writer, photographer, web person from Washington, DC.
This seems counterintuitive but seniors (age 55+) spend more time online than any other age group, according to a recent Jupiter Research report.
How times have changed since my days at AARP in the late 90s, when seniors were underrepresented online. More than once, I heard the argument that seniors would never use the web, that “old dogs don’t learn new tricks.” They would never give up newspapers and figure out how to use computers – how wrong and silly those ideas seem now.
The presentations from the Government Web Managers Conference are now online. There’s a wealth of useful information in these slides, relevant to all web managers, not just government ones. The highlights for me were:
Put down the laptop and have a look around.
Where do the digitally savvy roam? According to a new study, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, San Diego and, coming in at #5, Washington, DC. Maybe we should be called The Digital District. It doesn’t surprise me at all. People here wuv their Blackberries a little too much. (Not like us iPhone fanatics, we’re the normal, well-adjusted ones.) DC is all about the trading of information for influence and our digital gadgets make these transactions so much more efficient.
Austin – I’m surprised by you. You’re a city of music, bars, BBQ, bike paths and “Keep Austin Weird” – you have much better things to do than play online.
I twitter, post pictures on Flickr, comment on other people’s blogs and write my own blog postings. More than once, I’ve been asked, “How much time does that take?”
Really, not much. 5-10 hours a week at most, time that I’d otherwise spend watching TV, I’m sure. Museum 2.0 has a great post on how much time Web 2.0 really takes and includes a handy chart showing how much time each tactic can take.
And how did I find this article? Twitter. The author, Nina Simon, is a Twitter friend of a friend of a friend.
Artomatic – it’s on! I made my first visit Friday night to sample a bit of this arts extravaganza. This year, Artomatic has taken over an entire office building one block from the New York Avenue Metro station. More than just an open art show, Artomatic features music, movies, fire dancers, life modeling classes, bars and creativity untamed by professional aspirations.
Here’s a first look at some of the things I found interesting/scary:
You can see more photos on Flickr.
Here’s what interested me this week:
Congratulations to…
CDC.gov
The Centers for Disease Control have really been a leader when it comes to adopting new technologies to reach out to the public. They use email updates, RSS, podcasts, blogs, Second Life, Whyville and other tools to get their message out. Their site is attractive, easy to use and almost makes it fun to learn about the latest pandemics.
VA MidSouth Healthcare Network
Navigating and obtaining government benefits can be an onerous assignment. This network of six VA Medical Centers and 32 community-based outpatient clinics has made this vital task easier by surveying their users and then adapting the site to their needs. The use of the “I Want To” box on the home page provides quick access to medical benefits for patients.
This year’s winners and finalists were recognized by their peers as federal websites that had done an outstanding job of making it easy for their customers to complete their most important task online.
On Monday and Tuesday, I attended the Government Web Managers Conference held in Arlington, VA. This two-day conference brought together federal, local and state web folks from around the country to listen to expert speakers, hear about the latest web tools and discuss how to improve government websites.
A major focus of this year’s conference was Web 2.0, meaning the new set of participatory web sites like Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and blogs. Web 1.0 was the static publishing of information; Web 2.0 is everyone publishing and commenting on everything. There is broad agreement among government web folks that government sites should use these tools because that’s what the public expects. There are two major barriers to government adopting Web 2.0:
1. Lawyers. Regulations for government web sites were designed for a pre-Web 2.0 age and have not been consistently applied across the federal government. For example, on NOAA Ocean Explorer, we’re allowed to post our videos to YouTube but other agencies are not. In some agencies, you can’t even view YouTube.
2. IT Departments. The principles of Web 2.0 are openness and sharing, which are a security administrator’s worst nightmare. IT departments these days are often about locking things while we want to open up and share our information with the rest of the world.
It was interesting to hear that other government folks have the same challenges we do. The organizers of the conference are getting together teams of people to try to develop a unified approach to these problems. This cross-governmental cooperation will hopefully help agencies adopt these tools. There’s value in having a critical mass of government web folks pushing to use Web 2.0. The creation of this community of interest may be the best outcome of the conference.
Here’s what interested me this week:
Washington City Paper: Building the Great DC Novel
Surprisingly, no one has written a Bonfire of the Vanities for DC. The article is correct that most novels of DC are just about a niche of this city (Edward P. Jones) or treat things with a very broad brush (Christopher Buckley).
Greenversations
The Environmental Protection Agency is blogging! Hopefully, this will spur the rest of government (including the part I’m in) to blog as well.
The New Influencers
I’m working my through this fascinating book. The world of corporate PR and the mainstream media is over. Blogs and communities of people connecting online are the future.
DCist Overheard
The “nice balls” comment is one I submitted, LOL.
I spent a beautiful spring afternoon at the Conversations and Connections conference held April 5 in Washington, DC. This was a writer’s conference featuring “experts in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children, making connections, using the web, marketing, and everything in between.”
But the highlight for me was the keynote by Mary Gaitskill, author of Two Girls, Fat and Thin and the short story which was the basis of the movie Secretary. In her inspiring talk, she recounted her long and painful struggle for literary success. Here are the three things she believes writers need: