One of my public sector digital inspirations, Dan Slee (Walsall Council), recently made some predications about digital in local government in 2012, including this one:
12. Amazing things will happen in Scotland. Some of the brightest people in the public sector who are innocavating aren’t in London. They’re north of the border serving as police officers as well as in local government. It’ll be fascinating to see how this develops.
Which is nice.
It’s good to get a more objective perspective. I’ve been feeling a bit disheartened recently by (what seems to me anyway) our lack of progress on the digital front and have been looking south with jealous eyes. On reflection, I think this is actually more to do with people not talking enough about the good stuff they're doing rather than no good stuff happening at all (is it the Scottish Calvinist thing?).
And I this year certainly does have the potential to be a very interesting one for digital in Scotland (and hopefully that means lots for me to blog about!).
We’ve certainly got things off to a cracking start with the announcement of #Tartantm - concurrent TweetUps for public sector types in all the major Scottish cities on the evening of 22 February.
It’s ambitious. But it’s got two of our most dedicated public sector social media advocates, Carolyne Mitchell (South Lanarkshire Council) and Gordon Scobbie (Deputy Chief Constable of Tayside Police) behind it (assisted by others around the country), so it can’t fail.
If you work in the public sector and are interested in using social media to engage or to build online communities, you should get yourself along for food, chatting and tweeting. There's more info at http://tartantweeple.wordpress.com/.
So, I’ll see you there! (And if you really can’t be there – and you’d better have a damn good excuse - then follow the Twitter hashtag #tartantm.)
