Content about Social information processing

Launched in December, Google+ Communities are a place where users can share ideas and content relating to a particular topic with others who are just as interested in striking up a conversation. Already, the types of Communities available to the Google+ audience seem endless — ranging from science, animals, and even groups devoted to cities such as Detroit and Kansas City.

Have you ever shared a ladder with a neighbor? Hosted an out of town friend on your couch for the night? Know of someone who works from a co-working space? These examples of sharing resources may come as no surprise to you. Moreover, there are also people out there rebuilding the education, agriculture, transportation, housing, and financial sectors through the concept of sharing. These lesser-known examples may be more common than we think. If more people were aware of this phenomenon would the collaborative economy be booming?

TransparencyCamp is an “unconference” for opengov: an event where, each year, journalists, developers, technologists, policy-makers, government officials, students, academics, wonks, and everyone in between gather to share their knowledge about how to use new technologies and policies to make our government really work for the people -- and to help our people work smarter with our government.

Don't miss this Special Interest Track at the 25th Bled Conference - eDemocracy: from eRevolution to eParticipation. The purpose of this Special Interest Track is to shed light on recent developments in this highly topical areas and to discuss exciting new projects, experiences and future (research) directions -especially from a infor-mation systems perspective.

We hope all of you have had a joyous holiday season, and from all of us here at EngagingCities, we wish you a prosperous and happy New Year! In conclusion to a great 2011, here’s a quick look back at our most popular posts, according to our web analytics data, from this past year. Cheers - more to come in 2012! 

An entry level planner approaches his manager and asks if the department should be considering creating a Facebook page to get the word out about current projects. Says he knows a planner in the Bay Area that has recently done this for his community. The manager is skeptical. His only experience with Facebook in this context is work-related questions that would come in directly to him from residents, which foiled his attempts to have a personal life in the small town he managed. So, is this a good idea? Or a bad one - to have a Facebook page dedicated to your community and managed by your city department? What about controversial projects you are working on?

There are many ways to leverage your project’s web and mobile presence in our ever innovative world of outreach and communications technologies. In our day to day dealings with clients, we teach businesses, including real estate companies, non-profits, local authorities, and government institutions how to reap the most benefit from today’s most popular social media services, including blogs, online communities, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

As mutual advocates of issues central to the future of cities, Next American City is just one of the resources that EngagingCities staff refers to from time to time in search of the top trends and tools related to socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities. Recently, Next American City Magazine published a comprehensive list of best apps, websites and software for enhancing and improving urban life. The list included tools affiliated with everything from city governance,  mapping and transportation, to “living well”.  Our favorites are...

Some of you might be familiar with Foursquare, a mobile service that lets you “check-in” to locations and see who is nearby. Recently, Foursquare founder  Dennis Crowley  opened its API to anyone who wanted to build layers on top of Foursquare. This invitation inspired a new location based app called Scoville, currently available in beta mode to Foursquare members and Facebook users.

These days RFPs for planning projects often include the requirement to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites as a means to communicate with the public. Unfortunately, it typically doesn’t go beyond that and many projects that we have seen simply use these venues under the assumption we-build-it-and-they-will-come. Therefore the level of activity and fans or followers is often low.