I’ve been reading blogs and articles this morning about Squidoo and BzzAgent’s Brands in Public project that launched (and flopped?) back in late September 2009.  Brands in Public aggregates the conversation about a brand that’s going on in real-time across the social web.  It pulls feeds from Twitter, photos from Flickr, blog posts and articles into a central dashboard to display the whole conversation in a single location so that consumers and brand representatitives, alike, can see what’s being said about a brand and chime into the conversation.

All of the discussion that I’ve come across about Brands in Public has been focused on the fact that Squidoo CEO Seth Godin launched the service with a “pay for the keys to your brand’s dashboard” model.  This spurred a major backlash.  The $400/month fee that Squidoo was charging brands to use their own brand’s dashboard was generally viewed by the industry as money-hungry and inappropriate.

Bloggers and journalists, alike, have thrown the baby out with the bath water.  Taking the smart or not-so-smart business model of Brands in Public out of the picture for a moment, let’s explore the more interesting part of this: the concept of publically-accessible aggregated brand conversation.  Let me bottom-line it for you: the conversation about your brand is publically-accessible across the blogosphere and can be aggregated with a quick Google Alert. However, there’s something different about it being accessible and it being aggregated front and center.

A few cutting-edge ad agencies, namely Moderista! and Crispin Porter+ Bogusky, actually display the raw, unscreened conversations about their own brands on their sites.  These agencies are actively embracing the transparency that social media enables….but to a good or a bad end?  Negative comments about their brands are displayed right next to positive comments and, depending upon, the way the conversation is going, it’s conceivable that ALL of the comments on one of these agencies’ sites could be negative.  But they’re betting that the practicing the transparency — that’s currently getting such tremendous kudos in government circles — that they preach will outweigh the sometimes negative comments.

This past February, I began a social media project for an association (undisclosed for now) that is very much the same concept: a site that aggregates the conversation from Twitter, Flickr and blogs about a set of specific environmentally-conscious practices.  We’re now finally set to launch and the client is having serious concerns about the implications of so publicly aggregating the conversation.  Despite the investment, they’re now not sure that they will do much more with this site than utilize it as an interal tool through which to watch and maybe respond to negative comments about their brand and their members’ brands.  

Not launching the site would, obviously, be a waste of time and money spent on this project.  However, is not launching the site ignoring the conversation rather than taking the reigns and influencing the conversation?  Is such a public display of brand dialogue simply too public to be smart brand management or is it public display of brand dialogue critical to capture the real and raw feelings, comments and insights of consumers and to gain their trust and long-term respect?

Social media tools and technologies are surfacing valuable insights – positive and negative – for brands of all types.  Organizations that understand this know that they can neither ignore the conversation, nor control the conversation.  Rather, they have to participate in the conversation. 

Brands: you have the power to set the record straight, to influence the conversation, to change the relationships that you have with your customers.  Engagement is the name of the game.  Whether you are or are not ready to wear your heart on your sleeve and display the conversation on your homepage, find a way to monitor, join and, ultimately, own the conversation about your brand.

This past Tuesday, Mark Drapeau and I had the honor of meeting with a delegation of new media representatives from the 13 ministries of the government of the Netherlands.  I found it fascinating that the 13 Dutch ministries are so coordinated in their new media efforts.  The group with which we met coordinates efforts and shares information cross-ministries.  They’ve, in fact, recently created a single look, feel and identity for all of their government ministries to use and are in the process of centralizing all government information into a single government-run destination.  

There are a number of impressive new media efforts underway in the Netherlands.  Their presentation will give you a sense of Internet and social media penetration and usage, etc.
Our Dutch friends shared with us a number of social media efforts that have been successful and some that have not been so successful.  One campaign, in particular, struck me as the most cutting edge – and controversial.  It was a recent social media campaign that their Ministry of Justice did regarding cybersecurity. 

Basically, it was a fictitious viral video about a Russian terrorist planning an attack on the recipient of the video.  The video was built for and deployed on Hyves (Facebook equivalent in the Netherlands).  Members who received the video could send it to their friends on Hyves.  The unique thing about the video was that it utilized information from users’ Hyves profiles and incorporated this info – name, age, marital status, PERSONAL PHOTOS (!) , etc. – into the video, itself.  The idea being that personalization of the video would make it more impactful and enable the Ministry of Justice to better get their cybersecurity information communicated.  The video was widely disseminated and was, anecdotally, extremely succesful (I don’t have metrics).

