Continuation on Communicating With Social Media

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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Communicating Through Social Media

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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Social Media Club DC – Mid-Summer Happy Hour (Tonight)

I am pleased to announce that my company Navstar, Inc. will be sponsoring tonight’s Social Media Club DC – Mid-Summer Happy Hour [July 29, 2009 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (ET)] at Bar Louie in Chinatown, Washington, DC.

Larissa Fair – President

Twitter – @lyf108

Andrea Baker – Executive Vice President and Programming Director

@immunity

Anna Gabert and Travis Mason- Vice President & Sponsorship Directors

@annagabert @tgmason

Sarah Wurrey – Vice President & Promotions Director

@sarahwurrey

Nisha Chittal, Meg Roberts, Sara Burson – Event Managers

@nishachittal, @megmroberts, @saraburson

Maia Kotlus-Gates and Beth McNamee – Membership Managers

@maiakg, @bethmcnamee

Gabriel Key – Digital Scribe/Content Organizer

@gabrielmkey

Event Logistics:

Wednesday, July 29
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Bar Louie
701 7th Street NW #D
Washington, DC 20001
202-638-2460

Connect with SMC-DC

Washington DC has its own wiki-in-progress. Please visit: http://socialmediaclubdc.pbwiki.com/ for more details.

Washington DC Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/smcdc

Hashtag: #smcdc

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2419741913

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1820071&trk=hb_side_g

Friendfeed: http://www.friendfeed.com/smcdc

Sphere: Related Content

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Yes, I’m a SWirgin

This year, I finally get to see the hype first hand. I will be going to SxSW Interactive starting this Friday. Last year I watched the overflow of Information spill out from the event from my office back here in Northern Virginia and said to one of my contract customers, “I have to go next year!” Too late to put together a panel or a talk (I would have done one on Community Management), I am going this year mostly to network and sink in as many talks and panels as I can. But the point is I AM GOING!

Thanking my lucky stars for much of the pre-planning information this year, as  I am working out much of my trip as I can in advance with the help of some non-SWirgins. I am flying on the Big BWI Blogger Boeing on Friday morning (Flight 2262) with at least 6 other twitter/bloggers. If you are also on this flight, let us know so you can join the group. I am also looking to either carpool or take public transportation to the airport.

To get prepared, I have been doing a lot of reading of my trusted friends and experts who have done this thing before. Aaron Brazell aka @Technosailor has a nice write up about what to expect, some considerations, and even packing tips.

Andrew Mager (@mager) from ZDnet has a guide he put together with his picks for sessions to attend, as well as parties and extras.

And if you are looking for parties and other thing related to the event, you might want to check out the growing list over at http://sxsw.razorfish.com/

I have also signed up for my.sxsw.com. The official social networking site of the entire conference. It was developed by my good friends over at the social collective (follow @bucchere for more details). We used this networking software before for WIREICES last fall and they have improved it a lot since our experience and hopefully with our feedback.

Mostly I will be hanging out with other SWirgins Amy (@sengseng) and Steve (@robotchampion). We’ll be at Amy’s salon on Spying 2.0 (see below) if anyone wants to come say hello.

If there are any other tips or things I should know about please do not hesitate to let me know. I will be trying to twitter and live blog as much as I can during the event, but if my laptop becomes an anchor, there might be more twittering and less blogging until after the event.

I haven’t finished picking out my interested events and some are subject to chance, since some are at the exact same time as others I am interested in, but right now here is a brief list:

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She’s Geeky Comes to Northern Virginia

Announcing She’s Geeky NoVA edition. Kaliya, Amy, and myself are organizing the first ever local She’s Geeky event to the DC/MD/VA area on April 18, 2009.

LMI – 2000 Corporate Ridge, McLean VA, 22102

Registration

You can find a ride coordination wiki page here.

If you are a geek and you are a girl, then you qualify to attend. The event is self-organizing by those who attend. An event inside DC proper off a metro line is being planned for later in the year for those who are not able to attend this event. But save the date and I hope to see you on April 18, 2009.
Follow the names above on twitter for more She’s Geeky news as it happens, as well as @shesgeeky for official news.

Update: This event has been postponed until Fall 2009

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Get me to GovSec …

The 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

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

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Enterprise 2.0 for Government Event Feeler

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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More Thoughts on Work Life Balance

In an earlier post last week, I talked about suffering from the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). A colleague of mine, The Doyen of Intellipedia – the US Intelligence Community’s classified wiki, Don Burke mentioned to me that he had read my blog, but it wasn’t FOMO he was suffering from, it was HOLI: The hatred of losing information.

