Promoting Good Things

Dan Munz is a relatively modest guy, so I thought I'd pull his presentation from the Open Government & Innovations Conference from his Twitter feed to the blog and get it the attention that it deserves. Dan says something that I've been hearing from other folks who do social media work lately, that you need to focus less on the specific tool, and more on the action you want to make folks take:

Whenever people do public engagement, I think there's a lot of focus on "what will our website look like"? That's important but I'd encourage you to think this way: Build a process, not just a website....The best public collaboration starts not with a website, but with a clear theory of: How will this action enable people to hold me accountable? Maybe it's giving them data and seeing how they use it Maybe it's ensuring that you're looping back and completing that value exchange."

The folks at FEMA's social media office are doing pretty much exactly that, trying to be platform-agnostic, while focusing on the message first, and then finding the best tool to deliver it. I think that level of fluidity can only come when people are extremely comfortable with social media and collaborative tools, and with their swift evolution. Getting on board for the idea of a website, or a Twitter feed, or whatever, is a first step. The second is being able to step away from what you've built if it's not the right tool for the job.