New Media in the Old World

When Gov. Martin O'Malley set out for a five-day trip to Europe last week, he wanted to make sure the people of Maryland could come along for the journey.

With the governor outfitted with a digital camera for stills and an HD "Flip" camera for video, BSD created a map for MartinOMalley.com that would track the governor along each leg of his trip - and Team O'Malley took it from there.

Using the Flip camera, blog posts, Flickr, and Twitter, they created content daily - sometimes even hourly - that gave Marylanders a seat alongside the governor as he exchanged ideas and innovations on topics including economic development, sustainable growth, and cybersecurity.

On the shores of Normandy for the 65th anniversary of D-Day, Gov. O'Malley stood on "Dog Green" beach and described in a video dispatch what young soldiers of the Maryland National Guard must have seen when they landed on that sand over half a century before.

Next up was Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Maryland's partner in the National Guard's State Partnership Program. The program's aim is to bring together U.S. states and their National Guard units with new and emerging democracies so that they can collaborate and exchange ideas.

Updates on the governor's Twitter feed indicated that it's succeeding. "Met this am with the co-presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina," read one Tweet. "Their enthusiasm for their relationship with Maryland was a revelation." Another read: "Am now at the bosnia-herzogovinaian emergency ops center modeled on Maryland's center. Tangible application of our partnership with them."

The governor stopped in Estonia to learn about the country's innovations in cybersecurity - well-documented with Flickr photos and another Flip camera video:

Finally, Governor O'Malley reached his last port of call: Stockholm, Sweden. There, he learned how Stockholm city planners transformed an industrial wasteland into a green, thriving, and kid-friendly neighborhood by making sustainability a major goal from the very start of the design process. In the video the governor shot in front of a once-polluted urban waterway that is now clean enough to fish from, Marylanders could see - and judge - the progress for themselves.

Congratulations to Gov. O'Malley and his team for making new media and the Old World a winning combination.