What happens next is where YOU come in! The Aliss Project team are inviting people with long term conditions, service designers, product designers, graphic designers, marketers, funding bodies and business advisors to come together for two days and help make these ideas real!

‘How do you know it works?’ is one of those annoying questions that people seem to ask about social media. For some reason they’re never satisfied with ‘it just does’ as an answer, so our next event is a dream-team partnership between FutureGov and Measurement Camp to get to the bottom of social media measurement.

I’m very excited to tell you about FutureGov’s next event - The Crowdsourced Council: online tools for participative policy making. Not only is it a triumph of aliteration, it’s also shaping up to be a great session about tools and tactics for getting actual people involved in shaping policy. In partnership with Capital Ambition, we’ve invited some great people to show off their tools: The founder of Uservoice will be there along with the clever Audio/Videoboo people of Best Before Media, the co-founder of Yoosk, and the founder and CEO of Debatewise. We’ll also be introducing US company GovDelivery and getting a look at new tool Quiet Riots.

As most of you will know, FutureGov are fully signed up members of the Social Innovation Camp fan club. We’ve not missed any of the four that have taken place so far, personally helping to lead on a couple of projects at the first two camps in London (Enabled by Design and Accesscity). While I was at the fourth Social Innovation Camp, Social Innovation Camp Central and Eastern Europe in Bratislava last month, the chance came up for us collaborate at this week’s New Media Forum in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Take this as your invitation to the next FutureGov Network event. We will be running our next meet up in partnership with Huddle at Sun Microsystems’ offices focusing on using web technology to improve collaboration and innovation in councils. It’s a humdinger and a shift in emphasis for us since we have so far focused on how to involve citizens in local government at our events, but what goes on inside the council is just as important, if not more so.

As the keen followers of this blog will know, we like to organise (and attend) the odd event or two here at FutureGov. From FutureGov Network meet ups, to Gov2Gov events, to online film premieres, to lending a hand at bigger events like Gov20 Camp, Reboot Britain and Social Innovation Camp, we love getting out and about listening, learning and sharing. At all of these events and more besides, there has been a rapid growth in real time reporting on the goings on during the sessions due in no small part to the explosive adoption of tools like Twitter.

A bit like back in March this year, it seems event time is upon again here in FutureGov Towers. So here’s just a quick post pulling it all together to let you know where you can find us in case you fancy coming along and joining in the fun yourselves.

Two weeks ago now (wow how time flies!) I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Washington DC at the eDemocracy camp and the Politics Online Conference. Hosted and organised by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet (IPDI), I headed to the events eager to see how things had changed since my trip over last year given Obama’s intervening election. And they were again an honour to be part of, with the mood clearly having changed from excitement about all the possibilities ahead to enthusiasm for the reality of delivering the open government directive.

This weekend I’ll be flying to Washington DC to attend the Politics Online Conference. The line-up for the two day event looks fantastic! I’m especially happy to be there to support the screening of Us Now, which is a UK film about mass participation and collaboration directed by Ivo Gromley.

Last week FutureGov took on a race against time. We got the call on the FutureFone (a bit like the Bat Phone but more futuristic) that 50 bloggers from around the globe were descending on London for the G20 Summit the following week and there was a party-shaped hole in their schedule. ‘Quick!’ we cried, ‘to the FutureMobile!’ Then we realised we don’t actually have one of those yet, so we got on the phone and called everyone we know instead.