Sometimes speaking candidly can come across as speaking severely. So I read my quote in a Government Technology story about blogging with a bit of trepidation.

Lakewood, Wash., Councilmember Walter Neary said an elected official risks his career each time he blogs in the true sense of the word.

“The people who read your blog most carefully are your political opponents. If you blog right, you make yourself a bigger target,” Neary said. “You go to a lot of trouble to get elected, and then when you open yourself up, it gives people a lot more information they can use to try to unseat you.”

What I said is true. Everytime you put something out to the public, you offer up a vulnerability.

HOWEVER that’s the nature of politics. The same is true of what you as a council member put in a campaign statement, in a city brochure, in a speech at a council meeting or at a breakfast club.

So … surely blogging creates more vulnerability. However, it creates more opportunity for success. I’ve had any number of people thank me for my blog. It creates risk for my career, but it also creates opportunities. That’s the other side of blogging not covered in that story.

I do worry prospective bloggers might be scared away by such comments. But you know … if they are, then they are probably not well served to be bloggers anyway. Part of being an elected official is to try to speak the truth courageously and effectively. If you don’t feel called to do that by blogging, then don’t.

I spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Association of Washington Cities annual meeting about the use of Twitter, Facebook and blogging to reach our citizens. It was a great day in Spokane. The overall feedback I got afterward is that a lot of people were thankful for a safe environment to learn about these methods, all of which have a lot of hype and mystique around them.

What got very odd is that four people either from or affiliated with the city of Shoreline warned that these methods could bankrupt a city because of a court ruling involving them. Needless to say, their comments had quite a chilling effect on the discussion. I had to acknowledge their concerns without being familiar with the case.

When I got back to the hotel room, I looked up the court case. It’s pretty amazing. It involved tampering with a public document. If I was involved in a case like that, I sure wouldn’t be showing up at a seminar claiming to know anything about public outreach (Read up a bit on the case at http://www.wasupremecourtblog.com/tags/oneill-v-city-of-shoreline/ and the more thorough http://cforjustice.org/2008/07/22/chasing-the-metadata/ )

The short version is that one of the former council members deleted part of an email before providing it through the public records act. Needless to say, a court did not like this. I don’t blame the court. Tampering with a public document is wrong.

The case does have implications in how cities and public officials archive their documents; some guidelines on that subject are badly needed. How folks from Shoreline reached the conclusion that Facebook, Twitter and blogging were as dangerous as tampering with documents is beyond me. I feel kinda bad that I was not better prepared; I console myself that council members in the room who do research now know a lot more about ways to talk to their constituents. And talking to your constituents is always good.

Update Friday morning: when I wrote the below, I thought speakers were from the city of Shoreline. The mayor of Shoreline, Cindy Ryu, did oppose use of social media, but the leadoff speaker was actually an attorney: Ramsey Ramerman of the law firm Foster Pepper. My apologies to Shoreline council members, who as far as I know don’t tamper with public documents. The tampering was done by someone who is no longer on the council)

I’ve picked up good ideas and practices after reading other City Council member’s blogs. For one, I’ve learned to write a lot more succinctly. Shorter is far more effective on the Web.

The other lesson involved an approach I had to learn over a far longer time. The best practice is well summarized by City Councilman Douglas Athas of Garland, Texas, back when I was writing him and other council members for tips:

Indicate what is reporting and what is opinion; your readers deserve to know the difference. I think it generally a good idea to not mix the two. Two separate posts can work better.

I can categorize each post (most blogs can) and if I have any comments that are opinion, I assign that blog post to my Opinion category (and others, too, if appropriate).

I was slow in learning this lesson. I began my columns in the same style as I wrote as a newspaper editor. What I sort of vaguely told myself is that readers must want “interpretation” from me as a councilman. In the life of a newspaper columnist or editor, words are often a tactical weapon you use at those you want to persuade or move.

Of course, what I have learned with age is that darn few people are persuaded of something they don’t want to be persuaded about. They are generally looking for reinforcement of their beliefs; or, more relevant to this post, they want information that is relevant to their lives and/or their understanding of something.

What I found is that the slicing words that got me the most praise as an editor … heck, the words that won me a lot of awards … got me the most criticism as a City Councilman.

Now criticism comes with the territory. This criticism was right on. People like information about their government “straight up.” Walter the opinion columnist had to give way to Walter the City Councilman. Walter the City Councilman would be happy if people just knew what was going on in Lakewood. So he sure doesn’t want to repel people with his writing style.

I had to adjust my attitude and approach. People have told me they like it. I haven’t written a particularly savage column in a long while. When I do, I will clearly label it as such so people don’t enter the post thinking it is something other than what it is.

Take a look at how Douglas categories Opinion posts. Makes a lot of sense and I will start doing it myself.

I wrote to several city council members who blog, asking for tips and advice. I’ll be sharing some of that advice. Of all the contents in all the emails, the one paragraph that really turned my head was this one, from Councilwoman Angela Hunt of Dallas. She lives in a city where a council member could probably get a staff person to write the blog, but clearly she writes hers.

