Mar
23

The SXSW Experience

I tried to document as many of my ongoing thoughts as I could over on my Posterous feed during SXSW, but I thought I’d take some time to try and make some coherent sense of the week-long insanity I put myself through.

Location, Location, Location

There didn’t seem to be any consensus on a single new technology or app that debuted or blew up SXSW this year. However, plenty of existing ones brought immense marketing campaigns to Austin, and the majority of those seemed to be location-based services. Gowalla, in my opinion, severely dropped the ball by not preparing local Austin businesses for the influx of SXSW geeks galvanized by the Gowalla passport scavenger hunt. Foursquare, on the other hand, ruled the day by deploying 2000 virtual “Golden Tickets” into specific checkin spots in Austin that unlocked free tickets to their Big Boi headliner show. So many more location-based companies littered the landfalls in Austin as well, each with some zany promotional campaign to get people to download and use their app.

David Armano's Allhat3 at Guero's.

For my money, Foursquare was the clear popularity winner here. Their partnership with Pepsi – where they created an actual competitive foursquare court near the Austin Convention Center – culminated with an AWESOME party at the Seaholm Power Plant, where all sorts of people got to chill with Dennis Crowley and his Foursquare army to the tunes of Locksley, The Sounds, and Big Boi.

App Discovery of SXSW: Roqbot

Roqbot is an app-based service that allows you to take control of online-enabled jukeboxes in bars, clubs, restaurants, and other locations featuring these types of music services. Once you download the app, you develop a DJ profile of your favorite music and check into whatever location you happen upon that has one of these net-enabled jukeboxes. From there, you’re able to control the music playlist emanating from the box. Don’t like Lady Gaga? Spend a couple Roqbot credits to put some Oasis on higher in the music queue. You also earn free credits to play by unlocking various checkin rewards or you can just connect Roqbot to a Paypal account and buy songs directly. It’s SUCH a great a control solution for jukeboxes in places. I can’t wait till they expand their services into the DC/NOVA region.

DC Represents

I was caught off-guard by the massive DC presence at SXSW. From government rockstars like Amanda Eamich from USDA to nonprofit supercolliders like Tammy Gordon of AARP, DC’s varied social media community descended on Austin in force. I hung out with Mike Schaffer, Director for Social Media at iostudio the most, and lamented that despite having met and living near DC, we never hang out like we did at SXSW. I’m making a pledge to change that behavior on my part now that I’m home, and I want to invite any and all DC/NOVA peeps to call me on any antisocial leanings I may display from this point forward.

Margie and Dave Newman, masterminds of the DC Flacks Meetup group, created an on-the-fly “DCxSW” Twitter handle and hash for all of us while in Austin. They also organized an impromptu meetup of these DCists at the Driskill Hotel one night where I had the best networking conversations of the week. I met a lot of folks i only knew through Twitter here, and I am super-excited to build upon those relationships in the future.

So here’s a big public shout-out to all my DCxSW peeps: Margie, Dave, Schaffer, Gabe Hilado, Amandare!, Alejandra Owens, Peter Corbett, Tammy Gordon, Tammy Portnoy, Lisa Byrne, Patti Shea, and all the rest of you AWESOME DC peeps. It was also great meeting a bunch of non-DC folks like Jeff Esposito, Teresa Cantwell, and old friends Anne Weiskopf and Tonia Reis (formerly of TWTRCON fame, now The Realtime Report

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." --Davy Crockett

).

Walking in Your Footsteps

Much of the research I performed in prep for this massive undertaking panned out well. I intend to do up a fuller post on the travel hacks I came with on the fly, but the basics came down to comfortable shoes and clothing at all times. I can’t tell you how many times I just had to sit down because my feet hurt so bad from walking around so much. People recommended Converse as the go-to shoes for SXSW, but I have to put in a plug for the much comfier and supportive Merrel’s that I brought.

Panels & Speakers

For the mot part, I found SXSW panels pedantic and freshman. The only ones that piqued my interest and delivered a good conversation were a panel on The Singularity and another with John Hagel III on shaping the future. The Singularity panel brought together experts like Michael Vassar from the Singularity Institute and Natasha Vita-More from Humanity+ for a SUPER-AWESOME discussion about the ethical limits of transhumanism and posthumanity. I’m stll processing a lot of the info from this panel, but be sure to check out the convo archived on the #singularity hashtag. That conversation is still going on, so feel free to jump in and add your thoughts.

