from the civil service to the west coast of Ireland and beyond

With all the excitement of announcing the barcamp, I forgot to mention the fun I had at a recent event run by COI on behalf of the Government Communication Network.

Entitled ‘Social networking – can Facebook or YouTube help me? And what are they anyway?’ – the event was an opportunity to see some of the main social media tools and networks in action and talk to some of COI digital‘s experts about how they are being adopted across government.

Off the top of my head, there were demonstrations of social tagging, photo sharing, wikis, data mash-ups, and social networks such as Bebo and MySpace. Everyone had the ability to test them out, ask questions and develop ideas.

Around the room being used were a number of really useful wall displays explaining – in neat simple language – the technologies,  uses, potential etc. Hopefully COI will make these available to government communicators because they look like an excellent resource.

The workshop was run as part of the GCN Live series of events designed to help communicators across government build their knowledge and skills. I don’t know whether they plan to run more of this session but if you are at all curious at all about ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’, work in government and want to know more its got to be worth asking. Maybe COI would run a session for your team/ department too if you asked nicely.