Someone Tweet Joe Duffy!

As this being the second post suggests, I am new to this whole blogging thing. When I saw a post on Damien Mulley's blog about Joe Rospars aka Barrack Obama's New Media Director giving a talk I immediately wanted in. Social media is a big interest of mine and Obama '08 was a defining point in the evolution of this medium so hearing from a man integral to such a successful and historic campaign was too good to miss. The event was promoted by Strawberry Media and although registration was closed a pleading email was very promptly replied to by a Damien who told me to pop along anyway. So far so great, interesting speaker, friendly efficient PR and a nice free pricetag attached for these recessionary times.

Upon arrival there were plenty in attendence and there was certainly a buzz about the room. I am new to events such as these so I must confess I have no frame of reference to compare but all seemed quite normal. When the event did kick off I must confess I was a bit taken aback by being welcomed by Fianna Fail?! Now I must confess only a passing interest in politics and certainly have no political affiliations so I had no real idea who these people were. The promotion I saw for the event certainly did not mention anything of FF and I have subsequently found that the prompt reply from Damien was Councillor Damien Blake of FF themselves. Anyway the event continued and Joe Rospars fielded questions in the manner that you would expect Obama's New Media Director to with the brand spanking new FF website in the background. Personally I enjoyed the event but as I said I am new to these things.

Now I am not on Twitter and I certainly wasn't keeping tabs on what all the bloggers in the room were feeling via my laptop or phone. Call me old fashioned but if I've gone along to see someone talk I feel I should listen. Although I must be a lot more out of touch than I thought because apparantly I was sitting amidst some seriously pissed off people! Damien, Gav and many others have blogged about the lack of transparency involved in the situation. I really do have to agree that by not disclosing themselves in the promotion of the event FF are kinda missing the whole point of blogs and how this whole social media thing works. Transparency and full disclosure are inherent to new media, it's about trusting people and accepting that they can be in control. Maman Poulet makes the very good point that a transparent FF online strategy discussion with bloggers a la Bord Gais would probably have been much more valuable and certainly not caused as much fuss. To his credit Cllr Damien Blake has been in overdrive tonight dishing out apologies and even shouldering the blame via his own blog.

While I agree the furore is justified and many people are right to feel confused and annoyed about the situation, at least Irish politics is finally creeping towards it's digital future. Tonights event was certainly not the dawning of a new age of social media engagement from Irish political parties but with any luck lessons will be learned, fingers will not be burnt and politicians will slog on and strive to get it right next time they attempt to engage with the online community.