by Many thanks to Bernard De Broglio for passing me this link after we met at an event last week discussing online participation for local government with members of the Australian Government Web2 Taskforce.
It tells the story of how Birmingham City Council in the UK spent 2.8 million pounds sterling on a website that was years late to deliver and didn’t even include basic features like RSS. Unsuprisingly perhaps, people didnt like it.
Anyway, to continue the story, the response of the community was to build their own. They did it in couple of days and with no budget and no official participation from Council who, one would imagine, might be left feeling they have lost control completely.
Why did the community do this? Because Council omitted to ask them what they wanted from the new site.
Still think you can control the message?
This work by Bang the Table Pty Ltd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.
Great example!
I also point people to Google Sidewiki.
ANYONE can comment on your website now, saying whatever they like with no moderation.
Participation has become the only way to retain a level of control over message.