My friend Andrea Baker recently wrote a great blog post about Citizen 2.0:
“The Citizen 2.0 crowd are the citizens and constituents that engage the Government by writing their congressional representative, vote and create questions on HubDub or ObamaCTO.org or engage in online debate with others via Twitter or to their pundits on main-stream media programming.”
Here in Dublin, CA, I am working with local social media junkies and bloggers to design a free training workshop for everyday folks on how to use social tools to engage and influence their government and create positive change. Along the way, we hope to build community and also give a few tips on how our neighbors can also use these tools to build their own businesses.
What would you tell them?
CampaignAdvertisements.com: Digital Consulting & Ad Strategy. 
6 responses to “What’s in the Perfect Citizen 2.0 Training?”
here are a few… might post more after i see where everyone else is going with this.
#1. be helpful / positive / specific — i.e. even if you’re just reporting an annoying pothole, present the facts not the emotions.
#2. learn the tools of the trade — i.e. twitter w/ hashtags.
#3. use many tools and figure out their integration points — e.g. use brightkite and cross-post geo-coded messages and photos to twitter, flickr, facebook.
#4. don’t forget about email. it’s not “2.0” but it’s effective, especially for govs.
Talk about ways to include non-web users and to encourage the unplugged to participate. While data shows that more and more older people, for example, are online, many are not. Older people really have an impact in neighborhood politics, at least in my neighborhood. As we use 2.0 tools to organize, let’s not forget the digital divide on income and education.
Off the top of my head, and avoiding repitition, here are two things that should be included:
1. Do not hesitate to mention an idea or ask a question that seems “obvious” – chances are there are a number of other folks who are similarly in the dark. It’s not a “stupid question” if the answer isn’t available.
2. Do not be afraid to contribute because you think everyone else is so smart. (Maybe they just like to use big words!) You don’t have to be a certified genius to have a good idea or insight.
I suspect that the issues behind these explain the “Participation Inequality” described in the “90-9-1 Principle” (http://www.90-9-1.com/).
We did a self-guided learning program for CPAs – based on Helene Bower’s site from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library. Using the popular 43 things theme we developed 33 things – 15 minutes a day to get you comfortable with Web 2.0 you can check it out at http://www.cpalearning2.com
[…] Let’s Discuss Teaching Citizens About 2.0 – What should you include in a social media training? […]
You might already know the following but from my experience in teaching people I would suggest the following:
a. Walk into thinking they know nothing, not that they are stupid because they are not, but the vocabulary you use every day might just be greek to them. Do they know what Web 2.0 means? What is a blog? What does @ mean? You might be surprised at the responses.
b. There are so many outlets out there give them a stable start point so they don’t get overwhelmed about all the options. Emphasize one that they can then build from that point. There are so many ways for people to interact in Social Media it can be overwhelming.