Reposting a post from my writing partner in crime Ines Mergel that summarizes an article that we help to craft for the July Edition of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research – good stuff for local govts interested in the opportunities and challenges posed by virtual worlds for engagement.
Category Archives: Web2.0
Mapping the Social Media Response in Japan
The geodata masters over at ESRI have created some excellent live data mash-ups map of Japan that visualize information compiled from personal social media accounts. Warning, it takes a few seconds to load the info and you must have Silverlight installed (but it is worth it).
Social Media Map
http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/japan-earthquake-tsunami-2011-map/index.html
This map shows content related to the disaster posted on social media sites. It includes posts from Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Ushahidi (a tool that allows anyone to report incidents via SMS, e-mail or the web). It has a very visual impact with the raw data posted by citizens and government alike.
Trends Map
http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/japan-earthquake-tsunami-2011-map/trends-map.html
According to ESRI, this one “uses trend analysis to visualize community reports related to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.” It is a visual constructed by those who are in the zone of impact and still needing help. The map includes geographic points posted wherever someone posts a message requesting help or info or offering help or info. These messages include things like shelter information, transportation routes, power outages, etc. But it also documents postings from individuals – stores are posting a general summary of the supplies they have available, etc. Go to fullscreen view for the maximum impact.
As of Monday (3/21) afternoon, there were over 2300 such postings available for viewing on these maps. This is an excellent visualization of the collective crowdsourcing power of social media. Not only does it help first responders and emergency planners focus their efforts with more eyes and ears in the thick of it, it also shows how social media is used to connect people-to-people, with or without emergency management coordination.
If you want to know more about the technology behind the mashup, you can read the news release from ESRI.
There was also a recent article on Mashable that highlights the other crucial role that social media has played in the recovery efforts in Japan.
Because internet access has been mostly unaffected by the disaster, social media has been a lifeline for reconnecting families. In fact, on March 14th, the US Embassy actually sent a message to US citizens in Japan encouraging them to use social media to stay in contact with family outside the country: “While we understand that there have been disruptions in communications in Japan, including the interruption of internet and mobile telephone service, we encourage you to continue your efforts to be in contact with your loved one(s) using SMS texting and other social media (e.g., FaceBook, My Space,Twitter, etc) that your loved one(s) may use.”
Score one for ESRI and score another one for social media legitimacy in government!
Guess Who Signed His First Publishing Contract This Week?
Yep, that’d be me. But, here’s the real irony. If you are a regular blog-reader, you know I’ve been peddling my fiction manuscript for a couple of months now – my completed manuscript that is. But this week I signed a contract with publisher Jossey-Bass to co-author a new, non-fiction guidebook with my MuniGov pal Dr. Ines Mergel, professor of public administration and information studies at Syracuse University. Woot! Woot!
We’re collaborating on a guidebook targeted at those in the public sector tasked with establishing social media in a government organization. This is not about setting up a Twitter account or gathering followers on Facebook (okay, well, we might cover those tentpoles briefly). This will be a practical guide to building an organizational policy and integration the potential value of social media into an overall business strategy. I hope the book will occupy a space somewhere between a textbook and an Idiot’s Guide, with lots of examples and voices of leadership in government social media use.
If you are one of those voices – someone who has something to share in the realm of government social media – please speak up! We want to hear from you and possibly feature your story, your suggestions and your experience in the book. Drop me a line.
For me, for now, it’s back to work on the writing! I’ll post some updates from time and time and I’ve promised myself that I will not give up on the fiction writing and publishing either. After all, sleep is so overrated!
Social Media & Emergency Management
Recently I agreed to do a webinar on the connection between social media and emergency management. I always knew there was linkage, but I was actually quite astounded at how deeply social media could, should and actually is embedded not only into the four formal phases of emergency management, but also in even the general “public safety” functions that our local governments perform. There are hundreds of great examples available via Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and even some simple yet extremely powerful examples of how crowdsourcing mashups are helping the world recover from major events. For example, check out this great ESRI mash-up that geo-tags citizen provided tweets, photos and videos to help extend the reach and reduce the response time of emergency responders in Christchurch, NZ.
