Jul
14

Draft These Badasses to Improve US Communication Enterprise

Pundits, researchers, textperts, and academics all love to talk about how they would fix the United States’ fragmented, crapped-out communication apparatus. The overarching web of demon seed spunked across drab refurbished halls in the Eisenhower Building on 17th Street NW barely covers the Sarlacc maw of offices, officials, and assholes manning the guns of This, Our National Communication Nightmare. All suggestions for reform mandate – nay, demand! – leadership in renovating this sad enterprise, this broken transistor, these crusted lips. Though none of these tremendous gasbags has deigned to ask the question most important to we lowly peasants of the pen: “Who shall lead us?” Submitted then, for no approval, is this list of AWESOME, kermodial badasses. Executives in 21st century organization and innovation. Preeminent princes of creativity. Visionaries of the better and the righteous.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter.

Image via Wikipedia

Jack Dorsey – Creator & CEO, Twitter

Just interviewed The President using crowdsourced questions from Twitter. Twitter. A social media tool that has archived millions of impressions from people around the world and is on the way to becoming so ubiquitous that it’s considered a utility by some. Elegant simplicity and craftsmanship are his weapons. I think he knows a thing or two about designing a communication enterprise.

Image via The Guardian.

Andy Carvin – Senior Strategist, NPR

“The Crowdsorceror” who mounted a one-man content curation campaign in realtime around popular protests and demonstrations in the Middle East that later became known as the Arab Spring. Compelling, earnest believer in the power of people. His examples inspire legions of communicators to standing applause at his speaking engagements. To Carvin, community comes first. Imagine his style of realtime information gathering applied to intelligence or information operations problems.

Image via TVNewser

Jon Stewart - Host, The Daily Show

America’s funnyman turned mega-popular fake news host, consumed by millions of Americans as “real” news. Despite obvious satirical takes on journalism, staunchly defends That Which Is Right by attacking The Wrong, from Fox News insidiousness to Cramer’s role in puffing up the housing crisis. Genuinely loves America. Imagine his tenure leading government international broadcasting efforts.

 

 

 

 

Image via brosephstalin.com

Tim Hwang – Founder, Web Ecology Project, The Awesome Foundation, and The Institute for Higher Awesome Studies

A philosophical cog caught between the wheels of web analytics and netnography. Cultural researcher and student of human interaction offline, online, and elsewhere. Observer of society, real and imagined. Teamed with the right agencies, his timely insights about social communities could make AWESOMEthe work of thousands of government communication professionals.

Image via AV.com

Fred Wilson – Venture Capitalist and Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures

Social entrepreneur and investor in socially transformative technologies. Believes in the transcendant like Hashable, Etsy, Foursquare, GetGlue, Kickstarter, and more. Blogs regularly about the whys and wherefores, the how-to’s, and the aspirational dreams of his investments. Imagine a federal executive who apportions program funding according to the good of society versus short-term gains or even strategic objectives.

Image via Gawker.

Peter Thiel - Serial VC, Hedge Fund Manager

Avowed investor in the impossible, from artificial intelligence to social networks like Facebook to data analytics supergiants like Palantir. Believer in not just debating future technology and social innovation but making it happen. Convener of social creatives to discuss building an objective American future. Elusive yet visionary. Skates the edge of politics with controversial libertarian-esque views on economics and democracy, a modernist perspective badly required by an ever evolving communications ecosystem.

Image via bookgalaxo.com

Tony Hsieh – CEO, Zappos

The man who brought happiness to millions and made fun a core capability of his company. Committed to making the world a happier place, a mission sorely needed in the personnel departments of hundreds of government agencies.

John Lasseter - Chief Creative Officer, Pixar

The man who built an animated powerhouse out of a tiny studio no one believed would succeed. Since producing some of the most endearing animated films in the modern age, has merged his multibillion dollar studio with Disney to usher in a new era of Imagineering. Our communications enterprise, currently swarmed with ill-trained personnel that barely understand the social phenomena happening around them, requires creativity of this man’s magnitude.

