I was just informed today, Saturday evening January 10th, 2009, that BART is holding a "community meeting" on Sunday, January 11th, which is tommorrow, from 2 PM to 4 PM at 101 Eighth Street, the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter in Oakland, off Lake Merritt BART.
The timing of the meeting is questionable because I got the intel on it today (Saturday) in the afternoon. And it was clear that today was the date of the creation of whatever release went out on the meeting. I think BART's officials were trying to prevent the activation of New Media to annouce the meeting to any possible "undesirables" that may attend.
In other words, they were trying to control the spread of the message.
It's clear BART has learned NOTHING from this entire affair. The knoweldge of the shooting and the reaction to it was the child of New Media. Traditional media played a bit part because it was not able to do what New Media can do, constantly repeat an event in the pasttime for present consumption.
Thus, two actions are happening: one people are looking at the current set of videos related to the shooting and the riots, and two, more videos are being made, photos uploaded, blog posts written, tweets are being sent and retweeted, and each one in some way is contributing to the disemination of the other at a rapid pace.
Wild.
And all of this is not understood by large firms like BART, who screw up on a frighteningly regular basis in this case.
The other almost certain can of worms at play is who's coming to the BART meeting? BART has reported that "community members" and "elected officials" are to attend the meeting, which means members of the Oakland City Council , the BART Board, Assemblyman Sandre Swanson (D) Oakland, and hopefully Oakland's City Attorney, someone from California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office and others. But what about the community members?
Picking certain people from the community opens a massive can of worms if the wrong people are selected, especially if others who weren't called show up. Yikes.
What BART should have done is worked to give time to inform as many people as possible and took steps to assure a safe meeting environment. That would have signaled a new way that BART takes action.
But what we get instead is more of the same, which could lead to more of the same.
If you knwo what I mean.
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