360DigitalInfluence

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headed to Trinidad and Tobago later this week to participate in the Summit of the Americas - a somewhat annual gathering of the 34 democratically elected leaders from the Western Hemisphere. In preparation for the meeting, the State Department has launched a Digital Town Hall microsite, allowing users to submit questions to be answered by Secretary Clinton live from the Dominican Republic on April 17th.

There’s kind of quirky thing about the Summit of Americas site: it uses Howcast to power much of the content. From the URL (townhall.howcast.com) to the “How Tos” section on the top nav, it’s clear the State Dept adopted the instructional video sharing site’s format for presenting much of the content.

Howcast is best known for its simple, informative style for how-to videos - from How to Paint a Portrait to How to Hang Hooks in Your Closet.  (I admit to using the site myself; remembering how to tie a necktie is not, as it turns out, like riding a bike.)

So, on the surface, Howcast is an odd platform for a Cabinet Sectary; Obama’s recent town hall, Open for Questions, sat on a Whitehouse.gov URL and used youtube for the videos.  However, as I highlighted in an earlier post about the EPA, every federal entity is working to better communicate online. The Howcast solution is proof that there are a ton of hurdles facing these federal web workers - 508 compliance, hosting, IT security, etc - and different solutions are being worked out in real time. Howcast may very well have been the only way the State Department could have made this work.  I think it’ll be interesting to see how this site and others play out in the coming months.

For their part, Howcast is aggressively promoting the Summit, with a banner ad above fold and alongside it’s more traditional line up of videos.  I’ve included a screen shot below highlighting sometimes rocky marriage of the government and the social web, as Secretary Clinton’s call to action next sits alongside a video carousel featuring How to Use a Squat Toilet.  You just can’t make this stuff up.