Hashtags: bridges between 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.

Social Media 101 Presentation

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.

A Few Valuable Social Media & Government 2.0 Resources

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.

The Catch-22 of Collaboration & Social Media

I Need Social Media!
Clients regularly approach MiXT Media Strategies requesting social media help:

• Can you help me set up a Facebook page?   
• How do I “do” Twitter? 
• I want to “use” bloggers to broaden the reach of my marketing campaign—where do I find them?  

These are the wrong questions for two reasons. First, these are the wrong questions because social media is not about the tools and technologies.

“Huh?  What about all of the blogs, social networks, RSS feeds, video-sharing sites, etc.?”

Nope.  Those are tools.  Social media is about the capabilities that these tools enable.  Successful social media starts not with the tools and technologies, but with good, old-fashioned business planning: mission, vision, goals, objectives, strategies. 

Second, these are the wrong questions because they are selfish.  The behaviors and capabilities that social media tools enable are engaging, participatory, relational—social.  They are not something that you “do” to your customers to elicit click-throughs, response rates or sales.

To create a successful social media strategy for your organization, you must first understand social media in context.

What’s Going on Out There
There are two world-changing dynamics in action right now.  First, the proliferation of social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies is fragmenting the communications landscape.  Not only are there now simply more communication choices, but these new tools and technologies enable us to further fine-tune our communications by speed, formality, time and place.  We have myriad choices never before possible.  How we communicate is now as complex as what we communicate. 

Second, we as a culture are emerging from the Broadcast Era and entering the Collaboration Era.  This means a marked change in the way we communicate.  In the Broadcast Era, we pushed information AT our audiences through traditional, one-way media vehicles.  The Collaboration Era brings about a whole new set of capabilities that change our communication expectations.  No longer are people satisfied receiving information, they expect to be able to jump in, engage and be a part of the two-way conversation.  The opportunity to participate in new and meaningful ways is changing us from content consumers to creators, participants, collaborators…communities.

The Opportunity: a Case for Collaboration
Collaboration makes organizations more efficient and more effective.  Organizations that embrace collaborative practices—supported by innovative social media tools and technologies—will decrease costs and increase sales by increasing satisfaction and retention of employees, customers, vendors and partners.

The Challenge: a Catch-22 of Catch-22s
What complicates things is that each of these dynamics, in and of itself, is a Catch-22.

• We can’t understand the benefits of collaboration until we collaborate; and yet we can’t truly collaborate until we understand the benefits of doing so.
• We want to understand the value of social media tools before we invest our time and energy in using them; and yet, we can’t truly understand the value of social media tools until we use them.

What further complicates things is that collaboration and social media tools together create a Catch-22.

• We can’t truly understand the benefits and possibilities of social media tools until we use them to collaborate; and yet we can’t truly understand the benefits of and possibilities for collaboration until we utilize social media tools collaboratively.

collaboration                   social media

The confluence of these two separate but connected Catch-22s presents a solution: the Confluence Process.  Teaching organizations to use social media tools and catalyzing a cultural shift towards collaboration requires a process that manages the interplay between these two dynamics.

The Confluence Process that MiXT Media Strategies has developed enables organizations to use social media tools to learn the value of collaboration while simultaneously engaging in collaboration to understand the full extent of social media tools’ value.

ATK: real-world AFK (away from keyboard)

AFK (away from keyboard) is “in-world” speak for the state of your SecondLife avatar when you’re not operating him/her.  I’ve also heard this state referred to as “asleep” or ”latent.” 

I sought out this terminology a week or so ago when I noticed the opposite phenomenon.  I was with a group of social media cronies  at a conference or happy hour or breakfast and realized that we were the opposite of AFK–ATK: attached to keyboard. 

There was a lull in conversation while we all hung our heads–like sleeping avatars–to tweet, text or type.  We had checked out of the real world and were only existing in the virtual/online world.  In this group, this ATK behavior was completely socially acceptable.  In the technology, social media and web communities, there is an unspoken understanding when you step out of the in-person conversation and go ATK.  It’s almost like we live in a hybrid online-offline world.

However, in the non-tech, regular offline world, going ATK is NOT acceptable.  To your family, colleagues and friends, you may appear as exciting and conversation an avatar that’s AFK.

Rethinking community management

I’m at TransparencyCamp today. It’s phenomenal, exciting and overwhelming.  I participated in a great session this afternoon before lunch called “Drinking from the fire hose: how is a community manager to handle citizen participation in the Web 2.0 age?’  Here are some of my thoughts inspired by this session.

Social media is not about joining THE conversation, it’s about joining the conversationSSSSSS.  Today’s social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies make communications so easy and quick that there are an infinite number of conversations about an infinite number of topics going on within, outside and about any given organization.  No ONE spokesperson or team of spokespeople can handle this fire hose. 

It’s not so much about changing or even more efficiently using communication  tools as it is about changing the architecture of organizational communication.  We are used to a broadcast communication model in which organizations speak AT people.  We need to change this to a collaborative model in which the people within organizations speak WITH one another and WITH people outside the organization.

The only way to really manage this fire hose, then, is to empower everyone within an organization to participate and communicate.  If we do this right, the “community manager” role ultimately becomes obsolete because communication and public affairs becomes a decentralized.  Community relations/public affairs/customer service needs to move from being a vertical department to being a horizontal function within an organization.

In this collaborative communications model, organizations would deputize everyone to be conversationalists–a.k.a spokespeople–for the organization.  This is preferable because:

1. It enables the content experts to speak for themselves rather than having public affairs or customer service mouthpieces speaking on their behalf. 
2. It empowers people to participate in the conversation and, by doing so, catalyze innovation and new thinking

This raises a number of challenges, of course.  Here are a few:

1. Not all content experts are comfortable with or good at creating conversations, collaborating and participating in dialogue. 
2. This changes the role of public affairs/communications leaders from spokespeople to trainers–this requires a different skill set and interest set. 
3. This fragments the conversation, thereby increasing the potential for toe-stepping as there are increased areas of overlap.

