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Inventorspot has compiled a list of ten of the top branded social media nightmares.
These are situations where organisations or their staff have been caught behaving badly, where social media campaigns went past the line of good taste or where organisations failed to get onto social media and were not able to become part of the discussion (to their detriment}.
It is an interesting list and shows some of the risks involved in social media - including the risk of not becoming involved.
Showing posts with label rich media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rich media. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Social media nightmares | Tweet |
Sunday, February 28, 2010
How governments can use gameplay to educate and upskill a community | Tweet |
I'm a big fan for the use of gameplay to encourage people to explore concepts, test ideas, build skills and model behaviours while generating awareness - however it is a tool that I have not seen exploited anywhere near to the extent it could be in government or most commercial organisations in Australia (and yes I have some ideas....)
The World Bank is about to launch a very interesting online game, Urgent Evoke, that encourages people to 'make a different', solving real social problems around the world - in a simulated form.
To quote the game's blog:
This is not a simulation. You are about to tackle real problems.
Food security. Energy. Water security. Disaster relief. Poverty. Pandemic. Education. Global conflict. Human rights
Welcome to the Evoke Network. Welcome to your crash course in changing the world.
To understand how this game works and the value it provides, see the Episode 1 video below.
EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.
The game launches on 3 March (but is open for preregistration now) and will offer a series of challenges - the first involving an imminent famine in Japan. Missions and quests will be available to help solve these challenges and if it is like previous alternative reality online games of this type, players will be required to research, explore real (and fake) websites, video and other material, following trails of clues to find a solution.
People who complete all of the 10 challenges in 10 weeks will be able to claim the honour: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.
Top players will earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, and scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Sharing your photo library | Tweet |
Has your organisation ever considered sharing your photo library with other government organisations? With the costs of conducting new photo shoots, why not share your images with other organisations who might use them - and encourage them to share their images with you.
Some agencies may even wish the public to reuse their images.
Some departments councils and museums are already doing this via services such as the the National Library of Australia's Picture Australia site.
If your department has a library service, keeps a register of particular images of historic or national significance, or simply wishes to promote the reuse of specific images, this might be a way to encourage takeup.
Frankly it could be even more beneficial to have a cross-government photo and even video sharing library internally. With appropriate consents and licensing it would allow government to save significant funds by supporting reuse of images and snippets of visual media across departments and levels of government.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Australian Labor Party launches social media website | Tweet |
In a first for a major political party in Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has embedded blogging, tweeting and video in the heart of its website, relaunching www.alp.org.au as a Politics 2.0 website.
Termed 'Labor Connect' the redeveloped site aims to foster active policy debates, stating that,
We know we won’t always agree about issues and it would be pretty boring if we did. Labor Connect will not always be endorsed policy and its aim is to create debate and discussion about progressive policy development in the Party.The ALP calls its relaunched site a 'beta' and says there are many additional social media features yet to release. Their comment moderation process is very simple, with four basic guidelines:
- Stick to the topic
- Be respectful
- Be honest
- No Junk Mail
Besides the site's value in an election year, perhaps it is also an example of what the government is looking for from the public service in departmental engagement.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Who are the 'media' anyway? The new reality of media engagement | Tweet |
One of the long established principles in government and big business is that only designated staff are allowed to represent their organisations when speaking to the media.
This is an extremely well-intentioned principle, designed to protect both the organisation and individual staff. The media is frequently more interested in sensation than truth and can twist innocent statements into major incidents. Even when truth and accuracy are the goal, some things may need to be kept secret (at least for awhile) for good reasons - to protect intellectual property, safeguard individual privacy, avoid giving the competition an advantage or to keep complex fast-changing situations from being presented in static and simplistic (or inaccurate) ways.
Professional journalists are, in some ways, trained interrogators (and sometimes executioners). It can take an experienced, well-trained and well-briefed organisational representative to navigate a conversation that will later be reported, dissected and analysed for flaws and inconsistencies.
This limited media engagement approach relies on a single very important factor - that the 'media' is a clearly identifiable group.