This was the advice that struck me:

Don’t allow comments. Blogs take a lot of time by themselves, and if you are having to constantly respond to comments, they will eat up all your time. Encourage constituents to email you their thoughts and reply directly to them.

This got me thinking, and I took a look. A lot of council member blogs, particularly those in big cities, don’t enable commentary. I’m still going to allow comments on my blog, but after her pithy advice, I won’t worry as much about the lack of comments. I do like people to ask questions, but I no longer cherish the illusion that my blog will somehow serve as a sort of town hall.

I’m not alone; most council member blogs don’t get a lot of comments. I used to get a fair number from anonymous folks who accused me of trying to destroy the city for whatever reason got them excited. For awhile, I thought that maybe this created some sort of constructive dialogue, but I ended up deciding it just took time. Ever since I required would-be commentators to sign up with their name, I’ve had hardly any comments. A somewhat sad truth I’ve noticed is that most of the people who comment to blogs are the people who are in opposition of whatever is stated, and, most important from how I use my time, don’t have any real interest in why I support what I support. And they like to be anonymous.

There is a famous, famous cartoon about anonymous blog posters that summarizes what I think of them. Let me tell you right now it is highly highly highly offensive so please do not click on this link if you are offended by obscenities. If you are offended by obscenities and click on this, don’t come crying to me. I only post it because it’s incredibly true: the Penny Arcade cartoon about anonymous blog posters.

So while I enable comments, I applaud the councilwoman’s approach: concentrate on providing information and commentary, and not on trying to hold a town hall on your site when conditions are not right for one.

There’s this one room at a historic hotel in Portland that I am coming to associate with the latest and greatest in technology. Funny how location melts into sentiment.

The room is the third floor ballroom at The Governor Hotel. I’ve been there twice now. In July 2008, I attended the Internet Strategy Forum which opened my eyes to a lot of ways of communicating with customers and constituents. I started more aggressively blogging and trying new things at both my jobs (Comcast and the Lakewood City Council). Some worked, some didn’t.

Yesterday I was at another workshop about digital communications, Communicopia, organized by the Portland chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and the Oregon/Columbia chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

Once again, speakers discussed cutting-edge techniques to approach and listen to customers through the Internet and digital media.

The changes between July 2008 and May 2009, less than a year apart, are striking. There were far more good case histories yesterday of how companies are using the Internet to bridge gaps with citizens. I’m still contemplating all the changes, not to mention all the case histories, but two things struck me right away.

GOVERNMENT WAS THERE: There was nobody from government at the July 2008 meeting that I can recall. And indeed, most of the folks yesterday were from business. Still, yesterday, even some of the panelists were from government: Sally Ridenour, Oregon Department of Transportation and Jennie Day-Burget, Portland Water Bureau. Case histories were shared such as use of social media by an airport.

That said, I didn’t see any other elected officials. Maybe they’ll be there in May 2010. But the government examples were solid and show how agencies are trying to use technology for everyone’s benefit. These examples are from Portland, of course; but they’re growing all over the place in other states including Washington. Anyone in Washington state who is using Twitter should definitely be monitoring the Washington State Department of Transportation.

TWITTER WAS THERE: There were only a few people using Twitter at the July 2008 conference. Yesterday, there were dozens, and in fact the organizers even had a contest related to Twitter.

The discussions have matured. In July, it was all about ‘get on board.’ Yesterday, several speakers commented that you needed to be targeted and strategic. My favorite speaker, the plain-speaking Jeff Hardison of McClenahan Bruer Communications, compared people under pressure these days to enter “social media” to kids under pressure to drink beer in college: everybody thinks they need to be on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, or whatever Oprah and Aston Kurcher are using. He and several other speakers pointed that that it makes no sense to spend time on something like Twitter if you don’t have customers there.

“Your culture may not have the culture to do this stuff, no matter what people say … This isn’t high school where you’re under pressure,” Hardison said.

All the discussion got me thinking that all of us can be more strategic in how we communicate. That got me thinking that I need to spend less time on Twitter as a Lakewood City Councilman, because so far I have found all of one Lakewood voter (out of apprx. 13,000 active voters) dialoguing with me. I love my city, but it’s not known for early adoption of technology.

And there are more reflections, but that’s good for now. Wanted to share thoughts on two interesting days, nine months apart, in a historic Portland ballroom.

There’s been a lot of buzz about how electronic media will allow elected officials and citizens to exchange ideas. So I tried a little experiment, and posted some news on Facebook and on Twitter.

The news was that the city of Lakewood’s collection of traffic fines is up 40 percent for the first three months of 2009 compared with the first three months of 2008, for total of about $200,000 more. I have to say, I didn’t get a lot of feedback, but what I got was very high quality.

This is what I posted, because I was interested in what people thought: Lakewood WA traffic cameras collecting 200K more so far in 09, up 40%. Keeping drivers safe or fining people too much?

