Episode #4
Season 6, Episode 4 - When Things Don't Go To Plan
Fair warning: this one starts differently. No guest. No agenda. No plan. Just Becky and Dan hitting record on what was supposed to be Episode 4 and seeing what happened. What happened was a genuinely unguarded conversation between two people who've spent the last six months in the trenches together - and it turns out, when you take the structure away, that's when things get interesting. Before we get to the big sector stuff, you'll get the behind-the-scenes version of Dan and Becky - including Becky’s earliest life memories (it involves a push-along toy and a step she couldn't get past - and yes, it tells you everything about her), as well as her first birthday memory running on a Welsh beach, Dan's pre-engagement career as a competitive rower and DJ to 3,500 people, how he ended up pitching to venture capitalists at 25 and landing $250,000 in funding for CommunitiLabs, voice notes as the future of human communication, and a genuinely funny exchange about what "roasting" means across generations. Stick with it. The personal stuff is the context for everything that comes after - and what comes after is some of the most honest conversation we've had all season. Then we get into: When the industry doesn't resource its own innovation - Dan reflects on winding down CommunitiLabs, and what three years of building AI tools for the sector taught him about the gap between what the sector says it values and what it actually funds. Whether our work is consequential enough - a deliberately provocative question. Not whether engagement matters - it does, profoundly — but whether the way it's currently deployed allows it to have the consequence it should. Dan doesn't hold back. The accountability gap - what if there was a public dashboard where communities could see every submission, every theme, and what decision-makers did with it? What would change? Regional councils doing it right - without budget, without razzle-dazzle, just a CEO and a mayor getting in a car and driving to the footy club. Yarriambiack. Murray Bridge. The councils that make it work because they have to. Open Space Technology - Becky's favourite engagement method you've probably never used, and why the best conversations always happen in the coffee break. Swipe to unlock - Dan's analogy for what the sector's next innovation challenge actually is. The love letter - Dan wrote something called Crawling Over Broken Glass: A Love Letter to the Engagement Industry. We finally talk about where it came from, what's in it, and why Becky asked him to write the foreword to her next book using it as the starting point. This episode has an explicit rating. You've been warned. Connect with Becky: beckyhirst.world / LinkedIn Connect with Dan: LinkedIn The white paper - Engaged or Obsolete? What the Next Decade Demands of Community Engagement Practice - is in progress. Recorded on the land of the Kaurna people and the Wadawurrung people.