Seaholm Power Plant, site of the Foursquare/PepsiMax party.

I missed Seth Priebatsch’s keynote on the gamification of marketing and education, but I heard it was cool. I also missed Christopher Poole, aka moot of 4chan, who gave a keynote on social communities online and how their influence will continue to grow in the future. I heard good things about both of these keynotes but just couldn’y sync schedules to make them

Getting Your Groove On

I was most disappointed by the party situation. I RSVP’d for several parties specifically to hang out with or meet people that were throwing them. Unfortunately, every party is oversold, leading to massive numbers of people often crowding into small clubs, all trying to figure out who’s there that’s important or famous. What’s worse, I got the distinct impression at many of these parties that pre-existing community relationships led to a degree of “cliquey-ness” that isolated a lot of outsiders. This bothered me mainly because a lot of folks like myself stood in these long-ass lines for long periods of time to get into cool parties that only turned out to be fun for the cool kids.

 

Ogilvy Notes, a cool attempt to make visual sense out of all the information overloading SXSW's attendees.

There were literally so many people at many of these parties that you would get interrupted talking to someone of note, and they would never come back to you due to successive interruptions. It’s damned hard to connect with someone in this fashion, and you can damn sure bet I’ll be working on a SXSW Guide to Party Ethics for 2012.

Even worse, most of the Interactive parties featured some of the worst, most annoying DJs on the planet. Note to party organizers of the future: they don’t call Austin the “Live Music Capital of the World” for nothing. If you want to throw a SXSW party next time, do some fucking due diligence and get a couple of inexpensive but AWESOME live acts instead of a bunch of douchy DJ pricks.

Music vs. Interactive

SXSW should really be broken up into two conferences for Music and Interactive because virtually everyone from the Interactive festival popped smoke when the Music festival began. It was SUCH a sea change in personalities too: I joked to a buddy that all the Interactive geeks stayed inside the Convention Center for Interactive where Austin had to shut down streets to accommodate the influx of Music nerds.

What’s funny about the disparity between Music and Interactive attendees (and the lurking Film festival geeks too), is that they could all stand to spend time in each other’s sessions. So much inspiration flowed out of musical performances that I think would have benefited Interactive attendees, particularly the PR and marketing types who were hard-charging the entire time selling and jiving versus soaking up the people’s culture.

 

Emmylou Harris performing solo on the Radio Day Stage.

I’ll do up a separate post later on the musical discoveries I made. Those are stories in and of themselves.

Omni Hotels Continue to Rock

Not only did my lovely friends at Omni Hotels hook me up with a couple free drinks and grab bag of SXSW necessities, I also found that the Omni’s parking situation far outweighed any other in downtown Austin. Where other lots were jacking prices up to $10 and $20 at a time, the Omni kept a moderate $7 a day parking charge for SXSWi. What’s more, you could avoid that charge completely if you returned for your car after midnight, where they opened the garage. GREAT customer service from Omni, especially for people who weren’t even staying at their hotel for SXSW. Thanks again for the stops along the way!

(Pro-tip: The Omni also had the cleanest bathrooms in town. At about midnight when those tacos are kicking in, ain’t nothing better than a spotless and empty bathroom!)

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

The Macallan 15, proud sponsor of SXSW and drunk-asses everywhere.

SXSW was a worthy event, but I’m not sure I can do it all in one sitting again. It was a great time, and I enjoyed it, but had it not been for the people I met there, it could have been a big old bust. I brought back with me a ton of great ideas and content that I have to work with, so I hope to see some heavy return on investment soon. In that vein, keep your eyes peeled for successive posts about different SXSW aspects that I couldn’t fit into this one.

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Feb
22

AWESOME Things To Watch in 2011

After enjoying JWT‘s roundup of radness from their 2011 predictive trendspotting BIZINT department, I inferred a couple of times that they my have missed some things to watch in the coming year. I struggled with whether or not I was going to do a 2011 predictions post of my own (especially with all of the other great [and TERRIBLE] ones out there). As I intimated in the JWT post though, it’s tough to maintain your street cred as an armchair futurist if you don’t make some play calls – good or bad. It’s not like I can go on TV and just fry motherfuckers with my brain like Jamais Cascio:

Image courtesy of orderofchaos.soup.io

Here then is the Must. Be. AWESOME!!! 2011 Predictive Tapdance:

The Elephant in the Room: Islam

For all the loveliness that “hope” and “change” brought us in 2009, 2010 saw a whole lot of retrenching when it came to comprehending and engaging Islam. Look for the debate about what constitutes Islam, Islamism, what various groups of modern Muslims want in today’s world, and popular revolutions in the Middle East to ratchet up. Also keep an eye on what the Muslim Brotherhood does in the wake of Mubarak’s resignation: they will telegraph a lot of the conflict about modern Islam.

