PR vs the geeks

Lets see if I can explain the new world order to some people who have most definitly missed the point. Vodafone. You have missed the point. Your PR agency has missed the point. Your web devs have deliberately not missed the point but not told you. I suspect if you'd asked them, the entirety of your mobile technical support centre could have handed you the point nicely wrapped in a gift box with bows - but they'd have chosen not to.

It's not Christmas yet and you just dropped a bomb. This isn't surprising to me, because I don't count you as a particularly young and hip brand any more - you got left behind in the mobile provider wars when you didn't secure the iPhone before everyone else and even now you do have it your coverage of my bit of the UK is so appalling that I might as well use my 'phone' as a paperweight.

But all this aside, what you did this morning (Sunday, 12th December 2010) is hilariously appalling. I've only been in front of my PC for 40 minutes. In 40 minutes my perception of you as a company who has the ability to do business in the modern world is now exactly zero. I don't matter. Your stakeholders matter, of course they do, that's why you're dodging a rather large tax bill and continue to do so despite the horrific damage to your reputation this has caused amongst a demoraphic who 2 weeks ago were your main customers. The only people who matter to you are your stakeholders.

Unfortunately, when you decided you were going to use the hashtag #mademesmile to promote your 12 smiles of Xmas you forgot something quite fundamental. You decided, lord alone only knows why, in your infinite wisdom, that not only were you going to try and run a campaign to recover some of your lost reputation after the demonstrations last week, but you were going to do it in the very arena where the people who organised that demonstration gather, speak together, organise and collude.

Your arrogance, because I can only assume it is that, is going to be your downfall. Because, you see, whilst the #ukuncut bunch are not your stakeholders and don't matter and the police will deal with them and ensure you never have to put up with their pesky demonstrations again - you've now got a bigger problem. You're a laughing stock among the demographic who are your main customers. And in among those customers are the sons and daughters of your stakeholders. Who this morning will have woken to the biggest joke of this Xmas season so far - a company who listened to a PR agency who surely must be the stupidist people this side of the Atlantic?

Because who in their right minds would recommend a campaign like this is a good idea? I can only imagine we've come back to the same old problem yet again - they're a PR agency. They do PR. They've always done PR. The words social media will appear somewhere on their hastily redesigned business cards, but don't be fooled.

PR is about managing reputations. Marketing is about selling things to people. Social media? Here be dragons if you don't understand people. People who are not stupid. People who are smarter than you. More organised than you. More agile than you. More responsive than you. Can move quicker, mobilise quicker, think quicker. It's not rocket science, but it's not PR and it's not marketing. The skills required to navigate your way successfully through this new ocean, are not ones your average PR nor marketing bod have.

The simple fact is, Vodafone, you asked the wrong people. I'll give you a clue. If someone is dressed in D & G and Armani, they're not social media bods. If they're smart and smelling of gel, they're not social media people. If they're smart casual and wearing a Star Wars t-shirt - trust them, they know what they're talking about. If they're wearing trainers, pristine ones, which look like somehow they've impossibly come out of a box fresh from the 1980's, listen to them, they know of what they speak. Hell, if they look like their mother dressed them, you'll get better advice on social media than you will from people who've tacked those two words onto their online advert which has so many different colours in it it looks like a Pantone advert.

You are all still listening to advice from the wrong people, because you are all still working to the same stereotypes you always did.

If you don't want to become the next Vodafone, for gods sake go see someone sensible like Technophobia or someone decent. Let the PR bods do what they do best, let the marketing guys do what they do best but this? This is best left to the geeks.

The future will be digitalised

I've never seen anything like it. I never thought I'd see anything like it. This post isn't planned. It's not going to be cohesive, elegant or eloquent. It is, instead, a reaction to the events currently happening in central London and across the UK, as the nations next generation take the future into their own hands and draw their line - digitally.

Tweets from @ucloccupation, who at one point were suspended for too much activity by Twitter are an astounding example of the way social media can be used to get your message across in real time. The 100 or so students camping out at UCL are being peaceful. Entirely peaceful. Pictures posted to the feed including this one show young people doing what young people do......

