Alright Babs, I’m on the train back from UK Govcamp. This year hosted in Birmingham for the first time, bostin! As usual its been an energising event in the dark depths of January. Birmingham city council offices we’re beautiful the sort of place that inflates you with civic pride that just don’t get built anymore. I was mildly amazed at how well maintained the building was, given Brum’s well publicised financial challenges, its a credit to them they’ve managed to maintain the space, and haven’t sold it for a £1 as so often happens in crisis.
As usual I volunteered this year, it’s really not a great deal of effort for the reward. Volunteering this year was extra special as Si arranged a canal boat trip the night before. Usually there’s so much going on on the day you don’t get much time to talk to other volunteers so it was nice to have the opportunity to spend some time and get to know folks before the main event.
Before the day started I caught up with Oli for a coffee. The morning started pretty quietly for me, I was in the cloakroom during pitching. To be honest the pitching is my least favourite part of govcamp, I get its a really hard thing to get right, and a few iterations have been tried over the years, but the lengthy pitching session doesn’t float my boat. I did enjoy spending an hour chatting to Kat and Abi in the cloakroom, admiring Polly’s organisational skills and putting the world to rights. It set the tone for the morning for me.
The morning was mostly corridor camp, catching up with old friends, and a few new people. I posted about saying hi if govcamp felt a bit overwhelming and one or two folks came over and chatted to me, I’ll definitely do that again.
If it's your first time at #ukgc26 and it's a bit overwhelming, I'm Ian, come and say hello, I'm the old beardy guy that's not @jukes.ie 😁
— Ian Ames (@ames.world) January 17, 2026 at 9:02 AM
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It was really lovely to catchup with ex-reggers Lauren, Annie, and Emeric, who I haven’t seen for ages and are all absolutely thriving.
As usual I felt mildly guilty about corridor camp and not contributing to sessions, so I spent the afternoon in them.
The first after lunch session was excellently facilitated by Oli, he took us out of the usual roundtable discussion format to collaborate a bit more and get practical ideas down about how to handle people bringing solutions to teams, a thing everyone faces. For whats it’s worth I mentioned the The technology code of practice as a great back up should the service standard be dismissed as it broadly says the same things, it’s especially useful in procurements. My favourite solutions were from James, who had practical tips about meeting people where they are with their ideas and using it as a starting point for a deeper conversation.
The next two sessions were on AI, I mainly listened, this is not a space I know enough about so it was interesting to hear the differing perspectives. I was reassured that the conversations weren’t hype driven as so much written about AI usually is, but instead nuanced, considered conversations about the benefits and risks that AI presents. It gave me hope that smart people were going in with their eyes open about how to use these tools in ways to benefit society and are very mindful of the risks present.
Perhaps the loveliest but incredibly random part of the day was as I was leaving, a group of friends asked me to take some photos of them, they were incredibly lovely and we had a lot of fun taking loads of photos of them all together. They told me they were friends who didn’t get to catchup often and so they wanted to make a collage of photos together, we got loads of snaps in various poses on the grand stairs at the entrance to the city hall. They looked great and it occurred to me that these random small moments of incredibly human interactions are exactly what govcamp is about. A great event as usual, thank you organisers.
