Here at FutureGov, we’re all about bringing together diverse ideas and groups of people that wouldn’t necesarily find each other without a little helping hand. Whether cross-organisational, cross-sectoral or even cross-country (as our current competition to send a UK public servant to the Politics Online conference in Washington testifies), we really enjoy helping to make interesting conversations happen.

To help us with this we have now set up FutureGov Networks, a network of networks supporting change in government and beyond. First up in the series of hopefully thought provoking and productive events was a Local Government Breakfast Club social media special, held at the Hub Kings Cross last month.

While we’ve run a number of sessions in the past, including the GovWeb Wish List session at NESTA before Christmas, the Local Government Breakfast Club was the first time we’ve branded an event a FutureGov Network. Free to attend and aimed predominantly at London government’s communicators, the session focused on how local councils can better use the web for communication and engagement.

I kicked things off with a love that dare not speak its name, my love of gov (be warned: govgeek alert!):

FutureGov Local Government Breakfast Club from Dominic Campbell on Vimeo.

Next up was James Governor of Redmonk. Effervescent as ever, James abandoned the slideshow approach and opted to ask his 4000+ followers on micro-blogging social network site Twitter what he should be advising the audience. And the answer? Twitter. And lots of two-way dialogue with it, not just transferring traditional broadcast approaches into the social web. 1-0 to the wisdom of the crowd there we think.

Then on to Lee Bryant, Director of Headshift social computing consultancy and event sponsor. Lee provided a fascinating take on why not only does:

“local and national government need to radically improve its use of modern, connected IT, including social software, because we believe it is key to better inclusion, engagement and participation, there is now a pressing economic reason for accelerating this process. We simply cannot afford business as usual, even if we wanted it.”

Lee’s three themes for local government in 2009 can be found over on the Headshift blog - well worth a read.

Last up of the speakers was Emer Coleman (Director of Strategy at the London Borough of Barnet) who gave a presentation on how Barnet has really begun to push at the boundaries of traditional communications and engagement over the last year (with a little help along the way from FutureGov), drawing on a wide range of on and offline social media tools to better connect with the citizens of Barnet. Emer’s presentation gives you a good taste of what Barnet has been up to, and if you’d like to see more go to the links to Barnet Council’s social sites from the corporate website.

But as with any of these events, the most satisfying part of the morning was the energy in the room after the presentations and the quality of conversations people were having. There is now clearly a real appetite for change and momentum behind moving towards new ways of working and I look forward to seeing a whole host of new and exciting initiatives that will undoubtedly pop up in coming months. As I said in my presentation, local government has a once in a lifetime opportunity to lead and use the social web in new and exciting - and most importantly relevant - ways to connect and collaborate with communities to make a real difference to local areas.

One last thing…

Watch out for more FutureGov Networks events coming up. As well as a possible re-run of this first event, we are already thinking through some new and different themes (and cities!) for events as we look to reach out beyond the core social media evangelists and into making it relevant to a wider group of govgeeks. Leave a comment below or drop me a line if you’re interested in an event near you on a theme of your choosing and we’ll see what we can do!