Need help in creating a central list of mobile government websites in Canada

As you likely already know I’m a strong advocate of anything mobile, especially given how much time I spend on the road. I’ve been asked quite a bit lately to provide examples of Canadian mobile government websites. The main two that always come to mind come from CATSA (full disclosure: they are a client) & PHAC.I know there are plenty more. What I’m surprised not to have found however, is some sort of central website/directory that provides a list of all Canadian government departments currently offering mobile versions of their websites. If you know of such a list, then please let me know.

Social Media Document Garage Sale – Part II

About a year ago, well before the era of re-tweeting, I wrote a post entitled “Social Media Document Garage Sale” which received quite a bit of attention according to my blog stats at the time. The basic intent of the post was to provide you with download links to various white papers, presentations, reports and studies on social media that I had accumulated to date and that I could freely distribute (without violating any policies or copyrights). Another year has passed, and sure enough  my “3rd party reports” folder has once again piled up. I figure there is no point in keeping this stuff to myself so I’m providing links for you below. It’s also partly because I’m lazy and don’t want to be emailing individual reports to people when responding to questions. I’d rather point people at this blog post from now on.

I realize that the phrase “garage sale” doesn’t really capture the fact that these documents are free (it’s more of a spring cleaning), however I like comparing this to a garage sale so that I don’t have to claim responsibility if something is no good. Hopefully you find some gems, I know there are a few in there.

I have read most of these, however , some of them I merely skimmed through. Rather than providing you with my review, I’ll let you judge on your own and thus only provide you with the title and author. If, for some reason, I have made the mistake of putting something up that I shouldn’t have (e.g. something that was free for a limited time only), then by all means let me know so that I can remove it. Enjoy!

• Using Media Intelligence Tools to Drive Communications Success – CNW Group
• Social Media & Business Marketing – Mike Volpe (HubSpot)
• Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments – UK Government
• In with the Old, in with the New – Ryan Singel
• State of the Twittersphere 2009 – Hubspot
• Processing Personal Data Across Borders – Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Concepts and features of Government 2.0 and 3.0 – The National Information Society Agency
• The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications – Josh Gordon (SocialMediaToday)
• Twitter Success Stories – Marketing Profs
• Synchronizing Social Networks – Marketing Over Coffee
• Social Media Primer - Unknown Author
• About Face – The Advance Guard
• Blog Response Flow Chart – U.S Air Force
• How Obama did it with Digital – Marketing Profs
• Beyond Westminster Governance: Bringing Politics and Public Service into the Networked Era – Jeffrey Roy
• Networked Citizens: Power and Responsibility at Work – Peter Bradwell & Richard Reeves
• The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit – Edelman
• Reinventing Government for the 21st Century – Unknown Author
• Using the Social Web to find Work – Chris Brogan
• How Canadians’ Use of the Internet Affects Social Life and Civic Participation – Statistics Canada

I have a few more from some of my clients which I did not post up since I am unsure if they have been made public yet. When I know for sure I will put them up in a separate post. Happy printing and/or reading!

Why aren’t you using Google Docs yet?

I’m always blown away whenever I step outside of the social media fishbowl/community and step into reality.

Which reality am I referring to?

The one where the vast majority of intelligent people in the workforce have never used, let alone heard of free tools such as Google Docs (assuming it’s not blocked).

What is it?

Google Docs is the ultimate tool for when you need wiki functionality, but don’t necessarily want to open it up to the public and/or you just have a short term initiative in mind.

What makes it great?

People are already used to using it (most don’t know they are)

How is that possible?

It uses the same menus, icons and basic features as Microsoft Office products (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)

What’s the difference?

Any amount of people can work on the exact same document collaboratively in real-time. No more emails and/or documents with tracked changes!

Show me how!

Watch this video to get an idea of what I’m talking about…

So please , do yourself a favour (if you’re not already all over this) and start saving yourself and your organization some valuable time today!