Irrespective of whether this yields much political fruit in the form of new votes, it is undoubtedly clever from a party that actually does seem to be grasping the potential benefits of drawing upon the collective wisdom of the nation – even as an exercise in public consultation. Whether anything useful comes from the analysis or not (the site itself is rather basic – reflecting I guess the need to rush to get something out there) you can be sure that it will garner news headlines, those with an interest will feel engaged and it offers real efficiencies for Conservative HQ and their effort to respond to yesterday’s announcements by The Chancellor.  It’s hard to see how they can lose on this. I see Liam Byrne has suggested that it reflects the fact that the Conservatives “need help” with their response. I think that’s a potentially dangerous line to take on this one but we’ll see…..

Their recent “Cash Gordon” campaign online via Twitter was undoubtedly a disaster – be wary of trying to manipulate the web dwelling public into becoming a conduit for something they haven’t initiated or truly believe in – but on this one (for now) I doff my social(ist) media flat cap.

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Fascinated and excited by the recent launch of Ireland’s very own island-wide Crowdsourcing experiment/competition:

http://www.yourcountryyourcall.com/index.html

And apart from  few minor points of confusion on the site itself I think it’s been very well done thus far. Intrigued to see how the organisers move into the next phase of evaluation and ultimately implementation which is where such “Us Now” experiments will live or die.

Just reading some of the early ideas/proposals gives much food for thought and in many instances I felt genuinely inspired.  Will be keeping a close eye on this one.

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