Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts

Thursday, December 17, 2015

What does membership of the Open Government Partnership mean for Australia?

On 24 November Prime Minister Turnbull sent a letter to the global Open Government Partnership (OGP) Secretariat confirming that Australia would progress to full membership of the OGP by July 2016 (continuing the process started by the former Labor Government in May 2013).

Australia will become the 69th member of the OGP, joining countries such as the USA, UK, Canada, The Philippines, Mongolia and India.

The consultation process is now underway, supported through the OGPau website and a consultation wiki at ogpau.wikispaces.com.

I've been supporting the process through facilitating a number of Information Sessions on behalf of PM&C to help build community awareness about the initiative, to address questions and build engagement with the process.

Canberra's session was livestreamed and the raw replay is below.


I am also involved in the establishment of the Australian Open Government Partnership Network, a network of civil societies and individuals that support the goals of the OGP and aim to work productively with the Australian Government to help Australia achieve them as a nation.

If you're outside government and wish to stay informed about the process, or get involved in a network of people interested in the OGP's goals, learn more at aogpn.net

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Friday, August 29, 2014

Young people in Australia are highly engaged in politics - but engagement has moved online. Have governments?

A few years ago I heard it said by political advisors that one hand-written letter to a Minister counts for more than 100 emails on the same topic.

The perception was that if someone sat down and wrote their thoughts in long-hand it showed more interest and commitment than if they typed and posted them online in a blog, social network or website.

I believe this has changed slightly, with emails now accorded almost equal status with postal mail (largely by treating them in the same manner as postal mail, which isn't always appropriate).

However the value placed on blog posts or social media commentary by both politicians and departments still remains far lower than the value that individuals using these channels place on their communication via these channels.

This discrepancy becomes particularly concerning when looking at the level of political activity amongst younger and older people in Australia.

Based on the 'traditional' forms of political engagement - joining political parties, participating in street protests, writing letters and otherwise using physical means to communicate political views - young people are generally considered unengaged, even disconnected, from politics.

This appeared to be supported by a recent study by the University of Canberra commissioned by the Museum of Australian Democracy. (reported on by the ABC and Hijacked)

This study found that, based on these traditional forms of engagement, young people were far less engaged than older people. In fact people aged under 35 were only about half as engaged as those over 70 years old, and were the least engaged of any age group.

Source: ABC Lateline

However, the study went much further, looking at modern forms of political engagement - blogging, tweeting, memes, apps and other digital techniques - as well.

When combining traditional and modern forms of engagement the situation was very, very different.

Suddenly young people were just as engaged as the oldest Australians and more engaged than many of the age groups inbetween.


On this basis, including both marching in the streets and creating online petitions, young people are quite engaged in politics in Australia, with a large amount of their engagement occurring online rather than offline.

This can be hard for older Australians to grasp - they often don't understand the internet as younger people do, having been brought up on newspapers, radio and television.

Not coincidentally, a disproportionate number of our politicians, top bureaucrats, corporate leadership and leading journalists fall into these older groups - therefore they are often not equipped to even see, let alone understand, the ways in which younger people are engaging politically.

This divide isn't necessarily a problem, but it could become one. When insisting that young people follow the same political approaches as their elders, older people are devaluing newer forms of political expression and underestimating its reach and force.

Where politicians, departmental Secretaries and CEOs gauge the public's mood by signals such as how many people show up to protest, they may overlook the new signals, when hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people organise and protest online, until it is too late for them to change course.

There have already been examples of how politicians, media and CEOs have misread the public mood as they still rely on traditional, rather than modern political signals.

Until our 'elders' begin to recognise that times have changed and continue to change, they will continue to be blindsided as innovation continues in political protests.

For example, there was the creation of the Stop Tony Meow plug-in for Chrome, which replaces images of Tony Abbott in the web browser with pictures of kittens. The plug-in has been downloaded over 11,000 times and attracted significant media coverage as an anti-Coalition political statement.

There's also been the recent Dolebludger app available for Android mobile devices, which allows someone to send job application emails in a matter of seconds to 40 Coalition MPs, meeting the proposed monthly job application requirement. This was designed specifically as a political protest against a policy seen by the creator (and many public commentators) as absurd.

On top of this we have the endless string of memes created using free online tools which take photos of politicians and adds text to make a political point. These are then shared widely on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other platforms.

