The Vengabus

I don’t know if honour is the right word but it was certainly a great pleasure to host the latest UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration meeting in the region this week. Opencast kindly allowed us the use of their premises at the Kiln in Hoult’s Yard. It was a great event and rounded off (almost) this year’s CyberFest. It was as if we had planned it.

Again the event was a good session with updates on UKC3, DSIT and the machinations of central government, Cyber ASAP as well as the launch of the new member portal. Danielle and I had a short session on what CyberNorth has been up to. We gave a fireside chat and ran out of time without covering half of what we had planned.

The meat of the day though was given over to a session on thinking about how to create project ideas and how to measure their outcomes and impacts. Such things are bread and butter to us yet measurement tends to be something we overlook, usually as we have moved onto the next thing. Being able to demonstrate value however, is vital when asking for funding or sponsorship and so is something we need to get better at.

We were split into three groups and each was asked to go through a process of defining a new idea, understanding how we would set about delivering it, identifying the risks and objections we would have to overcome, considering the resources we would require and finally determining the measurements we would make to demonstrate its success.

Each group came up with a different idea and delivered the task as required. The one that stood out for me, however, included a cyber bus that would tour the country engaging people to raise awareness of the threats and opportunities from cyber security.

Two things immediately came to mind. The first was the Vengabus song by the Venga boys (actually released as ‘We like to party’) a tune once in your mind that is difficult to shift. The second was memories of the Digital Durham bus we used way back when I was working at Durham County Council, which we used to raise awareness of our campaign to improve broadband speeds across the region. It was an exciting adventure though probably not as useful as we had hoped. Perhaps if we had measured the outcomes we would know. Let that be a lesson.

The Vengabus is coming and everybody’s jumping, New York to San Francisco, an intercity disco.