In the past it was easy to identify the media. They were the people who owned the media distribution channels - radio stations, television channels and newspapers and magazines.
Commonly journalists identified themselves based on the media outlet they were from - except when going undercover - and a good organisational media representative could relatively easily identify and, over time, build productive relationships with the leading journalists covering their topical material.
However with the introduction of the internet this changed. We now have a virtually free global distribution network topped by ubiquitious access to publishing devices - including video and photos (via mobile phones) - and usage rates in excess of 90% of western populations.
Every internet user is able to break news to every other internet user - via blogs, citizen news sites, social networks, chatrooms, forums, newsgroups, microblogs and other online media channels.
This news can then be picked up and redistributed by other internet users and may also be picked up by 'traditional media' - those radio stations, television channels, newspapers and magazines (who are thirsty for cheap content).
This makes the question 'who are the 'media' a moot point. The 'media' is now 'the public' - no longer a small group of large conglomerates controlling information distribution channels but every single person with access to a mobile phone and internet connection.
This poses a challenge for government and private sector organisations who traditionally limit media engagement by staff. All of their customers and stakeholders are able to produce, publish and distribute media news. So can their employees.
So if the rules of the past no longer apply, what can organisations do?
The first choice is to ignore the changes in the environment and try to enforce the rules that worked in the past.
This approach is enormously risky as it can lead to many gray areas and blind spots - plenty of room for inappropriate and inconsistent enforcement. Individual managers (or in the government, agencies) could interpret the scope of the 'media' differently - creating discrimination and a rising tide of dissatisfaction and legal controversy.
The second choice is to educate all of an organisation's staff on how to engage appropriately in public arenas.
This is a signficant, but not impossible, undertaking. In fact Telstra is in the process of doing this right now (regarding social media engagement), as are the US Defense forces and some government agencies and large companies around the world. This approach recognises that the media environment has changed and organisations must change with it.
The third choice is to - well I can't think of a third choice. Organisations can either recognise the realities of the world and accommodate change, or they can attempt to hold back or even reverse them.
The next few years will tell us which approach organisations have chosen - and how well they have worked out.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Telstra publishes staff social media training package | Tweet |
Telstra has publicly released its staff social media training package, making the comic-styled multimedia system available on the web at www.exchange.telstra.com.au/training/flip.html
The package recognises that social media is becoming embedded into normal Australian life - including the lives of Telstra's staff.
The training package reflects how social media management is not the province of an IT or Communications branch, but is an executive level consideration for the entire organisation. It also makes it clear that Telstra has made a top level commitment to supporting staff participation online.
I believe Telstra's package will be a very useful reference for government - and commercial - organisations who are grappling with the question of how to empower their staff to participate in social media within the APSC and appropriate organisational guidelines.
I recommend sharing it with your management and HR teams.
Here's a couple of references to the package.
- The media announcement from Telstra
- A review of the package by Lee Hopkins, who was involved in the development of Telstra's social media strategy
- Media coverage by Mashable
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Catch me on Gov 2.0 radio next week. | Tweet |
I'll be chatting with Adriel Hampton on Gov 2.0 radio early next week to give US Gov 2.0 people some operational insights into Gov 2.0 happenings in Australia.
Gov 2.0 radio is a weekly podcast on collaborative and transparent government hosted by Adriel, a noted US-based Gov 2.0 and new media strategist.
I expect the discussion will cover topics ranging from current Gov 2.0 initiatives in Australia, the Gov 2.0 Taskforce's report, National Broadband Network and mandatory internet filtering.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Dealing with video accessibility - automating captions and transcripts | Tweet |
I found out last week that Google had recently integrated YouTube with Google's speech-text technology, allowing videos displayed on YouTube to have their captions and transcripts automatically generated.
In addition, these captions and transcripts can then be translated, via Google's text translation system, and displayed on the video in any supported language.
The transcript can also be downloaded (and corrected if necessary) to be reused in other environments.