I’m currently involved in the development of an integrated public affairs campaign that the U.S. Department of Defense is putting together for National Cyber Security Awareness Month (October) here in the U.S.   Seeing the Netherlands’ video got me thinking about whether this kind of dissemination and, moreover, active utilization of personal information, could ever be done in the U.S.  My initial take is that this comes way too close to a government agency capturing Personally-Identifyable Information (PII) to be even close to legal.  However, the information was captured was on Hyves, an external and commercial social network, not on a government website, per se.  This, of course, raises one of the key challenges that government agencies are grappling with regarding Web 2.0/social media policy: do all of the same rules that govern federal websites also govern federal presences on independent social networks?

This morning a colleague of mine forwarded me Nancy Scola’s Personal Democracy Forum post Are Congressional “New Media” Clubs Missing the Point?  In short, Nancy challenges whether Congressional new media caucuses are “simply self-serving clubs dedicated to winning the YouTube-Facebook-Twitter arms race.”  (Just perfectly articulated, I think.) If so, she explains, they are missing the point and losing an opportunity.  Indeed! 

As I’ve said many times before, “Web 2.0 is not about the tools and technologies; it’s about the cultural shift that they are catalyzing.”  It sounds like the new Congressional Caucus on Blogging and New Media, and the Republican New Media Caucus that Nancy mentions in her post get this a little bit and should be commended for venturing into this area.  However, her point is well taken that there isn’t an Openness and Participation Caucus… right now it’s all about understanding and utilizing the tools and technologies.

Congress’ participation in social media mirrors the phenomenon that I’ve seen over and over again: when individuals or organizations are at the beginning of the Social Media Adoption Curve, they focus on the tools and believe that the Web 2.0 Holy Grail is mastery of these technologies.  Once they’ve reached a point of general technology proficiency and comfort, though, they realize that understanding the tools is just a stepping stone and that the path is about communicating and working differently — more collaboratively.  Where the path of collaboration takes an individual…a corporation…a government agency…Congress…is for them to create.

I’ve been noticing rumblings atop the Hill.  With some terrific early leadership (small “l”)  in the Gov 2.0 discourse  and grassroots events by early evangelists such as Rob Pierson, Congress is starting up the Curve.  Perhaps they’re starting to notice the Gov 2.0 innovation and leadership so prevalent in the Executive Branch (even despite Agencies’ bureaucratic structures).

Congress has the unique challenge of fragmentation: each Congressional office operates as a separate “small business,” for lack of a better analogy.  Each Representative and Senator has his/her own budget to allocate as he/she sees fit: more staffers, higher salaries, etc.  So, though we lump them all together as “Congress” it’s a bit like thinking of the businesses in a local town as a single entity.  The reality is that there are many, many nodes with unique constituents and key issues.  Each office is at a different point of awareness, education, participation, relationships and collaboration.

Coming up October 12 & 13  is the inaugural Congress Camp unconference.  As one of the organizers of Government 2.0 Campback in March, I, of course, am a biased proponent of unconferences as an ideal way to introduce participation and collaboration to public and private sector organizations and interest groups, by SHOWING — as opposed to telling — them what this whole Web 2.0 (for an ongoing lack of a better term) movement is all about.  It is certainly my hope that Congress Camp exposes the Hill to new, more collaborative ways of thinking about citizen engagement.

As Nancy so succinctly states at the end of her post, “An Openness Caucus would be a recognition that, from the public’s perspective, the issue isn’t new media. The issue is new politics, whether it happens through the web or telephone or carrier pigeon.”

This afternoon I was fortunate enough to moderate the Engaging the Public in Conversation panel at the Potomac Forum& GovCollab.org’s Gov 2.0 Leadership, Collaboration and Public Engagement Best Practices Symposium at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center in DC.

All four panelists were really outstanding in both the content of the case studies they presented and their delivery and presentating capabilities.  Here’s the schedule and line-up.

Equally exciting was that the entire session (1:15pm – 5:00pm) was aired LIVE on C-SPAN!  I just found out yesterday that C-SPAN would be carrying the event and it didn’t really hit me until this evening when I pulled up the archived video on the C-SPAN site and saw the difference that broadcast-quality video makes.  We’re so used to watching home videos on YouTube that we sometimes forget…

I couldn ‘t figure out how to embed the video here on my blog, but you can view it here at C-SPAN’s archives.  The presentations are first and then the panel portion starts at 1:05:10 on the video.  I was relieved to be having a good hair day!

