My Country is Different

in May 2009 many of “us” are getting social media and do believe that “web 2.0″ has the potential to be a game changer. However, the critique of the new way of organizing collective action is to be taken seriously. Some of the points policy makers from Austria, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States have voiced to me in the last weeks are:

- in my country/company, labor laws do not allow government officials to work at 10 pm at night and if the write an email from home, we have a serious problem.

- in my country/company, journalists do not get social media, so we had to buy them 100 copies of Clay Shirky’s Here comes everybody (2008) so that they would understand our politicians point.

- in my country/company, maneuvering the tension between privacy and transparency is so complicated, we would not be able to profit of increased transparency.

- in my country/company the politicians do not get what they could gain from increased transparency, collaboration, and participation.

What are the main objections you have heard in the last months? What are your counter-arguments? What will happen?


Quick Travel Posting: Vienna Calling

am in Vienna for talks with friends in the interior ministry, the city, the environmental ministry and I am ever more persuaded that Vienna has the most effective municipal government/administration in the world – the question to the world is: is there any data available on this? how could/should it be measured? …and if proven true, how do we carry the experiences generated here into the world (hint: cases!?)