And, more disturbingly, we've recently seen hackers take down a stock exchange and call on the nation's president to take action on a given matter under threat of having confidential financial data released publicly. Where did this last form of political protest occur? In Syria - a country not known as a bastion of democracy.

Similarly striking into illegal behaviour, we've recently seen the use of a phony bomb threat tweet to disrupt the flight of a Sony Executive as part of a protest against Sony's corporate behaviour.

Online political expression is evolving quickly, with new approaches emerging frequently and proliferating widely, if they work, or dying away when they don't.

The old view that people would get out on the street and protest if they were really unhappy is no longer supported by the evidence - and the notion that online activism is simply 'slacktivism' and doesn't represent significant numbers or strong views is equally no longer supportable.

Governments - both politically and administratively - need to build their understanding of modern approaches to political engagement and learn how to use and defuse them (as appropriate) to serve their own ends.

Otherwise there are real and growing risks that a government or public agency will be severely damaged or brought down through online political avenues - channels that they weren't effectively monitoring, didn't hold in high regard and catastrophically undervalued.







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Monday, August 11, 2014

Watch the video of the GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards

The GovHack Red Carpet Awards was awesome (as you can see from the liveblog from Sunday).

If you weren't able to attend or watch the event's livestream, the video of the awards is now live at the GovHack site, and I've embedded it below for your convenience.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

VicHealth launches Physical Activity Innovation Challenge

VicHealth appears to be one of only a few agencies across Australian state and federal governments that has made a solid attempt at introducing public challenges as an adjunct to traditional policy approaches.

While most governments in Australia still use the same techniques for policy creation that they've used for 80 or more years, after the success of last year's Seed Challenge, VicHealth recently launched a new challenge around physical activity innovation.

With $400,000 in start-up funds available to be awarded to the best ideas, the new challenge invites sports bodies, entrepreneurs and changemakers to develop innovative approaches to get more Victorians physically active.

With information available at VicHealth's website, the Physical Activity Innovation Challenge both brings the public and various sporting and innovation bodies into the policy development process, and helps expose the department to the latest thinking and ideas around prompting people to take up physical activity.

This is the type of thinking that more Australian policy makers need to adopt in recognition that expertise is no longer concentrated within government agencies, and that they need to look further than the 'usual suspects' of lobbyists, activists and pressure groups, for great ideas to feed into policy development processes.



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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

What happened at Innovation GovCamp 2014 (Canberra)

Last Saturday Australia's first national GovCamp was held as part of the Innovation Month program.

Innovation GovCamp 2014 involved events in six locations across Australia. Over 500 people registered to attend.

I attended (and helped organise) the event in Canberra, at the Inspire Centre at the University of Canberra.

It was a good day - with planned and impromptu discussions across five topic streams. There were a few technical issues with live broadcasting national sessions to all six locations, however we were able to adapt around this.

A report is being compiled by the national organisers, John Wells and Allison Hornery, however I've also put together a video slideshow that tells the story of the day, from my perspective.

The slideshow (embedded below) was compiled from the photos the camera I wore took. Called a Narrative Clip, and used for 'lifestreaming' the camera was mounted (visibly) on my lapel, and automatically took a photo every 30 seconds.

The Narrative Clip was lent to me by Alexander Hayes, an international expert on emerging technologies and Professional Associate with the College of Adjuncts at the University of Canberra, INSPIRE Centre.

The video slideshow was cut-down from the 800+ photos the Narrative Clip took throughout the day.

It was my first experience using a wearable electronic device for that length of time. I found that while it did capture some interesting moments, a large number of the automatic photographs were of not-so interesting moments or simply too blurred for use.

I did reduce the size of the photos (and therefore their resolution if viewed full screen) to accelerate the process of producing the video slideshow.



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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Celebrate your social media successes, but don't forget that community trust is the key

In June Baltimore Police Department hit a milestone on Twitter, reaching 50,000 followers.

In celebration of this, they released the following video, reflecting the department's achievement and thanking the community for helping them make Baltimore's streets safer.



It is an awesome video and I totally support and respect organisations celebrating like this. It's important for staff to recognise when their organisation has done well and share in the success, and it can be a powerful way of connecting an organisation with its community.

This type of approach is also a great way to show that an organisation is composed of real people, who are simply performing a role when they don their uniforms. it humanises the staff and can bridge gaps between faceless bureaucracies and corporations and their constituents and customers.

