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Last Tuesday I had the honour and pleasure of helping out at a dinner to get people together to talk about Working Together 2, an initiative to help the public sector to work more intelligently with digital entrepreneurs and innovators when using technology to support service reform, rather than always plumping for the “safe” option of one of the big boys. The idea of the evening was to start off a process of co-creation through conversation and collaboration.

In the Soho House bar beforehand, I chatted with people to see what they’d come expecting to put in and take away from the evening.

I think what drew everyone together was a shared frustration with how things are, that it’s just too difficult at the moment for those letting contracts and those bidding for them and a feeling that public service reform is being held back because too many change projects are seen by civil servants as IT projects and therefore risky and therefore not to be touched with a bargepole if you can help it.

The people behind the event are Creative London who are being helped out by Prospect, NMK and PolicyUnplugged – a Working Together site is going up right now and we’ll be making the most of collaboration software to keep this conversation going through the summer.

Photos from the evening are on flickr tagged working2gether

tags: working2gether & public policy & london & Web2.0 & events