Sarah Teather and other Brent Liberal Democrates have joined facebook. I’ve poked her, have you?

I wasn’t expecting to see our Sarah on Facebook… A few years ago electronic networking wasn’t on her list methods for constituency communications. How things change over time: the ubiquity of the term “social networking”, meaning a twittering, bebobuzzing space for me to show my face on the internet, has overtaken “blogging” in terms of its penetration into the nations daily lexicon.

Sarah sees Facebook as a compliment to her existing constituency working: “It’s important to be accessible to all my constituents, and there are lots of ways for people to meet me face to face.”

“Young people often have very strong opinions on local and national issues. Sites such as Facebook provide another way for me to hear their views. I can also use the site to tell young people about the work I am doing on their behalf. For lots of younger adults the internet is now the main way of keeping in touch. I hope that having a page on Facebook will encourage many more people to come forward with issues and campaigns they would like me to take up.”

But Facebook is a closed community, a members only space on the internet: at least MySpace member pages are public! These “Social websites expose class divide“. Blogging, i.e. online publishing with comments, is open and public and seeks to engage readers in a transparent dialog.
As we know from recent escapades that some people around Brent’s elected representatives like to engage in online ‘activism’… So I hope that Sarah’s Facebook account and our other MPs for that matter are only being operated by her and not by their teams. As we know from the Facebook terms of service, in the User Conduct section:

• In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:
• register for more than one User account, register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity;
• impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;
• impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;

Here’s a link to the LibDem FlockTogether page on the Stonebridge local council by-election.

I’m hoping that this coming week will see two local residents associations get online with powerful internet based self-publishing tools provided by comwifinet. These two groups, one in Stonebridge and one in Mapesbury, will also become part of the Bonnet network of community interest groups, extending the Bonnet network and improving their own effectivness as a result. I’ll be posting links to their websites and to their Bonnet information pages as soon as they are active.

I posted recently on what could be done next with this journal. “wither b.e.c?” i asked. well, new projects are on the horizon. I’ve been working on a community information network project with Colin George, Chair of QPARA and Director of MarketSpark (publisher of the excellent Local Directories for Brent residents associations). We see a need to weave links between associations and organisations active in Brent and an opportunity to develop such a network in the light of the demise of Brent Community Empowerment Network.

MarketSpark and Comwifinet are working together to augment and extend community network links through a varitety of mediums. The Bonnet Project is the working title of our efforts.

Because the Brent Community Empowerment Network is no longer with us, BrAVA have a large stack of cash to put towards a community consultantion project or give back to Brent Council. Perhaps BrAVA will see it to support the Bonnet Project? Who knows…

Visit the website, register yourself and your organisation, participate.

I’ve been reading more F Scott Fitzgerald recently as I’ve just discovered a collection of his short stories published by Hesperus. “The Popular Girl” collects together 5 short stories, each a gem, each of which, with dazzling brilliance and sparkling wit, disects Fitzgerald’s favourite topic: the American society-life. This came to mind this morning while I was digging in my visitor statistics for stats that stood out. The number one incomming search term (the query entered at a search engine that led someone to read this website) is Hayley Matthews. Popular Girl indeed.

Very little information about any of our Councillors on the internet, unless they happened to have been the Mayor or an MP. The Brent Council website lists limited contact information for each elected Council member, and the Brent Brain ‘blogging Councillors’ project had a limited pilot that does not appear to be running at this time. I recently worked with Neil Nerva to support him and the other Labour Councillors in Queen’s Park in the adoption and use on some internet tools: then he wasn’t re-elected so that internet based communications project has ground to a halt.

Hayley is a Brent Lib Dem, so why no information on her, or any of the other Brent Lib Dem councillors on the BELD website? The BELD site emphasises Sarah Teather over other elected members in Brent. With the Lib Dems now with the greatest number of seats in the Council, will we see an overhaul of the BELD website to communicate more from our Local Councillors and less from Sarah Teather? They’ve got www.sarahteather.org.uk for all the news from our MP after all!