Yesterday we enjoyed a day out at the Headstar e-Democracy conference 2007. This was, I think, the third time we’ve been to this event, and every time it gets better and better. The new venue this year really gave the place a more professional feel, but more interesting than that was the demographics of the delegates.

Perhaps of necessity, this event sort of emerged from the National Project on Local e-Democracy, and as a result, delegates have previously been primarily from the local government sector, wandering round trying to avoid being sold anything.

This time, it was really noticeable how few local government people were there, and how many people were there from central government and large organisations. There’s not really much to say on this i suppose, other than it reflecting something we’ve been seeing for a while, local government just really isn’t that serious about e-Democracy in comparison with other priorities.

Met some interesting people as ever, caught up with some old friends and heard some good talks. Professor Coleman’s keynote speech was very good, made the apt point that being disappointed by e-democracy at this stage is mildly akin to being disappointed by television in the 1950’s, it was still quite new and capable of a lot more. Oddest talk of the day must have been the one on “New paths to political engagement: Videos, games, viral campaigns”. Odd for two reasons, first because using videos, game and viral campaigns for political engagement isn’t new, we’ve been doing it since 2001, and second because not one of the panelists had anything to say about any of the three.

Highlight of the day though was seeing Redbridge Council take a stand in the exhibition, and quote from this very blog in the testimonials on their stand. See the photo below.

In fact, it was great to meet so many readers of this blog at the event, sometimes get the feeling that we’re publishing to the ether, given how we annoyingly still haven’t got comments turned on on this blog (client work always books up the studio time for it!) so hi to everyone we met there, see you at the next one!