More Gov 2.0 Blogs

Following on my recent 10 Gov 2.0 blogs to track, here are a few more resources:

Recommended by Gwynne Kostin and Sarah Bourne:

http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio – Gartner’s Andrew DiMaio

http://candioncontent.blogspot.com/ – Candi on Content

Recommended by Christoph Berendes (whose own Citizen Tools – http://citizentools.netalyst.com/ – is worth your time):

http://blog.e-democracy.org/ – E-Democracy.org Project Blog (and related http://stevenclift.com)

http://www.worldblu.com/nowblu – WorldBlue (workplace/organizational democracy)

http://internationalbudget.wordpress.com – Open Budgets Blog

Should have been on my first list:

http://govtwit.wordpress.com/ – GovTwit

Communities:

http://ohmygov.com/ http://dowire.org http://govloop.com

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Twitter Lists, Ratios and Follower Counts: Network vs. Broadcast?

Even at this stage in the game, you could probably get five experts in a room and have each describe Twitter differently. Kind of like The Elephant and the Blind Men fable. But with the new lists feature, it’s growing easier to see why and how people people are using this tool.
Two of the main reasons people use Twitter are to broadcast and to network. (Why people follow is similar, either to receive the broadcast, or to network – and probably a combination of both.)
I got to thinking today about the new Lists feature and what the ratio of followers to Lists says about a handle on Twitter. Folks are already blogging on this – here’s one on the “respect ratio.”
I think the ratio has a lot to do with value, and a lot to do with networking vs. broadcasting. Some folks are definitely on Twitter not to aggressively use Twitter, but simply because they are famous and so is Twitter. Others have a tight connection to their followers, because they are really tuned into the tone and culture of the medium.
I also think that these ratios are going to expose again the ridiculousness of the suggested users that Twitter feeds to new members. With a high percentage of Twitter newbies not sticking around, the high follower counts for suggested users are grossly inflated in terms of their intrinsic value to the community at large.
Enough narrative, on to some numbers:
Erin Kotecki Vest (QueenofSpain) 1/39
Aaron Brazell (Technosailor) 1/26
John P Kavanagh (Jonnerz) 1/696
Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) 1/30
Chris Brogan 1/39
Govwiki 1/32
Jack Dorsey 1/984
Mark Drapeau (Cheeky_Geeky) 1/37
Erica Holt 1/44
Gary Vaynerchuk (Garyvee) 1/421
Scott Horvath (1/24)
Ari Herzog 1/6!
If you’re familiar with many of these names, you may join me in noticing that the ratios seem not to scale. It simply may be impossible to keep a tight network going after 100k followers. Also, Lists are very new so may not have settled out yet as a metric. That said, they also haven’t yet been gamed like follow counts (down with the SUL!). A few more quick observations: Dumping trash followers tightens your network. The founder of Twitter’s ratio looks like that of an MLMer. Even a robot can build a tight network on Twitter.
What are you seeing?

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Making Gov Easy for Citizens and Business

There’s a whole industry around advising commercial sectors about new laws that impact business. And yet, new laws in general get rigorous review before that go into effect. Why not create a list of categories of impact (businesses of 50 or less, businesses that serve food, condo associations, etc.) and invite folks to opt into an e-mail notice or RSS feed of the summary of any new law that regulates how the do business? During the analysis phase for legislation, it would be easy enough to check off these categories, and the tech for piping out notices is inexpensive. Of course, this might serve as a tool for the existing consulting orgs, but that’s OK, too. It would be government lowering the cost of business, and it would also give folks an easy way to monitor the impact of what their representatives are up to.

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

10 Gov 2.0 Blogs to Track

Just last summer, “Gov 2.0″ was anything but a buzzword, and social media was just coming into its own in the mainstream. This post is to clue you in to some of the great public and private sector bloggers who’ve helped blaze the trail. You probably know most of them, but maybe you’ll find one or two new. In no particular order:

Maxine Teller – MiXT Media

Ari Herzog – AriWriter

Steve Radick – Social Media Strategery

Jefferey Levy – Government 2.0 Beta

Mark Drapeau – Cheeky Fresh

Gwynne Kostin – On Dot-Gov

Andrew Kryzmarzick – Generation Shift

Nick Charney – CPSRenewal

Craig Newmark – CNewmark

Marylin Clark – Hello Happy Pitbulls (a special treat for dog lovers)

Who would you nominate? Who have I missed?

