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6. September 2011 – 15:15 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Nikolaus Münster is Head of Press and Public Relations at the City Council in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. I spoke to him about the city’s “Social Media Newsroom“, which gathers content from all of its social media channels and presents it on one website.
Nikolaus gained inspiration for the idea when he took part in a European exchange programme in 2009, completing a secondment at Birmingham City Council. That is where I met him and where he learned about Birmingham News Room. Apart from anything, I think this is a nice bit of European best practice exchange, which can often be hard to quantify. It’s also nice to see Frankfurt getting something in return for the Christmas Market that they send to Birmingham ever winter!
John Heaven (JH): What is a Social Media Newsroom?
Nikolaus Münster (NM): Our Social Media Newsroom brings together all of our social media channels on one website. The user can view this site to see news about the city on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and other media at a glance.
We have been using these means of communication for a while now. Since 2009 we have been on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. When we started we wanted to gain experience before actively publicising our social media presences. Now, social media are central to our communication strategy.
JH: What is the main aim of the Newsroom?
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Posted in good practice, Interview, News, Projects | No Comments »
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26. August 2011 – 14:38 by Asociacion Ciudades Kyosei / Pedro Prieto-Martin
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Ashoka Foundation, with the support of Google, has launched Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition. Well, it was launched more than one month ago, but you still have 19 days (till Sep 14th) to present a proposal.
This competition is very related to the e-Participation field, as Ashoka considers it as linked with the fields of “Citizen participation” and “Journalism”.
Ashoka and Google are seeking innovations that will allow global citizens to have a voice and the information they need to make change. The competition welcomes solutions that work with any communication or information technologies—not just the Internet. The contest is open to solutions around the world: you ara allowed to present you entry in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Thai, Indonesian, Mandarin or Japanese.
Some of the benefits mentioned for participants are:
- Connect to a global online community that supports the impact you are making, or seeking to make, on the ground.
- Gain visibility with our community and our competition partner, Google.
- Position yourself as a candidate for an Ashoka Fellowship within our News & Knowledge program.
The prizes of the competition are:
- One of four US $5,000 cash prizes in unrestricted funding to boost your project.
- Consideration for an Ashoka Fellowship—complete with a three-year living stipend, international recognition, and access to a network of systems-changing social entrepreneurs.
Have a look at the webpage of Ashoka Changemakers for more details.
PS: By the way, there is an entry for our Kyopol System. We would be more that pleased if you’d like to give us any feedback about our proposal.
Posted in calls & tender, ICT, inclusion | No Comments »
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7. June 2011 – 11:44 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Photo by Wrote on Flickr
Like their counterparts worldwide, local authorities in Germany are working out how to surf the web in something that is more like a huge ship than a surfboard, and how to provide something that surfers want instead of intruding on what they are doing and making them flee for the safety of the beach. As one PEP-NET Member, the City of Hamburg, publishes its social media guidelines, I review social media in German public administration.
The current issue of Kommune 21, a German E-Government magazine, gives a good overview of the social media landscape in Germany. There is a piece on Stuttgart’s comprehensive strategy for integrating several social media tools to ensure that their message gets to its target audience whilst remaining open to feedback; the City of Moers is also trying out several social media tools and has developed social media guidelines; and the City of Braunschweig reports how it has helped create a community of equals, Facebook users who exchange insider tips on which restaurants and cafés to go to.
However, Germany is well known for its suspicion of anyone who attempts to collect their data, whether the state’s pre-emptive collection of telephone records or Google’s photographing people’s houses for Street View. (Try taking a tour of a German residential area on Google Street View and you will see that many people have had their houses blurred out.) This issue will not go away, what with the increasing importance of cloud computing and the wealth of online applications that we use day to day. So Datenschutz, or data protection, is high on the agenda and warrants a place in all social media guidelines, including Hamburg’s.
Hamburg’s recently published guidelines explain some of the most common tools, describing social media use by German local authorities and providing examples of scenarios in which social media could be used. The case studies come from across Germany and indeed from across the world: from San Francisco’s activities on Twitter to the Stadtwiki Karlsruhe via Maerker Brandenburg, the Fix My Street-like service that allows citizens to report problems to their local authority and view status updates online.
On top of that, the suggested scenarios illustrate what can be achieved with social media, and how to go about it. These fictional scenarios are: a directorate uses Facebook, a district office publicises times for vaccinations on Twitter, the Culture Directorate posts videos of cultural events on YouTube, the HR department uses XING to acquire new staff, a senior official blogs, and a directorate conducts a survey with SurveyMonkey.
Each of these scenarios is accompanied by a flowchart which really nails down the procedure that has to be gone through when setting up something as simple as a WordPress blog: the departments that have to be consulted, the problems that have to be anticipated, the extra work involved and issues that have to be considered. I found this part especially interesting because, although it may seem onerous to go through such a long procedure for setting up a Twitter account, I think it is right to be honest with the public and employees about the reality of social media within a large public sector organisation like Hamburg.
