Social Media Stream at San Diego Conference

P2 practitioners are finding the take up of social media critical in their practice and in engagement of stakeholders. This year's international conference is picking up on the tools, techniques and issues that are shaping public involvment around the world. See below for the social media sessions and check out the whole program at www.iap2.org

Web 2.0 Tools
Dr. Crispin Butteriss, Bang the Table, Newcastle Australia
Web-based engagement is sustainable for both process and practical reasons. It provides a new and broader public with an opportunity to get involved in conversations about places and issues that affect them. It also reduces travel requirements by allowing citizens to join conversations from home or work. This session will explore workshop online community engagement through a series of case studies.

Facebook: Fad or Failure?
Martin J. Cowling, People First—Total Solutions, Melbourne Australia
This session outlines the social networking technologies, their potential and actual usage and poses some questions as to whether these technologies are a temporary phenomenon or represent a fundamental shift for those engaged in raising public participation.

Social Media
David Messerschmidt, Public Affairs Media Group, Seattle, WA USA
Public participation takes place in a new communications environment that includes “legacy” print and broadcast media, social networks, bloggers, “citizen” journalists, mashups and new online tools that pile into the toolbox everyday. To be sustainable practitioners managing public participation processes need both access to and an understanding of these new tools.

Social Networking Solutions
Karen Franz, San Diego Coastkeeper, San Diego, CA USA
Soumya Chennapragada, San Diego Coastkeeper, San Diego, CA USA
The purpose of this session is to explore the strengths and weaknesses of social networking tools for nonprofits wishing to engage communities in a collaborative dialog to protect environmental health building upon on a complex data set. The environmental data presents a lens through which social networking tools are applied for community engagement.

E-consultation
Amelia Shaw, Translink, Burnaby, BC Canada
Patti LaCroix, MA Catapult Media, Halifax Canada
Kirsten Koppang-Telford, Translink, Vancouver, BC Canada
Showcasing public transportation in Vancouver, this session will report on a recent e-consultation pilot project undertaken by TransLink as part of its 10 Year Plan consultation process. Central to the pilot project was an exploration of how e-consultation could support the development of stronger, durable decisions that improve the quality of life for today and future generations in our community.

Social Media and P2 in California

The tools and techniques of social media are being applied by P2 practitioners to draw in new people to public participation. It is more than teaching an old dog new tricks - it is applying new technologies and techniques to the well-established and viable essence of IAP2 - the core values, spectrum and code of ethics.

This week in California two IAP2 mini-symposia have showcased and demonstrated check out this one from San Francisco. There will be more of this coming up at the conference later in the year - as it is a major thread running through the conference Sustainable Decision-Making - the price and promise of public participation.