Actually, no they don't. That right there, apparently, is the 'media table'.

Think about that for a second. Yes, this has been brewing for weeks and yes there's been some time to rally for the troops and organise the output and organise the events. But a 'media table'? Really? What the hell are we teaching these kids at university nowadays that they're so organised and switched on?

Of course, it's not the teaching. It's society. In our focus on the way society has become so celebrity orientated we forgot something - it's also become intensely media aware. We assumed everyone was taking the lessons from Katie Price and thinking that getting your tits out was the only way to acquire fame and success. We did the next generation a great injustice in doing so. And now we learn, now we see. The future generation took all we taught them, indirectly, about self promotion and branded perfumes and they learnt the lesson well. Then they took the lesson and they applied it to their politics, to their morals and their codes. They picked it up and passed it on, and passing it on as we speak, the network of tweeting students in occupation spreading. Talking to journalists without needing to pick up the phone. Using Twitter like a knife to cut through the noise and explain. Passing the account from hand to hand and producing soundbites from individual protestors.

The point?

Typing furiously. Using the tools. Channel shifts. Ways of communication absolutely changed in the future world where by any means necessary means choosing words and having the intelligence to understand the power of words.

The future will be digitalised.

Why can't they just....?

I recently attended Download Festival, and am a reasonably active member of their forums.So far, so normal, really, in this day and age. I go to the festival, I comment on the festival, I give feedback, interact with other people with the same musical taste as me, and to a lesser extent provide help where I can on trying to make the festival more environmentally friendly.

So I've been paying particular attention to the feedback form, and one thread in particular entitled Environment Tent Purchase Option. I think it's actually supposed to be Environmentally friendly tent purchase option because that was what was offered by a very nice new company, who saw a niche in the market - tents which could be recycled in their entirety, all in one go, without someone having to wade through the 1000's of tents left behind at festivals each year and seperate them all out into their constituent bits. Believe me when I say, there are literally 1000's of tents left behind at Download. Download is not alone, Leeds, Reading, V, all have the same problem because essentially we live in a throwaway culture and those attending these festivals are predominantly from the generation which have grown up in a throwaway culture.

So, full points to the company for trying. But where does social media come in to all this?

Read this thread - if you're short of time, jump straight to post no 100 in that thread. It says, and I quote: "Why can't they come onto the forums and do this themselves" where this is collect feedback and suggestions on how their service can be improved before the masses at Leeds and Reading tear them limb from limb in a way the Download lot are way too polite to ever do (don't judge rock fans by anything other than the fact that 99% of them are ineffably polite and whilst they will have complained at the festival, they will have been more interested in getting drunk).

I find this fascinating. No longer is there any leeway made for a generation who are not comfortable with computers, never mind creating forum accounts and getting their head around the complexity of social interaction on the web. The next generation expect responses, immediately and on their own terms in their own arenas. They are not forgiving of those who are not comfortable with those arenas. Companies reputations can be damaged irreparably by their inability to operate in those arenas. I suspect the response in that thread would have been very different if the company involved had made the effort to create an account and come and explain themselves, or indeed paid someone else to do it on their behalf.

So it comes down to this. The rules of the business game are changing. Either learn to play by the new rules or pay someone who already understands them, because if you don't you will be left behind in favour of those companies who are comfortable dealing with customers and delivering customer service instantly through web interfaces.

It might be early days, but already the missiles are being fired and are landing.

Fragmented shadows

The social media world is a strange one, and the rules or indeed lack of them is even stranger. There be pitfalls here, and even the most experienced can easily fall into them, whether that be experienced in using the web as a tool to network and communicate, or experienced in marketing and PR.

Increasingly, there is an ever expanding group of people who I have not met, but whom I talk to on a semi-regular basis through Twitter and other forums and media. We've crossed paths through a number of different means - hashtags, common employers, common interests, friends of friends, old university friends. I've even managed to cross paths physically with one of them at the top of the Blue/Red descent at Coed Llandegla mountain biking centre, only realising in retrospect that we had chatted on Twitter.

