I, along with about 100 volunteers and members of  the City of Leduc’s Council including Mayor Krischke were very fortunate to have the opportunity to hear Ms. Crooks speak.  

I was really inspired by her talk about her life as an elite athlete, and how volunteers played an incredible role throughout her life in sport.  She credits volunteers, and the time they spent helping kids like her turn into a 5-time Olympian and Canadian silver medalist in track and field.

As part of her presentation she showed a video of Dr. Maya Angelou reciting the poem “Amazement Awaits” while we watched images from a number of Olympiads over the years.  After hearing Dr. Angelou speak, I can see why she has been given over 30 honorary degrees.  The word “inspirational” doesn’t do Dr. Angelou or Ms. Crooks justice.  

Watch the video of Dr. Angelou below. 

What a tough act to follow, however, I was fortunate to have a great crowd stick to take in my presentation on how volunteer organizations in Leduc can use social media.  

As is customary for me I like to take pictures of the audiences as part of my presentations and tonight at the Executive Royal Inn in Leduc was no exception.

Having volunteered as a hockey coach, I understand the nature of why people decide to give back to their community in this way.  Countless hours and a ton of work by so many people, I was honoured to speak about social media. 

This was a packed night of information because after my presentation Brent Collingwood from the UofA School of Business was to present on the roles and responsibilities of volunteer boards.  Thank-you Brent for allowing me to take 5 minutes of your time. 

Overall the evening was terrific, I met great people, had a great dinner, and was inspired by the great presenters.  I’d like to thank the City of Leduc for the invitation to speak at their special event.

What about your volunteer organization?  Does it use social media effectively?  If not, feel free to ask a question.  

Simple, you can add live streaming content to your website which will provide a unique content advantage for you at no upfront cost.

Also, if you’d like to create your own content on fusedlogicTV, we can help you with that too.  Just contact us: info[at]fusedlogic.com or 780-640-9339

If you want to embed the live stream simply copy and paste the code below into the HTML for a page or post for your site:

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Evone points out a point of view that’s unfortunately all to prevalent among citizens and elected officials and administrations.  Rather than seek to understand the true impact of Open Government, large assumptions are made about losing control and the case is closed before it begins.

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less”.  - General Eric Shinseki

Has old thinking doomed rural Alberta?

If you’re a taxpayer, business owner, community member in rural town Alberta, life is incredibly challenging.  You’re most likely led by an honest, hardworking and well-meaning town council charged with making tough decisions.  Also, your town council is probably supported (or directed) by an honest, hardworking and well-meaning town administration.

Now if you’re lucky, you might have a town mayor who stands at the podium exclaiming the virtues of “moving foward”.  They recognize, a desperate need to be innovative, to do business differently, in a word…Change!  The good news is that the majority of council, and some elements of your town administration recognize the same needs, and put a plan in place to head in that direction.  After surveying the community in many different ways, the word comes back.  ”We like it, we’re behind you, but do it this way.”

Innovation in rural Alberta?  Why?

Well to start with, brain drain.  For years, your young talent has been leaving town by the truck load, heading to where the action is.  This problem is so bad in many towns, that small business owners on main street can’t find anyone to man the cash register for an hour while they attend a chamber of commerce luncheon.

The world of government is actually a very competitive environment in its own way.  The economic survival of all communities big and small depend on jobs, business, education, quality of life, and doing it better than the town down the road.  Sure, there’s collaboration among communities and jurisdictions, but make no mistake, jealousy runs deep too.  Someone always wants a better museum, better library, more convenience, bigger this and fancier that…we read about it all the time.

Unfortunately, economic development in rural Alberta is often relegated to cheering about a hotel, strip mall, and a Walmart if you’re lucky. Not that this type of development isn’t welcomed taxes, jobs and convenience, but it’s hardly innovation, and it often leaves large holes on historic main street.

Now lets say your town mayor and council have been able to see past the standard issues that plague the docket of all small town council meetings, and they start thinking big.  They realize that for the town to not only survive in the 21st century but thrive, drastic measures are called for, big ideas needed.  Sure, this might be the 21st century, but this is also rural Alberta.  We’re a conservative province, have been for decades, and I don’t see that changing.  There isn’t anything wrong with this, except when it paralyzes decision-making or causes innovation to die on the vine while wasting taxpayer money.  We all know that life requires more than planning, it requires intelligence and decisive action in order to be successful. So if you claim to be about innovation in your planning, then you need to be innovative in your actions.  Otherwise, you’re spinning taxpayer wheels fuelled by taxpayer dollars.

Opportunities lost.

Think of the opportunities lost every day rural Alberta doesn’t consider and plan for Open Government.

Imagine over time potentially saving your town millions of dollars in process expenses.  Imagine having an open and transparent local government that saves citizens time and money when interacting with their local government.  Imagine having a town administration strapped for resources now having more to work with simply by doing business differently, more efficiently. Imagine gaining strong economic development opportunities in the tech sector that will retain some of that young talent, and potentially attract others back into the community.

Imagine….just imagine, every small town in Alberta inspired to consider, analyze, and think about this, then set goals specific to their situation and implement communication strategies that get the community organized and focused on these goals, together collaboratively.

More money, more efficiency, better trained.

Your town administration becomes more efficient, has tools that make their job much easier and that might actually be free, they’re happier and we’re happier.  Sure training and education comes first, and there’ll be the stick in the mud laggards resisting but that too will pass.   We don’t need old thinking today in rural Alberta.  We need to bridge the gap between where we are today, and where we need to go, and we must start now.

If I was the mayor of a town and I stood publicly saying, “we must move forward” and I heard our town managers in charge of strategic thinking say “we’re really not sure we want to go towards Open Government”.  My tendency would be to fire them on the spot, (this maybe a harsh gut reaction, that’s true) and this is a huge mistake, one that will take years to recover from.  Years that many small towns may not have.  The Undertaker is measuring many small towns around the world for their wooden boxes, just search it…

Is Open Government in rural Alberta a pipe dream?  Maybe, the reality is, things need to change.

My experience and a show of hands is that 85 out of a 100 hard working Chief Administrative Officers (CAO) and Town Managers have never seen a Google Analytics or Web Trends report on their town website.  When I was selling website development in 1998, it was standard practice to include this step for business clients, as it is today.  Often these CAO’s are supported by managers of strategic projects, managers of economic development, managers of communications, managers upon managers who put down the idea of Open Government (if they’re even aware of it) simply because they’re scared of what they don’t understand.  When I converse with them, it’s clear they haven’t done their homework, and in an instant have doomed their town to last century thinking.

Band-aid solutions?

Don’t be fooled by “band-aid” thinking.  Saying the words “Open Government” doesn’t make it so.  Just like having 48 followers on twitter doesn’t justify you charging people to show them how to set up an account.  422 communities in Alberta have access to the Alberta SuperNet.  Broadband Internet access is a great thing, did it eliminate the digital divide?  No.  Did tech companies warp into your small town and create a technology utopia?  Ummm, no.  Did it help?  Sure, but it’s only one unfinished pre-requist step of many.  How did some communities leverage this power?  They installed video conferencing rooms at an average of $40,000 a piece to connect to other towns.  Unfortunately, they’ve realized that this is a low impact closed circuit system, which you have to travel long distances in Alberta winters to get to, and they sit dormant the majority of the time.  No amount of ads in the local paper is really going to change that…a different way of engaging rural citizens is required, and I’m not talking about starting with a new website, or Facebook fanpage.

Enable evangelists.

Face to face exchange of ideas that lead to action held accountable by the administration and the citizens.  This is precisely what happened in the City of Edmonton and is happening around the world.  Practical, low tech communications led by citizens, young and old, with administrations and political leaders at the table.  Sure there’s a unique structure and plan to these meetings that makes them different, but the results are undeniable.  Open Government takes hold, and a citizen led “movement” is created, to benefit of all, whether they’re initially aware of it or not.

Open Government IS governance for the 21st century.

Sad news!  Until yesterday I thought we had at least one small town in rural Alberta that was ready to be an amazing rural leader, and at least begin the conversation about Open Government as part of their communications mix.   Their official documentation suggested they were.  Many in the community I interviewed suggested that innovation is needed, but more work and clarity was required.  Unfortunately yesterday I heard things that just made my heart sink.  Today I’m saddened to say that the choices made by this town administration will set them back dramatically.  We cannot jump over dollars to pick up dimes, we can’t think 2-dimensionally, and do things the way they’ve always been done.  As citizens, (or “rate-payers” as I heard this one manager call you and I so she didn’t have to use the word “tax”), we need to think about replacing our strategic planners who advocate yesterday’s thinking, and who put the brakes on Open Government thinking.  Should citizens demand they be replaced for being asleep at the wheel during the biggest revolution to happen in governance in over a century?  Albertans have demanded resignations for less.  

In my opinion, you don’t stop Open Government discussions because you have too many documents to scan in preparation for Open Data, and you don’t delay Open Government because of “legacy systems” still in place…both excuses demonstrate a lack of understanding.  More importantly to you and I, it demonstrates that the internal culture of your town administration is in trouble and will cost you more money than it should.

That said, the future is bright

I’ve written this blog post as a commentary regarding decisions made by one well-intentioned town administration in the hopes that others may learn and be inspired in some small way to consider Open Government.

Do you want an Open Government discussion to happen in your town?  Would you like to help your town save money, be open and transparent allowing citizens to collaborate with it better?  Would you like your town to be a part of a global movement and yet, benefit locally?  Do you just want to know more about what Open Government is?

Let us know, we can help kick-start the discussion in your town, meet with your leaders, administration and citizens to explain what Open Government is and how it benefits you…please call us.  780-640-9339

I vowed that when I was ready I would do something to give back in his name.  My dad was the most giving person in the world, if you were stranded, needed help and he was physically able to help, he didn’t hesitate, not for a second.

Here’s what we at fusedlogic would like to do.  We’re going to dedicate one hour of video production at fusedlogicTV per month FREE to non-profit and charitable organizations in Alberta.

What does FREE video production at fusedlogicTV mean?