More Mashups, More Memes

I don’t care what anybody says: mashups and memes will continue to provide ample entertainment to We People of the Internetz. Look for advertisers to begin capitalizing on meme-trending and mashup-producing. Performance indicators: the next acquisition/website startup from the I Can Has Cheezburger collective AND Wieden & Kennedy after hiring the creator of this AWESOME video–

Cloud Seeding

As gaming continues to seep into the popular consciousness through applications like competitive geolocation (i.e. Foursquare and Gowalla) and passive social gaming (i.e. Farmville), look for more creative approaches to “seeding” the cloud with various types of content. Be it for advertising or grassroots mobilization purposes, effective influence and content promotion campaigns of the future will unfold via a variety of platforms. StickyBits and other QR code scanning apps are good indicators of tactical implementations of a cloud seeding strategy.

Hacktivism Triumphant

If WikiLeaks has taught us anything, masses of anonymous hackers can make or break online footprints. With Anonymous’ mobilization against Amazon and other deniers of service against WikiLeaks, it is apparent that all-out online cyberwar can and will occur at a rate of minutes and hours. Government will continue to play catch-up to the independent entities playing havoc with cybersecurity. DDoS attacks will become typical tools of the trade, and countermeasures against such attacks will demonstrate a new “arms race” in evolving security and attack technology. We will also see cyberwars play out in days between entities if not hours and minutes, the extent of which will run the gamut from mere inconvenience to full-on revolution (there’s a reason why Mubarak shut off the Internet, yo). It is possible that a wild 4channer will crack U.S. cyber defenses in 2011 and perhaps provide a 9/11-like impetus for government to begin getting serious with policy and legislation to operate in the digital age.

Nobody Cares About Public Diplomacy

Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech demonstrated that the U.S. government will continue to centralize public diplomacy initiatives in the White House, leaving State Department assets twisting in the wind as hollow emperors in the field. U.S. legislators will increase the depths to which they could give a shit less in 2011 about PD because PD does not create jobs for Americans. Meanwhile, 20th century institutions of public diplomacy like Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the Broadcasting Board of Governors will continue to wither and die in the digital age as on-the-minute social reporting and citizen journalism make them further irrelevant. Funding for PD initiatives will continue to stagnate while implementers will find more creative methods of achieving strategic PD goals, mostly via the private sector tech sector and citizen diplomacy organizations. China and some European countries will continue to lead with non-obvious but concerted national efforts in global influence, the effects of which will remain undiscovered by their targets (i.e., US) for years.

Passive Social Gaming EXPLODES

Related to my concept of “cloud seeding,” 2011 will see an explosion of social games in the vein of Farmville. Already, 2011 has seen Zynga publish a suster game to its masses-tranquilizing hit called Cityville. Transmedia, alternate reality gaming, and other episodic social gaming entities will experiment further with audience acquisition, retention, and profit conversion this year. Advertisers will cash in on these mechanisms en masse, driving ad-tired audiences from game to game and forcing ad strategists to begin thinking in different ways about social advertising. We will also see a continued harmonization of transmedia and ARGs cross-platform, online and offline, for social gaming experiences that will, for example, weave in and out of Facebook, Twitter, iPad and other mobile apps, and in-person performance art. More and more people will join longer term games socially as new genres are introduced on social networks. Performance indicator: keep your eyes peeled on LinkedIn for a business-based social game that trains executives in a number of administrivial and professional functions.

Location-based Services Get Profitable

Also related to “cloud seeding,” location-based app services such as Foursquare and Gowalla will rapidly get profitable this year. While many detractors continue to ridicule the small audience size these services carry, their growth will continue by orders of magnitude in 2011, so much so that advertisers and marketers for brick-and-mortar businesses will pay oodles of dough to access their users. Look for more unique rewards for users who check in to local places and events as well as the beginning of an actual value system based on fictional goods (i.e. Gowalla’s items).

