This week it is your opportunity to put the social in social media
When I started this blog, there were two primary reasons that drove me to the keyboard week in and week out and, after a period of reflection, I have decided that I haven’t been at all successful in the second. And while I am not trying to lead you to an inference about the first, I remain confident that the remedy lies within my own reach.
The first reason was to learn as much about social media in the public sector – in as public and transparent a fashion – as possible. To write about it and to engage with colleagues and peers. Pretty straightforward.
The second, equally important, reason was to provide a forum for colleagues, peers, interested readers et al (you), to interact and experiment with social media. Looking back over the last year and a half, there hasn’t been too much of that. This post is an attempt to change that.
Come on out
Looking through the visitor numbers to the site I have a good idea of the ratio of readers to commenters and while it is reasonable to expect that social sites will generally have a fairly predictable breakdown of active/passive visitors (the 1% rule), for communicators I think we can and should do better.
This is your chance. Stop lurking (even if only for this one post) and come out and introduce yourself. Tell everyone a little about yourself, where you are from, your work and your interests in terms of communications, social media etc. Get social.
If you have other social media profiles, include links to them. Your blog, bookmarks, Twitter or Tumblr accounts, your online feed reader, LinkedIn profile, whatever… Anything that will help all of us connect with others who share what is after all (if you read this blog regularly) a fairly obscure interest.
If you would like to do more than introduce yourself, you are encouraged to submit your thoughts about the blog, especially if it involves suggesting directions or areas of interest for 2008.
Now, don’t be shy: start mingling.
Photo: yewenyi
16 Comments
OK. My name’s Megan and I am from the Canadian Arctic. I work in government communications.
I have one that I update daily and one that I update when I’m annoyed with the hypocrisy of the world around me.
Greetings Jason. Well, you know me, and what I do at our place of work (for those who don’t, I’m a lawyer working in the ICT branch of a central government department). What you may not know is that before setting up InsideoutLegal, I started writing an anonymous blog in 2004 while in Europe on blogging and the legal profession as well as an out-in-the-open blog on pharmaceutical law. I think social media will take off more and more in 2008 and am looking forward to more commentary. I too will be ramping up my online presence with a focus on legal issues. Cheers.
Hi again Jason, and NPSC readers. Amongst other things in my spare time I run TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, a website to help people track the activity of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament. I’m hoping to facilitate “Networked Democracy” by building tools and services that expose existing parliamentary processes to all who are interested.
Once organisations and individuals are networked online, will they be able to identify and collaborate on issues, and emerge outcomes that represent the common interest? If we innovate now by building prototype services, we can see how society reacts to this possibility. As Tom Steinberg said at the recent BarcampUKGovWeb: “code not talk!”.
I’m developing some social features for TheyWorkForYou.co.nz that’ll hopefully see the light of day this year. You can follow the project’s progress via TWFYNZ twitter updates, or the less frequently updated TWFYNZ blog.
Hi Jason, great idea!
Ok, so I’m involved with Webstock. blog very poorly at maupuia calling (it really is something I want to ramp up also), and sometimes post photos on flickr. I do Twitter!
Hi Jason,
Call me nostalgic for NZ but I check out your blog whenever I can. And I know others in Europe who do so too…..so I reckon your lurkers are from all over the planet! Keep up the great work in pushing the frontier of public sector social media from Wellington. For the benefit of us all.
PS if you want to go beyond introductions and vacuous fanmail (like the above) to get a bit of feedback, or even why not ask all of us lurkers to come out and rate your posts? My favourite so far was “5 principles for Govt2.0” from April 2007 which concluded:
“for government to be responsive, to engage effectively and to deliver value to New Zealanders in the age of Web2.0 will require a reinvention of the way we think and work. And, to be clear, this is not about technology: it is about developing solutions for social and governance challenges.”
Good idea Jason (I will be curious as to what % of your readership does take this opportunity).
I work at the State Service Commission with Jason and Richard. My job title is “online collaboration specialist”.