Simple, we’ll be setting aside (4) 15 minute show slots for non-profits.  As a non-profit or charitable organization, you would “like” the fusedlogic Facebook Fanpage and then tell us what you’d do with the free 15 minutes of recorded talk show format video produced in the fusedlogicTV studio.

The top (4) ideas with the most Facebook likes at the end of the available voting time on our fanpage will win the available production slots for that month.  You will have to host your own show, prepare your own simple script, and promote your own show as you see fit.  As part of the provided free production service, fusedlogicTV will supply you with the ability to Skype in up to (2) people, and you’d also be able to invite up to (2) in studio guests.

Once completed, fusedlogicTV will supply you with your digital file, you’ll own the content.  However, you will have agree to allow us to include production credits but your branding will be front and centre.

We’ll be starting this program formally in September, and just thought we’d give you an advanced  heads up.  I’m very excited about this, and hope that you’ll take us up on the offer once it’s officially launched.

Stay tuned…and get your creative juices going…if you’d like to see what these shows can look like, visit and subscribe to the fusedlogic YouTube channel.

What has me thinking of this?  Kiwis.  No not the fruit, but the great Nation of New Zealand, recently ravished by devastating earth quakes.  Despite disaster and rebuilding, New Zealand has released a Declaration on open and transparent government in New Zealand.  Absolutely brilliant!

And here we are, this magnificent Canadian provincial powerhouse called Alberta still partying in government as if its 1999.  I’m speaking directly about the ridiculous behind closed doors, power struggle, silo protecting, short-sighted reactionary culture of government.  I literally had a public servant yesterday on twitter argue against “participatory budgeting” in Alberta because he thought it showed a lack of respect for Treasury employees.  This is simply a lack of understanding.  The Open Government movement around the world isn’t about disrespecting public servants and saying they suck at their jobs.  Open Government is about government operating as a collaborative platform where citizens can directly engage digitally “with” public servants.  Do things on behalf of government with Open Data.  Open Government is truly “Our Government.”  Now for those leaders who simply want to dictate to Albertans, well, now you can see the disconnect.  They of course, would never come out and say that’s what they’re doing, but actions speak louder than words.

The time has come for this to end, for a “real leader of the people” to emerge, willing to take the “Open Government” folder currently buried on the desk of the Premier, and not only set it on top but actually open it and get to work.

I’ve heard several times from different sources within the Government of Alberta say, “they’re aware of it.”  As Albertans, you should be angry, you may not think this is a priority for your life, and yet, we should all realize this hits all areas of government, every public servant, and looks to change the culture.  Making service for you better.  Which is why it’s so freaking scary for many bureaucrats and politicians alike.  All except the brave visionaries.  The brave visionaries realize that they grow in altruistic strength and power with this movement.  Alberta goes global overnight, and for a positive reason for a change, instead of always being embattled and on defence.  Let me just say, we won’t have to spend another $25 million to rebrand the province again either.

Yesterday, I tweeted this:

fusedlogic Walter Schwabe    I’d like to know which #pcldr candidates would have a “Minister of Open Government” in their cabinet? #ableg #pcaa #AB #opengov

How do I know this?  Well here’s the PDF outlining the deal between the City of Edmonton and Google regarding the Workspace Edmonton Program.  If you’re young, hip and want a working environment that’s hyper-connected from anywhere, and cutting-edge fusedlogic is your first stop.  However, if all of those things apply and public service is on your mind, then consider the City of Edmonton’s IT Branch as the perfect home.  For those of you who don’t know, Edmonton’s IT Branch is led by a strong group of people and its CIO, Chris Moore.  Full disclosure, Edmonton’s IT Branch is a client of ours, and Chris Moore has been on fusedlogicTV several times to talk about Open Government.

He is not only a real advocate but as you can see above, he and his team are people of action when it comes to creating efficiencies, collaboration, and increasing transparency among their team on behalf of Edmontonians.  The world is literally now, their oyster when thinking of all the ways collaboration can happen across great distances.

This is a fantastic example of what cities and towns need to do, Chris no doubt will be able to speak about the pros and any cons that come out of this migration to Google, and it’s Enterprise level Google Apps Premier Edition. Using Apps such as Google Mail, Google Docs, internal YouTube for training will dramatically save the team time.  Not to worry Microsoft, (Disclosure: another client of ours) Office and SharePoint are still a part of the picture as required.  People have a choice, imagine that.  Also, Edmonton’s public servants have had access to Yammer, a Twitter clone designed for internal communications, now with over 1000 people on it. In the case of the BC Government, they’ve been using Yammer for well over a year now with great success.  Glad to see the City of Edmonton embrace real-time communications internally as well.

Overall, this step into the Cloud is fantastic, congratulations to the City of Edmonton, the IT Branch and to Chris Moore for walking the walk.

I see top executives running for cover, I see political campaign managers cringing at the prospect of having a not so favourable blog written about their particular candidate.  The echos of “see I told you, there’s nothing good about social media.”

The fact is, here in Alberta we’re dealing with really serious issues.  Our economy is only “ok” and not spectacular by any stretch, healthcare is a complete and utter mess, teachers are getting laid off, and the list goes on.  Families are struggling here in Alberta, albeit not as badly as in other parts of Canada and certainly not like the US.  Often you don’t get to know who you’re doing business with until it’s too late.  In politics, it’s really important to understand who we’re dealing with “ahead of time.”  Which is why I offered a special one hour live debate to both Doug Griffiths and Rick Orman.  One person on twitter suggested that Orman was “staying on message” by not answering my direct invitation.  Not sure if that’s true but something to consider.

Some organizations stand up for what’s right, some executives stand for respect and others run and hide.  I took a couple shots last night from Orman supporters, or people who thought I was simply being “whiny.”  Ok, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, if you’re unwilling to take comments, and sometimes criticism, constructive or otherwise, then don’t publish content.

At the time, I felt like Alberta PC Party leadership candidate Rick Orman was snubbing me in particular, I’m not sure that’s ever a good idea when it’s a politician and a voter.  Some people think it’s ok to allow people to walk all over them, that I should “get over myself…”  I forgive people for a show of lack of respect but last night, with Rick Orman, I decided not to.  I’ve had support via DM come in to confirm my impressions from others. But really…does anyone truly care whether Rick Orman insulted me or not?  Well, curiously, the late night crowd did as our analytics would suggest.  Does that mean they’re not going to vote for Rick Orman as a result of my blog post?  I wouldn’t go that far, most people prefaced their comments on Twitter or on the blog by saying…”I’m not a Rick Orman supporter…” so today is another day in the realtime web and we’re all moving on.  Today seems to be about Mar’s thoughts on healthcare in Alberta, more Edmonton Fringe discussion and whatever’s important in your life…

Doug Griffiths to my knowledge is continuing to look for another candidate to debate live on Alberta LIVE.  I think a 1-1 debate with an hour of air time would really be great for Albertans.  Much better than the 30 second sound bites they currently offer.  I hope he finds someone, and yes, if Orman comes back into the picture I’ll consider it. (Not to sound too much as one person commented, a “whiny Rupert Murdoch,” that cracks me up.)

Hey Doug, Gary Mar apparently is going to privatize healthcare or so it’s being reported.  Maybe he’s game…

For all the time you spend online using social media, regardless of whether you’re from Alberta, do you think social media will help to change anything in Alberta regarding the discussion around key issues?  I’d love to hear your opinion, is social media helping to influence your thoughts on the issues below?

1. In Edmonton, is social media in your opinion influencing you and your thoughts regarding the debate about Katz Group’s bid for a downtown arena district?
2. Will social media influence the outcome of either the Alberta PC leadership race or that of the floundering Alberta Liberals?
3. What about things like Bill 50?  I know of some power companies in this province that really want Bill 50 passed and they want it done quietly.  Has social media influenced your thoughts on it in any way?
4. Do you care about the land use legislation as a result of finding out more information about it online?

There are certainly many more issues then the four I’ve listed here, so if you have another issue that ranks high in your world please by all means list it in the comment section, IF you think social media influenced your thoughts about it.

To be clear, I’m not referring the social technologies specifically, rather the on-going discussion, chit chat, pow-wows, debate, stare downs and tweeted zingers you are experiencing or creating within the social web.  This would include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and of course blogs comments just like the ones I hope you’ll offer here.  You spend so much time of your life doing this, it would be neat to know where you and others like you think it’s having an effect.  I have an opinion (of course) but I don’t want to influence you one way or another by offering it here.  Please comment and offer your opinion and then ask others what they think.  This issue is on many people’s minds from decision-makers to the every day Joe and Judy.  (My apologies in advance for speaking on behalf of all Joes and Judy’s)

Who’s talking?  Many who spend time following the #pcldr hashtag seems to be a small grouping.  This is partial speculation, however, with as explosive as politics can be, this is really low engagement overall.  People just don’t seem to care about what’s being said, at least enough to spur on discussion and content generation online outside of the current observers.  The group actively participating in this Twitter discussion, predominately led by candidate supporters is even smaller.

Taking samples such as the one below over a week or more, the players on the list move up and down but generally stay the same. You’d think that the best time to see the most activity would be during or right after a live debate.  That is generally true, although policy announcements help, yet the amount of people being reached on Twitter, is in my opinion, very small considering the importance of this.  I do expect this to heat up as we get closer to the first ballot in mid-September.  Here’s a screen shot from tweetreach.

Now lets take a look at the Wildrose Alliance Party and their hashtag #wrp, who are not currently in an internal leadership race.

By comparison, the Downtown Arena District hashtag #yegarena discussion as of late has heated up but in the last 24 hours is on a bit of decline.

Go beyond this one small view, and take into consideration the amount of main stream media coverage this issue has generated in the last 6 days or so surrounding the Enoch and MLA PR issues have reached well over a million people.

The reasons for the low digital engagement regarding the PC leadership race in part would include accounts with small follower counts engaging.  A small cross-section of account variety engaging in the discussion.  That said, I’m not including the #ableg or #pcaa hashtags in this post, and that would normally need to be sifted through and considered for a more accurate reading of issue reach.  Also, the various campaign camps might want to consider the activity of their own teams in particular.

When building a better understanding of a digital footprint, one should consider several factors.  To measure more accurately, say as part of a formal project report, I would consider all primary elements that make up a digital footprint.  From the content created, the attention given to that content, the influence of those engaging, the sentiment of the comments, and the reach of that content across all relevant digital channels, such as Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, political blogs and mainstream media websites, then compare that with conversions.  This is a lot of work.  Some may be fooled into thinking that a single piece of software might handle all of this, and they’d be wrong.

To interpret what’s happening within that PC tweetreach stat above we need to ask some key questions.  Sure hired guns can create white noise to look busy but is this translating into increased interest in their candidate?  I’m seeing more impact based on direct comments made by a particular candidate.  As it should be.  How about the volunteers?  A small group of 5-7 or so per candidate quick to defend their candidates is evident, but are they convincing voters to join the discussion, donate to their candidate, buy a membership and become advocates?  I’m seeing a bit more positive evidence of this lately based on some of my own real-time analysis, that said, I wouldn’t suggest evidence of a “landslide” victory for any one candidate.  Pretty safe to assume this is going to a second ballot.

Curious as to who is getting the most traffic to their website?  I consulted Alexa.com which provides a global ranking for all websites. The higher the number, the more websites with better traffic than your website.  You want a low number.

In order of Alexa ranking worst to best:

 
When asking why these rankings are the way they are, there are several reasons.  From a commitment or lack thereof to digital content generation, and existence of an actual digital strategy versus those who haven’t focused on it.  In the case of Rick Orman, a concerted use of traditional advertising driving awareness.  He is also an outlier and less of a known entity as compared to the other candidates, plus he throws all other candidates under the bus every chance he gets.  Having said that, the proof is in the conversions pudding.  Each campaign will know whether this traffic is translating into meaningful membership conversion.  I would hope they’re modifying web content based on their internal web analytics AND what they’re hearing at events.  However, the above evidence supports that this work is beyond some of these campaigns. In at least a couple of the campaigns, this is likely a lack of knowledge and understanding.  In others, I would add a lack of prioritizing resources to focus on this.
Just for fun I also looked up the various Party websites.

 
Clearly, this is only a fraction of the information that one should consider before making any serious judgements, recommendations or moves.  However, if one or more campaigns takes a critical look at what they’re doing, and can figure out the flash points that drive membership conversions for them in particular among voters, and then repeat it, some late gains can be made.  I will say though, there is little help for those without any strategy.  The numbers above separate those who are simply going through the motions from those making a concerted effort.

Also, one final little tid-bit, currently with respect to “sentiment,” Doug Griffiths and Alison Redford are reaping more positive comments related to their efforts in the last couple of debates, Doug Horner, Gary Mar and Rick Orman are not inspiring noticeable jumps in positive sentiment, the majority is “neutral,” and Ted Morton is leading with respect to negative sentiment.

One other key thing to monitor is the low “attack” factor.  Generally the Wildrose is leading the political attacks with one NDP supporter being vocal.  That said, the PC candidates are generally not being challenged as much as I would have expected.

For me, as far as personal voting goes, demonstrating an understanding of technology is important to me regardless of Party. Technology permeates our lives, whether you’re 9 or 90 years old.  This isn’t the only consideration to be sure, but it’s important, and it drives me nuts that in this day and age, we still have to explain to business and political leaders that there’s this little thing called the “Internet,” an environment that should definitely be respected and mastered.  For me, the above numbers suggest there’s a fair amount of work yet to do.

Many in business spend their days talking about social media.  Sure we talk about it too.  We also use it in a very targeted way to build business.  Many people spend all day being “social media rockstars,” building up their own account numbers.  We spend time tending to our relationships, when we can….but we’d never call ourselves “rockstars.”  Thankfully, a lot of the time we’re doing client work, and using the power of social media to drive new opportunities and revenue for them and us.

Using Linkedin, I reached out to some key people in the Alberta Oil and Gas sector.  The ensuing conversation via LinkedIn led to Skype calls and discussions of potential social media and live streaming projects for fusedlogicTV.  Which brings me to my quick trip to Calgary to meet with a few different firms at the Gas and Oil Expo and Conference on the Calgary Stampede grounds.

Steve Zurakowski from Dynamic Vision (shown above on the left) appeared on “A Brilliant Idea Every 60 Seconds” on fusedlogicTV a week ago.

Once again, social media has enabled me to reach out in ways I never could have in the past, it’s an absolutely critical business development tool for fusedlogic.  Building relationships in person is incredibly important, social media opens doors, and draws us closer in between face to face meetings across Alberta and beyond.  Today I met with people from Dubai, China, Calgary, Ft. McMurray and Halifax, all from a simple “inmail” within LinkedIn and within the next week or two we should be announcing a very exciting and major new global project.

After walking around the exhibition and meeting with a couple of clients, I ended up at the Xtreme Hot Oil and Pressure Service tent for a tasty beverage.  Frankly, they had the tunes cranked up after the Expo closed at 5pm.  I like these guy’s style and I was like a moth to a flame.

Due to the fact that this new business relationship isn’t quite signed off on yet, I won’t mention all the folks I met with today. However, in one case, we’ve agreed to announce a new powerful global relationship very soon.  Stay tuned and thank-you for your support…

One of the primary reasons I haven’t committed is available time, or timing of the ask.  Another reason I’ve said no is because my spidey sense suggested that the candidate wasn’t as genuine as I expect, and didn’t follow through with anything they said they’d do. Further, when push came to shove, one or more weren’t truly about change despite the sound bites.  I don’t want to paint a picture that every politician is disingenuous, or likely to mislead about their intentions for change.  That’s certainly not the case, I’m only highlighting the main red flags for me personally that drove my reservations to commit my personal reputation to a candidate.

What is spurring on this post today is no other reason than I happened to see this tweet by Doug Horner, one of the PC leadership hopefuls (shown below, not picking on you Doug, it could have been any candidate doing the same thing, they all have).

This tweet inspired me to quickly review the social activity of many of the politicians/candidates in this province.  My personal opinion is that overall that activity could use some help sprinkled with a little rant here or there.

8 points for politicians on why this isn’t about “ME” it’s about “THEM”:

I’m adopting this image by David Armano to make a point about the impression most politicians are making online in my opinion.  Most state they’re about “grass roots, about change, and doing politics differently.”  However, if we consider the amount of content creation by the “grass roots” about a particular candidate or party the list gets really short, really quickly.  The list of Trolls supporting one party or another, and engaging in attacks is larger than ever.  The smart thing is NOT to engage them, they’re children stomping their feet and looking for attention.  Mature voters see them for what they are.

1.) Be genuine – Most people don’t actually care about all the locations you’ve visited in the past with the exception of your competitors.  If you really want to communicate location, use a geo-location app like foursquare to check into a location, send that to Twitter and Facebook, and leave it at that.  Hint – become the foursquare mayor of these locations around Alberta, and I’ll really be impressed with your outreach efforts.

2.) Engage on the issues – granted twitter is not optimum for this, and a blog is more suitable.  Write 250 word replies to individual Albertans and their key issues from your heart, and then reply on twitter to that citizen.  Don’t like writing?  There’s always short burst videos comprising a video blog (vlog), you can say that same 250 words in 2 minutes, and YouTube is perfect for that because it’s shareable.   This takes time so be focused with your responses to the issues.  Don’t have the time?  BS.  This isn’t a priority because you don’t understand what to do, and how to deploy the multiple technologies for effect.  Frankly, most don’t believe social media will help sway opinions enough to cast a vote.  This little tidbit is good for those who disagree with that statement.  Social media when used correctly builds rapport, it’s not the silver bullet it’s a main component that should be baked in to all campaign activities.  Voters take that into consideration.  Parties who understand behavioural patterns online can really make a lot of headway.  Others…,the dinosaurs, well they’ll tweet to seem envogue, and be doing it blindly, broadcast all about “me” tweets to no real tactical advantage.  Sure, promote things that you’re doing, but also be prepared to engage in debate on policy and solutions and it’s better when citizens promote what you’re doing.

If you’re about “grass roots and change” for real…Set aside an hour a week for a public online debate.  Cover It Live is one example that could be installed on your website, or you can simply be on twitter during a designated hour using your hashtag to answer any questions thrown at you.  Schedule so that people know when they can engage with you.

3.) Use video for citizen responses, questions and engagement.  Mr. Horner, the travelling is impressive, I would have been even more impressed had you provided video footage from each of those stops with people stating why they’ll vote for you.   However, I’d be over the top if any candidate generated a bunch of content by citizens pledging their support voluntarily.  If politicians truly inspire, then the evidence will be there. Granted not all would get in front of a camera but some will.  In today’s digital landscape where the digital divide is still very real, learn to solve these problems, rural folks have a camera phone for a picture or an impromptu video, share life as it happens with Qik.

Coincidently, the most watched live Alberta Live! episode was when I interviewed Danielle Smith, Doug Griffiths is second, Dr. Raj Sherman, and newly elected Alberta Party leader Glenn Taylor are on fusedlogicTV too.  Here’s a hint, albeit a self-serving one.  fusedlogicTV is your very own Web TV Network for hire and Alberta is our strongest province for viewership for obvious reasons.  See any of your competitors airing a regular (unedited) TV show that works live and on-demand?  People are still watching those episodes, the campaigns and parties can promote these episodes at no cost.

4.) Teach citizens and volunteers to share – if campaigns taught citizens how, where to tweet, how to post a twitpic, where to post a picture on Facebook fanpage, a video response to Youtube, a comment on a blog…well you get the picture.  Of course, most campaigns don’t contain this knowledge or focus on it because many don’t believe these technologies will actually have any impact on the vote outcomes.  I have to say based on usage to date, I completely agree.  I’m incredibly uninspired.

5.) Engagement beyond evangelists – true penetration online is demonstrated in the analytics when more than your 4 campaign supporters get online and “create” content about you and what you stand for.  Time is precious, politics is hotly contested and heated debates ensue online so if people blog about you on their own, you’re reaching them.

6.) Lead don’t follow – Quite often, and some parties have more than others, the Trolls come out to play.  Now I could call these appleheads out here but giving these arrogant, self-indulgent, political know it all experts more ink is out of the question.  Anyone following the various political hashtags knows precisely who these boneheads are.  The funny thing is, some of these people actually believe they have credibility when they blog or tweet while they hide behind “just because we have a differing opinion doesn’t make us trolls” mantra.  Yes, actually in my mind it does.  Here’s why.  Leaders don’t build on a foundation of bullshit sniping.  Leaders lead by providing a positive message, solutions and action, by pointing out the positive for citizens not by tearing others down.  Leaders hoist others on their shoulders and carry until exhausted.  If you’re so “right” then lead and prove it rather than being a follower of a negative mob.  If your blog post simply tears others political views down for your self- gratification, then do us all a favour and at least have the guts to call yourself what you are, a political narcissist.   You know another reason why I didn’t run, I didn’t believe I was good enough to take on the important challenges that the citizens would need me to do.  My mind is one of business, and in my heart I can’t stand a system that often has to rip others up to get a job done.  The political system is broken and many supporters of various parties out there are ridiculous and it makes their parties look even more ridiculous.  If these folks ever take a step back to reflect, one out of 10 will be ashamed of their actions.  The others will defend their positions.  Why do you think there are so few “real leaders?”

7.) Data, data, data – it’s all in the data.  Well ok, not all but most of it.  Most campaigns won’t have the resources but Google Alerts are simple email notifications and Google Analytics on your website, Tweetreach for Twitter reach is a real basic start.

8.) Tell your story and that of Albertans – Get beyond the “vote for me for a better future” BS.  What does that mean in real terms for me and my family?  Tell that story, and if you’re a leader you’ll have stories about how you’ve already done this.  This will be about the Albertans and the lives you’ve changed.  Storify combined with Twitter is a great way to do this.  If you search, Edmonton Journal and Storify you can see how they have been using it, most recently to cover the U2 comments by Edmonton residents and others who experienced the concert and used the concert hashtag #u2360edm.

Ultimately, politicians in Alberta don’t capture the stories that affect us all, that we can relate to.  They’re even worse at sharing these stories beyond the podium or stage, and finally, as is evident in the one tweet by Doug Horner listed above but similar examples exist in all political twitter streams, true engagement is next to non-existent.  The expectations of your constituents has changed, it’s not about you, it’s about them, their needs and how you’ll lead this province “with” them, not behind closed doors but out in the open.

Do you have the “most digitally engaged” candidate? Let us know here, share the links to show off the digital footprint and we’ll invite you on to Alberta LIVE!

Leaders are not afraid to lead!

As a result of reading this blog post today, the following tweets by Strathcona County Councillor Roxanne Carr speak for themselves.

Councillor Carr follows up…

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

@TricommStrategy @fusedlogic I am at #fcmhfx conference +would love to connect with residents back home #shpk#strathcoHow is Monday 3pm?

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

Any other polis interested in a poli tweet on line with residents? #strathco #shpk Monday 3 pm?

1 hour ago

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

@fusedlogic Thanks will put it in my blog – would like it open to all interests + topics #shpk #strathco

51 minutes ago

CouncillorCarr Roxanne Carr

@TricommStrategy @fusedlogic like I said any topic: budget, pot holes, Council priorities, even cats….lol …ps cats don’t herd well!!!

24 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

The signs they are a changing.  Secretly, many Strathcona County employees have been chomping at the bit to start Facebook fan pages, YouTube channels, twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles and blogs.

This is terrific and yes, it’s clearly early days for the County, and it’s exploration of social media.  However, this shows a small cultural shift internally towards what I hope is the foundation of a more digitally engaged Strathcona County community.

How do we get there?  Simple, we connect on and offline.  We hold events like this social media workshop in Council Chambers tonight that I’ve been invited to participate in by Councillor Roxanne Carr.  Thank-you Councillor Carr this is going to be fun.

Keys to building the Strathcona County community online.

1.) Train everyone! If people don’t understand why they should engage online, where the value is for doing so, they won’t.  Proper training will empower people.

2.) Self-organize. Don’t wait for Strathcona County employees to drive this initiative.  Come together offline at regular tweetups and meetups to connect with your community and then follow-up online.  The County employees should look to attend.

3.) Tell stories in your own way.  You may like photography like I do, so you may want to use Flickr as your photo-sharing hub.  Many simply use Facebook for this purpose.  Look at your world from these four primary content areas.

Text:
Micro-blogging http://www.twitter.com
Blogging http://www.wordpress.com
Presentations http://www.slideshare.net
Document collaboration http://docs.google.com/
Bookmarks http://delicious.com

Images:
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/

Video:
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.vimeo.com
http://www.viddler.com/
http://qik.com/

Audio:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com
http://www.podbean.com/

Social Media Sources:
Alltop http://social-media.alltop.com/
Mashable http://mashable.com/
Readwriteweb http://www.readwriteweb.com/
emarketer http://www.emarketer.com/
Techcrunch http://techcrunch.com/
gigaom http://gigaom.com/

And of course, http://www.fusedlogic.com and http://www.fusedlogic.tv

4.) Develop an Open Strathcona County Framework. Open Government is the next step, using social media doesn’t constitute an Open Government.  Collaborative discussions on this should begin right away.  I hate to say it because the word “camp” is so overused, however, “County Camp” should happen and we should invite folks from the Greater Edmonton area to participate. The purpose of such an “unconference” would be to discuss Open Data here in the County, as well as, a framework for process improvements within government based on case studies from here in Alberta and from around the world.

Here’s the prezi that I presented tonight at the Strathcona County tweetup so that everyone can review.  Thanks for all your questions tonight and contributions to the event.  Great job by Thelma Scammell and the entire Strathcona County Communications team, there’s lots of great things ahead.  It was terrific to meet everyone in person and I look forward to the next event.  Special thanks to CrowdMap.com for their great map on the wildfires in Slave Lake.   This prezi was built from this presentation on slideshare.net.

With that in mind, I have a few questions.

Does this mean that the City of Edmonton knows what to do with the information generated?  Just because of things stated in this post, should someone actually inform Mary Pat Barry?  What happens when “troll like” statements are made by a city employee?Such has been known to happen on Twitter when Andre Darmanin makes disparaging remarks regarding the city he now lives in, and is employed by, and that makes it into a blog post?  Should anyone care?  Of course, there are clear codes of conduct for city employees regarding freedom of speech and personal opinions, political or otherwise.  I also believe that the use of social media by City of Edmonton employees is important, so I’m a clear proponent of using and respecting the power of social.  I’m just wondering about the perception.  How should one interpret the perception of this or any other employee’s conduct online?  Would that even resonate with those monitoring with Radian6?  Would they know what to look for?  That is clearly a very large task.

How far reaching will the information gathered about this post travel?  All the way to city council?  All the way to Mayor Mandel for instance?  If as a city employee you are reading this blog post, and you don’t think it’s important enough to include in your reporting or important enough to include in briefings to the mayor, could you be fired as a result of missing something this important?  Is this important? I’m not a City of Edmonton taxpayer, I live in Strathcona County, does that matter?

I’m curious, what’s the point of monitoring if you don’t intend on taking some level of action based on the information?  That said, let’s assume you will take action.  What action (if any) should be taken?  Who has the power to take that action?  Does the City of Edmonton use social media to respond publicly or ignore this post?  Will ignoring this post only fuel my curiosity, causing me to ask even more questions?  That’s tough to determine.  So then, does one respond here on my blog, and publicly acknowledge this post, giving it recognition?  The safer route may be to ignore it, then again, this entire post is about how the city is listening which would automatically suggest that a response should take place.  Whatever you decide is fine with me.

What about sentiment?

I suppose one or two within city administration might be trying to determine the “sentiment” of this blog post at the moment, an important endeavour to be sure.  Am I being positive, negative or neutral?  But wait, won’t the software take care of that?  Can you truly trust a software solution of any kind to make that determination?  If not, that means that there will need to be many city employees sifting through results, and trying to make that determination.  How much time should be spent going down that rabbit hole?  How much research should one perform on me as the blog post author in order to determine the importance of this blog post, and possible implications if ignored?  Is that time and money well spent?

At what cost?

What of the expense of Radian 6, and how they bill their clients partially based on the number of searches being returned?  If the searchers are not in tune with what’s to be monitored, searching inaccurately could mean substantial cost down the road with very large surprises.  I imagine the City of Edmonton would generate considerable search results across the entire enterprise, and then you have to ask, can one solution be trusted to do the job effectively?

What about influence and/or respect?

Do I have any?  Or am I just a troll taking a pot shot at the city?  Do I have any reach or respect at all?  I suppose that would be determined by who you asked.  This blog gets very little traffic in the grand scheme of things.  It’s possible that no one is reading this blog post at all, except for you. And still, it’s possible that members of the mainstream media are reading it, and will decide to inquire as to the cost of this program to taxpayers after the trial is over.  As they might with any city expenditure, that’s quite routine actually.  What should you do?  Report this to your superiors now?  Across how many departments and supervisors?  There’s nothing like reading a headline in the Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun or hearing about city spending on the 6 o’clock news is there?  Is this money well spent?  I think the activity itself if done correctly is an important one, and yet that’s simply my opinion.

I hope those reading will agree that I’ve asked some important questions here that deserve follow-up and strong consideration. Not only for those within the City of Edmonton, other areas of the public sector but also the private sector as well.

The Stephen Duckett “cookie” story and healthcare in Alberta lead the way this week.  Walter Schwabe speaks with CTV Edmonton News Director Glenn Kubish about how the story unfolded and the impact social media had on its international reach.

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http://www.pbs.org/engage/blog/new-signs-government-openness

When talking about Open Government people use words like “transparency, collaboration and innovation” to describe the primary reasons for pushing this concept forward.  There’s no doubt, I agree that a government which focuses on these goals is headed in the right direction.  Let me also re-state that Alberta needs to employ an Open Government framework and my hope is that it includes steps for “sustainable integration.”

Allow me to expand.  If you polled the vast majority of people in your town or city, statistics would most likely show that they wouldn’t know what a hashtag is, or want to use one.  They wouldn’t have used an iPhone app, let alone report a pothole, and frankly, they’d pass right by any opportunity to attend an Open Government “unconference.”  If you disagree with me feel free to speak up but I believe there simply isn’t a critical mass of interest yet.

