5.18 — weeknotes — President’s Conference special

Well it’s official — I am now President of Socitm.

What an amazing couple of days it has been. A packed agenda with great speakers and great content. A real mix of delivery approaches as well to keep it fresh and relevant — presentations, workshops, table exercises, panel sessions as well as the dinner — being able to celebrate our successes. We even had a cyber escape room!

Socitm has been an important part of my career and been a member most of the 24 years that I have been in Local Government and Digital (I really can’t believe it has been 24 years — I still think I am in my 30s!) it is an organisation that really goes from strength to strength. I am incredibly proud to be President for the next year.

We had a number of Hounslow colleagues as well at the conference, either attending as delegates; attending the cyber escape room; speaking about data or attending the Empowering Women course! Nice to get some excellent attendance — and we’ll get that award next year!

There is an amazing team at Socitm, a fantastic President’s Team, engaged members and committed partners. All this together makes sure we deliver the very best for the communities we serve. There are too many people to thank, but a few quick thank yous — Nadira for just being amazing and supporting and encouraging me and Sheema for pulling together an amazing conference — and finally to Huw for being an amazing President and for being just so lovely! There was a theme in a number of the sessions — and that was it is all about people and not about technology. It isn’t about a new shiny piece of technology — it’s never about the tech. It is always about understanding the people we serve and making sure we use every advantage we can collectively to learn, support and deploy services to have positive impacts in our villages, towns and cities. Genuine place based leadership.

We heard from Matt Prosser in his opening remarks on the first day that Socitm is now signed up to the Local Public Sector Manager Code of Ethics — https://solace.org.uk/code-of-ethics/. I am delighted with this development and that we are supporting the highest standards in the management and delivery of local public services. It really is embedding Digital skills into Local Government leadership.

Another theme that came out repeatedly was ethics and the importance of diversity and inclusion in our workplaces to ensure that we don’t build bias in the technology and tools are developing. We took a big step forward at conference and bringing diversity and inclusion to the forefront — the Drag Queen was a risk, and I was nervous about how she would go down, but it was amazing! Thanks to Ophelia Payne and Alison’s hosting skills on the evening were once again awesome!!!

Building ethics and cyber security into all the work that we are doing across the sector is the key to really drive that innovation and change forwards.

I had such great feedback from a huge number of people about the conference. It really lifted colleagues spirits being together, being beside the sea and being able to have some real conversations!

The conference was really on point

Socitm is a big deal

Great to get the opportunity to speak to people

Words are not enough but it was a truly great conference in Brighton

My chosen charity is Mind Out — an LGBTQ charity supporting LGBTQ people with mental health — it is very real and Erica gave the conference a great flavour of the need for such work — and mentioned to me in the evening, that morning they had calls from 2 people thinking of taking their own life. So pleased to say we raised over £1200 just in the auction in the evening — more to come. Donate if you can: https://mindout.org.uk/donate/

It also made be really appreciate that Local Government cannot do everything and this was a great example of the partnership working across the sector that we really need.

And now the excitement was all too much (:-)) — so I am now enjoying a bit of time off in the sunshine — therefore no weeknotes next week :-)

Tune of the Week: Madonna — Holiday (Live Aid 1985)