Brad Blake Director, New Media & Online Strategy Massachusetts Office of the Governor

What is Web 2.0? generally a focus on the technology Use of AJAX, Javascript, databases to allow for nimble customization of webpages and two way interaction between website creators and users.

What is Social Media? content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues into dialogues the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Benefits Transparency Better understand constituents needs Direct distribution of information Crowdsourcing Cost Savings Time Savings (may be a shift at first)

Distribution, Cost, Time: Video Sharing

Distribution, Cost, Time: Photo Sharing

Distributing Info & Understanding Needs: Blogs

"On Monday afternoon we began receiving questions about airports that were requiring ALL electronics to be removed from carry-on bags (everything, including BlackBerrys, iPods, and even cords). This practice was also mentioned on several other blogs and left us scratching our heads“ "So... we checked with our security operations team to figure out what was going on. After some calls to our airports, we learned that this exercise was set up by local TSA offices and was not part of any grand plan across the country."

Distributing Info & Understanding Needs: Blogs

Social Networking Sites Social networking focuses on building online communities of people Social networking has created powerful new ways to communicate and share information. MySpace and Facebook are the most widely used in North America

Social Networking Sites

Microblogging Microblogging is writing extremely short blog posts – similar to text messaging. Twitter, the currently most popular microblog client, allows for posts of up to 140 characters, which can be read online or on mobile devices The popular social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn also have a microblogging feature, called "status update."

Microblogging: Twitter April, ‘08 – April, ’ Million to 32.1 Million Users

Microblogging: Twitter

Twitter – Search! What are people saying about you? What are people saying about your policy? Is something happening you should be aware of?

Going around traditional media? Gov Patrick: WashPost blog floats your name for HHS. Are you in the mix? Would you take if offered. Thanks. 10:01 AM Feb 4th from web rdsahl

Going around traditional As the Governor has said countless times, he is staying put and running for re-election. - Kyle Sullivan, Press Secretaryrdsahl 10:59 AM Feb 4th10:59 AM Feb 4th from web in reply to rdsahlin reply to rdsahl

Crowdsourcing: Photo Sharing

67,176 tags were added. 7,166 comments on 2,873 photos. Less than 25 removals of ‘inappropriate’ content. More than 500 Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) records have been enhanced with new information provided by the Flickr Community. a photo once simply captioned, “Reid Funeral” is now more fully described with the note: “Photo shows the crowd gathered outside of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during New York City funeral of Whitelaw Reid, American Ambassador to Great Britain.

Crowdsourcing Constituent Needs

Opening Up Data

Getting Started Figure out your WHY, then your WHAT Decentralize! – Give up control - you don’t have to do it all yourself – Trust and empower those who work for you or with you Ask constituents to help and contribute Be willing to make changes or admit that it didn’t work – fail fast

Things to consider Time Commitment Campaign Finance Law Records management Terms of use & Privacy policies User accounts, passwords, security Accessibility Copyright & Branding

What are others doing?

Where to go next?