Posted via web from Wired to Share

Why and How: Local Twitter Lists

If you don’t live in a metro area, social media community building can be daunting. Last year, I organized a charity tweetup in my medium-sized town and thought that at least several Twitter contacts were confirmed. It turned out as a small crowd of me and my best pal from up the street. Now, there are many other posts to be written about successful tweetups, and perhaps I’m not the one to write them.
But I do have one action-oriented tool I wish had been there last year: location-based Twitter Lists.
In fact, I also wish I’d had this tool, or had created something like it, when I recently ran for U.S. Congress in a far-flung district of medium-sized towns. See, I believe that community building among social media users in a geographic area has great potential for businesses, activists and government. Twitter Lists are far better than Facebook’s location-based groups for this, because, unlike Facebook groups and friend lists, they are easy to share and manage and require no immediate buy in from the folks you’re listing.
I’ve got plenty of ideas on how to effectively use local Lists, and I hope you’ll share yours as well.
So, on to building them.
Pretty soon, there will be tools to automate this (and as soon as you build one, please let me know), however, getting ahead of the curve is what helps set you apart in the social media world. Be the first to build a valuable list and folks will notice. If you’re already in a big metro area, this is a no-brainer. The guidance here is for folks in the Twitter wastlelands. First, decide what towns you want to have in your list. Create a placeholder Twitter account for each one. Also create a List for each. Use the Google-powered LocalFollow.com – which I expect to make this much easier very soon – to search out and bulk follow users in each town from its own Twitter account. Then add them to your town-specific list. Repeat for each of your towns, then create a new list for the region and add all your town-listed folks to this one. Ta-da, you’ve got micro- and macro-targeted lists to build community within. And hopefully your first tweetup or Congressional race goes better than mine!

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Twitter Lists: Thinking Like a Spammer

So I’m loving Twitter lists. I’ve already written here about their potential as a discovery engine for new people to follow, and about how I like the crowdsourcing of tags to describe other users (and how you learn about yourself from the tags others put on you.) Blogging and exploring today, I’ve been thinking about two more big issues.
Social media consultant Ari Herzog commented on an earlier post that he’s using Lists to organize people he’s not following. Me, too.
1) Lists allow you to dip in and out of important communities, either as a lurker – just checking out what’s up, or to carve your reach further into a community you want to engage with.
The implication is that Lists are great for explorers and marketers. And for spammers.
2) Imagine you’ve got a product for dentists. Well, according to Listorious, there’s already a handy list for you to start peppering them with @ reply messages. Get ready for it.

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Representative Gov 2.0 & the Identity Crisis

What do you thing the greatest barriers are to elected officials and constituents interacting through social media? The barriers atop my list are identity and representation. Why would officials expose themselves to the open Web if they rep a specific, local constituency? And how are they to sort through all the noise?
If you believe that social media has potential for increasing citizen participation, informing policymaking, and creating better government – as I do – a first step towards engaging policymakers is to get real constituents online and using social media. That’s the aim of local Citizen 2.0 trainings I’ve helped put on (on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/citizen20).
The next step is a localized way for citizens to engage with their representatives on social networks. If x number of constituents – vs. random activists – engage with an official using social networks, they will have real impact. Reps will pay attention when social media means real voters, volunteers and donors. That’s why I’m excited about projects like GovLuv.org. Designed by Jim Gilliam and the Open Forum Foundation, GovLuv filters outTwitter activity to connect local reps and their constituents, highlighting their activity in one conversation stream.
As more citizens embrace social media as a way to interact with their reps, such filtering will be a game changer.
What do you think?

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Twitter Lists No Substitute for Community

While everybody’s still writing about Twitter Lists, I’ve got another thought that’s simply too long for a tweet.
The A-list talk is about status. That’s cool.
Personally, I like lists as a way to discover new recommendations in communities of interest, and also as a way to quickly tune into those communities. Creating and following locality-based lists also holds much possibilty. Then there is the great value of seeing how other community members see you, as based on how they tag you in their lists. But lists are never going to replace the utlity of the two-way connection on Twitter. Dipping into streams and commenting and going back and forth with replies and DMs forms real relationships that Lists are going to have little to do with. If all you do with Twitter is broadcast, Lists may be a bit more important (but only if they get followed, which most of them so far are not).
I don’t think Lists shake up the core of the human relationships and far-flung community engendered by Twitter.
(And look, here we are tweeting and blogging about Twitter again, after almost getting that out of our systems earlier this year.)