Whilst Google admits that neither the speech-to-text autocaptioning or the translation tool are perfect, these are measurable steps forward in using computing power to address accessibility in videos.
It also is a powerful tool for any organisation with video footage - even for internal use. They can simply upload video to YouTube in a private channel, have it auto-transcribed - correct this as required and then translate the material as necessary, then remove the video from YouTube and use the translated material internally.
More information on this tool is available at YouTube's blog in the post, Automatic captions in YouTube and I've embedded their demo video below.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Youtube offers free branded channels to government departments globally | Tweet |
Youtube recently announced that government departments using the service can get a free branded channel for their videos, saving a US$50,000 set-up fee.
The offer is apparently still making its way to the Youtube site, however the details of the offer are public and it is available now.
Below I've provided the content of an email sent to me by Geordie Hyland of Youtube regarding how to take up the offer and here is a link to a blog post by Mike Kujawski in his blog Public Sector Marketing 2.0 with details of what departments will get with a branded channel.
Note that departments do need to assess whether taking this up meets their needs - and whether there's any potential lock-in effect that may not be in their strategic interests in the future.
Youtube does have a dominant position in the online video distribution market at present - however it may not suit all departments' needs.
Please contact me by email directly for a Youtube contact if needed.
Hi,
Thanks for your interest in starting a YouTube channel for your government, government department, or government agency. If you like, you can start a YouTube channel right away by creating an account and posting videos. One time at the end of every month, YouTube will transfer any new government channels to "branded" - thus allowing you to upload a branded banner to the top of your channel, and giving you the ability to upload longer videos to the site.
We do not have the capacity to do this more than one time per month, so please be patient if you don't hear back right away - and feel free to start posting videos to your account.
To enter your application for a branded channel, please send an email to government@youtube.com with the following 5 pieces of information:
* The name of your government, government department, or agency.
* Your .gov website URL.
* The account name you've registered on YouTube (i.e., your YouTube username).
* The email address you are using to manage the account.
* Any other information you want to tell us about your plans to launch the channel, and what types of content you plan to post.
Please also be aware the YouTube will not negotiate any individual content licensing agreements with state or local governments - your contract with YouTube is our site-wide terms and conditions, which you agree to upon starting an account on YouTube. To see that policy, please go to: http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Thanks, and good luck!
-The YouTube Team
Monday, November 09, 2009
Collaboration within organisations increases productivity - new report | Tweet |
When I stepped into the public sector just over three years ago, in terms of workplace collaboration it was like stepping back twenty years.
I found that staff directories were merely lists of names, titles and phone numbers - without listing people's expertise, qualifications, experience, current projects and interests.
The only way to get to know and understand the skills of staff in most other areas was to discover them by word of mouth or meet them at work functions.
Collaboration was limited to face-to-face working groups, flying people around the country to attend meetings, or sending draft documents to others by email or on paper and asking for feedback. Sometime comments were returned written on document print-outs, in long-hand reminiscent of a doctor's prescriptions.
Even when document edits were tracked changes, compiling and reconciling the edits from different people in such a process could take days, if not weeks, before the document was ready to be recirculated for re-review.
While these collaboration systems were slow and clumsy, people - public servants - made them work. I worry about whether it also made best use of peoples' skills, departmental time and public money.
Recently Frost and Sullivan released a report which defined the productivity gains both public and commercial sector organisations can gain from more advanced collaboration techniques.
Reported in NextGov and titled Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration (PDF), the report
surveyed 3,662 professionals in businesses and government agencies about their use of advanced collaboration tools such as voice-over-Internet Protocol, instant messaging or meeting via high-definition video to get their work done.The report found that these collaborative tools delivered a return of 4.2x the organisation's investment and that 60% of workers felt that the tools increased their performance.
Is a 4x ROI sufficient to encourage government departments to invest in better collaboration tools? I hope so - and look forward to more productive collaboration with my colleagues in the years to come.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Short takes for public sector management - Shift happens & Did you know? | Tweet |
If you're having difficulty getting across to your management the magnitude of the impact of the internet and changes in society, try showing them one or more of these videos - each is only around eight minutes long.