People Begin To Realize All This Social Stuff Really IS Creating Socialism 2.0

Marx said it would take capitalism to run its course and fall out of favor before true socialism could take hold of the world. Macro-philosophers and economists will slowly begin to see that that is happening on a mass scale in 2011. Group buying services like Groupon and Living Social, crowdfunded charity programs, realtime crowdsourced news reporting, and near-realtime media curation will continue to prove that power really is all about the people. Democratization of content and price will, therefore, produce The New Socialism or Socialism 2.0. This will freak out conservatives and create performance indicators on conservative news networks that decry not only a socialist presidency but a socialist economy beginning to develop. Look for influencers that combat these conservative perceptions as the emerging leaders of the Socialist 2.0 movement (which in and of itself will never be referred to as an organized, network movement with a solid objective… it will just happen). Parallel to this, fortunes will begin to change hands as sales for various product areas crash: for example, the comics industry will continue to lose sales in print as consumers demand more digital, interactive content.

We Need a New Narrative

No more Harry Potter. No more Lord of the Rings. No more Star Wars. What’s the next big franchise? 2011 will see experimental repurposing of old ideas into new franchises. My money is on Thor and Captain America to be the starting point for a huge Avengers movie franchise in 2011 and 2012 (with reams of associated multimedia content) while Green Lantern and Transformers: Dark of the Moon tank.

What Do You Think?

Got some predictions of your own? Think I’m off-base about some of these things to watch? Let me know in the comments.

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Jan
27

JWT’s 100 Things To Watch in 2011

I got quickly overloaded by the abundance of “2011 predictions!” posts, white papers, and other internet ephemera that started spouting before the turn of the new year. As an armchair futurist and a self-described Challenger of the Unknown, I have to pay attention to a lot of the thinking bubbling up from the cesspool of teh Interwebz just to maintain a reputable degree of “cocktail party talk.”

No single source really jumped out at me as AWESOME in the 2011 prediction glut until I came across JWT‘s 100 Things to Watch in 2011 presentation on Slideshare (embedded below for your reading pleasure). What really struck me about this preso were a couple things:

  1. JWT leads with its track record. Not a whole lot of people out there honestly self-assessing their prior predictions. I can respect companies and people who are willing to include the credential of their work, positive or negative, before making predictions about the future. How accurate was JWT about 2010? Two words: BACON EVERYWHERE.
  2. They call Foursquare a “mobile gaming app.” This is the most accurate description of what Foursquare really is and how it works. Most netizens like to describe Foursquare as a geolocation social media tool, which completely misses the point. What makes Foursquare special is that it’s competitive, and that’s how you bring back users time and again.
  3. The preso’s author, Ann Mack, is credited as Director of Trendspotting. That is the BADDEST-ASS title I have ever encountered from a PR firm.
JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011

View more presentations from JWTIntelligence.

For these reasons alone I ascribed enough of a degree of credibility in JWT to actually consider their projections for 2011. Here now are the ones I found most AWESOME:

Auto Apps

I’m very intrigued by the integration of social and smartphone-type apps to vehicles of the future. The obvious one that JWT identifies is Pandora, which is the internet nerd’s answer to mobile radio. But think about where this goes: Security systems that tweet your iPhone when someone jacks with your car. Shutdown options for stolen cars. Intelligent maps that ask you if you’re interested in stopping at some AWESOME attraction while on your road trip. Lot of potential here.

Biomimicry

Design that takes inspiration from naturally occurring shapes and constructs? Love this concept. Sounds very posthuman to me.

Breaking the Book

Glad JWT sees that redefining the way we read is going to explode even more in 2011. They briefly touch on the future of publishing with Kindle Singles and the concept of serialized e-publication, but I think there’s more to it than that. With the advent of the tablet market, I think books are about to be redefined as a medium en toto.

Detroit

Everyone knows how sad of a story Detroit has become since the economic recession of the past few years. JWT proposes that Detroit is in for a turnaround this year, an idea I find curiously sticky given my sudden fondness for Detroit-set TV shows like Hung. Could Detroit become the playground for a new Silicon Valley-type creative ecosystem? We’ll see.

