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How equitable access to technology can transform our future

Posted by Clare Curran on May 18th, 2010

New Zealand is at a turning point in its history. We are poised to create a new network. A network that will deliver critical infrastructure for our nation.

What that network can deliver is transformation, social and economic. On many levels.

I don’t think the bigger picture has been properly articulated and therefore isn’t there to be strived for. I gave a speech in Auckland today which attempted to spell out a Labour view on how important access to technology is for our social and economic future.

Ultrafast broadband is not an end in itself. It does not constitute by itself the big picture for New Zealand. It is however, a critical component. Because it’s the means to connectivity. But there’s much more to it.

Imagine how our country could be in a decade. Even less than a decade.

Where pretty much all people are connected. With a fast connection, whether you live in the city or the country. Where poorer communities, both rural and urban have more options to develop and to keep families together.

Where data caps are much less relevant and people can afford to be connected.

Where children bring home laptops from school and teach their parents how to use them. Where at risk adolescents who may have in the past ended up leaving school and hanging out on the streets gather together in groups and make music, games and movies. And end up in jobs.

Where schools teach creative content, ICT is an integral part of teaching and learning across the curriculum, where there are clear pathways from school in further training and a myriad of careers. Well paid jobs that are transforming the New Zealand economy.

Where the ICT industry is seen, and placed at the forefront of NZ’s economic growth. And is delivering.

Equitable access to technology isn’t going to solve all our social problems. It’s not going to stop domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse. It wont stop kids ending up at school without breakfast and shoes. It wont stop gangs and the drug trade. And it wont stop people get diabetes, obesity and cancer.

But it could help make us more equal and if it boosts the economy, there’s more jobs and less poverty.

Read the rest of my speech here:

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Filed under: Energy, Red Alert, broadband, comms & IT, digital, economy, education, health, inequality, infrastructure, internet, jobs, regulation
11 Comments

Farrar on #OpenLabourNZ

Posted by Clare Curran on May 14th, 2010

David Farrar on Kiwiblog has some initial ideas on open and transparent govt. It’s taken me a wee while to get round to commenting on them. Which is no reflection on his ideas. I hope he’ll have more.

Here they are (in Farrar’s words):

So what are my initial ideas for an open and transparent government policy.

  1. My previous suggestion that all Cabinet level documents be automatically placed on the Internet by DPMC within six months of creation.
  2. Expanding Parliament TV to include select committees
  3. Requiring all payments (above a modest threshold) from a Govt agency to be listed on a central website

All worthy of discussion. I think making broadcasting the public sections of select committees  would be a huge step forward. Obviously not everyone’s cup of tea but would certainly make the process of government much more  visible.

Funny that I agree more with Farrar than with Trotter so far!

What do you think?

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Filed under: #OpenLabourNZ, Labour Party, Red Alert, blogs, comms & IT, democracy, internet, policy, select committee
16 Comments

Happy birthday Red Alert

Posted by Clare Curran on May 5th, 2010

IMG_2008

Today we are One. So we thought we’d celebrate.1902 posts, 35,116 comments. 35 out of 43 Labour MPs have posted on Red Alert. Some more than others. Trevor Mallard still wins the prize for the most posts (550). Followed by me (212) Grant (198) Phil Twyford (156) and Chris Hipkins (136)

But all MPs make interesting, diverse and thoughtful contributions. Sometimes deadly serious, sometimes adversarial, sometimes funny and a bit silly. Sometimes a bit obscure.

They reflect the diversity of our caucus, but all have a set of common values.  And we’re not short on opinions. As you’d expect.

We’ve tried a few new things. Red Alert’s original aim was to open ourselves up to online contact. Now we’re opening up policy with the intention of opening up government. #OpenLabourNZ ,launched off Red Alert, is our first open policy on open and transparent government. And we’re doing it in an open and transparent way.

So far the reaction has been great and people are participating.

We’ve also tried using other forms of social media. We’re now sending Red Alert posts to both Facebook and Twitter and starting conversations about the issues in these mediums. Many Labour MPs are now actively using social media.

The important thing is the conversations we’re having with you the readers and commentors. We’re not trying to force our ideas down your throats, we want you to respond with your own views and have a discussion.

I feel proud of us, I think we do have a strong and valid voice and our challenge is to make Red Alert better known in the community and for more people to participate.

