Please note, we have also developed an infographic to download and post in your cubicle. Or if you telework like me, post on the wall of your home office. Additionally, also as noted below, we do offer customized briefings for your organization in support of the roadmap.

As mentioned below, we are collecting your feedback, case studies and examples on the AIIM wiki and we hope you take part in this as we shape future versions of the roadmap.

To download the roadmap and contribute to the AIIM wiki, please go to www.aiim.org/roadmap or with your smartphone scan this QR code to take you directly to the AIIM site.

The social business roadmap consists of eight primary steps. Each step is briefly described here and is addressed in substantially more detail over the course of the document. Links to the eight steps take you to our wiki, where we discuss the “what’s next”, case studies, and your additional thoughts and feedback.

1. Emergence. In this step the organization is not using social technologies in any formal or organized way. Instead, individuals or small groups within the organization are experimenting with social technologies to determine whether there is business value to them.
2. Strategy. Once the organization begins to develop experience with social technologies and has identified potential business value from their use, it is important to create a framework that identifies how it expects to use these technologies, and the goals and objectives for their use.
3. Development. With the strategy in place, the organization can make informed decisions about what tools to implement, how to implement them, where to implement them, and how they will potentially scale more broadly within the organization.
4. Monitoring. Initially the organization should spend time monitoring and listening to the conversations taking place in and around a particular tool to get a sense of the nature of the tool, the content of the conversations, the target audiences, and who the leading participants are. This is perhaps more visible in externally focused processes but is important for internal ones as well.
5. Participation. Once the organization has done some listening it will be able to participate more meaningfully and should begin doing so according to what it has learned about the target market and the nature of the conversations on the various tools.
6. Engagement. The goal is for participation to move to engagement – from speaking at or to customers to engaging with them. This means creating processes to respond to issues, both internally and externally, and ensuring that communications are clear, accurate, and authentic.
7. Governance. This step describes the process for developing an effective governance framework for social business processes. Some of the steps are specific to certain tools or capabilities, while others are more broadly applicable, such as an acceptable usage policy.
8. Optimization. Once social business processes are in place, they should be actively managed and reviewed to ensure that the organization is realizing the expected benefits. This includes but is not limited to monitoring the tools in real time, identifying and measuring specific metrics, and training users on new or evolving tools and processes.

In addition to the roadmap document, we have also created a detailed infographic of the eight steps. Please feel free to download this graphic and share.

Contact

Please contact Jesse Wilkins, Director, Systems of Engagement, to schedule a briefing for your organization. Andrea Baker, Manager, Systems of Engagement Development is available to present classified briefings for organizations with security concerns.

• • Cell: +1 (720) 232-9638

Email: jwilkins@aiim.org

Government Social Business will be a strong focus for 2011 and I believe that was kicked off nicely at the Gov20LA event two weeks ago in Santa Monica. I led a session there called a Structured Brainjam (a term we borrowed from one of my online mentors – Chris Heuer of Social Media Club fame), in which I presented the attendees a chance to weigh in on a topic raised during the two day event. One of the points up for discussion was changing the name of calling what we do in the aspect of Government 2.0. I have been on the record that I do not like iterative numbering of programs or content.

We know something is going to change, everything changes. Garbage’s second album was Garbage’s s “Version 2.0” (probably their most successful and well known album mind you), but they did not go on to make their next album 3.0. That would be silly. So we should approach all 2.0 programs and ideas as what are we trying to achieve. Well for me, I am trying to achieve the education of Social Business processes and programs under my division, Systems of Engagement for AIIM.

On a much larger scale, I think what is known now as the larger Government 2.0 community, there are several thrusts of what groups are trying to achieve. Open Government being one, but for me and several others, we will be focusing on Government Social Business (GSB). GSB is the evolution of current Government processes with the inclusion of social media and social collaboration to meet constituent needs and transparency when warranted.  I mention when warranted, because there are several mitigating factors to consider with GSB to include, but not limited only as FOIA and Privacy, not to mention the daunting task of Records Management that will have to be re-evaluated with the evolution of data that is now being created out in the open.

I do plan to blog and continue the discussion about Government Social Business on my various blogging platforms and twitter (@immunity), if you care to share your opinions.  I look forward to the conversation.

All in all, there are just a few days left in February and my survey of collecting your top business problems. I appreciate your 2 minutes to help answer just 10 questions.

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.

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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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?