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Upcoming on Gov 2.0 Radio | 9 p.m. EST Sundays

November 1 – Brian Drake and Stephen Buckley | Fix It?
We discuss what’s working and what’s not in government with retired career fed Stephen Buckley and collaboration consultant Brian Drake. Drake is planning the Government 2.0 #FAIL workshop, while Buckley, who in the ’90s managed a 1,000 member “Reinventing Government” listserv, is working on an unconference around the forthcoming Open Government Directive.

November 8 – Ari Herzog | Doing it Your Way
With a bit of luck, by the time we go to air, Ari Herzog will be a new councilmember in Newburyport, Mass. We’ll discuss campaigns in the social media era, and what’s its like to be an independent consultant in this new media world.

November 15 – William D. Eggers and John O’Leary | Doing Big Things
Bill Eggers coined the term, “Government 2.0.” We’ll be talking to Eggers and co-author John O’Leary about their new book, “If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government.”

November 22 – David Hale | Health and Innovation
David Hale will join us for a discussion of biomedical informatics, Health 2.0 and evangelizing social media.

November 29 – Dustin Haisler | Creating What Comes Next
We’ll discuss innovation in local government with Dustin Haisler, CIO of City of Manor, Texas. Manor has just launched an innovation incubator, Manor Labs.

December 6 – Ben Berkowitz | Gov 2.0 and Quality of Life
We’ll be joined by Ben Berkowitz, CEO of SeeClickFix, a Web 2.0 company that helps crowdsource reporting and resolution of non-emergency city problems such as potholes and downed trees.

December 13 – Lewis Shepherd | What Comes Next
Lewis Shepherd is CTO of the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments. Listen and call in as we squeeze the future out of Mr. Shepherd’s brain.

December 20 – Craig Thomler | Gov 2.0 Trends in Australia
Craig Thomler, a long-time public servant and e-gov practitioner, joins us for a discussion of emerging trends in Australia and the ups and downs of the e-gov movement.

Also coming soon, we’ll have Walter Neary and Barb Chamberlain talking local Gov 2.0; Lovisa Williams, Pam Broviak and others on government in Second Life; and Chris Dorobek, host of Federal News Radio, on the other side of the mic.

Listen and catch up with the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast at http://gov20radio.com. If you’d like to join us on a future show, e-mail adriel (at) adrielhampton.com

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

Posted via email from Wired to Share

Are You Tuned in to Gov 2.0 Radio?

Back in my days as a City Hall reporter, one of my very favorite things to do was the Comcast Citydesk Newshour show on local cable. Once a week, I’d get to chat live about politics and City Hall with some of The City’s top reporters, editorial writers and columnists. I was always rushing down to the TV studio in the Mission from my downtown office at The Examiner, and sometimes I’d arrive just in time to sneak in off camera and get miked up while show host Barbara Taylor was doing the intro.
Today, I’m having just as much fun with Gov 2.0 Radio (and I’ve only blown the start time once that I’ll cop too), the weekly show I host on BlogtalkRadio with the help of GovLoop’s Steve Ressler and GovTwit’s Steve Lunceford and great guests from government and Web 2.0. If you’re one of our regular listeners, thank you! If not, I hope you’ll check out the show live on Sundays, 9 p.m. EST, or as a replay, at http://gov20radio.com. Past shows are also available at http://govfresh.com, thanks to Luke Fretwell.
Past guests on the show have included well-know tech names such as Tim O’Reilly and Craig Newmark, and a wealth of great govies, academics and enterprise consultants such as Gwynne Kostin and Andrea Baker, as well as industry reps from companies like Overtone and Yakabod. Jeffrey Levy of the EPA and Federal Web Managers Council has been a repeat guest.
Coming up this week, we’ll have retired career fed Stephen Buckley and collaboration consultant Brian Drake on to discuss citizen-gov participation and the premise and promise of “open government.” Also upcoming on the show, the CEO of SeeClickFix, Microsoft big thinker Lewis Shepherd, William Eggers – author of 2005’s “Govenrment 2.0,” and other great gov insiders and outsiders.
Hope you’ll tune in, and always feel free to drop me a line – @adrielhampton on Twitter – here, there or anywhere to suggest future guests for the show. You can also follow show promos on Twitter, @gov20radio. Thanks again!

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

Posted via email from Wired to Share