The UnOfficial Green Party Liveblog

On Monday Damian Connon of the Green Party announced via email to bloggers that party’s plans for their coming Party Conference.
(See http://www.irishelection.com/03/green-party-take-internet-outreach-up-a-notch-a-whole-notch/#more-4729 ) for details. Amongst the news was the intention to set up a Liveblog using the ScribbleLive platform.

The ScribbleLive based liveblog of the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis had been a fantastic success- with no advance coverage beyond a post on tuppenceworth and some (few) twitter posts it attracted quite large audiences. The #ffaf hashtag was, for a while, the fifth most popular topic on twitter as a whole. Gavin, who was reporting from Citywest on the day, found that the photographs he posted were attracting around a thousand views each very quickly.

But the success didn’t only come from the numbers following the story. It came out the the strength of the medium itself. ScribbleLive added support for Twitter since Christmas and this occasion showed what a powerful addition that was. People who didn’t know the Liveblog’s address, or even know that it was happening, could have their opinions captured and added to the rolling picture of the event just by adding the tag #ffaf to the end of their Tweets.

The result was a virtuous circle of information and discussion- from the people reporting from the event to interested parties at home or, like me for much of Saturday, checking in using their mobiles. It gave us a mirrorball effect, seeing the Ard Fheis from all views at once- official party news, bloggers on the spot, links to other media as well as reaction to what was being said and done from around the country and abroad.

If you wanted to know about the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis, that Liveblog was, by a country mile, the best place to go. Beating TV and newspapers (and their websites) hands down, despite the paid reporters they had attending. Only the radio coverage gave a better feel for the atmosphere and news, in my opinion. But even that wasn’t available on demand.

So, after pushing the idea of Liveblogging for months, why wouldn’t I be only delighted to see a party taking the initiative and setting up their own Liveblog for their Party Conference? The problem is one of control.

ScribbleLive gives powers of moderation, editing etc to the creator of any particular Liveblog. And I don’t think that that it’s a good idea if we are going to rely on people’s honest enthusiasm to contribute to the discussion of public affairs for them to wonder if criticism is being played down for the benefit of any particular party.

With this in mind, I contacted Mr. Connon yesterday and offered to run a different, more independent liveblog for the Green Party Conference. To his credit, and the credit of his colleages, he was very open to hearing about the FF Liveblog experience and understood why the question of control was important for credibility.

So, the Completely UnOfficial and UnApproved Green Party Conference Liveblog can be found at http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Green_Party_Conference_2009

If you’d like to join in, either from the Conference or your own couch/ mobile just post on twitter ending with the tag #GP09