So it’s over for another year. The votes have been counted, the champagne has been drunk and all the winners of the council worker of the year awards have been duly congratulated.

And it’s been great. We’ve had more finalists than before, more categories and more votes. And the dinner in Harrogate earlier this month was a big success. Judging by all the tapping fingers and smiles the politicians and chief executives really enjoyed the evening.

Of course the most important people there were the finalists themselves. We hold a private lunch for them earlier in the day and it is a real privilege to meet them all and put names to faces. It’s also quite a humbling experience. Because this is truly a diverse group of people who have done so much to benefit the community in which they live.

But all that not withstanding the night itself belonged to Barry. I’m obviously talking about Barry Snowdon from Mansfield Borough Council. Barry won the award for Bravery after he spotted a petrol station about to catch fire and put out the blaze at great personal risk.

Barry was in the right place at the right time because Barry is a street cleaner. And people look down at Barry. But his pride in his work is tangible – you can almost touch it. And if the rest of us went about our work the same way as Barry does the world would be a much better place.

Thought so. And we are too here at WebsEdge. It’s been a busy year and there’s so much more to look forward to!

Last week in fact we were at the seaside in Bournemouth for the Local Government Association Annual Conference. We were there for two reasons; to show a series of programmes we made through the local government channel and to honour front-line workers through the council worker of the year awards.

Around the conference we conducted some research into how citizens interact with councils and what their major concerns are. As you can imagine people are concerned about crime etc but by and large they were happy enough with the overall job councils are doing. But what really surprised me was how poorly they think councils communicate. And get this. Only 6% use the Internet as their primary means of communication. When we pushed them further 64% wanted to see video as part of that communications mix.

A lot to ‘chew’ on when we made it over to the council worker of the year dinner. At the dinner we showed videos of each finalist which had played on our website over the past ten weeks allowing citizens to vote for their favourite worker. It was a good night and everyone enjoyed picking up their prizes and toasting the winners. View the winners collecting their awards!

But what stuck in my mind was the 21 year old man collecting his award for bravery. The video showed how he had saved several lives through cool thinking when the bus he was travelling on almost crashed because the driver suffered a heart attack. Luke received a standing ovation from the whole audience and was widely applauded in the press the next day. View his story here.

At the end of the day video tells powerful stories – be it on or off line. And if institutions are going to communicate with their stakeholders in the 21st century they’re going to have to make a whole lot better use of it.