Mar
16

The Courtesy of a Reach-around

A wrench got thrown into my Gov 2.0 Expo preso planning while I was picking myself up a bride Down South. It actually made me question whether I wanted to go through with it at all. However, after some hard thinking, I’m putting on the smiley face and taking my cheek-splitters like a man.

Let me explain.

The Gov 2.0 organizers contacted me about my presentation, “Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government: The Case of the IED Task Force Tech Team,” a couple weeks ago. They told me that they were altering the format of the conference and that my presentation was being shortened from the originally proposed 50 minutes to FIVE minutes. Apparently, they thought it would be so much cooler if they bunched in a ton of 5 minute “rapid fire” presos around the keynote address. There were a lot of platitudes about how great my proposal was and how AWESOME it would be condensed to 5 minutes.

How do you “condense” a case study, which by definition is the result of an analysis? It’s like saying, “Hey, dude, I love your book! Can you give me a pamphlet version?” Considering how much effort I’ve already put into researching this topic, a FIVE MINUTE presentation does the material – especially this material – a disservice.

I wrote the organizers back expressing my discontent but also offering an alternative: how about I come up with something else related to creating AWESOME culture in government that I could adequately fit in the time limit? Apparently, the organizers really wanted the IED Task Force Tech Team case study but felt it wasn’t topical enough to warrant a full panel. They adamantly demanded I present the same topic as originally proposed. Basically, do it or hit the road, jack.

Now this all sounds like inside baseball and dirty laundry, but I’m recounting it to demonstrate something. Despite the sheer shittiness of the situation, it forced me to sit down and think hard about what I was being asked to do. Is it worth taking a stand against this tomfoolery? Should I risk standing behind my material if it means getting kicked off the ticket? Is it even possible to give a good presentation on my original topic under these new circumstances? Am I betraying my AWESOME if I cave to these new demands? In this case, can you still be AWESOME living on a compromise?

At the end of the day, I accepted… and here’s why:

  • I can’t trade the exposure I’ll get at this conference at this stage of my career.
  • It will be an even more challenging exercise boiling my preso down to something entertaining and valuable.
  • I think I can still deliver an AWESOME preso.
  • Who knows what I can get away with on the day of?

Don’t be mistaken though: I’m not compromising on this. I’m acceding to the organizers’ demands. I think that’s an important distinction.

All that said, though, I’m still gonna fucking ROCK this expo. Fifty minutes, five minutes, whatever. It’s just less time into which I gotta pack a more concentrated dose of AWESOME.

So bring a spare pair of panties– IT’S ON.

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Mar
16

Station Ident: Teammates

Submitted for your consideration…

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

This is Must. Be. AWESOME!!! Dot com.

Feb
05

The Gov 2.0 Expo Is About to Exhibit a Slight Case of AWESOME

A couple months ago, I told y’all about submitting a proposal to the Gov 2.0 Expo occurring in May. It is with glad jazz hands that I can tell you my proposal, “Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government,” was accepted by the Expo committee! I’m now listed as a speaker alongside some pretty frickin’ AWESOME company (like Gary V!).

As promised, I’m going to blog about this experience. It’s really the first time I’ve ever had the chance to analyze and put forth a case that’s totally unique (at least in my opinion), so I’m really excited about the opportunity. I am deep into collecting data for the case study, and one method I’m using to do this has been reaching out to former members of the IED Task Force Tech Team for stories, pictures, and other info that may help my analysis. It’s been a BLAST reconnecting with these guys. We had a lot of fun back in the Tech Team days, which is one cornerstone of that experience’s AWESOMEness.

I have gotten a crap-ton of fun stuff so far, a lot of which I hope makes it into the final preso. But to give you a tease, here is the first logo one of our Tech Team brethren, Shane Gilmore, cooked up back when we first went joint.

JIEDTF2

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Jan
04

Station Ident: The Year We Make Contact

Welcome to 2010. I’m coming for YOU.

My resolution this year is to make everything I do AWESOME. I will launch an AWESOME consultancy. I will publish an AWESOME book. I will deliver AWESOME content to the readers of this blog. I will get married…AWESOMELY.

In this, Our Year of AWESOME, I invite YOU to join me.

Photo by Sarah Austin

Photo by Sarah Austin

This is Must. Be. AWESOME!!! Dot Com.

Required Reading for the New Year:

Dec
08

Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government

There’s been a slow, creeping movement in DC these past few years to renovate the way we think about government. The Gov 2.0 Summit and Expo, put on by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb, drew a monstrous crowd of people last year to explore challenges, requirements, and strategies for adapting the phenomena we associate with the social media movement to the government of the future.

I just submitted a Must.Be.AWESOME!!! pitch for the Gov 2.0 Expo in May 2010. My topic is called Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government. The approach I intend to take on this preso involves analyzing a case study of how  AWESOME can exist and flourish in government today. I chose to use a very specific case study, one near and dear to my own heart: my experience with the IED Task Force Tech Team from January 2003 to April 2006.