So there is a lot going on in Germany in the field of open government, which thanks to projects such as Apps 4 Berlin and Munich Open Government Day, which open data to the public and encourage enthusiasts to develop apps that make use of them, is not limited to social media use. Maybe more on that in a later blog post …
Posted in good practice, members, News, Projects, Trends | 1 Comment »
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22. April 2010 – 17:03 by Centre for E-Government
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From April 14 to April 16 Germany’s largest conference of Social Media was held in Berlin. The conference is specialising on a multidisciplinary approach including areas like sociology, psychology, politics and computer science. Special emphasis is on new forms of e-politics and e-protest, blogging, open data and open government as well as on nerd culture, technical workshops.
Prof. Kruse gave a very well received lecture on the psychology and religious framework of internet culture and e-values. As he argued, the “digital religious war” is going on amongst experts, not laymen. The fight for cultural values polarises our society. According to a study with 191 heavy users, two main groups could be identified (and made visible in a semantic visualisation): Digital Residents and digital visitors. They differ in their valuation of electronic networks and social landscapes in the internet. Digital visitors know about the importance of the new movements. However, they don’t adopt new values and behaviour patterns. Therefore any public dialogue will be accompanied by differences provoked by different values and perceptions of the same phenomena. For residents, the social web leads to huge benefits and a productive output whereas for visitors it more likely symbolises danger and risk. With Kruse’s theory, the question of digital visitors or residents is less based on concepts like digital natives vs. digital immigrants or age differences. However, the fundamental changes through network effects and power shifts cannot be stopped.
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14. April 2010 – 22:57 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Photo of Nick Booth by aeioux on Flickr.com
Before becoming a social-media consultant and founding Birmingham-based Podnosh, Nick Booth was a BBC journalist and then ran a government quango. He advises public administrations on using social media, is involved in many projects that promote active citizenship, and is a major player on the UK’s eParticipation scene. Nick is regularly invited to speak at conferences on social media.
JH: Hi Nick. Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed for PEP-NET. First question: what does eParticipation mean to you?
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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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21. April 2009 – 09:46 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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The rise of social media and social networking as part of it brought both advantages and problems to eParticipation projects. On the one hand online time is limited for each potential participant of an eParticipation effort, which means the more time a person spends on Facebook, Twitter etc. the less time will be available for the eParticipation project. On the other hand social media has gone mainstream, which means that even more people are used to publishing their thoughts and opinions online, which in turn may also help to get people involved in eParticipation. It is not significant whether one or the other force is stronger as eParticipation projects need to find their audience where it is already active on the web. Keeping this point in mind the following information on the fastest growing social sites can help to plan and organize an online campaign to recruit participants for eParticipation projects.
Mashable.com regularly looks into the growth and development of social sites. They have identified the fastest growing social sites and also points out some trends besides the raw numbers. Facebook and Twitter are still growing at enormous rates. The year-over-year growth of Twitter in March 09 was more than 2.500 percent. Facebook attracted almost 70 million visitors in March alone.
Besides these top players the social network of social networks Ning is believed to be the second fastest growing social networking site, with now more than one million individual networks on it. Its traffic grew 283 percent year-over-year. On the business end of the spectrum LinkedIn reaches 15.8 Million people in the US where it the third largest network behind Myspace and Facebook. The full report can be viewed on the Mashable.com site.
Two of the named networks seem to be of special interest for eParticipation projects. The massive growth of Twitter and the fact that the rich ecosystem surrounding it allows for novel and targeted actions makes it an interesting choice for an online campaign. The online discourse about the Future of the University of Hamburg tries to make use of this potential. The second one would be Ning. This site is not one social network but a platform which allows users to setup their own ones. Therefore Ning hosts networks about almost any topic or set of persons. This circumstance can be used to directly address certain target and interest groups. Examples would be networks on Sustainable Urban Development or government related ones like govloop.
In summary social media sites should be part of the online campaigns done to attract participants to eParticipation projects and allow for targeted actions on a topic or regional basis.
Posted in Trends | 3 Comments »
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2. July 2008 – 11:28 by Rolf Luehrs
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By today the 2gether 2008 started its two day festival in London, UK.
Digital innovations are changing our world, the way we perceive it and our notions of what is possible ….
But are we doing enough or being imaginative enough to harness the potential of internet, mobile and games technologies to:
- promote social progress,
- enhance the quality of public life and our collective well-being and
- tackle the problems facing the world at the outset of the 21st century ?
The first 2gether Festival will bring together over 300 innovators from a wide range of fields to focus on how using digital technologies we can generate real social benefits.
2gether08 is not just about wise words and rousing presentations. A defining hallmark of the Festival will be how we frame problems and work towards solutions. This is happening now in advance of the Festival and will continue during and after the event.
2gether08 live streams the event via mogulus right after the click!
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