“What concerns me about the Open Government Directive is the notion of ‘check-box government’ it seems to encourage. Very little emphasis seems to be on the actual engaging, or even on the strategy for doing so. The focus is on the technology. Where's the focus on the humans?”
Knowing that these new websites, user interfaces, and datasets are what the public wants and needs, and that the new forms of public engagement are actually, truly effective is far more important than merely peacocking them on the Web. Where is, in fact, the focus on the human side of the equation? I haven't studied every single open website in depth, but generally the emphasis is on new technology or new data, and not new engagement.
FCW also quoted me as saying,
“Engagement is hard, very hard, and it doesn't happen completely from behind a computer terminal in a cubicle on Independence Avenue,” he said. “It happens through genuine, human interactions with people, and through caring about the communities your agency is supposed to be supporting.”
When you hear Gary Vaynerchuk speaking about openness and engagement in the video above (possibly the single best video I've ever seen on social engagement with stakeholders in your organization), you don't hear about putting more options on a website, nor about this or that technology very often. You hear an awful lot about people – talking to people, listening to people, providing content that people want, and generally caring about people. And a lot of it is very one-on-one, not email blasts and blog posts. It's human and authentic. In a talk long ago, I heard Gary use an acronym that I still use to this day, one that should be at play in all the discussion about the OGD. The acronym is RAT. RAT means Real, Authentic, and Transparent. RATs win. RATs use technology, but aren't focused on it. They're focused on people. How the new open government websites and tools are used to interact with individual people, to engage citizens around topics (not agencies, topics), and act as platforms to build communities around those topics remains to be seen. But there's one thing anyone involved in communities already knows – these things take time and are not subject to artificial deadlines. Joseph Jaffe recently wrote a truly excellent post about the Toyota recall, and their engagement with customers and other people online. He's fairly critical of their efforts. And what I couldn't help thinking about as I read it was the OGD. In Toyota's case, they seem to be doing all the right things (i.e., checking off all the boxes): apology in the newspaper, some of their website devoted to the crisis, 15k Twitter followers, an official Fan Page on Facebook, and more. But they're not engaging, because there's more to engaging than having a presence. It's about being alive within that presence. (Read the post for details on how Jaffe thinks they can "flip the funnel" on their communications crisis.) Deadlines are good for checking off boxes in some kind of scientific manner. Engaging people is an art, a true street-smart craft that few are good at. Can one mandate such an art?
Well, be careful what you wish for, because it might just come true. Something I’ve noticed is when I do actually visit one of these places (that I might only visit once every two years or something) is that some people hustle to meet me, and some people don’t. I try REALLY hard to reach out to people on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, and phone to tell them when I’ll be in town, where I’ll be, and when I’m available and what I’m thinking. It’s a hustle. I try to pack tons of engagements and activations into a trip (people who have seen me dashing around Manhattan know this well).
Back to the hustle; it goes both ways. It’s illegit to feign wanting to meet me very badly, and then not hustle to make it happen when I’m in your city for two or three days. It gives me a bad impression of you, if I haven’t met you previously. Everyone is busy, no doubt – but if you’re the kind of person to take 15 minutes and meet me in the hotel lobby for a cup of coffee, you’re making that BIG impression on me. And if you have this thing on Thursday and that other thing on Friday and you’re busy on Saturday…yeah, that doesn’t impress me. You can’t say you badly want to meet me when I’m in town and then not make it happen.
I try to meet everyone who wants to meet me, within reason. But it goes both ways. Want to make a GREAT impression in real life? Hustle. You can only do so much from behind a keyboard.
The social search engine in question is called Aardvark, and it’s really interesting. You have to sign up, like on Facebook or LinkedIn, with a real name, DOB, and so forth – very brief, not too onerous. You can also use Facebook Connect to interface the search engine with your Facebook interests, contacts, groups, etc. You can also interface with an IM program you use (I used my Gchat account for this). Finally, you can click on either “Answer” or “Ask” to do either of those two behaviors.
First, I clicked on Answer. A few questions were there that I didn’t know how to answer, but one person (25 y/o from PA) asked about where she might get historical items checked out. I recommended the Smithsonian as a resource (oversimplifying a bit here for the sake of space). Next, I asked a question about learning to cook as a couple in DC. Within 5 min I had an IM and two emails with answers from different people. Very specific answers (XXX in YYY place has wonderful evening classes for couples), location-specific, reasonable, even with good grammar. The answers were actually very helpful to me. The normal route would have taken me to the website of a local magazine, where I would have then searched for stories about cooking, where I would have then… you get the point.
Currently we have search engines like Google and Bing which break your query down into keywords and give you “relevant” websites. Sometimes that works well (”Pamela Anderson Baywatch pics”), and sometimes it doesn’t (”Where’s a good place to take my vegetarian date on a Sunday night in Chicago?”). So-called “organic” search engines like Twitter and Digg allow the most popular items to bubble to the top, and to some degree that’s interfaced with location and contacts to give you more specifics.
With Aardvark, you seem to get the best of all of this for specific questions. I’m excited to see where this leads.
Instead of asking me to be your Fan, why don’t you just un-friend me? Then, we can have an authentic interaction. Thanks, Mark
