#oakmtg is the Twitter hashtag used for discussing topics relating to the Oakland City Council and other Oakland boards and committees, but it is also so much more. #oakmtg also refers to folks who livetweet City Council Meetings and discuss other City Council issues. Maybe one way to describe it would be to call it an unorganized citizen watchdog "group" born and existing entirely on the internet.
The hashtag was first used in July, 2009.
Please note that a number of folks who tweet under #oakmtg have a goal of providing neutral live coverage of the meetings. There are also lots of folks who tweet with this hashtag who are fine providing perspective, commentary, etc., but not everyone does that. Additionally, there are a number of regular #oakmtg livetweeters, and lots of other folks who discuss #oakmtg issues, but are not necessarily in the group of folks who try to livetweet most/all of the meetings.
In 2015 #oakmtg won the Best Twitter Hashtag for Oakland Politics award from the East Bay Express.
Watch Online
You can watch the city council meetings on the internet at this URL:
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/CityCouncil/s/VideoArchive/index.htm
or if you're some kind of hacker whiz you can just do:
mplayer rtsp://209.232.103.148:554/broadcast/encoderstream.rm?cloakport=80,554
City Council meets the first, third and fifth Tuesdays of the month in Council Chambers on the 3rd floor of City Hall. Ceremonial presentations and non-controversial (consent) items will be heard at 5:30 pm. At 6:30 pm public hearings and discussion items are reviewed.
Get Involved
#oakmtg folks are working on 2014 Mayoral Election stuff here on the wiki, partially as the 2014 Mayoral Election Team (an open team that anyone can join). They are planning a 2014 Mayoral Election tweetup/online candidate debate (which you can get involved with).
And of course, if you use twitter, just add #oakmtg to your tweets and join the conversation.
Nights when #oakmtg trended nationally
Sometimes the #oakmtg hashtag is a trends nationally, which means that it was one of the most common hashtags that people were using in their tweets across the US.
Date | Reason |
2013-02-22 | Bill Bratton on the agenda |
2014-02-18 | Domain Awareness Center on the agenda |
News & External Links
- Things tagged #oakmtg on twitter.
- 2013-01-23: "#oakmtg Trending, But Why? William Bratton and 'Stop & Frisk'" Politic365.com
- 2013-07-22: "#Oakmtg Hashtag Flexes Its Growing Political Muscle (Analysis)" Oakland Local
- 2013-11-27: "Mayoral twitter debate could influence upcoming campaigns" Oakland North
- 2014-04-22: "#Oakmtg: Meet the hashtag warriors of open government" Liveworkoakland.com
- 2014-06-08: "Tweet with Oakland's next mayor" SF Chronicle
Here are all the pages on the wiki tagged #oakmtg:
(many of these cover City Council-related issues)
logos vector file (CC0) oakmtg.svg