Politics In The Social Media Playground
May 12, 2010
We may never know the Impact social media had in shaping our new rather bewildering government.
Maybe it reached a lethargic non-voting population and changed their minds. Perhaps it taught the party campaigners to engage with more mobile tools in order to rally their troops. Maybe all it did was introduce other channels of communication to the mix.
All I know is it certainly played a part.
@CraigElder sources David Cameron questions on Twitter to answer at The Open University
Perhaps now with new Natural Language Processing tools for measuring our online sentiment we will finally get an idea of how much of an impact these new media tools are having in the mindset of the general voting public. This is both amazing and scary to me. We seem so desperate to know yet many of us are just having fun. Playing with tech as tools.
It was @Ilicco and Reuters that though it was OK to let the geeks loose with tech in close proximity to the leaders of our parties. And as the security perimeters thinned with each encounter, Brown to Cameron to Clegg.. we would try out more tools and techniques experimenting ways to bring the outside conversations in and to share the conversations we had with everyone. There were times when Ilicco wondered how much trouble we may or may not get into. That said.. I don’t think he ever stopped having fun.
Some of these groundbreaking platforms championed by @Sleepydog lived only during this extreme period of change. His coders would use zero’s and one’s like lego. All the bits are now back in the box. Till next playtime.
We were not too hung up on the quality of anything, be it the video stream or the questions I would slip into whatever conversations we were having. I do remember feeling excited and sharing way too much coffee with friends who’d been given the opportunity to collaborate on projects that excited and inspired.
It was a social media playground like no other. Mobile phones verses the HD stream. Political pundits verses the twitter stream with in many ways the geeks given free rein.
I’m not sure if we will ever again see such a massive change in communication in such a short space of time. Not to the extent that Reuters championed. It was the beach on which the waves of old and new media crashed ..and we all got wet.
Now everyone and their dog is a ‘Social Media Expert’ the air is muggy with hot air and opinion claiming the right and wrong way to engage using real-time web tools.
In the words of Yoda, “Do or do not… There is no try.”
Participation is the key and feeling free enough to play allows you to subconsciously learn from your mistakes.
The people who were both in the rooms and working remotely in these projects are too many to mention. Perhaps they would like to link in or comment their experiences below.
Some names of note were: @Ilicco, @Sizemore, @Sleepydog, @Loudmouthman, @Kate_Day, @SolobassSteve, @benjaminellis, @MarkJones, @CliveFlint, @Sophiebr
The unquantifiable nature of all this will be just a memory next time round. The tools are coming and although I feel we are a long time away from totally understanding the impact from this kind of exchange, we are getting closer all the time.
If I’m honest it’s the metrics that excite me the least. Let the practitioners experiment, explore, dance around new ways. For every ten people willing to show the way, there will be ten thousand wanting to sell you the map.
“When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point.” ~ Alan Watts
I am @Documentally on Twitter and mostly blog on http://Documental.ly
P.S Lets remind these guys what they promised the people..
PPS, In this last coffee soaked audioboo I meant to say megabits not megabytes..
David Cameron On Social Media
July 30, 2009
I guess I should not be surprised that the leader of a political party should contradict himself. It happens all the time. In the case of David Cameron and his twitter comment though..“Too many twits make a twat..” It doesn’t seem that long ago that Mr Cameron was extolling to me the virtues of social media.
I’m not sure how we can believe anything he said in the Audioboo interview when he is now so keen to slam tweeters.
Twitter at the moment is the mainstay of all the social media I’m involved in and I think others use it in a similar fashion. It’s the back bone, the spine of cross platform conversations. Interesting how Cameron says “Politicians do have to think about what we say..” Perhaps they should also think about what they have said..
Maybe he just wanted to reconnect with his ‘Base’.. Maybe he still just doesn’t understand social media at all.
UPDATE: The comments that follow this blog post have become way more important that any statement I made in my original hasty proclamation.. Please make sure you read them.
A moment with Tony Benn
June 26, 2008
Today whilst passing through London and before descending into the tube, I just happened to pop outside Euston train station and spotted Tony Benn sat on a bench lighting his pipe.
I was on the way down to Southampton to pick up a car and although I have no idea what made me pop outside the station after getting off the train, I am glad i did.
I was not going pass up the opportunity to chat with a lifelong hero of mine so I wondered over and introduced myself.
We had a brief discussion about the National Union of Journalists before I suddenly remembered I had in my bag a pro stills camera, a web enabled mobile phone and a mini video camera.
Although Tony Benn only had about five minutes to catch his train to Preston he was kind enough to humour me as I conducted a short interview on video.. I then took a few stills and showed him how easy it was using Qik to stream from a mobile phone.
Tony is no stranger to being interviewed or filmed as he spends much of his life on the lecture circuit in the public eye. It was the quick demo of the technology around live streaming from a mobile device straight to the web that seemed to interest him the most.
In about three minutes we were done and a slightly amazed Tony Benn took my card and invited me to get in touch so I could introduce him to more of this technology.
It was a really great start to the day for me. Totally unexpected and I was glad I had my ‘geek’ bag at the ready.
I have been a fan of Tony Benn and his work for a while now and am so glad to have finally met him. Not only that, but as a great bonus I now have his home number and hope to do a more in depth interview in the future.
Here is the same video on YouTube
..and my thoughts on Qik straight afterwards.