One person on Twitter, a former co-worker, wrote: or just creepy Big Brother technology that should rile small “l” libertarian minds like yours?

Another person offered two thoughts:

Assuming accident rates are down 20% in camera zones, how does that compare to non-camera zones? w/out those numbers, can’t tell.

I responded that there was indeed a reduction and then the other person responded: Thx. If trying to decide if cameras improve safety, prob should get stats on camera v. non-camera areas. 20% citywide is good news.

and meanwhile, another person who’ve I’ve never met in the flesh asked for more info. I gave her some News Tribune stories about the subject of traffic fines and traffic cameras. She responded Cool, just curious. Wenatchee is in process of installing red-light cameras.

So that was Twitter.

Meantime, here was the reaction on Facebook. Four very thoughtful reactions:

It depends, if it’s you running the red lights. It is frustrating when the light turns green and you have to wait for 4-5 more cars as they keep going through.

It is obviously not high enough. People are still running the lights. It is a major cause of traffic death here in Florida where the red light means next 3 cars.

My theory: Weak budgets and hungry cops. At a minimum, I suspect there is pressure from the top to enforce hard, it seems to be that way everywhere these days.

Keep up the GOOD work. TOO many people speed every day and there is NO reason to drive fast. We are not driving the Indy 500 here – Speed KILLS!

I have to tell you … I was very impressed with the points of view.

BUT

and there’s a BUT

Not a single one of these folks lives in Lakewood.

So … great views. Great Internet exchanges. Zip interaction with Lakewood.

I think in part it’s because Lakewood folks are not on the Internet as much as they will be in, say, a few months or a year. Or …. it might just be I’m not in the right places. So now I am posting this on my Lakewood blog … will be interested to see if I get more reaction …

A couple months ago, I ‘jumped the shark’ by posting a photo of Elvis below and wondering if there’s all that much interest in government and social media. I didn’t post much after that. It seems like only a few months ago that if you brought up the topic in government circles, there were frowns and hesitation and muttering about how government people couldn’t go near social media on their computers.

In the past couple months, that’s surely changed for the better. Seems like there are two primary sources: the Obama adminstration embracing social media (and Republicans talking about perhaps it can help their cause) and all the talk about Twittering in Congress. One blogger coined the phrase Goverati to cover people involved in enriching social media and government; and beyond that, the entire Air Force apparently wants to be involved.

The latest articles on the subject offer a lot of excitement. Consider how many ways Secretary of State Clinton is using social media and the Internet. People can follow her around the world. In a few years, when we can upload avatars of ourselves into the 3-D Web, it probably will be virtually possible to follow her into a building in London or the Mideast.

Something I had not thought about before is that this social media emphasis is not just about being more transparent. With the disintegration of newspapers moving faster and faster, we may be fighting for the attention of the public about public policy. A recent story in Time magazine is scary. The article talks of a town without local news that suffers reduced voter participation and fewer candidates. It’s a scary scenario unless something replaces the local newspaper to inspire public participation.

We could have told you this before, based on what we’ve seen in my hometown. It’s a very real scenario in my town, Lakewood, a suburb of Tacoma. We’re too close to Tacoma to have our own community newspaper. We’re too small to get more than a story every couple days, if that, in the Tacoma paper. I know from talking to citizens that a lot of them have no idea what’s going on in the town, and that makes them uncomfortable. Some tell me my blog helps …. and our hyperlocal blog definitely helps … can all the tools of social media help?

They have to! Any way we can be involved in interacting with each other in the hunt for deeper and richer public policy discussions is valuable.

I was wondering whether to continue this blog or not, back in January. It’s interesting to see how the Twittering by members of Congress has really put social media and government in the spotlight. The resulting fuss has been both intriguing and also made me feel a ton better.

Why?

Back when I was blogging in 2004, I started noticing a very, very small but vocal reaction. What I was doing was discussing my inner conflicts about some of the policy positions in front of my community. I got some very, very heated feedback from people. One of my campaign supporters wrote, for example,

A state legislator, Kris Amundson, reminds us in a blog posting that an elected official who blogs can always make his or her points in a more creative, original and compelling way … and also be responsible for an Elvis sighting!

Check out this great new mapping website from the city of Seattle. I bet everyone would love to put their town ‘on the map’ like this. There’s a lot going on with mapping, such as Zoodango, a site that notes local attractions and lets people rank and share information about them.

If you couple all this work with technology that makes this information portable – even wearable - the potential is amazing. Wouldn’t it be great if a citizen could point their augmented reality glasses or headset, or whatever, at a city building or an entire civic complex and have the device tell the person what services are where?

Imagine a world where taxpayers can ask their machine to give them directions to a place that’s being discussed by their City Council … which of course is possible with GPS technology … but then also get relevant information about the proposal onsite through one of these devices. And then … be able to make a ‘public comment’ then and there by dictating into a machine that saves the feedback for the council?

OK, we’re aways from that … but these are clearly exciting times.