Changing the community management paradigm has an equally-important counterpart.  Not only do we need to reinvent how the organization engages with its communities, but we also need to change the model and expectations of constituent involvement. 

In the case of government, citizen engagement would ultimately be a little part of everyone’s responsibility and civic life, driven not by coercion, but rather by personal interest and motivation.  To make this real and valuable we’d need to change people’s expectations from people asking questions to receive an answer, to people asking questions as a way to engage, participate and problem solve.

Which is the Cause, Which the Effect?

I’m here at the WeMedia conference today and tomorrow in Miami, FL. You can check out the Twitterfeed for #wemedia.

There are great discussions going on here about the future of our country and world, communications, collaboration and media.  I’ll share with you some of the concepts and thoughts here.  Not the most coherent blog post I’ve done, but I just wanted to get down some of the ideas.

————–

One concept that’s been presented is that it’s now the “end of apathy” thanks to emerging social media tools and technologies.  However, as I think about this, I’m not sure which is the cause and which is the effect, so here’s what I’ve come up with:

• chicken : egg :: apathy : tools that enable action

Tools that enable collaboration and innovation would not be created with out the desire to collaborate and innovate.  And yet, without the tools and platforms for collaboration and innovation across time & place, these behaviors are not maximized.

—————

In the morning sessions, Dale Peskin presented an Agenda for Smart Capitalism:

• outcomes not income
• connections not transactions
• people not products
• creativity not productivity

At lunchtime, I had an interesting discussion with some folks who were slightly rubbed the wrong way by the political agenda of this conference/conference organizers.  Their assertion: most everything presented this morning supported a liberal agenda.  Objectively, when you look at the case studies presented, this is pretty much true. 

My question, however: is this a cause or effect?  Is it that the innovative application of social media tools & collaborative concepts are primarily coming out of organizations with liberal agendas OR that liberal agendas are more likely to think differently and therefore embrace collaborative and innovative tools to solve their problems?

Peter Kim Calls it Social Business

Per my last blog post, I’ve been grappling with the contradiction between “marketing” and “social media.”  Though usually viewed as a progression from old to new, the terms more often seem like opposites to me.

Today I read and commented on Peter Kim’s blog post, “It’s Time to Transform.” I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of the need to change the way we do business and think about our organizations. I really like the term “social business” as a way to explain the critical cultural shift that organizations must embrace. Read Peter’s post (and my comments!).

Becoming a Truth Organization

What we refer to as “social media” really has very little to do with media.  Media –from cameras to demographics–is a set of filters.  Filters obscure the truth by focus as well as by omission.

Social media strips away the filters upon which content shops–news organizations, marketing consultancies, ad agencies and PR firms–have relied over the past century, and brings us Truth.  Sure, sometimes social media yields too much information and sometimes it’s the cold, hard truth, but its products and processes are raw and authentic, nonetheless.

So, it’s interesting then, that traditional marketers, advertisers and PR folks, are jockeying to stake claim as social media stewards.  From my perspective social media and marketing are not so much the same as they are different.  In fact, I’d posit that social media marketing is truly the opposite of traditional marketing. 

When I speak to clients and audiences about the importance of social media, I first talk about the cultural shift that social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies are catalyzing.  Our culture is shifting from one of facades–advertising, messaging, “spin”–to one of Truth.  The first rule of the blogosphere is “HATs off”: honest, authenticity and transparency.  LonelyGirl15 and the Walmarting Across America were early examples of misuse of social media and why Truth is paramount.

But a good portion of traditional marketers still don’t view social media this way.  Rather, they view it as another set of rich distribution channels through which to send carefully crafted messages.   (It’s not a surprise that social media has gotten all tangled up with marketing.  This likely stems from “social media” being a misnomer.)  Successful social media strategies must start not with marketing, but with introspection. 

The cultural shift towards Truth and collaboration must be felt, understood and embraced by an organization before it can truly sucessfully leverage social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies.  The organization that understands social media first as cultural shift will see why social media is more akin to business strategy, organizational change and strategic partnerships than to marketing. PR and advertising.  That, is the Truth.

The Fallacy of Opacity

Do you remember the game show “Let’s Make a Deal“ from the ’70s?

Basically contestants had to choose between the “deal” that was presented to them by the emcee and what was behind “curtain #1,” or #2 or #3…

Now even though they knew they could end up with 150 jars of peanut butter or a gaggle of geese, most of the time, the contestants went for it and took the “deal.”

For some reason what was behind curtain #1 seemed more valuable because it was hidden.  This is what I call the Fallacy of Opacity: we tend to believe that what is hidden is more valuable. 

However, this is, in fact, not a truth, but a fallacy.  Though we’ve seen it disproved millions of times on Let’s Make a Deal and in real life, alike, we continue to believe that what’s hidden is more valuable.

Why? Because we confuse it with its inverse which IS actually true: what’s valuable tends to be hidden, protected, locked in a vault.

Social media tools and technologies are challenging this assumption and encouraging us to share that which is most valuable. To those of us who are not Digital Natives, this mindshift is tough to make and even tougher to put into practice.  

Remember, sharing information enables collaboration and collaboration yields better solutions.  Hidden information is not, in fact, more valuable — that’s just the Fallacy of Opacity.

What if Obama’s Work Progress projects were digital?

“The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something!”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

There have been a number of news articles over the past week, e.g. CBS News’ FDR’s New Deal Blueprint For Obama, that liken Obama’s economic recovery plan to the Work Progress Administration (WPA) founded as part of FDR’s New Deal in 1933. 

