LG/WWW

Yesterday was the first LocalGov Digital Makers (LGMakers) meet, in Guildford. It was an event that Ben Cheetham , Dan Blundell and I organised to show some of the Makers Project Team pilot projects but more importantly hear people's views on collaborative working and get them involved in LGMakers. The event was only open to those working in local government  ( I wrote why here ) and around 40 people from 25 councils attended. For me the event confirmed there's a growing desire amongst those working for local governments to do things differently. This is heartening, as given the diminishing funds councils have at their disposal, increasingly local authorities have to stop doing things or find alternative ways of doing them. With Makers Project Teams, by using existing tools such as GitHub , Trello , Slack , Twitter and creating a few more (they'll be more about the pilot projects in the next couple of weeks) council digital teams would share their work, where comm

LocaGov Digital Makers (Makers) is the network for designers and developers from LocalGov Digital . Makers is open to all, and attendees at our Hack Day in June included people from local governments, the Ordnance Survey, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Government Digital Service, the NHS and the private sector. So why is the Makers Meet-Up on 11 September just open to those working for a council? Change is generally enacted by those with a mandate or by consensus when a critical mass start doing something new. Makers don't have a mandate, and whilst we're much more that just a group of volunteers, we're only working in tens of councils rather than hundreds. On Thursday we've got people from over 25 councils coming to talk about how they can start changing things and working together, whilst still retaining the autonomy the need to meet local users' needs. We've got LocalGovCamp veterans coming, we've got others taking