Because of the great body of work on the topic, I am going to start a new blog category that deals exclusively with social media use in emergencies, public safety and emergency management. I intend to use it to share what I’ve already learned on the topic, highlight useful examples of its use and point you to even better resources that are more informed on the topic than I.
My Professional Network Map
I tried out the LinkedIn Maps feature over the weekend. It creates a graphical representation of your LinkedIn network and attempts to organize your contacts in a logical fashion. I was pleasantly surprised with how well it managed to capture and catalog the different segments of my contact group. It was also very interesting to note how evenly dispersed my groups are between the jobs I have held and the different roles I play today. It would be an interesting experiment to see how this overlays with a mapping for Facebook and Twitter contacts. I believe Twitter would have a higher focus on Gov2.0 contacts and Facebook would be much more diversified given the worldwide contacts made through Gov2.0 and MuniGov initiatives and the fact that I have a lot of “non-work related” friends as well.
If you haven’t yet, check out LinkedIn Labs for your own network map or any of the other experimental tools they’ve got cooking over there.
NASCIO Negotiates Govt-Friendly ToS Changes with Facebook
Yesterday, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) announced that their Social Media Legal Workgroup, along with the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) had successfully negotiated several key changes to Facebook’s Terms of Service. Facebook’s standard click-through agreement language has traditionally caused many government agencies to shy away from the social networking behemoth due to several clauses that typically are non-negotiable in any government contract.
Although the group’s efforts were primarily focused on state government needs, the clauses they’ve resolved are also common sticking points for local governments as well.
According to the NASCIO news release, “Facebook has specifically agreed to modify the provisions of its terms and conditions to:
- Strike the indemnity clause except to the extent indemnity is allowed by a state’s constitution or law;
- Strike language requiring that legal disputes be venued in California courts and adjudicated under California law;
- Require that a public agency include language directing consumers to its official Web site prominently on any Facebook page; and,
- Encourage amicable resolution between public entities and Facebook over any disputes.
State and local government agencies who are already on Facebook are immediately grandfathered in to these changes.
These changes come after over a year of “lengthy discussions”, but NASCIO expects that this will serve as a model going forward, hopefully usable with other social media services. Back in March of 2009, the General Services Administration successfully negotiated Terms of Service amendments with several social media services, including Youtube, Flickr, Vimeo and Blip, yet most state and local governments did not find the changes particularly helpful to their needs (which, generally speaking, are very different from those of federal agencies). So this success by NASCIO is likely going to be a much more pivotal move for state and local government adoption of social media services!
Twitter New Leaf Follow-Up
Last month I posted that I was going to expand my Twitter horizons beyond gov2.0 with new topics and new followers and new friends to follow. I was very curious to see what (if any) impact this would have on my follower base. When I did the post, I was at 387 followers. Today, a little over a month later, my account stands at 420 followers. Interesting! Although I get the regular ebb and flow of followers, I don’t think I’ve ever had this many before. And I make sure to prune all the bots, so these are legit peeps.
What does it mean? I dunno! Maybe people are widely more accepting of broad topics once they develop confidence in a person they follow? Maybe there is so much in people’s twitstreams that they don’t even see some of the posts of mine they would consider off topic or off interest to them? Or maybe they don’t even care? What do you think?
Farmers Milking Social Media to Promote Agriculture
Check Me Out on MooooooooooooTube!
I love, love, love hearing about how social media is helping in new ways, and I am not just pulling your udder!
Here is yet another example of how everybody, and I mean everybody, is getting on the social media bandwagon as a way to bypass mass media and directly reach consumers.
A recent article in Government Technology magazine highlighted a growing trend in the agriculture industry to take a message online to directly interact with consumers. The goal according to the article is to use social media as ”an effective counter to the mixed marketing messages targeted at consumers about what’s healthy and how food is made”. The movement stems primarily from bad press in recent years in which many farmers felt that their side of the story wasn’t told accurately. So they took it upon themselves to find new ways to reach out to the buying public to set the record straight.
