Laura Putt reflects on her experience at the UK's first Transport Planning Camp.

 

On 7 November 2018, I travelled to the Open Data Institute in Leeds. After months of preparation as one of the organisers along with three talented and enthusiastic colleagues(James Gleave, Pawel Bugajski and Anna Rothnie), it was time for Transport Planning Camp! This was one of the events organised as part of the build up to the TPS Transport Planning Day. It was a great success and exceeded my expectations! 

 

Over 50 people from a range of backgrounds including charities, consultancies, local authorities, start-ups and academics gathered to engage with the theme of the day: 'Transport Needs of Future Generations'. It was my first experience of an 'unconference' and I was apprehensive about how it would work - the idea is the attendees decide the agenda and content for the day, so we didn't have prepared presentations or other materials to fall back on. We had to trust that people would turn up and contribute their own ideas and concerns to build an engaging day. And they did! People were asked to write one topic / question they wanted to explore and suggested sessions on a wide range of topics. Those that were scored most highly by attendees went on to form the agenda: Equity, Safety, consumer demand and freight, autonomous vehicles, car ownership, land use, governance.

We have written up a summary of the event, and this includes links to all the notes taken on the day: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wIP74TPMQiadst7l4aQ9HRbY6TG5n8UBjXZXMm5CcLc/edit#slide=id.g4937f6f654_0_18We are keen to share all the materials so have made these available on Google Docs, alongside guidance on how to run your own Unconference: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C5-jSpO6RLh41uKdLjBwuJHKCANJSeWf4lXrm9zT9DA/edit

 

I felt lucky to spend the day with a great bunch of enthusiastic people all wanting to discuss ways to improve the places we live and work. I connected with some old colleagues I hadn't seen in years and met lots of new people. It was an intense day - luckily the food and drinks were high quality to keep us energized. There is lots of positive energy to build on, and we're planning how to carry this forward into 2019. You can read more on our reflections of the day and keep up with what's happening next on our blog: https://medium.com/transport-planning-camp/organisers-reflections-on-transport-planning-camp-80673f94c762