Representing In A Digital Age - What I Said to N Yorks Cllrs

N Yorks Council Chamber - Impressive

This week I was lucky enough to be invited to speak to all of the councillors on North Yorkshire Council about the possibilities that digital presents in terms of their varying roles.  Firstly, what a beautiful part of the country, what a magnificent building County Hall is (I'm a civic building nerd) and what lovely hospitality - thank you.

I think it is ok to say that one of the main reasons I was there was to provide a bit of challenge and explore the art of the possible.  Of all of the councillors there only one is a social media user.  It was nice to catch up with @torycannonfoder as he was present back in the day when we did our regional  cllrsocmed sessions.  He's still flying the flag.

My presentation slides are available here but here's a summary of what I said:

• It's not easy being a councillor - difficult decisions to take, changing and increasing expectations against a backdrop of diminishing resources. AND all of this in a digital age.  Would you want the job?  But does digital provide opportunities?  
• Opportunities to Inform ..... residents what you are doing for them.  Here's an example 
• Opportunities to Communicate ..... about whats happening in your patch. @JayneCowan is brilliant at this.
• Opportunities to Engage ..... with resident and communities about local issues and concerns.  Cllr Nicola Turner uses Facebook effectively in this way.
• Opportunities to Broadcast ..... Councillor Phil Murphy, Monmouthshire, using You Tube as part of the council's budget consultation.

• Opportunities to Watch ..... you don't have to take part.  Put your ward into the Twitter search engine and see what's going on.
• Opportunities to Campaign ..... whilst it might be no substitute for good old fashioned shoe leather there is evidence from the Obama campaign that social media can have a positive impact as part of the campaigning process.
• Opportunities to Mobilise ..... there are now many examples of the value of social media in supporting mobilisation in terms of crisis and emergency.  As community leaders councillors are often in the frontline when supporting residents in such situations.
• Opportunities to Notify ..... we're all familiar with the village notice board.  Have a look at what Cllr Darren Fower is doing on Pinterest 
• Opportunities to Meet ..... these days no digital presentation to councillors would be complete without name checking Cllr David Harrington's Skype Ward Surgeries
• Opportunities to be Transparent ..... most councils are now web casting or live streaming their meetings.  Why not use parts of that content to communicate and share with your residents?

I tried to make the point that these are all tools that can be added to the elected representatives tool box (thanks to Dan Slee for the tool box image on Creative Commons).  They are tools that may help them do what they do already.  They are not a panacea nor are they a substitute for tried and tested methods (door knocking, leaflets, poster, meetings).  

As is traditional  closed with the issues that usually come up - connectivity, your kit, pressures on time, managing on-line reputation.

I was the slot before lunch so that, in a nutshell, was it.  I'm not sure what effect any of this will have had.  Let's see.

Please feel free to comment on this post and share.

If you want to continue the digital democracy conversation join @LDBytes on Twitter or join the LDBytes Club on KnowledgeHub

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Its Your Council- Join In

This is a little case study about tweeting meetings. There have been lots of stories in the media where councillors have got a bad press. This post seeks to present a different perspective and perhaps redress the balance in favour of opening up democracy.

The origin of this post goes back to a Summer evening in Cleckheaton, a town in Kirklees. In fact it begins in Cleckheaton Town Hall where I was sat (as part of my job) awaiting the start of our Full Council meeting. The reason we were in Cleckheaton Town Hall (and not Huddersfield) was because the Town Hall in Huddersfield was being refurbished. Bear with me all of this is relevant.

Not being in Huddersfiled meant that we were unable to webcast the meeting. This was a real shame as there had been an interest developing amongst residents and staff in terms of what happened at our council meetings - people were tuning in to watch!! As I sat waiting for the Mayor and Chief Executive to enter and for the formal proceedings to begin I routinely checked my Twitter account on my phone. That was the lightning bolt moment - I'm here, my phone's fully charged, I have a full signal. For the next four hours I tweeted the meeting (using the #kirkcouncil tag), providing commentary as best I could and kept linking to papers and reports on the council web site as councillors discussed the items. As the meeting progressed there was a steady growth of interest as my tweets were retweeted and comments and views began to add to the conversation. Not a big deal really, or so I thought.

The next morning I woke up and routinely checked my Twitter account (a bit sad perhaps, but I bet I'm not the only one). I was amazed to see how many mentions and retweets had been pinging around whilst I slept. I really thought that tweeting a meeting was not such a big deal. Residents were commenting, officers from other councils were interested, a councillor asked for a copy of a report that was discussed and craziest of all a council in Sydney (yes Australia) wanted to speak to me about "how I did it". Just for the record I had a great e mail conversation with colleagues in Sydney about this and other democracy stuff. I think if I ended this post now it would be pretty cool in itself.

Back in the office I discussed this with colleagues @spencerlwilson and @steventuck. Cutting a long story short our next council meeting, back at Huddersfield, had a Twitter Fall sitting alongside the web cast. We have now used this approach twice. We now have a combination of residents, councillors in the chamber, Kirklees council officers and all comers watching and joining in the dialogue. Blending the media of web casting and twitter has proved to be a really good combination.

It is early days but there is no reason why this simple model of engagement and dialogue can't be developed and rolled out to other meeting experiences - some food for tough for me there.

For the benefit of others who might want to try this out I think there are some learning points:

• Having councillors tweeting in the meeting adds value and perspective to the event - they are politicians expressing views on important matters for the residents of their borough. People are interested in this - this should not be a revelation.
• Be lucky enough to work for an organisation like Kirklees Council that is forward thinking enough to give this sort of stuff a go - obvious but true
• Try and answer any questions that are tweeted.
• Make a virtue of the passionate web and democracy folk in your organisation
• Promote internally within your organisation - it is important that staff understand councillors and the democratic organisation they work for. This is a quick and easy way. We are all approaching budget council meetings - this will be important to residents and staff alike.

There's loads more to do with this, I feel we have only scratched the surface. Would love to know what others are doing.