Unfortunately this isn't where the story ends.

Several Baltimore Police officers have been charged with various offenses related to animal cruelty or inappropriate behaviour over the last few years, becoming the subject of significant media attention.

A local newspaper created a response to the Police Department's video using the same music (different lyrics) illustrating a number of these incidents, to paint a different picture of the Baltimore Police and, they said, as a courteous reminder for the Police Department to clean up their own act.


While this second video has only received 10% of the views of the Police video so far (it has been live for about half the time), it is a telling reminder for organisations of the importance of building and maintaining positive community relationships.

If the public are well disposed towards your organisation, they will (largely) support you on social channels. If your organisation has taken actions, or has been portrayed to have taken actions, that place it in a negative light, you will face a greater level of negativity when engaging with the public on social media.

This crosses channels, however is often most immediately visible on social channels due to their speed and reach. Ultimately a bad impression will reflect on how the public engages with your staff via other means - on the phone, in correspondence and in person - making it harder for staff to perform their roles.

Of course, it may take only one disgruntled, sarcastic or delusional individual to create and distribute material like the video above, and may not be reflective of broader community views. However how far this material will spread and how fair a representation it is seen to be depends on the pre-existing negative or positive views of your organisation.

A good reputation will have your community come out in support, a bad reputation will see the material distributed far and wide with support.

Social media isn't just a reflection of the world - it is part of the world. How your organisation conducts itself on social channels can significantly shape community views - creating a positive or negative impression.

So don't take this parody video as a reason to not celebrate your successes or shutdown your social accounts. Instead use them as ways to effectively engage with your community, helping solve problems and participating respectfully and humanly to build and maintain good relationships with the people you serve.

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Friday, May 16, 2014

The latest video communicating social media policy to public servants - Social Media Man

The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring 'Social Media Man'.

It's the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria.

The first, in March 2011, was the Victorian Department of Justice's Social Media Policy.

This video (embedded below) took a solid and dependable approach, providing a top-level view of the Department's (then new) Social Media Policy.



This video became the 'go-to' standard for government agencies across the country and was seen globally as an effective example of how agencies could leverage social channels and particularly video to better communicate with their own staff.

The video has been adapted and reused by a number of agencies and councils around the country, including the federal Department of Human Services.

(My company, Delib Australia, has the code for the video and has repurposed and redeveloped it for councils. We'd be happy to do this for you too.)

After several years of hiatus, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) took the bar higher earlier this year with the release in April of their Social Media Policy video.



Using a cartoon-drawing style, this video supported the release of the DPC's social media policy, which is also available on their website at dpc.vic.gov.au/index.php/resources/communication/social-media

The latest entrant in the mix, hot on the heels of Victoria's DPC, is the Queensland Government's 'Social Media Man'.



A mild-manner public servant otherwise known as 'Garry', Social Media Man gives staff at DNRM, DTESB, DAFF & DEWS an overview of their obligations under their social media policy.

The video is available at Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=HaYlcZur5_E&feature=player_embedded

Note this may not be publicly visible for long, given that Queensland government has chosen to prevent embedding or sharing by other sites (as evidenced by broken links from Business Insider and Mumbrella).

This is a real shame as it is, in my view, a great approach - balancing humour with a clear message.

UPDATE 1 Sept 2014: the video is now embeddable, so you can view it below.



It is my view that public sector social media policies should be public. This helps send a clear message to the community that they can trust the public service to act appropriately and not politically on social channels, building trust and respect.

There's also the consideration that governments, such as Queensland, have adopted Creative Commons as a standard licensing approach - so appropriate sharing of this type of material should not be prevented.

In lieu of being able to embed the video, here's stills of Social Media Man in action.




It will be interesting to see which governments in Australia can take this further - potentially even stepping beyond the use of videos to promote social media policy to promote other OH&S and security policies within agencies. There's a lot of scope for video that's not yet been realised.

Finally I think it is worth noting that the Queensland public service, per this video, is told to not criticise their own policy areas or department, but can engage more broadly in political expression regarding other government policies - that's currently denied Australian Public Servants by the Australian Public Service Commission's guidelines on social media use.

In my view Queensland has got their social media guidance right.

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Thursday, March 20, 2014

Keep an eye out for the live webinar at 12:30 (AEST) on Content Marketing in Government

Live Webcast poster
From 12:30-1:30pm (AEST) today, Content Group is holding the second of its live webinars, this time on Content Marketing in Government.