Du4 pretending to be King Shit at the old Tech Team trailer

Du4 pretending to be King Shit at the old Tech Team trailer

My intent behind examining the Tech Team stems from the entire team’s own reminiscences about our time there. Not a single one of these exceptional people would tell you that working on this team was anything less than AWESOME. The team’s mission was to seek out, evaluate, and rapidly equip lifesaving counter-IED technology to American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were long hours and a lot of opposition to our methods (our approach basically bucked and made irrelevant the entire Army acquisition system), but our cause was just and we celebrated it joyfully every day.

I’m really looking forward to digging into this study. It gives me a chance to catch up with a lot of my original teammates, all of whom left an indelible mark on me due to their profound professionalism and loyalty. I loved working with these guys, and I’d lay down in traffic for ‘em any day. That’s the kind of culture we need to instill in government today.

With some luck, my submission will get picked up by the Gov 2.0 folks, and I can get to work putting together a badass preso. I’ll blog about how it’s going as new developments occur; maybe something I’m looking into will help YOU in instituting a culture of AWESOME in your own organizations.

Nov
19

Station Ident: Dreaming of Texas

Spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about moving back to Texas. Raised in Longview, I still call myself a son of Fort Worth (high school and post-college), and I’ve always wanted to live in Austin.

Image courtesy Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau

Image courtesy Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau

One day.

This is Must. Be. AWESOME. Dot com.

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Oct
27

TWTRCON DC: A Reverie

Du4 & fellow Open Mike winners

Du4 & fellow Open Mike winners

TWTRCON DC invaded the Grand Hyatt last Thursday to a rousing rabble of rock stars. My biggest concern about the event – that it would feature merely a poo-poo load of social media jerks wanking each other off – proved to be completely unfounded. In fact, I met a host of cool cats with whom I hope to continue rocking.

Instead of rehashing everything you can glean for yourselves from the #twtrcon hash, I shall instead focus on the things that I found most moving, helpful, and AWESOME about the event.

What I really dug about this event was how learnable everything was. The speakers, combined with relevant and targeted questions from attendees, produced a live narrative that, to me, is the new 21st century version of academic case studies and symposia: realtime, rapid fire analyses of business experiments in microcommunications. Every single discussion revealed a takeaway… some a little more hard to identify than others, but all just as helpful.

Possibly the most AWESOME of the bunch was Scott Harrison from charity: water. Donations made to this cause fund construction of clean water wells. How Scott and his handful of people go about raising money for this charity is quite remarkable. Charity: water organized “twestivals” in over 200 cities. These events drew in certain communities (knitters, for example) who donated what they could. But the focus of these events was on what the communities cared about, whether it was knitting, drinking, or music. This draws in the people who in turn donate as little as $5 for, say, an event fee. This added up to over $250,000 that charity: water gave back 100% to their constituents.

As AWESOME as that sounds, it gets better. Scott gave some no-shit measurable “do’s and don’ts” about using Twitter (and social media in general). While these reflected his experience with a nonprofit, they were perfectly transferable to businesses and government. Themes like transparency to donors, design sense, the art of surprise, and trust all wove in and out of Scott’s preso. It got me both excited and concerned, which should be an objective of virtually any modern influence campaign.

Armano modding the Real-Time Organizations Panel. Captain Chris is rocking the fatigues.

Armano moderating the Real-Time Organizations Panel. Captain Chris is rocking the fatigues alongside FEMA's own John Shea.

Also of note was U.S. Air Force Captain Chris Sukach‘s very impressive admission that in social media, “if you’re not failing, you’re not trying.” I hardly ever hear that type of honesty from government representatives in this town, much less those in uniform. We expect so little from our government because we’ve been conditioned to think of it as a maintenance mechanism for status quo, and this often translates to lameness. Chris is the type of change agent we need more of in DC.

I do want to thank everybody at TWTRCON who voted for me as part of the Open Mike Contest. I am a shameless ham, and any chance to get up in front of people and entertain flips my shitbiscuits. That said, I did mean what I said about being AWESOME: keeping it simple often kills innovation and coolness. (More on the shittiness of the KISS principle in future posts.)

I want to spend a little time giving some props to the peeps I hung with on this very rocking of days. Amy, Ira, and Kim of  Chickdowntown were GREAT fun at Brasserie Beck (check out the website for some cool fashion deals and TWTRCON pics). Had a great conversation with David Puner of Dunkin’ Donuts about their social media strategy, which was enlightening and cool. Many thanks to Brian Block for the iPhone charger (he’s using Twitter for real estate and epically winning). Had a great time laff-testing material with my tablemates Andrea Meier, Ali Long, and Adam Zand. Chris and Rachel from Socialware (a TWTRCON sponsor) were supercool– I expect an invitation to come rock it out with you guys in Austin SOON. Lovely connecting at last with Ogilvy rock star Rohit Bhargava who did a great job manhandling Steve Rubel on the Real-Time Business panel. I’d also like to implore people to visit OrphanBracelet.org, a charity benefiting children orphaned by HIV/AIDS which crusader Monique Watkins turned me onto. And of course, the inimitable David Armano– who appropriately knocked Du4 around for sounding like a used car salesman with an aptly delivered: “Own it!”

