Feedback from Think Data for Government

At Think Digital Partners we always listen to feedback from our delegates regarding the conferences that we produce, as it is vitally important in helping us shape future events. We thought we would share the feedback from our recent virtual event, Think Data for Government, which was held on March 2nd.

The conference had 296 registrations, of which 193 attended on the day. As with all our conferences now, the content is viewable for all registered delegates to view post conference for up to 6 months. This enables delegates to fit in the content around their busy schedules and not miss out on any of the great discussions and presentations.

To date we have had feedback from around 15% of the delegates that attended on the day.

• 100% of respondents rated the overall conference as either very good or excellent.

• What delegates listed as liking best about the event:
  • Very interesting speakers
  • Range of speakers, experienced, interesting and great topics covered
  • Learning on how many career options there are for data roles. Addressing the equality gap. Insights to how others have developed projects. The overview of log on` s and how this will change.
  • Great opportunity for knowledge sharing – interesting to hear different views from many different companies
  • Streamlined, easy platform to navigate, talks were on a good variety of topics and well structured throughout the day. Good mix of panels/interviews/topic deep dives etc.
  • The speakers were all very knowledgeable and had very engaging discussions. I also liked the platform

• 100% of respondents rated the organisation of the conference as either very good or excellent.

• 100% said that they would attend the event again, with 33% saying they would like to attend a physical event next time, whilst 66% were happy to attend the event online next time.

• Specific panels or speakers that interested them either before the day or on the day.
  • Childrens panel
  • NHS discussion
  • Womens Data in government panel
  • Rosalie Marshall
  • Christophe Prince
  • Data sharing session
  • Equality in data
  • In general I am keen to hear and learn from what other areas of the public sector are doing within Data and Digital.  In the past these forums have actually led us to new technology or process within government which i have taken back and embedded within my organisation.
  • The final session about data relating to children raised some very thought-provoking points
  • Explainable AI session
  • Focus on citizen experience
  • The use of synthetic data and its differences from obfuscated data

• When asked about what future topics they would like us to cover, answers included:
  • Data trends
  • Data ethics framework
  • Data diversity making decisions for the BAME community
  • Career progression in data
  • Use of stats modelling in projects.
  • AI tools for research dataset cohort creation and their ethical use” and “Privacy Enhancement Technologies
  • Regulation in the Safety Tech industry
  • Developing KPIs, especially for teams who aren’t used to working with them
  • An understanding of how OGD are sending and receiving ‘big’ data over low bandwidth connections
  • Analysis and intelligence around cyber-attacks. and what we can learn from other countries. 

We were also asked a couple of questions by delegates that we wanted to respond too publicly as we thought it would be useful for people considering registering for our future conferences.

Q1. Could we have a copy of the agenda in advance of the event?

A1. The agenda is currently available prior to and during the conference itself both on the event website that all delegates register on and also on the event platform itself. Moving forwards, we will send out a copy of the agenda and or link to it on the event platform, when we send all registered delegates the link to view the event. This link is usually sent out a few days before the conference takes place, so please watch out for it.

Q2. We noticed that with the sessions being back to back we feel very rushed in our note taking.

A2. It is important to note that the complete conference is recorded and is available for all registered delegates to view for up to 6 months after the conference closes. So, if you are not able to view all sessions you can review the content in your own time. It is also worth noting that you can pause the live stream to enable you to make notes, however, you can obviously also review the content again and again to make further detailed notes.

The conference had great feedback from delegates, sponsors and speakers and was a resounding success. Katie Murphy, TDP’s event manager said “I’m proud to have been involved in organising our second virtual Data event.  I was impressed with the commitment of our audience, who were so interested and engaged in the content both on the day and after the event. At Think Digital Partners, we always strive to secure great speakers and our Data agenda was full of them!  The balance of experts from private and public sector really stimulated some very interesting panel discussions.  I’m really excited to start working on the next one on the 5^th October 2022!”

Finally, if you are reading this article and did not register to attend the conference, you really missed out! However, we now offer the facility for the public sector to register to view the recorded content post conference. This means that for all future conferences, the registration page will remain open for 3 months after the event. This facility is only available for government delegates, so those employed by public sector organisations and with public sector emails only. If you do not match these criteria you will not be sent a link to view the content. If you would like to access the recorded sessions please email our event manager Katie Murphy who will ensure you get access to the video. You can email Katie on katie.murphy@tdpstaging.uk

You can view the dates of all 2022 TDP conferences here.