Image via Screencrave.com

Image via Headshift.com

Lee Bryant – Co-founder & Director, Headshift

A social business maestro, he advocates for clients to change the way they do business instead of simply hanging shiny new social media toys on their websites. Understands the complex challenges of technology’s promises and shortcomings in solving organizational and communications problems. Also, very British.

Image via The Huffington Post

Baratunde Thurston – Vigilante Pundit, The Onion

Champion for The Right in all things Wrong. Outspoken advocate for diversity, a trait we see too rarely in government. His infectious influence could inspire legions of public diplomats, strategic communicators, and information operators at all levels. Laughter mandating shot caller of madness. Imagine his effect teaching communicators in institutions across government how to be AWESOME and not just govvies.

David Kilcullen – Counterinsurgency Guru

An early advocate of fighting ideologically against al-Qaeda versus hand-to-hand. Believer in people-focused counterinsurgency security. Sees war as competition managed by influence instead of shootouts and bombings. Widely regarded as the smartest man on the planet when it comes to strategically understanding the wars of the future. If the Defense Department continues playing in deployed communications – and it will – then it will need a shamanic leader like this man to responsibly pilot the interagency minefields such across-the-board coordination that will require.

Image via The Washingtonian

Official portrait of United States Secretary o...

Image via Wikipedia

Robert Gates – Former Secretary of Defense; Former Director, CIA 

The ultimate honest broker in all things government. From his perch as SECDEF, fought interminable battles with service cultures and DOD dinosaurs, breaking down inflated budgets and streamlining operations. Put this same right-is-right tenacity to work reforming and leading the rehabilitation and redesign of America’s communication enterprise across agencies, and we will see magic.

 

 

 

 

Mae Ferguson. Kind of a badass.

Mae Ferguson – President & CEO, Fort Worth Sister Cities International

People forget citizen and cultural diplomacy are cornerstone elements of strategic influence, and because of that, they remain ill coordinated with the rest of our national communication apparatus. Mae has the terrier-like tenacity and management expertise to round up the various bit parts of cultural programs and get them working properly in alignment with national influence goals. A long time nonprofit leader, she has achieved a lot with strangled budgets and limited personnel. Disclosure: she’s also my Mom. :)

Who am I missing?

I know you’ve got some ideas about kermodial badasses we need to draft into service of our faltering national communication enterprise. Tell me who they are in the comments.

May
25

Station Ident: I Got To Freak, I Got To Flow

Apologies to all you good people for the lack of substantial new content lately. Work at @Du4.llc has taken off in the past couple months, and a smattering of other esoteria has also begun vying for my time. Instead of whining about it though, I figured I’d post a quick update on what’s new in AWESOME-Land.

Depending on how the summer shapes up, there may very well may be some professional work changes to report. Despite my love of the freedom of independent consulting, Sean Connery said it best: “Never say never again.”

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

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Mar
04

Links of the Week: March 4, 2011 Edition

Not much to report this week due to a flurry of Du4licious activity in prep for this week’s Sister Cities International conference in Arlington. But a couple things did catch my eye.

Congressman Rahm Emanuel (center) with Sol Sch...

Image via Wikipedia

Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel

 

Like many across the country, I fell in love with the raucous foulness of Rahm Emanuel‘s parody Twitter account, which started broadcasting shortly after Rahm left the White House to run for mayor of Chicago. As @MayorEmanuel’s popularity grew, so too did the mystery of who was really behind it. In this Atlantic article, @MayorEmanuel’s pilot is revealed: Dan Sinker, a Chicago punk rocker and new age digital storyteller. Sinker describes @MayorEmanuel as performance art, a new sort of digital political commentary that weaves in and out of fiction, celebrity, and current events. I’m massively intrigued by the potential of using Twitter in a manner like Sinker did. Anonymity is so easily protected on this network, there are huge opportunities for persona manipulation… which makes me wonder about the future of digital identity. Great read.

