Category Archives: Government

Starting Over, Yet Again

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And no its not that book that is in the self help aisle that Charlotte was looking for in the “Sex in the City” tv show, but its about the newest chapter in my life as a Government Consultant. Last month was my last day as a full time wiki Gardener/Digital Curator for Intellipedia and other social software tools for the Intelligence Community. I am still doing project management for the contract as my/our vested interest of Navstar and Enterprise 2.0 work, in the bigger picture of Government 2.0.

When one does consultant work, especially in the Federal Government, as I do, you tend to rotate to new contracts on occasion. I’ve been on some contracts for years, others for months depending on the work. Sometimes I have been on a contract from inception, others I have taken to a close. But with each one, I learn so much and gain new friends and colleagues.

In fact, since I have been consulting in the same field since I left the Army in 1998, I keep running into the same familiar names and faces. Some even go back to those days when I wore BDUs.  I have worked with several kinds of contracting companies, from Small to Medium to Large. So now, with all this time under my belt, I can tell you my best experience so far has been with the small female owned company by Joanna Alexis, Navstar, Inc.

With Navstar, I have been growing up a lot. When I first joined I was still doing work as a billable employee as a Developer (I even learned a bit of Ruby on Rails). Even though I had previously done work as a Project Manager and even a small venture as an Independent Contractor. Over my time here at Navstar, I have pulled away from being just a developer and back into Project Management and Business Development.

As my mission to continuously grow the Enterprise 2.0 division of work, I have been scouting fine talent inside and outside of the Federal Government to work towards and more Open and Transparent ethos inside and out. Not only have I been recruiting great minds to our team, but I have been growing this business in the same breaths. Which brings me to where I am today and the subject of this post.

A few weeks ago now, back fresh from a mini beach vacation in Ocean City, I started back with the organization I was formerly a developer, in an Agile project management role. The team I join has a stellar background in delivering innovative work with the use of new technologies and agile business development.

Yesterday I spent some time in an Agile Refresher “talk” that was tailored to my work I will be doing with the team as a Project Manager. While in the “talk”, I realized that Agile falls right into some of the rethinking your mind and fits into what I am trying to evangelize when I am talking Enterprise 2.o to my customers. My role now as a PM is not only to be a liaison between the developers and the website owner and stakeholders, but it is also to innovate an agency, if not a community into bigger and better ways to achieve our over all mission. Because, its the mission that is the focus, not just the tools.

So today, I am opening my mind even more by attending Blog Potomac #blogpotomac in Falls Church, right down the street from Navstar Headquarters. And in two weeks, I am looking forward to meeting some of the Enterprise 2.0 luminaries at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. #e2conf

But no matter what the case, I promise I will still be a rockstar, realist, and edgerider to deliver quality work to my Government customers.

Blogging for the [Government] Enterprise at WordCampMid-Atlantic

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Whether you work for the Government or a public business, it is very important for you to approach your blog content as a professional and with an established brand. Today (this afternoon) I am presenting my thoughts at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic about Enterprise Blogging, especially with regards to the recent efforts of Government 2.0. 

The day is energetic for a bunch of nerds to get up early on a Saturday morning with so much going on today in the area. We have the Preakness just up the road, the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Force Base, and right next door, one of my alma mater’s “University of Phoenix” is graduating next door, amongst the many other institutions that are holding their commencement ceremonies. 

But back on topic, today since I have been moved from the User Track to the Technical Track of the schedule, I want to focus a little on both. So I have prepared remarks about the technical needs of the Enterprise when it comes to blogging. My points are strongly specific to the Government 2.0 aspect of the Enterprise. 

The first aspect I want to touch on is culture – the User side of the story. When it comes to the culture part of the story, there is much to address when it comes to the behavior of how we share information. Recently I had published a lengthy guest editorial at ZDNet about the mindset of “You Were Never 1.0“. While not all of my Enterprise 2.0 colleagues agree with all my points, I believe strongly in the bottom line of my message. You need to practice your game before you step on to the court.

