VasGk | Κοινωνικό Νερό

I had the opportunity to be in Corfu this weekend at the informal meeting of OSCE foreign ministers . It was a great experience from any perspective, media and otherwise! This was the first informal ministerial meeting of the OSCE .  During the conference we had the opportunity, as OSCE Press and Public Information Section, to explore new ways to link with the media and the general public utilizing the twitter and facebook accounts of the OSCE. For the scale of the event we did manage to stream the event live and have multimedia (audio and video) of the opening and closing statements and a great photo gallery ! I believe that the most important thing is that we learned so much in preparation for the Formal Ministerial Council in Athens in December 2009.  One of the suggestions is to project the OSCE twitter to the Press Center, so as journalists, reporters, media people and volunteers to keep up to date with schedule, press center and pool updates, media appeara...

So, Pres. Obama in his push to communicate his proposed economic plan has started campaigning again. I believe that this is a brilliant communication method, given that the White House Website has undergone such a huge redesign and the President is keen to engage with citizens and have the first ever Presidential online town hall. The questions were picked after users of whitehouse.gov “buzzed” or “digged” them to the top of the pile. He also manage to address a few questions more from the actual audience in the room. Now, I also had a read through a Blog post “Obama like Dora” from a good friend Achilleas Ioakimides. Achilleas, as a communications advisor to the Minister Dora Bakoyannis, has created the segment “Live with Dora”, where the Minister answers to direct questions from citizens through her Website . Both great examples of politicians and citizens coming together online.

It was awesome to be part of this very interesting discussion at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . The Minister ( Ms Dora Bakoyannis ) along with a number of Bloggers and people active through social media had an opportunity to exchange views and debate concerning the role of the Internet and web 2.o technologies with concern to politics and political communications. It was quite interesting brainstorming ideas and suggesting technologies that can become instruments for developing foreign policy, while bringing together the Hellenic community overseas. All the people involved were excellent in their remarks and I personally believe that it was a great opportunity to exchange views and hopefully shape political communications strategies in Greek politics. My talking points included: Permission Marketing techniques, Online political communications, facebook groups concerning the issue of Macedonia Communication tools of a Foreign Ministry website. I must say that I...