On Revolutions

Pretty interesting perspective on the Middle East protests from Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non-Conformity. Guillebeau has made a name for himself as a “travel hacker” by finding inexpensive means of visiting all sorts of places around the world. He is, in my opinion, a true citizen diplomat (public diplomacy peeps: take note). His experiences flying into Afghanistan, Libya, and Iran (!), give him an interesting “average joe” insight to what’s really at the forefront of people’s minds in those countries. Highly recommended read, and be sure to subscribe to Guillebeau’s blog too. It’s a must for nonconformists, proto-world dominators, and doowutchyalikes.

Announcing: Open Foresight & The Future of Facebook Project

Venessa Miemis is at it again with what sounds like an AWESOME forecasting initiative via Kickstarter. She has already interviewed several notable social media and tech influencers and has opened up her research questions to the public on Quora. I highly recommend EVERYONE go and participate in this project. I’ve blogged about Venessa before, and I think her work as a modern digital/social futurist demonstrates a LOT of required skills we as humans need to adopt to adapt to the new digital lifestyles in which we find ourselves.

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Feb
21

Please Consider Joining Us for the Sister Cities Annual Conference Next Week

Arlington County, Virginia seal

Image via Wikipedia

Next week, March 3-5, Sister Cities International brings its 55th annual conference to Arlington, Virginia. As a member of the board of directors for both SCI and Arlington’s own Sister City Association, I’ve been helping to put together an AWESOME conference experience for everyone. SCI has a great schedule lined up this year, from briefings by the State Department to best practices roundtables. You can get a fuller look at the schedule and register here: http://www.sistercitiesconference.org/.

Additionally, the Arlington Sister City Association will be throwing a reception Friday March 4th at 6:30pm to celebrate its sister city relationships around the world. Arlington’s sister cities include Reims, France; Aachen, Germany; San Miguel, El Salvador; Coyoacan, Mexico; and friendship city Cochabamba, Bolivia. We will be celebrating the official signing of a sister city relationship between Arlington and longtime friendship city Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine as well. As part of our reception, attendees will see dancing and music from some of these groups and get to experience ethnic foods from each of these unique cultures. Tickets to the reception are only $40 or free with the purchase of a full conference registration from the SCI website above. We’re also giving away free memberships to ASCA for a year with the purchase of any of these tickets.

If you’re interested in volunteering, SCI and ASCA could use a few AWESOME citizen diplomats. We have open shifts for ushers, greeters, desk managers, and badge checkers all days of the conference. These are all-ages volunteer opportunities; we’ve got something for everybody. You also get free access to some of the conference sessions and some other cool bennies, so give it a think.

We at ASCA are also still searching for 2011 sponsors. Sponsorships help us not only conduct cultural celebrations like this reception, but also specific trips for students, artists, and musicians between Arlington and its sister cities. We welcome corporate and individual sponsorships with a variety of different benefits including logo and brand placement amongst our community, access to speakers at the SCI conference, and free tickets to conference events (dependent on sponsorship level).

If you would like to contribute, learn more, volunteer, or just buy a reception ticket, shoot me a note at du4 at mustbeawesome dot com.

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Sep
21

Sister Cities: A Cause for AWESOME

A sign near City Hall points to the sister cit...
Image via Wikipedia

I don’t like the term “nonprofit.” It describes organizations with a negative instead of a positive. Sure, they’re not in it for profit. But what ARE they in it for? ”Nonprofit” is a shorter way of saying “cause-based organization.” Since causes are often emotionally based, there is a huge well of contributory power found in many of these groups not immediately evident in for-profit endeavors. One such cause-based organization that I’ve become a rabid fan of is Sister Cities.