I don't know these people, but I like them. I don't know what they look like most of the time, but through their tweets and comments, political or musical or other, I trust their opinion on certain things, ask for advice and take it. The advice is freely given, and so is my thanks. A trade which at another time will be returned, as they need assistance with something that I can provide.

But I only see what they allow me to see. I only see a side of them they are comfortable sharing with me. I see fragmented shards of the whole of their personalilty.

What should not happen, but increasingly seems to be, is the same for organisations, events and companies. I should not have to chase around Facebook, Twitter, official and unofficial forums, to make sure I have every bit of information I need. I should not be finding different information released on Facebook to the information which is released on Twitter. I should not be clicking on a link in Twitter which sends me straight to a Facebook page, which if I'd wanted to join, I would have - on Facebook. Linking to Facebook pages is fine, now and then, but if every tweet you release is simply a link to another social media channel, I am going to assume you are too lazy and stupid to work out what the real use of Twitter is supposed to be, and unfollow you. I don't think I will be alone.

Multiple channels of communication are the same in the social media world as they were in the 'old' media world. If your copy is not tailored to the audience you are aiming it at, the audience will yawn and bin you. However, if the audience has to do the equivalent of chasing down the local free newspaper, the local newspaper, the County newspaper and listen to the local radion station religeously as well just to ensure that they have all the information they need, because they know that all the information will not have been released through all these channels - well who would bother? They wouldn't have, is the simple answer, because no one has the time to follow and consume all the channels. Everyone has their own preferred method of absorbing information - the trick is to use the channels to target your different audiences but to essentially say the same thing, just in different language depending on your audience. I don't wish to be spoken to the same way you would speak to a 13 year old, but then nor would I wish to be spoken to in the tone of those who have seen World Wars. My values are different, my priorities changing and my trigger words very different.

Multiple channels of communication are supposed to run in parallel. They are supposed to enhance your message, not fragment it. Which interest of the many I have that I focus on is different depending on which forum I am writing on at any given point. I am not lying about who I am, I am not pretending to be something I am not, I am simply tailoring my message and thoughts based on the audiences values who will be reading it. If organisations, events and companies don't catch up and work it out, they will fail in the social media world, for failure to understand a very simply concept. Nothing has changed except the method with which you are communicating.

RATM, or how a band accidentally changed a landscape

This is going to be a complicated post for me because I must not be emotive. That's hard because I passionately believe in democracy for all, in engagement, and in influence and shaping the future to be what we want it to be instead of sitting on our asses and letting someone else do all the debating.

Firstly, I need to own up to something. Shyness is not the only reason this blog never existed before. Confidence factored in, but also apathy. What was the point, I thought, in being one voice among many, invisible, tipping empty irrelevant thoughts into the black hole of cyber space. What difference can I make, what contribution do I have? I didn't think I had an opinion at all, never mind that expressing it might be a positive thing.

Then something odd happened. I loved Rage Against the Machine when I was younger. I was a shy little geek and Killing in the name of allowed me to scream rebellion in an acceptable form. It was cathartic, a way of getting rid of all the worries and stress of my teens. I didn't know they were a 'political band', I just knew the words resonated on a very deep level. And what do you know, but a large number of years later, it seems those words resonated with a whole new generation. Against all the odds, despite all the naysayers, Killing in the name of was the British Xmas number 1. Perhaps less of a deal than it used to be in this digital age, but still, actually, a really rather big deal. And not because it had the F word in it.

You see, in 10 years time, and with no disrespect to a band I now understand better and admire, no one will care who the band was and what the song was about, because it will be largely lost in the much bigger picture. One framed in the word Facebook, but containing a picture of the faces of over 1/2 million people who wanted to see if they could.

The picture is this, as I see it. At the end of last year some people in their teens and early 20's decided to see if they could do something, just for a laugh. I don't think they expected to succeed, that's certainly the feeling I got at the start of the group. They genuinely had a manifesto - to make a point to the country that they were sick of X Factor produced yawn inducing pop - but they also had timing on their side. Facebook is familiar now, a thing which even the people who have never used it are aware of, in much the same way that a few years ago people understood Googling something was to do with computers, even if they didn't own one. At the end of last year, a recession year, a year of doom, gloom, awful weather and an absence of political inspiration, bad music seems to have been the rallying call. Maybe it's what a zeitgeist is, something which cannot be quantified, just something which occurs as a result of someone catching a mood, a feeling, a discontent.

