A Post Entitled Notes from the Cross Party Digital Group #digitalwales
These are my notes from the first meeting of the Cross Party Digital Group. Check out my earlier post for what this was all about, and you can also check the Twitter hashtag #digitalwales for some other backchannel chatter. Turnout was rather good, filling the medium-sized conference room with suits. Rory Cellan Jones kept everything on target, with only a few sidelines into the news of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to remove his content from search engines, and another chap who for a moment I honestly thought was going to ask the Google lady why his site wasn’t ranking well. The key nuggets to take away were:-
Everyone on the web is equal. The voice of one blogger can be as loud as yours. You’re going to have to come to terms with that. Resisting or denying it will get you nowhere.
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Release your data so others can use it. (I was disappointed there wasn’t more said about this - hopefully it will be a bigger theme for the next group meeting)
- Go where people already are. The platforms are there. People are already using them. Join them.
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Karina Brisby suggested that the Assembly should “Embrace the crazy”. She said that you can always defer issues, promise to give answers later, but that you should be prepared to take anything on board. (I wonder if she knows how crazy some locals are).
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Run regular blogger briefings. Bloggers are not as high-impact as the mainstream media, but what they write often has much greater value to a smaller audience. They are serving an important long tail.
- According to Jag Singh “Wales has the lowest takeup of social networks”. He was the most pessimistic/realistic of the panel in this regard.
- Work with people with what interests them. Give people a hook, something to get them using the technology. Great example: Pigeon fanciers who needed to use the internet to share their stats.
- What is really so important about new media and technology, and how can you convey that?
- The need to tell a story to make it relevant.
Interesting footnote: There was no real information on the web about this Digital Group evening, so when Rory mentioned it on Twitter beforehand, he linked to my blog post. Go figure!
A Post Entitled National Assembly for Wales Cross Party Digital Group #digitalwales
Tomorrow evening is the inaugural meeting of the National Assembly for Wales’s Cross Party Digital Group (6pm, Tuesday, 10th November, 2009 - Conference Room 21, Tŷ Hywel, National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff Bay) It’s going to take the format of panel discussion and questions, chaired by Rory Cellan Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent, asking the question: “How can we make better use of new media and digital technology to engage with the people of Wales?” Panelists include:- Sarah Hunter, Google’s Head of UK Public Policy. Her background is in Government, where she was a Special Adviser for two Culture Secretaries, and was Tony Blair’s Senior Policy Adviser on Culture, Media and Sport.
- Karina Brisby, who has led the campaign and advocacy digital strategies for Oxfam since 2004, as the Head of Digital Campaigns for Oxfam GB, where she has focused on supporting global efforts to end poverty and injustice, such as; Make Poverty History, In My Name and ClimateVoice.
- Jag Singh, a veteran of American political campaigns. He is currently Chief Information Officer at online campaigning and advertising agency MessageSpace in London, which aims to connect a politically influential and aware audience with brands and organisations that aim to harness the new participatory processes taking place on the Web. Jag has worked for Democratic Presidential candidates (Wes Clark, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton), as well as Senators and Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Georgia, on both sides of the political aisle. His specialisation revolves around using technology for voter/stakeholder profiling and contact, but has more recently branched out into targeting voters and audiences online.