Anil Dash seemed to echo this sentiment about blogging in general. He mentioned that when he looked back on his earlier blogs (he and I both started blogging 10 years ago), he can see how much he has grown as a blogger. This is why I think just getting your foot in the door and blogging internally is a great way to practice your tone, demeanor and message. Once you have practiced a bit behind the firewall, you can almost anticipate the reaction and how you react. 

The second aspect is the technical nature. There is much to discuss when it comes to where the Enterprise will go with new Web 2.0 and blog widgets, I briefly touched on this earlier this year in an interview with Executive Biz. 

So I hope that my presentation today is more of a conversation, what we have learned in Enterprise blogging and what can the open community, especially the mid-altantic can do to help move ahead the blogging force of Government 2.0, inside and outside of the firewall.

I’m up against a big hitter this afternoon, so if you are at the camp today, I hope I can steal your attention away from the big dogs to have a robust dialogue. 

2:30-3:15 Twitter, Friendfeed and Social Tools: Extending the blog beyond the blog – Dan Zarrella [BC-AUD] Blogging in Government – Andrea Baker [BC-143]

Government 2.0 Camp Reprise

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Catching up on some blogging w/@robotchampion. Photo by Planetrussell

That’s me on the right in the green scarf, catching up on some blogging w/@robotchampion.
Photo by Planetrussell

On day one we started off with your name, who are you with, and three words that described you or the name of a session you would like to propose. My three words: Geek Girl Supreme as recently dubbed by Adriel Hampton on the Government 2.0 show on Blog Talk Radio.

I spent most of the two days working as the Blog Coordinator for the event. And for the sessions I did attend, I tried to keep to some light housekeeping in which to make sure the presenter instructions where followed and the sponsors were thanked. I did manage to find time to actually moderate a session on Citizen 2.0. I didn’t want to be the focus of the session to be on me, since there were a lot of great minds in attendance. I have touched on Citizen 2.0 in the past and from the session at Government 2.0 camp there seems to be many ideas of what an individual defines for this moniker.

Now there have been a multitude of blog posts already by my colleagues and friends and new faces in the past couple weeks. I took my time to post this reprise because I wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost in the fold. As this is not so much about the content, but about the event itself, the best practices and lessons learned going forward.

I think I would break up my review of the event in some pros and cons:

Pros

  • So many sponsors – it made the event free for attending, provided food, provided the venue
  • Parking – I got great spots both days. The first day I parked in a two-hour zone and did not get a ticket (musta been luck – because every time I am in Old Town Alexandria, I get a ticket)
  • So many attendees – so much interest. Really gives me the fire in my belly that its not just those of us in the Beltway that want to change our aging institutions.
  • Kick off of the Government 2.0 club – for those of you that bravely stayed until the long at last end, on day two we crowdsourced our charter.
  • Networking – I finally got to meet Chris Dorobek and Jeffrey Levy in person because of this event. We all thought bringing us together in the same room would never happen and be a sure sign of the end of the world.
  • Knowledge Capture – while we didn’t get it all, this was the first unconference that I had seen that was completely transparent and information was going up as it happened, rather than later in the night. For 48 hours and weeks to follow, information is still being generated about sessions and the event itself.

