A view of what Government 2.0 could be (courtesy of ZD Net)
What does Government 2.0 mean? Does it merely entail government agencies embracing the use of multiple social technologies and community platforms? Is it reflective of a more open, engaging and inclusive approach to governance? Or does it epitomise the beginning of active citizenry in all public affairs?
Want to play a part in shaping how government can better serve you through social technologies? Got a burning desire to change the delivery of essential services? Why not participate in the first ever Singapore GovCamp?
Taking place on 19th Jan (Wed) on NUS Campus, Singapore GovCamp hopes to “connect the Government with the general public and private sector to communicate, collaborate and co-create government citizen services, improving and expanding citizen engagement and empowerment.” Its the first time that such a platform has been mooted so I guess it should be pretty interesting.
Broad and sweeping, yet detailed and penetrating, Clay Shirky’s volume “Here Come’s Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” is a tour de force of how technology influences group activity and organisation. Shirky skillfully blended social sciences like psychology, sociology and anthropology with elements of the social web – mailing lists, forums, blogs, Youtube, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter.
Weaving his words into an easily digestible narrative, Shirky isn’t afraid to borrow theories and concepts to back up his claims. A notable example is the Coasean Theory, which states that high transaction costs make hierarchical organisations more efficient than individuals striking agreements with each other. Shirky’s argument is that the lowering of coordination costs to practically zero through social tools like forums, emails, and blogs make it possible for new loosely structured groups to form outside traditional organisations. Hence the Coasean Floor of transactional costs are lowered, making it efficient and cost effective for such groups to form.
Clay Shirky speaks at the Smithsonian (courtesy of taoboy)
After several weeks of doing some online research/surfing/bumming around and asking friends (like the ultra intelligent Kevin Lim), I managed to get a handle (well partially) on what’s happening for social media in the museum world. Here’s what I found after some digging around:
First is the discovery of a blog aggregator for museums around the world called (surprise surprise) Museum Blogs! Believe it or not, there are now some 331 museums blogs (at least those which are captured here) around the world. I am glad to see that our dearly beloved Yesterday.sg is there too! Yay.
And yes, I am back to blogging again after a super long hiatus! By now, every publicist worth his or her salt would have heard of the wonders of new media. Anything imbued with the word 2.0, social media, conversational marketing, blogosphere or peer-to-peer is laden with the Midas touch.
At the recent IPRS Conference (PR 2.0) where I was invited to share as a panellist, I was inspired by Christopher Grave’s presentation which covered amongst other things the concept of “love trails”. These are paths off the beaten track created by folks to provide short-cuts from point A to point B.
As a runner and a frequent “trail blazer”, I found that this point resonated with me. It is somewhat similar to the idea of serendipity, where people choose to do what they do simply because they feel like it. Or the concept of tags in folksonomy.
What this means is that you shouldn’t box people into target segments by demographics, psychographics, GenX-GenY, and what have you. What this also means is that you let people choose how they prefer to interact with you and your organisation. If you are interesting enough, they will come to you, and find a way to get there.
As Frank Sinatra would have sung, “I did it MY WAY!”
Came across this brilliant post by CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Kevin Roberts. Apparently, the Museum of London (yeah its a museum folks) is using Google Earth to create a Love Map of the city. According to Kevin,
“You register, locate a place on the map (like all Google-style maps it zooms in from a bird’s eye position to close-ups of houses and streets) and place a virtual pin on it. With your pin you get the opportunity to add a personal story connected with that place…”
Apparently, lots of people have already started populating the map with their personal tales of romance, kinship, historical encounters, and other recollections. In a way, this becomes a clever way of linking a place to the population. The end result is stronger community bonds and rootedness to a location, and of course more love.
Would be a great idea to do this in Singapore. In fact, we already have a champion for this area. Now, all it takes is to expand it to personal stories.
Read this brilliant post by Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion fame. The main thrust of his post is that it still all boils down to understanding good old human behaviour as opposed to simply chasing the latest, greatest and coolest out there in the planet.
At the recent iX-TDM New Media Forum, I had the privilege of meeting and hearing from Jeremiah Owyang. The director of corporate media strategy at Podtech.net, Jeremiah is a social media consultant to big guns like HP, Cisco and Hitachi. In his session, he spoke about trends and developments in the social media space.
Jeremiah started by explaining fundamental concepts. Companies need to shift their strategies and mindsets to look at harnessing all employees – not just corporate communicators (like yours truly… ha) – to be advocates.
I certainly had fun moderating the panel discussion which talked about “A New Voice”, though it did go a little chaotic at times. My conclusion was that the crowd seemed to have more fun chatting with each other! Well, I guess that’s the spirit of the whole 2.0 movement, where EVERYBODY participates in the conversation. It’s “All Star Anything Goes” (for those old enough to remember that celebrity slugfest).
A special treat for the evening was having upcoming blogging singer Genie treating us to a music video of hers, hottest mummy contestant eastcoastlife sharing what makes her so special, and also hearing from celebrity STOMP blogger Joe Augustin. Nice to also know that we have upcoming technopreneurs in Singapore making their mark in the web 2.0 universe. Finally, it was great to meet Veron, DK and Dr Leslie Tay of I Eat I Shoot I Post fame, all big-time bloggers in their own right.
Special kudos go to Estee for the fabulous organising and professional emceeing of this event, as well as other digital movers like Ming Yeow, Su Yuen, Swathi, Chern Jie and all the other hardworking folks at The Digital Movement who made this possible.
