At lunchtime, the participants gathered in the atrium of Microsoft’s Atrium . As a little warm-up, the seating for the day was put together: cardboard stools. These were to be decorated with ideas for the civil service at the end of the Barcamp. You will come across one or two of these stools again at the Future Congress on the State and Civil Service.
The hustle and bustle was interrupted by the ‘Silence Fox’ gesture performed by Julius Falk and Lena Sarp from Luftmenschen . At the start of the event, participants were first asked to listen to a few introductory remarks and pointers regarding the rest of the Barcamp’s programme.
Tanja Böhm, Head of Microsoft Berlin, opened the event and welcomed the participants to their premises. Inspiration was provided by lightning talks from Prof. Dr Gerhard Hammerschmidof the Hertie School of Governance, followed by Michael Seipel and Christopher Büttner from Cassini Consulting.
The Luftmenschen team and Basanta Thapa from the Public IT Competence Centre explained the rules for the next steps and drew up the agenda of topics together with the participants. Ten topics were discussed in each of the two discussion rounds, with each topic being assigned to a group. Participants were free to choose the group in which they wished to take part in the discussion. Among other things, the topics ‘AI in public administration’, ‘IT in public authorities – efficiency versus security’, ‘Blockchain as a driver of eGovernment’ and ‘Bringing services closer to citizens through digitalisation’ were discussed.
The Barcamp followed the principle of “Bumblebees and Butterflies”. The butterflies are the designated group leaders, who ensure that work within the groups is structured. The bumblebees can move from group to group during the discussion phases to gather information for their own topic.
The groups were encouraged to work in an interdisciplinary manner and, at the end of each discussion phase, to produce a summary document, which was displayed in a feedback galleryat the end of the event. Here, participants were able to rate the other groups’ ideas using green and blue dots. Blue means ‘Good idea’, whilst green means ‘We need to work on this further. Further discussion required’.
Following a feedback session for the organisers, participants were also able to share a little something with their fellow attendees during the ‘warm back’ activity. Compliments and words of thanks were written on Post-it notes and stuck onto the backs of those to whom they were addressed.
Our participants also had the opportunity to leave their mark on the ‘human wall’ with a self-designed business card and to network between the group sessions as well as at the get-together at the end of the event.
The interactive and open-format Barcamp U30 generated many new ideas for the local authority, which will be presented on the first day of the Future Congress on 18 June. All Barcamp participants are warmly invited to attend!