Cons

  • Credit to the unsung volunteers – I am not discounting anything Mark, Maxine, Jeffrey, and Peter have done to get this effort underway. But there was a group of us over a dozen that made all the logistics happen and helped the event run smoothly. Everyone had a role and if I new everyone’s name I would list them. They made sure there was water, wifi, pizza, candy, the works. If you thought something was nice about the amenities of Gov20Camp, it was because of one of them. In so many of the post-publications I had not seen a mention of a hat-tip to those volunteers. So here’s to you (imagine me singing the bud light real American hero tribute to you)
  • Unfocused – Government 2.0 is a big big subject as so many of us define it so many different ways.
  • Large Participation – so many people made it hard to effectively network
  • Too many sessions – with what seemed to be over 100 sessions over the two days there was so much to choose to participate it was just as bad as going to a conference like SxSW Interactive. The schedule was overpacked. It was also repetitive. We could have used the first hour sessions to really modify the schedule even more and narrow down the rooms. Some topics repeated, which is good and bad. I did like that on day two, we learned from day 1 and made the gallery an “open room” for ad hoc discussions. This is something I initiated at WIReICES last fall. Having an open room during our conference. I admit I got the idea from the open sessions I had seen at Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco in 2008.
  • Knowledge capture – even with prior planning from lessons learned at other events, the moderators and presenters in some rooms failed to heed instructions on the yellow note we gave to them. I know this was an unconference, but some protocol does work. We had a wiki, a blog, google forums. There was just so much information spread throughout that was not interconnected. I have been trying in the weeks since to help bridge that gap.
  • Too Much Web 2.0 and not enough Enterprise 2.0 – I took a break from my normal push of Enterprise 2.0 discussions except for the Wikis in room 205. I know I know my stuff when it comes to wikis and the Enterprise, so I tried to be more of a listener. I did end up participating more in that session and I am glad I did. Great connections. But again, I purposefully took a step back from talking about the Enterprise, because I didn’t want to come off as a vendor or someone selling a solution. However, I kinda regret not pushing for that in the end because I saw much about external facing solutions and not enough internal solutions for communication, collaboration, and transparency. This drives me even more to have the specific Enterprise 2.0 Conference for Government this fall as I have previously talked about. I am also looking forward to the Government 2.0 summit in September.

I have been both a participant and an organizer of BarCamps and Unconferences before. This way by far the biggest one I had been too, but IMO wasn’t really the first unGovernment unconference. I have to believe outside of the ones I had organized and participated with some of my Government customers (on a smaller scale), that some where else, some other Government organization had tried something like this.

I think we could definitely do this event again. It should be yearly and not just DC centric. Although this area is the Mecca for Government. I would be interesting in knowing if anyone would want to see this be hosted in other cities. So if we do it again next year in March, who would be the host city? What would you like to see different?

Government 2.0 Camp Venue Announced

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The Pre-Camp Field Guide video. It can be found here:

http://www.government20club.org/2009/02/government-20-camp-pre-camp-field-manual/

Event: Government 2.0 Camp

Date: Friday, March 27, 2009 at 8:00 AM – Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 6:00 PM (ET)

YES THIS IS A FULL TWO DAY EVENT

Location:
Duke Ellington School of Arts
3500 R St NW
Washington, DC 20007

For more information click here: Government 2.0 Camp

Get me to GovSec …

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govseclogoThe Expo and Conference is one week away and the big question is, will the Goverati be there? Even though it seems like March is the month of the BarCamp, please don’t let this event skip your radar. The organizers of the event have been reaching out to get their target audience using social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter. This event is the perfect meat to the sandwich that was Transparency Camp last week and the upcoming Government 2.0 Camp at the end of the month.

The event is March 11-12, 2009 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. As a part of the bigger FOSE 2009 conference this is the part of the event you should focus on if you are someone with interests as my own with Transparency and Collaboration in Government. If you use Intellipedia, you might want to think about attending. First responders and those in Government security fields might not be reading my blog exactly, but if you know of someone who fits the bill and should attend, please pass along my blog and the link to the conference to encourage them to go. It is free to attend the expo for both GovSec and FOSE 2009 and if you have already registered for FOSE don’t sweat it, because you are covered for this event as well.

Louis Freeh, Former Director of the FBI

Louis Freeh, Former Director of the FBI

The former Director of the FBI, Louis Freeh will be the Keynote speaker of this event discussing the Convergence of Homeland Security on Thursday, March 12 at 9am. Mr. Freeh tenure as Director was during several major events that I can recall that brought national attention to the FBI. He was the director at the time of the infamous Robert Hanssen espionage case. Personally I am very eager to hear him speak about his time in office and his thoughts on the progression of the FBI and Homeland Security in a post 9/11 world.

