A few days ago I listened to an audio program in which one person talked about an advocacy campaign that was creating itself based on Arab Spring. That’s pretty tall order. Besides, the advocacy campaign had no parallel with overthrowing a regime. Last night I participated in a Twitter chat in which one participant highlighted [...]
Online campaigns generally have a very short half-life. I’ve observed and written about many examples of this over the last few years. During last year’s federal election, I took to calling this the This Too Shall Pass Effect since most examples of this were connected to a headache for a candidate or campaign somewhere. The [...]
The federal Liberal Party woke up to a few new realities last May. Besides being shuffled off to third-party status, they had to vacate prized office space in Centre Block for the new official opposition, the NDP. Ralph Goodale became the poster child of this change as the media covered what many established politicians felt [...]
I began my working life at iSTAR. It was 1995. The excitement about the burgeoning Internet had been given a boost by the Netscape IPO. Ours would follow a few months later. So, a lot of eyes were on Canada’s first national ISP. The expectations were pretty high. Inside the walls of the company were [...]
It’s been a fascinating week in Canadian politics. Many of the events highlight how the Internet, specifically social media, is making it increasingly possible for the public to organize and reach–possibly influence–our elected decision makers. As I noted yesterday, my hope is the democratizing of our political interactions can be productive and done in the [...]
According to some tweets published a few minutes, the Twitter account @VikiLeak30 is shutting down for good (see image below). [UPDATE 10:01pm: The account has been removed from Twitter] The account gained notoriety throughout the week for its prolific publication of scandalous details of Vic Toews’ personal and political life as available in public documents. It fell silent [...]
Klout.com is a bit of a controversial service among social media analysts. It uses some fancy math to evaluate the level of influence a social media participant has based on the level of output, engagement and mentions by others. An overall Klout score is assigned, rating the individual out of 100. Tony Clement has long [...]
The Internet has come alive with a wave of voluntary disclosures to Public Safety Minister MP Vic Toews. The #TellVicEverything movement started yesterday. It’s a humourous pre-emptive strike by Canadians concerned about the warrantless powers made possible by the Government’s proposed “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act”. The intent is to tweet activities and thoughts, however mundane [...]
It seems surprising that after two years of doing analysis on the role of digital in Canadian politics, and being a media source on connected MPs, I only met the digital “rock star” of our Parliament last evening. Hon. Tony Clement MP was the guest speaker for Third Tuesday Ottawa. He addressed a packed room of [...]
I’m going to try something new on Saturdays. My plan is to build a virtual conference based largely on talks that can be considered in public affairs and political circles. Today, I’ll warm up the audience with a fun TED Talk delivered by Lennart Green in 2005. This is pure entertainment.
Hélène Campbell is 20 years old. You may have heard of her. She’s become something of a celebrity in the last month. She’s used social media to help her raise awareness of blood and organ donation. Hélène has a degenerative lung disease and needs a double lung transplant. With the help of friends, she’s taken [...]
I had the privilege of speaking to a gathering of the Canadian Federation of University Women last evening. The presentation I was asked to deliver was a bit of a departure from the presentations and sessions I’ve been asked to participate in over the last two years. Where the latter have focused on the role [...]
It’s hard not to blog about these guys. Everything they do seems to incorporate a number of different creative ideas. Plus, they always look so serious when they’re doing the crazy stuff noone else has.
The last time I doodled was probably in grade school. I don’t remember the circumstances which led to the end of my doodling career. If I had to guess, it was probably frowned upon by my teachers. More to the point, my grades weren’t particularly impressive so the doodling was the target. So much of [...]
Conservative MP Patrick Brown has been getting some media attention lately for being “the first Canadian MP to have launched a free iPhone app” and one of the first Canadian politicians to embrace QR codes (see article in iPolitics). Actually, neither claim is accurate. Jack Layton’s bilingual iPhone app was launched on March 23, 2011 [...]
