Games - a New Medium for Public Diplomacy?

Wednesday, June 1st 2011

If you want to hear a global communicator whose livelihood depends on getting it right, listen to Arjun Sethi.  He has to sell the same basic story, Ravenwood Fair, to audiences all over the globe, modifying language and plot details to match local customs.  He always asks a key question: “How much do men and want to share about themselves?”  His audience: 300 million (he says) and growing (next big push is Latin America.)

Sethi was the lead-off speaker at Serious Games, presented on May 27-28 by the State Department’s Tech@State program, a quarterly conference sponsored by the eDiplomacy Office.  (Full disclosure: I was the Office’s first director back in BT -- Before Twitter.)

Joe B. Johnson

Board member

 

Joe B. Johnson consults on government communication and technology after a career in the United States Foreign Service.  He is an instructor for the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where he teaches strategic planning for public diplomacy.

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Author: Joe Johnson

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• Defense_Department
• State_Department
• technology

Take a Trip to Barcelona

Sunday, March 27th 2011

An article by two public relations professionals brought to mind a dilemma for public diplomacy: proving its value.

Most readers take that for granted, but many new members of Congress do not.  If the federal government's discretionary expenses must be cut, why not start with public diplomacy?  You don't need it to issue visas or protect American citizens, and there is little hard evidence that PD is advancing American interests abroad.

Unless PD practitioners can demonstrate that their work is indispensable to U.S. foreign policy objectives -- I'm talking defense agreements, bilateral trade pacts, and similar objectives at the embassy level, not an amorphous "image" problem -- they risk losing early on in today's harsh budget climate.

The commercial PR people I mentioned above "embraced measurement by applying the Barcelona Principles.

Joe B. Johnson

Board member

 

Joe B. Johnson consults on government communication and technology after a career in the United States Foreign Service.  He is an instructor for the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where he teaches strategic planning for public diplomacy.

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Author: Joe Johnson

About:

• Measurement_and_Evaluation
• Professional Training
• State_Department

The State Department's New Year's Resolutions

Thursday, January 6th 2011

That’s what the QDDR – Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review – amounted to when it was released on December 15 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Joe B. Johnson

Board member

 

Joe B. Johnson consults on government communication and technology after a career in the United States Foreign Service.  He is an instructor for the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where he teaches strategic planning for public diplomacy.

...click authors name for more info

Author: Joe Johnson

About:

• public_diplomacy
• QDDR
• State_Department
• USAID