Stap isi

11 September 2009

Tweet Tweetback's Baadasssss Song

Great to see 32 Australian councils on Twitter and to hear Lake Macquarie interviewed on ABC Radio Newcastle about @lakemac.

I still think Twitter is a good fit for local government.

The short message form has always been popular (BBS, IRC, SMS!) and government is now also coming to the realisation that less is more, especially when it is timely.

We’re fortunate to have an increasing number of use cases to evaluate from across government and around the world.

If you haven’t seen Neil William’s template strategy for government, it’s an excellent overview and discussion starter. Note also comments on the strategy from Jason Ryan and Michael Grimes.

The debate over organisational versus personal accounts continues but there is now ‘best practice’ for the former. A very workable solution is demonstrated on Campaign Monitor’s twitter page (see below). The page background identifies who is tweeting for the organisation. Tweets are attributed using the caret & initials convention.

Usability guru Jakob Neilson has written an excellent and no doubt provocative article on how to write a good tweet. Everyone will learn something from it. Make it part of the toolkit for staff tasked with tweeting.

The issue that remains beyond my grasp is how to formulate a workable ‘follow policy’. Following everyone or no-one seems contrary to the spirit of Twitter. Which means you must discriminate. How to ensure the implementation of that policy is neutral and seen to be neutral?

— b3rn   twitter   Sep 11, 01:52 PM   #   Comment

30 June 2009

Alright gov

Here are some U.K. L.G. tweeps that are neat.

Actual local authority officers		Activists, specialists & others
	twitter.com/pezholio		twitter.com/davebriggs
	twitter.com/sarahlay		twitter.com/pauloCanning
	twitter.com/SimonHume		twitter.com/peteashton
	twitter.com/carlhaggerty		twitter.com/podnosh
	twitter.com/barryearnshaw		twitter.com/ingridk
	twitter.com/StevenTuck		twitter.com/liz_azyan
	twitter.com/martinxo		twitter.com/dominiccampbell
	twitter.com/Stephen_Cross		twitter.com/shanemcc
	twitter.com/ChimeraX		twitter.com/neillyneil
	twitter.com/abeeken
	twitter.com/alncl
	twitter.com/gecko84

There’s lots more, this is just my arbitrary list. Special shout out to bashley, not from the U.K. but does speak English.

Twitter profile pics pulled courtesy spiurl

— b3rn   twitter, uk, web teams   Jun 30, 08:33 PM   #   Comment [2]

19 April 2009

Nonna tweets

One of the best Twitter stories I’ve heard tops this episode of Spark, a podcast about technology and culture.

“My grandmother is on Twitter. She’s enthused, and excited, and I haven’t seen her that way in a very long time.”

@documentally‘s time on Twitter with his nonna brings surprising rewards.

Questions never asked prompt stories never heard, while @Granumentally reminds us that older people remain curious – “interested in life” – getting just as much a buzz out of the internet as you and me.

Lovely story that suggests a project for library and aged care staff working together.

As the presenter says in the introduction, you don’t necessarily need a computer to go online… Listen here or download the mp3.

— b3rn   older people, twitter   Apr 19, 09:26 PM   #   Comment

16 April 2009

Archiving Twitter

Concern is expressed at the shallowness of Twitter’s archive and by extension the implications for record keeping arising out of interaction on 3rd party sites.

But it’s not that hard, is it?

We have machine-readable data on public-facing websites and, with Twitter, an API. There’s nothing stopping us from periodically and programmatically accessing this data and adding it to our existing document management and record keeping systems. The data is already structured and ready for re-use.

Some complexity is added when you need to consider not just your own published data but responses, conversations and context.

The finesse would be to build a simple admin interface for Council officers to register feeds, hashtags and other searches as required along with an optional date range – for consultation periods or other time-limited events.

Or, build a Pipe that aggregrates and rebroadcasts your information to the cloud in an endless loop.

