Jun
09

Hey, Twitter! Government Liaison? How ‘Bout AWESOME Government Liaison?!

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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Jun
08

Holy Crap, This Looks Like an AWESOME Job

This job announcement from Twitter just went live. The salient bits are here:

Twitter is looking for an experienced, entreprenurial person to make Twitter better for policymakers, political organizations and government officials and agencies. You’ll be our first D.C. -based employee and the closest point of contact with a variety of important people and organizations looking to get the most out of Twitter on both strategic and highly tactical levels. You’ll help Twitter understand what we can do to better serve candidates and policymakers across party and geographical lines. You’ll support policymakers use of Twitter to help them communicate and interact with their constituents and the world. You’ll work with nearly every group at the company and at every level to pursue your vision for how Twitter ought to be. You’ll help set the culture and approach of a fledgling public policy department and be an important part of our very small company.

Image courtesy of zoominfo

I could totally do this. It’s actually the one thing that sounds insanely fun about working in DC: showing government folks how they can use Twitter for AWESOME purposes. Connecting legislators to their constituents (and each other). Connecting soldiers with families. Connecting. CONNECTING.

Even though I’m already gainfully employed and stretched thinner than Plastic Man in a God-sized tug-o-war… I am really giving some serious thought to applying for this gig.

What do y’all think??? Should I go for it?

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May
09

Developing the Tech Team Preso

I’m using this post as a testing ground of sorts with which to work out the design of my 5-minute Gov 2.0 Expo talk on May 25th, 2010. As a result what you are about to read may seem random and disjointed at first. Fair warning.

I think what I’ll probably do is develop the case study as a full-on post for Must. Be. AWESOME!!! so that interested folks from the expo can come here and read through the entire narrative. What I’ll need to do then is make the 5-minute preso more of a pitch for people to come back and get the full effect. Plus, it’ll be a great place to start a conversation about the Tech Team, share experiences, continue analyzing, etc.

Original Pitch

“Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government: The Case of the IED Task Force Tech Team”

  • Purpose 1: Demonstrate how gov entities can exude AWESOME
  • Purpose 2: Extract lessons (positive & negative) from case study
  • Contraints: 45-min preso time shortened to 5 minutes — warrants major curtailing in presentation of findings

Major Themes in Research/Interviews

  • Righteous mission: helping to save soldiers’ lives
  • Brotherhood: team exceptionally loyal to one another, inside & outside of work
  • Fellowship: people & job were fun – weekly happy hours & grill-outs
  • Leadership: BG Votel  and LTC Jost took risks, backed up his people every time

Lessons Learned

  • The right mix of personalities will enable AWESOME in any enterprise.
  • AWESOME activity creates swarm of “antibodies” (naysayers, can’t-do’s, etc).
  • People will give 18hrs/day if the activity is AWESOME.
  • Small, super-empowered teams can change everything if given the chance.
  • Cults of personality and rabid positivity will engender loyalty between all echelons.
  • Middle management worked for team members, not vice versa.
  • The business of AWESOME is inherently and unavoidably social.
  • Ad hoc, task force structure engendered agility, effectiveness, & ownership.
  • Permanizing the organization destroyed team cohesion & introduced stagnation & irrelevance.

Unanswered Questions

  • How transferrable is this case to other parts of government?
  • If JIEDDO was borne of the Tech Team / JIEDDTF, then wasn’t the organization a failure? (because JIEDDO pretty much sucks today)

The IED Task Force Tech Team (circa 2004)

A note on formatting: I’m also currently fooling around with Prezi, a new web-based system of designing presentations that purports to help design better presentations by forcing you to think creatively, visually, and using mind-mapping techniques. The videos make it seem pretty cool, and I was considering using this for my Gov 2.0 preso. However, I’m concerned that the Gov 2.0 staff isn’t ready for the newness of Prezi (I’m not even sure of the file formats supported), and I’ve only got a few weeks to play around with it. Further, despite the New York Times‘ recent story on how tired of PowerPoint everyone in the Defense establishment is, everyone’s still using it and everyone’s used to seeing it.

In 5 minutes’ time, I’m not even sure the benefits of Prezi would be worth it. Still, I may do a longer version of the talk in Prezi to post here on the blog at a later date. We’ll have to see what the future demand looks like for this case study.