I have to agree with him that HOLI is a subset of FOMO. While the fear of missing out is more encompassing to to what’s going on at work, on the television, the news, on twitter, out at a social meetup, it is the hatred of losing information is a big part of that. The knowledge gained when we participate on a collaborative site, watch the news, tweet on twitter, or meet in person is astounding.

The Doyen let me know he hates to see information disappear, information lost when there was an opportunity for it to be captured. I agree. That’s the very thing that Intellipedia is doing for the Intelligence community. The knowledge of government, contractors, and other qualified users dispersed around the world being shared on a wiki that anyone can contribute.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in wiki-markup and esoteric solutions for me. Many a night I enjoy working late as there is time for me to think and play with code. (I am sure many other code-geeks out there know what I am talking about). To me it is fun, fun to see a solution come to life that can effect massive change. Sometimes just 4 lines of code can make a big impact. Those are the time I really smile and get uber-geeky about my work. But then there are times the solution just doesn’t come, so I go to Starbucks or just have to call it a night and come back the next day or next week to it. We can’t expect to know the answer if we get too in the weeds.

Another colleague of mine who I was chatting with today online was commiserating with me about all the projects we juggle and body aches we suffer as we get older. His quote was “Our passions can easily be interpreted as Obsessions“. Even not having a significant other in my life, I know my family and friends can see this about me. My best friend asked me days in advance to go to karaoke last week, because he knew if I didn’t put it on my Google Calendar, then I would just stay in the office and work until I got hungry enough to come home.

Family matters – As you might have read from my tweets and my blog, I have been getting more involved with the church. Which connects me more with family. I feel good when I participate in church functions because my family has been with the church since before I was born and my pastor knows me not only by name, but what I do for a living and what I want to do with my career and life. I was even the first to volunteer for the Chili Cookoff we had this past Saturday and I did come in Second Place. (Dare I share my winning recipe with you all — nooooo like my votes, it will stay a secret).

Going to church and my mother coming down on the weekends gives me time to spend with my ailing grandmother and youngest brother. She’s been suffering from extremely low blood pressure among her other symptoms of her condition. She used to be able to outlift me when we would go grocery shopping. She’d grab the 50lb bag of dogfood because I have a bad back. Now its a good day when she can leave the house. Spending time with her I can see is good medicine, it lifts her spirits. Now that I could never do from my office.

My youngest brother and I have an age difference of 14yrs so much of his life growing up, I was not there. This is something I am working with him on as he has Aspergers and I learn his idiosyncracies. He doesn’t like chili or spaghetti, but he loves to cook and grill. He’s 18 and just graduated from High School, so he spent time living with me this fall and now he comes down on weekends. He is a big help around the house and I have been teaching him how to drive. I am proud to say he just did his first round-trip from Pennsylvania and back this weekend. He beat that new game on XBOX “Deadspace” in less than a day.

He’s not with me now in the house because I haven’t been able to spend much time at home as I juggle all my work responsibilities. I sat him down and told him he can come stay with me again in the future, but right now I can’t do much for him to help him get a job or education when I am not at home to help. He is scheduled to get his license soon and that should help out tremendously. Maybe then I could have a driver? I keep saying I need a personal assistant.

Anyways, back on point to this work-life balance, I know we all are trying to find it in our lives and what might work for others, does not work for all. With the openness of the web and new tools for collaboration and communication coming out every day it seems, we can’t know or share all the information. We will miss out and we will lose information. But now, we don’t have to be the only one who knows, goes, and shares. We can work together.

I hope reading my experiences let’s you know, we can’t be expected to do it all at 100%. I mean, even Barack Obama doesn’t do the dishes and Michelle Obama never slept at his DC townhome while he was a Senator. But they have identified and verbalized with each other what their priorities in life will be once they move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama is going to work on the Economy & hunt down Al-Qaida and Michelle is going to work on being Mom-in-Chief for the first year. (You can thank 60 Minutes for this knowledge tidbit)

My final thoughts are that time spending with loved ones is time always well spent. I think we should take a moment to remember that as the holidays come around.Be thankful for your health, your loved ones and for the passion that drives you.

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Live Tonight Talking Government 2.0

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.

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Work Life Balance

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?

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