Update: UserVoice has launched a site that collects and rates ideas about what tasks the upcoming Obama Adminsitration should start with. (Think Dell’s IdeaStorm for the new administration) I’ve added a new task called: “Developing a Community Manager for the USA”.
Please go vote it up!
Josh points out a genius idea, and it sounds terribly connected to my previous thoughts about Obama’s Social Media Campaigning:
I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country’s problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world’s largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.
I’m quite serious when I say this: Where do I submit my resume??
One thing I’d like to take exception to with Josh’s idea is that the value is tapping into the world’s largest focus group. That’s the politics of (hopefully) the past, and it doesn’t truly deliver on the Social Media Promise. The true value of creating a project like this is that it helps to activate and motivate citizens to positive action.
With a community based on around a better connection to government, the citizenry could combine forces with their elected representatives to make decisions and implement solutions. They could do so together, using the my.america.gov site as a hub for such activity.
Certainly this community would inherently serve a focus group-like purpose, simply because information would exist and politicians could (and should) access it. But it’s more than that. This type of community, guided by successful community management could quite literally change the way a citizen base interacts with their representation.