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Feb
03

When Your Clients Are Not AWESOME

Within my community of business owners, contract wranglers, and salespeople in DC, I’ve seen a lot of long faces lately. Since the economy crashed and the new administration took office, business development people have had a harder and harder time selling their wares to federal clients and closing new contracts. Most of what the government does award these days often looks a lot like continuation rollovers, wherein some asshole COTR (that’s contracting officer’s technical representative for you neophytes) finds it easier to perform minimal competition compliance just to ensure he or she doesn’t have to deal with the added headache of transitioning between incumbent contractors and new winners.

Despite the reasons for the recent slowdown in federal business, the bottom line is that many companies are finding it harder and harder to deal with their onetime great clients. Contracting officers (COs) and COTRs have become outright hostile to some companies, turning required program management into offensive, often farcical dehumanization of the performer(s). Folks I work with vent often and loudly about how the typical government contracting churn in Washington has gotten even worse.

Also, as hard as it’s become to acquire a contract nowadays, there’s developed the added insanity of dealing with a growing crop of dickheaded contract administrators. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard from businesspeople in DC complaining about how unmovable, boorish, and downright inappropriate some government agencies can act towards their performers. Some government officials who administrate such contracts blatantly tell their contractors that part of the gig is to take shit from them, from simple incompetent management on down to the most revolting of behaviors toward gender and racial lines. There seems to be this attitude that, goddammit, the government knows best and since I’m the government’s representative on this contract, you better listen to me. This behavior is not just unprofessional, it’s insulting, repulsive, and deserving of public punishment.

This situation – Our Great Client Crisis – is not new and is not AWESOME. In fact, it’s pretty fucking lame.

I have one piece of advice for these folks, and it’s advice that’s applicable to any business, company, consultancy, or individual:

If your client treats you like shit, then kick ‘em to the curb.

Subjecting oneself, one’s company, and one’s people to abusive treatment by a client just because they’re paying you money is ridiculous. Despite how many millions of dollars you’re making or could stand to make, it is simply not worth the emotional loss your business will take when scads of your people begin feeling The Mighty Fed in their poop chutes. Furthermore, the added frustration of trying to secure such work from people who may be willing to pay for your service but not understand it (“Let’s get some social media on this advertising plan!”) will only serve to waste more of your time that could be better spent with AWESOME clients.

Image courtesy of She's Unapologetic.com

So, if you’re in such an abusive relationship, what can YOU do about it? Here are a couple ideas that may help:

  • Call ‘em on it: The next time one of your clients purposely demeans you in public, call ‘em out on it. Publicly. Federal workers particularly are often not willing to duel over degrees of impropriety in public. Making the behavior public will often cause them to back down. That said, be ready for the dick move of having your contract terminated for no reason afterwards.
  • Make ‘em smarter: In a lot of cases, your clients aren’t acting like assholes because they want to. They just don’t know any better. So defuse the situation by offering to help them out. Tell them about other clients you’ve had who have expressed the same educational roadblocks in whatever specialty you happen to deal. You may even make a friend out of them. And friends give friends work in the future.
  • Call Fraud, Waste & Abuse: Each government agency has a hotline set up to report instances of fraud, waste and abuse amongst its employees. Use it. It may take time for your complaint to get addressed, so be prepared to go on the record, which can speed things up. Google your department of choice and be sure you’re calling a number at a high enough level that it warrants attention from that agency’s Inspector General.
  • Lodge a protest: Federal contractors in particular have clauses in their contracts providing for their right to raise protest against their COTRs for impropriety. Exercise this with caution however: these protests go in your company’s permanent record and may taint evaluators’ opinions of you during future competitions.
  • Find new clients: This is my favorite suggestion. You don’t like who you’re doing business with? Get out. Get out and find some dudes you DO like. If this requires you retooling your corporate offerings or marketing, then maybe you should take a hard look at your business and decide what market you really want to play in. Stop being a slave to million dollar contracts. Trust me: the payoff is not worth the stress and abuse you’ll take over the life of the contract if your client is an asshole.
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Oct
08

A Panel Is Worth a Thousand Words… of Suckage.

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.

Im here for yer publik diplomasees.

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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