Some details and background about WPA from Chip Reid’s piece for CBS News:

The WPA lasted 8 years, from 1935 to 1943, and left a mark on America that is still visible today. It spent $11 billion dollars, employed eight and a half million people.

New roads were built – 650,000 miles of them. And new airports, including New York City’s Laguardia Airport.

But it wasn’t just about things. The public school lunch program got its start with WPA dollars.

“Attendance increased,” Taylor said. “It was something that raised the health of the country.”

FDR thought people needed places for recreation. So, the WPA repaired and enlarged the national park system, but Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, the man who headed the WPA, knew there was more to life than bricks and mortar.

“The great thing that Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins recognized was that it made no sense whatsoever to take an excellent violin player and put him to work building a road,” Taylor said. “He could provide, or she could provide, entertainment to people. And enlightenment! And that’s why the WPA had an umbrella over arts projects as well as construction.”

In 1941, Woody Guthrie was paid to write songs for a month as he visited the new dams under construction along the Columbia River in Washington State.

The WPA financed 225,000 concerts, with audiences of 150 million Americans. Actors appeared in stage productions all over the country. Artists painted murals on countless public buildings, like those at LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal in New York.

The WPA financed almost a half-million pieces of art. Some are on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.

Much of what Obama is proposing–building infrastructure, roads, bridges, schools, transportation systems, green technologies, etc.–replicates FDR’s infrastructure improvements (not sure about the arts expansion…).  I’m not bringing this up to start a political discussion about whether there should be a New Deal 2 or how large a stimulus package Congress should actually agree to–that’s a completely different debate for a different set of bloggers or politicians.  My interest here is in why Obama wants to allocate these funds–75 years later–just as FDR did in 1933?

Today’s world is dramatically different, namely, we are a connected society that has all information available at our fingertips.  Expanding and improving brick and mortar infrastructure and access to traditional entertainment–though truly necessary in many parts of our nation–at the same time sounds a bit like a throwback from a previous era. 

So the question that I have for Obama is this: what are and should be today’s, 21st century, Work Progress project equivalents?  What capabilities and skill sets could Obama leverage to simultaneously strengthen morale, our economy, and our American culture for today,  just as Roosevelt attempted to do in the 30’s and into the 40’s?  What does digital work progress look like?

Social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling innovation in ways and scale never before possible.  Connected individuals and organizations are collaboratively solving problems and creating products, services and processes that are transforming our country in awe-inspiring ways.

Though improvements and construction of physical roads and bridges are certainly still critical for our country, Obama might find that investing in virtual roads, bridges, educational solutions and information transportation systems that leverage the tremendous power of social networking can have exponential return-on-investment.

New eMarketer Social Network Marketing Report

eMarketer just released a new report entitled, “Social Network Marketing: Slow Growth Ahead for Ad Spending.”  It’s an expensive for-pay report ($695), so I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing, but I just wanted to share with you the synopsis.   I agree with the overall premise that impactful social network marketing is not going to be about banner advertising.

The Social Network Marketing report analyzes why marketers have been unable to crack the code of social network advertising.

The declining US economy and slower-than-expected revenue growth at MySpace are two reasons for the lowered near-term social network ad forecasts.

Advertising is not the only way for marketers to participate in social networks, however.

Although social network advertising—banners, search ads and new ad formats—is not growing as expected, other forms of social network marketing—encompassing tactics such as customer communities and influencer outreach—are proliferating.

Marketers still need to be where their customers are, and consumers remain heavily involved in social networks.

It’s good to see that marketers are realizing that traditional advertising on social nets is not the way that social marketing works.  However, the last line, “Marketers still need to be where their customers are, and consumers remain heavily involved in social networks” keeps me wondering . . .

Showing up and being there is not only not enough, it misses the point: social networks are about engagement, participation  and collaboration.  Being where your customers are is like trying to pick up a gal at a bar through just by standing  in the corner and hoping she notices you.  Come on Romeo, roll up your sleeves, slick back your hair and buy the gal a drink!

U.S. Premiere Screening of Government 2.0 Film — update

So, I heard back promptly from Hugh Hartford at Banyak Films.  They are very interested in and open to having the U.S. premiere of Us Now at the Government 2.0 unconference–yay!  This will be a great addition.

Related to this, but not dependent upon this, I AM planning move forward with the Government 2.0 unconference idea.  I really appreciate all of the positive feedback that I’ve received and look forward to working with you all to create an unforgetable collaborative event.  I plan to have a wiki up by early January.

Us Now: a film about government 2.0

Last week I learned of a new documentary film entitled Us Now:  a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet.  The documentary is directed by Ivo Gormley and produced in the UK by Banyak films in association with the RSA.  Here’s a brief explanation from the Us Now site:

In a world in which information is like air, what happens to power?

Us Now is a documentary film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet.

Us Now tells the stories of online networks that are challenging the

existing notion of hierarchy.  For the first time, it brings together

the fore-most thinkers in the field of participative governance to

describe the future of government.

All of the material generated during the project will be available to

view online and the project will culminate in an hour long documentary

to be released publicly in January 2009.

 

Here’s the preview:

 

Without having seen the film, it’s tough to comment knowledgeably about it, but I will say that the subject matter is extremely timely.  Clay Shirky’s quote, (paraphrased) “it’s not about the tools and technologies,  it’s about what they can do,” is,  of course, dead on.  Film is an accessible and universal format and may be just the right tool for engaging the not-yet-believers in the power of collaboration for cultural and governmental change.

