#NotJustLondon — what’s that then?

#NotJustLondon stickers

The start — GovCamp 2018

On 20th January 2018 I was at #UKGC18 (UK Gov Camp 2018) and I had decided to pitch a session for the first time. Whilst in the queue with my post it note and sharpie in hand I decided that of all of the things I could discuss, I was most interested in discussing people’s experience of the public sector being very London centric. I almost left the line, but decided that after three years of attending about 10 openspace/unconference/barcamp events it was time for me to pitch.

Not a great photo with my eyes closed but here I am pitching #NotJustLondon. Tweet from Katie Lambeth-Mansell

Here is the actual post-it note I wrote while in the line. Tweet from Chris Barnes

Tweet by Beck Strickland showing the room and the people attending the session.

The conversation

We had a fascinating conversation which ranged from jobs, through events and to general lack of awareness when inviting people to events in London for example what is reasonable to expect in terms of start time for parents or people working shifts. I am definitely not anti-London however I do think that there are lots of situations when London is the default choice and that is not always ideal. I am doing my best to make sure that there are things going on locally (West Yorkshire) and to include everyone.

Tweet from Keri O'Donoghue

Tweet from Linda McGee

Tweet from Debbie Blanchard

One of the things which I have done which was inspired by the conversation is run OneTeamGov lean coffee events using Zoom.

Tweet from Beck Strickland

Since GovCamp

We have talked about #NotJustLondon since at OneTeamGov breakfast and LocalGovCamp.

The hashtag

The hashtag just came to mind whilst I was in the queue. People started to (and still) use the hashtag for events and recruitment (although I found out later by searching that a couple of people were using it before).

The Delib Team tweeting about an event in Manchester

Saul Cozens from dxw tweeting about jobs in Leeds

The stickers

I love a sticker and so I designed some simple circular stickers and have been giving them out and sending them to people who ask. At the same time Ian Ames designed a sticker and so lots of people have both.

Update: Haley Green from the Orkney Islands Council has asked if there is any chance of including the Northern Isles. Does anyone have an image including the Northern Isles which I could use?

Tweet from Haley and reply

Tweet from Sam Villis with both sticker designs

I ordered large blue stickers (69mm) from Diginate, small blue stickers (45mm) from Awesome Merchandise and sets of four small stickers in the colours from my logo (38mm) from Moo.

Here is the design, please feel free to download it and get some printed if you would like to. You can change the main colour to fit with your logo if you would like.

If you use the design elsewhere please give attribution and use the CC information.

The sticker design

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License