I’m not talking trash here, I am however stating that we have a lot of work to do.  Sustainability is key.  Reaching new audiences is key, and I wonder if governments are considering ways to satisfy this need before they’re at the Open Data stage of the equation…I believe this is an important step.

There is a terrific opportunity for government to close the gap with citizens but is this happening beyond the Open Government evangelist level?  Is it still too early to expect more traction?

For every person who cares about the topic of this post, there are literally tens of millions who don’t.  They wake up each day and do everything but think of their government except to complain about roads and the other usual suspects such as public transit etc…I frankly don’t expect this to change.  I expect that how people will access information in the future will be different than how it is done today, and people other than evangelists will simply just experience it.  In fact, it’s probably something they’ll have to be forced to do out of necessity because they won’t care otherwise.

How does the Open Government movement reach the uninterested?  Is it through limiting available options to interact with government or by some other means?  We must think sustainability from growth.  By the way, “laggards” operate within government too.  Don’t assume that everyone inside government understands, or in many cases even wants an Open Government movement to hit their town, provincial or state department.  Instead they’d like to continue the next year or so “as is, where is,” while they put their time in before retirement.  Not everyone is like that to be sure, yet I’ve had several conversations where that was the sentiment.

In the Open Government space people talk about “transforming” education, government, healthcare, defence…but what is behind the actual “transformation?”

Here are three things that I think need to happen, are they your three things too?

1.) Internally, transformation must include behavioural changes within IT, providing access to more Web 2.0 technology.

2.) With access to the right tools, I believe governments need to “integrate and share” information while removing internal silos.

3.) We need to continue to educate and empower citizens to co-create with governments beyond simple feedback mechanisms.

I believe at the heart of Open Government, we’re  talking about transforming “people’s attitudes.”  Without reaching beyond the early adopters and creative class, I fear that we won’t reach a strong foundation of sustainability.  At some point we have to reach beyond the funky and cool app contests.

I know many in local government are only now still exploring the implementation of social media, and they’re still a long way away from publicly releasing data.  However, I’m excited to get beyond the “look at how cool our city, provincial/state or fed government is for this app or that catalogue stage, and get to the empowerment of the “unconnected.”

In fact, Open Government has been implemented long enough in some circles to actually have the analytics and research come back to see if the leading governments in this game have truly increased their level of transparency within the minds of citizens as in this NextGov post.

I’m not proposing that as early adopters we leave the job half-finished, in fact, I believe the above statements are really about finishing the job properly…and integrate even more people into the mix, there must be a positive legacy in place before we move on.

Do you have a story of sustainability that’s happening in your area?  Let me know.  Disagree with what I’m saying?  Let me know that too…

Jury Konga was kind enough to notify me of his presentation, it’s a good one, have a look…

The municipal election extravaganza.  Walter Schwabe talks with 9 different candidates about their use of social media within their campaign for this 2010 election.  What they’re using, how they’re using it, and any impact social media may be having on their ability to generate votes.

Your outsourced CFO is a click away at Dorward and Company.

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The default reaction might be to think this is “facial recognition” software.  According to Annika Heinle of Facebook Corporate Communications, “this is not facial recognition software in the sense that it recognizes specific people. Instead it is a facial detection feature that finds faces in photos.”  There in lies the difference, a big one. The intent of the software is to make it easier to tag photos – which I think is a good thing.

This all stems from the recent corporate acquisition of Divvyshot, the creators of this software.  A smart investment since there are over 100 million photos uploaded a day according to Odio.

Still, one might ask since Facebook continues to struggle with a large segment of users who are revolting against their privacy policies, will this go any further?  Some might see this as yet another step in the wrong direction, albeit a small one in this case. Certainly Facebook’s track record with respect to privacy is abysmal, bad move after bad move so there it is reasonable to question the social networking giants’ intentions.

What do you think?  Conspiracy, smart acquisition, don’t care either way?  Leave your thoughts here and we’ll use them on the radio show…

UPDATE: Canadian lawyer launches class-action suit against Facebook as covered by CTV, and Canadian Press.

Do you think this lawsuit has a chance?  Would you participate?

Everyone was pretty good about the little slip-up, although in true social media fashion, there is a tweet explaining the mistake I made and I couldn’t resist and also had to blog about it too.

The Giant is Asleep

In a room of just under 50 professional people, (2) were on Twitter, that’s not entirely unexpected for this industry after my preliminary research.  There were also (2) self-proclaimed bloggers in the room, one of which I found out later was actually a teacher.  That too was lower than expected.  However, I believe that many started putting serious thought into taking some action towards becoming a “social accountant.”  I can extrapolate this from the questions that were asked after my presentation was completed.  Discussions of how to reduce white noise or irrelevant information flow, pilot projects  and where to start, this was a very friendly and engaged group.

Admissions of the beginning of Linkedin profiles and Twitter accounts.  By enlarge, this industry is dormant in terms of social activity.  Certainly with respect to Alberta, we have a long way to go before anyone could state that our regional accountants of any designation are truly invested in social.  My hope is that for one person or organization, yesterday’s presentation was enough inspiration to take action.  I did receive a little feedback from folks which I always appreciate as it helps me improve.  That despite the faux pas mentioned above was quite positive and I feel really good about the experience as well.  We’re all human after all and prone to mistakes, it’s how we learn from those experiences that is the real story.

I want to thank the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta for the chance to speak at their wonderful event at the Jasper Park Lodge and for the wonderful speakers gift too.

The Social Accountant

This association of accountants, many of which I’m sure will be from major centres such as, Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary but also I suspect from locations all across Alberta.  The Certified General Accountants of Alberta is one of many chapters from across Canada as of the national association.  I’ve been performing some research as I typically do prior to a speaking engagement and I have found some very interesting uses of social media by accountants and accounting firms.  There’s also a large opportunity to mature this usage in many areas which I look to cover in Jasper.  Over all, social media is still a relatively new concept for the majority of this industry of professionals and I’m excited to be presenting some of what I would consider the social media basics, as well as, some advanced concepts that will help those Alberta accountants in the room interested in generating new revenue to get started with social right away.  For example, the opportunity to become a “social accountant,” a term I will define further during my presentation and what that would mean in terms of general awareness for the accounting firm that takes this advice to heart.

Another benefit to this opportunity is that I get to travel out of the Edmonton area and that is welcomed, especially as it falls on a weekend, so I will be taking the opportunity to breath some fresh mountain air and return to Sherwood Park at some point on the weekend.

Also, here’s an article I wrote on “understanding social media” that was published in CGA Magazine in December of 2009.

I have to admit that the highlight for me was two-fold.  First, when the premier stated that our proposed hospital here in Sherwood Park (and others across the province) would be going ahead.  Also, when I went up and said hello to Premier Stelmach and shook his hand after the post dinner Q&A.  He provided me with a warm hello and mentioned that he hasn’t been out to Sherwood Park in awhile.  Premier, the invitation to return and speak at a Chamber function is certainly open.

A question was put to Premier Stelmach by Danielle Klooster from Red Deer in support of earlier discussion about a “diversified economy” and asking about specific strategies the Government of Alberta had in play that were designed to open up new international markets, and foreign investment thus making us more competitive.

“That’s a loaded question,” the premier responded.  In other words, a complex question.  The premier talked about education being a key to a diversified economy, he referred to Port Alberta although not by name, and understanding the larger picture such as an “open skies” agreement that would change all the protectionism of Air Canada and allow foreign airlines to enter Canada with routes to places like Abu Dhabi, a location the premier visited recently.

During this, I couldn’t help but think how much more competitive Alberta would be if it was “Open.”  How municipalities across our province would benefit and by extension Albertans-at-large.  A more efficient government, considerable tax dollars saved, increased private sector opportunities.

Premier Stelmach mentioned that tomorrow a Competitiveness Bill will be brought forward and is expected to pass, he considers this an important Bill because in his words, “Alberta will not retire.”  Explaining that being strong stewards means smart succession planning for future generations.

As many know by now, I believe that an Open Government Framework should be a key part of a “competitive Alberta” today and in the future.  Time will tell if this idea starts to gain traction, I hope it does. Let me know what you think.

Open Government Framework

As Chris Moore, CIO for the City of Edmonton states, it’s time to “enlarge the circle.”  With that in mind, I’m calling for an Open Alberta.  The Government of Alberta (GOA) needs to begin to put in place an Open Government Framework.  I think that there are many within government who understand that the GOA doesn’t have a monopoly on creating “public value.”  Citizens also have an opportunity, and in my opinion, a responsibility for creating value that positively impacts the quality of life for Albertans and Canadians.

If we take a moment to think about this, Open Government initiatives are a tremendous opportunity to share openly.  To communicate that the government is willing to listen and collaborate with citizens rather than simply appear to placate, which is so often the criticism many in the provincial government hear from Albertans.

Is Open Government risky?

I believe Open Government is only risky to those individuals working (at all levels) within government who would rather see citizens not enter the discussion and thereby affect the way their job is performed.  Unfortunately, these people exist, I know because from time to time I’ve had conversations with them.  You may know an elected official or bureaucrat that believes in this philosophy, claiming this is the way an efficient government works, “we know best and citizens need to butt out,” they’ll say.  This can be the result, when people don’t vote and/or get involved in public debate.

What about privacy?

Open Government doesn’t mean that the Government of Canada should start sharing everyone’s Social Insurance Numbers or personal information on a wiki.  What it does mean, is that data which is already generally available should be properly organized into machine readable formats and offered for use by the private sector or citizens.

Election Issue!

I suggest that during this municipal election year people make the concept of Open Government an election issue.  True, many elected officials have been sitting on the sidelines regarding the use of social media and Web 2.0 technologies.  This is no longer tolerable. Further, if the candidate for your ward, or those going to the top job of mayor know nothing about Open Government, don’t vote for them.  Simple. The same goes for the next provincial election, if your MLA, party of choice has not exhibited the fact that they understand, or the government hasn’t initiated an Open Government Framework by that time, don’t vote for them either.  Open Government isn’t the future, it’s the present.  If you don’t know about it you’re living in the past.  This isn’t about being harsh but direct.