I have reached out to the folks at Banyak films to discuss their plans for a U.S. screening.  We’ll keep you posted…

Social Media Adoption Curve

Yes, this PowerPoint rendition is ugly as sin, but I wanted to quickly throw this out for feedback before getting mired in design.  Disclaimer: I am NO artist! 

I came up with this continuum as I was thinking about the various phases that both individuals and organizations go through when breaking into and then evolving in the world of social media. 

The diagram is pretty self-explanatory, but I want to point out the two “mindshifts” that I’ve identified along the curve.  The first mindshift occurs between the ”broadcast” and the “participation” phases, when the individual or organization has the “ah ha” moment of realizing that social media is not another broadcast tool, but rather, a way to engage with others.  The second mindshift occurs between the “relationships” and the “collaboration” phases, when the individual or organization realizes that focusing on increasing the value for others–the collective–is more beneficial (to the individual/organization AND others) than focusing on increasing the the value for itself.

Government 2.0 BarCamp unconference

I had an idea on Thursday that’s gotten me really excited but which has been burning a hole in my head and taking up way too much of my mental energy since its inception.  So, I started to run it by a few folks to see if I’m out of my mind or if I have something here. 

For quite some time I’ve been stymied by how to harness the power of the pockets of social media thinking and activity that are in process within various functions in government agencies by tying them together into a cross-agency, cross-functional government 2.0 initiative.   It seems to me that this can’t be led by any single department within any single federal agency because it’s not really their charge.  It also can’t really be done by a private corporation like Microsoft or Google because then it’s a commercial venture with overt business development objectives.  Think tanks have their own political leanings.  Academic institutions are more about thinking and researching thank action.

So, what if we hold a Federal Government 2.0 BarCamp unconference organized by all of us: the people and organizations passionate about collaborative government?

The topic of the unconference would be leveraging social media tools and technologies to catalyze and implement collaboration within, across and for the federal government.  The unconference would bring together the leading thinkers from government, consulting, academia and industry to practice what we preach:

• share myriad initiatives already in process;
• collaboratively generate ways for the Obama administration to utilize and harness the power of social media as it develops its plans for the next four years;
• provide networking between the new and transitional leadership and those of us already involved and leading government 2.0 throughout the federal government.

I was thinking that January 23 and/or 24 might be a good time to do this — right after the new administration takes its positions, but right at the beginning of them settling in and setting agendas

I think that securing sponsors and drumming up participation would be fairly easy given the tremendous existing government 2.0 network and the social networking tools that we use everyday.

What do you think?

A Web 1.5 ad & promo

So I just received a LinkedIn invitation from Bob Woods, a guy whom I met at SocialDevCampEast2 this past Saturday. I clicked through, accepted the invitation and then decided to update something in my profile. Great. Done. Exited LinkedIn.

And then I saw a pop-up exit ad from Banana Republic inviting me to enter a promotion for a chance to win 1 of 25 $1,000 Banana Republic wardrobes and providing me with a coupon to receive 25% off any purchase of $125 or more through 12/7 in-store or online.

This was the first time I’ve seen this kind of ad targeting based upon participation in a social media activity.  The ad was delivered to those LinkedIn users who had engaged and used LinkedIn in some way.  I think that this is an interesting old media cross-over baby step to new media — kind of a web 1.5 hybrid. 

Maybe next time Banana Republic will invite me to be LinkedIn and start following me on Twitter after I announce how much I like their Jackson fit petite slacks….

What’s all the fuss about Twitter?

A great report just came out this morning (from Pistachio Consulting) detailing the microsharing landscape and effective ways microsharing is being used by organizations.  It’s definitely worth a look. 

I follow @Pistachio on Twitter and she (Laura Fitton) is smart, witty, humorous and has excellent insights about social media.  The report provides an overview of 19 microsharing applications and classifies them in a matrix of subcategories.  (I suppose with six subcategories, it’s hard to put them in a 2×2, but that would be a great way to show similarities and differences.)  The report provides advantages and reservations for each app and then puts each in a comparison grid against 20 or so attributes. 

As far as I know, this is the first comprehensive analysis of the microsharing space to date.  It’s nice to see it being taken so seriously as a business opportunity and imperative.  The value of the ambient awareness and content bursts of microsharing is really tough to understand until you are doing it and really tough to do until you understand it enough to see the value.  I’m @mixtmedia on Twitter.  Follow me, follow @Pistachio, follow @marciamarcia (a contributor to Pistachio’s amazing microsharing report) and start to understand…

What my grandmother taught me about social media

So I just booked our flights for Thanksgiving to visit my grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins in Amesbury, MA. Anticipating this year’s long holiday weekend got me thinking about last year’s family get-together.

I remember my 95-year-old grandmother sitting in a chair last Thanksgiving and indignantly saying, “they won’t come to me!” referring to my 1 ½ and 4 ½ year-olds. “Why won’t they come to me?!” This seemed to me and other family members to be a ridiculous comment. They’re little kids! They are enticed by people who get down on the floor to play with them, suggest fun activities and are friendly.

Kids are attracted to people who engage with them, in their language and on their level. My well-meaning grandmother was guilty of the same offense offline as so many organizations and corporations are guilty of in the social media space: not understanding or engaging with her audience.

Though the social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies are still new and shiny, they are just another way to interact with others. It’s easy to assume that because the social media space has different platforms and tools that it also had different social rules.

Social media engagement is as natural as playing with your grandkids. Just as grownup relatives need to follow the cues of the children and engage with them, on their level, wherever they may be, so must organizations and corporations engage with their customers on the customers’ terms, wherever they may be.

So don’t say, “why won’t they come to me?!” Get down in the sandbox, on the living room floor, or wherever they may be, and start engaging with YOUR customers. Those are the interactions that they’ll remember… well into their 90s.

Inability to comment on comments stifles the conversation

I just finished reading Keith Burtis’ great guest post on Chris Brogan’s blog, “Twitter- To Converse or to Broadcast-THAT is the Question.”  As I scrolled and skimmed through the comments to get down to the bottom and add my own comment, it dawned on me how strange it is that the participatory medium of blogs that are all about conversation and collaboration do not allow people to comment on comments.

Sure, you can explicitly refer to what commenter “Starfish” said when you, yourself, are commenting, but this requires others to scroll back up and try to find “Starfish’s” comment, then scroll back down to your comment and then down again to insert their own comment.  This is cumbersome, not collaborative.

I often find the same challenge in using Twitter: I @reply to someone’s tweet to start or continue a conversation, but maybe I’ve been in meetings for the past two hours and the tweet that I’m latching on to is a tweet from much earlier that day.  I feel the need to sort of recap the initial tweet and then add my insight or addition–tough in 140 characters.  From being on the other side of some of @replies I know it’s sometimes difficult to to figure out to which tweetstream they’re referring.

As I commented–yes, linearly, because what other choice did I have?–on Keith’s post, the broadcast problem is threefold.  First, we Digital Immigrants, are still getting our sea legs when it comes to participatory media.  Collaboration is not our comfort zone.  We want try out the latest social networking tool, but find it uncomfortable to put ourselves out there, trust “strangers,” and give away our ideas for free.  It’s a cultural issue. 

The second issue is the adoption continuum.  Remember 1994 when email was still fairly new?  Little by little friends and family members were ”getting on email,” as we said back in the day.  The user habit was to write an email letter–yep, these were long messages–to your friend.  Then once you’d gone back and forth a few times and had nothing else to say, the “forwards” would start.  From jokes, to consumer warnings, to limericks, you were one recipient on your friend’s mass distribution list.  At first this was funny and you, too, would forward these inane messages along to your friends who were “on email.”  But “funny” quickly soured and turned into annoying.  You moved on.  You started using email as a productive communication tool rather than as a toy.  It became a seamless part of your daily communications.

The same adoption continuum exists for social media.  First we sign up for a service and then probably forget about it for awhile.  Then we passively observe the landscape.  Next we dip our toes in and blurt and broadcast, “I had pizza for lunch!”  Then we settle in and start sharing useful and mildly interesting information with our followers…but we’re still operating in a 1.0 broadcast paradigm.  As we build our follower networks, we begin to see the value of social media.  Suddenly we “get it”: we have this mindshift that it’s not about us, it’s about them.  Broadcast is about increasing value for the creator; social media is about increasing value for everyone else.

The third and final piece of the broadcast problem is that the blog and microblog platform infrastructures are, too, still evolving and are not yet truly conducive to the collaboration that their content is trying to encourage.  I’d be interested in hearing if anyone knows of a blogging platform that truly facilitates collaborative discussions.  I can envision a clickable mindmapping kind of visualization.

Emerging Technologies for Defense Applications conference: notes and commentary

On Monday, October 27, 2008, I attended the Emerging Technologies for Defense Applications conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Arlington, VA. 

 

I was sad to see that I was the only one at the conference expanding the conversation beyond the walls of the Ritz via Twitter.  You can see my Twitter feed by searching #etechd.  I wanted to create a summary of the conference here on my blog and tried to find a good way to do this by leveraging this Twitter feed, but no luck.  So, using old fashioned editing, here are my notes summarizing the Techipedia portion of the conference.  I hope that you find this useful.  Please comment if you have any questions. 

 

The Honorable John Young, Jr., Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics (AT&L), explained that the landscape is changing: threats are emerging that have new tools and technologies.  To outpace our adversaries and secure our nation, we need to get the information sharing, speed, and technologies that will enable us to be agile and respond rapidly.

 

He underscored the importance of collaboration in all dimensions of our business to our success in the future.  Embracing collaboration requires a shift in ideas, values, behavior, and processes.

 

DoD has three key challenges in achieving its imperative to support the warfighter:

 

1.    Internal communication: research and acquisition functions need to communicate more effectively

 

2.     Process agility: we need to shorten the time it takes to identify and procure solutions

• We need to develop a more strategic and effective budget processes

 

3.     Collaboration with external entities: government needs to tell industry what it needs; industry needs to tell the government what it is doing and can provide

• Working with smaller companies who are focused on different technologies is critical for our global success and security.
• We need to proactively identify and adopt new tools to confront emerging threats.

 

DoD Techipedia provides solutions to these three challenges by linking warfighter requirements with the best innovations that exist.  Techipedia has three components:

·        Internal wiki: rolled out October 2008

·        Defensesolutions.gov portal will enable external entities to submit solutions to DoD and enables to DoD to respond quickly: will launch January 2009

·        External wiki: will roll out Spring 2009

 

Technipedia will initially be limited to a small number of solution areas in which we’re seeking solutions, e.g. fingerprinting, DNA management, battlefield forensics

·        All solutions, from high-tech to simple, will be considered

·        All available sources of information, including non-traditional, will be used

 

Techipedia is launching with a pilot program also called the Open Business Cell (OBC).  This will be within the Rapid Reaction Technology Office where the culture is already lean and anticipatory. 

 

Though I am impressed with the clarity of AT&L’s objectives and the foray that the organization is making into social media, I am concerned that they are missing a big piece of the point of social media: to participate. 

 

 

AT&L is creating valuable destination site that is certainly Web 2.0-enabled, but to realize the success that they’re hoping for, there is really going to be a need for a) a communication plan about the existence of this destination; b) participation across the web to mine for ideas, technologies, participants. 

 

 

If you build it, they will not necessarily come.  Social media is about reaching customers, partners and enthusiasts where they may be.  The fourth component of Techipedia really should be a distributed social media strategy that monitors the blogosphere and engages appropriately to yield value for DoD and its next generation of not-necessarily-traditional partners and suppliers. 

