This was mainly because we had a great band of speakers, and the cleverly crafted socialbysocial game to change the tempo after mid-morning.

As last time, James Munro from Patient Opinion gave the opening talk, and we could sense that they are growing, despite not because of the NHS supporting the customer voice.

Stewart Kirkpatrick from w00tonomy reminded us of the value of user generated content.

Stuart Harrison ( thanks for coming all that way ) gave a great insight into twitter, and how he and Lichfield district council for whom he  works, are using the application. He is a multi-talented proponent of technology, and other ways of using the web to get messages across.

Mike McTernan from Rapid Mobile wanted to know how people might use mobile in new ways. We had a great example of the simple ways in which Africa, specifically in this case, Malawi uses mobile technology.

The Learning Pool folks were over from Derry and it was lovely to meet Mary in person. Thanks so much to you all for coming. Paul had a plane to catch to get back home, so he showed us how much time and money can be saved with on-line training. I was thrilled to hear that they are working on serious games, and will definitely be in touch.

Al Tibett from Greener Leith explained how their organisation has grown using face to face communication backed up by extensive use of the web, and has been an on-line charity from inception.

Then we played the socialbysocial game and worked out in 5 groups what sort of actions might be needed to help Edinburgh transport, combat the recession, promote education and young people,ork with the environment, and engage the community to hear the voice of the citizen.It was fantastic to see the human dynamics in the room changing, as everyone played their game challenge on their table. Drew and David were extremely effective masters of ceremonies.

We will be doing more of this type of work with the city of Edinburgh council on June 30th. We are kindly invited to run a workshop on how citizens experiences and ideas can help design services.

Interesting in this context to see the post about Government waste of money on IT ( about £ 120 billion ). This comment suggests, as all of us at the event probably agree, that the citizen needs to be at the heart of the design ; government is ” institutionally incapable ” of delivering services in 2009 with the structures, IT systems and business processes that it has. It should listen, and in many cases get out of the way or remove itself.

After a healthy bowl of delicious soup from our wonderful hosts The Melting Pot, we heard from Mark Ballard at SCVO about the challenges the voluntary and not-for-profit sector face with web2.0 adoption.

Then the talk I had been waiting for from Iain Henderson mydex about Vendor Relationship Management. This will enable the individual to choose what they tell their vendors, either private or public sector. Give us back our identity is a powerful message, and the business case for supplier and individual is compelling.

Suraj from Jadu who spoke afterwards said that mydex is a paradigm shift, and I agree.

Suraj and Jadu have designed East Lothian web site, and it would be great if they could build a business in Scotland. Public sector websites on the whole are very poor and in real need of value for money re-designing. Citizens ought to be involved in this as well. After all, it is our money that pays for councils and our lives that are influenced by their services.

Finally James Coltham gave a pretty simple summary of accessibility issues. He blogs on this and other subjects, and would love to hear from others interested in accessibility.

Other things I learnt on the day

• Edinburgh Council education department will apparently not let school teachers or pupils build web sites in school time – this is one to follow up as I could have misinterpreted the statement
• One of the guests does the IT for the Homeless World Cup
• The pupils from Firrhill and Drummond High schools have great ICT teachers

It was a lot of fun and final thanks to Liz Ainan for covering it all so well

Everyone was then away by 1545, some to the pub, some to Dave Briggs localgovcamp in Birmingham, and others to Anna Maybank’s SICamp in Glasgow.

Busy times for web2.0

Flickr Commons aims to make hidden photographic treasures more widely available to the public. A number of institutions are participating in the project, where photographs with no known copyright restrictions are displayed on the internet for the world to see. The National Galleries of Scotland is the first Scottish organisation to open up its archives to the world in this way.

Among the gems to be found is this stereoscopic photograph of the Forth Bridge taken in 1896. Try crossing your eyes to see it in 3D.

Users are invited to share their knowledge by leaving comments and tagging photographs to make them easier to search for. Already 107 photographs have been uploaded, with the promise of more to come over the next few months.

For more information, visit the National Galleries of Scotland’s page on Flickr, or view the news item on its website.

The Edinburgh event will take place at Hawke and Hunter, 12 Picardy Place, Edinburgh. Tickets are £7 and all proceeds will go to charity: water. It promises to be a great opportunity to put faces to avatars, with the promise of live music and a raffle and auction with some rather tempting prizes. I will be there. Be quick if you want a ticket though — they seem to be selling quickly. You can buy your tickets here.

For more information, check out the Edinburgh Twestival webpage. You can also follow EdTwestival on Twitter and keep up with the event page on Facebook.

Already as part of the celebrations surrounding the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, snippets of his poetry have been posted on Twitter under the account ayrshirebard. Now the account will be the home of a drive to raise funds to build the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.

NTS is looking to raise £4 million over the weekend. The fundraising drive coincides with the 25th of January, beginning when the first part of the globe celebrates the birth of Burns at noon today and ending on Monday evening.

This looks like it is very much an experiment for the time being. Although Twitter has been used as a fundraising tool in the USA, but NTS reckon this is the first time it’s been done in the UK. It will be very interesting to see how successful it is.

There is more information at Craig McGill’s website and you can follow Robert Burns and the fundraising efforts on the Twitter account ayrshirebard.