Is it really that important?  Not only is Open Government important, it’s critical.  Critical that our leaders get this concept and move quickly in this direction.  Many have yet to realize that this is the most transformative time in government in our lifetime.  Hold meetings and chat all you want about how your government isn’t performing.  More than talk, Open Government is where the rubber meets the road, it’s transparency, participation and collaboration in action.  Open Government represents citizens and government elbow to elbow working together for a better future.

Below is a 2-minute video of the City of Edmonton’s Chief Information Officer, Chris Moore speaking about Open Data in relation to tomorrow’s big event, as well as, continuing the vision forward.

As mentioned, the stage is set for the regional Open Data movement to continue to travel leaps and bounds.  The list of folks scheduled to be in the room or participating online is diverse and represents our region, province, country and international friends from many angles and that goes directly to how well the communications about what’s going on has penetrated and inspired folks to take action, all this since the first event on November 21, 2009.  Whether that be through the use of social or traditional media, the results are clear.

Just this week, Edmonton was recognized as a leader in the Open Data movement during a major announcement by San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom in the United States regarding their National Open 311 initiative.

Please see the video below and pay careful attention to the organizations listed in the background.

How can you participate?

Well first, if you have an opportunity please come out in person and participate directly in the “unconference.” Secondly, if you are unable to attend in person, then you are invited to watch the live video stream.  Further, anyone in the world may also “embed” the live video stream into their website, blog, etc…

Why would you want to do that?  Those who are considering an Open Data initiative in their region may want to communicate and educate certain local audiences that frequent their site.  You now have that opportunity, thanks to the City of Edmonton’s willingness to share with other communities, not only here in Alberta and in Canada, but also around the world.  I’ve had personal discussions with people from the US, Australia, even with Annemarie van Campen who is excited about the Dutch “fresh government” Open Data initiative.  I love the “fresh government” tagline, it’s brilliant.  We won’t be able to tell or communicate leading up the event as to everyone whom might be planning to carry the feed unless someone confirms that ahead of time, so please tell us here if you can.  Such as in the case of Nick Charney and his very popular Gov 2.0 cpsrenewal blog Nick is also going to be a panelist here in Edmonton.  I’d also like to mention once again how cool it is for the Edmonton Journal and GovLoop.com to be participating as mentioned in a previous post.

The team

I know one thing for sure, regardless of the really great discussion, ideas and thoughts shared tomorrow at the workshop.  You should be very proud of the City of Edmonton event planning team.  This takes a lot of effort to properly represent the fourth largest city in Canada on such an important subject.

Councillor Don Iveson, Chris Moore, Jacob Modayil, Scott Lundy, Jason Darrah, James Rugge- Price, Devin Serink, Raffaella Loro and Ashley Casovan who has been rock solid in terms of keeping everyone marching forward to ensure the event is terrific, that’s a tough gig regardless and she’s handled it very well so far I thought.  I’d also like to mention our project team, Evan Adnams, Kelly Lalonde and Genoa Adnams who have been working hard on this project to ensure our first ever (and I believe for the city as well) “bilingual” webcast goes without a hitch.

Due to everyone’s hard work, increased awareness and even recognition for this region and the Open Data work has already happened prior to the event itself taking place and that’s something to be proud of.  Of course, there is a lot of work still ahead and yet, clearly the momentum is building going into tomorrow and that I must say is highly cool.

Live!

Here’s a special twist.  fusedlogic is proud to announce that we’ve been hired by the City of Edmonton to provide a live bilingual webcast of the event.  We’ve twisted the City’s arm (it didn’t take much) and asked if we could provide the live stream to others who may want to share it.  They said yes.

Hello embed code! If you’d like to generate traffic and attention to your Government 2.0 focused blog, website or community this is a terrific opportunity to provide content to your online community.  If you’re in the media and would like to have the stream on your site, let a thousand flowers bloom.

The City of Edmonton is listening to your Open Data ideas and they’re acting on it.

The spirit of this event is to share ideas and thoughts, learn and collaborate on the way forward.  It’s events like this that help to shape a city, everyone’s job is to come out and contribute directly or online.

Trust

One of the fundamental elements of an Open Government is trust.  The City of Edmonton said it would open its’ data, it has.  The City of Edmonton said it would expand this Open Data movement to the entire region so as to benefit all citizens, it is.  Citizens are often skeptical of government for many reasons not the least of which is they don’t feel their voice will be heard.  The City of Edmonton’s IT Branch is listening and led by Councillor Don Iveson, CIO Chris Moore, and the team in the IT Branch they’re acting on it.  Look out folks, this is only the beginning.

Special Guests: 3 impressive Open Government minds are flying in to Edmonton to participate on a Open Government panel.  David Eaves, Mark Kuznicki and Nicholas Charney I expect this to be great fun, and a tremendous learning experience.

See you on Saturday and follow along on Twitter using the Twitter hashtag – “yegdata”

Embed code will be provided for you on our site here:  http://fusedlogic.tv/events/yegdata/

More information on the event itself is on the City of Edmonton’s website

Register here to attend the FREE Open City Workshop

I found our experience to be fascinating albeit too short, and yet, it was great to hear Jerry and Grant provide their perspectives.  What I found even more fascinating was the group of Mayors and their questions.  Grant asked how many of the audience was on Facebook and I’d say nearly 75% put up their hands.  This is a good sign.  When it comes to twitter however, only three folks not including myself identified themselves as being micro-bloggers.

65 minutes!

There were questions about time commitment, what tools to use, how to engage regionally via the social web but actually the most fascinating question was really more of a statement for the record by a Mayor, who’s first name was Barb, I didn’t catch the name of her community but she wanted to raise the issue about ambulance response times being nearly 65 minutes in her community.  Essentially, she explained that Alberta Health Services AHS had cut services which affected her region.  Now if you’re a citizen having a heart-attack first responders “can give you an IV and an aspirin while everyone waits for the ambulance,” said the Mayor.  When Barb asked if any other communities were experiencing similar service reductions other hands definitely went up.  Are you kidding me? What are we doing in this province?  We’re not broke, why are we operating as if we’re a developing country when it comes to essential services?

AUMA’s President Darren Aldous who is also the Mayor of the Village of Breton, Alberta said that the good folks at the AUMA will be submitting the formal written communications on this issue to the Government of Alberta and AHS which is great.

So much could be done

However, here’s where social technologies could play a direct role in terms of communications in a case like this.  While paper is being submitted through formal channels, towns and villages with small councils and little in the way of resources could be leveraging other means to get the word out, gather support and consensus and get things moving.  Of course, my head jumps to Open Data and how if only the province moved immediately towards releasing a data catalogue people could start creating value-added services that could help these hard-working folks and the citizens in their communities.

I’ve said before that Premier Stelmach and his administration need a CIO who could then align with the Open Data Movement here in Alberta and launch something real (instead of a broken link) - data.alberta.ca.

We need more sites like what Gisela Hippolt-Squair is doing over at the Alberta Geological Survey

Without providing specifics on my ideas here, there’s no doubt that lives and services could be improved in rural Alberta nearly overnight.

Imagine your family member waiting while having a heart-attack for 65 minutes just to have an ambulance arrive and the only reason, as explained by Mayor Barb, is due to funding cuts…it’s absolutely shameful.  Just because you’ve chosen to enjoy this great province in a rural setting shouldn’t mean you also dramatically increase your chances of dying because of it.  Rural Alberta, indeed rural communities in general simply get little to no respect.

I’m excited that there’s more to learn during two additional social media related panel sessions tomorrow with Mayors from medium and large communities.  Expected to be in the room are provincial MLAs…Hmmm, this is going to be fun.

Yesterday I read “Is Social the new dirty word?” by John Moore out of Boston.  Moore’s post highlighted what I’ve been feeling for nearly a year or more but especially in the last 6-8 months.

I’m concerned with the dramatic “watering down” of the burgeoning industry that my team and I work in full-time.  So I thought I’d reference a point in time and then tell a bit of our story.

For example, I was walking to my truck while at nextMEDIA in Banff, Alberta last summer.  The timing was such that I happened to bump into Kris Krug (@kk) who was outside taking photographs of the beautiful scenery,(here we are).  We had an interesting chat, not only then but later on camera, as the fusedlogic team streamed live interviews from nextMEDIA and Kris was kind enough to stop by.  Kris is a unique character, a non-conformist, and I’ve learned a staunch evangelist for his community, his craft (photography) and the non-use of labels.  I know Kris well enough now from our online exchanges and phone calls to know that he reluctantly refers to himself as a “web strategist” but really, he’s a guy who likes to be a part of the social experience through is crazy skills as a photographer.  He’s also committed to and an integral part of the cool happenings around his community of Vancouver which often includes considerable charity work with the Union Gospel Mission and others.

Here’s the dilemma, not all of us can develop the nomadic persona or lifestyle of a Kris Krug, our clients wouldn’t understand it and it wouldn’t be authentic.  That’s in part, what makes Kris a unique human being and business person, he has real-world experience having started Bryght in 2004 and successfully selling the company in 2007 to Raincity Studios.  That aside, he’s just being himself.  I respect Kris for what he’s accomplished and I suspect countless others do as well.

Having said that, I’ve never asked him directly, but to Kris during that chance meeting at the Banff Springs Hotel I must have appeared to be that outsider guy, that “what gives you the right to be a social media strategist guy?”

Interestingly, Kris said something I’ll never forget after our interview was over.  I thanked him for taking the time to speak on camera and told him I really enjoyed the experience of meeting him.  Kris said, “no problem, you know, it’s interesting we’re all here to talk about social media and you guys are in the room doing it….that’s cool man.”

Here are the “yummy chunks…”

November 2004

This is the night my Web 2.0 journey began. I watched CNN as they pulled commentary off of political blogs for the broadcast.  I found this amazing and started researching the blogosphere.

Many haven’t heard the fusedlogic story so I’m going to go over the last year or so rather than go over every blog post starting in September 2005 from my blogspot blog or since our incorporation in March of 2000.  (Secretly, I’ve been doing some thinking about where fusedlogic has come from and where we’re going, since this coming March will be our 10th anniversary).

