How the PdF Unconference Crowd 'Twitterjacked' the Public Advocate
BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, June 9 2010
Update: Because of technical issues with our audio archive, the embed of this session has been removed.
At the Personal Democracy Forum unConference on Saturday, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio was effectively held hostage at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism until a gaggle of developers and 21st-century-city thinkers attending a session with him were able to persuade him to use Twitter for himself and, finally, tweet.
The public advocate was at the unConference to brainstorm about ideas to use the Internet and new technologies to better the lives of New Yorkers. As public advocate, de Blasio is sort of an ombudsman of last resort for residents of the city; he can cast a tie-breaking vote on the New York City Council, can introduce legislation, and is expected to investigate the ramifications of city policy and the complaints of New Yorkers who have had no satisfaction with their own councilmember or the mayor's administration. He's also first in the line of succession should the mayor die or become incapacitated.
When de Blasio and his staff started to talk about their existing forays into social media, Micah Sifry — the techPresident editor, PdF co-producer and my boss — took them to task. There is a difference, he pointed out, between having a Twitter account and using it. He suggested de Blasio use the BlackBerry holstered at his waist to tweet for himself, rather than having his staff do it — which seemed to be the state of affairs at the time — and to tweet more often than once a day with a link to a press release.
The conversation turned into a crowdsourced argument encouraging de Blasio's direct involvement in social media in the course of his job, and several people in the room stuck around afterward to get the public advocate started on Twitter. Among his first tweets was a solicitation for ways he could use online movement-building to help New Yorkers. (It doesn't look like anyone has taken him up on that so far by @-replying with ideas.)
We've been monitoring de Blasio's Twitter stream the last few days to watch him get his feet wet in this new (to him) medium. He was taught the "Cory Booker" model and seems to be figuring out how to emulate it: A mix of personal stories, city business and press-release-ish upcoming events.
What we hadn't seen from de Blasio was the special sauce of Twitter: Actually interacting. Until today, which may be his first real retweet.