Other sessions I am interested in are New Technologies for Interoperability, Cyber Security and Information Sharing , Terrorism and Information Technology and the panel moderated by Christoper Dorobek of The Daily Debrief on Federal News Radio.

Register today, and pass on to your colleagues.

FOSE 2009
March 10-12, 2009

Registration: 8:00AM – 4:00PM
Keynote Sessions: 9:00AM – 10:00AM
Expo: 10:00AM – 4:00PM

Walter E. Washington Convention Center
801 Mount Vernon Place NW
Washington, DC 20001

Enterprise 2.0 for Government Event Feeler

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I wanted to put out a feeler for a conference I am planning on behalf of my company Navstar, Inc to happen sometime in June October* (as soon as I get a venue confirmed). The conference is already in planning mode, in fact I am heading to a dinner shortly to work on this in more details.

Target Audience and Goal

I would like the target audience to be High Level Government Employees with decision making capabilities, to the likes of Vivek Kundra and other Government CIOs, CTOs, and their staff. Ideally the end customer would be high level decision makers in Federal and Local DC Metro Government, as this will be somewhere inside the DC-Metro area. However, general participation is being planned for transparency and openness.

The goal of the event is to really make aware of other Government members of projects that highlight efficiency, collaboration, cost-effectiveness, and reusability. I would love to extend this to be bigger to include more areas of Government, but since this is the first time event, I would like to keep it manageable in the first run, with hopes that this turns into a bigger and annual event.

Style

I am looking to do the conference in the style of TED in which speakers/presenters can showcase their work/idea/thought/project with a 15-20 minute slot time. In addition, would be able to showcase their stuff in an exhibit hall for more of a deep dive.

I am also looking to see if there would be interest in a barcamp, if this was a multi-day event. Right now, I am thinking it would be 1-2 days depending on the submissions to present.

Content

This event is not to compete, but to continue and expand upon connections and networking achieved from the Government 2.0 Camp and will be promoting as well as soliciting presenters/speakers from that and other events. In general, we are not so much focusing on contractor solutions but tools and ideas that are in place now that are connecting the enterprise to meet the points I stated above.

As I mentioned, this would fit the specific purpose of communicating to decision makers and other programs of best practices, successes, and failures.

Sharing and virtual participation:

I was thinking I would run a live channel on mogulus with a twitter hashtag (#e20gov) and feed running on the program. I’m planning to keep this unclassified and transparent.

If you are interested in helping out (volunteering), presenting, or sharing ideas. I would love to hear from you.

You can reply here or follow me @immunity on twitter

I originally posted this feeler on Govloop and have reposted this here for maximum exposure and discussion. Please feel to ask me any questions about the event if it has not been covered already.

* Changed date to October to prevent June conference fatigued and to not compete with Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, in which I might attend.

Digital Street Cred and Validity

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Just Full of Ideas by Cayusa

Just Full of Ideas by Cayusa

I just finished reading my social media in Government colleague’s Steve Radick’s latest blog post. As per usual, his posts trigger deep thought and a loquacious response on my end. First I would like to say I just started reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. It was a gift from my mother who loves thrift store shopping and came across the book. In fact my mother has supplied me with a great deal of good reading when it comes to Government and change (thank you MOM). Her great finds and the people I speak with daily continues to shape my knowledge and opinions of Government 2.0 and where it is and where it is going. Those of you whom have heard me speak, you know I am not fond of the term/meme Government 2.0. But as it is what I apparently live my work-life balance in, I cannot escape it … but that’s another story, another post, another time.