Interestingly, I blogged about Twitter in April of 2007 but didn’t join until 2008.

In 2008 we continued to deliver social media work for several small businesses including Edmontonians Magazine, also notable was our project with the Public Affairs Bureau – Government of Alberta.

Crossing into 2009, we worked for ATB Financial, MacEwan School of Business, EEDC, Fringe Theatre Adventures – Industry Canada’s Marquee Tourism Program and we broke all sorts of ground on that project, multiple projects for NorQuest College which are still in play and again a number of small businesses mingled in.  Including our first Pay-Per-View live streaming sporting event with Aggression MMA. (our second PPV event will be tomorrow and it’ll be even bigger). We’re proud to say that our footage from the last event (as with our work tomorrow) will be broadcast on the FIGHT network, as well as, HDNet.

Also in 2009, we took on the digital marketing for Pik’s Revenge, an ambitious indie iPhone game developed by Edmonton’s Fluik Entertainment Ltd. Starting with zero Google search results for “Piks Revenge,” we now have nearly 1500 results and it will continue to grow as we’re expecting a big review from a major US property later this month.  The game was featured on the Apple app store which is not an every day occurrence.  Also, we’re doing something different with Pik as we build out the character a bit in real-life, expect more fun and dare I say “cheesy by design” things on that front soon.

Further, I started writing my book on Government 2.0 in 2009 entitled Escape Velocity, which is due out this spring provided I live up to the expectations of my editor.

In January 2010, we finally launched our iPhone transit application Route 411 and in less than 2 weeks we’ll be posting an update that will dramatically change the user-experience in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto.  All I’m willing to say at this moment is that we’ve integrated York transit data with Toronto and we hope folks out there will appreciate that integration because it wasn’t easy to pull off that’s for sure.

Also, we’re celebrating a big week as we’ve closed a few new deals including a project with Health Canada and Alberta’s Centre for Child, Family and Community Research.  There’s much more to say about February and March but I’ll leave it there for now.

My point with all of this is simple, credibility in this game (as with all business and life) is paramount.  If Kris had asked for background in Banff I would have at least been able to provide names and brands as above where we have taken projects from concept to metrics. Granted, the brands are not global brands like Coke or Virgin, but to us and our clients, they are successful examples of digital planning and deployment experiences and it’s a story we’re very proud of and not even close to finishing.

Interview with the Mayor of Hinton, Alberta – Glenn Taylor

I first met Glenn on Twitter, when he put a link out asking for feedback on a housing report for the Town of Hinton.  I replied asking if he and his administration had considered using a wiki for policy feedback from citizens?  He replied, “No, but I’ll pass it along.”  Then becoming Facebook friends and continuing our discussion, we found out that he was presenting at the ALI Social Media for Government conference.  This gave me an opportunity to meet Glenn in person for the first time.  Glenn was presenting a fire-side chat (no PPT slides) with Ken Chapman of Cambridge Strategies about the Grande Alberta Economic Region (GAER).  The story is interesting in terms of how this particular region has been impacted by many different issues.  The Mountain Pine Beetle for example has had a devastating effect.  After the conference we agreed to follow-up and today’s interview was our next step.

WS: Why become an elected official?

GT: “That started in the sandbox, I was learning about the political process in grade 5 which was when I became class president.  After school I was involved in unions and activism.  For me, it has always been a sense of representing other’s concerns that’s interested me. Union politics turned out to be too limiting, contractual negotiations etc – a narrow lens of looking at the world.

The opportunity to represent citizens’ concerns to administration is what I found fascinating and why I really love governing at the municipal level.  You can discuss something at Council and the next day be having a cup of coffee over the fence with a neighbour fielding questions about the decision.  That has translated into what is currently my 3rd term on council and 2nd term as Mayor.  We’ve focused on shaping the community identity.  We’re an industrial town, and yet, as a community realize that we have a responsibility to give back to the land.”

During the ALI conference, Glenn described his initial response to Ken Chapman’s suggestion that he start using social media as resistive.  ”I don’t have time for this,” he stated while speaking at the ALI conference this week.   However, what I don’t think Glenn bargained for is how persistent Ken Chapman can be and so @mayorhinton is now active on Twitter.  Also during that presentation he revealed that others on his Town Council are on Facebook now, although they’re not as active as they could be and more Twitter accounts have been set-up recently too.

WS: What resistance if any has there been from your colleagues on Council, administration or the region?

GT: “Well I would start with the traditionalists being afraid to engage, the silent majority if you will.  They’re asking, how can we control the message?  What’s motivating that fear are examples like what’s happening with elements associated with Rockyview County Council generating a facebook group.  Basically fixating on the negative.

We (government) can’t be superficial, can’t just listen and continue to do the same thing.  We need to take action.  However, within administration there can be fear that change will bring about more work.  Fear about change of the status quo.  At the provincial level there’s a tendency to consult with citizens through town halls so that it can be stated folks were consulted and then do what was planned anyway.  As the community changes, we need to bring that message back from the citizens to the government.  In a municipal government it’s truly the citizens issues being presented to the government and that’s my favourite part.  The challenge becomes then, how do we get those issues to the administrative team…for change in process?”

Glenn didn’t name the group but I found this one called Stop the Madness in Springbank! which seems to be against development.

WS: How do you see social media impacting your region economically?

GT: “Well number one – you need to make decisions with good information which means you have to gather good information first.  Being open to listening is key and understanding the challenges.  How do we tap into that knowledge?  Traditional invitations to discuss the issue and also connecting people online through various channels.  Flexibility has to be present in our approach so that we can reach as many citizens as possible.  In fact, we’re hosting a workshop on social media to help folks understand the tools better.”

WS: What challenges lie ahead for you and your community?

GT: “We’re really at the beginning stages of engaging the citizens.  I believe that we’re ahead of the curve and that’s a source of pride for us. However, there can be a disconnect between administration and council that sometimes exists and that will be something we have to work on.”

WS: What advice would you give to other elected officials?

GT: “Build the business case, not I have a dream, rather it’s what I have learned. It’s way easier to to operate in reactionism rather than finding the path.  I’d say it’s important to be proactive rather than reactive.  For example at our GAER Board meetings we now start with blue sky sessions and ask what’s on the horizon?  What are you hearing in your communities?  Is it a priority, do we need to spend time working on it…that means that key issues have a chance to help us set our course at the beginning.”

“Leaders get the behaviours that they themselves exhibit and tolerate.”  - Larry Bossidy, Author of Execution: The discipline of getting things done.

And with that in mind, I’ll leave you with the same question that Glenn has posted on Facebook and like other elected officials I’ve come across (but unfortunately not all), he cares about the answers you give…

GT: What does community mean to you?

I’m writing this post feverishly about a statement that Glenn mentioned.  We’re not taking the top down approach, but “bottom-up social engagement governance.”  Glenn was referring to how they’re getting the word out and the consultative process involved using social media.  This is a REALLY COOL!!! This is the kind of grass roots movement that you need to pay attention to and participate in.  I’m going to update this post later and include links because I’ve got to grab the mic from Ken and Glenn, this chat should have been last and we could have spent hours listening, at least I could have.

As I listened to the various speakers today, listed here. I found each one very interesting in their own way.  Jas Darrah from the City of Edmonton provided some key insights into how he helped the City get started with the “SMAC” or Social Media Advisory Council down the social path.  Jacob George from the City of Calgary, enlightened us about the overall digital footprint the city has and how quickly they respond to issues that arise.  Also, Jacob used prezi and we’re big prezi fans too, so extra points for that.

I found our break-out blitz session to be most interesting as that’s when the audience was given a chance to contribute by telling a social media story other than their own as I encouraged them to meet someone new.  Fear, still reigns supreme as the number one issue, time-management and capacity where also near the top of the list. However, trying to convince the “old guard” back at the office that this is the way to go is frustration that it seems everyone is feeling.  Should you work in government and for someone who is actually a proponent of open government, you don’t know how lucky you are.

Nathan Freed and Manon Abud did an excellent job of explaining the issues, processes and opportunities behind Inspiring Education.  A terrific Government of Alberta, Alberta Education initiative.  Kudos to Minister Dave Hancock for supporting such a project.  Now if we can just remove some more road blocks for Nathan, I bet we’d see even more from this project.

Other highlights include Troy Wason explaining to the crowd all about the ups and downs of being a assigned with getting the social media word out on behalf of the Alberta Government Caucus only to be shown the door as a result of doing his job “too well.”

And then ending the day on a pleasant note with Diane Begin from NAIT’s communications department who explained all the great things they’re doing over there involving the social web.  All and all a wonderful day.

I was just on Twitter and Nick Charney wrote the following. “Thinking of writing a blog post called Rethink, Retool or Retire, but I think it’s too edgy.”  To which I replied, “why not be a guest blogger on our site, I don’t think it’s too edgy.”  In fact, I think it’s bang on.  This sentiment also reminds me of a Lee Iacocca saying, “lead, follow or get out of the way.”  Ultimately, this is really what we’re exploring at this conference, you can actually see the wheels turn as participants look for ways to convince colleagues back home that “Web2 and Gov2 have happened and they need to be prepared and involved.”

