Coventry City Council – famed in social media circles for probably the most successful localgov Facebook page in the UK – has done some more groundbreaking work in online participation and collaboration.
According to 24dash – the council staged the world’s first city-wide online conversation with nearly 900 local residents, businesses and public bodies. And the article has some frankly amazing user statistics, surpassing the usual participation levels of IBM’s online collaborative Jam technology.
Martin Reeves, Chief Executive of Coventry City Council was quoted as saying “The IBM Jam brought out practical ideas. People know that we can’t change overnight, that we need to take practical steps to being a smarter city with low-cost projects. I was really impressed with some straightforward ideas that people would like us to implement over the next few years.”
The Social Media community of practice has an ongoing discussion about online engagement and consultation including doubters on whether you can get people to engage on things like “sustainable community strategies”. But it’s really a matter of how you do it, how you promote, how you integrate with traditional consultation strategies and most importantly whether you actually listen to and act on what people are saying.
(HT Dave Briggs)
Ingrid Koehler