The Local AND Global in Public Access Media

A few of my co-workers and I had an interesting discussion this week about how best to use our external online presence, on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and blip.tv. We talked about sharing local information relevant to the community we serve on a platform available to the world for those with access to the tools, skills, and knowledge. A simple question we had was “Why would people globally be interested in what we are doing locally?”

It made me think about the beauty of the web when it’s working at it’s best. What I love about the web is the opportunity it provides to find things that people around the world are sharing online, whether it’s video, audio, photos or text that they’ve created and allowed other people to join in conversations around their work or ideas. It is with this openness that can lead to inspiration.

When a blog post contains hyperlinks it provides “see for yourself” opportunities for others to find their own context and meaning. Blog posts - at their best - are not meant to be final, but rather they are like rolling snowballs down hills. Open platforms - websites open to others sharing their ideas - provide opportunities for this activity to occur.

So in terms of our question above, I think sharing local content on global platforms can do both successfully. That is to say that the web can provide opportunities to share local content locally, while allowing others to participate in the conversation and become inspired globally.