They provide a snapshot (in figures) of the changes taking place in the world.
In case you experience resistance, mention that Did you know 3.0 was used by New York State's CIO, Dr Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, in her presentation at the recent CEBIT Gov 2.0 conference.
Did you know 4.0 (2009)
Did you know 3.0 (2008)
Did you know 2.0 (2007)
Shift Happens (Did you know 1.0) (2006)
Monday, October 26, 2009
Have you entered the Webbys? | Tweet |
The world's top internet award, the Webbys, is now accepting early bird entries for their 2010 awards.
Early bird entries are accepted until 30 October (US time).
Monday, October 19, 2009
Gov 2.0 conference - Liveblog | Tweet |
I'm liveblogging at least the morning session of CEBIT's Gov 2.0 conference in Canberra.
Please add your comments and questions and I'll seek to pass them on to the speakers and blog the responses.
For those of you on Twitter, the hashtag to follow is #gov2.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
NSW trialing video Hansards and auto-translation - looking for comments | Tweet |
As discussed in NSW MLC Penny Sharpe's blog last week, the NSW government is trialling video Hansard for proceedings in both NSW houses.
Videos are tagged via the Hansard transcripts to improve searchability - though at present the search system implemented finds the video clip, but not the precise time within the video.
In addition to the video, NSW is also trialling auto-translation of Hansard transcripts into Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish (though unfortunately not Klingon). This offers the exciting prospect of being able to provide the discussions in parliament in the languages of some of the different cultural groups across Australia. In my view this is even more significant for supporting Australia's multi-cultural democracy than watching parliament in action.
To trial the system, go to www.visionbytes.tv and login using nswparl as both the username and password.
If you have feedback, please comment on MLC Penny Sharpe's blog.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Google in Government Symposium - notes from the day | Tweet |
On Wednesday 18 March I attended the Google in Government Symposium, hosted by Hedloc.
I had planned to liveblog the day, as I liveblogged the recent Politics and Technology forum, however due to a lack of available wi-fi (the National Convention Centre still charges $40 for six hours access - which I was not personally willing to pay), I resorted to taking notes on PC, which I've provided below in an edited form.
I also twittered the event as a personal stream-of-consciousness record and thanks to the dozen or so people who asked questions of the presenters through me or discussed the event with me on Twitter.
The record of the Twitter conversation can be found here, or under the hashtag #cggov - note that the records are in reverse chronological order, so go to the last result to start at the start of the day.
The text below is an edited version of my personal notes from the day. It does not represent the views of any other individual or organisation. Any errors or omissions are mine.
Google in Government notes transcript
Google Enterprise Overview
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google
Google Enterprise
Google Search Appliance
Google Maps/Earth
Google Apps
Destination Innovation
Presenter: Alan Noble - Engineering Director, Australia & New Zealand, Google
His view of the two major trends for innovation
Google is a big supporter of open standards, Open Social Alliance and Open Handset Alliance
Google is very interested in having governments make public data available online on same basis to all organisations and citizens - and has made submission in this vein in the current consultation process.
Some examples of openness
Two technologies changing the face of the web
Four trends on the web
Destination Search
Presenter: Richard Suhr - Head of Google Enterprise, ANZ & South East Asia, Google
Search challenges for Gov Agencies
New US president has made search front-and-centre
Singaporean government came to Google and said they wanted a better search system across all of their government departments. Google took one search appliance – runs all search for all of government. Operates 4 million pages, 300 different search experiences (in agencies)
Quick stats from Google
Customer (and staff) view
Google's trends...
Technical Overview and Case Studies
ATO website – people can now find information on the website, users gravitating to search as the first path for navigation, rather than menus – huge increase in search.