The year ahead will become more intense, we pledge to maintain our credibility and integrity.

Here’s a few stats:

We average about 30,000 page views a week
More than a million page views
465,000+ viewers

People visit Red Alert via:

Google (organic) 134,318 29.13%
Direct)86,917 18.85%
thestandard.org.nz (referral) 53,161 11.53%
kiwiblog.co.nz (referral) 46,955 10.18%
facebook.com (referral) 17,432 3.78%

The moderators on Red Alert are myself, Trevor, Grant and Chris Hipkins. We do our best to be fair and reasonable and your comment will get through as long as it’s not offensive, a lie or way off the subject.

We look forward to the next year and hope you’ll keep reading and commenting and telling us what you think.

Clare

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, comms & IT, consultation, democracy
33 Comments

#OpenLabourNZ How it will work

Posted by Clare Curran on April 30th, 2010

Labour announced yesterday that we are trying something new. A new way of developing policy. Out in the open, and involving you.

We are developing a policy on open and transparent government. This is how you can participate.

Stage 1. Participate in the first round of discussion

This is a brainstorming phase. We want to hear all your ideas, suggestions, and the issues you think are important regards open and transparent government. At this stage any contribution is welcome and valid, no matter how left field. Blog posts, links to news articles and reports or research, commentary on what’s happening in other countries, your half thought through or fully structured thoughts, anything is welcome.

It would be great if you could use the OpenLabourNZ tag whenever you write about the issue. This will make it easier for us to find and aggregate your input.

To participate you can:

Stage 2. Participate in a public event

Labour will host a public event in about four/five weeks (date to be announced) which you can attend in person, or through remote access. We hope to stream it live and to have several prominent speakers on open, transparent government. This is an opportunity to take part in a live discussion on the main issues raised during the first round of discussions and to hear other people’s views.

Stage 3. Comment on the draft policy on the wiki

After the public event, a draft policy paper will be put together by an independent writer who will be tasked with drawing together all the major themes and issues raised during Stages 1 and 2. The draft paper will be placed on a wiki for editing by anyone who wants to participate, over a defined period. It will then be finalised, and presented to Labour as a major piece of input into our policy development process.

Please participate in good faith. If you have any questions, just post them on this  blog or email me directly.

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Filed under: #OpenLabourNZ, Labour Party, Red Alert, Social media, blogs, comms & IT, consultation, democracy, policy
32 Comments

Key Slippery on Childhood Education

Posted by Sue Moroney on April 28th, 2010

The Nats were looking decidedly uncomfortable today about their plans for to cut funding for early childhood education in May’s budget.

Both TV1 and TV3 covered this story that the Government was hoping to bury in the budget day haze that will surround the taxation issue.

Remember, you heard it on Red Alert first, when I blogged on their plans for funding cuts to ECE last week.

Filed under: Red Alert, Uncategorized, children, education
19 Comments

So what does Steven Joyce really think

Posted by Clare Curran on February 11th, 2010

It looks as though Steven Joyce is paying  a bit of attention to what’s happening over at Telecom after all.

The ICT Minister has distanced himself from a statement made by his office implying news articles about possible Telecom job losses and the XT network outages are a media beat-up.

Read the rest of this piece from the Telecommunications Review titled Joyce denies ‘media beat up’ comment.

Steven Joyce’s retraction follows a comment on my Red Alert post Talk to Telecom Steven…keep our jobs Kiwi by James, who said he’d emailed Joyce’s office. See below for what he asked and the reply from Joyce’s office. 

Apparently that wasn’t correct, and Joyce hadn’t meant to blame the media. Says he is interested but can’t get involved. And that he’s talked to Telecom. Wonder what else they talked about.

James says:
February 8, 2010 at 6:03 pm  (Edit)

Clare, On Wednesday 3, I emailed Joyce’s office:
1. Do you plan to discuss the issues as described within the article
above with Telecom, and try and assist keeping the jobs of
numerous New Zealanders whos jobs could be at jeopardy?
2. Have you discussed the issues as described within the article
above with Telecom, or any Telecom staff, if so, when, and what
was the conclusion?
3. Has he discussed with Telecom the XT failures and the lack of
investment in infrastructure?

Today I got the following statement:
Thanks for your email below regarding Telecom jobs and the XT network.

I can advise on behalf of the Minister that Telecom has been in touch with his office and that in both cases the story has been overblown by the media.

