Introducing Camp Camp (Or shit just got Meta, but I’d still like to see your ROI)

I suspect this post will alienate a big chunk of my regular readers. I’m not going to apologise for that. So, if you’re sitting comfortably, pre-packaged outrage in hand, I shall begin…

I’d like to formally introduce you all to ‘Camp Camp’. It’s the latest in a long-line of public sector events and aimed at people who want to best use social media to set-up and attend huge numbers of events in their spare time, where roughly the same topics will be covered by largely the same people…Meta, right?

For my non-public sector followers, ‘Camp’ is the commonly applied term used to describe an Unconference-style event. People, mainly in the spheres of IT and Communications, gather together to discuss how new technology and social media can be used to best benefit a particular service area. Unconferences are largely unstructured events, sans agendas and totally driven by the topics that participants want to cover.

I’m joking about Camp Camp, of course, I have no intention of creating a Camp about the organising of Camps. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else was though.

I did help organise BlueLightCamp in April of this year and had great fun (on the whole) doing it, but it’s left me with a weird feeling ever since. You see, despite it’s lofty aims, you know what the camp I spent a massive amount of time organising actually achieved? Nothing at all! There is nothing that exists now that I can say came into being because I helped organise that camp. The level and standard of engagement by Blue Light Organisations is no better or worse than it was before we started. This makes me decidedly uncomfortable. Why? Because a lot of people gave up their time on a Sunday, a lot of Sponsors paid a lot of money and no one has anything really to show for it. Sure, we all made some new friends, but is that something that should be measured as a Return on Investment?

Return on Investment, ROI, now there’s a concept not regularly applied to Public Sector Unconferences, but it damn well should be! It should be, because I strongly suspect BlueLightCamp isn’t the only Camp that would struggle to demonstrate any form of Return on attendees Investment in terms of time and money.

The ‘Camp Scene’ is fast approaching critical mass, the bubble WILL eventually burst and, unless serious thought is given to things like Outcomes, a lot of great people will become disillusioned with the principles of Unconferences.

So…what am I asking?

To Organisers

It’s simple really, if you are organising a Camp I need to know you’re confident there is a need for that event. A real NEED, not just a spurious one that you can justify in your own mind. If you want me to attend your Camp, I don’t need an agenda, I do need to see something come about as a return on such a huge collective Investment. My time is very precious to me.

To Attendees

Don’t let my words put you off. If you are planning to attend your first Camp, I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Broadly-speaking, I believe Unconferences are a valuable tool, I just don’t see them as an end in themselves. Always ask yourself this though: what has the event changed for me?

My top tip is: If you are are at a Camp with people like Dan Slee, Andy Mabbett, Mike Rawlins et al, spend time with them, they are truly lovely and brilliant people you can learn from. I have learnt a lot from them…but I could have done that without attending Umconferences as they are so generous with their time.

Finally…

To Sponsors

If you’re approached to sponsor an event like this, it’s reasonable and right to expect stated desired Outcomes that are a bit more robust than ‘sharing good practice’ and ‘meeting new people’. You would demand a damn-sight more if you were asked to invest in anything else.

**Update 21 October 2012**

Well this has certainly provoked some interesting responses from people, as the comments below give a flavour of. In the last few days I have been told that I am right, wrong, brave, a coward, short-sighted, insightful and, my personal favourite: that I have betrayed and annoyed a lot of people.   I am not sure that there is greater compliment as a writer than provoking such varied and intense responses from readers.

The thing that has surprised me most is this is nothing new, the issues that I raise, have been raised before. Here’s a post by Simon Gray that yoiu might find interesting: Challenge and groupthink amongst the #localgovweb community…

Interesting isn’t it? That was written over a year ago now and what’s changed? Really…What has changed? I’m sure when Simon wrote that it prompted the same sort of responses that this post did. A lot of people probably wrote some rather self-congratulatory posts about Camps and Uncons and nothing changed. The problem with cliques is that they will work hard, when needed, to maintain the status quo when it is threatened. Ask yourself this, who does the status quo is actually benefit?

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and…

You know the drill, if you don’t like these thoughts, stick around, I have plenty of others.

Rorschach – A character in fiction who speaks to me.

Kitty Genovese. New York. March 13, 1964. Stabbed. Attacked for over half-an-hour in the lobby of her apartment building.Thirty-eight neighbours heard the whole thing. No one called the police. No one helped. No one heard. No one saw.

