Brad Rourke

Building A Talk Using Social Media

In late January, the New York Time’s David Pogue gained a bit of Twitter infamy with a stunt. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was making a presentation and as a way to demonstrate the “power of Twitter,” he asked for a cure for hiccups with Twitter running on his screen. He got lots of immediate responses, in real time, in front of the audience.

But when he told the Twitter users what it was all about, he got decidedly mixed reactions. You can read all about it here. The incident has become an iconic example of what it means to treat one’s online social connections with respect and transparency.

One person pointed out that Pogue might have added the word “demo” in his initial tweet, in order to be more transparent.

This is on my mind because I am asking my online social connections for help putting together a speech. As a part of a program with the Phelps Stokes Fund, I’m talking to a number of francophone African diplomats on “transparency and governance.” I don’t want to just say “transparency is a great thing!” so I thought I would go looking for a few ideas.

So, I posted a video on Seesmic asking for help, connected to it on Twitter, and posted a link on Facebook. The response was quick and has been very helpful.

First of all, to my amazement, people I do not know are responding to me — in video — on Seesmic. (See the whole thread here.) Secondly, I have gotten very, very thoughtful comments and FB emails from friends.

If you have time, I do recommend taking a peek at the Seesmic thread. There are a lot of interesting (all video) comments.

I plan to use all this material in my talk. My head is spinning from this brave new world.

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3 responses to “Building A Talk Using Social Media”

  1. My Remarks On Transparency, Openness, And Civic Participation « Brad Rourke’s Blog

    […] I prepared for this talk, I asked a number of people about transparency. “Why be transparent?” was my question. What I heard was surprising. Sure, many people […]

  2. bradrourke

    I agree that, in some ways, the difference between Then and Now is . . . not much. In fact, you could say that about the whole Internet, which really is the telephone system on steroids.

    But at some point, the quantitative difference becomes qualitative. I think the difference, for the issue of this particular post, is that it is easier for a wider range of people to both HEAR the request and RESPOND to it.

    I got responses from people I had never heard of. In some ways, this is no different than a reporter posting a question on a forum. But it’s just about frictionless here, so it holds more of the qualities of being a conversation.

    Just my two cents.

  3. Caryn Martinez

    Is this really any different, or just faster? Magazines and organizations have been offering “advice from readers” — strangers to the asker — for decades. It was just a much slower process.

    Back in the pre/proto-internet nineties, La Leche League made good use of voicemail phone trees. A leader could send out a single message, “Can someone help so-and-so?” which would go to all the voicemail boxes on her list. The person who needed help would get calls from…. strangers!

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