Two people that I HIGHLY respect, Kathy Sierra and Gary Vaynerchuk, sat down at Government 2.0 Expo here in Washington DC and interviewed each other. It’s a really awesome conversation. Definitely worth a watch.
Now… I started watching the Super Bowl at half time, so I may have missed some ads, but of the ones that I saw Hulu’s was by far my favorite. What was your favorite ad?
My friend Dr. Mark Drapeau has got a really cool article in Mashable, “Government 2.0: Crowdsourced Beltway Pandits“, about how Web 2.0 in government isn’t just helping government work together or broadcast to their constituents. It’s helping the constituents more actively participate and take a role in government. It’s make it a 2 way street.
Here’s a snippet:
In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln mentioned that government is “of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,” but interestingly among all the feedback I have received, no one has pointed out that all of my writing on Government 2.0 has been about what the government itself is doing. What’s your role as a citizen?
One of the cool parts of the Flickr project that I helped start at the Library of Congress was how it wasn’t just about creating a new way for the community to enjoy photos. It was just as much about finding a way for the community to participate the process. They could tag, comment on, and annotate photos. Plenty of the data that was being contributed, once verified, was getting taken back and integrated into the Library record.
So… yes, I agree with Mark. I think more and more you’re going to see citizens be able to play more an active participatory role in how they’re governed through the use of Web 2.0
The Library of Congress continues to add photos to its Flickr account. There is one from May 23rd that particularly caught my eye and I thought I’d share.
The photo is of life boats coming from the Titanic on their way to the RMS Carpathia, after the Titanic hit the ice berg. Whoa!!!! What a sweet little nugget of history!
Enjoy, tag, and be inspired by this and many more Library of Congress photos over at their account.
After today’s and the last few days’ drama around Twitter, I think they need a Community Manager.
While there management has been kind of accessible, they really need someone who’s smack dab in the middle of the folks that use the product on a daily basis.
They need someone who’ll communicate constantly what’s going on and help even more so maintain this relationship.
Twitter is obviously a tool that folks depend on so it’s extra important to give special attention to the community and it’s feelings about it.
It’s all too easy for a community to turn on a product and move somewhere else.
PS – No, I’m not offering myself for the job. I’m very happy at Clearspring.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Rockstar Workshop here in Washington, DC at Busboys & Poets. The workshop was for people or organizations that wanted to utilize social media to become social rockstars.
I did “Widgets 101 (PPT Slides)“, which was a lot of fun. I hadn’t given that talk in a while.
It was masterfully organized by the Paul Worsham and Kady Chiu. They brought it in other great speakers and friends of mine like Nick O’Neill and Frank Gruber. It was hillarious when Frank spoke. He had had one too many cups of coffee and was CRAZY hyper. 
I had a lot of fun at the event. Word on the street is that Paul and Kady will be doing more events soon so stay tuned.