The webinar features a panel including Gina Ciancio, Senior Social Media Advisor at the Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt, Senior Manager Media and Communications at ACT Government, and myself.

It will be broadcast on Canberra Live and available after the event if you don't have time to watch today.

It should be a very interesting look at an area that government still struggles with - how to develop and provide the right content, at the right time, to the right people, through the right channels to influence in the right ways.

There will be a particular focus on Community Engagement and on mobile content.






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Monday, February 17, 2014

Help me create a crowdfunding video for a social media planning tool

I need a little help from folks in Canberra for an upcoming project.

I'm crowdfunding a social media planning tool I developed to help people increase their social media expertise and assist teams in planning effective social media strategies.

I've used the tool with hundreds of people to great effect, however need a little funding to make it more widely available to social media professionals and organisations.

To improve my chance of raising the necessary funds, I'm creating a video demonstrating the tool in use.

I need 3-4 people to help out in Canberra on Saturday 22 February (between 9am and 3pm).

You will be filmed using the tool, and the video will be published online.

I will cover your lunch and you'll have my thanks, plus I'll keep you informed about the progress of the project.

So if you're interested in being involved in a crowdfunding process, in trying out a social media planning tool, in getting more video experience and/or in helping me out, then:

Please get in touch with me via email: craig@socialmediaplanner.com.au

BTW - you can follow progress on Twitter at @socmedplanner

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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Do government agencies and councils deliberately make it harder for citizens to engage?

I've been watching a great TEDx talk by Dave Meslin on citizen engagement, which asks the question - if governments want to be open and engaging, why do they make it so hard for citizens to engage?

He raises a very good point, and demonstrates it very clearly in the video (below).



This is one of the areas I've struggled with for years.

Some of the processes governments and councils put in place around citizen engagement are designed to address political considerations, such as minimising the advertising spend (so government is not seen to promote itself too much), or address agency resourcing or timing limits, such as having extremely short engagement processes or 'hiding' consultations deep in a website so they receive only a few responses to analyse.

There's also cases where the people managing the consultation don't really understand the audience they are consulting. They may use specialist terminology, language or documents so long and complex they are impenetrable to the average Australian (who has an 8th grade reading level - that of a 14-15 year old), let alone the 46% of Australians who were considered functionally illiterate just a few years ago.

As an example, I recall an Australian council development proposal just a few years ago that was 385 pages long, provided via a sub-page in their website (with a limited number of printed copies) where people were expected to provide feedback within two weeks, responding via email.

Most Australians couldn't finish a 385 page novel in two weeks (given the amount of time per day they'd have available to read), let alone a complex planning document - even if they could find it in the council's website in time.

Response methods are equally an issue.

Holding a community forum or town hall meeting is still a popular way of consulting, and suits people who have the time and the interest to dedicate several hours to travel to and attend such an event in order to speak for a few minutes for or against a proposal. However many are increasingly dominated by retirees, the unemployed or students - who have the time to attend.

Professionals, people with young families, shift workers and tradies often don't have the time available when councils and agencies wish to hold these events.

Email-based online consultation, which is still the predominant way Australian governments ask for feedback via the internet, is dangerous in a number of ways. Emails may be blocked due to large document attachments or misclassified as spam and lost (as has happened on several occasions in the last few years - almost costing Ministers their jobs).

The generic form of responses received through emails may not suit the complexity of the consultation process. An email response to, for example, that 385 page document, may be very difficult to match against the key topics and themes, requiring a lot of time for a council or agency to analyse.

Then there's the cost and complexity of publishing responses. One of my pet hates while working in government online communications was the policy area who came to us and said, "we've just held a consultation and received 500 email responses - could you publish them in the website within two days please."

The resourcing required to publish email responses - even without considering the accessibility and privacy considerations - was immense, and was never budgeted for by the policy area.


These issues reflect on what I feel is the key issue with citizen engagement - not the common view that citizens are disengaged, but the challenge to governments to adapt their engagement approaches to provide the right environment and information for citizens to get involved and respond.

While governments tout their openness and transparency, how they are adopting a 'citizen-centric' focus and employing techniques like crowdsourcing and co-design to involve communities in decision-making, are they making the necessary changes in their own processes, approaches and people to ensure that citizen engagement is actually inclusion and effective?