Very broadly, I love watching the evolution of the internet, and the way it fundamentally changes stuff (communication, the media, education, retail, information access, copyright and the law, traditional organisational hierarchies, the 9-to-5-at-the-office working week etc.). I am confident, that combined with the broader changes in technology (medicine, the outcomes of the human genome project, computer user interfaces, robotics and cybernetics) the environment and the demographics of the the human race, the world in 50 years is probably beyond the capabilities of our imaginations. This make me optimistic, excited, and at other times, pessimistic and scared.
In my personal life, I regularly edit Wikipedia, post videos to youtube, and had a travel blog while overseas.
Hi Jason, I’m too outspoken to blog so I still use friends-only livejournal so I can stay employed. Still vaguely peeved you never replied to my last email.
I work for Webstruxure, a Wellington web application development company. We’ve developed sites and applications for Government agencies including Land Transport New Zealand (Fuelsaver and Rightcar) and Immigration Appeals Authorities. We also make a range of products for web designers.
I blog for Webstruxure on our products and other matters we’re interested in, such as Government procurement policies - see Small is Beautiful and Dangerous Enthusiasms.
I know where you live. Your daughter is named after my cat.
Hi Jason, I also think this is a great idea. I work for NZPA, managing the New Media Business. I have worked with the web since forever, but have always found myself on the old media side of the fence. This has meant I have had a top down approach to the web, as opposed to a more consensus social media bottom up view. I guess I have always favoured the illusion of control.
I have promised myself this year to blog at pellacor.com - and have a history of comments and the occassional post at Metafilter dating back to 2002.
My view of the webs changed during 2007 as I was exposed to social media ideas here and experienced an epithany during a presentation given by Thomas Scovell last November. Previously I had considered social changes are being driven soley by enabling technology (I have tried to find my comment here to that effect, to no avail); but now understand we live in a time of social change and emergent social phenomina independent of the network structure they sit atop of.
Ok I work for the State Library of Western Australia I consider myself more of a public service web geek than a public service communicator.
I blog, try and promote gov use of web2.0 which is a little hard in Oz and I am an bit of a social media junkie and use twitter too much.
Greetings Jason, at Bullet PR we made a decision some time ago to upskill ourselves considerably on social media. As a result we have been able to deliver a number of online projects for clients. These include the Life Insurance blog for Pinnacle Life; the Digital Future Summit blog for the MED before the event in November; this CEO blog
for AIM Proximity; the Waitangi Day site for Maori Television’s live billboard with web cam, including assisting with the moderation of comments; and we have rebuilt our own site which includes rss feeds for news updates. There are a few other exciting social media initiatives we are currently working on - I will keep you posted.
Thanks for the invitation Jason. I have been reading and admiring your blog for a long time - I promise to be a little more active with the comments!
Cheers
I’m a writer with a particular interest in technology and the Internet, where it’s going, what’s happening, and how that affects regular folks and also community groups.
I’m involved with Webstock and Webguide, I write my own blog TiKouka, free weekly MacTips, and am one of the authors of WordPress 2 Visual QuickStart Guide (second edition being written now).
Oh, yes: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I have other profiles, such as Flickr, but most are because I need to know about such things rather than because I really use them.
Hi Jason and all, I work in the South Australian Government and am interested in all sorts of online things including where this world of social networking is headed and what can be applied in a bureaucracy. Before heading to SA I worked on the Queensland Government’s online engagement space. I have had a play with LinkedIn and am increasingly using YouTube and Picasa to send pics of the kids to my family interstate and elsewhere. I wonder if there are other Adelaide lurkers out there… if so, get in touch.
Hi Jason,
I have a web design company in Wellington called Decisive Flow We work with a lot of web 2.0 startups internationally helping the techie people make their websites super simple to use and help them market to the ever increasing wave of non-techie people who are getting excited about the internet. I Twitter, am on Linked In and Facebook and everything that they let me sign up to really…
On a side note, I really enjoy how much thought you put into your posts, I’m yet to read one I don’t get something out of.
Hi Jason
I am more a blog reader than a blog writer as you know but, echoing the contributor above, I appreciate the thought you put into your posts. I realised that I was falling behind when all my Crown entity comms team said they have Facebook pages (your points noted) so realise the need to upskill myself on the social media scene!