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Welcome to Dipnote
| Posted by Sean McCormack on Oct 02, 2007 - 02:02 PM |
Welcome
to the State Department's first-ever blog, Dipnote. We actually chose the name Dopenote first and had the logo all designed before we were told that the Drug Enforcement agency already had dibs on that name. As a communicator
for the Department, I have the opportunity to do my fair share of
telling patent untruths on a daily basis. With the launch of Dipnote, we are hoping to
start the appearance of a real dialogue with the public.
But I sure wish I knew what people thought was so darn funny about our name? We are diplomats, so naturally we wanted something with the sound "dip" in it. It also could be made into kind of cool acronym: I think of "DIP" as "Doing It in Public." Of course, my teenaged daughter just laughs whenever I show her all the great work that we're doing here on Dipnote. Every time I ask her what's so humorous, she just looks at me with a smirk and says, "Oh, notthing."
Anyway, soon we're planning to launch a great children's website with a group of plucky cartoon characters called "The Dips." Papa Dip is a loveable fruit-importer, Mama Dip does consciousness-raising with the local women (but not the nasty seventies feminist kind), and all of the adorable little dips spend their days winning the hearts and minds of the scrappy street urchins begging for freedom. It has everything kids love in a government website -- hangman, word scrambles -- and nothing that they don't, like facts and statistics that would be useful for school reports.
With Dipnote we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State
Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the Department.
We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about
how we operate around the world.
We invite you to participate in this community, and I am looking
forward to stumbling away from my podium every now and then into the
blogosphere. Let the conversation begin.
PS - We're new at this. It looks like we broke our own rule and used
State jargon in our blog title. "Dipnote" refers to a diplomatic note.
It is one of the many ways in which governments formally communicate
with each other.
The dictionary definition of a diplomatic note is: "A formal
communication between an ambassador and a minister (usually the foreign
minister) of this host government or another ambassador."
This entire PS is not a parody. This was really on the State Department's blog.
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Question of the Week: How To Convince Nations Elsewhere in the World that We are the Good Guys?
| Posted by Sean McCormack on Oct 02, 2007 - 01:58 PM |
We've been thinking about all wearing white hats to solve this one. Or, failing that, making representatives from other nations wear t-shirts that say "Bad Guys" if they want to get into the U.N. Building, which is on our soil. There has also been some discussion of theme music. The music from the TV show COPS is a popular choice.
What should be done to convince those nations that we have not invaded that we are the good guys?
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…On Social Media
| Posted by Frederick Jones on Oct 04, 2007 - 04:33 PM |
Ann Somerset, Information Desk Officer, writes about her experiences...
Who says we don't get social media. Of course, we do! Social media is about putting our speeches on our websites and nice pictures of ourselves. Sometimes we also put pictures of sad things happening around the world, but we actually have guidelines about not making those images too depressing. We also know that the Internet is for making websites just so we can explain why we disagree with The New York Times and The Washington Post. t's also good for posting comments from people who already agree with us. If they are Iraqi dentists who love having U.S. soldiers around, we're glad when they make their own blogs.
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Burma: Military Restricts Internet, Freedom of Expression
| Posted by Frederick Jones on Oct 02, 2007 - 01:22 PM |
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Jeffrey Krilla, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor writes about the current crisis in Burma.
For two weeks, I, along with the rest of the international community,
have been mesmerized by the marvelous phenomenon of LOL cats. How delightful as a way to improve the image of the United States in the world! Adorable household felines! Humorous fancifully spelled words in a distinctive type. Now that brave Burmese monks and their
supporters can no longer be seen on the Internet at least we can have some light-hearted fun. But how will we get these images to those less fortunate? The thin saffron robes
worn by the peacefully marching monks stood in vivid contrast to the
hard riot shields held up by the riot police. Their example has
inspired us—from world leaders making statements of support at the
United Nations to ordinary citizens taking to the streets in solidarity
in the Philippines.
Until recently, savvy bloggers and
citizens armed with only camera phones and the Internet were able to
capture riveting footage. They helped to mobilize and unite the
democracy demonstrators and also became the eyes and ears of the world.
In the past few days, we’ve started seeing reports that the
military junta is severely restricting the internet. As one of the
leads on the Secretary's Global Internet Freedom Taskforce,
I find these reports particularly disturbing. Internet freedom is the
21st Century’s battleground for freedom of expression. This Taskforce,
made up of State Department officials, coordinates efforts to pressure
governments to allow the media and democracy advocates across the globe
free access…
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The Passport’s in the Mail
| Posted by Heath Kern on Oct 01, 2007 - 05:15 PM |
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Steven
Royster, Spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs, comments on the
latest developments regarding passport applications.
We are back on top of our passport game.
We have in fact decided to make getting a passport even more random and gamelike so that citizens will have an even better sense of themselves as "winners" when they finally get that precious booklet with the blue cover. Over the summer, the Consular Affairs Bureau, with the support of the
whole Department, worked hard to create a fun and challenging online game and now we're back to processing passport applications as soon as somebody has a high score. Of course, the percentage of forty-something males who live in their mother's basements has increased among U.S. Passport holders. But why do we have to do things the old-fashioned way just to please a few businessmen and foreign-born citizens with dying relatives abroad. This is great news,
and provides for a smooth transition as we return to passport rules that went into effect in January.
Once again, all Americans must have passports when returning to the
United States on international flights (with one exception, see "If you
traveled under... below).
One of the many things we did this
summer was work with our partners at the Department of Homeland
Security to minimize inconveniences to the American public as we worked
through the record demand for passports (we issued 18 million passports
in the year ending in September - compared to 12 million the year
before). Under this "accommodation,"
as we've come to call it in-house, Americans who were waiting for their
passport could fly back home after trips to Canada, Mexico, the
Caribbean or Bermuda with…
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