In my view there's a long way to go - in Australia and in similar nations around the world - to retrain public servants, politicians and even the media, to put citizens at the centre of engagement.

It's not simply about engaging more or using online. It is about rewriting community engagement guidelines, redeveloping consultation procedures and revisiting political concerns to ensure that citizen engagement is indeed about engaging citizens, and not simply about ticking a procedural box in a government process.

For citizens to be central in engagement, perhaps governments and councils should be approaching citizens to involve them in codesigning their engagement processes.

Perhaps groups of citizens should be commissioned (at a small fee for their time) oversee or audit agency and council engagements, to provide advise and suggestions on how specific processes could be improved, or consultation materials adjusted to suit the audience being targeted.

Perhaps governments should even crowdsource the development of major consultation processes. Before asking citizens 'do you want....' they should ask 'how should we engage you on do you want....' for each major engagement.

Whatever the approaches taken, one thing is clear. If governments and councils want citizens to feel more engaged, they need to start by changing the way they engage.

Repeatedly using the same approaches to citizen engagement as have been used in the past is unlikely to deliver improved outcomes.

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Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Opening the vault - Open data in Queensland - watch the livestream

Today the 'Opening the vault' event is being held in Brisbane, discussing open data in the context of the state.

Following from the Queensland Government's commitment to open data (with the appointment of Australia's first e-Government Assistant Minister), the event was opened by Premier Newman and is being livestreamed on the web - demonstrating the level of importance placed on this area in the state.

You may follow the event on Twitter using the #dataqld hashtag, and watch the livestream at data.qld.gov.au.

Keep an eye on the session after 11:30am Queensland time (12:30pm AEST) for the finalists in the latest data competition and to vote on who should win.

I've also embedded the livestream below.

Streaming by Ustream

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Friday, March 01, 2013

Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch event videos from February

Gavin Tapp has done his magic and so, with the assistance of the ACT Government, I'm happy to present both videos from the Gov 2.0 event I ran in Canberra on the 14th.

I've embedded both videos in order below with the bios of the speakers.

Darren Cutrupi



Darren Cutrupi has been the Manager, Media and Community Information at the ACT Emergency Services Agency for the past nine-and-a-half years.

In that time he has taken the ESA from having no real system to provide the community with alerts, updates and warnings to now be an industry leader in the provision of timely and accurate public notifications of emergency incidents.

This includes the ESA website, social media accounts, an internal process the ESA calls THE SPOT (The Single Point Of Truth) and an internally designed app to take care of all the technical side of publishing and distribution information to a range of sources, platforms and people in real time.

Before joining the ESA, Darren spent fifteen years working in commercial radio in NSW, ACT, QLD and TAS, initially as an announcer then as a journalist at stations including 2UE, 2HD, 2CC, 2CA, 104.7 and MIX 106.3. Darren reported from the scene of the Old Canberra Hospital Implosion and won a radio industry award (RAWARD) for his work as the local journalist at 2XL Cooma during the Thredbo Landslide.

Darren has built several websites using WordPress and is also a massive Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles fan.

Ben Fowkes


Ben Fowkes leads the consultancy team at Delib UK, a digital democracy company based in the UK, helping governments, the NHS, the police and local authorities to take part in meaningful citizen consultation and engagement online. He has worked extensively with Scottish, UK, Canadian and Australian Governments, as well as private sector clients such as National Grid.

Ben speaks regularly to bodies in the UK about online engagement, most recently presenting to the UK police foundation at their third annual conference on connecting the police with the public.

Ben will be speaking about the Gov 2.0 situation in the UK. He will unfortunately not be able to speak about the UK GovCamp as it was delayed due to snow.

Disclaimer: This event's organiser, Craig Thomler, operates Delib Australia, a subsidiary of Delib UK, and is hosting Ben in Australia. Ben will not be giving a corporate presentation, instead focusing on the development of the Gov 2.0 movement in the UK.

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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

TubeRank helps reduce the risks in creating viral government content

Viral content - content which gets shared across the internet and media very quickly (like a virus) - is often a controversial area of communication for organisations. While the approach can result in massive attention and awareness it can also lead to massive risks.

What if the content doesn't go viral, wasting your investment? (Like these nine viral failures)
What if it goes viral, but not in the way you'd prefer, damaging your reputation? (such as Witchery's girl with a jacket or Nestle's pedobear)?

