Learning from the Masters

I’ve been saying for a few years now that the elections in Canada and the US were great sandboxes to watch the emergence of community web-based engagement strategies.
CIO Magazine has an article this week:
Obama’s Top 5 Tech Tools: Barack Obama promises to be the most tech-savvy President ever. What will be the top five tech tools of Obama Administration?
I signed up for both the McCain and Obama campaign communications years ago. The Democratcic campign won the e-battle hands down. And I continue to get tweets and e-mails from the Obama Whitehouse. It’s an amazing engagement strategy.
What are the top 5?
Twitter
Tumblr
YouTube (Obama’s broadcasts remind me of the FDR fireside radio chats but more modern)
Whitehouse.gov (Change.org)
Technology, Innovation and Government Reform Team (TIGR) (Watch this one!)
Pay attention folks. Leaders are starting to communicate more directly with citizens.
What does this have to do with libraries? Everything. It raises expectations of the general public we serve and how they expect to be consulted, informed and engaged. And we can lead too.
Oh yeah, I was totally surprised that Obama got to keep his Blackberry. Awesome. Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian inventors of the ubiquitous Crackberry, couldn’t afford this kind of advertising!
Stephen