The Minister has discussed the XT Network situation with Telecom and Telecom are very concerned about the network, and recognise that they have to fix it to keep faith with customers.
ENDS.

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Filed under: Red Alert, comms & IT, jobs
4 Comments

Red Alert is nine months

Posted by Clare Curran on February 5th, 2010

I thought our nine month anniversary was worth noting, because nine months is like  well…gestation… and we are Labour. And I feel kind of motherly towards it.

Now that I’ve got that out the way, a few Red Alert stats:

  • We’re approaching a million page views
  • 1369 posts
  • 22,851 comments
  • Behind The Standard and Kiwiblog, Facebook is our third-largest referrer of traffic

Shan’t comment on who’s done the most posts, because we all know who that is. But we’ve now got 35 out of 43 MPs posting and more coming.

And there’s some imminent exciting new developments which will take Red Alert and Labour in new directions.

Keep reading us, commenting and participating. We are irrelevant without you. 

Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, comms & IT
16 Comments

A word about moderation

Posted by Chris Hipkins on January 22nd, 2010

Here at Red Alert we want to provide an opportunity for a wide range of people to engage with our MPs. As the political year gets into full swing, we thought it would be useful to do a quick re-cap of our approach to moderation. Clare’s post back in November set out the four golden rules:

  1. Keep it relevant to the post.
  2. Keep it clean. Don’t use offensive language. We’re tolerant, but we use the test of wanting to have intermediate age school kids using this site for research.
  3. Don’t make it personal. Stick to the issues rather than the person. By all means criticise what people have said or done, but do it in a way that is not personal. Leave families out of it. And we moderate attacks on National and ACT MPs on the same basis as Labour.
  4. Don’t tell lies.

In addition, we also encourage you to moderate yourselves in terms of the number of comments you make on a particular post. We will always be flexible to encourage genuine debate about issues raised in posts. However where people are commenting in such a way that clogs ups comments and discourages others from engaging, we will moderate the number of comments they can make on each post. We’re reluctant to stop people engaging, but if you can’t moderate yourselves, then we will moderate you.

The moderating team consists of Trevor Mallard, Clare Curran, Grant Robertson and myself. We welcome reasonable feedback, either in the comments thread here or direct via email.

We’re really pleased with the way Red Alert has evolved. Rest assured there is more to come!

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs
48 Comments

Fair cop Farrar: Mike’s done us proud

Posted by Clare Curran on January 21st, 2010

This year has had some odd beginnings for me. Here I am agreeing with David Farrar. Well actually, we agree on a number of issues I suspect. Just not some of the really fundamental ones.

Anyway, David drew attention on Kiwiblog to the fact that none of us  (on Red Alert) have congratulated Mike Moore on his appointment as NZ Amabassador to the US.

Of course Labour has made a statement in MSM congratulating Mike. But fair cop, we haven’t said anything here.

There’s two things to say. Firstly, it’s an honour and a measure of the man that he has merited such an appointment. It’s hugely significant and follows from his rather interesting, but stellar career as Prime Minister of New Zealand and Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

The second thing is to draw attention to his book Saving Globalisation launched a few months ago in Parliament. I haven’t had time to do more than flick through it, but it’s hugely interesting and informative and somewhat controversial.

Not just for those interested in globalisation, but for anyone interested in the state of progressive/social democratic ideas in a globalised world.

A recent review on Amazon puts the essence of the book like this:

Moore passionately believes that greater international economic engagement and interdependence driven by truly free trade can reduce poverty and promote more freedom and democracy throughout the world.

Weirdly, I’ve heard that the book hasn’t been reviewed in New Zealand. Not sure if that’s true, but if so, for goodness sake what’s wrong with us?

I don’t know Mike well. I’m newish to politics, he’s at another level. But we’ve had a couple of robust conversations (over fish and chips) and I like that he’s constantly thinking and challenging our ideas and political strategies. I’m looking forward to more robust discussions and think he retains enormous value in our Party, in our country. So congratulations Mike, keep on doing us all proud.

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Filed under: Book Reviews, Foreign Affairs, Labour Party, Red Alert, blogs, social democracy, trade
26 Comments

Social media and Labour

Posted by Clare Curran on January 10th, 2010

I thought I’d share a few of the things I talked about at the Labour Party Summer School this weekend.