The key to finding time for social media: replacement

So my husband, Paul, has lost 5-10 pounds over the past year or so.  It’s happened gradually and he attributes it not to a diet, but rather, to a shift in his food selection that he refers to as “replacement.”  He’s not eating less food, just replacing many of the refined carbohydrates he was eating with unsaturated fats and protein, e.g. rather reaching for a cookie, he’ll grab a handful of almonds; instead of a sandwich, he’ll have a salad with double turkey.  Believe it or not, Paul’s concept of replacement is a relevant lesson for organizations and individuals dipping their toes into the sea of social media.

I had the pleasure of grabbing coffee (no, no muffin or croissant with it) this morning with long-time contact and SVP at Fleishman-Hillard Digital, Dan Horowitz.  Conversation flowed from FH Digital’s terrific That Guy website and campaign for military health client Tricare, to the work that I do with DoD’s New Media Directorate, to the challenge of finding the time to actively maintaining a social media presence.  Dan explained that one of the biggest challenges in working with clients is getting them to understand that to do some of the social media “stuff,” they have to stop doing some of the traditional “stuff”: replacement.

Whether you are an individual or are reading this in your role with a corporation, organization or government agency, you can’t keep doing what you were doing and also fully participate in the world of social media.  There is not enough time.  Social media needs to replace a portion of your old media time and resources. 

Even if there were a hypothetical situation in which you actually had unlimited time and resources, the concept of replacement still holds true because the relationships that you will build and maintain through social media makes some portion of your old outreach, PR, customer care and other communications functions, obsolete.  This means that they need to be replaced.  Replacement can help you/your organization, too, to become leaner by focusing on what’s really valuable and usable rather than on the empty calories of some old communications.

Have you seen Apps for Democracy?

Apps for Democracy is a mashup contest being sponsored by DC’s Office of the CTO. Developers and designers will compete by creating web applications, widgets, Google Maps mash-ups, iPhone apps, Facebook apps, and other digital utilities that visualize OCTO’s Data Catalog, which provides real-time data from multiple agencies to citizens — a catalyst ensuring agencies operate as more responsive, better performing organizations. The contest features 60 cash prizes from $2,000 to $100 dollars for a total of $20,000 in prizes.
I love this concept because it really gets at the collaboration and participation that 2.0 is all about. In fact, it’s a model that more organizations should consider adopting–i.e. copy–as a truly collaborative way to engage internal and/or external audiences.

Rethinking “2.0″…

So this morning I received an e-mail from my DoD New Media colleague, Jack Holt, asking for my thoughts on the idea of changing the name of the New Media Directorate to “Online and Emerging Media.”  At first I pointed him to my post Official Announcement: It’s Just “2.0″.  He pushed back with a good point that echoed Steve Radick’s comments on that blog post: what happens when it becomes Web 2.5, Web 3.0, etc.?  This discussion got me thinking further about what the heck to call this stuff!  Here’s my response to Jack:

Hmmm, yeah. I see what you mean. Truthfully, none of these terms are really great. What if in the analog age we’d called it “analog media’ thinking that was so future-focused…. then digital media usurped analog. Social media and social networking feel like fads: social is not the point, social networks are really just laying a foundation for us to be able to leverage our contacts to accomplish new things in different ways. As for 2.0, indeed there will be a release 3.0, etc., so 2.0 doesn’t get us much except outdated too quickly. I like “new” because it never ends. I like emerging even more because it has cutting edge connotations. “Online” concerns me because I’m not sure that the clear distinction between online and offline that we have today will exist in the same way in the future as mobile technologies blur the line between the two. I am concerned about lumping this all in as “media” because the changes that are happening are bigger than just the way we communicate. The cultural shifts are not captured by “media.”

Official announcement: it’s just “2.0″

I am officially switching from using the terms “Web 2.0,” “social media,” “new media,” and “digital media” to simply using “2.0.”  It’s not that I’m going minimalist on you, it’s just that what’s going on out there is a societal and cultural shift enabled by tools and technologies.  As I’ve said before and will say again, it’s never about the tools and technologies.  The above terms limit the scope of changes that are infiltrating every aspect, corner and depth of our society.  We are entering a new era just as we did with the Renaissance or the Age of Enlightenment.*  This era, as a whole, I’m entitling “2.0.”

 

* can’t help but think of that hilarious scene in the movie Swingers, though…

Microcasting yourself across social networks

So, I’ve been grappling with how to best manage my personal feed across social networks.  It seems silly to update my status separately on several social networks when services like Ping.fm exist to enable broadcast updates across networks.

A few weeks ago I did a test and linked my Facebook and Plaxo Pulse feeds to auto-update when I post updates on Twitter.  I then asked my contacts how they felt about receiving so many status updates from me.  I got some honest feedback: it was too much information. 

I am not a prolific tweeter–I update 0-5 times per day.  Most of my tweets are observations or status updates, some are sharine interesting articles, blog posts or concepts.  So, why did this seemingly perfect concept of cross-social network updating not work in practice?

There are three reasons: the audience, the origin and the action.  Though all of my Facebook friends and Plaxo contacts are, by definition, participating in social media, the majority of them have not immersed themselves in it from a cultural perspective.  Just as most news publications use blogging as another article format, so do many social networkers use these tools primarily as another form of interpersonal communications, just as they use e-mail or IM.  In both cases, they have not made the big shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: from a world of information exchange to a world of deep and meaningful collaboration. As I’ve already stood on my Web 2.0 soapbox, I’ll refrain from repeating myself here, except to say that embracing social media means adopting a single persona and believing that collaborative thinking is superior to self-promotion.