According to Dino Giacomazzi, a dairy farmer and avid social media user, the farmers’ voice has been lost in the past and “now thousands of farmers have since joined Twitter, Facebook or started a blog to show people what kind of work they are doing.” Interestingly, but perhaps not surprising, is that this new world of such transparency is taking some getting used to for many of them. But thanks to Giacomazzi and events like the recent Social Media Conference for Farmers, those in the ag industry will soon learn how to avoid the cowpies of social media and milk it for all it’s worth!
Want to know more? Check out Giacomazzi’s great twitstream (@dairydino) or his blog – which has a bunch of great links to get you more in the know of life as a dairy farmer.
Turning a New Twitter Leaf
It’s time to reveal my great Twitter experiment! Okay, well maybe it’s not grand enough to be classified as “Great”, but it is mine, and it is an experiment. For a few years now, I have tried to remain faithful to a strict business-only code on my Twitter account; no talking about anything other than IT nerdiness and Government 2.0. I kept my other pursuits, such as DIY, writing and music exclusive to my Facebook site or here on the blog.
These last few weeks have seen an intersection of my interests. If you read this blog with any regularity, you’ll know I’ve recently completed my first novel. As I travel down the highway seeking a literary agent to represent my work, I have begun following authors, publishers and other aspiring writers via Twitter. These are folks in the genre and the industry, the ones I want and need to learn from. Just as I’ve surrounded my online self with the goverati who walk the govt 2.o walk, I want to do the same with my writing circle of expertise. The combination has created a very interesting stream of posts that fly across my twitfeed. And now I find myself fighting stronger and stronger urges to post (gasp!) non techie posts on twitter! No…I musn’t! I might lose a follower or a dozen or 100. I can’t let that happen…can I?
Sure I can! My twitter feed is mine, all mine. If it doesn’t work for me, who does it work for? Many moons ago, I did a post on why Twitter held value for me as a techie 2.0 govie. But it doesn’t matter what subject you want to review as long as you get the right kind of symbiotic audience to fit your needs.
Yesterday I had a great time talking to a New Media class at Syracuse University about social media use in government. I reminded them (and myself) that social media is SOCIAL and MEDIA. It is a conversation at a cocktail party, not a lecture hall. You mingle, you find common interests and forge new relationships.
So that is exactly what I am going to do. Don’t cry Government 2.0, I am not giving up on us, I just don’t want these boundaries keeping us so exclusive. It’s not you, really, it’s me. I want a more open relationship. I want to be able to see other topics. We’ll still be friends, I promise.
So to my “old” government 2.0 friends, I’m still here and still full-on geeked out. Bear with my seemingly random non-2.0 posts if you can. If not, I’ll understand your stealthy “unfollow” with no hard feelings at all.
To my “new” writing friends, hopefully you’ll accept a noob among your ranks. I look forward to connecting with you all via new channels about our common topics and struggles.
As of this publishing, I am the proud recipient of 387 followers. In a month or so, I’ll follow this post up with an update and a review of my great experiment! I would really appreciate any candid feedback, positive or negative on this one, so send me your two cents below!
Confirmed: Facebook Is Now Lame (Visual Proof)
I have suspected for some time now that Facebook was rapidly becoming so commonplace and mundane that it could no longer be considered “cool” by any worthy barometer.
Back in July of this year, it was widely reported that Facebook had passed the 500 million user mark. You can “like” just about everything you see on the internet today. As a friend of mine so eloquently said today “What was once the cool new thing, made for and about college students living on the edge of relationship management, has now officially jumped the shark.” Although I knew it was inevitable, I did not know exactly what form its demise would take.
What would be the proverbial nail in its coffin? Would there be a pivotal instant where it would die in a fiery explosion or would it slowly waste away bit by bit? Well friends, I got my answer yesterday morning. Below I give you Exhibit A in the trial of Who Killed Facebook’s Coolness…
