Courtesy of vincentgallegos
Nicely done, Twitter peeps. Full report to follow but suffice to day, TWTRCON DC 09 was a rousing success. Very useful collection of people, discussions, and studies. Met a shitload of great people and even won the Open Mike Contest.
Great meeting everybody, and thanks to all who voted for lil’ ole’ me. I love you longtime. More to follow.
This is Must. Be. AWESOME. Dot com.
Had a lovely time this evening bullshitting with some of the crew coming to TWTRCON DC. Despite our disparities, it’s funny how this thing called Twitter has brought us together. Realtors, educators, marketers, techies: we are all harmonized in some way by this odd little tool. I have to hand it to the Modern Media folks who put this mutha together: so far, this sounds like a great time.
If you’re not coming to #TWTRCON, use the hashtag to follow realtime updates on any number of tools like TweetDeck or TwitterFall (if you aren’t already). I oughtta be running around, causing a ruckus and fucking shit up, so if you’re attending, holla at a brotha via @Du4 and lemme know where yer at. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are probably not even reading this blog.
Con report to follow.
Image courtesy of Brian Lane Winfield Moore
Are you coming to Washington, DC next week for TWTRCON? I’m not terribly certain what the unified purpose of this conference is. Like many “social media gatherings” of the modern age, it may just be an excuse for A) some social media startup to charge the fuck out of its attendees, and/or B) a bunch of social media “gurus” to get together and jerk each other off.
To be fair, the prior TWTRCON in San Francisco seemed to go over well with attendees and guests. There have been quite a few of these types of conferences where people wrestle with what Twitter is and how it can be used for business, marketing, or whatever. I like how inherently social this makes Twitter’s users feel if they can actually unplug from their hashtags and muster up the gumption to shake hands with people they don’t know physically.
Courtesy jdlasica.
So… we’ll see how it goes. One of my ulterior motives for going to this thing is to stalk David Armano and conversate with him about all the cool new things happening at The Dachis Group. Something that’s been intriguing the pants off me in this weltering morass of social media madness has been Armano‘s (and now Dachis’s) concept of “social business design.” I think this concept is going to be the Next Big Thing, with the potential for crossing all kinds of boundaries that social media doesn’t. More about this in detail in a future post.
Let it be known that Ye Olde Du4 has actually submitted an idea to TWTRCON’s Open Mike Contest, and that tweet can be found here. The basic idea is an encapsulation of the intent of this blog (and potentially a future business!). I’m not sure how the judging is performed, but keep your fingers crossed that I’ll have an opportunity to wow the crowd with the power of my ROCK.
If you’re at TWTRCON DC, shoot me a DM at @Du4 to link up.
Monday, October 5th, I attended an event at George Washington University billed as “New Approaches to U.S. Global Outreach: Smart Power on the Front Lines of Public Diplomacy (PD) and Strategic Communication (SC).” A mouthful of whaaaaaat?
The point of said “event” was to purportedly discuss strategic and tactical issues involved in U.S. government communication. Quite a few familiar and some new faces were on the panels, to include Rosa Brooks from DOD’s Policy shop, Daniel Sreebny from the State Department’s Global Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC), public diplomacy scholar Kristin Lord, some old guy from SOCOM’s Strategic Communication Directorate, and a Congressional lawyer that made me want to commit seppuku on the spot.
A bunch of other PD bloggers are going to scholarly and academically get into the nuts and bolts of this discussion, and the conversation will turn back to how sorry we all are that there’s no strategic leadership for PD/SC, how no one can agree on who owns what, how no one cares, blah blah blah.
I, on the other hand, want to know why this community is purposely avoiding AWESOME.
We’ve been having this debate about the delineations and roles/responsibilities of PD, SC, military information support, and all the other information disciplines for years. Like all good alcoholics, we know we have a problem… we just aren’t going to stop drinking because we’re such assholes. We always end up asking the same questions, arriving at a bunch of solutions, but then drop the ball at implementation. Oh sure, there are reams of reports out there analyzing specific problems with the USG’s communication apparatus… but to paraphrase Dr. Bruce Gregory, no one seems to want to actually LEAD this community and establish a SOLID BUSINESS PLAN for implementing reform.
I'm here for yer publik diplomasees.
So what ends happening? Everybody putters about like a mass of retarded lemmings, hanging on the charity of others, hoping someone else will figure things out and give their lives meaning. Meanwhile, it’s Clown Shoes Day every day on the world stage, and the United States is Ronald McDonald.
The tragedy is that this is not even LAME. It’s just… mediocre. None of these people is purposely LAME. Some are weak, some assholish or crapulous. But ultimately, the community is just… meh.
It’s just a community that shows up. Do they care? Sure. Will they do anything about it? Not… really.
Well, wait, doesn’t it count that we’re talking about the issue? Sure. But we’ve been talking for YEARS. People have been railing against the State Department’s mistreatment of the public diplomacy field since the U.S. Information Agency was forcibly integrated into the department in 1999.
The point is, NO ONE’S DOING SHIT ABOUT IT.
The lawyer at the panel basically defended Congress’ abdication of responsibility for fixing the interagency legislation, oversight and budgetary authority. The SOCOM guy complained about antiquated laws. Sreebny said he was new on the job. The refrain was the same: “It’s too HARD.”
Well, you know what, taxpayer-paid-for govvies? THAT SUCKS.
We do not need more administrators managing the status quo. We do not need more lawyers to find new loopholes in the problems. We do not need more apologists for this bullshittery.
We need LEADERSHIP. Moreso, we need AWESOME LEADERSHIP. If this administration is truly about change, then get off your goddamn asses and FIX IT.
Stop the complaining. Stop the beauracratizing. Stop the crack-addled fantasies that this will all be taken care of by someone else.
If you claim to be a public diplomat, a strategic communicator, a PSYOPper, a Foreign Service officer, a counselor, a scholar, a believer… if you call yourself anything that tracks back to this venerable profession then get involved. I, and many of my fellow taxpayers, are tired of you bitching about how screwed up the communication disciplines are. FIX IT!
Defy mediocrity. BE AWESOME.
[Joker pic H/T to Ben @ LikeCool.com.]
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