The Real-Time Brands Panel

The Real-Time Brands Panel

You can find all the presos and a list of other con reports and media here. I have to give Tonia, Anne, and Chris super-kudos for putting such a worthwhile and fun event together. I had a great time funnin’ with everyone. I highly encourage everyone to stay engaged in the TWTRCON conversation and help keep it relevant, fun, and engaging for everyone.

[TWTRCON pics courtesy of @vincentgallegos]

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Oct
21

TWTRCON Bound

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.

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Oct
01

The Awesomeness Manifesto – Worthy of the Title?

Short answer: Pretty much.

Umair Haque over at HarvardBusiness.org beat me to the punch with his Manifesto on Awesomeness. Now, on the whole, I like Umair’s writing. He’s crazy. I mean, look at this guy:

Aaagghhhhh!!!!
Aaagghhhhh!!!!

Dude looks like he’s got so much rumbling around in his brain, rays of badassness might come flying out of his peepers.

Umair argues that the days of innovation are over. Innovation, in Umair’s estimation, is old hat and not inherently COOL ENOUGH to continue to be that shining beacon in the distance that we should all be striving for. Instead, we should be yearning for AWESOMENESS, which he describes thusly:

Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. [Emphasis mine.]

Putting all the other stuff aside, I want to hone in on the two things I highlighted above: love and insanely great stuff. Umair is right on the money in describing something that is AWESOME as something that has been born of love. It is often someone’s passion that produces anything of remarkable import.

From such love, insanely great stuff can come. I think this needs no further explanation. Plenty of other 21st century troubadour poets have said as much more eloquently than I.

Love + insanely great stuff = AWESOME. I can get behind that.

There is a GREAT conversation happening in the comments section of Umair’s post in which I highly encourage everyone to go participate. While I dig the guts of Umair’s manifesto, I still think he’s missed some things. Furthermore, many commenters – including quite a few bean-counting, butt-headed, bitch-assed defenders of Ye Olde Way Of Doing Things – have attacked him, pointing out his assertions’ naivety and the mere GALL – GALL, I tell you – that Umair would use such a silly word like “awesomeness” to replace the sacred golden cow of Innovation.

Umair, like a true son of the Social Media Masses, responded that The Awesomeness Manifesto is open source. That means, YOU can go edit it. Don’t like the concept? FIX IT. Think of a better pillar of Awesomeness that Umair missed? GET IN THERE.

What would NOT be AWESOME, but in fact be kinda LAME, would be if you just said something stupid about it in the comments (mine or Umair’s) and pretended to care. ;)

Sep
30

An Intro (of sorts) – What Is AWESOME?

du4 le seersuckerI should apologize right now.

I should… but I’m not gonna.

This is about as close as you’re gonna get from me in terms of a manifesto for this blog. What you’re about to read? This blog?

Just you wait.

Flashback to January 2009, and my buddy Matt Armstrong asks me for a hand. Says he needs some new content. Says he wants me to stop flappin’ my gums about how shitty everything is and COWBOY UP. What am I complaining about? The veritable lack of AWESOME in damn near EVERYTHING these days.

He asks me, “So what’s awesome?”

So I give him this. It’s a guest post. It gets some convo started. It gets some new traffic for MountainRunner. It gets laughed at, linked to, pointed at, sloughed off. Like most one-offs on the seas of the Internetz, it gets forgotten.

But not by me.

I keep thinking, “Dude, I can’t cover EVERYTHING AWESOME in ONE GUEST POST on a public diplomacy blog! There’s gotta be more!”

Right?

RIGHT.

It’s on the tip of your tongue. It’s scratching at the back of your throat. It’s driving your top left eyelid to pulsate in iambic tetrameter. It’s the all-encompassing, all-knowing THING you feel every time you see it. Every time you hear it. Every time you taste it. Every time it touches you.

It’s AWESOME.

You KNOW it when you feel it, when you see, hear or read it. It makes your eyes blow up wide, your mouth open, some weird mouthbreather noise escape the depths of your gullet. “OMFG,” you say. “THAT’S AWESOME.”

And THAT’S what we’re gonna explore here. Together.  AWESOME.

I’m not gonna rehash my original call to AWESOME from MountainRunner; you can find that here if you want to read it in full. But for the Cliffs Notes kids out there, here’s the deal:

If you are going to do something… do it AWESOME.

Doing something shitty or to a preset standard is lame. Anybody can do that. If you are not doing everything you can to achieve the absolute pinnacle level of badassness… well, that just sucks, dude. What’s the point? Just to maintain? We’ll get into that too.

It’ll all happen here. Comedy. Music. Movies. Government. Social media. Marketing. Influence. Public diplomacy. Defense contracting. Comic books. Writing. Family. Happiness. Blue Meanies. Harsh language. You name it. Nothing is forbidden because everything has its degrees of AWESOME.

Now, I got problems just like the rest of ya. It’s a hard road to slog being AWESOME all the time. We all can get a little down on our own shit, and we all need a little help from our friends. So I’m lookin’ at YOU to chime in. Call me out on wrongness… or lameness. Point me to other examples of AWESOME.

Conversate, people!

My name is Christopher Dufour, and I wanna be AWESOME.

I hope you do too.