Presenter: Aaren Tebbutt - Account Manager, HEDLOC
DEEWR
Extras
Destination Geospatial
Presenter: Mickey Kataria - Google maps Product Manager, Google
Mission: 'Organise the world's geographical information and make it universally accessible and useful'
Features
Maps API - Premier version
Maplets
Mobile
Australian Electorate map for Federal election
UK Metropolitan police crime map – http://maps.met.police.uk
User-generated content
Google Earth
Presenter: Brian Atwood - Google Earth Enterprise Product Manager
Examples:
1. All data goes into Google Earth Fusion Software – processes and blends it together
2. Processed data goes to Google Earth Server which allows viewing of data in a 3D or 2D format
Case study - Virtual Alabama
Goals
Implementation
Case study - Energy Australia
Presenter: Lawrence Bolton, Manager Community Liaison and Infrastructure
In his area
Wanted a way to 'see' or 'visualise' data
Google Earth is being rolled out in pilot as the visualisation platform for their GIS data, using layers and rich information.
Case Study - Australian Federal Police
Presenter: James Harris - Team Leader Geospatial services, Information Services Australian Federal Police
Audited systems:
Selected Google Earth via a tender process, and are implementing an internal version so no-one external is aware of when the Federal Police have interest in a location. Initially using 8 terabytes of storage – with multiple globes.
Initial role out in April to testers, full rollout in June.
Looking to roll out maps, live feeds, custom build tools, link into corporate databases in future.
Case Study - NT Land Information Systems
Presenter: Phillip Rudd - Director NT Land Information Systems
Geospatial useful for key questions
Uses Google Earth alongside other tools (complex system - but it works well).
Department was gathering lots of map data, but could not effectively do much with it.
Originally deployed solution in production in 2006.
Emergency Management – 239 registered users
Land Information – open to all users (potentially 9,500 desktops) actual 1,619 logins
'We all think in pictures, not in words'
Uses:
Destination Apps and Security
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google
Why are users unhappy?
Stats on current IT management
Forrester report Jan 2009 – should your email live in the cloud?
Monday, March 16, 2009
What does the future look like? | Tweet |
Microsoft have developed a Future Visions series to provide some insight into where technology is headed, and how it will help people.
If you are looking to anticipate the needs of your customers, rather than simply play catch-up, the series provides some very thought provoking ideas.
Here is the montage video, exploring different concepts in brief. Below I've placed links to the full videos on each topic.
And in case you think this technology is still a long way off, read this article from the Inquisitor, If You Want the Future, Look to the Hackers. It talks about companies placing working brainjacks into people's heads, and how to create a Minority Report-style interface using your Nintendo Wii.
The others videos in the Microsoft Future Vision series are:
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The reality of marketing and comms today | Tweet |
Marketing just isn't the same anymore - customers are harder to reach, they trust brands less and spend their time listening to each other rather than to media or to corporate or government marketers and communicators.
Yet many comms and marketing people are still stuck on the 'shout louder and longer' theory. If someone isn't listening, the theory goes, you keep shouting at them louder and louder until they MUST listen to you.
It's an interesting theory - one that I sometimes see English speakers use to attempt to reach those who speak other languages. The twin fallacies of the approach are that people can simply walk away (switch you off) or may not actually understand you in the first place. They may also find you obnoxious and rude and go tell all their friends that.
The other communications approach I see used a great deal is the 'love'em and leave'em' or 'big bang' approach. An organisation will go for saturation coverage, a big launch event and then - nothing. After launch they settle back to assess the numbers, maybe doing a mini-relaunch every now and then to attempt to regain interest. Big launches are good fun and I've participated in a number of them over the years, but they don't shape lasting impressions.
As most people have discovered, it is hard to build a long-term relationship with another person by leaping out of a box with a bunch of flowers while a plane skywrites their name in the sky and then ignoring them totally for the next year.
So what's another option?
How about starting with a conversation - simply talking to your customers without expectations or attempting to direct or control the conversation. Over time, as trust builds your relationship, you can inject ideas or build on suggestions and co-create a product, service, policy or program in collaboration with your audience.
Sounds crazy? It's been done - with everything from government policy (in New Zealand) to beer. In fact it even has a name - relationship marketing.
