@mafjohnson see [link to post] for a view

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Chief Superintendent Robin Smith, commander of Sussex Police’s East Sussex division, is due to be joined by Sussex Police Authority members Carole Shaves and Councillor Bob Tidy, and Detective Chief Inspector Michael Ashcroft, head of the county’s CID.

The event is being held on Thursday January 21 between 6pm and 7.30pm at the council chamber at County Hall in Lewes.

It is due to be broadcast live on East Sussex County Council’s website, http://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/webcasts.

Whilst it is possible to find webcasts with low viewship (and I would suggest this is possbily due to marketing plus a continuance of the non citizen friedly language that councils use – but that is another topic) you can also find successes see http://www.bcfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10327~1867366,00.html nearly 6000 people viewing a council debate live.
There are lots of citizens comments such as “At last we will be able to discover what Councillors actually said rather than the potentially biased version propagated by the local media”. It would be a shame to loose anything and any form of editing could only destroy any of the trust that has been built up.

RT @davebriggs The biggest mistake councils made with online engagement [link to post]

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RT @Lisa_Mc_G: RT @davebriggs The biggest mistake councils made with online engagement [link to post]

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Adrian: try using your argument about going to your local planning meeting to some rural counties. Would you really like to get home from work, jump in your car (if you have one) or use public transport in the middle of January to travel to a council planning meeting which could involve a lengthy trip for the evening, or get home from work, have some food and sit and watch the debate online?
I understand your side of the debate but for every good reason you use there is an equally good counter reason.

I was also interested in the debate about using associated documents and agenda’s etc using webcasts. Surely this content is already available? I can see all of this and more when I watch my local council debates (Mole Valley).
[Now I'm wondering if anyone here has actually seen a proper webcast of a local council meeting!]

Here’s the comment I made on one of our Councillor’s blogs http://cllrkenhawkins.co.uk/2009/12/10/full-council-8-december-2009/#comments

“Alan Colson says:
10 December 2009 at 8:54 am
I came along to view this session, mainly to see what goes on. I found it quite interesting, although as someone who works at the Council, and therefore aware of many of the things being discussed, it was probably easier for me.

If we want to engage more with the citizens of the borough, perhaps we should consider making these meetings a little more accessible, and have the Mayor mention the report, and have a 1 or 2 line summary before calling the Councillors up. It would save people trying to find it in the papers, and a bit more ‘user friendly’ if I can use that term here.

Also, it may pave the way to record these meetings as podcasts, and make them available on the website, something which would be very useful to people interested in politics/democracy/Solihull who prefer to listen to things on the go, or with visual impairments, rather than sit down to read them. (Although I don’t know who I need to talk to if I want to pursue this idea)”

If after eights years of webcasting it’s still a case of “well, change takes time you know…” then there’s something more fundamentally wrong than simply not having let enough years go by. As I said in the post, if you look at other forms of verbatim reporting, overall the world is moving away from rather than towards it. What’s the reason to believe that after so long, and going against the grain, things are gong to change for webcasting?

As for the alternatives – again I’d point to what I said in the post. Look at what is done with information about meetings online. Often it’s minimal, locked away in files that aren’t picked up by search engines and without links to background and explanatory information. Taking a council agenda and minutes and turning that into an lively, informative, linked in document will do far more in most cases than webcasting the meeting – and at less cost.