Social Ch@nge

Oh, climate change.  Oh, the UN. A giant concept and a giant organization, both with limited access points for the public, guaranteed to make you feel small, disempowered and unheard.  Well, it’s that time of year again: it’s the UN Climate Change Conference, and this year it’s happening in Poland!

Kidding. That’s an excerpt from last year’s post about the UN Climate Change conference, when we did a case study of the Polish website (and Avaaz). It’s just that, when it comes to climate change and making UN information accessible, so little has changed since last year that everything’s feeling, well, a little recycled.

Our criteria last year for a good conference website holds up: conference websites have to be clear, pretty, interactive and useful to thousands of stakeholders with radically different needs. Last year, we thought the Poles had given it a good try. Sure, it wasn’t the prettiest website, but they tried to make complicated information as accessible as they could through an issues quickfinder and a section called “Essential Background”. But they also used a lot of jargon. Can the Danes do better? Well, here’s the conference website.

It is pretty. But clear? Here’s a litmus test: see how quickly you can find these key talking points. Bonus question: Could you understand the talking points once you found them?

- Why are they holding this conference?

- Who’s speaking for the EU at the conference?

- What was achieved at the last UN Climate Change conference?

- What has convinced scientists that humans are largely responsible for global warming?

You get bonus points if you managed to make it through any of the blogs. Now, I am not in favor of dumbing down a message. But I am a believer in in information that’s accessible, clear writing and a conference website that I can use to access the issues. However, by explicitly targeting only the press, ngos, businesses, researchers and delegates, you – the person using the website who couldn’t afford to get to that conference in person – could be forgiven for feeling a little left out.

There’s some decent use of traditional media that does make accessing the conference issue easier (for example, it was a good move to post the news feed prominently and they’ve made it searchable by target audience) There is also an interactive comment tool that lets you send your greetings to world leaders on the main page, then re-broadcasts them at the top and on screens at the conference. But they lose serious ground on information management, and on some of their basic social media offerings by not treating it as social media – besides their heavily managed Climate Change Thinker blogs,  they’ve created a Facebook Page  that doesn’t allow Fans to post to the wall, and a Twitter feed that appears set only to broadcast.

Where they seem to be concentrating their social media efforts is in Raise Your Voice, a Youtube channel that solicits video messages from users as well as from more famous (and unexpected) contributors like Emma Thompson, Jet Li and Desmond Tutu. Part of the channel frames the big issues through selected user comments, and lets you either comment yourself, or vote the featured comment up or down.  This bit works well, but it’s a shame that the rest of the conference website isn’t as welcoming to people looking for information or tools. What if there was a conference wiki, or a collaborative platform available to users where ideas and brainstorming could take place? What if there was an online gathering place where e-delegates could present about their organisations (say an online version of the International HIV/AIDS conferences’ Global Village gathering area?) What if the website’s search engine could link users to academic information or reports. What if – here’s a brainstorm – some of the blogs were written by the rapporteurs for each session?

What if this site was a way for the world to enhance the talks at Copenhagen? Sadly, unlike climate change, constructive use of Web 2.0 for conferences appears to be moving way too slowly.