It might seem strange us talking publicly about who we should be communicating with better and how we might try to do that. But if we don’t we’re fools, I reckon.

I suppose the main point to make is that Labour, like all political parties, must understand that it needs a better relationship with the voters of the future (Gen Y and the millenials) and why social media is such an important tool for doing that.

The relationship must be genuine and we should be making an effort to understand more the issues that really concern and matter to this generation in the digital age. Issues such as privacy, safety, censorship, ownership of information (piracy and copyright) creativity, quality of information. I’ll have more to say about this.

Here’s a few interesting facts.

  • Gen Y were born between 1976 and 1991
  • Currently there’s around 900,000 in NZ
  • This year they will outnumber the baby boomers
  • It is estimated that 96% of Gen Y use social media (world wide)
  • The emerging generations are the largest ever.
  • Combined X&Y = 70% global population
    • In Australia 57% population
    • Indonesia 67%
    • Pakistan 75%
    • Iraq 80%
  • Gen Y = 2.1 billion worldwide
  • In NZ, facebook use is at 1 million (25% population)
  • 150% growth in the last year
  • Global Nielsen report (March 09) says social networking has overtaken email as most popular way to communicate
  • In NZ 79.6% pop uses the internet
  • Amongst Maori, internet useage higher than non-Maori esp for social networking
  • Every day, we are exposed to 1600 marketing messages. Most are filtered out

This You Tube clip called the Social Media Revolution is really interesting. We’re doing a lot of thinking about this. We take it seriously and want to be credible.

Red Alert is part of our attempt to develop a more genuine relationship with people online. Many Labour MPs have facebook pages and are starting to use them more regularly. A few are on Twitter. But it’s not enough. We’re got a few more ideas for direct engagement with a broad audience via a mixture of face to face and online means.

The younger audience is obviously critical, but all age groups are online and using social media.

Interested in your thoughts.

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Filed under: Red Alert, Social media, comms & IT, internet
40 Comments

The next decade… how to pronounce it?

Posted by Clare Curran on December 31st, 2009

I just did a google search on news results for pronouncing 2010 twenty ten or two thousand and ten. There were 2,744 results and rising.

I don’t know whether a consensus has already been reached. I just listened to the radio news in the car on the way home and heard both versions in the same bulletin; one from a journalist, and another from a person being interviewed.

I think we’re confused. I personally lean towards twenty ten, but have been saying two thousand and ten and two thousand and eleven for a while.

A decision will be reached, but confusion may reign for a while. What do you think?

We hope to have the ability to do polls on Red Alert in 2010 (however it’s pronounced). For now you’ll have to vote through your comments.

Happy New Year to you all.

Update: Radio NZ, the BBC and a bunch of other media have decided on twenty ten.

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, humour
36 Comments

Should Red Alert out ministerial staff who make comments II

Posted by Trevor Mallard on December 15th, 2009

Great discussion over the last few days. Range of views and that’s not a surprise.

The tiny team has had a talk. We have decided to leave things as they are for now. We won’t out anyone without giving notice of a policy change.

We hope the debate causes people to realise that some of the comments are manufactured and not random – and people in the Beehive to understand that they need to consider carefully the position they are putting their Minister in if they mislead as to their identity on a blog.

Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, media, national
8 Comments

Lording it over us #2

Posted by Clare Curran on November 15th, 2009

Interesting that Kathryn Ryan from Nine to Noon  interviewed Lord Norton of Louth on Friday’s programme about the UK Lords of the Blog, which is what it says; a blog consisting of a bunch of Lords.

Red Alert posted on the Lords of the Blog a few weeks ago. Lord Norton is a prolific blogger with around 410 posts. He’s one of a few Lords who post on the site.

But what’s interesting is that Radio NZ chose to ignore the homegrown political blog, Red Alert, which exists under its very nose and is generating a lot of comment and discussion. 34 our of 43 Labour MPs, many who post regularly (some more than others).

In the interview with Lord Norton, Kathryn Ryan didn’t even mention Red Alert. I got a tip off that Radio NZ was doing the interview, so I guessed they knew about us.

Maybe I was mistaken. Because I choose to be charitable, I’ve made sure I’ve alerted them to this post so they now do know about us.

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs
10 Comments

Half a million page views on Red Alert

Posted by Clare Curran on November 14th, 2009

You might have noticed that we like to record the odd milestone on Red Alert.