Unintentionally viral content can also raise concerns, such as when Minister Shorten supported the Prime Minister, though it can have benefits, as demonstrated by the Prime Minister's 'misogyny speech'.

The concerns and risks around viral content have sometimes nobbled efforts to bring this approach into government campaigns. In fact the entire hit and miss of viral content makes it appear a high risk strategy for most organisations.

That said, agencies are still successfully employing viral techniques - such as the Dumb Ways to Die video from Victoria Metro (which reportedly has reduced 'dumb behaviour' by 20%) and the memes used in their Facebook pages by FaHCSIA and Queensland Police's What tha Friday Photos.

So are many companies and brands - as AdNew's Viral video chart (which is also powered by VAN) demonstrates at www.adnews.com.au/campaigns/viral-video-chart

So what if the risk of viral content going wrong was reduced? Would more agencies consider creating viral content?

I reckon so and that's what a new service from the Viral Ad Network (VAN), a sister company to Delib (for whom I am the Aussie Managing Director) now offers organisation.

The free TubeRank service is an online tool designed to assist organisations identify characteristics and approaches that help them create their own viral successes - reducing the risk of a viral dud.

TubeRank works by allowing creatives to select triggers (goals) and interests (audiences) for a campaign. TubeRank then provides relevant viral video examples, tips and a downloadable PDF tactics report on how to go about approaching the creation of successful viral content.

While TubeRank doesn't guarantee every viral will succeed, it improves the odds and helps reduce the risk of failure.

I've included the TubeRank tutorial video below and you can try out the service at http://tuberank.joinvan.com



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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

How will augmented reality shape society's future and the expectations of government?

Augmented Reality, or AR, involves the projection of information onto our physical landscape through some form of assistive device, such as the heads-up displays (HUDs) used in many aircraft, the use of a mobile device with a camera to photograph a location and add information or the upcoming Google Goggles, which promise a wearable AR experience.

There's many, many potential uses for this approach.

Doctors could monitor a patient's vitals and view an x-ray or CAT image over the area they are operating on, emergency workers could see a map of a building's interior, which tells them where to go to get around obstacles or even where people are trapped, business people and politicians could access public details of individuals they meet so they're never short of a name or small talk, street workers could view all the conduits under a road, or builders the wires and pipes in walls and floors in order to guide their activities.

Even tourists could use AR productively, viewing historical information on landmarks and tour routes as they travel around a city or country.

The potential for global information at one's eyeballs may even be a more profound leap forward than the internet's now established concept of global information at one's fingertips.

This isn't even new technology. Our grandparents were the first to have access to augmented reality devices, before computers, microwave ovens or mobile phones, albeit in a limited way.


The first HUD was invented in 1937, when the German air force developing the reflector sight, an approach that used mirrors to reflect a gunsight modified by airspeed and turn rate onto the glass in front of a fighter pilot's eyes. This improved their accuracy and effectiveness in air combat and began a race by other nations to develop similar approaches.

However the first electronic HUD wasn't created until the mid 1950s, when the British introduced the Blackburn Buccaneer, a low-flying bomber with the world's first inbuilt HUD. While the prototype flew in 1958, the production aircraft didn't enter service until 1968 and served until 1994, used as late as in the Gulf War.

It was noticed that the HUD improved the general abilities of pilots, despite being originally for targeting purposes only, and it was expanded to provide a range of additional information to help pilots.

The modern HUD was developed by 1975, by a French test pilot, featuring a standard interface to aid pilots switching between planes. Around the same time HUDs were first expanded into use on civilian planes and in 1988 the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme became the production car to feature a HUD, followed around ten years later by the first motorcycle helmet offering a heads-up display.

Experimental HUDs have been developed for ski goggles, scuba divers, personal battle armour and for fire fighter goggles as well as many other applications, with some of these very close to production ready.

Augmented reality is being integrated into computer, console or mobile games, many of which feature some form of virtual HUD. Our televisions display information on the screen about programs and channels and our mobile devices, with the right apps, can use their cameras to place additional information on real-time video.

With the range of uses for the augmented reality supported by these devices and the widespread exposure society has now had to the concept, the next step will be very interesting.

Once appropriate mobile augmented reality devices comes onto the market, such as the product Google is working on, there will be a market ready to adopt them. 

How will they be used in society? What policy challenges will they create?