MiXT Media Strategies — in conjunction with iStrategyLabs and MindFarm — is currently working on a client project with a group in Alexandria, VA that is interested in utilizing social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies to more efficiently and effectively solve the acute needs — think: hunger, homelessness, etc. — of its community by increasing the breadth and depth of citizen participation.

We’ve interviewed non-profits, citizen groups and social entrepreneurs in Alexandria and researched innovative ways in which other communities around the country and around the world are utilizing social media to engage citizens.

From our research, we’ve learned that we’re really at the forefront of building successful Web 2.0 models for geographically-based community engagement.  In the spirit of crowdsourcing, we wanted to throw our ”strawman” out to you — the myriad social media experts — for feedback, suggestions and ideas.   We look forward to your comments. Thanks!

Concept

Build a compelling online community engagement platform that is comprised of:

• news and information pulled from traditional news sources
• user-generated content: blogs, photos, wikis entries, etc.
• local event listings
• a directory of local non-profits
• social networking components
• best practices knowledge repository
• idea-sourcing functionality — **this is really the key to the whole thing…. read on…..

1. A traditional and social media marketing campaign encourages individuals, non-profits and corporations to submit community problems through the idea-sourcing tool
2. Citizens vote on the problems to create community priorities
3. The platform’s Community Manager pulls out specific problems to be solved by contest: he/she provides timeframe, requirements and prize information
4. The Community Manager builds buzz and excitement through online community engagement as well as by hosting live, in-person “meetups” that encourage the community’s brightest thinkers and most savvy “do-ers” to connect
5. Individuals come together and form groups that submit their best solutions to win the contest
6. Solutions can either be voted upon by the community or winners can be selected by Community Manager, the platforms’ “Board of Directors,” etc.
7. Winning team executes its solution — another community problem is solved!
8. Solution is well documented and included in the “best practices knowledge repository” that can be leveraged to solve future problems in this and in other communities

I had an interesting brief chat this morning at eDemocracyCamp with Peter Corbett.  We were talking about the power of hashtags.

Most people don’t yet understand that hashtags are an extremely strategic, powerful and valuable way to inform targeted communities about related concepts, events and topics.

For example, if I am attending eDemocracyCamp and hear or share something that may also be a valuable insight to those currently attending FooCamp, I can co-tag my “#edemcamp” tweet with “#foocamp” to share my comment with Foo Camp attendees.  This not only exposes another entire community to this information nugget, but potentially catalyzes discussion around this topic within that community.  This type of cross-pollination can yield unique and innovative solutions because it infuses a discussion with input from a tangentially-related community who have different assumptions, education and perspectives.

This also, however, brings up the interesting line between using hashtags for good and not for evil.  There is a fine line between informing and marketing.  Misuse of the power of hashtags = spam. Informing and enlightening with hashtags is valuable.  Marketing with hashtags dilutes their value.

Over the past few weeks I have come across a number of projects and initiatives being led by “unorganizations” — groups of people who come together for a common cause, but who are independent agents and not a formal corporation, organization or association of any sort. 

The first was, of course, the recent unconference that I co-organized, Government 2.0 Camp.  It was important to me from the event’s inception to make sure that it was owned by the people.  By design, the largest sponsorship was $1,000–just 1/20th of the total funds raised–so that no single organization owned the gathering. 

But how do you do business as a non-entity?  Duke Ellington School of the Arts (DESA) required Government 2.0 Camp to sign a standard  contract for use of the venue.The contract was between DESA and Government 2.0 Camp.  I signed the contract, but felt soft of silly doing so, as Government 2.0 Camp wasn’t a formal organization. 

One interesting idea that was suggested by Nancy Faget, an attendee of Government 2.0 Camp, was selling the proceedings from Government 2.0 Camp to a book publisher.  In fact, she claims that two are already interested!  Session leaders and other attendees could author the chapters and the proceeds could fund Government 2.0 Club.  How do you fund a non-entity?  To whom would the publisher write the check? (Yes, in reality, I know we’d form a 501C3 or similar, but the philosophy of this is still a rather intersting conundrum.)

The closing session of Government 2.0 Camp was a brainstorming discussion about creating and formalizing Government 2.0 Club–the and official creator of Government 2.0 Camp.  We were lucky enough to have Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club, to guide our discussion and ideas with his experiences from creating and growing Social Media Club.  The difference, however, is that Social Media Club is owned and operated by founders Heuer and Katie Wells.  Our vision for Government 2.0 Club is the embodiment Government 2.0, itself: owned and operated of the people, for the people, by the people.  

