Must. Be. AWESOME!!!

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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Apologies for the lack of updates over the past couple weeks. I’ve been wore out from traveling so much lately, and it’s been nice to just chill out at the hizzy with Mrs. Dufour for a while. That said, I’ve got some GREAT new content coming at you that I’ve managed to collect from my travels into AWESOME. Be on the lookout for a lot of fun posts soon.

In the interim, check out this hilarious Ke$ha / Star Trek mashup from the brilliant minds at Major Spoilers:

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

I’m a little behind with commentary on the tweet-storms and blog-bangs about the Twitter Gov Liaison job. Lots of interesting discussion punctuated by occasional drumbeats of douchebaggery. I’ll try to get caught up with my writing on the train to New York Sunday as I depart DC for TWTRCON NYC!

I had a great time at TWTRCON DC last year, so this outing should be superfly TNT, especially with the last minute addition of BPTerry (he of the hilarious BPGlobalPR Twitter satire). I’ll also be attending the Corporate Media Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday on behalf of The Rendon Group. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, shoot me a holla so we can connect.

On a completely unrelated note, I leave you with this unreleased piece of AWESOME from my favorite (and sadly defunct) band, Oasis.

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

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I figured after all of yesterday’s conversations about the Twitter Gov Liaison position, I figured I owed everybody a “statement of purpose” of some kind for my candidacy. What happened instead, however, involved a broken camera, a bout of nausea, and two very angry cats.

So instead, here’s some “good enough” footage from my FlipCam where I talk about some of my thoughts on the job, the federal government, state and local government, citizens engagement, and a bunch of other stuff.

Thanks for watching.

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When I was younger, I thought a lot about time and how once you accepted that everything happens along temporal continua (be it linearly, spatially, nonlinearly, or transcendentally), you could exert total control over your own life. I never developed this thinking much beyond high school, possibly because I didn’t have the life experience to best understand what I was on to. And up until now, I had never encountered a book, a person, or other source that confirmed my suspicions about time as an engine of faith and culture.

That is, until now. I recently discovered the following video on Open Culture. It’s a speech by Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor, who explains how our perceptions of time give us heretofore hidden insight into temporal power, particularly as seen through a lens of culture. If that topic isn’t AWESOME enough for you as it is, someone has taken Zimbardo’s speech and illustrated it via a series of sped-up whiteboard drawings.

It’s incredible illuminating and really challenges you to think about time and yourself in new ways. I’d be interested to hear what you think about it in the comments section below.

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The Gov 2.0 Expo has been a pretty amazing experience, speaking aside. I’ve met some really great people working at hyperlocal levels of government on extremely cool, forward-thinking means of connecting with their citizens. Sometimes you have to really have to embed at these events to get a good understanding of their value, and this one delivered.

I’ll write up a more in-depth analysis of the event once I’ve had some time to think on things. But in the meantime, here’s video of my 5-minute presentation from Tuesday’s Keynote Kickoff. (Thanks to the fine people at O’Reilly Media for recording, livestreaming and promoting this!)

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