Well today we passed the 500,000 page views mark. That means half a million pages have been viewed. Not half a million visitors.

Every time someone visits Red Alert they usually visit several pages. Our post marking the six month anniversary recorded nearly 200,000 unique visitors, spending an average of 3 minutes and 54 seconds on the site.

I’m keen for us to reach a million page views in the next few months, which means building our audience.

So feel free to tell people about Red Alert. It is pretty unique and we hope, interesting and challenging. And your participation, through your comments, is essential to its success.

Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, comms & IT
3 Comments

David vs Goliath

Posted by Clare Curran on November 14th, 2009

Imagine if the small town of Lawrence, in Central Otago, which has a free wireless network, had that network shut down by a big movie studio because someone in the town downloaded a pirated movie from the internet!

Well that’s what happened in the town of Coshocton, Ohio, who are without their free Internet after a single download prompted the Motion Picture Association of America to shut down the town’s municipal Wi-Fi network.

Lawrence has a free municipal network. It’s by no means unthinkable that should termination be included in the re-write of Section 92A of NZ’s Copyright Act, that a similar thing couldn’t happen here.

There’s a few issues to consider:

Is the internet an essential service, like the telephone, like electricity? If you use your telephone to conduct an illegal act, such as a drug deal, is your telephone disconnected? If you use your electricity to grow marijuana in your house, is your electricity cut off?

No. But, if caught, you are charged and you do reap the consequences, generally either by a fine or imprisonment.

A few weeks ago I did a post on Red Alert about Finland moving to make access to the internet a legal right. Should New Zealand be thinking about this?

And should a powerful movie studio have the ability to shut down a whole town’s access to the internet because of the actions of one person?

Imagine if you are running a business which relies on the internet, as most do these days, and you get shut down by because of such a tactic.

What do you think?

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Filed under: Red Alert, comms & IT, copyright
34 Comments

Good things in moderation

Posted by Clare Curran on November 9th, 2009

There’s been a bit of discussion on Red Alert among the commentariat about our moderating policy. In the interests of transparency and a willingness to engage, we, the moderating team, thought it would be good to introduce ourselves and set out some guidelines.

That should make it easier for everyone.

As Red Alert’s readership has grown, so have the number of comments. You may have noticed in the six months old today post (from last week) there have been to date almost 14,000 comments. We’ve now exceeded that and while we’re keen to keep expanding our readership, we’re pleased with our progress.

More comments, require more moderating, so our team has expanded.

We consist of myself, Trevor Mallard, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins. Our approach is pretty simple. Here are the guidelines for commenting:

  1. Keep it relevant to the post.
  2. Keep it clean. Don’t use offensive language. We’re tolerant, but we use the test of wanting to have intermediate age school kids using this site for research.
  3. Don’t make it personal. Stick to the issues rather than the person. By all means criticise what people have said or done, but do it in a way that is not personal. Leave families out of it. And we moderate attacks on National and ACT MPs on the same basis as Labour.
  4. Don’t tell lies

If you’re commenting for the first time, your comment will go into moderation, and is generally approved. After that your comments should automatically appear.

But if you step outside the guidelines, you’ll be placed “in moderation” which means your comments will sit in a box and be looked at by one of us before being approved.

If you have been banned then you’ll be placed in the banned box. And your comments will not appear on Red Alert during the period you are banned for. After your ban period ends all your comments will continue to be moderated.

In short, we do not tolerate trolling on Red Alert. For those of you who don’t know what trolling is, here’s the wikipedia definition:

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

Trolling results in editing, deletion of comments, and in the case of gross, or repeat offending, banning. So if you don’t troll, you’re generally okay. We moderate people from across the political spectrum. The occasional Labour MP has experienced moderation.

We write our posts in good faith, and we expect good faith and robust discussion in return. That’s not too much to ask.

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, comms & IT
51 Comments

Six months old today

Posted by Clare Curran on November 5th, 2009

Red Alert is six months old today. It began as a project of direct engagement. Politicians talking directly to, and with people about what they believe. Our first post said what we were about.

Being in opposition isn’t easy. It’s difficult for Labour to have its voice heard in the community right now. Red Alert has provided us with a voice, delivered directly, not via the prism of media. We think it’s been worth it. So far. What do you think? And what can we do to improve it?

