Peter Smith, government communicator type. Canuck. Current focus: social media, Web 2.0 and other disruptions.
Main blog: www.spaghettitesting.ca
... to truncate my email sig at the end of my last post. I've just edited the post to remove it. Why? The stuff I post here is not official communications from my employer; I don't represent anyone or anything here other than myself.
I love Posterous' email-based posting, and especially the cool features they've built in, like the ability to use the #end hashtag to truncate unecessary stuff not relevant to the post being emailed. But I've got to train myself to use it!
Great post that breaks down how www.visiblegovernment.ca went about their recent Beers for Canada online fundraising campaign, aimed at garnering donations to help open government data to citizens and promote transparency in public offices.
Especially in terms of lessons learned, the post is full of useful insights. It's a great case study, one with application beyond the specific fundraising campaign in question.
Check it out here - http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/07/alistair-croll-guest-post-using-twitter-for-fundraising-lessons-learned-from-beers-for-canada.html
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http://www.slate.com/id/2221537?wpisrc=newsletter
"Apparently, so many people turned to the Internet to confirm rumors of his death that Google's computers interpreted all the simultaneous searches for "Michael Jackson" as an automated attack."
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How to motivate your reader community to participate in a crowdsourced investigative research project? Make it a game.
How to lure them? By making it feel like a game, said [lead developer] Willison, 28. The Guardian’s four-panel interface — “interesting,” “not interesting,” “interesting but known,” and “investigate this!” made categorization easy. And the progress bar on the project’s front page, immediately giving the community a goal to share. But a video game needs more than an interface and a score. It needs a narrative — and this project offered that, too. That was what Willison discovered when, on a whim, he added the Guardian’s mugshots of each MP to their pages in the database. Participation shot up, he said.
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Reporting on comments made by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone at Cannes:
Open Up: Twitter gets three times as much use from third-party applications as it does from its Web site, thanks to its decision to open its API to any developer. That's resulted in 11,000 Twitter applications, Stone said.
I had figured that there was more going on via Seesmic, TweetDeck et al, than via Twitter.com, but wow. Considering how much action happens directly on Twitter.com - three times that is huge.
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Another Ipsos factoid: if you don't have a social networking presence
you are now in the minority.
Something else of interest: "Online Canadians are now spending more than
one-third of their Internet time each week participating in, and
browsing, online social networks."
One third! For me it's prolly higher, but mostly Twitter rather than
Facebook.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ipsos News Alerts [mailto:newsalerts@ipsos-na.com] Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 7:02 AM
To: Subject: What? You Don't Have A Social Network Profile? You Are Now In
The Minority.
What? You Don't Have A Social Network Profile? You Are Now In The
Minority.
Dramatic 17% Increase in the Percentage of Online Canadians with a
Social Network Profile in the Last 18 Months
Facebook's Dominance Continues
Calgary, AB, June 19, 2009 - A new study from Ipsos Reid shows a
dramatic increase in the number of online Canadians who have a profile
on an online social network. In 18 months the percentage with a profile
has increased from 39% to 56%. These are some of the findings from
"Social Networking: 2009", a new study conducted and released by Ipsos
Reid.
Access the entire press release at:
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=4436
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... explore the idea of producing a Federal multi-agency Alternative Reality Game (ARG). The general idea of a multi-agency ARG would be to use game play as a way of engaging citizens in an exploration of democratic ideals. It would also be a way to discover new connections between Federal agencies, and new ways of connecting citizens to their government.
So I'm not the only one who's had thoughts along these lines.
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What with the WHO and their level 6 pandemic talk and all, this funny little pic that a friend sent to me a while back is suddenly relevant again.
<<27K39.jpg>>
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<<Snagit1.png>>
Neat little toy from the LA Times - the California Budget Balancer
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-statebudget-fl,0,95571.htmlstory
Illustrates in an engaging way the kind of compromises that are needed when building government budgets. When I was playing with it, I got to thinking on different strategies that could be used - should I make a few big cuts? Or a few large tax increases? Or many small ones? Or some kind of combination of big/small, cuts/tax increases?
Then I got wondering about what kind of budget would come about by combining this kind of gameplay approach with the participatory web?
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