Is Digital Diplomacy a Fad?
After 10 years of tweeting, “facebooking” and “instagramming”, how many diplomatic goals were really achieved thanks to digital diplomacy?
After 10 years of tweeting, “facebooking” and “instagramming”, how many diplomatic goals were really achieved thanks to digital diplomacy?
There is some controversy over this ”digitalization” of diplomacy and the exposure of public leaders on Twitter. But regardless of the critics and Twitter public users, it is a fact that social media and, in this case, Twitter, profoundly impacted our lives and how we relate to the public sector.
Last Friday, the Office of eDiplomacy within the State Department’s Bureau of Information Resource Management held its Tech@State conference on the theme of Moneyball Diplomacy. The event centered on how emerging tools and practices in data analysis can add a valuable quantitative lens to approaches in U.S. foreign development and policy. My favorite speaker wasRead… Read more »
I would go so far as to say live tweeting a speech is the most stressful thing you can do on twitter. We regularly do it from accounts I manage, and I think we now have it down to a fine art. Here are my top 5 tips…. Get a copy of the speech inRead… Read more »
Last week the embassy of Israel in Paris, France, hosted an international workshop on the digital diplomacy. It was first such experience for us in the Israeli embassy, but what I learnt from our guests during the workshop was that it was also the case for many of them. While diplomats discuss this topic withRead… Read more »
Last one! The closing keynote speaker was David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know. Great speaker on a complex topic. I hope I do him justice here… if anyone else heard and wants to jump in, please do! Weinberger argues that in the olden days, facts used to be separable bits of knowledge (think:Read… Read more »
The afternoon’s plenary panel looked ahead 5-10 years to imagine what social media will look like and discuss what we can do now to prepare for the huge volume of data it’s bound to entail. The panel was moderated by Rob Zitz (SAIC) and consistet of Lou Martinage (Microstrategy), Rand Waltzman (DARPA), and Patrick MeierRead… Read more »
I attended the breakout session: Drinking from the Fire House, which looked at the impact of and strategies and techniques for dealing with the explosion of data. John Kelly (Morningside Analytics) moderated a panel that consisted of Jason Hines (Recorded Future), Eddie Smith (Topsy), Jonathan Gosier (Metalayer), and Adam Sharp (Twitter). The presentations were aRead… Read more »
Clay Johnson, author of “Information Diet.” The U.S. started with a constituent to representative ratio of 60,000:1 and is now somewhere over 700,000:1. There will be a crisis if government can’t take the huge and growing amount of information from people and interpret it and use it in an effective way. With more and moreRead… Read more »
The first panel of the day was on how various organizations use social media and internet-enabled data to create real-time awareness. The panel was moderated by Dr. Linton Wells (National Defense University) and included panelists Robert Bectel (Department of Energy), Robert Kirkpatrick (UN Global Pulse), Ahmed Al Omran (NPR), and Clark Freifeld (HealthMap.org). Each discussedRead… Read more »