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- The Webinar about Social Media, Cities and the Law in Washington State
- Interesting Websites about "Gov20" Law and Issues in Washington State
- Elected Officials Will Rely on New Media During Disaster
- Cautions from an Unknown Prophet of 1873
- Does Interacting with Elected Officials and Bureaucrats Matter?
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The recording of a pretty detailed webinar about social media, digital communication, governments in Washington state, the law and cheese is up! It's available for your viewing pleasure. I tell people in all candor that it's about 75 minutes, so have coffee nearby. I'm very grateful to attorney Ramsey Ramerman for his lead role in, really, the state of Washington, in making important information known to local governments.
Here's the slideshow. We debated whether to post it separate from the webinar. We already got some feedback, well said, that we left something out. We really should have counseled elected officials and others to meet not only with attorneys but also their IT department. The computer people play a huge role in this, as we discuss in the webinar, and Ramsey and I agree we could have called that out better in the slides.
Something that's a bit frustrating is that we don't really have an online forum anywhere to have an 'afterparty' to discuss what came up during the webinar. So the webinar happened, there was a good discussion, and then everyone dispersed. But someone familiar with the webinar's contents will probably enjoy
the question and answer document which we worked on after the webinar was concluded.
I'm looking forward to an appearance tonight on "Government 2.0 on Blog Talk Radio" with Barb Chamberlain of Washington State University. I thought I'd open up this file to place URLs of items that may come up in the conversation. I'll probably shape this up after the interview so it's got the URLs that actually did come up in the conversation.
Dated events:
Friends, Faux Pas, Tweets and Traps Webinar: Jan. 7 Discussion with Ramsey Ramerman, an assistant city attorney in Everett about legal issues particularly of interest to Washington State.
Open Gov West: Workshops and an "Unconference' about Digital Democracy: Jan. 29 and 30.
Legal Issues Special to Washington:
Here's my original post about the conference where the attorney and I gave people conflicting advice. The two of us are now joining forces to present the webinar mentioned above on Jan. 7, hosted by the Association of Washington Cities.
Here's a post about the Arizona metadata case that mentions the phrasing in Washington State law that we all have to be aware of: wwww.ediscovery.law
This then leads to the Shoreline case, where there are a number of writeups. These offer different, but equally interesting, perspectives. If you have time, you might as well start with the actual court decision.
Evergreen Freedom Foundation
Center for Justice
This document, filed by an attorney for the city, is the most favorable rendition of what happened from the city's perspective, and discusses the metadata involved.
Finally, I just found this, what seems to be an excellent and up-to-date review of legal issues about metadata: Illinois Municipal Review
'Course when it happens, no one tells you that you and your community will be landing in the middle of a social communications revolution.
Nope. Instead ... You sip your morning coffee, all relaxed cuz everyone else in the house is asleep, and it's just you and your coffee and Twitter. You look at your TweetDeck column that searches for all references to "Lakewood WA."
And you can't believe what you read. You just do't want to believe it. And then you find out it's true.
And then you just go numb. And tear up. And go numb again.
For hours and hours and hours.
So that was my Sunday last. It's probably not wise to write definitive blog posts when you've been going to bed late and waking up at 5 early every morning since then. But one thing I do know: elected officials HAVE to learn social media and new tools of communication.
Why is very clear. It's not just that you will be one of the first people to learn about a problem or disaster, though of course that's helpful too. More importantly, the city of Lakewood seized up and focused during this horrific tragedy. The focus was on a crime, on four families, on those who remain, on emergency operations, and on daily operations. As a city council member, I can say nearly everything I learned about the incident, and shared with constituents, came via media. As just one example, the next day, the only way I found out that our city was having a news conference at a particular time and place was from radio, 90 minutes before the event.
I was the only other council member besides the mayor who was able to attend the conference, standing among the media reporters whose pack I once belonged to. I was able to look out officers in the eye as they stood proudly in front of their station. I suspect they had other things on their mind, but it was an important moment for me.
True, radio is an older form of media, but the vast majority of the information I got came from Twitter. I was able to inform my constituents and answer their questions via Twitter, Facebook and my blog only because of new media. The first time I learned that I would be in a memorial service Tuesday at a certain time and place was by way of Twitter.
I'm sure that will be true for your city as well if you get caught up in something like this, unless you've got a huge communications staff sitting around. Lakewood has one city manager and one communications director, and they had more to do than worry about keeping their city council informed. This event was a tsunami. Nothing was normal. Nothing about it should be normal. Something like this should NEVER happen again.
There are probably newer links on this topic - how social media informed this breaking news event - but the one I know about is well-written and found on John Cook's TechFlash blog. If you are an elected official, it is worth reading this post closely. Think about where and how in your particular community both old media, new media and all of your citizens will participate in the communications revolution.
As it is, Lakewood is catching its breath and is communicating very effectively, including a powerful website. By the way, we welcome suggestions for it.
