You need to open up more. WAY more. The lack of communication we get at the municipal level is abysmal. Compare yourselves to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin, MP Tony Clement, former Toronto Mayor David Miller, or MP Glen Pearson, and you’ll see the difference between your approach and theirs.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty

In fact, Glen Pearson blogs, tweets and even uploads videos to YouTube! He’s a pretty good example of what more politicians ought to be doing long before they run, during a campaign, and especially after being elected.

Do I expect the politicians themselves to always be the ones communicating with us via the various channels? No, of course not. I know full well their staffers will be doing some of it, and that’s fine. The difference is accessibility, and at least attempting to appear to be a normal person that just happens to be in an elected position of power vs. someone in a position of power telling you what they believe you should be thinking about.

I adore the fact that Dalton McGuinty has a Twitter account, and will tweet about seemingly innocuous things like coming home from his recent trip to China, where his dog showed more enthusiasm for his return than his kids did. It’s real, we all feel that way sometimes, and he actually replies to many tweets himself (according one or two directed at me).

There are a few area politicians who are leading the way, like Nancy Branscombe and Judy Bryant; unfortunately they are the exceptions to the rule in our area.  Middlesex Centre Mayor Al Edmondson, whom I’ve exchanged emails with in the past, has a website that was launched for the recent municipal election that hasn’t been updated since the election. Newly elected London Mayor Joe Fontana recently deleted his Twitter account after saying, during the campaign, he intended to continue communicating with citizens via his Twitter account (which lead to the events surrounding my previous blog entry).

I know what some of you are thinking: Who cares? Why should politicians blog, tweet, or have Facebook pages?

Middlesex Centre Mayor Al Edmondson

At a purely selfish level (for them), to help them get re-elected. If you’re a politician, and you strong believe you’re still the right person for the job, you need to get your positions, accomplishments, and message out there in as many ways as possible. If you think I’m wrong, you might as well not run in 2014. Get done what you can now, then get out.

In four years Twitter, Facebook, blogs – or whatever other medium comes in to replace or supplement those communication platforms – will be far more important than they are now. Much of the electorate in the London area is still catching on to social networking/media sites (for reasons other than sharing funny cat videos), but I myself maintain two Twitter lists full of London-based accounts – right now they track 840 individuals, businesses and organizations.

That’s 840 Londoners on Twitter who talk to 10 friends, who talk to 10 friends, etc. – the math starts to add up quickly! Oh, and that doesn’t count the Londoners with “protected” accounts – you can’t add those to Twitter lists. So the number’s probably closer to 900, if not more.

On a more altruistic level, politicians need to open themselves up in order to show they can take criticism and praise with equal grace, to show they really do care about their constituents whether it’s a riding or a ward, and to help increase their profile overall. It’s important to know who you should speak to regarding issues in your community regardless of the issue falling under municipal, provincial or federal jurisdiction – having name recognition makes your constituents feel better about having a real voice at city/town hall, Queen’s Park or Parliament.

I’m talking to London, Strathroy, Mt. Brydges, Kilworth, Komoka, Dorchester, Arva, Ilderton, St. Thomas, Glencoe, Newbury politicians… get more engaged; whether for the more selfish reasons I outlined above, or more community-building and altruistic reasons. At the moment, I’m not overly concerned why you do it – just do it.

• Yesterday afternoon several people, including myself, noticed that @londonsmayor had been re-registered by someone after former Mayor Anne-Marie DeCicco-Best had changed her Twitter handle to @DeCiccoBest.
• It looked like Joe Fontana, the new Mayor of London, was the person tweeting (or someone on his behalf, which is more likely), despite a misspelled name on the account’s profile (it was ‘Joe Fontama’ before being changed to simply ‘Joe F.’)
• @londonsmayor even replied to someone about the name change/handover saying that it was a simple administrative issue (which is true).
• I noticed a tweet from @londonsmayor last night, asking if anyone knew where he had to go tomorrow (for the swearing in ceremony) and it CC’d @LondonComms. I thought this was pretty funny, and knew immediately that the account was in fact a parody/spoof.
• This morning it was very evident it was a parody since a tweet was sent out saying Joe had been hit by something while riding his bike to the swearing in ceremony, even though Joe was being sworn in just as this was tweeted.
• I called out the fact that it was a parody/spoof account this morning, and several people agreed. No big deal, I still thought it was funny and harmless.
• @LondonComms tweets that they have reported this “hack” to Twitter.
• I take issue of the word “hack,” which this clearly was not.
• @LondonComms tries to reply to me, instead turning the reply into a retweet making it looked like I supported the City reporting the account to Twitter. I took issue with this and dealt with it via direct message, though others called @LondonComms out for it publicly — I appreciate the backup folks!

This led to Deb finding Orpheum’s website and getting my number via the Contact Us page. I end up being quoted in an article about the issue.

Unfortunately, Mayor Fontana is saying he has no intention of continuing to use Twitter after shutting down @JoeForMayor. This is unfortunate, and also a contrast to when he said, during the campaign, that he had intended to continue using Twitter to keep in touch with the populace even after the election.

It’s dumb, really, that he won’t continue to use Twitter to engage the public and connect with potential, future voters. And it’s also extremely shortsighted.

Thankfully the person that had registered @londonsmayor after Anne-Marie relinquished control is back on the beat with @NOTLondonsMayor. I’m really looking forward reading the tweets from London’s own version of @notstevejobs.

1. Integration of RPX. This means you can login using your Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, OpenID, Facebook or LiveJournal account and start participating in comments/discussions.
2. The current theme/layout. This theme has a lot of hidden features. One major one I’d like to highlight is if you hover your mouse over the top-right corner of the webpage, you’ll be given options to increase/decrease the size of the text and also the ability to change from a fixed-width version of my site to a fluid-width version of my site.
3. Addition of a formspring.me form. Formspring.me provides you with the ability to ask me any question. Clearly there are some I won’t respond to, like sexually explicit questions, but I’m going to do my best to answer every question asked of me as honestly as possible. The form is just to the right.
4. The book store. I used the Amazon Associate aStore feature to setup my own book store featuring books I enjoy or want to read. These books are laid out by topic area (food, education, etc.).
5. Dedicated pages for issues. For example, the London 2.0 page. It’s not done yet, but I’m using it as a public way to flesh out my ideas and opinions on topics. London 2.0 is just the start – I’ll be adding more as time goes on.

I hope that gives you a good breakdown of what’s new and maybe not so noticeable. My ultimate hope is that knowing more about how the site works will ultimately lead to more engagement with readers and a general satisfaction with your visit.

That being said, I’ve decided to bring back my “personal page” back from the dead. I have included feeds from my Twitter and Flickr accounts on to the right and below this post, respectively. I’m hoping to integrate other sites I’m a member of as I continue to develop the site.

In the meantime, feel free to browse around with little content is available and to check out my various accounts on the web. And have a nice day!