Even if you think this approach is too out there, or would take too long, it's clear that our audiences have changed their behaviours. Old marketing techniques are less effective and old marketers need to learn new tricks.
And if you believe that just because we're in government we're different in some way, sorry no. People are bombarded with advertising all the time. Putting an Australian crest into an ad doesn't mystically help it cut through the morass of messages. We have to do better than that.
Steve Collins from AcidLabs recently blogged about the video below in his post Engage them.
As a marketer I found this video tells a compelling story of how markets have changed.
The big question for me is - have government communicators?
Monday, December 01, 2008
What governments could learn from Mumbai - citizens now control the flow of information | Tweet |
Like many other Australians I have a direct link to the recent attacks in Mumbai.
One of my family's friends was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel. She managed to avoid being taken hostage - or worse. Her husband was out of the hotel at the time and found shelter elsewhere.
Fortunately both of them remain safe. My thoughts go out to all who lost their lives, were injured or who lost loved ones in the attacks.
During the siege it was difficult to get accurate and timely information about what was occurring from Australia's traditional mainstream media. This was repeated in many other countries around the world. Events unfolded too fast for television crews or print reporters to get onto the scene or file stories. When they did they were not able to access people at the heart of the crisis, their access was controlled by Indian authorities.
Due to this many people around the world turned to the online channel for information, finding a wealth of eye-witness reports, videos, photos and maps, with many citizens self-organising to support those in Mumbai and the people who care for them.
Commentators have called it the first crisis where the internet completely dominated other media channels.
Where were governments? They were left waiting for official updates, providing limited information in pre-packaged messages via traditional media, while citizens took control online.
If the communications experience of Mumbai can be learnt from, I believe it teaches governments that they must become more nimble and open to use of public online channels, or lose control, influence and relevance.
Mumbai is a wake-up call - in many ways.
People used many online channels to self-organise and share current information and personal accounts as events unfolded. This included sites such as blogs, Youtube, NowPublic, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps, Google docs (a complete list of dead and wounded) and Twitter.
This frequently involved live updates from people in Mumbai directly experiencing the events, or repeating local news reports that did not get picked up outside India.
There was so much information that, on Twitter alone, CNN Online reported that at peak there were an estimated 80 messages (or tweets) sent to Twitter via SMS every five seconds providing eyewitness accounts and updates.
Traditional mainstream media relied heavily on citizen journalism to understand what was occurring, contacting Indian bloggers, using on-the-scene photos from Flickr and amateur video published on the web. Several traditional media players were able to tap directly into citizen journalism, such as the BBC and CNN.
However most mainstream media played catch-up, particularly in Australia where online commentators quite vocally criticised the slow reactions and poor coverage by local outlets.
It appears that even the terrorists involved in the attacks made use of the internet, using Blackberries to monitor world public opinion during the attacks.
With all this online activity, how were most governments communicating to the community?
Via traditional mainstream media outlets.
This highlights to me the disconnect rapidly emerging between how citizens choose to communicate and how comfortable and skilled governments are in using new media channels.
More and more citizens are seeking timely, relevant, plain english and personalised information. Whereas governments remain focused on traditional methods to assure accuracy and message management.
By the time a government assesses events, writes appropriate messages, gets approvals and distributes their views via traditional media channels (hoping they get a 15 second grab), the public has moved on, relying on personal, on-the-spot accounts.
Traditionally this approach has served government well. It maintains their appearance of authority, dignity and accuracy, preventing disturbing rumours or information from spreading in an uncontrolled way.
However the world has changed. Many eyewitnesses can publish their personal accounts directly without going through 'official' channels.
Using traditional approaches governments can appear slow to respond or even painfully out of date, particularly where events progress rapidly.
Similarly in organising a response and support for people, while governments do an invaluable job behind the scenes (organising counseling and transport), publicly the self-organising online citizen groups are more nimble and responsive.
