February 2010
Review: Seth Godin's new book "Linchpin"
Read it. Read it this month. Read it before it’s too late to change things. Read it to inspire yourself. Read it under your desk, by flashlight under the covers, in the bathroom, if you need to hide it from the resistance. Read it if you’re in high school, auto school, and grad school. Read it and take notes, don’t take notes, take mental notes. Read it for a new perspective on...
Why "Out Of Office" Email Responses Are Useless
Now that I’m working for a large corporation, I’m reading and sending more emails than ever before. And I’m receiving more auto-responses than ever before, too. Getting an email auto-reponse is sort of like calling someone to let them know you’ll be late. I guess it’s nice to know that you ran into traffic at rush hour, or that you’re having trouble finding...
Should the Federal Government Send Tech...
Last week, the U.S. State Department sent a technology delegation of so-called “dreamboats” to Russia. There’s a good writeup about this at The New York Times. It’s unconventional to have actors and Silicon Valley startup CEOs on a public diplomacy mission, to be sure, but there is some merit in the tactic. Among other reasons, the delegation of non-professional diplomats...
Microstorytelling Overkill and the Conundrum of...
Very recently, the U.S. State Department sent a delegation of staff and tech entrepreneurs (broadly defined) to visit Russia. The delegation included the diversity of State Department maverick Jared Cohen, entertainer and businessman Ashton Kutcher, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and well-respected thought leader Esther Dyson. The delegation seemed important. At one point, Cohen described it as,...
Government 2.0: Roadmaps Are Good, But What...
Not long ago, Google Buzz and the video site ChatRoulette did not exist. Today, they have thrown the social media world into a bit of minor chaos. From criticisms over privacy to excitement over discovery, many people are trying to figure out if they should use them, and if so, how to leverage them to achieve their goals better. Gary Vaynerchuk has a new video about flexibility in business that...
Is Open Government Dangerously Digital?
Yesterday I sat on a great panel about the Open Government Directive and the open government principles of transparency, collaboration, and engagement hosted by Adobe and 1105 Media. I’m particularly interested in how communities are engaged by the government, especially with my new job as a “director of innovative social engagement.” So, as I listened to Robynn Sturm, the...
Must Every Company Employee Engage in...
Last week, a New York Times op-ed criticizing Microsoft’s innovation and creativity sparked discussion on the Web, including a post on Microsoft’s official blog, here. In my view, the big takeaway from the official response was that innovation shouldn’t always be measured merely by speed-to-market (Innovation at Speed), but rather can also be measured by the number of people it...
Why Microsoft? New Video Highlights Philosophical...
Something new is happening at Microsoft. They have something compelling to watch. A new series of messages under the umbrella “Why Microsoft?” is making its way out into the Web. Here’s the first video I’ve seen; it’s three minutes and really interesting. http://www.youtube.com/user/officevideos#p/c/0/rcQs-oS_OrE What I see here, as someone relatively new to...
Social Media Metrics: Count Thank You's, Not...
Many people who work with social media tools, especially managers who have employees working with social media tools, are obsessed with metrics. How will we know if it’s working? How do we measure growth? Measure influence? One of the easiest things to do is count “followers,” “fans,” or some variation on the number of people who click one button and are now...
Posterous Sometimes Spreads Information Too...
I’m a big advocate of the blogging platform Posterous, which I use on a regular basis. It has two really great features that I like a lot. One is that an email platform can be used as the blogging interface; meaning, draft your blog posts with email, and then email them to Posterous and they are posted. Two, your Posterous blog can be automatically tied to other blogs (Tumblr, WordPress,...
Live-Tweeting Events is Dying. What Can Be Done?
Over this past weekend, I watched tweets from the popular Gov 2.0 Camp LA with some interest. I had originally planned on attending in person, but with too much happening on many fronts this month I opted to watch this one from afar (Note: both Microsoft and O’Reilly Media were sponsors of the event), mainly by following the hashtag #Gov20LA on Twitter. I was a bit disappointed in the live...
A Tale of Two Twitters: Why I Started Rocking...
Most people who use Twitter have just one personal account. And that’s fine. But over the almost two years I’ve used Twitter, I have seen some creative uses of more than one personal account. For example, Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post tweets at The Fix and speaks authentically as himself. But when there’s a press conference or something like the State of the Union address, he rapidly...
Why Don't We Have Information.gov Instead of...
The relatively new Federal government website Data.gov has made a lot of waves and gotten many people excited as part of a larger government transparency movement. But who really wants all this data? Primarily, the people I see excited about Data.gov and similar efforts are what I call “tech elites.” Bloggers, evangelists, startup companies, software developers, former CTO’s,...
Does the Public Currently Need to Know What...
Christina Gagnier wrote a post about the Gov 2.0 Camp held in LA this past weekend, focusing on one speaker, Bill Grundfest, the creator of Mad About You. The essence of the post is that Government 2.0 innovators are not using the right language to discuss the topic with their “intended audience, citizens.” He criticizes the amount of jargon used as well. I have two major critiques of...
Is the "Open Government Directive" Engaging...
The initial deadline for Federal agencies to meet the Open Government Directive (OGD) has come and gone, and many of them have checked the necessary boxes to prove that they are more “open” and transparent. They have new websites with new features and some new data that new people can use if they choose. And there’s more new things to come in 2010. But, as I noted in a quote...
People That Want To Meet You But Don't Hustle
Through my online and offline activities, a lot of people have begun to hear about me. Some of them find my blogs useful, maybe they think my tweets are funny, perhaps they were in the audience at an event I spoke at. I really appreciate hearing positive, and even negative, feedback from this audience. One interesting development is that now with me traveling more, with an audience spread all over...
Social Search is an Intelligent Combination of...
There was an article in the New York Times on Friday about a “social” search engine that taps into the social graph to get answers to questions, as opposed to simply pointing you to a website based on keywords. This might be a big part of the future. The social search engine in question is called Aardvark, and it’s really interesting. You have to sign up, like on Facebook or...
