Since we held our first digital lunch last month, we've held a few more, including Elizabeth Lumley from Finextra and Sian-Estelle Petty from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
Last week we also hosted Jag Goraya in our Sheffield office, who gave 20-odd members of staff a fascinating insight into what it takes to build a movement in a city, and how digital can help.
When we decided to start pulling together these informal lunch sessions, I was keen that digital - websites, tools, technology - only featured as part of what made our guests interesting.
Jag is a great example of that.
We were treated to example after example of how digital communities are really just like-minded people who are motivated to experiment with different approaches to problem solving - the fact they use digital is only part of the story.
We heard how Barcamp Sheffield helped put problem solvers in front of charities, and put a project for Sheffield Cathedral online within 24 hours.
These people are sometimes at their most creative outside of formal spaces such as universities, offices and schools. It poses an interesting challenge for people working in the public sector: to feel empowered to share knowledge and experiences (good and bad), openly and away from their desk.
Hosting these informal lunches doesn't take up a lot of our time to organise, but helps those who are interested to understand the wider impact of digital, and, hopefully, take away some of the fear of 'technology'. We'll keep blogging about them here.
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