Fort Wayne Disses Local Social Media Experts, Hires Chicago Firm [Updated]

On 30 September 2010, the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana entered into a contract with Chicago-based social media firm Carolyn Grisko & Associates in a move to increase the city's use of social media as a means of providing information to and getting feedback from its citizens. Many approve of the goal, but there is a concern among some who believe outsourcing the job is a serious misstep.

[This entry has been updated twice: I added another Further Reading link and report on the City Council meeting I attended to the end of the post.]

Deputy Mayor Beth Malloy, who has worked in local government under Chicago's Mayor Daley's administration, has indicated that she desires to have a greater presence in social media despite previous efforts by the City to avoid entering that arena. I think most Fort Wayne residents who spend time on the Web would applaud the effort to finally "get with the times"; I sure do. I use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to keep track of all sorts of local, regional, and national news, including events and venues, weather, traffic, emergencies, and so on, so I would welcome an official city presence to the mix.

While discussing the benefits and uses of services like Twitter (especially Twitter) would merit its own article, one obvious positive is the interaction with other local people. I have a list of Twitter users from Fort Wayne (view it here), and similar lists are maintained by many of the people on that list. It has allowed me to "meet" some very intelligent people right here in my own hometown without even trying!

Among the folks I've "met" using social media are several people who are involved with small business, publishing, news, and even social media. I don't really know anything about media marketing, but I know Scott Howard (@ScLoHo) could help me with that. I've never started a company, but I know James Paden (@JamesPaden) could help me with that. I've never tried to make a plan for integrating social media with local government, but I know Kevin Mullett (@kmullett) could help me with that. Hey wait—what was that‽

Deputy Mayor Malloy spoke with News Channel 15 reporter Elizabeth Fields: "When I got here, that's what I asked about. I looked around and did some Googling and searching, and I wasn't able to find a local government that had actually procured someone to help with a strategy." Scott Howard, a local media and marketing expert, recently tweeted, "Reason Malloy couldn't find local expert 1) She's not from here. 2) Never looked or asked!!!" In what looks to be an even bigger sign of the lackadaisical effort the City put forth to find qualified personnel locally is the absence of any mention of this issue from Fort Wayne's Project Bidding webpage. I could've found somebody—in fact, I have—and I'm not even in the industry! There are many others qualified, too.

There are many concerns people have about this deal: that Malloy may be employing Chicago-style "cronyism" by giving the job to a friend from back home; that Malloy may have intentionally kept the price tag below the $75,000 threshold to avoid the requirement for approval from the Fort Wayne City Council; that $72,000 is too much for the city to be paying for this service. I don't know what is the truth about Malloy's history or motives, but she claimed she did not know Carolyn Grisko & Associates or its owner and that the deal was in the pipeline before the threshold was lowered from $100,000 to $75,000. But I do know that there are local resources who could fill the role.

Now, I don't claim to be a person who could help with the implementation of social media to the Fort Wayne government, but as a currently unemployed recent graduate of a reputable science, engineering, a technology institute with a degree in computer science living in Fort Wayne, I can sympathize with the feeling that this job needs to go to a local resource before it goes to Illinois—especially Chicago! (Don't get me started on why I'm not a fan of Illinois, especially Chicago. And this news from the city only aggravates that distaste.) It is vital to the economies of the City of Fort Wayne, the Allen County, and the State of Indiana that jobs which local resources can accomplish are given to those local resources! (This isn't something Fort Wayne and northeast Indiana doesn't already acknowledge; haven't you seen the Talent Made Here commercials on TV and on your banner ads on Facebook?) I have seen, with my own eyes, comments from local social media experts who would have offered the service for free or at greatly reduced fees than the $72,000 bill we're now footing.

Tonight, my father and I are attending the Fort Wayne City Council meeting (5:30 pm in City County Building Room 128) to make it known we do not approve of this contract with an outside company when there are local companies who can do the job. Councilman Tom Smith is also displeased with the contract, so it is good to know that at least one representative shares our point of view.


Further Reading
My point in posting this blog entry was to summarize the matter for my friends and family who may not be aware of it, clarify why I am unhappy about it and why they should be unhappy about it, too. There is a lot more to read about the issue that local writers better than myself have already produced. For more information and more viewpoints, check out the following resources.


Opinion: The City of Fort Wayne and Social Media and ‘Talent Made Here’ — The AroundFortWayne Blog
This is an excellent post that breaks down the specifications from the actual contract and demonstrates point-by-point how they could have been handled locally.

Do We Really Want Talent that IS MADE HERE? — OurSpace Fort Wayne
This discusses the attitude of young unemployed people who may realize, why stay here?

Fort Wayne Deputy Mayor introduces Chicago style cronyism — Angry White Boy
Again, I don't know that it really is cronyism at work, but the suspicion is valid, in my mind.

Controversy over social media consultant — WANE-TV
This features video of the interviews with Deputy Mayor Malloy and Councilman Smith.

City spending $72,000 for lessons on social media use — News Sentinel

City hires social media consultant — Journal Gazette

Fort Wayne City Council meeting schedule

To follow the conversation on Twitter, use the hashtag #FortWayneSM.


Update 2: Even Further Reading
How Hiring a Social Media PR Firm Can Ruin Your Public Relations - .gov Edition — Social Media Infrastructures.com
The very tools the city wants to learn how to implement and integrate were used to tear apart the poor decision the city made about how to learn it.


Update: Attended the City Council Meeting
Well, I attended the City Council meeting tonight at the City County building with my dad. One of the local social media and marketing experts I mentioned in this post was also there, Scott Howard (@ScLoHo). He wrote a great response to the meeting, which you can read here:
Lessons in Local Politics (& Social Media) - The Political side of Scloho.

What came of attending the meeting? As it turns out, since I'd never been to a City Council meeting before, I wasn't sure of the procedures, and I definitely wasn't going to speak out or on a topic that would make myself the fool, so I ended up missing the time to speak on the matter. (They asked if anybody in attendance wanted to speak, but I didn't know if it was open for any topic or just for the matters on their agenda, so I held my tongue. Turns out that was the time to speak up. Oh well.)

And on reflection, it may not be a matter which warranted speaking up at the time. As Scott noted in the aforementioned response, this isn't really even within the City Council's jurisdiction since it didn't break the threshold. Or if there is a course of action open to the councilmen, I sure don't know it. I need to educate myself about the way our government works here in Fort Wayne before I think I can speak up myself, so that I can speak up at the appropriate times and to the appropriate people.

And so should we all.