Group-Manipulated Pricing

I think this is a gimme just based on the data we all saw in late 2010. Things like Groupon are going to become more and more popular because it’s a social enterprise that crosses online and offline worlds. While people will gravitate to services like these to get monetary and consumer deals, I think they’ll become more popular because of the social act the service brings. People ENJOY saving money together, and this may even cross the geo-location boundary at some point when people get better deals by checking in somewhere as a group. The even more amazing facet of this phenomenon (which JWT missed, surprisingly) is how democratizing prices in this fashion looks VERY similar to a socialist economy.

Ignorance Is Bliss

JWT posits that if information becomes ubiquitous, as it seems to be doing via internet-age enabled apps and services, more people will simply stick their fingers in their ears and choose not to care. I identify with this to some degree because I do it all the time: do I really care that much if everyone on the planet knows I just checked into Samuel Beckett’s Irish Gastro Pub? Blow that up to the next logical question: If no one cares, are we bound for a sudden slingshot backwards in technology and progress?

Nanobrewers

I know TONS of people in the DC area that brew their own beer. The idea that these folks can sustain their own businesses by doing something they love is totally rad. The larger question, I think, is what’s the magic number that turns your hobby into a sustainable business? People will always want to drink a cold beer, but how well is that helping other more esoteric businesspeople (see Etsy).

Near Field Communication (NFC)

This concept is similar to RFID in that it involves the exchange of information between mobile and other devices within a four-inch zone. JWT sees utility in this for ticket purchasing, wallets, etc. Once that proves out as a useful method for data transfer (and it will), I’m more interested in the propensity for NFC-enabled wetware in humans. Why carry ANY device when you can embed it subcutaneously and turn your body into a digitally transmitting wallet?

Objectifying Objects

Love the idea of “fetishizing” – as JWT calls it – obsolete physical objects into decorative accouterments or other re-purposeable items. My wife and I buy things like this from the French Market in New Orleans all the time. She has two clocks up in her office that were made from old vinyl records painted in new artistic ways. I’m real interested to see new expressions of this “recyclable” art form this year.

Odyssey Trackers

JWT’s example is more extreme than mine, but this concept involves the aggregation and broadcast of all social and personal media information from people who go out to explore the world. I’m looking into some innovative storytelling uses of this when I trek across the country in a few weeks.

Older Workforce

I dont actually think this is AWESOME as much as it is alarming and shitty. My dad always told me he expected to work until the day he died and I should too. Data is clearly indicating that there is no way national entitlement programs will be able to satisfy their constituents without immense tax increases (something our already bloated deficit can’t handle). So the alternative is to continue to work past your retirement age. After all, what the fuck am I gonna do with $265 a month from the Social Security Administration when I’m 70?

Social Networking Surveillance

We’re living in a post-Wikileaks world now, people. If you don’t think there are little nondescript buildings at Fort Meade where tons of poorly-paid federal contractors are poring over your social media output, think again. Take it from a guy who’s participated in studies of social media and social networking in more oppressive societies (like Egypt): there is no more privacy.

Social Objects

Love love LOVE the concept of making THINGS social: attaching personal information, reviews, or other data to objects to advance the knowledge of a community of consumers. I thought JWT was going to miss the emergence of “cloud-seeding” in 2011 (I’ll talk more about this in a subsequent post) but their identification of this phenomenon coupled with apps like StickyBits makes it all better.

Space Travel Goes Private

FUCK. YES. It’s about fucking time. It’s the 21st century, for Chrissakes.

Storied Products

Transmedia Producers

JWT describes the first concept as something that involves consumers demanding more of a personal connection to brands they love. I actually think these two things on JWT’s list are interconnected in such a way that they deserve to be together. Transmedia producers have had a really hard time finding mainstream access and recognition beyond mere marketing effects (see the “Why So Serious?” campaign instituted for The Dark Knight). The more studios and companies blur the lines between marketing and production, the more transmedia’s reach will be seen. In the meantime, I actually think we’ll see more transmedia pros find better paying and better recognized work creating transmedia experiences for products on behalf of brands.

Temporary Tattoos Go High-End

According to JWT, there are places in Dubai that sell temp tattoos in actual gold. I actually think upgrading temp body art to designer levels (e.g., Chanel) is a new form of posthuman body modification. Up till now, I’d seen body mods as purely utilitarian and ability-expanding instead of cosmetic or vanity-inspired. So combine the functional with the fashion and what could you get? Solid gold Prince Alberts that deliver electrical shocks during sex? ZING!