Whatever, as a result we ended up with the Xmas no 1 that 1/2 million people had actively chosen, downloaded, listened to and believed in. But that 1/2 million were not mums, dads, aunts and uncles buying presents for stocking fillers. They were a certain age, a generation. In an age of political apathy, where a certain age bracket engage not at all with the political and democratic process, suddenly there was hard cold proof of something tangible. If you stand up and state your case, your claim or your opinion, be it downloading something to ensure something else does not attain no 1 status, or be it putting a tick in a box, you can change history. Yes, it's music, yes it's a no 1, yes it's no big deal. And yet. Imagine being a teenager and being utterly disenchanted with anyone caring about your voice or opinion, and suddenly realising that you can change something real. No one can argue with the change this 1/2 million made. No can take it away from them or belittle it and no one should. The value of a lesson learnt in this day and age is plastered through old and new media alike and that lesson is indelible. If you decide that you want to make a change somewhere, no matter how big or small, if you can speak to the masses and motivate them, then you can win.

@marcshmid asked this morning what people thought of the Facebook General Election page, and I must confess that question is the reason for this post. My response was that I thought that RATM may have taught people that there is a point, that apathy may have been eliminated.

I stand by that comment, because I do believe this. I believe that this year, people who have never ever bothered putting a tick in a box (and I am one of them, oh yes I am) will get up a little earlier, and slightly self consciously fumble around trying to locate their nearest polling station. There will be people who wont know where to put the tick, whether we should take our own pencils, whether we will be looked at strangely. There will be those of us who wont do our research too much but will vote on gut instinct, those of us who will do our research and press extra hard on that pencil when we make our mark.

But our marks will be left, and I believe there will be more of them, because I believe 1/2 million people learnt a lesson for life in December 2009. I was one of them. I learnt that there is no excuse for sitting on my ass shouting at the television. I learnt that it's possible to change something that looked inevitable and divert the future onto a different course. Such a small thing, downloading a music track, and yet, from such small acorns......

On June 12th 2010 I will scream the lyrics of Killing in the name of into a storm of lights and sound with 110,000 other people. I will scream them oh so very loudly. It will be a thank you for a catalystic wake up call to an apathetic unengaged ignorant woman who should have known better. I wont be the only one, and ultimately, that's the lesson of the Xmas no 1. You're not the only one.

Firstly, a disclaimer. I've been on the 'web' since 1995 in one form or another. From the early days of the Webchat Broadcasting System and every webpage having a grey background to the current web 2.0 shiny world, I've watched quietly whilst the virtual world changed around me. I didn't leap on web 2.0 immediately, as documented below, for various reasons. A lot has changed in the past year.

Eventually, no matter how shy you are, you come to the point where you realise that knowledge, experience, observations and musings are worth nothing if they remain in your mind. No opinion is wrong in this brave new world. I have no qualifications and no training. All I have is who I am, a geek watching the world change around her and deciding to become a part of that world in all the myriad different ways which are now available, from festival forums to Google Wave, from Twitter to software user feedback groups. Knowledge is worth nothing if it isn't shared. As a result of the new social networked world, next week I will be trying to help a festival organising team make their festival greener. The week after I will be trying to convince a magazine who recently ran a convention for the first time that Twitter is the key to instant information dissemination to geeks who all have mobiles in their pockets. The week after that, who knows?

The following are my musings on the challenges which web 2.0 will present to Councils which I sent, after some very deep breaths, to the Communications Department. I am unaccustomed to popping my head above the parapet at work. I am geek also equates to I am shy.

I've been on the web for 15 years now. The rules have changed, the speed of communication has changed, the general feeling among 'geeks' has not, and nor has their sociology. I dislike the word, but essentially, some of the most powerful tweeters with the most followers are self confessed geeks, people like Stephen Fry, Neil Gaimain (author), Wil Wheaton (ex Star Trek: The Next Generation actor, now pro blogger), Jonathon Ross. As Twitter grows their influence will wane, as celebrity culture takes over and the demographics of Twitter change.

