In case you missed it, we ran a story a few days ago about Ward 2’s Matthew Petty who is soon bringing forth a resolution involving social media.
In the days leading up to April 21st, you will undoubtedly hear a lot about the City Councilman who wants to make it a requirement that Fayetteville officials use Facebook, Twitter, or whatever’s hot at the moment to keep its citizens up-to-date.
Most will jump on the “yes, those tools should be used, but not during meetings” bandwagon but few will offer any worthwhile suggestions. Fortunately, those folks aren’t elected officials who are charged with actually getting anything accomplished. Matthew Petty, however, is.
Although I don’t know Mr. Petty all that well, he is my ward’s alderman so I pay fairly close attention and read his blog pretty often. Earlier this week, Petty presented a quick-n-dirty brainstorm of 25 possible ways that the City of Fayetteville could improve citizen communications using new media. Among his list, here are a few that stand out as excellent ideas to me:
3. summaries given to Council of online discussions and public perception
9. ability to form citizen workgroups on the city website with their own calendar, blog, wiki, newsletter, etc
13. 5-minute weekly video addresses from the Mayor and his administration
For the full list see “25 improvements to citizen communications in Fayetteville with new media” on Alderman Petty’s personal blog.
The ideas on his list could be put into one of three categories:
- Sounds good, let’s do it.
- Sounds like a lot of work.
- What the heck is this guy talking about?
While, I’d assume that at first glance, many folks might put the majority of Petty’s ideas into the 2nd or 3rd category, I think nearly all of them are no-brainers. What about you?
