The blog you’re looking at was active in 2008 and 2009. If you feel like digging through the archives, please enjoy!
But if you’re looking for blog creator Pete Forsyth’s current blogging, which generally focuses on Wikipedia and the collaborative Internet, you might be better off looking at the Wiki Strategies blog.
I haven’t blogged here in a long time — but I’ve been busy! Here are a few of the things I’ve been working on:
From August 12–13. Hmmmmm….
Ted Wheeler is getting some heat for his desire to have a modern media expert on staff at the County, working with tools like Twitter and Facebook. He’s doing a pretty good job of justifying his position, but it’s pretty ridiculous that he should even have to do that. Let me explain why this whole discussion strikes me as being completely ludicrous.
Last week, a bill I’d been working on (unpaid) was before a legislative committee in Salem. I had expected it to be heard on Tuesday, but at about noon on the previous Friday, I learned that it was going to be up at about 3pm that day.
So I canceled appointments with clients, and arranged to get from Portland to Salem. I then delivered my testimony, reflecting about 6 months of volunteer work facilitating a discussion among a broad group of business, policy, and government experts.
The committee chair did not listen to a word of my testimony (maybe 45 seconds); he was talking with the committee secretary about something more important.
On the whole, a massively inefficient, and somewhat humiliating, interaction. It’s fun to learn the steps to an odd 19th century ritual, but pretty frustrating to be required to do it just in order to sum up my work to a decision-maker.
I didn’t let it stop me, but many people with something to offer do. They don’t even consider the possibility of meaningful communication with their government institutions.
I, for one, applaud Ted Wheeler for daring to ask how government can become better at leveraging modern technology to better communicate with the public.
Am I suggesting that I should have been able to “tweet” my testimony? Of course not.
But here are just a few groups that have recognized that Twitter is an important dish on the modern communications menu, and have invested substantial capital or sweat into getting it right:
To those of you who claim you’re “too old” or “too unhip” to get it, you’re wrong. If you think Twitter is a trend, or diminishes personal interaction (rather than enriching it), you’re wrong. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a communications revolution — and many of the tools that emerge represent significant progress. 20 years ago, you were telling me that email was a toy for academics and computer geeks, and would never catch on. 5 years ago, you were saying something similar about blogs. Pardon my lack of interest, but admit it — your track record isn’t that good.
If you genuinely want to understand how Twitter or related tools can fit into an effective communication strategy for the County or any other institution, I’d be happy to sit down and have a discussion.
But, fair warning: I’ll charge you a lot of money for that discussion. That kind of consulting is in pretty high demand these days.
One of the cool benefits of editing Wikipedia on a regular basis is coming across little tidbits of unreported news.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of biased edits on the “encyclopedia anyone can edit.” The mainstream media loves to express outrage when campaign staffers, PR agencies, or enamored spouses try to “doctor” Wikipedia articles, often leading to awkward hyperbole; last year, the Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes was happy to lend his name to this sort of sloppy thinking, accusing a staffer on Steve Novick’s campaign of inappropriately editing the biography of Novick’s opponent, Jeff Merkley. (In reality, the edit in question was mostly an improvement to the article, and was reviewed by an experienced and uninvolved Wikipedia editor within about 23 minutes. So the harm alleged by the Merkley campaign was pretty much nonexistent.)
Such stories miss the point in too many ways to mention. But self-interested Wikipedia editing is, of course, a reality. And for the regular Wikipedia editor, it can provide a fascinating insight into how the campaign staffers, PR agencies, and enamored spouses of the world are thinking.
This Wikipedia edit, which wandered across my computer screen earlier today, told me something interesting about Portland media — something that has gone unreported in other media outlets. But before I can properly explain it, here’s just a little more background.
Last May, the Portland Tribune (a former employer of mine) dropped from two weekly editions to one, and laid off a bunch of employees. A sensible response to tough times in the industry. But they were roundly criticized by other Portland publications for the spin they put on it: rather than characterizing it as the downsizing it was, the Tribune was quick to pat itself on the back for their new plan to update daily on their web site, a product they called a “daily online newspaper.”
But the punchline on the joke was that they called it “LocalNewsDaily.com” — rebranding their web site to combine the Trib and their numerous other community papers into a single web site, clearly advertising that they were producing some kind of innovative “online daily newspaper.” The name was a clear indication that they thought they had a truly innovative product — that they were somehow reinventing local news delivery by updating frequently on the web. (Apparently, they were using the domain as early as 2006, though they did not advertise the name that early.)
So, what’s the scoop today? Well, in contrast to the launch of LocalNewsDaily.com, which created quite a buzz on the local scene, the disappearance of the LocalNewsDaily.com brand name apparently escaped the notice of the local press.
The site as of January 2009
But I spotted it, because of a tiny Wikipedia edit that caught my eye. Someone anonymous — and it’s hard to imagine it was anyone but a Trib employee — took the trouble to remove the references to LocalNewsDaily.com from the article on the Pamplin Media Group (the Trib’s parent company). And sure enough, when I punched LocalNewsDaily.com into my web browser, it redirected to a web site that’s now known as PortlandTribune.com.
Just like it used to, back in the day.