Here is an additional point I would make (based off Steve’s post): It is not only who you know that makes the domino fall, but the right momentum to get that first push. If you do not have substantive information, poignant thought, or a new look on an old way of doing things: all the connectors in the world will expose those weaknesses faster than you can blink. With fact checking at the tip of our fingertips, it is easy to find out if you indeed are the SME or you’re just a johnny-come-lately. In terms of Government 2.0, we saw this first hand when if you watched the Presidential debates on CurrentTV where they infused twitter hashtags #current #debate08 and others to respond to the candidates and fact check statements made. In fact when searching Google for the term “debate fact check” the number one site returned appears to be a “nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters” according to their “about page”.

Of course this point of this post is not directed at Mr. Radick, its supplemental. This is just something I thought I should mention, as our digital exhaust becomes our street cred and virtual resumes its best to wear your colors on your sleeve and be who you are and not inflate who you are not. You can build your personal brand to have name recognition and thousands of contacts via social media websites.

For example, I recently went to a meeting in which the person I was meeting with had his people do research on what I can only assume was my digital exhaust from my expertise on social media. They asked me questions based on my “digital resume” and were impressed with my speaking engagements.

But none of these contacts will give you the return on investment you desire unless you deliver first. Why do you think twitter is so effective on finding out the spammers and fake accounts? I know when I get a friend request, be it twitter or facebook, I check who they are friends with, what do they tweet/talk about and what is the value of that connection to me? If a person is doing all the following and not being followed and posting jibber-jabber, we can feel confident it is something we should not waste our short-attention spans. I mean we have enough FOMO and HOLI to deal with, right?

Its not that I am an elitist or think of myself too picky. I follow a great deal of you on twitter and vice versa, compared to some of my colleagues. Why? Well because of the time of our connection I made a brief inquiry to the ROI for the both of us. So going back to the debates and election, when it came down to it, you most likely voted based on your mutual ROI between you and the candidate. For the country en masse, it was President-Elect Barack Obama.

So when you are making your connections, think about what the ROI will be for you and them? Are you just trying to get high numbers or are you more concerned with the content and message you produce?

Live Tonight Talking Government 2.0

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I know its late and there is the Skins vs. Cowboys game on, and yes True Blood and Dexter, but you can DVR all of that and talk shop with me. Tonight at 11pm EST, please join me live in a discussion where I will be a panelist.

For the twitter crowd who know what these @’s mean, you can follow along with the panelists in their streams and in the future.

Topics on Fire Podcast w/me (@immunity) @geechee_girl @leslieann44 @justinherman @casualrepartee @you2gov talking Gov 2.0 and social media and what it means for the Presidential Transition at 11PM EST. For the original scoop, you can read all the details over on Uptown Uncorked.

You can listen online and chat live with us adding your points as we “kick off the digital work week”, with our thoughts. This is great timing following President-Elect Barack Obama’s first post-election Interview that was on earlier tonight on 60 Minutes. I jotted down a few things he said and will probably try to bring up during our chat tonight.

And my apologies to our new Skins Corner DeAngelo Hall. My fat-fingered blackberry typing spelled your name wrong on an earlier “tweet” tonight.

Work Life Balance

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When a new employee joins our team or I speak to someone who asks to be mentored by me, I always mention right from the get-go, know your work-life balance. You may learn and absorb all the knowledge and best practices from me, but you really should find your work-life balance. In short, do as I say, not as I do.

I am writing this post as a comment back to Steve Radick’s blog in which he commented in how I mentioned part of my drive came from my having met and spoke to Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.

I suffer from the “fear of missing out” (FOMO). When I want to commit to everything, be logged in on twitter, write my blog posts on whatever network I happen to be on at the time, edit the wiki, be at social media events in DC, and so on…

It is very taxing on my physical well-being, as well as mental. In 2008 I can say this is my sickest on record. I have had more allergies, flu, colds, and just complete exhaustion than before. I am hoping I am learning to self-correct this as I have made corrective measures at home. So when I leave the office and walk in my door at home, I am not attached to my laptop.