Tintin the Movie

JWT’s calling this the next big franchise, possibly the new age replacement for Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. With Spielberg AND Peter Jackson at the helm, I don’t doubt that it could be HUGE. But I’m not sure it hits the imagination highs required of big summer tentpole films like Harry Potter or Star Wars. Unless of course Spielberg and Jackson do some reinterpretations of the original source material and Tintin fights a robot zombie or something.

What Did They Miss?

Despite how great and how comprehensive this 2011 list is – and I encourage you to check out the entire preso – I actually think there are a lot of things JWT and other futurists missed. We’ll explore those next in a subsequent post.

In closing, I’d like to point out that this report is published annually by JWT Intelligence. Key in on the italicized word there and think about that for a second. From my experience, having worked in what many consider “real” intelligence (i.e. the U.S. government Intelligence Community), I find fascinating how many communication and public relations companies are choosing to characterize their future endeavors in the vernacular of intel. The term “business intelligence” has been around for quite some time, but I think its use in commercial enterprises like JWT implies another, more sinister intelligence-related word: espionage. So if this report compares as an intel assessment for JWT’s 2011 operations, what do you think its competitors and their communities of interest are doing with it?

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Sep
22

The Cold Beer Theory

Something my Dad told me once: “Nobody likes to be sold to… but EVERYBODY likes drinking a cold beer.”

As much as I respect The Hard Close, I have to admit, I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of that theory this year. Early on, I identified about 15 potential clients for my newly-minted consultancy. The ones I’ve hit with The Hard Close have yet to sign on the dotted line. The others I’ve spent considerable time drinking cold beer with. Or playing golf. Or watching movies. Or cooking out. Or whatevs. I’ve closed three deals with that group of cats.

Sometimes a cold beer and a whatevs gets you a lot more social capital than you might anticipate. So remember that next time you’re questioning your business overhead for entertainment and marketing expenses.

Corona beer

Image via Wikipedia

Buy you a beer?

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Jul
13

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 5

And now, the final video from my MountainRunner Institute talk at the “Now Media Seminar.” Let me know what you thought!

You can also find the slides from this preso by following this link.

Jul
12

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 4

Here’s Part 4 of my MountainRunner Institute talk from the “Now Media Seminar.” HOWF!

Also, you can follow this link to see the actual slides from the event.

Jul
11

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 3

Here’s the third part of my MountainRunner Institute talk from our “Now Media Seminar” on July 6th. Hope you dig!

Jul
10

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 2

Here’s the second part of my MountainRunner Institute talk from July 6th’s “Now Media Seminar.” Enjoy!

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Jun
10

Video: Du4 Talks Twitter Gov

I figured after all of yesterday’s conversations about the Twitter Gov Liaison position, I figured I owed everybody a “statement of purpose” of some kind for my candidacy. What happened instead, however, involved a broken camera, a bout of nausea, and two very angry cats.

So instead, here’s some “good enough” footage from my FlipCam where I talk about some of my thoughts on the job, the federal government, state and local government, citizens engagement, and a bunch of other stuff.

Thanks for watching.

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Jun
09

Andrew Wilson’s Top 10 Requests of the Twitter Gov Liaison

I mentioned in a prior post that Andrew Wilson had taken the first meaty stab at a list of requirements for the new Twitter Government Liaison. I want to spend time directly addressing his thoughts, because they are true AWESOME gold.

The United States Congress approves federal fu...
Image via Wikipedia

Andrew rightly calls for people to submit and discuss ideas about the Gov Liaison’s duties. His overarching theme though is that those duties are non-political. This seems to fly in the face of Twitter’s original requirements in the job listing, but in actuality, Andrew is trying focus people on the more important issues of connecting citizens to their representatives in DC and at the state and local levels through discussions of open government. Tools are just tools, as Andrew says, and it’s up to us to responsibly figure out how to employ them to the best benefit of everyone.

On to Andrew’s list. (Warning: this will be a longer post than usual.)

1. Please engage, in a transparent manner as possible, with the federal, state and local employees that are using these tools to get their input, ideas and concerns. This is a community with no end to thoughtful, innovative leaders… and listening to them will benefit everyone.

I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Twitter fosters engagement, so the Gov Liaison should be blowing it up with AWESOME, connecting with folks like the ones Andrew mentions, the Gov 2.0 crowd, and anybody who has some insanely great ideas. You can bet your ass I’ll make this happen if I get the job. This is a great community to be a part of, and I would demand that level of engagement from Twitter.

