Over the past six months I have authored a number of blog posts both here and on the Triadvocate discussing the reasons why government officials should embrace social media. One legislator who has incorporated social networking into his daily routine is State Representative Josh Shapiro. First elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2004, Rep. Shapiro is Secretary of the House Appropriations Committee, Chairman of the Legislative Audit and Advisory Committee, co-Chairman of the Speaker’s Commission on Legislative Reform, as well as a member of the Finance and Insurance committees. Since he is one public official who has incorporated Facebook and Twitter into his constituent outreach, I sent him an email last Saturday morning to see if he would be willing to do a short interview with me about his use of social media (by the way he responded back in less than an hour).
We were able to sit down Thursday morning (his four year old son Jonah served as my assistant and provided some background acoustics) and talked about how he uses social media to serve the citizens of the 153rd Legislative District.
If you want to connect with Representative Shapiro you can reach him at www.joshshapiro.org or on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and YouTube. Also, if you want to weigh in on the Pennsylvania state budget, you can check out the site he and Representatives Jesse White, Matt Smith, Steve Santaseiro, Eugene DePasquale built at www.yourpabudget.com.
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