At the current moment in time, however, the following facts seem true:

• Twitter attracts, at the moment, a certain group of people. Whether they fit into Acorn or not (I suspect they do), they have certain general traits. Middle class, educated, eloquent, not afraid to express their opinion, access to all forms of the web, well read in the blogosphere, personal connections through 2nd and 3rd parties to influential people. Whilst take up rates of broadband connection within our area may not be as high as in some other areas of the country, schoolchildren still have access at school and on their phones, likewise college students. By using Twitter we are disseminating information to a very specific group of people, those who do have 'always-on' internet access, and those who are aware of Twitters existence. However, these are people who perhaps don't read paper media any more, don't read the local newspaper, don't read Councils paper based communications. For them, the internet is the way they learn about everything, to the exclusion of other more traditional forms of media. You cannot carry a paper in your pocket.

• The borders between famous/celebrity/talented/important and us 'normal' people are breaking down. I can send messages to the editor of SFX magazine or any other numbers of magazines, the organisers of my favourite music festival, my favourite authors, bands, blog writers, and I can get a response. Sometimes instantly, sometimes not. But this would never have happened before Twitter, you would have needed a personal email address. That would have been perceived as an intrusion, akin to phoning someone on their direct line. Now those barriers are not in place and peoples connections with others are multiplying. Some are more accesable than others, but the nature of access has changed. This will directly affect us. If people ask questions of our twitter feed, are those contacts being logged, is there a facility to attribute it to social media, are we measured on this in NI's, how do we judge an avoidable contact, what kind of reply are people being given? Are they being told to telephone instead of someone interacting with them directly? Does the twitter feed need to be manned during office hours with a live human being who can find answers for people and reply? Is this another face of our call centre? How busy is the person covering the feed likely to be? Are we an information push, or do we intend to be interactive. If we are not being interactive, are we defeating the point of Twitter itself, which seems to have become 'to interact'. Will this affect how we are perceived and therefore limit those who take our messages seriously or follow us? (I'll come to public perception later, it's a big one)

• Peoples interests, hobbies, day to day curiosities are being catalogued. I can search, using Twibes, for people who are interested in exactly the same thing as me. Or, indeed, search for people who know something about a subject I don't, but want to. Hashtags catalogue in the same way, collating groups of disparate people together who would never have spoken before Twitter by a common goal or interest. Is there a way we can encourage community spirit in the virtual world in a way we seem to have lost in reality, turning things full circle and encouraging communities to come together in reality to make changes to their environment through discussion on social media?

• Goals, objectives, agendas, firestorms. Last week Paperchase learnt a bitter lesson in failed PR, pathetically unprofessional email responses, what happens when you come to a battleground too late, and how peoples perceptions of you as a company matter. http://econsultancy.com/blog/5425-paperchase-social-media-and-crisis-management-speed-versus-substance#blog_comment_22313 tells the story well, but it examines only half the issue. On the one side, yes, the public and private sector have been taken by surprise in the speed with which Twitter can be utilised to get a clear and concise message across. And yes, perhaps the depth of feeling aimed against them was a little of a shock to the system. But that shock expressed only shows how little they understand the demographic of Twitter users. Social conscience and ethics, hitherto, have been words on a strategy report or year end report. A brief nod, and move on.

Part of being a group who are no longer seeing barriers to discussion, commentary, instant information sharing and access to people that was impossible before, is the dropping of self moderation and inhibition. People are no longer hesitant about expressing opinions. The retweet function means that something can go viral in 15 minutes if the influential geek tweeters pick up on it. And on a really fundamental level, people from Korea to the US saw a big corporation being a bully and reacted, by calling the corporation out on it and emailing Paperchase to complain about their plaguerism. Paperchases initial response to those first emails was 'Do not always believe everything you read.......' - unprofessional, unhelpful, defensive and most definitely not a professional press release cleared with internal PR. Their second response was a post on their webpage explaining that the offending artwork had been purchased from a studio who had assured them of the above board origins of the artwork. The third update finally named the studio and explained the artist had been contacted. It transpires the contact was in December and denied all culpability. It also now appears that Paperchase are refusing to talk to the artist by email, and will only communicate by telephone. Cynics would suggest deniability is coming into play here somewhere and someone has finally spoken to their Legal Department.

