Video on Anthropology, YouTube & other Social Media

I’ve been meaning to post this up for a few months now, but somehow it got sidetracked until now. It’s a video by Mike Wesch, who is an anthropology professor at Kansas State University. I watched it for the second time today and realized that EVERYONE interested in social media, from any perspective (marketing, technology, sociology, law, etc…) should watch this.

Anthropology, sociology and the psychology of humans, have all been subjects that fascinated me ever since I can remember. While I may have gotten my degree in business, most of my private reading revolved around these topics. Perhaps that’s why I’m so passionate about social media and how we can use it to improve government and society. Videos like this remind me why I write this blog, why I am involved in this community, and why I love spreading this viral knowledge to others. We are in the process of re-constructing the very nature of human social interaction and community building.  This goes way beyond technology. In fact, as I often mention in my workshops, technology is simply the enabler. Anyone can use this stuff, not just the geek next door. Technology is no longer a barrier. It will be interesting to see how all of this evolves as we begin to be overwhelmed with content and the need to filter based on relevancy. Will we slowly regress back to controlled dissemination of content? 

Campaign for Government Transparency – Take the Pledge!

I came across an interesting new initiative launched by Jennifer Bell over at Visible Government the other day. The campaign website is www.ibelieveinopen.ca and was started to encourage federal government transparency. It challenges both candidates and voters to take a pledge for the upcoming federal election.

Candidates are asked to commit to five key improvements in government transparency, they are as follows:

1. Support reforms that increase government transparency and accountability.
2. Make campaign promises specific and measurable, and report progress on promises and their metrics at least semi-annually.
3. Publish the content of his or her daily schedule, including meetings with lobbyists and special interest groups.
4. Support reforms allowing free access to scientific and survey data gathered by government institutions.
5. Support reforms that make it easier for Canadians to obtain government information they have a right to know.

The campaign also calls on voters (measured separately) to register their support for the goal of increased transparency in their federal government.

When asked why she started this initiative, Jennifer Bell from Visible Government said:

“Few Canadians believe campaign promises, and even fewer know what their governments do on a day to day basis. Our goal is to open up government and let citizens see what their taxes are paying for”. Per capita, Canadians are the most web-savvy people in the world, yet our federal government isn’t using web 2.0 technologies to open up government to Canadians; It’s time to change this”.

I couldn’t agree with her more. As of September 25th, 2008,  51 candidates have signed up and 130 voters. What  I find particularly interesting, although not surprising, is that the candidates that signed up are either from the Green Party or the NDP.

How many Liberals so far? One. How many conservatives? Zero.

You’d think they’d have someone tracking the blogosphere for these kinds of things. Perhaps they do, but are focusing on responding only to big political blogs, which usually just beat their own drums or regurgitate campaign promises. Real democratic initiatives start small and are grassroots and organic in nature, like this one. They should not be ignored. For starters I challenge, David McGuinty (liberal) and Elie Salibi (conservative) from my Ottawa South riding to take the pledge. Let’s see if they are really listening…

The state of social media in the Canadian federal government

In the spirit of community and social media, I have decided to post up a revised version of my presentation from Podcamp Montreal on SlideShare. It is highly visual in nature and is not really meant to act as a stand alone document, however some of you may find it useful. The topic of this presentation was “Social Media & Canadian Government Usage Examples”. I focused mainly on the Canadian federal government due to limited presentation time and the sheer amount of content to cover. I have embedded it below. Feel free to skip through my intro or browse through it in the 17.6 seconds I always present it in.  Otherwise it looks like a ridiculous self-promotion, which it is not meant to be (it was a personal branding experiment). Enjoy!