Earlier this year I remodeled my den to turn it into an at home office. I do work from home from time to time and I wanted to have a more ergonomic place to go to without the interruptions of other things like the TV or front window. I got a nice wooden desk, lamp and place to stick all my magazines. I even got an ergonomic chair (better than I have at work), for home.

So now when I am working from home, I am working away from distraction and in comfort. When I am in my normal office, yes I do have TVs on (cable news), that is normally background noise as its not one of the many serial dramas I have come to be addicted. So when I am working at home, at least I am not contributing to my bad back or what I am sure will be carpel tunnel syndrome someday.

Also, having my office in another room is making it easier for me to just go to the couch or easy chair and just escape in front of the boob tube. Time usually only spent when I was sick. Now I can watch a couple shows as I decompress from home and then off to bed.

I still can’t pull away completely from twitter or work, but since switching from a HTC Dash phone to a Blackberry curve a few months ago, my ability to stay on top of emails at work has improved and twitterberry has been able to abait some of the FOMO of what is going on with twitter by at least letting me see who is @’ing me and what my friends and colleagues are talking about. Sometimes I see a good debate going on, which I would love to chime in… and I do… but I keep it to a short response when I am in my downtime now. I don’t let it get to the point of where I need to get up and walk into the office right away to get deeply engaged.

At least, that is what I am doing now to handle the balance. I am sure it will creep back more work-less play again. But I am trying. Now that its colder, its harder to get out and just drive the jeep with the top down to the beach. So maybe I will be more active on the Wii again. I love Wii tennis and Guitar Hero. I have also been persuaded to go to Karaoke on Wednesday nights. Will i see you there?

Finding Government and Other Conferences to Attend

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In recent days I have seen general questions in twitter on how does one in the Government find conferences to attend. Well that can be a bit of a problem, as the question keeps getting asked. Additionally, not all Government conferences are geared towards the same target audience. Even more so, since not all Government employees want to be in an echo chamber, they most likely want to also attend conferences in Industry/disciplines to network with the rest of the world.

So how does one handle the multitude of conferences that are out there to get on your radar?

Well I can tell you what I do and hopefully you will share your own experiences to help others who might want to know your tricks for filling out your calendar.

First, for me its not just conferences, its any type of event where I want to attend those with like minds and ideas or possibly different minds and ideas. Any event I am scheduled to attend or be a speaker, as soon as I get the confirmation, I add it to my “Events” page. In fact I just updated this page earlier today with a new event – ISS World Americas 2008, Washington, D.C.

Next for me, I started creating a plan for what I wanted to do with my career in what conferences I wanted to attend and which ones I potentially want to speak. I put this plan together in a Google Document, in which my company can see and help me act on, as well as add to the list to help me be aware of potential opportunities.

I think that what I have so far might help others who are in the Social Web and in Government or supporting Government, so your miles may vary. However while some of my links are specific, others link to listings of more generic events. Also I have added the deadlines for some “call for papers“, another Google search term I use when trying to find events.

Events and Deadlines Coming up to Submit

Conference Sites of Interest to Me

Additionally, some great resources are right at your fingertips that you are probably already using. Twitter, Facebook networks, and NINGs (social networks for specific groups). In fact, I am attending one Government 2.0 event tonight that was coordinated on Facebook and another I found out about through twitter tomorrow night.

Specifically when it comes to NINGs I am a member of:

Many of these events that I find valuable to me, I do like to share with my community, so I will add them to Intellipedia when it seems relevant to share (which is most of the time). In fact, this past summer, I helped plan, schedule, run a/v support, and moderated a panel on Web 2.0 for the first ever Intelligence Community Enterprise 2.0 Conference, WIRe and ICES. I believe the conference was a success and hope that we do it again and see the new Government connections I have made in the past year attend and share.

So that’s my advice on how to find Government (and technology) conferences. I hope you have some tips to share. I will see you at an event soon.