Second, Twitter (and not only Twitter, I should add) is of a different ilk than Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and others.  Committed members of the Twitter community have made taken the plunge and are living by the tenets for Web 2.0: trust, transparency, openness and collaboration.  Furthermore, a large number of people who follow one another on Twitter met one another on Twitter.  This stands in stark contrast to networks like Facebook which are founded on the principle of retrobuilding existing networks.  Twitter enthusiasts want more detailed information more frequently because this interaction is the basis of their relationships. 

Finally, the action: on Facebook or Plaxo, a status update is a broadcast; on Twitter the action is micro-casting, not broadcasting.  Twitter followers find one another through keyword searches or threads based on topics of interest, geographic location, or social situation, e.g. being a mom.  Microcasting is Chris Anderson’s Long Tail in action: people building communities around niche areas of interest.

So, for now, I will keep my tweets separate from my status updates, but I have to say that at this particular point in my social network evolution, I feel a closer sense of community and am experiencing more meaningful collaboration with my Twitter followers and followees than with my real-life–albeit retrobuilt–network.

The professional Catch-22 of personal transparency

At this point it’s fair to concede that the idea of a lifetime job is a relic from a previous era.  It is widely believed that we are slated to have an average of seven careers in our lifetime–many of which will involve more than one job.  Even when we’re in long-term committed employment relationships, we are still not married to the company.  Ultimately, we’re free agents and need to manage our own career paths, proactively make job changes and build our own skill sets. 

At the same time, when we are employed by a company, we must be, to some extent, representatives of that company.  We are expected to conduct ourselves in ways that are not only ethical, but also appropriate and socially-acceptable.  Bad behaviors reflect poorly upon our employer.  This is even more the case for corporate executives.  I’d argue that the further you get up the chain of command, the more your public face melds with that of your corporation.

So how does this play out in the transparent world of social media where we have a single persona?  Because the personal is the public, it is also the professional.  

One result may be that people become reticent to BE the face of the organizations for which they work.  People may choose to keep silent and not share their opinions and thoughts in public forums.  Noses to the grind and locked behind closed doors, these employees will hinder the information sharing that leads to innovation and will hinder the development of the collaborative culture that is percolating.

Another possibility may be that people will opt out of some or all of the social media conversation to protect their employers and themselves.  My husband, a Hill staffer, has very consiously chosen not to have a Facebook page because he cannot control his contacts’ activities and posts.  An embarrassing comment on his Wall would reflect poorly upon him and thus, upon his employer. As a government employee, his standards are, necessarily, high.

A third outcome is that we may see more and more independent consultants and freelancers who represent their own brands.  Being an independent consultant may be the safest position to be in, and yet the hardest, all at the same time because we can be associated with conflicting client perspectives at the same time. Over the past two weeks I’ve come across two occasions on which I felt the need to put a disclaimer in my communications: ”the views in this post represent my opinions and are not necessarily the perspectives of my clients.”

With our world in the midst of major shift to a more open, honest and transparent culture, shying away from full participation is neither a positive, nor a sustainable, solution.  We need to find ways to be our personal and professional selves within social media.  We can’t afford to lose valuable people or their perspectives.

Renaissance 2.0: the birth of truth

Though I never thought of the Metro as a sociologist’s petrie dish, the other day I found myself noticing the stark contrast between the casual behaviors and open interactions of twentysomethings and the more formal rituals and body language of the members of older generations.  Millenials chatted and thumbed on their PDAs; Baby Boomers buried their noses in Express and hardcovered books. Millenials sprawled when they could, seemingly having a broader definition of personal space; Boomers avoided eye contact and sat stiffly, careful not to take more than their fair share of seat. 

What I’m talking about should not to be confused with college students dressing in ripped jeans and flip-flops while business professionals don blazers and neckties: the contrast is not really about age or vocation.  Though it may be illustrated by the external facades, it really represents a deeper and more substantitve social shift: our society is shedding its formality.

I think few would disagree that the formality of our society has decreased generation over generation.  From casual Fridays in the workplace, to Evite invitations, the formalities of our society are waning.

According to Wiktionary, formality is:

1. Something said or done as a matter of form;
2. A customary ritual without new or unique meaning.

So, formality is really just a socially-constructed facade accepted because it is the social norm.  What was behind the Wizard of Oz’ facade?  Stark reality; the cold, hard truth.  Formalities protect us from reality. 

Over the past five or more years, reality shows have been the most popular genre on TV.  Unfettered by the editors and reporting structures of journalists, bloggers speak their minds and share everything under the sun.  Twitter enthusiasts share valuable professional insights as well as mundane details of their commutes and coffee breaks.  Social media is dissolving the already-weakening formality of our society, giving way to a new set of values: authenticity, openness, honesty, and truth. 

Text messages use shorthand, IM forgives typos and podcasts continue through sneezes.  For the first time in history, the message has overtaken the medium: what’s being said matters much more than how it’s being said.  Size doesn’t matter: individuals can now speak as loudly as corporations.  So why is this happening and why is it happening now?

The confluence of many trends is causing an eruption of our formal societal constraints.  Put very simply, though, the driver is bandwidth. Today’s speeds and storage capacities enable new tools and technologies which enable us to rapidy communicate and connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere.  Now that the infrastructure exists to initiate and support conversations, participation, and interactions across all physical boundaries, progress can be made in all arenas as it never could before.  There is so much to say and so many problems to solve.  We are necessarily shedding formality because there is no time and no room to care about facades. 

Formality is inversely proportional to truth.  We are beginning new chapter in human history: Renaissance 2.0: the Birth of Truth. 

Just as did Renaissance 1.0, this changes everything.  We are starting to see glimmers of the future.  Social hierarchies are transforming from being based on superficial demographics to being based on substantitive ideas.  The valued currency is shifting from money to influence. 

