It’s not just video
Whilst David and I were reporting on the Digital Inclusion Conference, we were also trying to pull together content from other sources, as well as providing a bit of interaction with those familiar with some of the new social online tools.
One of the key things for an event to have pre-arranged, if they want to have a successful online element, is a unique tag that can be applied to various bits of online content. Tags are simple keywords that people can apply to the stuff they upload which help others to find it.
One of the best places that tags work is on Flickr, a site for the hosting and sharing of photos online.
As David and I wandered around the conference, we took photos on our iPhones and uploaded them to Flickr, tagging them with dc10plus. This meant that all the photos taken at the conference could be clustered in one place.
Another cool conversational tool is Twitter, which is just starting to get some widespread attention and take-up - even 10 Downing Street has an account. It allows you to post short (maximum of 140 characters) messages to anyone who is listening by a web interface, instant messaging or sms on a mobile phone. Now, Twitter is mostly about identity - you follow people’s updates because of who they are, and you get all their updates no matter what subject they are on - but it can be used to pull together content based on topic.
This is done using a site called Hashtags. To get it to work, all you have to do is follow the updates of the Hashtag account on Twitter, and then start including keywords prefaced with a # symbol in your posts on Twitter. They are then pulled together on the main Hashtags site, which also produces an RSS feed. Several people were using the dc10plus hashtag on Tuesday, both at the event and those at home or in the office.
A third method of drawing in information is through social bookmarking, with a service called del.icio.us. Rather than save websites or blog posts that you like on your browser’s list of favourites or bookmarks, del.icio.us allows you to save it to a web page and - you guessed it - tag it with a keyword. By using this system, related content can be gathered in one place, and this is exactly what has happened with the dc10plus delicio.us tag. Again, an RSS feed is produced so it can be monitored in the future, and can also be republished in a blog, for example.
By using tags in this way, it means that anyone can publish content and have it associated with an event or organisation. An alternative would be to create an account to upload content to on each service, but that limits participation only to those with access to that account. By using tags, everyone can get involved.
Another advantage is that these tags can be used in the future too, they are building blocks in putting together ongoing communities distributed around the web. Someone in Canada might be following the DC10Plus blog, because they are interested in how local government organisations around the world are using new technology (ok, ok but bear with me on this one). They might also be reading similar blogs in Canada, Australia, Germany and France. If they spot an article on one of these other blogs, they could bookmark it, tag it with DC10plus and immediately we in the UK would know about it.
So, we have put these building blocks in place for the conference, but they are now there to be used forever. Let’s see what the community can make of them.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 8:05. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response or trackback from your own site.
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