Social Media: Engaging Democracy and Communities Online

Steve Clift, founder and Executive Director, E-Democracy.org has asked me to do a presentation tonight for a class he’s teaching at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs titled Social Media: Engaging Democracy and Communities Online.

He’s asked me to talk about my civic leadership blogging coaching, as well as my current citizen engagement consulting work. I plan to take the class on a web tour while I speak to them about both.

Civic leadership blogging

1. July, 2004: UK e-gov delegation visits Northfield
2. Feb, 2005: Trip to the UK
3. July, 2005: field trip to Northfield for the International Symposium on Local E-Democracy
4. Fall, 2005: Guide to Civic Leadership Blogging (U.K. edition) How to use blogs as an effective local leadership tool
5. Oct. 2008: UK CivicSurf booklet
6. Featured civic leadership bloggers
• Edina City Manager Scott Neal
• Northfield City Councilor Betsy Buckheit
• NDDC Executive Director Ross Currier

Citizen Engagement Online

1. Northfield.org (since 1994)
• Blogosphere aggregator
2. Locally Grown Northfield (since 2006)
• 3,400 blog posts
• 40,700 comments
3. Webinar on social media use by local government (Nov. 2010)
4. Edina Citizen Engagement (since May, 2011)