Informal monthly get togethers for folk who do or are interested in Digital. Open to all.
I’m really glad to say the call for new blood to organise TeaCamp London has been answered.
I’ve given the lead organiser the keys to the kingdom and they’re setting up their 1st meeting with fellow organisers to discuss format, etc.
They’re expecting to launch the reboot in April 2019 so stay tuned for further details.
TeaCamp is on sabbatical until we find some new organisers to step up and run the show. If you’re interested, please contact James or Sarah to get the keys to the kingdom.
We’re very grateful to dxw who’ve regularly sponsored teacamp, providing you with all the tea and cake you can scoff. Thanks also to Curzon Victoria who’ve let us use their mezzanine level free of charge.
Welcome back to Teacamp folks, the heat of summer may be dissipating but we’ve been keeping the Teacamp fires stoked and have a scorching hot topic for October’s Teacamp. We are very lucky to have Blake this month and they would like to talk to you about unintended consequences of the Digital Economy Act and Age Verification.
The Open Rights Group wrote about the then Digital Economy Bill back in 2017, which is has now become the Digital Economy Act – “The Bill is an example of how not to legislate for the Internet and complex social issues. Among other things, the DEBill, attempts to address the issue of under 18s seeing pornography, by forcing porn sites to implement Age Verification (AV). This ‘simple’ solution has been fraught with problems from the start.”
Age verification for online porn is coming – but this child protection measure threatens unintended consequences for the privacy of internet users.
Soon you will have to show ID to look at online porn, and the companies offering age checking services will have access to both your identifying details, and your porn browsing activity.
Some of these companies are more trustworthy than others.
Rather than sensibly legislating to protect this sensitive data, the Government are failing to adequately regulate the age verification market they have created. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, what do porn viewers and politicians (who may well be the same people) need to know about the risk of porn data leaks – and what can we do about it?
Blake is a genderqueer independent scholar, feminist pornographer, sex worker and sexual freedom campaigner. They are non-binary and use the gender neutral pronouns they/them. Their films have won multiple international awards, and they have prevailed in defending their work in legal battles against porn censorship in the UK.
Blake is an active campaigner for sex work decriminalisation and labour rights, obscenity law reform, civil liberties and human rights. They were awarded Publicist of the Year at the Sexual Freedom Awards 2015 for their efforts advocating for sex workers’ rights. They are official spokesperson for Backlash, and sit on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group. They crowd-fund their political work via Patreon.
Age verification on the internet affects us all, will this change your browsing habits? Are there websites that you will no longer visit because your browsing habits are being tracked? Come along to Teacamp on Thursday and be part of the discussion with Blake.
Hope to see you there!
Time and date: 4pm – 6pm, 1st Thursday of every month
Location: Mezzanine, Curzon Victoria, 58 Victoria street, London, SW1E 6QW
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
Do you remember that old wives tale? According to folklore, the dew on 1 May has magical properties and anyone who washes their face in it will have a flawless complexion for the entire year. May dew was also said to be able to remove spots, freckles and pimples.
Well, I can’t promise that washing your face in the morning dew is going to work wonders, but if you come along to this months May Teacamp on the 3rd of May, you’ll be able to work wonders with our Government Digital Service (GDS) Service Assessments Bootcamp. In case you are wondering, Service Assessments are a great tool to enable departments to work in the right way to create services that reflect and serve the needs of their users.
Yes you lucky Teacampers, this month we have Clara Songaila, Digital Engagement Manager at GDS.
Clara graduated from the University of Manchester in 2015 with a degree in Latin and Ancient Greek and not knowing exactly where this would take her, she headed straight into the world of digital at Adobe, selling their Digital Marketing Cloud. With intensive training courses in sales and digital tools she then moved on to use those skills as the Website and Systems Executive for Osprey London at their head office. Clara managed the integration between the internal legacy systems and their new e-commerce platform as well as upgrading the internal legacy system – something that came with its own unique challenges.
After Clara had completed the project and upgraded all the system, she stumbled upon the Digital Engagement Manager position at GDS last October when looking for my next move. Keen to get involved in the the digital space of the public sector Clara was thrilled to get the job and start in December of last year. Clara has always been fascinated in the inner workings of government and being able to make a difference – excuse the cliche – on a daily basis, or trying her best to make things happen and it’s been a really enjoyable experience so far.
And with that, Clara is is going to take you through the Service Assessment process, which is part of assuring services across the whole of government. She’ll be going into detail specifically on:
It’s going to be a great Teacamp this month! Have you been through a Service Assessment? How was it for you? What would you like to feedback to GDS? Are you nervous about going through a Service Assessment? This is an excellent opportunity for you to ask those niggling questions and hopefully soothe your nerves. Or perhaps you just wanted to find out more about GDS Service Assessments, then this is the Teacamp for you!
