allow me to clarify. client asks you to roll out a campaign, there’s an event, the event hashtag goes crazy, you’re trending on twitter, client loves you. three days later, you do a search and find nothing. zilch. nada. that’s because twitter search does not persist. so when people go looking for information after the event, you get no link backs to your campaign site, and there’s no ‘word on the twittersphere about your campaign’. not ideal right?

now just to clarify what i meant about slideshare. if you upload any presentations from the event to slideshare, it will live there and your content will be searched for and found ad infinitum.

ok, so the headline is a little bit controversial and a bit of bait. but here’s the dealio. what you want to do, is aggregate the hash tag stream on an open, search engine friendly platform. that might be a wordpress site as an aggregator, tumblr or some other bespoke system, this has to be done if you want the conversations to be found down the track.

thanks to jeremiah owyang for the prompt to commit this post to paper. he talks about using a live blogging application which is great idea. this works well if you have an official blogger at the event. what a campaign aggregator will do though is capture everything on the hashtag (and any other social media) not just what your official blogger is doing.

this post also appears on asiadigitalmap.com

every time i hear “we’ll stop the boats” i want to invite the man to a bare knuckle cage fight and pummel him. this strong reaction made me think, “why do i hate this man so much? i’ve not even met him?”

as i watched the twitter stream, i watched as other seemingly intelligent people descend into zealotry. then i thought about my own motivations and i came to the conclusion that for all this talk about ‘policies’ what we’re all really voting on is ideologies. does this statement get an reaction from you? does it make you feel righteous indignation?

we hide behind ‘policies’ to rationalise what essentially irrational. commentators in the media, on twitter and out on the street all passionately put forward the reasons why they vote one way or the other. that they are right and others are wrong. at the end of the day we vote based on an ideology. is there such a thing as the right ideology?

who researches the every party’s policies before voting? read them line by line have we?

or have we just read what the media have told us? how we choose to vote may have come from how our parents voted or whether we believe that refugees will take ‘australian jobs’. it’s ideology that makes us right, left, conservative, centre, green, blue, or red. yet people seem to use ‘policy’ as justification to call each other names and take the high moral ground on twitter. i think it’s time we got off our high horses and stopped pretending that we are these altruistic creatures wanting what is really best for the country. what we want is a country moulded to our beliefs and prejudices.

it’s not just this election either

i’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s every election in the history of humanity. do you think social media really won the election for obama? or was it the resounding message of “change” regardless of the medium? didn’t obama just have the message that everyone wanted to hear? did he not just stand for an ideology? one that resonated? one that people were ready for?

i voted greens

i voted greens because of an ideal. i voted greens because i believe in their ideals. that in 2010 gay people should be able to express their love just like straight people. i am a refugee, and many of my family came here on boats just after the vietnam war. so tony’s ‘stop the boats’ offends me.

my best friend is a liberal voter

he votes liberal because he hates the union movement. he cannot name a single pro union piece of legislation but just can’t bring himself to vote for labor. he’s also from blue state perth. i have other friends that vote for a party because their parents voted for that party.

electorates remain ‘safe seats’ for parties because people identify with that party. go out west and people vote labor. go to sydney’s north shore and people vote liberal.

so here’s the crux of the issue

ultimately, in a democracy it’s the most popular ideology that wins power. that’s not to say that there are not any rights or wrongs, but for the most part our fellow australians have just walked a different path to us, and have different views.

so whatever you believe in, express it. debate it passionately, but don’t resort to the argument that my party’s ‘policies’ are better than your party’s ‘policies’ because really, what it’s all about is: “my prejudices are just different to your prejudices”.

and mr abbott, if you’re reading this, actually, i don’t hate you, but your ideologies are definitely not mine. for the sake of our nation, i hope more people are like me, than you.

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now see transparent government in action!

• rachael falk, legal counsel, from telstra and
• matthew gain, digital director, edelman

the panel was moderated by kara-lee from amnesia.

i spoke about the practical application of our crisis comms framework but thought it might be of note to some attendees if i broke the framework down. check it out and let me know if it’s useful. it’s just our current thinking. we evolve this stuff all the time as we handle more and more crises.

the facebook for business session is really a 101 on how to get started in building a facebook presence for businesses. below is the deck that i shared with the attendees. note that the number of facebook users today has officially reached 500 million.

i however would not like to see the thing that ate it in the water!

(hat tip: @kobygeddes)

who says interesting communication can only exist online?