 It's great to see you all. So, really lovely to see some tiktak alumni who have been here before. I'm so happy that they have come back. Hopefully, it means that we are doing something right. It's not just because we choose awesome places to have the conference in. We even got the weather for you this year. I know, last year and the year before, we were a bit dodgy on the weather so we ordered the weather special. It's supposed to be lovely and sunny, lovely and warm today. So rhan gyd wedi gael i Lleis分 a dod yn ddim yn ei gweithio i'r bobl sy'n gwybod i chi psyllwyddiadau yn gweithio'r cyfle gyda ymlaen i fy modd, rydyn ni wedi bod yn ymwybod i'r gweithio'r gweithio. So rhan gyd yn ddweud ac sy'n ddod am ymweld i'r gweithio a'r gweithio i fynd i'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Roedd yn gweithio gyd yn sut mae'r diogel i'r gweithio i gyd yn y rhesyf wedi'i gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. a we have also been doing some consultancy work, so we've decided to professionalise this side of our work a little bit. We've always said we're very open to partnership, we're open to working with people, but we've never really spelled out what that might look like, so we've got a little bit more information on the website now if you wanted to partner with us or you wanted some practitioner training and research, that kind of thing, we'll be previewing some of that in our workshop after the break. We have also got a shiny new data website. We've said for years, we've got all of this awesome data that we don't even know what a lot of it says because there's so much of it and so few of us, and we quite often get requests randomly from researchers around the world saying, this data's really cool, do you have it? Can you extract it? We now have this shiny new data site, data.mysociety.org, that puts all of that data in one place with APIs as well, so if you wanted to go and have a look around, please do. There's interesting stuff there or if there's other things that you think we might have that aren't on that site, get in touch, we may be able to do something about extracting some of that too. So you'll have seen on the agenda that I'm supposed to talk about opinions and facts or of the difference between opinions and facts. I think most of you in this room know what the difference is, so I'm not going to teach you to suck eggs at this point. Really this particular title came up because the wonderful Gemma who basically single-handedly organizes this, I really don't deserve any credit. She's very strict. The speakers in the audience will know that she emails you weeks and weeks in advance and asks for a title so it can be put into the literature. She's just as strict with us internally. We don't get any special treatment. We have to give her the title weeks and weeks in advance. I was a little bit flustered. I was like, oh, I think I might want to talk about facts and opinions or something. So this is what we've ended up with. I was thinking about this at the time because I was actually feeling a little bit weary. It might have just been the British winter. It's cold, dark, January, and there's a bit all. But I was actually feeling a little bit weary about all of the things I was reading, whether that was on Twitter or the social media, whether that was just reading news online. There seemed to be a weight of opinion and it was really hard trying to sift out some of those facts. For me personally, the Brexit fiasco is just my personal opinion, by the way. I'm sure that people think Brexit is wonderful. But for me, just reading about that, trying to siphon the actual facts of what's happening from all of the conjecture and speculation and the way people are twisting information, I find fairly exhausting. On top of that, you have things you're trying really hard at in a work environment. You put it out into the world after a lot of sweat and tears and all sorts. It's immediately shredded on Twitter or a whole barrage of opinion comes your way and you don't even know where to start. I was feeling a bit weary from all of this, I think. That's where this came from. Opinions are great. I think everyone should have opinions. You didn't have to have an opinion. If you don't want to comment on something, it's absolutely fine too. Sometimes I feel like, I just don't have an opinion on this or I don't want to be really reactive about this at the moment. I'd rather read this report and just let it sink in and not have to say, oh, this is what I think. In my society, we actually have this really weird, ongoing debate about whether tapers are the best animals in the world. We have staff members. You would be surprised at how often we talk about this. Our HR manager, I think, is really annoyed, actually, at how much time is devoted to tapers in my society. This is a lot of my colleague's opinion, but I'm a honey badger girl all the way. But some things closer to our work are actually a lot more hurtful. Most of us in this room are triers in one way or another. We're trying in one way or another in our fields to maybe make the world a bit of a better place. It's really hard when you do put something out into the world and maybe things get a little bit twisted or are used for a political narrative that's actually not correct. Very recently, there was a bit of a storm in a Twitter teacup about our site. They work for you.com and the data that is or isn't on there. We got caught up in a political narrative that we really didn't want to be a part of. It's depressing. You think you're doing something really good, you try really hard, and all of a sudden, Twitter is against you and you're like, everyone hates this. At that point, you can just think to yourself, I just want to close the door and not open Twitter again now. I'm not obsessed about it. But the great thing I think about the team at my society is, obviously it was like, but we sat down, we thought about it, we talked about it. The whole organisation talked about it. It wasn't just a kind of comms team individual. We all talked about this and how can we respond to this? Because we don't just want to be reactive. We don't just want to say other people's opinions of this is wrong. We want to use this somehow to do good work. We used it actually to start a better conversation, a more productive conversation, about how facts and how data are necessary for us to be able to do this kind of work properly. This kind of conversation highlighted something that we knew we wanted to do, but maybe we needed to bring to the forefront a bit more and not just have our team or our coders do things, but actually ask Parliament to be better at doing data and to be better at putting that data out there. So it doesn't just benefit us and it doesn't just benefit their MPs, but it benefits anyone else that wants to use that data for the public good. So we've submitted some evidence to Parliament and hopefully this will influence how they do data in the future. So obviously the kind of weight of opinion, it can be really daunting. But I think actually we're trying to use it for a lot more good now. So we're trying to kind of get into a cycle of having opinions, reading other people's opinions, accepting hopefully constructive criticism and using that to kind of push our work on and to think more about what we do, what we would like other people to do and just generate that kind of ongoing dialogue rather than just being really reactive and really weary from the weight of opinion. So say this is tick-tock. We are about research and I'm finding out what works and finding out what doesn't work or just finding out how what we do, those ripples in the pond, spread out. So I'm so excited to hear all of the opinions and all of the facts that are going to come out of all of the sessions. I think we should strive to create as much knowledge around this field as possible because even though it's not that kind of new nascent field anymore, we are maturing, it's moving on at such a pace that it's really hard as researchers to keep up. And I think it's really important for us, not only to generate knowledge, but to admit to the extents of our abilities as well. Something civic tech exists in this incredibly complex world and we can't maybe calculate everything. We can't maybe know with most certainty exactly what impact every little thing we do has. It's not to say we shouldn't do it. It's not to say it's not a good thing. I think we need to be honest about what we are able to do and I think we have some super supportive funders who are realistic in that sense as well. I don't think certainly as practitioners we should be really, really worried that if we can't absolutely prove we are the best things in sliced bread and that we've fixed democracy within our two-year grant period, I think that's okay. And I'm sure many of our funders would agree with that. So, yeah, I just kind of want to... I'm sure I'm not the only person that sometimes feels a bit weary about all of the opinion and trying to kind of sift out the fact, but I suppose what I want to say is don't be daunted. This conference specifically is about having these conversations in a safe, supportive space. Absolutely be critical. Hopefully you can do that in a constructive way so that people can actually take something away from the conference and look at how they might do things in the future. I'm really excited to hear everything, everyone's opinions, everyone's new facts, everyone's new bits of research, everyone's new ideas about what kind of research they might want to do. I think it's going to be a super couple of days, but that is just my opinion. So just really please everyone have such a great time over the next couple of days. I look forward to speaking to as many of you as I can. And that's it from me. Thank you.