OPEN

I took a detour to the House of Commons on my way to the NMK Forum yesterday to hear Joe Trippi, architect of the groundbreaking Howard Dean presidential campaign, speak about “politics 2.0”.

Above his head as he spoke was a monitor flashing up messages about debates, committees and the general business of Parliament. As the messages cycled through I noted the terrorist threat warning “Threat Level is Severe”. (Tried to get a shot of it but my N73 wasn’t up to the job.)

It seemed strangely appropriate: Mr Trippi was talking about social media as a threat to the “Goliaths” of the world as people were able to get information from one another now about almost anything and didn’t need big, top down information any longer. he made a very good point: that teh authority of “big everything” (not sure that’s a quote may have just been how i noted it down) was being eroded simply because people didn’t need it as much.

He was thinking big as in big governement, corporations, media and it was a point that resonated with me deeply. I’ll come back to that point later on the subject of advertising and big media.

Even though I knew alot of the things I was hearing already there were some new perspectives from a politio’s perspective. And there really was something exhilarating about sitting in Westminster in a room that wasn’t short of an MP or two hearing people talking about a revolution in politics, and really meaning it.

I’d been thinking about buying Trippi’s The Revolution Will Not be Televised for a while and it’s defintiely next on my list now…

: : The event was organised by Portland PR and hosted by Bebo – thanks to both: it was very useful.

: : : More on the power of the web this morning from The Guardian as Michael Cross discusses a report on social media:

The Power of Information is written by Ed Mayo, chief executive of the National Consumer Council, and Tom Steinberg, director of MySociety and creator of the 10 Downing Street e-petitions service.

It set out to examine the Web 2.0 phenomenon and determine what, if any, the government’s response should be. The headline finding is that phenomena such as social networking, blogging and wikis add up to more than a passing craze; the report likens today’s online communities to great 19th century movements such as friendly societies.

Looking forward to reading the report. Perhaps holiday reading for next week (I’ll hide it inside the newspaper so i don’t get accused of working ;-)). It got a very warm reception from Government last week. Hilary Armstrong said:

Government cannot afford to overlook this phenomenon of citizens changing their lives through their use of information, especially what they find on the internet. We need to support ordinary people to take advantage of these opportunities to build community networks and make informed decisions on issues relating to their day to day lives.

Question is how much of this is lip service and how much is resolve to change things?