Here are a few facts on content and traffic:

Number of posts: 879
Number of comments: 13,702
Number of Labour MPs posting on Red Alert:  32 (out of 43)
Unique visits to Red Alert: 192,962
Page views: 479,240 (as of around 10am this morning)
Average time spent on the blog: 3 minutes 54 seconds

MPs with highest number of posts:

Trevor Mallard: 292
Clare Curran: 88
Phil Twyford: 78
Grant Robertson: 74
Chris Hipkins: 61

Interestingly, open source browsers make up a significant percentage of Red Alert readership:

Internet Explorer dominates with 48%
Firefox 32% (open source)
Safari (Apple-based) 13%
Chrome (Google) 5% (open source)
Opera 1.5% (open source)

Our readers span the world. After New Zealand (highest percentage of readership) comes from:

Australia
UK
US
Japan
Canada

Within NZ, our  highest regional readership is from:

Auckland
Wellington
Christchurch
Palmerston North
Dunedin
Hamilton
North Shore
Invercargill
Lower Hutt
Nelson

I have to say I was a bit miffed that Dunedin was beaten by Palmerston North! (No offence Iain).

There you have it. Our half birthday. I’m feeling proud of us. Feedback?

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs, comms & IT, democracy
63 Comments

Red Alert #5 on NZ blog rankings

Posted by Clare Curran on September 23rd, 2009

Not quite five months old, Red Alert has leapt 10 places from No 15 to No 5 on Tumeke’s NZ Blogosphere list rankings. 29 Labour MPs posting, 600 posts, 9722 comments. Not bad. Next month we might make the top three.

PS: Couldn’t do it without you readers and commenters. Keep coming and we’ll keep on talking about stuff you’re interested in. Suggestions welcome (constructive ones)

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Filed under: Red Alert, blogs
31 Comments

Opening up #3 How can we?

Posted by Clare Curran on September 20th, 2009

Liberty, Linux and the gift economy.

Liberty. Freedom to act. The right to be. The essence of our humanity and of our society. A fundamental value which underpins Labour.

Linux. The story of a network of self-organized volunteers who broke new ground in the early 90s, not only in computer science, but in the way in which they worked together on a project from which none of them would derive significant monetary benefit. They did it because it was important, they were driven and because it provided a greater good.  The term Linux is derived from Linus Torvalds, a Finn, who in 1991 invited a bunch of academic computer scientists to join him in creating a new operating system. This was around the time the internet happened.

Today, Linux remains hugely important as the basis of many computer operating systems across the world which are constantly evolving.

It’s been described as the phenomenon of massive, distributed , self-organising volunteer labour, which continues to accelerate.

The gift economy. The notion that:

where goods and services are exchanged without a direct quid pro quo, and where a participant’s power and status are derived not from what s/he has accumulated by taking from others, but from what s/he has contributed by giving to others.

This is a deeply compelling philosophy. It’s the philosophy of reciprocity and exchange which underpins community and builds society. And it’s the philosophy of the internet. And, I contend, of Labour.

Why am I telling you this?

Because today is Software Freedom Day. And Labour can learn a lot from these founders of software freedom. They exposed the limitations of the monopoly market and the way in which the control of software has been used to concentrate wealth and stifle innovation.

There are extraordinary parallels across our society particularly in the technology infrastructure that will drive our future as a nation.

Open access, open source, open data, open software, open government. Opening up. This discussion began at our Labour Party conference last weekend.

Today, I pledge that we will try to practice what we preach and have an open discussion to build sound and profound policy. Please join this discussion and add value. If you are a Red Alert reader, you’ll be more likely to take an interest.

And read this article (PDF link) where I got some of the ideas for this post.

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Filed under: Red Alert, comms & IT, copyright, democracy, economy, infrastructure
26 Comments

Red Alert conference

Posted by Trevor Mallard on September 13th, 2009

Good example of MPs giving much better coverage than could possibly happen thru MSM.  Unmediated is gr8.

Quick count 22 posts from 11 MPs. Range from light – thanks Lianne you will keep – to a couple which go to the core of our electoral system. Maybe next time we should try and do a bit of a roster to get a better cover of remit, fringe and organisational workshops. We do need to get some consistent formating for speeches to aid posting for beginners.

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Filed under: Red Alert, conference, labour, media
13 Comments

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