WIRe Conference 2010

The World Intelligence Review (WIRe) will host its annual conference entitled, “Beyond Tools: Transforming Online Intelligence” on February 24-25, 2010 at the Gaylord National Hotel at the National Harbor, MD.

The goal of the 2010 WIRe conference is to propel the Intelligence Community (IC) beyond the static use of tools toward a more dynamic point of cultural transformation and repurposing of the ways that we utilize online intelligence. As we investigate the differences between how the IC and the rest of the world use social media, we will pinpoint best practices across the social networking spectrum and examine how constantly evolving Web and social media tools impact the intelligence mission.

Who Should Attend:
The 2010 WIRe conference will foster networking opportunities for members of the IC, Department of Defence (DoD), military, and academic communities, as well as Government contracting and industry representatives.

This event is completely unclassified.

Just announced: WIReCamp — a networking & open brainstorming session during the WIRe conference next week! Bring your fresh ideas 4 #gov20

This moderated networking event will take place during the conference between 12-5pm each day. I am looking forward to moderating the event. Hope you can come with your ideas.

I will be attending this event, always moving forward in making Government more efficient and less redundant.

I am also looking forward to seeing Dion Hinchcliffe and Marcia Conner speak as well as the progress for the Apps for the Army and IDEO presentations.

If you are in the United States Government, Contractor, or state or local… DHS included, please think about registering and attending. Its not too late.

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NerdHerding for Fun and Profit

Today I am in Denver and I am going to be speaking this afternoon about how to have fun with Community Management at Defrag. As much as it is a business, its not all stuffed shirts and processes.

I believe I was born to be a community manager. At some level at least. When I was younger, I used to be the one on my street that organized all the kids together in the games we would play. If I had my scanner and photo album here with me, I would be sharing pictures with you of a bunch of kids rein-acting the Beatles “Help” in her grandmother’s front yard.

In high school, I wasn’t a loner, I was a connector. I didn’t belong to one specific group (grits, yo’s, preps, or jocks). I had friends in all these circles, but I didn’t associate with any specifically. However, I was able to work with all of them to get things done. I learned how to produce videos from the ideas in my head, using my associations to get the finished product to air on local television.

In the Army, while stationed in Germany, I used the old spaces in our barracks basement to throw parties. We would have themes and the parties kept the soldiers on the base safe and without having to drink and drive.

After the Army I created my own music promotions company, Emerging Sounds. In which I helped bands connect with their fans and get noticed by major record labels. Which, I can proudly say, several of the acts I worked with did go on to get signed. Some with big successes.

In recent years, as a Government Contractor with Navstar, Inc, I have been a community manager in a real sense being able to work on the Intellipedia project.

Taking my life lessons learned, I have been able to observe how people interact with each other in person and online in much of the same way. My talk today is a glimpse into that world and the dance of the community manager.

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Protected: Ignite DC #2 and SxSW Interactive

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Starting Over, Yet Again

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.

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Blogging for the [Government] Enterprise at WordCampMid-Atlantic

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. 

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Government 2.0 Camp Reprise

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?

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The Difference Between Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media

Recently in a phone interview I was asked about the difference between the two subjects in the title. I thought to myself, I have answered this many times, but it would be just so much easier to write my answer and then have it available to anyone who reads my blog or is searching for the answer. Not to mention, putting frequently asked questions in a blog post or a wiki page is usually one of my solutions I offer to someone if they keep having to answer the same question or relay the same information more than twice. So I thought I should heed my own advice.

Simply put its internal vs. external, two different parts, that work separately, but should work together. See my breakdown below for more differences:

OK I put some things in there for levity as I am biased for the Enterprise 2.0 side of the house. The reason, I think organizations should think internally before claiming they get it on the Internet. You may look cool by having a social media presence to get new recruits and new hires. But if you do not have a productive and collaborative environment behind the firewall, you are NOT going to retain the young bright minds to take your organization into the future.

Also, I didn’t know about the existence of this video, of someone I practically consider a mentor in the business and thinking end of all things Enterprise 2.o. I think Andy eloquently speaks on the differences in what he has noticed in the the past 2 and a half years.

Andrew McAfee – What is Web/Enterprise 2.0

My simple advice is this if you are a business organization, your Enterprise solution should be in communication with your social media strategy. If you are public organization, who has or hires a marketing team, you should be in control of your brand presence on the internet. You should NOT outsource this. For Government organizations, this position for brand management should be part of your Office of Public Affairs or equivalent. The persons working on this external presence for your organization, should also be a part of the enterprise solution for internal collaboration. The internal collaboration, the Enterprise 2.0 platform your organization leverages to communicate between employees is paramount to the growth of the organization.

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The Enterprise 2.0 Life-Cycle

Over the past few years I have been collecting knowledge and growing best practices for my business area of Enterprise 2.0. I recently changed my position at Navstar to focus on this exclusively and now I am no longer the Director of Technology, I am the Director of Enterprise 2.0. (new business cards have been ordered).

With that, the past few years I have been growing our Enterprise 2.0 business at Navstar, Inc. This growth comes from my personal experience in managing communities over the past 15 years with the various tools available. As the community grows, technology is growing and evolving with or without it. Some communities embrace change, others do everything they can to resist.