As a case study for how not to deal with a bomb going off in your face, Paperchase have performed admirably. Of all the things we needs to worry about in its use of social media, this is it. By entering the social media arena, we have agreed by inference to play by social medias rules. Paperchase did not have a social media presence until last night. They entered the battleground late and lost all credibility in doing so. Credibility is key here, because without it, peoples perceptions of you as an organisation will plummet. The idea that what happens in Twitterverse stays there no longer washes either, both the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7215124/Paperchase-forced-to-deny-it-plagiarised-British-artists-work-after-Twitter-campaign.html and the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/11/paperchase-design-hidden-eloise picked up on the story within hours. Instantaneous mob rule appears to have arrived. And yet, if this were the case, surely there would be more firestorms, more hauling over the coals?

The fundamental lesson to learn here is not that Twitter will crucify you if you make a mistake. It will crucify you if you make a mistake and then fail to compensate, apologise, respond professionally or contact your PR department before opening your mouth. These are lessons which we need to learn. The importance of never responding to anything on any social media site ever without first checking it with PR, when it relates in any way whatsoever with your work area, or BWDBC in general cannot be emphasised enough. It needs to be a discplinary offence to do so and it needs to be included in the acceptable use policy. Your own opinion is your own opinion, absolutely, but as someone who is tweeting who is identifiable as working for a particular organisation, you are a representative of that organisation whether you like it or not. The same is true for blogging, for Facebook, for any social media. What you say is instantly quotable, undeletable, and can be retweeted in 2 seconds into the streams of thousands of other people, including the local newspapers. I strongly believe the adage 'if you've nothing positive to say, don't say anything at all'. We're not restricting peoples free speech, we're asking them to be responsible ambassadors for us out in the social media world. The issue with the social media world, is that you still work for the Council in that world, whether you are sitting at your desk or not. There is nothing so simple as removing your badge or branded fleece to denote the end of your involvement. If you enter the arena of social media, these are the sacrifices you make.

Public perception is important. Whilst being professional is important, corporations like Paperchase who sign up to things like Twitter for no other reason than to defend themselves are given short shrift. Twitter is about interaction as is all social media. It's about being able to ask the most esoteric question regarding some random piece of software and receiving a reply from some bloke in Chicago who you've never met, giving you the answer. Or at least it is for me. It's not about coming across as cool. It's not about trying to be young and cool and hip. It's about being honest and upfront if you have failed and directing focus back onto what you're doing to fix the problem. The Xmas period tweets were a perfect example of this. People moaned about gritting or lack of it, we switched to a stream of information about what was being gritted, when, and how often. Managing public perception is something which can be done easily through social media and I strongly believe that we are on the right track. We are communicating our successes, acknowledging our failures, but also redirecting focus from our failures to our measures to address those failures. We are being what Paperchase were not, honest, up front, clear, concise, not changing our story and ensuring that the public know what they need to know. I believe continueing to do this will stand us in good stead.

• Personal versus professional logins for social media sites. This is tricky for me. I have an online presence which spans many communities, forums, old BBS's, blogsites, Google Wave and Twitter. I appreciate I am not er, 'normal' in this respect. So putting that aside, how do you address the issue of someone saying their work accounts can be held accountable if not portraying us in a positive light, but that their private ones can't? The London Ambulance Service were one of the first employers to have this problem, thanks to the popularity of the Random Acts of Reality blog, written by an Emergency Medical Technician working for the LAS. The author wrote an interesting summary of how not to lose your job if you're publically blogging about your employers here: http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/17/443453.html - despite trying, I've yet to find a public comment on this blog from the LAS but this quote "This is one of the reasons, he suggests, that his colleagues and managers at the London Ambulance Service Trust, (who Reynolds concedes could have stopped him in his tracks if they wanted to) have embraced the blog." from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/aug/30/health.healthandwellbeing is the closest I've got to finding that his employers, despite his honesty, are fine with the blog and wont be pursueing him to stop writing it any time soon. It's an interesting take, and it's offered as evidence that complete lockdown is not always the way forward. However, a complete restriction on blogging etc is far easier to manage than opening up the floodgates and then having to address the issues each individual blog raises as more and more people decide they have a view and they're expressing it come what may. It's definitely something we need a statement on though because eventually it will become an issue.

