Personally I was very pleased to hear that Walsall Council had decided to do an “experiment” with twitter and tweet for a full 24 hours. But this post is not about that work although you can read more about it here on Dan Slee’s blog and follow it for yourself on twitter with the hashtag #walsall24. It was also great to see some national coverage on the Guardian website and this was a great thing to see….But then I started reading the comments on this Guardian Article.
I’m not going to reproduce any of the comments here as I simply don’t agree with them and would not want those comments seen on my blog (I do have standards).
What I will say is, it is very good to see a council experimenting and trying new approaches, even if it is to simply learn lessons about whether a particular medium can or could be used over time to aid communications – and in this instance, it was free and staff did tweets in their own time using good will.
Regardless of how many people follow Walsall Council or even how many people are actually residents….It was an experiment and no doubt was to try out something new whilst the council has staff to try things like this. Some people would see this as a waste of time – But I don’t – I think Walsall should be applauded and I’m looking forward to hearing about the lessons learned.
It very much feels like that as local government we are damned if we do try new things and damned if we don’t.
In this climate and over the next few years we simply HAVE TO CHANGE and It would be great if we could all support those in local government and understand and accept that we all make mistakes and we all need to learn – please support your colleagues and friends in local government as we are only trying to make local services better for us all.
If anything it makes me more determined…..I’m always happy to get feedback and I love a good debate and discussion – as this helps people move forward….what I don’t value is just negativity – It just doesn’t help anyone.
Whether people like it or not, we are ALL in this together and we ALL need to work together to find better solutions and to provide better or different services.
Filed under: Personal Tagged: change, dan slee, guardian, social media, twitter, walsall, walsall council 
Great attitude!
Thanks Adriel 🙂