Stap isi

11 February 2009

Aussie councillors AWOL from Twitter

Twitter has been getting lots of media coverage, here and abroad. For the goverati, Ingrid Koehler’s post gives a good overview of its use by elected representatives in Britain. (Councillor James Cousins of Wandsworth is an exemplar.)

It’s now becoming clear to me that it’s just as important for your councillors as your council to be online. No yin without yang.

Apparently Australia has about 6,600 elected councillors. I’ve been able to find about 12 of them blogging. And I haven’t found any using Twitter. I hope that’s more a reflection of my search skills than the reality.

Take a look at the UK – there’s loads of them. Given their weather, sporadic bathing schedules and innings of 51, you’d expect plenty to be bashing the keyboards indoors. But so far they’re keeping a clean sheet against us on Twitter.

As k3nd said – cmon local authorities, lets jump into the 20th century, u may even like it.

Update April 2009: see OzGovLocalClrs.

— b3rn   councillors, strategy, twitter   Feb 11, 08:11 PM   #   Comment [4]

21 January 2009

The Art Of War by Mal Booth

At Tuesday’s afternoon keynote at Information Online 2009, Mal Booth spoke about his team’s social media strategy at the Australian War Memorial.

He told an anecdote about presenting this work to the institution’s governing council – a heavyweight collection featuring General Cosgrove and Kerry Stokes – as if it was in preparation when in fact it was already live. His point was that you just have to go and do it. He put up this quote:

It is sometimes easier to seek forgiveness than gain permission
— attributed to Grace Hopper

Not a bad strategy!

— b3rn   strategy   Jan 21, 08:06 PM   #   Comment