My own contribution to ReadWriteGov Peterborough was to add a bit more interaction to proceedings, which I did via the social media game.

Two teams worked on two scenarios: firstly a council wanting to engage citizens on a policy issue (in this case, charging for waste collections) and secondly a council wanting to collaborate online, both internally and with partner organisations.

Once the scenarious were developed, a member from each team took their scenarious to the other team, who would act as ‘consultants’ designing a solution using online and offline tools, printed on cards, each with a cost attached to them - a simple points system, reflecting effort as much as cost. Each team had a miserly budget of 10 points, and neither managed to produce the solution under budget!

The game provides a number of benefits to those playing it:

• It encourages people to put tools into content, and work out what is needed, not what happens to be cool at the time
• It introduces them to new tools they may not have come across before
• It encourages the mixing of offline and online methods: this is not an either/or situation and a good blend of cool online stuff and old school face to face engagement is necessary

Hopefully everybody had fun, and maybe learned a bit too in the process. If you have any questions, do leave them as comments to this post, or email me at d@vebrig.gs.