The perceived slow response from governments can reduce the trust and faith of citizens. Over time this leads more people to seek more responsive channels and, though receiving timely eyewitness accounts, reduces citizen satisfaction with the language and messages of government. Governments become less relevant.
People who relied on traditional media or official reports to stay informed during the Mumbai seige probably find it hard to believe the impact the online channel had on global communications.
Fortunately no-one has to rely on my opinion.
The failure of traditional media has become a topic of much debate, by the media itself, such as in Wall Street Journal's Live Mint and Yahoo News, as well as by well-known bloggers including David Henderson (Emmy award winning former CBS news correspondent) and Laurel Papworth (one of Australia's top experts on social media).
To finish with a quote from Laurel's post (link above),As someone who doesn't have Cable TV I can - hand on heart - swear that I learnt nothing about #Mumbai from Australian MSM [Mainstream Media].
I relied totally on Twitter. Not because I wanted to, but because TV wouldn't interrupt Kerri Anne Kennerly or children's morning TV with real news.
Twitter filtered to me websites, and tidbits I couldn't get elsewhere. ALL news was broken to me by Twitter and the links they sent.
In amongst retweeting MSM were the REAL stories. Someone hearing the bombing while lying bed. Someone else driving past a hotel as it was attacked. A guy worried about his friend. I realised this: who on earth ever said that social commentary is not News? O.o
For me, MSM doesn't make the news, they simply report OUR stories. Just another filter. After people-in-crisis are interviewed on CNN India (I watched online, thanks to link sent by Twitter) they tell a friend, who puts it on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace. More links to real stories.
Australian Media is dead. It failed to meet my needs (I channel hopped from 9:30am until about 4pm hoping for new News) and by the time the 6 O'clock News came on, MSM was simply retweeting what I had already seen and heard through Twitter links.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
eGovernment best practice from Utah's CIO | Tweet |
Ari Herzog has begun a series on social media best practice in his blog, AriWriter.
Kicking it off is a fascinating interview with Utah's Chief Information Officer, David Fletcher, providing an insight into how Utah has implemented its online strategy, taking it to win the Best of the Web award for US state governments twice (so far), in 2003 and 2007.
Drawing a few highlights from David's piece...
The state has over 830 services online, was an early adopter of blogging by public servants, services such as Twitter (as covered by USA Today) and online chat (24x7) and the use of video online via Youtube. Do I need to also mention they use wikis?
For many of these initiatives Utah is leveraging free online technologies rather than reinventing the wheel and spending large amounts of public funds. And Utah isn't keeping the performance of Utah.gov a secret - they publish their analytics online.
In August this year the state instituted a 4-day work week for public servants, based on Utah's ability to provide so many services on a 24x7 basis online.
Amazingly, although the state only has 2.6 million residents, the Utah state portal receives over 1.1 million unique visits per month. That's a much higher rate of citizen online participation with government than we see in Australia (for example Australia.gov.au reportedly gets around half this number of visitors (not even unique visitors) for 8x as large a population).
The state has also cut down the time for businesses to register at local, state and federal levels - cutting what could be a several week process down to 30 minutes.
A number of their services have over an 80% adoption rate - which I take to mean that under 20 percent of registrations come via other channels.
And if you want to learn more about the state of Utah's online presence, you can visit David's blog or find him on Twitter at @dfletcher - he's truly walking the talk!
Sunday, November 16, 2008
US President releases first weekly youtube address | Tweet |
One of the promises Barack Obama made in the US was to release his weekly address to the nation via Youtube.
This signaled how serious he was about transparent and open government, and flagged the incoming US government recognition of the power of Youtube's large and growing audience - which publishes almost 10,000 hours of content per day (per Michael Welsch's Anthropological Introduction to Youtube).
Obama's first weekly address is now available online and demonstrates how polished his staff have become in the use of Youtube.
I hope we'll see a similar use in Australia of the KevinPM website, even going further to have the Prime Minister respond in a public questiontime to video questions posed by citizens - just as John Howard used his weekly radio talkback - but accessible to a broader audience.
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