A few days after the unconference, my co-organizer, Peter Corbettsent out an summary and wrap-up e-mail to all attendees that directed interested parties to the Government 2.0 Club website for session summaries and other unconference proceedings.  He signed his message “the unmanagement.” 

The “unorganization” phenomenon extends beyond Government 2.0 Camp and Club, however.  I have been working over the past two weeks on a proposal for a community organizing project for a local municipality that is being created, driven and funded by “concerned citizens.”  It’s quite a legitimate initiative led by a number of impressive for-profit and non-profit organizations as well as philanthropic individuals.  I frankly don’t know who will sign the contract or write the checks.  Those are details that someone or some organization will shoulder for the sake of the cause, just as I signed the venue contract for Government 2.0 Camp. 

Another example of “unorganization” made its way across my computer screen earlier this evening and prompted this blog entry: TEA Party Tax Day.  Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the politics of Tax Tea Parties, it’s interesting to note that there is no Organization behind this tremendous grassroots organization.  When you click the About or Contact buttons on the site, you are just brought back to a page that says ”Please see the Help Organize area for the most commonly asked questions and the answers” and enables you to fill out a form for more information or to organize a “tea party” in your area.  I asked a top Hill staffer for more information about this and learned that this initiative really is being run as a collective effort of like-minded tax opponents and is not “owned” by any single organization. 

The challenges of the “unorganization” also remind me a lot of what’s going on right now in the Government 2.0 movement.  Government agencies–especially the General Services Administration–are successfully working through barriers, like Terms of Service challenges, that prohibit them from signing agreements with third party social media service providers, e.g. YouTube.  Issues of indemnification and defense are two barriers cited by the Federal Web Managers’ Council in its December 23, 2008 paper Social Media and the Federal Government: Perceived and Real Barriers and Potential Solutions.  In cryptic non-legal simplification: because the government is owned by the people, it cannot be sued and thus, cannot agree to indemnifya third party.

Why are all of these “unorganizations” popping up?  Collaboration.  As I’ve written about in many previous blog posts, we are in the midst of a major cultural shift from the Broadcast Era in which large media organizations intermediated our information, to the Collaboration Era in which we can have influence that rivals the most watched Superbowl ads.  Individuals + collaboration = game changing ideas.

How will the legal, organizational and philosophical challenges be resolved for and by the increasing number of “unorganizations” that are emerging in the Collaboration Era?

I was honored to be interviewed by Chris Dorobek on Federal News Radio this afternoon. Here’s the clip:

Here is the Social Media 101 presentation that I gave this morning as part of the the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media for Government Social Media 101 Pre-Conference Workshop.

Ken Fischer and I then co-led the workshop and he did a great presentation on Information for the Greatest Good. 

I am looking forward to seeing presentations from some of my colleagues and friends over the next two days.  For more conference information, check out the conference site.

I just finished up at SXSX in Austin, TX. There was so much amazing content and conversation that it was truly overwhelming. A few sessions that I found particularly noteworthy were: Charlene Li’s talk about The Future of Social Media Networks (Twitter #sxswfsn) and her assertion that social networks will be like air — everywhere and all around us; the Shift Happens: Moving from Words to Pictures panel about the increasing importance data visualization (Twitter #shift); and Guy Kawasaki’s interview of Chris Anderson about Anderson’s new book Free! (Twitter #free).

Last night, in the middle of a SXSW party, I stepped into a quiet backroom at Six Lounge to participate in Adriel Hampton’s first Government 2.0 BlogTalkRadio show.  Despite having to pull myself away from the partying rooftop, it was a great deal of fun to banter with Ari Herzog, Andrea Baker, Jeffrey Levy, Steve Ressler and many others. I think that this show is going to be a great addition to the Government 2.0 discourse.  I encourage you to tune in to the Gov 2.0 show on Sundays at 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST.

Finally, I was so excited to see the launch of the Government Web Content Managers’ Social Media Subcouncil’s social media presence yesterday. Follow them on Twitter at @GovSocMed, check out their wiki and find them on GovLoop.  I remember participating in the Web Content Managers’ quarterly conference call back in October (following a GovDelivery panel) when the Social Media subcouncil was first formed and announced.  I was tweeting to Jeffrey Levy, one of the Subcouncil’s co-chairs, how I was so disappointed that I could not participate on the subcouncil, as I am not a government employee.  He vowed to find ways to get members of the broader Government 2.0 community involved, and it’s wonderful to see that coming to fruition.