Can’t wait to see you there 🙂
Time and date: 4pm – 6pm, 1st Thursday of every month
Location: Mezzanine, Curzon Victoria, 58 Victoria street, London, SW1E 6QW
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
It’s the Easter break and you may have overdosed on the old chocolate, but there is ALWAYS room for more CAEK, and April’s Teacamp is going to give you plenty of food for thought!
This month we have the awesome Millicent Scott Brooks who’d like to talk to you about:
Millicent has long been interested in the citizen’s contract with the state. Much of this is currently done offline, but are we being “digitised through the backdoor“? Information is held about the individual at the passport office, the NHS, the DVLA, the banks – not to mention social media.
She’ll be inviting you to help explore some of these issues and suspend reality to imagine creative solutions that could become viable for a modern age contract of citizenship.
Millicent is a Senior Partner at The Democratic Society. She has spent over a decade working on increasing citizens’ engagement with policy making and bringing people into democratic processes. She spends a lot of time thinking about how to engage people in civic society, while balancing security and freedom.
Before joining Demsoc in 2015 she worked for the European Parliament, Scottish Government, Scottish Civic Forum, the Association for Citizenship Teaching (England) and the Financial Times.
Millicent has a BA in European Studies from LSE and an MSc in Nationalism from the University of Edinburgh. She speaks English, Norwegian, French and German.
I can only manage English, Scottish and Dundonian, so am in complete awe!
With so much of our life online now, and our interaction with Central & Local Government increasingly moving services online, James, Millicent and I would love to invite you along to our April teacamp and hope you’ll be part of the discussion about this fascinating topic, whether in person or online. Just follow our hashtag #Teacamp
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
Chris has over 12 years of policy, strategy, and digital delivery experience in city and central government, and latterly the NHS. He currently works in NHS Digital, an organisation that delivers technology and data programmes for the NHS, as the service manager for 111 Online. 111 Online is a digital service to assess patients’ health needs and connect them with the right care. He will talk about the transformation challenge of building clinical digital services that span multiple NHS organisations, and where he thinks the NHS needs to go in order to realise the full benefits of the internet age.
Nayeema has worked at the Government Digital Service (GDS), the BBC and is now Head of Digital Service Transformation at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
December, a time for gift giving, Christmas parties and a time for reflection. That’s this months teacamp all wrapped into one!
James and I would like to take this opportunity to catch up with you (This could be Teacamp’s Christmas party!) and more importantly listen to your feedback and ideas about what we should do for next years Teacamp.
dxw are kindly sponsoring this months teacamp so you can still get your monthly fix of tea & cake on them 🙂
To quote a line from one of my favourite old Sci-Fi programmes Babylon 5. “What do you want?” That’s what December’s teacamp boils down to.
We’ve had a great year, lots of fabulous speakers on a whole range of different topics and an eager audience turning up to listen, engage and discuss. Thank you so much to everyone who spoke, who turned up and listened and asked all those questions.
You make Teacamp.
So please, come along to this months teacamp on the 7th of December and help us crowdsource ideas for speakers for next year.
Come along and help us shape next years Teacamp offering.
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
Throughout 2015 and 2016 Dan Barratt made over 100 cakes for work, gathered feedback on all of the cakes, recorded it on a public spreadsheet, and broadcast his activity on Twitter. He did this because, through cake, he wanted to model and exhibit behaviours, practices and values that he would expect to see in work. He wanted to “be the change you want to see”.
At the end of November Dan wrote a blog post about this ‘cake for business’ project. People across the public sector digital and cake industries really liked it.
He’ll talk about what he learned, and explain why running a two-year behavioural experiment on your colleagues is a good thing to do.
Dan is the Head of Data and Search at the Houses of Parliament. He likes making things, fixing things, making things better, and public service.
He has been an inspiration to many of us in government, particularly teacamp organiser James.
There will be cake. Unfortunately, not made by Dan.
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
We held a session at December’s Teacamp to think about possible speakers for next year. Not quite crystal ball gazing, but thinking about what you might want to discuss next year. Check out our Trello Board of our thoughts on potential speakers.
A lot can happen in a week of politics, let alone predicting what’s going to happen over the next
year and what you might want to talk about. So this isn’t by any means a “fixed” list. We need your feedback on what you’d like to discuss, so do get back to us. Is there anything missing from that list of potential topics? What would you like to talk about?
See more via #teacamp.
How does teacamp work?
If you want to come to teacamp, just turn up on the day, it is open to everyone. It is upstairs in the cafe, very informal and friendly. If you are coming for the first time or on your own, ask for James or Sarah and we will introduce you to some teacampers.
Contact info
Teacamp London 