With that, I have developed the Enterprise 2.0 Life-Cycle or ELC2.0

The Enterprise 2.0 Life-cycle

This life-cycle is the stages in which I have seen organizations, communities, and businesses adapt to the changing and available technologies that help their organization grow and thrive. This may ring a little familiar to those who are familiar with the Software Development Life-cycle (SDLC), the long, costly, and project creep way of doing business. In this approach, we do not wish to reinvent the wheel. We firmly believe that there are many excellent open-source solutions that are ideal for business collaboration, communication, networking, and transparency.

• Evaluation – The Enterprise 2.0 team evaluates the customer for their needs, conducting focus groups and attending meetings of those in the target community. A requirements document is developed based on the discussions and presented to management for a proposed solution.
• Enterprise Implementation – All activities and tasks are derived from capabilities, actualized by deliverables, and produced into an implementation document.
• Customization – During the pilot introduction and eventual community roll out, the Enterprise 2.0 works with customers to tweak the enterprise solutions (toolkit), to fit the communities needs. Not just an out of the box solution.
  
• User Management – An experienced Community Manager will work as a part of the larger community to bridge the technology and cultural gaps, develop guidelines, and tutorials for new users. As well as act as initial Tier 1 support until additional staff has been trained.
• Training – As you introduce new tools to your community they will replace existing business practices. With new technologies and tools, comes a bit of a learning curve for some. This is why we believe training is essential to the deployment of Enterprise solutions.
  
• Evolution – As the community comes on line with the tools replacing old business practices with new techniques, comes the desire to do more. This becomes the natural cultural evolution of the community.
  
• Revolution – The cycle continues as the revolution takes over. The community suggests new tools and new technologies on their demand bringing back the circle to evaluation, in which the Community Manager and Enterprise Architect consider the community input to take it to the next level.

Now this is not the entire strategy I am posting, but rather the highlights [excerpts from our Navstar, Inc Whitepaper on Enterprise 2.0 for Business] of the overall implementation of Enterprise 2.0 within a community, be it business in the private sector or the Government. If your business or organization would like to learn more or are looking for a company with Enterprise 2.0 experience and solutions that encompass the entire life-cycle, then feel free to reach me at my work email account [abaker at navstar-inc.com]. I would be happy to listen to your needs and open a dialog for a solution in which Navstar can help you.

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Ignite DC Proposal – DC Women Rock

Women Rockstars

I have submitted a proposal to use my 5 minutes at Ignite DC on May 14, 2009 to highlight DC Women in tech, enterprise, and social media. Please comment on the proposal if you would like to see this make it as one of the final 16 presenters. The organizers of Ignite DC clearly said they wanted to see more women submit proposals, so you can do that too. I figured I can use my time to promote more women.

Additionally, if you want to be one of the women featured in my 5 minutes presentation, please connect with me here in a comment on my blog or via twitter @immunity.

Thank you for your time.

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She’s Geeky Northern Virginia is Less Than a Month Away

The Girls of Shes Geeky NoVA at SxSWi

Update: This event has been postponed until Fall 2009

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day.

INVITATION TO ALL WOMEN!!

She’s Geeky is coming to Northern Virginia – the DC Area.
April 18th McLean Virginia (Tyson’s Corner).
http://www.shesgeeky.org/

Early bird admission is $40 until April 1 – $45 regular until April 11 and $50 after that.
Student admission is $20

We are inviting women from a divers range of industries together for a day of interactive learning and industry cross pollination.

To us Geekiness is self defined – from those with advanced degrees in mathematics, science and engineering. To skilled programmers who are in large enterprises, government or startups. To women who have taught themselves how to code the PHP on their side bars on their blog or just super enthusiastic users of technology.

Each city has a different mix of technologies – DC has a variety of fields
* the nonprofit and advocacy sectors,
* government, defense, aerospace, and intelligence
* Web portals – like AOL
* startups innovating

The range of topics discussed is diverse – in California you can see the list of sessions.
http://shesgeeky.org/wiki/Sg2009wc:Notes

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How does the unconference day work?

The sessions are put forward by the women who attend the event – and are diverse. They include expert topics about their particular expertise, hosting conversations about issues of interest both technical and personal (like how to balance work and family), exploring start-up ideas, introductions or deep dives to different programming languages or frameworks, sharing stories about what it was like to work in the early days of the industry, introduction to public speaking and many others.

Beginning at 9 AM each day, we start with a blank wall and, in less than an hour, through a highly participative process, create a full day, multi-track conference agenda that is relevant and inspiring to everyone there.

From there, we go to separate areas or rooms assigned to each topic. The session can be a presentation, inquiry about a question or discussion about an issue or technical field. or. One participant volunteers to record the proceedings.

The notes from each session are collected in the newsroom, then a book is compiled with all the notes from the conference and distributed to everyone who attended.

For this event, we have the pleasure of guest moderator, Jean Russell. This event is co-hosted by Amy Senger of LMI and myself, Andrea Baker, of Navstar, Inc.

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Sponsorship opportunities for both small and large companies are available too.

If you have questions you can e-mail us at info@shesgeeky.org

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