Last Week, I spoke at the Potomac Forum’s session on “How to” in Social Media in Government. My presentation was on How to Write a Blog Post: The first steps of organizational blogging.

I have been blogging in some shape or form since 1999. I started blogging about concerts I attended and the occasional hi-jinks that ensued with my work as a music promoter. Over the years, I have transitioned to community management and supporting the Federal Government with Enterprise 2.0 best practices. Part of being a good community manager is to have a voice that can be heard above the rest of the noise of discussion in regards to presenting policy and guidelines, as well as mitigating wiki edit wars.

As such, I leverage my blog internally in my company and with the customers I support to organize the chaos. Blogs are an effective way to place a conversation or announcement you would normally send to a large email recipient list and can prevent those long chains of “reply all”.

This workshop is a follow-up to my previous talk at the last Potomac Forum I spoke at in August 2009, Hints for Communicating in Social Media.

To see the steps I have covered in my talk, please check out the wiki on GovCollab.

Blogs I contribute to on the open internet aside from this one:

• navstar-inc.com/blog – @navstar
• smcdc.wordpress.com – @smcdc
• Capital Beltway – @thebeltway

I am also a guest blogger for ZDNet and Social Computing Journal on topics of Enterprise 2.0 and Government 2.0. Occasionally, I am also asked to guest post on blogs, which I consider an honor and will link on my website. If you would like me to be a guest blogger on your site you can contact me via twitter (@immunity) to connect for more details.

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Occasionally, I will speak in public, in groups at happy hours, or with customers in the office about Social Media and how to effectively use social software, specifically free and open sourced software when applicable. At the Potomac Forum Government Leadership event at the Reagan Building, I will be semi-formalizing this talk to suggest “Hints for Communicating through Social Media”

During my talk, I will be asking the following questions to those in the audience to think about:

• What is your mission?
• Who is your target audience?
• How do you communicate now?
• What social media tools are right for you?

What is the Difference in all this 2.0 Stuff?

Internal vs. External Communication

Excusing my crappy excuse for drawing on a flipchart, you can see from my “illustration” above what the difference with all the buzzwords that are floating around. This is the main focus of my talk that I give when talking to people who are interested in knowing more, have heard the buzz and think they need “Facebook” or “Twitter” as their answer. But it may not be that simple. I previously discussed this back in April on a guest post on ZDNet, “You Were Never 1.0, but Get Ready for Enterprise 2.0“. Fortunately what I wrote then still holds true months later.

My aim is to prepare organizations, be it business or Government to make a knowledgeable transition into effective communication and workflow using Software as a Service or other Web 2.0 applications in an Enterprise manner. While there is much good being done by Social Media/Web evangelists — myself included, those intrigued should not get caught in the glamour and glitz of something new for new sake, but strategically plan around what the problem is that an organization is trying to solve. The “Jeopardy Method”, of giving the answer then ask the question/dilemma seems to be how things are getting done now. When the case should be — the question/dilemma is “Our Organization is Having a Problem Communicating externally, internally, capturing workflow, answering requests for information, etc… and we need to fix that by?” Identifying the problems, in detail before you have a solution in mind will help you choose the right tool for the job.

Sounds a little old school right? It should — using social media is just a new way of doing old business. Now project costs are lower because the software is not dependent of End User Licenses and pricey volume purchases. Now, you can find the best fit to solve the problem and then customize it yourself, or with a company that specializes in customization of known solution like Mantech and Jive’s software. For example, Jive Software develops and provides the software  platform that Mantech customizes and supports onsite for their customers. The result, “A-Space”, a social networking and productivity site for the US Intelligence Community.

So I am sorry for the late night post, but I was just told tonight that C-Span will be recording and covering live the conference at the Reagan Building, I am a little nervous and definitely will be coloring my hair tonight. After my presentation, I will publish my slides (which I normally don’t do slides), for review. Addtionally, I will add, I do have a finished White Paper on “Enterprise 2.0 for Government” available by request.

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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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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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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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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.

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In addition to the posts contained on this site, I do appear elsewhere on the web and in public. Government 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are topics I write and speak about often in other publications and conferences. For where I will be speaking next or conferences I will be attending, check out the events page.

Opportunities

Schedule Andrea to speak at your event by emailing vindictiveimmunity at gmail. com.

You can also view my profile at Geekspeakr, a site for women speakers.

Speaking Topics

• Government 2.0
• Enterprise 2.0
• Web 2.0
• Community Management
• Creating Communities with Wikis and Blogs
• Women in Technology

Training and Consulting

• Setting up your Internal Collaboration Network
• Establishing your personal brand
• Changing existing work processes to include social software

If you would like to see more of my additional work, you can check out the following links.

Items in Delicious tagged with my name: http://delicious.com/tag/andreabaker

Guest Editorials:

• ZDNet: The (Government 2.0) revolution should be televised
• ZDNet: You Were Never 1.0, but get ready for Enterprise 2.0
• ZDNet: Government as a dialogue: Will the Gov 2.0 Summit contribute?

News Articles:

• Intellipedia’s next act

Blogs about me or my work:

• Just the Guy We Need for Government 2.0
• Why Nerds and Geeks Have Taken Over the World
• Social Governance Won’t Come Easy
• Apps for Democracy
• Traction Software’s Third Annual Traction User Group Meeting – October 6 & 7
• When Intelligence Officers Get Social…
• Social Computing Journal
  

Video

• Blogtropolus at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008

Radio

• WFED – Federal News Radio – The Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris
  • More on the possible Obama CTO

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