— b3rn   recordkeeping, twitter   Apr 16, 09:24 PM   #   Comment

6 April 2009

Introducing LGi a.k.a. Local Government Eye

• Update 2010-01-11 Today I turned off the Pipes and both Twitter accounts are now inactive. Twitter’s new Lists feature provides similar (and better) functionality. Follow twitter.com/b3rn/ozgovlocal or make your own!

I’ve set up a couple of Twitter accounts that aggregate and relay tweets from Local Government Authorities in Australia and their elected representatives:

• OzGovLocal
• OzGovLocalClrs

If you’re a Council (or Shire or Town or Borough…) or a Councillor, follow the relevant Twitter account above, and you’ll be followed back – automatically adding you to the stream.

Credit to Barry Earnshaw in the UK, whose Pipe I cloned.

For more on Oz LG, see:

• Local government in Australia – Wikipedia
• Councils on the web – Australian Local Government Association

— b3rn   community of practice, councillors, councils, twitter   Apr 6, 07:49 AM   #   Comment

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]

17 January 2009

Considering cycles of time

Talking about Twitter, a local government officer recently asked why?

A better question would be when?

The treatments for each of these social networks may be different. It may be that sending out three bulletins a week on MySpace might be all that the folks on MySpace want. But if you’ve signed up for the Barack Obama Twitter feed, you want information from us at least once a day.

I think that a challenge for organizations moving forward is to figure out how much information supporters want and where they want that information. Do they want it on their phone. Do they want it from their Facebook account. Do they want it on e-mail?

Let’s say Barack is appearing on a late-night TV show. If you send it by e-mail, by the time people check their e-mail, the show could be over. Different types of announcements now warrant different types of communications.

— Scott Goodstein, Barack Obama’s text message guru talks to the Ticket

A key determinant for using any particular channel is its time cycle.

Twitter gives you a chance to push out an alert or reminder right-on-time and you can expect a significant proportion of your followers to see it within minutes.

— b3rn   time, twitter   Jan 17, 08:17 PM   #   Comment [1]

13 January 2009

Why Councillor James Cousins blogs and twitters on his own patch

I took this decision mainly because I wanted to be free of restrictions the council would have to impose. While I do not intend the blog to be especially political, I am there as an elected representative because of my political affiliation, and want to be free to make political points when I want.

Additionally there is part of me that believes these things should be separate. A lot of people are ignorant of the role of a councillor, and the separation helps reinforce that I am part of the council’s political leadership rather than an officer.

— From an interview with Liz Azyan: part 1, part 2

The first reason echoes comments made by CivicSurf’s Shane McCracken and blogging Councillor Mary Read.

The second makes a good point – for both councillors and council officers.

Constituent comments on operational matters can be absorbed into existing workflows readily enough. But what to do with suggestions and questions relating to policy issues that are the domain of elected representatives?

Best if councillors are also online with their own presence and identity.

— b3rn   blogging, councillors, twitter   Jan 13, 07:37 PM   #   Comment

15 November 2008

Lessons learnt from Twitter

After an optimistic call for local government to get on the tweet, here’s some feedback from a month or so in the ‘verse.

Continued...

— b3rn   identity, twitter   Nov 15, 05:41 PM   #   Comment

17 September 2008

On the tweet

Twitter is a good fit for local government.

I see it as a personalised, friendly feed. Like RSS but better.

Plug your website feeds into Twitter and you’re automatically publishing to an additional channel whenever you post news, events, consultations or jobs.

But you also have the flexibility to tweet additional and complementary messages that fit Twitter’s profile.

• Twitter’s heartbeat can be measured in minutes and hours, so it functions well as a wire service for breaking news, alerts and reminders.
• It’s an appropriate place to publish those smaller chunks of information that might not merit pixels on your home page.

There’s a good chance the channel is being monitored. Twitter users seem to follow a mix of peers, personal friends and feeds, so I’m guessing it’s checked as frequently as email.

It’s also worth listening. Search Twitter for mentions of you or your suburbs.

Once I was able to point a resident to information on our pick-up service for larger household waste.

Continued...

— b3rn   messaging, twitter   Sep 17, 07:40 PM   #   Comment [1]