2. Please use your position to help raise awareness about section 508 (accessiblity for people with disabilities) so that EVERYONE can access Twitter. This includes having Twitter throw its weight around, when possible, to get 3rd party services to develop compliant and accessible services and add-ons.

I actually need to get a lot smarter about 508 and really get an understanding for how this affects government leaders and workers in the workplace. I do think there’s something to be said for Twitter using its throw-weight to push policy and legislative change where needed. This is something I’ve found way too many companies in DC unwilling to do.

3. Please make sure to devote enough attention to state and local government concerns. Some of the best and most innovative uses of social media are at the local level and I firmly believe that social media is most powerful when it reinforces and enhances existing (in real life) connections.

This would be a hallmark of my work if I got this job. I got jazzed seeing all the cool hyperlocal innovations from state and local folks at the Gov 2.0 Expo a couple weeks ago. But I think the federal government could act as a change agent to help more communities adopt Twitter for innovative local use. We’ve just got to educate some people and get some others voted out of office. ;)

4. Please make (or work with the Library of Congress to make) an archiving and access tool that would be truly useful for government employees and, in particular, policy makers.

Done. I too want to see quick and easy access to all of Twitter’s data when anyone wants it, anytime. I’ve participated in some research projects in the past where my team designed analytics to run on captured tweets, and the hardest thing was just capturing the tweets in the first place. We need to figure out how to make that data access easy and available.

5. Please help establish a quick and transparent process to get “Verified” on government accounts.

This is a must and a quick fix, in my opinion. Especially if the Gov Liaison duties are getting govvies on Twitter in the first place, we should be able to verify very fast.

6. Please create a public directory (perhaps with some associated metrics) of federal, state and local accounts

Does this already exist somewhere? I know I’ve seen sites like Govloop and GovTwit try to list tweeting govvies, but I’m not sure it’s comprehensive (especially at the state and local levels). I bet we could police that up pretty easy with verfied govvie accounts and develop lists. This may even help folks understand the Byzantine organization of our government.

7. Please develop some more robust off-the-shelf metrics to help measure engagement. Facebook Insights would be one model for this and perhaps access could be tied to verified government accounts.

I’m guessing Andrew wants to measure the engagement stats on govvies? That’s a pretty interesting method for accountability. Having spent some time helping develop algorithms to measure influence on Twitter, and now seeing easy-to-use, free measurement tools hit the web (like Edelman’s TweetLevel), I think it’s important that we use commonly available and individually modifiable tools versus sinking money into colossal objective systems. The latter way leads to government pork like Future Combat Systems. What Twitter could do is start organizing the creators of some of these tools and promoting specific accountability measures tailored to the agency or politician of choice.

8. Please be available when emergencies occur to help government use Twitter in the most effective manner possible. AND publicly post lessons learned, best practices, a related archive of tweets and possibly links to any relevant research on the issue.

I think the Gov Liaison should be more than just available. I think he should be the point man for such issues. There are tons of lessons to be learned from the State Department’s engagement with Twitter, lessons that Twitter itself could take a leadership role in collecting and publicizing.

9. Please expand your government cases studies beyond the USGS to highlight best practices by school districts, local governments and state agencies, as well as federal agencies.

Totally agree. Like I mentioned above, there are tons of case studies to be made from State’s AWESOME work, San Antonio’s traffic and transportation program, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s bus notification systems, and many others. It would have been great had I this job at the Gov 2.0 Expo, because I feel like there so many cool stories of local governments using Twitter to solve communication problems with their citizenry. Those stories would have made good captures, but it’s not too late!

10. Please partner with the Open311 standard to increase visibility of inter-governmental efforts to create a universal API for access to non-emergency services, and work with law enforcement and emergency services agencies on use of geo-location capabilities for emergency reporting and response.

Getting back to open government, this is definitely a partnership worth pursuing. Twitter’s value as an emergency response tool is, I believe, so far untapped despite being so promising. I have not read much about Open311, but I’ll start getting smarter on it ASAP. ;)

There are some additional thoughtful ideas from some of Andrew’s commenters as well, like standardizing hashtags for specific gov agencies, engaging better with African American constituents on Twitter, and a wiki for best Twitter practices in government. Suffice to say, I don’t think any of these things are impossible. In fact, I think most of them are pretty easy to do if we can catalyze the right communities. I just hope I get selected as that catalyzer. :)

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