Years ago, it was all about putting press releases out and managing the message. Now, a fifth of public sector comms teams have an income target to meet. An income target? Yup. Here’s some ideas if this is you and some advance warning if it isn’t.

Effective, slick and joined-up working across the public sector. Of course it makes sense, but the reality of pulling it off well can be harder than it looks. Here’s a rallying cry for getting better and smarter at it.

Everything is in here, from the paintings on the wall of the hotel room where Kennedy spent his last night alive to the layout of the emergency room the president lay in at Parkland Memorial Hospital as doctors tried vainly to save his life.

One of the best things about having the comms2point0 web site is the opportunity to showcase and share other people's rich learning. Learning from one another is at the heart of our ethos. This post ticks all of those boxes.

Darren Caveney’s recent blog post about his experiences as a Head of Communications over the last 10 years got a huge and admiring response from his friends and colleagues across the public sector comms industry.

At the same time I was asked to do a second year as a mentor for one of local government’s aspiring communications talents on the LGcommunications’ Future Leaders programme.

Both Darren and LGcommunications got me thinking about my experiences as a leader of communications teams and what, if anything, I really had to pass on to a leader of the future (the very near future if the track record of LGcommunications of spotting stars is anything to go by. Step forward Emma Rodgers and Natalie Corney, as just two recent examples).

The results are in: here are my top 10 honest lessons from 11 years as a Head of Communications...

We know that a common complaint from comms folk, and others for that matter, is a lack of recognition for their work.

Whether it’s a brilliant campaign, managing communications through a crisis or just turning up every day of the year and being the best you can be it’s not a lot to ask to get the odd ‘well done’ or ‘thank you’.

But it doesn’t happen often enough and that is the ultimate reason behind the comms2point UnAwards 15. To shine a light on the colleagues proudly flying comms flags across the sectors.

Now there’s only one thing better than being shortlisted for an award and that’s being nominated by someone else for an award. It’s a special thing. It means you’ve caught someone’s eye, demanded their attention or impressed them with your creativity, doggedness, enthusiasm and skills.

Know someone like that? Then why not nominate them in the UnAwards 15.

Last week in Cardiff saw the culmination of a good few months of work for Kate Hammond (@GlamHamm) and myself (@willdotbarker) – yes Will and Kate and no, not that Will and Kate – at our #PSdigital conference that we’d set out to organise on behalf of 1000 Lives Improvement and Public Health Wales.

Cool, but what exactly was #PSdigital?

We’re glad you asked (I’d recommend taking a look at the hashtag or this Storify if you have five minutes, which you probably do as you’re reading this blog).

Very rarely in life do you get to choose a brand new comms team from absolute scratch. You normally inherit folk and work with what you've got. But what if you had a blank sheet and the chance to choose. Who would make the cut?

Well here’s the thing. I woke up this morning and for the first time in 10-years I am not a head of comms. This is a good thing because it means I have moved on to an exciting new phase of my career.

It’s an obvious time to reflect. Has 10 years of being a head of comms made me a better comms professional? And would I recommend the role to someone else? Here’s my take on it, my top tips and answers to these two simple questions.

I have had some fantastic opportunities. Worked with some brilliant colleagues. Won over a dozen industry awards with them and learned way more than you could ever capture in a single post. I have also sat in some dreary meetings. Had to argue the case for comms, over and over and over and over, and crossed swords with some quite unpleasant people. The rough with the smooth. You know the score.

Govdelivery's annual UK Public Sector Communications Conference has become an essential part of the September calender. Why? It delivers good content. You can learn more about this year's line-up here. We take a look at one of the key speakers on the role of text messaging in comms.

Look around in a public setting. You will notice more people hunched over a mobile device to communicate or access information than ever before.More than 35 million UK residents own a mobile phone and they’reaccessing their devices for an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes each day – the equivalent of almost a full day per week.

Mobile, as a marketing channel, can no longer be ignored in order to succeed in today’s world – especially in public sector communications. Accessibility, convenience, clarity, and universality make mobile an essential channel to communicate with the public.

Every now and then we have a guest editor. They pick five links, write a post and pick a tune and we post them to Twitter. We also ask for a random fact about them that not many people know. Today's guest editor? She was in a team that finished 2nd in the Irish Dancing World Championships in 1995.

Drawing on other influences is a vital part of being an effective communications practitioner whatever level you work at and that was the thought process behind the random fact I shared today.

Public relations does not exist just to serve itself – it helps businesses perform at their absolute best whether that’s to sell toys or fight fires – so it’s important to soak up other sources of information to understand organisations and those they need to communicate with.

A good place to start is with what’s around us, what culture we’re from, who family members are and, perhaps, what hobbies we’ve been exposed to.

My memories of making videos at University mainly involved me falling asleep in editing rooms whilst my colleagues did all the work. I always had more of an aptitude (and face) for radio so when I decided to get into video making for my council’s social media page I hopped on a train and headed to the comms2point0 video course only armed with my trusty iphone 4 and a sandwich.

The day long course started off with introductions from Steve from the Film Café whose CV includes working on Dr Who and Torchwood. Our first icebreaker task was, in pairs, to go out onto the distractingly pretty corridors of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry and film each other talking about what we wanted to get out of the day.

I’ve been thinking for a while that 24-hour Twitter events have driven up a bit of a cul-de-sac.

You know the sort of thing. An organisation tweets what it is doing for 24-hours and shines a light on unsung heroes. You learn things you didn’t know and then the timeline moves on.

Back in 2011, I was part of an award-winning team at Walsall Council that ran this first one in local government called #walsall24. We encouraged teams from across the council from 6am to join in. There was a countryside ranger talking about what she was doing, scheduled road repairs and events at libraries.

Public relations, communications: broadcasting to the world outside what the organisation needs it to know. Social media seems to be an ideal way of doing this, so it's added to all the other channels comms teams know about and serve.

For comms people the message 'look at the data' is important to shape what you do, what you say and who you say it to. The open data movement and communications people should be best friends. The trouble is, they are not. Is it time they told their story better?

Twice in the past couple of weeks I've been reminded about about the great universal sticky problem and what to do about it.

The problem that almost dare not speak it's name is how much your team are keen to change, innovate, be creative and explore new ways of communicating. Do they see an infographic or Snapchat and want to know more? Or do they roll their eyes and look at the clock?

comms2point0 sits at the heart of a fantastic community of people who want to make communications better, want to innovate with digital tools and want to drive change in organisations, especially public sector organisations.

We need that community to turn that energy and focus to emergency situations. Organisations are already doing great work to communicate with the public in emergencies but we can do more and one thing we know is: emergencies are always different.

comms2point0.co.uk is a shared learning space, created by – and written for – creative communications professionals. Home to fresh comment, informed opinion, in depth analysis and expert feature articles, comms2point.co.uk inspires and supports communications professionals in the UK, Europe and beyond.