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.

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.

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

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

This past Tuesday, July 6th, 2010, I got the opportunity to speak as part of the MountainRunner Institute’s “Now Media” seminar at the National Press Club. For the less sharp-eyed out there, I’ve been proud to call Matt Armstrong (MRi President and a highly AWESOME blogger) a friend for some time… even before he provided the first forum for Must. Be. AWESOME!!! in its proto-stage. A few months ago, Matt asked me to help him transform his blog, MountainRunner, into a full-fledged nonprofit institute devoted to the study of and conversations about public diplomacy and strategic communication.

One of MRi’s key offerings is a seminar Matt honchos about “Now Media,” his concept of understanding the existing and emerging media environment as it relates to influence and engagement. These seminars give us an opportunity to wrap up everything we learn into something useful for communication practitioners. At this particular event, we had attendees from the U.S. Marine Corps public affairs team, the State Department, and even a contingent of Indonesian bloggers visiting the States on a State Department exchange.

Matt asked me to put together something to capstone the day, integrating everything from his lectures to the examples and information of our guest lecturers. I thought I would present that briefing, “Engaging in a Now Media Continuum,” here for everyone to check out. Accompanying the slideshow is the first of five videos of my actual presentation. I’ll deploy a new chapter of this video series every day for the next five days, so tune in or subscribe to the blog via RSS to get the whole story!

This was my first time presenting on behalf of MountainRunner, so I’d be really interested in everyone’s feedback: What do you think about engaging in a “now media” continuum?

(Note: Special thanks to Rob Watwood for his time and energy discussing the various ideas, thoughts, and challenges that I eventually cobbled together into this preso.)

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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.

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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So I decided to do it: I applied for Twitter’s Government Liaison job.

Despite how much I’ve shat on government in the past, I’m really excited about the prospect of being “the Twitter guy” in DC. I have a lot of fun on Twitter. I like the short, true-to-life conversational aspect of the form. Twitter is such an ideal, simple cannon for quick, bite-sized bombs of AWESOME. All of us peeps in DC need a little more AWESOME, and I see Twitter as an objective delivery device more and more every day.

Now, this is a public policy position. It’s obvious from the job description that Twitter wants to develop an influential presence amongst policymakers in our fair government. There is a huge opportunity here to build some connective tissue between legislators, policymakers, commercial folks, a host of non-governmental organizations, state and local government, and citizens. I want to show Congress how AWESOME we can make our global communities. I want to show people some of the AWESOME things happening in government they never get to see or hear about. I want to connect with more people, more often, mo’ bettah.

Can Twitter provide that connective tissue? You bet your ass. And for those of you following me on Twitter, you know how much I love it. Twitter is AWESOME. It is insanely great, to use Umair Haque‘s manifesto. I want to show more people how to use it to help them achieve great things. That’s why I’ve put my hat into the ring for Twitter’s Government Liaison job.

But who just applies for a job and leaves it to fate? Not this guy.

I would LOVE having people’s support on this. If this isn’t worth doing big and AWESOME, it ain’t worth doing. So I’m asking for YOUR HELP. Here’s what we’ve gotta do:

• First, get a Twitter handle if you don’t have one.
• Show your support by tweeting “@Du4 for Twitter Government Liaison!” or something like that.
• Tag all your tweets with this hash: #Du4TwitterGov
• Link back to http://mustbeawesome.com.
• Participate in the coming discussions on Must. Be. AWESOME!!! about the job.
• Tell your friends and family on other social networks.

Image courtesy of zoominfo.

I’ll start churning out thoughts, discussion, pingbacks, and other commentary that’s beginning to surface about Twitter’s entry into the gov arena here at Must. Be. AWESOME!!! Campaign Headquarters. To start, check out Andrew Wilson’s Top 10 Request for the New Twitter Gov Liaison. I’ll comment specifically on Andrew’s call to action in a subsequent post. Wouldn’t it be SUPERCOOL if this started as a simple job application but BLEW UP into a movement of some kind?

There’s probably someone insanely more qualified for this job, but I WANT IT. I want it like I want OASIS TO GET BACK TOGETHER. Like I want JOHN LENNON TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD AND DO BATTLE WITH SARAH PALIN. This could be SO. COOL.

I hope you’re as excited about it as I am.

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As regular readers of this blog know by now, I had quite a journey getting to present at the Gov 2.0 Expo this year. I’ve spent enough time talking about that preso. Now it’s time to talk about the Expo itself.

There have been metric shitloads of wrap-ups, reviews, commentaries, and think pieces following the Expo. I’ll try to sum up my experience there without repeating too much. (See links below to some of the better wrap-ups.)

First and foremost, I have to give Laurel Ruma, J.B. Wheatley and the rest of the O’Reilly staff huge props for hooking it up for me. Laurel greeted me with a great big hug when I arrived, and her enthusiasm never wavered. The speakers’ lounge gang was a delight as well, providing a great place to meet new connections like David Hale from the National Institute of Health and longtime Twitter pals like Chris Rasmussen.

I expected a lot of cogitation, pontification, and general assholery from this conference… par for the course of most govvie conferences in DC. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the gov in Gov 2.0 was better represented by hyperlocal government (cities, counties, townships) than the federal monstrosity here in DC. While we eventually got to see presos from Price Floyd (Defense Department) and Alec Ross (State Department), their remarks were not near as inspiring as the things coming from local yokels like Joshua Robin (Massachusetts Department of Transportation), Steve Corbett (iStrategy Labs), and Melissa Jordan (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It was really AWESOME and inspiring seeing these representatives and enthusiasts of city and township government speak about crowdsourced apps, programs and ideas that are revolutionizing the way their local governments are engaging with and supporting citizens.

