The challenge of crowdsourcing policy and feedback

Personal Democracy Forum’s Techpresident posted an interesting video in which White House Science and Technology Officer Beth Novak makes the point that new media has been great for getting the message out there, but poses the question, “How do we crowdsource feedback and input in a way that’s manageable?”

I need a multi-network social news/bookmarking site.

My challenge in identifying the best social bookmarking or news site for my purposes is that I want to share different links with a number of networks of people. I would like my colleagues in the DA and I to share political news and useful links. I also want to share useful Web 2.0 links with fellow nomadic marketers – class-mates from two different courses I’ve attended (and perhaps a few other contacts I’ve picked up along the way).

I find myself using different sites or channels to share links with different groups – Muti for Nomadic Marketing graduates; Facebook group and/or Del.icio.us for my FNF Political Communication in the IT Age class-mates; and I’ve just set up a Ning network for DA staff to share ideas and information. It’s not exactly efficient.

Convergence, changing media and public relations

I’ve been thinking about convergence over the last couple of days – how convergent technologies impact on what we do.

Save for the ANC’s signature desire to control everything, South Africa has an excellent piece of legislation in the Electronic Communication Act to address the fact that broadcasting and other types of electronic communication can no longer be pigeon-holed. They’re converging.

Joining the Conversation

I love the title of Joseph Jaffe’s new book, and I’d like to read it, Dave (is the list of trackbacks in your comments the reservation list? I rather enjoyed Eric’s extremely minimalist approach to a mention )

“Join the Conversation”, for me, perfectly sums up marketing in the Web 2.0 universe. Whether you’re selling a political vision or designer jeans, people are talking about your brand online. And they’re paying much more attention to each other than they are to you.

The conversation is going to continue, with or without you. We’re joining it. Are you?

A global view of Web 2.0

I am afraid it is turning out to be quite a challenge to make the time to update my blog regularly while in Germany. For a start, as part of the seminar I am attending at the International Academy for Leadership in Gummersbach, I am in the team responsible for documenting our proceedings on a class blog. To do this, we must either multi-task during the sessions (discouraged by our seminar facilitators), or post to the site in the evening and before breakfast in the morning.

It has been really interesting to get such a broad insight into what is happening around the world, and in developing countries in particular (there is a list of participating countries in one of the posts on the class blog, and we’ll be adding a Participants page in due course). There is quite a broad range of existing skills and knowledge levels. Some people are learning about blogging and social networking for the first time, while others are fairly familiar with much of the technology, but are looking to sharpen their skills, get some fresh ideas and pick up on specific areas of expertise, particularly with respect to generating traffic (a universal goal )

What’s in a name?

This was going to be in my first post, but thought it was going to get a bit long, so let’s break it up rather.

Why Ant’s World? Well, there are a couple of reasons: firstly – and obviously – it’s short for Anthony, and it’s what my friends call me. (I had to add ‘SA’ behind it because someone got there before me – hardly surprising.)

Secondly, I don’t have a marketing or a politics background. I’m actually a zoologist by training. I did a B.Sc. (Honours) in Zoology at UCT, went to work as a research assistant and project manager on a collaborative research programme between University of the Western Cape and the then-Sea Fisheries Research Institute (now the research division of Marine and Coastal Management), and did most of a Masters before getting too distracted by a job in politics.

Another reason – related to the zoology connection – is that there are some wonderful analogies one can draw from nature about what we do…