The DC beltway community likes to throw around policy and cocktail convos about concepts like “citizen diplomacy” and “cultural diplomacy,” but in truth, the true implementers of great person-to-person exchange are organizations like Sister Cities. For those who don’t know, Sister Cities is a concept that President Eisenhower introduced back in the 1950s: American cities reach out to foreign cities – be it through their mayors, business leaders, teachers, or other interested citizens – and establish a personal city-to-city rapport. (There’s a lot more that’s interesting about how Eisenhower saw collective citizen diplomacy as a bulwark against the Soviet Union as part of his Overseas Internal Defense Program, but that’s fodder for another post.)

These rapports vary from city to city. In some cases, Sister City relationships can be as simple as parents who organize exchange programs with families in other countries. In others, American businesses organize massive conferences aimed at empowering minorities in oppressed societies with the tools they need to create their own businesses.

Today, individual Sister Cities programs conduct their own programs and raise money in their own fashion. Some are extensions of local city governments. Others are 501c(3) nonprofits in their own right. There is also a global coordinative body, Sister Cities International, that lobbies on behalf of local programs, seeks grants for citizen diplomacy programs that Sister Cities can implement, and provide training and other support for individual city programs. I guarantee if you Googled your city, you’d find a Sister City program.

The distances to each of Louisville's sister c...

Image via Wikipedia

I bring Sister Cities up because through the course of my work, the only sustained and effective influence America has delivered overseas has come from Sister Cities programs. Insurgencies rarely happen in societies that look forward to sending their kids to an American city for a semester of school or in foreign regions that regularly welcome delegations of plain old PEOPLE to their home. From youth to women to city government, this concept promotes global harmony and equilibrium more than any other community-building initiative I’ve seen. And I think that’s damn AWESOME.

My own personal experience with Sister Cities began when my mom, Mae Ferguson, became the Executive Director and now President of Fort Worth Sister Cities International. Mom started traveling all over the world to Fort Worth’s Sister Cities, and she brought back amazing stories that changed her life. Through her, I learned about how cultural exchanges really work and the barriers we need to break through to make them successful. Mom eventually ran for and was elected Chairperson of Sister Cities International’s board of directors where she ROCKED OUT the organization. I also have met some incredible people through Fort Worth Sister Cities, people who should be receiving medals from the White House for the AWESOME things they have done for Americans and their friends in their Sister Cities. I am really proud to now volunteer for this organization, and I have my Moms to thank for that. :)

If you would like to learn more about Sister Cities or contribute, I have a couple suggestions for you:

Since this is a cause I believe in, I have joined the board of Sister Cities International and my local Sister Cities association in Arlington, VA. I’m heading up the conference planning for March’s annual conference and helping out where I can. I would really, REALLY like to talk to anybody who may be interested in helping me out. We need everything from volunteers to large corporate donations with which we’ll underwrite our conference. So give me a shout. I promise you it will be the most rewarding community-building experience of your life.

The Sister Cities of Fort Worth, TX

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Aug
03

Station Ident: Albuquerque Rock AWESOME

I’m struggling to get back into the blog saddle after several weeks of travel and madness. I’m cooking up a couple special posts soon, but I wanted to take a moment and welcome all the newcomers who are happening upon Must. Be. AWESOME!!! for the first time.

WELCOME! :D

I just returned from four days in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I attended the Sister Cities International (SCI) Annual Conference. I am a raging fan of Sister Cities, as you will see from some future blog posts, and I’m very proud to announce that I’ve been elected to SCI’s Board of Directors. This is a big deal to me as I’m following in the footsteps of my AWESOME mother, Mae Ferguson, who not only served on the board but acted as its president for two AWESOME years. I had an amazing time in ABQ where I met hundreds of new friends and colleagues from all over the world.

If you’re one of those new sisters or brothers, and you’re coming to the blog for the first time, I hope you enjoy it. I’m always open to feedback, so feel free to holler at me in the comments section of any post or via the contact form. I can’t wait to talk to you more!

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

Outgoing SCI Chairman (and personal friend & mentor to me), Mike Hyatt, from Albuquerque.

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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.

Jun
06

The Gov 2.0 Expo Experience

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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