These combined perspectives on citizen engagement of local government really speak to me given my work with Sister Cities International. If it’s one thing my mom taught me (she’s the president of Fort Worth Sister Cities) it’s that the relationships that matter most to government change are those between citizens. And it’s important to remember, government employees are citizens too. People at the Gov 2.0 Expo showed me how true and effective that can be, especially when you activate those citizens’ AWESOME and let them come up with some really badass shi’ to help their local communities and governments.

There were some really great presos that I won’t go into too much detail here, but you should check as many of them out as you can on the Expo’s YouTube channel. I particularly enjoyed the mashup of marketing, Maslow, and media sciences that Dan Zarrella used to scientifically study social media. Kathy Sierra’s talk about passion (and call for a LOLcat Translation Project for the Federal Acquisition Regulation) was much more fun than I’d expected, and surprisingly cooler than Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote.

Finally, the Expo’s social events were great places for me to connect with people I’d only engaged with online. It was AWESOME drinking beers and shooting the shit with Steve Radick, Chris Ramussen, Steve Ressler, Andrew Krzmarzick, and Steve Lunceford; and meeting new friends like Chris Bennett, Chris McCroskey (hmmm, AWESOME Gov 2.0 peeps seem to go by the names Chris and Steve….), Jacque Brown, David Hale, and the boys from Palantir. As a social animal myself, it was pretty rad to hang out with these cats and others that felt like “fellow travelers” in our particular, individual quests for AWESOME government.

In closing, the source of inspiration for any good Gov 2.0 discussion… TENACIOUS D.

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One of the coolest personal experiences I’ve had of late involved meeting and hanging with a bunch of cats from Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based company that rocks a pretty cool data analysis tool. I’ve known about their software for some time, and I’ve heard good things about their products and services from some of their clients in the Intel Community and DOD. What I had not experienced, however, was Palantir’s AWESOME corporate culture.

I met Palantir’s Drew and Jon at the Gov 2.0 Expo in DC, where Palantir had spared no expense in setting up the biggest and baddest-ass booth in the entire expo hall. Instead of developing the same old tired convention booth marketing concept, Palantir had designed a cool little area in which to simply hang out and get to know their people. Drew described it as their “mullet booth: business in front, party in back.” While they flaunted the customary multiple widescreens on which to demo the Palantir system, the real draw of the booth was the pleather couches and full-on Wii gaming setup they had going on behind it. Oh yeah, and they were serving their visitors complementary beer. Motherfucker, JAM.

What Drew &  Jon showed me was a corporate culture that valued their people’s AWESOME way more than their products and sales of their products. As I learned, Palantir is all about its people. They let their teams self-organize to solve problems, and they provide tons of on-site perks that enable a creative, fun atmosphere. I got the chance to see this culture of AWESOME in action when I got invited to Palantir Night Live at Palantir’s Tysons Corner office last night.

Pro setup at Williams Sonoma? Nope. Just Palantir's AWESOME kitchen, complete with daily catering menu for its peeps.

Every month, Palantir Night Live features a rad speaker in the national security, intelligence, tech, or other related community that Palantir touches. Last night it was Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security and Skeletor lookalike. The event is a social one and underlies a key facet of Palantir’s people-based marketing strategy. The draw of this event has little if anything to do with the company’s products and everything to do with its culture. Palantir peeps are young, hip folks who enjoy socially building their business. So that means they value facilitating knowledge exchange (via AWESOME catering and bar service) amongst a variety of people in their social business circle. You saw govvies rubbing shoulders with bloggers at Palantir Night Live.

I would be greatly interested in seeing the sales leads generated from events like these, if those are even metrics Palantir tracks for the success of its marketing events. As a social business, I see Palantir experimenting a lot more in non-traditional selling, i.e. allowing its community of interest (customers, personnel, etc) to recommend the company within existing trust networks.

Skeletor-- er, Chertoff, draws the hotness of DC blogger "K Street Kate."

How well this works for the company’s business development strategy remains to be seen, but I can attest to the AWESOMEness of the culture. Their focus on people really underscores the value of a social business. Palantir doesn’t even use a whole lot of social media marketing because their in-person social marketing works so well.

I should also mention that a couple of my former Detica colleagues got picked up by Palantir when that company was unceremoniously acquired and assfucked. One whose work I respect a great deal told me how much he loves his new job and how he feels great working for Palantir. It’s people like this guy whose trust is based more on social culture than the old work-reward hierarchy that tells me there is something imminently special about Palantir. I would LOVE to work with these cats if given the chance.

For more on Palantir Night Live, check out the Twitter hash #pnldc and @palantirtech.

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Just hit SEND on the final “Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government” preso to be delivered at the Gov 2.0 Expo this week. I’m up at 5:55pm on Tuesday at the Washington Convention Center. If you happen to be in town and catch me, shoot me a holler on Twitter so we can connect later. There’s a social or some shit like that after the keynote Tuesday, and I’d love to hear how AWESOME my delivery was.

I’m a complete stranger to Ignite-style briefing: 20 slides, 5 minutes, 15 seconds per slide. It’s either gonna be a fun exercise in bullshittery or a complete shit-show. HOWF!

For folks who aren’t going to make it to the Expo, I’ve uploaded the preso here for your viewing pleasure. Please feel free to leave a comment below and tell me what you think. I’m going to try and get video of the actual Day-Of, so be on the lookout for that in subsequent posts.

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