So that's all for now. If you are another elected official, the message is clear: learn the tools. You need those tools today to be effective. The lesson here is that someday you may someday REALLY need them.
Update, Saturday morning: Another good link about how some Seattle media used new communication tools to be the first to find, announce news: http://crosscut.com/2009/12/03/media/19419/
The April 6, 1873, issue of The New York Times had an anonymous story that's well worth reflecting on for its take on modern times. There are implications for politics, and those who conduct public policy with all these new social media tools.
I found this article, "The Drama of the Future," from the book "Buffalo Bill's America." The book tells part of the long story of how both the truth and fiction of the Old West got baked into U.S. culture.
What the article seems to be about is the fad of famous figures playing themselves on stage. For example, Wild Bill Hickok, before his death, briefly starred on Broadway in exploits supposedly based on real-life adventures. Buffalo Bill built a whole long career on doing this. That's the two of them, pictured before one of their shows together, at right with Texas Jack Omohundro in the middle.
As the article states,
"The gist of the movement, as thus portended, consists in going beyond the old idea to "paint matters living as they rise," and to illustrate current history through the painting of actual events, by the real actors in them.
"By this means, the theatre may be made a kind of pictorial disseminator of the news of the day, and public curiosity as regards noted individuals may be gratified by having them appear on the boards in dramas depicting their own exploits."
Now, the article goes on to give one example of this trend that could be completely serious, namely, an Arctic explorer who uses his real tools, pots, pans, etc.., to illustrate the adventures he was just on. The article then seems to make fun of its own idea by suggesting Brigham Young could also illustrate his life on stage accompanied by "a score or so of real wives."
If you are like me, you're already thinking of reality television and how much of this has come to pass. Some very popular and very real programs feature the supposed girlfriends or boyfriends or even spouses of both famous and 'everyday' people. We can imagine a long-dead writer from the New York Times smiling knowingly in his grave.
So what's this got to do with politics?
What I wonder is if the person smart enough to pick out this trend in 1873 is smart enough to predict how it might be abused. Hear this, toward the article's conclusion:
"By and by, a still further step forward may be taken, and we may find people deliberately seeing strange adventures, or even courting deadly perils, with the idea of thus acquiring attractive material for a success on the boards."
Of course, "balloon boy" comes to mind. But what of the politician? Right now, any of us in politics can perform on the public stage by Tweeting or posting on Facebook or a photo site or may other forums exactly what we are doing. At what point can we be sure the politician is not now doing what she or he should be doing, but instead what looks good on Facebook or Flickr? Can we trust ourselves to know? Are we going to consciously or unconsciously subordinate wondrous communications tools to create the dramas we enjoy chronicling? And will the voter reward this behavior by saying "Thank you for communicating with us!"
The article concludes:
"Some such thought may have been in the mind of Shakespeare when he made Jacques tell us that "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players;" for the lives of most people are already more histrionic than they think, or own, and consciously or unconsciously to themselves, there are infinitely more actors and actresses in real life than there can possibly be on the stage."
Just something to think about.
You can read the whole article by way of this link. Photo credit's here.
Disillusioned citizens: Had some interesting reaction to my recent city council blog post about a controversial action in Lakewood. Basically, state government is throwing Lakewood under the bus - or in this case, under the train - to reroute trains through town for benefit of Seattle to Portland commuters to shave six minutes off the route.
The pros and cons don't matter in terms of this posting. What matters is the reaction I got from a couple folks about
my blog posting that encourages people to write state and federal officials.
Here are quotes from some of the responses ...
I would appreciate your suggestions as to the most appropriate next step and assistance in preparing a letter format we can use so the message from our neighborhood is consistent and articulating our concerns clearly. We are also concerned that we are careful not to undercut the efforts being made by City staff to force change upon the State DOT.
So far only one neighbor has expressed doubt about our opposition and he said it is useless and unwise to oppose the state. Yes, I did point out that we had a revolution to establish our right to oppose government heavy-handedness, however, he seems not to think it relevant (must be a tory!!!).
I am so disturbed by this news, that I am physically ill. The future looks bleak for us in the Nyanza area. I have written to every single person Walter Neary suggested on his webpage. Will it really matter?
Notice the ideas running through here.
There's a concern about whether a citizen writing a letter could somehow interfere with what government is doing.
There's a concern that it is useless and unwise to oppose a government.
There's a concern that corresponding with officials may not matter.
I've spoken to many people who've been even more direct; they don't see the point of commenting to government.
To me, there's a huge tension between these real citizens and all the "stuff" I see floating around the Internet: breathless Twitternouncements with the hashtag #gov20 and references to stuff like open source data and Drupal. Heck - we need to get citizens thinking their participation even matters. Can the Government 2.0 movement do that? Or all we all running around Tweeting, Facebooking and generating meetings and workshops for our own amusement?
The real question is whether our use of these tools will rebuild credibility with citizens. That's the real challenge and the real goal.
Photo credit: Peter Halen and The Tacoma News Tribune.
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