The FullConTech Spring 2017 Playbook is here. And it’s packed full of ideas about civic…
FullConTech brings people together for civic collaboration
Over 200 people from government, education, non-profit, and the tech industry came together at Seattle City Hall on Monday for WTIA’s third annual FullConTech. The theme was “Civic Collaboration,” and as in past years, the event focused on collaborative, impactful problem-solving.
As part of the FullConTech planning team, I was one of the people who attended the event, and it was my second time helping to produce FullConTech. One of the things I love about working with WTIA is the group’s commitment to experimenting, learning, improving, and making a difference. Last year, I was intrigued by what FullConTech could become. This year, I felt as though something truly special had started to happen.
The energy in the air, the conversations that emerged in the Invent Sessions (the breakout, problem-solving discussions), the new relationships that were started – all of this was rooted in a sense of urgency and the commitment people felt about closing the gaps in our community and making Seattle a great place to live for all its residents. At this FullConTech, people looked outward and embraced each other, not just as colleagues, but as neighbors. They made the event personal, and that shaped the tone of the discussions.
As UW Professor and FullConTech participant Ed Lazowska said, “FullConTech was spectacular. I loved my breakout group (full of smart, diverse, thoughtful people I would never have met otherwise). This is a wonderful thing for WTIA to be doing.”
Much of the credit for everything that happened on Monday goes to the people who participated. But the morning also unfolded as it did because the WTIA team had sat down seven months ago, immediately after last year’s event, and talked honestly about what we’d achieved compared to what we’d wanted, what had gone right and what could have been better, and what we needed to change to push FullConTech closer to our vision.
FullConTech, true to the spirit of WTIA, is an ongoing experiment. The team is committed to creating a one-of-a-kind event that offers the opportunity for discussions you won’t find anywhere else. And that means ongoing inventing, testing and fine-tuning. Based on the feedback, with 93% of participants who responded to our survey saying they would recommend the event, we made some big steps forward on Monday.
But what about the people who were less satisfied? They all expressed the same concern, that while FullConTech had cross-sector representation, it didn’t have broad community representation. We were talking about disparities in Seattle without the people present who were most impacted.
This is great feedback and something we’ll discuss as we begin planning for the next FullConTech in October.
Here are some things we did differently for this year’s FullConTech and how they turned out:
| 2017 Change | Why it was different | Success? |
|---|---|---|
| Broaden our scope beyond the tech community | WTIA founded ION earlier this year with the goal of fostering collaborations that would get the tech industry involved in helping solve broader community problems. To support this mission, we chose for FullConTech the theme of “Civic Collaboration” and set up discussions around topics that impacted the broader community. | The real test of whether or not this change increases the FullConTech impact is what happens now: Will participants stay engaged and continue to collaborate on the projects they started at the event? We’ll keep you posted. |
| Shorten the event | In the past, FullConTech offered a full day of sessions, but many participants were leaving at lunchtime, which meant the Invent Sessions, the heart of FullConTech, were poorly attended. This year, we started earlier, reduced the number of sessions, and made lunch the last item on the agenda. | The Invent Sessions were full this year, so we solved the attrition problem, but many people felt the sessions were too short. They wanted more discussion time in their small groups. While we succeeded in keeping people until the end, the end came too soon. We’ll continue to explore new ways to create an agenda that keeps people around until the end but without sacrificing discussion time. |
| Have only two Discover Sessions, make them different, and run them concurrently | The 2015 and 2016 FullConTech events presented two rounds with multiple tracks of hour-long panel discussions with participants having a choice of 3 at each round. And last year, we introduced a new session – Flash Talks – which meant we had to find 27 great speakers and deliver 6 engaging panel discussions. After last year, the team agreed that Discover Session approach was too ambitious. We needed to scale back and do fewer but better. We also wanted to provide options because people learn in different ways. So, we decided to offer 1 panel discussion and 1 set of 3 Flash Talks, run them concurrently, and let participants choose which one they wanted to attend. | The good news is that we had an equal number of participants choose the panel discussion and the Flash Talks, which confirmed our hypothesis that different formats appeal to different people. Feedback, generally, on the Discover Sessions was positive, with a bit higher satisfaction with the Flash Talks. People said they liked the personal stories, which clearly illustrated concrete points. Doing fewer and better is the right approach, but we’ll continue to refine the Discover Session formats to get more personal stories into the mix. |
| Provide more data | We’d gotten feedback from the first two FullConTechs that participants wanted discussions to be more grounded in data, so they felt more confident they were talking about real challenges and not just perceived challenges. This year, we made a giant step forward: We kicked off the day with the Seattle CityClub presenting the Civic Health Index, which showed us, with data, the growing disparities in our city between income levels. We invited SMEs to open every Invent Session with data. Look for an upcoming blog post on FullConTech data. | Throughout the day and during the Invent Sessions, people referred to the data, which provided all participants with a common knowledge base for their discussions. Having solid, provocative data was a significant improvement, and we’ll continue to bring data into FullConTech discussions |
If you didn’t get to FullConTech this week, you missed an incredible day. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait until the next event to get involved. FullConTech isn’t about a moment in time. And it doesn’t stop when the day is over; instead, it fosters collaborations that continue throughout the year.
So, even if you weren’t at City Hall on Monday, get your hands on the FullConTech Playbook that WTIA will release in about a month, review what happened at the event and the ideas people set in motion, contact WTIA, and say, “I want to help.”
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