Diigo Provides A New Communication Channel for Government Transparency and Policy
Some of you already know what a big fan I am of Diigo.com. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always been a literary person or perhaps it’s because I’ve been working in online research of decades, but for me, Diigo is a revolutionary tool. If you’re like me, you bookmark hundreds of websites/pages that you want to come back to in the future because they provide supporting research, provide examples of successful models you are interested in using, or you want to use in a blog post you haven’t written yet, etc. My biggest problem is that I bookmark all kinds of things, and two months later when I came back to them, I often can’t remember why I specifically bookmarked particularly sites. Diigo solves this problem for me because it allows me to highlight phrases or sections of a webpage and add comments and sticky notes that remind me of what I was thinking about at the time I bookmarked it. For me, the annotation capabilities make Diigo a lifesaver. But there are all kinds of other features I am just staring to recognize the genius of. It can also informative and a lot of fun reading the comments others have left on the same webpage. For instance, on my Twitter profile, someone added a sticky note that says something in Danish.
I have not used Diigo’s social features much, but that is about to change. As an experiment, I am starting a new Diigo group called “Government Transparency” in order to build an online repository of webpages and annotations by others interested in government transparency. I envision it as an online brain trust on the subject and I am recruiting you–yes you–to help. All you have to do is join Diigo, join the group, and start bookmarking and annotating webpages. And if you run into something online you think belongs in the Government Transparency group, tag it and save it to the group.
As a way of exploring the new level of conversation Diigo makes possible, I might propose a discussion on how to use Diigo to help the government transparency movement at TransparencyCamp in Washington D. C. next weekend. It’s an unconference, so I’ll just see how it goes. But I see a lot of potential in attracting like-minded activists to contribute to such a Diigo group–not only for collecting and annotating online documents and conversations, but for creating a new conversation entirely. For instance, if you look at the first blog post on whitehouse.gov through Diigo’s eyes (logged into your account), you’ll see an online conversation you had no idea was going on. Think of the potential in that. A group of directed activists could make all kinds of interesting things happen using Diigo as a tool for collecting and annotating material, but also for starting a new kind of conversation about those materials and using that conversation to inspire action. What do you think? I’d love your help exploring this idea so help me spread the word!
I’ve included Diigo’s demo video below.
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“My biggest problem is that I bookmark all kinds of things, and two months later when I came back to them, I often can’t remember why I specifically bookmarked particularly sites”
That’s what happens to me with my delicious page–i forget where I put it!
That’s why you need bloggers, it can get overwhelming to check out all the new gadgets and softwares out there. That even If it there is something really good out there…not too many people know about it.
Thanks for the video..
Hey, thanks. That really sounds like something I could – and would – use. Like the other person, I bookmark dozens of things and then forget why I was so interested in it.
Hi, a great video and wonderful tool for me.
Thanks