Yesterday was great. During the day, I was at the Democratic Sector Day, a day ‘for participation practitioners to share ideas, projects and ambitions, and hopefully develop a better understanding of this ‘community of practice’ in Scotland. The objectives were:

1. Improve our understanding of the Democratic Sector in Scotland: Who is doing what and how?
2. Discover opportunities for collaboration regarding research and practice.

Both of these happened for me – I learnt of a lot of projects and products that hadn’t previously come anywhere near my consciousness. I made a couple of new connections and received some very welcome news about one of my practical ambitions. (More anon when I can talk about it.) I also had an idea for another research topic. I’ll blog a bit more about this tomorrow – I’ll be using that blogging session to sort out what I want to do and when I should do it.)

Back to the plot – in the afternoon, we were asked if we wanted to run any mini-workshops within the even. My main topic is how digital can be used to support democracy, so I volunteered to do that. The next volunteer was Christian Storstein, of the Scottish Government’s Digital Engagement team, who wanted to do the same. So we joined forces – here’s Christian’s blog about the day.

A huge thank you to Oliver Escobar and his colleagues for organising the day. I’m massively looking forward to the report from this event, and to taking more action to make participatory democracy big and real and happening!

Oh, the other good thing about yesterday was that I reached a square number of years – and was spoiled by my family and lovely partner.