• Social media in worktime. I use Twitter for a number of things. Out of work hours I'll post interesting links, pics of where I am and what I'm doing, and chat about sci fi and geekery. In work hours, I use it as a way of asking for help from a massive pool of people who have a lot of different experience levels in a number of different technical areas. There's a bloke in Colarado who helps me with GIS, a girl from Pitney Bowes who I send suggestions to about Map Info's usability, friends who are better at Excel and Visual Basic who I can ask about formula construction - and I get these answers and feedback instantly. If I were to wait for ICT, as I have done in the past, I would wait a month. With Twitter, the help is instant. That's invaluable to me. I also work as the lone geek in Environmental Services off site. I can't pop my head around someones door on a different floor and ask for help or to bounce ideas off someone. Twitter and social media allows me access to a think tank of people who I can bounce ideas of. I am no longer restricted by my physical geography. However, Twitter is a different bunni to most social media. I can't chat for hours on there, the character limit restricts me. There are no games, no groups, no distractions. I read other peoples feeds in a quick glance. It doesn't time suck. Other social media such as Facebook does. Therefore someone is going to need to examine the payoff between allowing Facebook to be accessed through the Councils network to allow different Departments to engage with their target audiences - I am specifically thinking of Childrens Services and Social Services here - against the very real possibility of numerous employees spending most of their working day lost in the chat and games available there.

• Mentioning something you don't want to mention. There is a very real possibility that in mentioning social media and developing a policy at all, it will bring to the notice of people hitherto unaware of such things the possibility of causing trouble with blogs, or sinking worktime into Facebook. Therefore there needs to be some kind of statement included on how access and usage will be monitored and who it will be fed back to and what the outcome is likely to be if you are found to have accessed these sites inside work hours if you do not have a good reason to do so i.e. running a Connexions group or the suchlike. In this vein, perhaps going down the route of social media ambassadors may be an option - a nominated person (or people) within each Section who is responsible for representing that particular section in social media circles. They would be put on an access list for Twitter, Facebook et al and everyone else who wanted to access those sites and post something in work time would need to go through those people. I don't know if this is practical from a ICT point of view, it should just be a case of putting facebook, twitter et all on everyones ban list and adding it to the exception list for all the other people who have been nominated.

I am aware that some of these suggestions will not be popular. I am aware that restricting access to anything comes with its own problems. I am also aware that at the end of the day, I am paid by my employers to come into the office and do some work. In the new shiny world, I do believe there is a massive space for social media, an opportunity to engage groups of people hitherto disengaged with the concept of community, a way of interacting with people who would never normally speak to their Council or see any need to. I believe that contacts regarding basic questions can be avoided by efficient communication, and efficient communication no longer involves delivering a leaflet to every door in the Borough.

I put mine straight in the recycling bin. I read The Guardian on my iphone and I pay for it. I watch freeview in realtime on my iphone. Yet I still read books in bed. I am not alone in this because I talk to very many people who do exactly the same thing. I am, perhaps, not the majority, but I am a minority with a new voice who wants to vote but who doesn't know who to vote for because no one is telling me their policies in arenas I pay attention to. I am the minority but I want to be part of the community, contributing to shaping the future of our world, but I am finding new ways to do it in an arena which I understand the rules of. I don't attend community groups. I don't go to church. I do check certain forums, blogs, twitter feeds and webpages on a daily basis. I have a social conscience, I care about the environment, I recycle, I am reasonably well educated. I believe social media and the rules of communication are changing. I am proud and relieved to work for a Council which acknowledges that.