Change is difficult to embrace and many peoples’ instincts are to flee.  We must trust that the benefits outweigh the losses and embrace this new era.  If only everyone could see that…could believe that…. could embrace that… world peace just might ensue. 

I am not such an idealist as to think that this is going to happen anytime soon, let alone in my lifetime, but I am enough of an optimist to believe that we can make this shift.

The mindshift is easier for those who are younger because they literally have lived through fewer years of the previous era, and thus, have less of an attachment to its formalities.  Millenials, a.k.a. Digital Natives, are the first generation to think differently:  their gut instinct is that the truth matters more than the formalities; Generation Xers still put formalities first.  It’s hard to unlearn and hard to let go of concepts and practices that you’ve always known to be true.

One interesting and important manifestation of this reduced formality is blurring of the line that previously existed between our private selves and our public selves.  Social media–built upon truth, authenticity and openness–commands a single persona.  Millenials understand this.  They are hard-wired to be less formal and more open, just as I observed on the Metro.

Fox News on Facebook: Web 1.0 or 2.0?

So, Fox News has launched its own Facebook page.  Fox News already has over 22,000 thousands of fans, so, I guess we can consider it pretty popular.  I am curious to learn how Fox News is defining and measuring the success of its Facebook page: number of friends, conversations sparked, clickthroughs to FoxNews.com, etc.  In short, I’m not convinced that a Facebook page is truly a Web 2.0 tactic for Fox News–or for any other corporation, media company, or organization, for that matter.

“Huh?” you might ask.  “It’s Facebook, how much more ‘Web 2.0′ can you get?”

I would imagine (though I don’t know) that Fox News, like many companies playing in the social media sandbox, utlimately views this social network as another broadcast venue–another way to drive traffic to its destination site.  

When corporations create individual “personas” on social networking sites, they are superimposing their Web 1.0 objectives onto Web 2.0.  Though they’ve shown up to the party, they’re not really participating in social media.  Being on a social networking site and not participating is–really by definition–not being part of the social network.

Another similar example that I was discussing with Mark Potts today at lunch is auto-RSS Twitter updates.  When a blogger does this to promote a new post to his/her followers, it’s well-received: a blogger–by definition–is already a respected participant in the conversation.  A blogger’s tweets spark conversation both as responses on the blog, itself, and on Twitter.  But when an organization sets TwitterFeed or other similar RSS auto-tweeting tool to post whenever its site is updated, it’s exploiting the medium and, thus, diluting the viral value of social media.

I understand why news outlets, corporations and organizations are creating presences on social networks: they want to be where their audiences are.  This is the first premise of social media.  However, being on social networks as a corporation and simply TwitterFeeding every site update violates the second premise of social media: authentically join the conversation.

Collaborative Government: Recapturing Our Founding Principle

I had coffee this morning with Mark Drapeau, National Defense University fellow and author of two terrific recent and impressive articles on Mashable about government 2.0.  As I was driving to my DoD office afterwards, I was thinking about the implications of government 2.0 and began to establish this concept of collaborative government. 

Now, for the first time in history, we have the opportunity to truly live the “we the people” vision of our founding fathers.  Social media’s collaborative capabilities can level the playing field for us–the people–to create, improve, and manage our country as could previously only be envisioned.

Of course, we’re really just at the beginning of this new era.  72% of Americans are online.  According to Universal McCann’s recent “Media in Mind” tracking study, 50% of Americans are using social media today.  This study shows that only 10% of Americans blog.  Although this is just one indicator of engagment and active participation in social media, it’s an important one. 

It’s one thing to have a broadband connection, it’s another to usethe Internet.  It’s one thing to set up your Facebook profile, and quite another to be proactively and regularly collaborating via a social network.  The difference that I’m poking at is between attending an event and participating in a conversation.   The former is very much of a Web 1.0 metric, the latter–harder to measure and gauge–is what social media is all about: collaboration.

As our population has grown beneath the shadow of the broadcast media era, citizens have lost involvement in and ownership of their government.  Many view The Government as a impenetrable fortress around which they must navigate.  I live in Washington, DC.  I drive past the Capitol, the White House, and the myriad marble government buildings and icons, daily.   It’s easy to develop this perception.

But this is not the spirit of America.  Our government is of the people, for the people.  The rapid evolution of social media solutions provide government agencies with opportunities to leverage the best minds across the country to solve their biggest challenges.  This is my concept of collaborative government. 

There are a number of private organizations–Understanding USA and Personal Democracy Forum, being two–leading the charge to bridge this gap for citizens by utilizing social media tools to break down the perceived fortress and encourage citizen-government interaction.  As important and in the right spirit as these organizations may be, and as accessible and interactive as they make government information and data, the interaction still occurs outside the government “fortress.”  To maintain the safety and security of our country, this must, in many cases, remain.  Therefore, only government agencies–protectors of information and data–can initiate true citizen-government collaboration.

NASA’s blog, OpenNASA.com, is a great example of one agency understanding this and trying to engage and appeal to its next generation of advocates–and prospective employees.  The Department of Defense, is working to create a social media wiki that enables a collaborative dialogue about Defense needs and applicable industry innovations. The State Department has created “virtual embassies” that enable valuable interaction with U.S. citizens and foreign nationals.

As social media tools evolve, there will be more and more ways for government agencies to initiate a collaborative government.  What if USA.gov were to add a collective ratings layer, similar to the functionality of Yelp or Digg, to enable users to help users find the most valuable and relevant information across the government?  

The possibilities for creating our collaborative government will be endless.  Our government agencies must not just advocate social media, but truly embody its collaborative spirit–the spirit upon which our country was founded.