A group of Israeli film makers has produced a seven-minute long short-film, Sight, which showcases some of the potential uses of augmented reality and some of the challenges and risks that societies may have to face.


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Monday, May 14, 2012

Accessibility - a great video from FaHCSIA to educate staff & management

Last week FaHCSIA released a great video on accessibility that they're using to educate staff and management on its importance, who it affects and the basics of what to do.

I think it is an awesome resource for all organisations (not just government) to help them understand their legal obligation and how to meet it.

We need more resources like this for government, tools that use video, pictures and sound to help educate and influence, not simply more PDF manuals like this.

I've embedded the video below and it is also available directly from its YouTube link or as a MP3 from FAHCSIA's resources section.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Look for the Australian premier screening of Twittamentary at GovCamp QLD

A few weeks ago I became aware of a very interesting documentary project, Twittamentary, a movie that  explores the intersection and interplay of peoples' lives on Twitter.

Directed by Singaporean filmmaker and Tweeter, Tan Siok Siok, the documentary takes a grass roots approach, looking at how Twitter has connected, affected and influenced individuals across America.

Twittamentary touches on social policy, privacy, trust and collaboration - themes that should resonate with government policy makers. It demonstrates the diverse range of uses that Twitter and, by extension, many other social networks can be put to to support and empower citizens and communities.

The documentary was itself created in a 'social' way, with social media stories submitted and voted on via Twitter, social media and the Twittamentary web site. The production team were sourced via Twitter and other social networks and the final narrative was developed using the concept of 'beta screenings'.

This involved a series of discrete 'tweetup' screenings organised via social media to get feedback on the latest rough cut of the documentary. Viewers could interact in real-time with the Director, the cast (all real people) and each other via Twitter during the screening.  Feedback from each of these beta screenings was used to help evolve a new iteration for the next beta screening, resulting in the final documentary after 15 iterations.

Twittamentary has already screened in the US, UK, China, Malaysia and Singapore, has received positive media reviews and has been submitted to a number of international film festivals.

Now, with the permission of the documentary's producers, I'm pleased to announce that Twittamentary will premier in Australia at GovCamp Queensland on Saturday 3rd March, following with a screening at BarCamp Canberra on Saturday 17th March.

If you're attending either of these events, look for the Twittamentary room. The screening takes about an hour and is totally free - though you are invited to donate toward the production and streaming costs of Twittamentary (as it was produced .

Note this isn't simply a passive experience, though there's a lot to enjoy and learn from simply sitting back and watching Twittamentary.

If you're on Twitter, the Director and Producers of the documentary ask that you tweet about it using the hashtag #twittamentary during the screening. Your tweets will become part of the permanent record for Twittamentary, part of the evolving experience of the movie.

To learn more visit the Twittamentary website or watch the teaser video below.

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Monday, October 17, 2011

What if computer problems happened in real life?

I'll let the video speak for itself...

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Thursday, June 16, 2011

Delib's downunder digital democracy documentary deliberations definitely defining

Delib's Chris Quigly has released the edited Australian digital democracy mini-documentary that he recorded earlier this year with a number of Government 2.0 leaders (plus myself) across Australia.

The nine minute mini-documentary provides an interesting perspective on Gov 2.0 approaches and trends in Australia. It also provides a defining view from the outside - how people in other countries might view what is happening in Australia.

I have not embedded the video below as it is worth reading Chris' post about the mini-documentary for context.

I cannot wait for the blooper reel! (well OK I can)

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Monday, December 13, 2010

How workplaces can use social media

Commoncraft, one of my favourite instructional video developers, has created a new video on Social Media and the Workplace.

In about four minutes it provides an excellent summary of how social media can be used to address reputation issues, provide customer service and otherwise support organisations in a managed and safe manner.

Unfortunately the video isn't embeddable yet, so you'll have to click over to the Commoncraft website to view it.

View social media and the workplace.

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Monday, November 01, 2010

Short takes for public sector management Part II

Almost exactly a year ago (on 28 October 2009) I posted a set of four videos from the 'Shift happens' and 'Did you know?' series, mapping the changes in society and growth of the internet through a range of statistics.

It is time to update this - with the latest videos on the same topic - looking at the changes just over the last twelve months.

They're a wake up call. Share them around.

BTW - here's 12 things you need to know about Facebook (Australia) from Hitwise's Alan Long.



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