Night I heard 38 people did nothing was night I put on this mask. Never wanted to see face in mirror again. Ashamed to be part of Human Race.” – Rorschach – Before Watchmen: Night Owl #2

38 people did nothing.

You are intended to be surprised, but you’re not, are you? Not really. You’re not surprised because, odds are in my favour to predict this, you are one of those 38 people.

You were not a Neighbour to Kitty Genovese when, in 1964, she was stabbed to death in the lobby of her apartment building…but

You ARE one of the 38. There will have been a time, more than one I’d wager, when you have seen something terrible, something that perhaps you could have even prevented. You did not. You walked away, you held your silence, you heard nothing and you saw nothing. You are one of the 38 people in Kitty’s apartment building…and

So am I.

I did nothing.

I did not see.

I did not hear.

More on this later…

This post started out a long time ago; I heard this audioboo from Nick Holloway (@NickHollowayVox) and it got me thinking…

There are lots of characters from literature that speak to me, but there is one whose voice I hear louder and clearer than all the others. His name is Rorschach, from Alan Moore’s superb graphic novel, The Watchmen.

Rorschach

For those of you who haven’t read it, The Watchmen takes place in an alternative and highly distopian 1985, where the planet stands on the brink of nuclear oblivion as the Cold War threatens to heat up. In America, masked anti-heroes have taken up the cause of justice as the state fails in it’s response to increasing levels of civil unrest and anarchy.

Amongst these ‘masks’, The Watchmen, is Rorschach, so-called because of the constantly shifting ink blots that form his mask.

Those of you who are familiar with moore’s work are forgiven a little surprise at the fact this is the character I would cite as speaking most to me. It is fair to say that he has some personality quirks that I do not share:

• Rorschach is about as Right Wing as it’s possible to be, while I’m a bit of an unrepentent Lefty;
• Rorschach is antisocial to the point of self-imposed issolation, I have been known to quite enjoy the company of others; and
• Rorschach is violent in the extreme, while I always seek to avoid conflict wherever possible.

At this point it is worth addressing a commonly repeated slight on the character of Rorschach, which writes him off as a sociopath. We humans like our labels, but this label seems too harshly applied to a character a lot more complex than that. There are certainly several aspect of Rorschach’s character that would single him out as having an antisocial behaviour disorder – at one point other characters recall he throws a deluded, but innocent, man down an elevator shaft – but other elements, that would suggest otherwise. Sociopath or not, he still speaks to me. At the heart of the reason for this is compromise…

We all compromise, it’s part of our humanity. Our innate capacity for compromise makes us adept and effective at collaboration. Collaboration is a good thing, it’s largely how we better the whole species. Sometimes we compromise too much; at the expense of ourselves, at the expense of others, we become like Kitty’s neighbours, because it’s easier to do nothing. It’s easier to hear nothing. I compromise too much, I always have. Rorschach knows nothing of compromise.

Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon. – Rorschach, The Watchmen

*Spoiler Alert*Even though Rorschach knows that Ozymandias’ plan, to foster a world peace by providing a common threat for the leaders of the world, will be highly effective, he will not compromise his beliefs. Rather than accept the brave new world created by Ozymandias, a world that his masked comrades are willing to accept, however distasteful, Rorschach cannot. There is no doubt in his mind when he steps from Veidt’s antarctic lair into the snow that his destruction, at the hands of Dr Manhatten, is assured…

The panel of Dr Manhattan disassembling Rorschach, leaving him nothing more than a smear of blood and deconstructed bone on the antarctic ice, still affects me every time I read it. It’s powerful, such sacrifice. Rorschach becomes a true hero in my eyes…We compromise too much, but we don’t need to. Whether we recognise it or not, there is a little bit of Rorschach in all of us.

I’ve always been drawn to them. Drawn to those people who stand out from the vast sea of our collective compromises. They stand up, they shout out, they attack what they believe is wrong. Often they are overlooked, marginalised, fragmented, disassembled and even killed. They know this is a possibility, a likelihood, but they do it anyway, but themselves at risk, in danger, rather than compromise their beliefs. Never compromise, not even in the face of armageddon.

For too long I’ve been a neighbour of Kitty Genovase. I have seen nothing. I have heard nothing.

No more! I’m making a concerted effort to be more Rorschach-like.

I will be bold…

It’s started already. Here’s something that I wrote recently: On The Abuse of Power.

The City is afraid of me,
I have seen its true face. – Rorschach