I’m giving a talk today at a conference in Norwich for parish and town councils and one of the things I want to do is just to share some really simple ideas on how councils could get some online interactivity going.
One of those ideas was to tweet meetings. I asked my network on Twitter for examples, and was deluged!
I’ve used Storify to collect them all together, and have embedded it at the bottom of this post. Storify seems a great way of dragging tweets (and other media) together – ideal indeed for covering meetings!
It seems like there are different approaches being taken, mainly around who does the actual tweeting. Is it council officers? Councillors themselves? Journalists? Citizens?
Have a read through and see what you think.
http://storify.com/davebriggs/tweeting-meetings
In the latest version of WordPress you can embed a tweet in a post just by pasting in its URL.
It saves relying on external services like Storify. Of course, they may have other uses beyond that basic functionality.
Yes, haven’t played with that yet Adrian. It’s on the list!
A very timely and useful post – it will be intersting to see how this develops – particulary whether councils start to see it as part of the job descrition of a democratic servcies officer – a sort of twitter clerk I suppose – or if the better approach is simply to encourage public and press to provide the running commentary. Of maybe even the councillors themselves?
Anyhow, have linked to this from my recent post on digital democracy.
http://localopolis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/44-local-digital-democracy-five-point.html
Cheers.
Hi Dave – I suspect it depends and each authority should make a decision based on how things work there. I suspect in an ideal world, it’s a job for journalists or volunteers.
Hi Dave,
Sligthtly off-topic, but our live-tweeting from RSA lectures seems to be going pretty well – and the Twitter monitor/reporter sometimes has questions to ask that have come in from Tweeters who aren’t in the room.
They can be very appreciative of this new way to engage with the speaker! 🙂
There’s an argument going on about Twitterfall display vs Visible Tweets (more subtle?) vs it all gets in the way vs only turn on the Twitterfall during questions, not during speakers.
We currently don’t show the Tweets in the room.
Matthew
Personally am not a fan of having a big display of tweets in the room where the event is happening – so no criticism from me on that one!
It strikes me that one of the advantages of the internet is that it can free us from the tyranny of time and place, and work like you guys are doing at the RSA is very helpful – especially for us fellows not based in London!