Tomorrow is another action packed day and I’m just as excited to be a part of it with this wonderful group.  Especially since I’ve got a surprise or two cooked up for everyone…

Thanks to all the organizations who participated:

Service Canada
Alberta Agriculture & Rural Dev.
Alberta Environment
Alberta Energy/information Tech.
Town of High River, AB
Metrolinx Ulistic Inc.
Royal Alberta Museum
Alberta Education
Red Deer County, Alberta
City of Red Deer, Alberta
Alberta Geological Society
National Energy Board
Edmonton International Airport
APEGGA
Govt. of the Northwest Territories
Town of High River, AB
AB School Empl. Benefit Plan
Strathcona County, AB
Alberta Utilities Commission
Alberta Education
Government of Alberta Office of the Auditor General
City of Fort Saskatchewan
WMS Communications
City of Kelowna, BC

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS: Monday, January 25, 2010

9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

MORNING PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP

Social Media 101: How To Connect With Your Citizens And Colleagues Using The Latest Technologies
The world is all a buzz with social media, however there are significant hurdles that many leaders today still face with getting online and creating a buzz. How can you connect with your citizens and colleagues using social media? The Internet is all about connecting both technically and socially. How are you overcoming this challenge of connecting with your citizens and colleagues? Many of us look at the Internet and see a confusing mess of computers, laptops, and mobile phones while some of us look at the Internet and see a mesh of connected people, resources, companies and individuals. How are you seeing your place in social media?
Social media and networking has primarily been used as a tool to keep in touch with those external to our organizations, however many leading corporations also incorporate these techniques internally across departments and throughout the enterprise. In this workshop, you will hear how you can start using these tools internally with your teams, across your organization and also as a mechanism to share important information in an expedient manner.
After attending this workshop, you will walk away with new knowledge in 5 main areas to help you better understand how to use social media internally and externally. Specifically, we will take a hands-on approach on how to:

• Integrate social media into your organization
• Leverage social media to keep in touch with employees, team members and clients
• Design a blog – with tips and tricks to share your thoughts with those around you
• Write your message clearly and concisely
• Apply delivery mechanisms and alerts to notify you when new items are posted
• Use social networking to connect with your organization and audience

You will also leave with a solid foundation of understanding what the basic social media tools are and how to use them.

WORKSHOP LEADERS: Stuart R. Crawford is Vice President Business Development at Bulletproof InfoTech. Stuart has shared this information across the globe with IT Professionals, Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs who crave to understand how they can leverage these tools to increase the awareness of their work, educate those around them and share information with their communities.
David West is the founding partner of Ulistic Inc., a progressive internet consultancy. His teams have developed hundreds of websites over the past dozen years. David began working with Internet technologies initially as a freelance website programmer. He later formed a full service website design and development company in Calgary, Alberta.

12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own.

1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
AFTERNOON PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP B

A Step-By-Step Process For Successfully Building And Implementing A Social Media Strategy

In this workshop, we will discover why it is so critical for your organization to have a strong social media strategy. Key insights that will accelerate your learning curve and help you avoid the mistakes others have made will be addressed. This live-fire exercise is best experienced when you come prepared with your mobile phones and laptops, ready to go online.
The workshop is broken into three segments. This interactive session will help you lay the foundation for your own social media strategy, and give you a step-by-step process for:

• Gathering social media intelligence
• Leveraging and building a social media strategy
• Implementing a social media strategy effectively

This fast-paced and entertaining session will give you some of the practical tools and ideas necessary to bring your organization up to speed in the world of social media.

WORKSHOP LEADER: Walter Schwabe is a seasoned presenter and speaker. He is proudly Métis and has been helping entrepreneurs generate and implement rare ideas for over 9 years now as the Chief Evolution Officer of his social media strategy firm, fusedlogic inc. In addition to working with numerous small and medium sized organizations, Walter has worked with such organizations as Apple, Dell, AMD, Capital Health, Government of Alberta, MacEwan School of Business, Nortel, North American Construction Group and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

AGENDA ~ Day One, Tuesday, January 26, 2010

8:00   Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30      Chairperson’s Welcome, Opening Remarks And Presentation:

Capitalizing On Social Media: How An Organization Of Any Size Can Use Social Media To Generate Engagement And Be Successful

Walter Schwabe, fusedlogic inc.

9:35   Break-Out Blitz!  Share Your Challenges And Begin To Brainstorm Solutions

10:05 Morning Refreshment, Networking Break & Exhibit Time

10:35     Moving Towards Government 2.0: Using Gradual And Deliberate Steps To Gain

Management Acceptance And Citizen Engagement

Jas Darrah, City of Edmonton, Alberta

11:25     Making Sense Of Social Media: 12 Things To Learn About How To Communicate With Your Audience – Your Friends, Fans And Followers

Jacob George, City of Calgary, Alberta

12:15 Lunch On Your Own – But Not Alone!

Join a small group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated

by one of our expert speakers.  Please sign up at the registration table.

1:45   Enriching Your Public Engagement Initiatives Through A Variety Of Social Media Tools

Nathan Freed, Alberta Education and Manon Abud, Ascentum, Inc.

2:35   Afternoon Refreshment, Networking Break & Exhibit Time

2:50   Cracking The Internal Culture:  How To Use Social Media As a Catalyst For Internal Change

Troy M. Wason, WMS Communications

(former Sr. Communications Officer–Social Media, Alberta Government Caucus)

3:40      How To Integrate Social Media With Traditional Media Relations To Maximize Communication Results

Diane Bégin, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT)

4:30   Close of Day One

4:45   Networking Reception – Please Join Us!

6:30      Dine Around – Sign up at the registration table for dinner with a group of your colleagues.

AGENDA ~ Day Two, Wednesday, January 27, 2010

8:00   Continental Breakfast, Networking & Exhibit Time

8:30   Chairperson’s Opening Of Day Two

Walter Schwabe, fusedlogic inc.

8:40   Using Social Media To Initiate Change In Government: It Starts With You

Kelly Rusk, MediaMiser

9:30   Morning Refreshment, Networking Break & Exhibit Time

10:00     How To Drive Higher Participation In Online Community Forums For More Effective Community Management

Dr. Crispin Butteriss, Bang the Table Pty. Ltd.

10:50     Monitoring Social Media: Knowing When And How To Take Action While Getting The Most Out Of Your Budget

Aaron Wrixon, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario

11:40 Lunch On Your Own – But Not Alone!

Join a small group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated by one of our expert speakers.  Please sign up at the registration table.

1:10   Group Exercise – Let’s Communicate and Collaborate!

1:50      The Social Media Toolbox: How To Choose The Right Tool For Your Communications Strategy And For Your Dollar

Mike Spear, Genome Alberta

2:40   Afternoon Refreshment, Networking Break & Exhibit Time

2:55   Using Social Media To Transform A Regional Economy

Glenn Taylor, Grande Alberta Economic Region & Town of Hinton, Alberta and K.J. (Ken) Chapman, Cambridge Strategies Inc.

3:45      Eight Ways To Engage Your Audience By Integrating Social Media Into Your Organization’s Website

Gisela Hippolt-Squair, Alberta Geological Survey, Energy Resources Conservation Board

4:35   Chairperson’s Recap:  Key Takeaways And What To Do When You Get Back To The Office

4:45       Close Of General Sessions

Thursday, January 28 (if applicable) in Mayfair:

– Continental Breakfast will be provided at 8:00 a.m. for the morning workshop attendees.

– Morning Post-Conference Workshop C, Managing Through The Power Shift Of This New Information Age And Convincing Your Senior Leaders Why Now Is The Time To Get Involved, begins at 8:30 a.m. & ends at 11:30 a.m.

– Afternoon Break/Lunch On Your Own from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

– Afternoon Post-Conference Workshop D, Practicing Social Media In The Real World: A Campaign In Action, begins at 12:30 p.m. & ends at 3:30 p.m.

Post Conference Workshops:

January 28, 2010 INTERACTIVE WORKSHOPS

8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
MORNING POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP C

Managing Through The Power Shift Of This New Information Age And Convincing Your Senior Leaders Why Now Is The Time To Get Involved
Information is power and the power over information has shifted from those who control traditional media and professional message makers and manipulators to individuals who use social media.
Social media will continue to change the roles, relationships and even the responsibilities of bureaucracies, public policy advisors and how they advise policy makers in the political process of law making in our representative democratic models. How will this power shift affect your organization? What if your senior leaders don’t want to engage in using social media?
In this session, we will greater explore tools you can use to achieve social media buy-in within your organization:

• Social media literacy skills and tools that bureaucracies will have to learn and learn quickly
• How bureaucracies can keep up with social media to do their jobs effectively
• How you can manage through the information shift in your organization
• Strategies on how to approach and convince your senior leaders that now is the time to begin using social media

WORKSHOP LEADER: K.J. (Ken) Chapman Lawyer, Principal and Founder of Cambridge Strategies Inc. (www.cambridgestrategies.com) an Alberta based public policy design development and deployment consultancy. He has been an active Blogger (www.ken-chapman.blogspot.com) for three years and a political and public policy commentator and critic on mainstream media for decades and engaged in social media for many months.

11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own.

12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
AFTERNOON POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP D

Practicing Social Media In The Real World: A Campaign In Action
Now that you have learned about all the social media tools and services that are at your disposal, it is finally time to put them into practice.
This workshop will guide you on how to:

• Set up a social media campaign from start to finish
• Pick the right social media tool for your campaign
• Track the conversation once you’ve gotten started
• Measure the ROI for your campaign
• Mitigate potential problems that can arise
• Prepare for a follow-up campaign

Additionally, we will also explore some real social media campaigns. What was done well? What could have been done better? You will leave with a better understanding of how to go from theory in the classroom to engaging citizens on the Internet.

WORKSHOP LEADER: Mack D. Male, President, CEO of Paramagnus Developments Inc., is a software developer, entrepreneur, and social media guy. Always up-to-date on the latest trends and technologies, Mack loves sharing what he learns with others. He’s particularly passionate about his hometown, Edmonton, and does his best to expose everything it has to offer, through his blog, Twitter account, and many other online tools and services. Mack was named one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2009 for his work in helping to build Edmonton’s online communities.

Scott McKeen of the Edmonton Journal wrote:

“City Hall has embraced open data. Great. But I’m confused”

McKeen goes on further to describe himself as a “second-class citizen.” In theory, because he doesn’t entirely understand or use technology in the way early-adopters within the City of Edmonton’s tech community do or will now that the city’s data catalogue has been partially released.

Although it’s true that some of this data has been publicly available online in some cases for years.  The difference now, is that it’s in machine readable format now and not a PDF or application that doesn’t allow for independent coders to work with it.  As McKeen explains this will inspire a new level of innovation in the Greater Edmonton Region.  Our iPhone transit application Route 411 is a prime example of the kind of innovation that can take place when a city such as Edmonton, Vancouver or Toronto releases transit data.

Many may not be aware of the fact that I’m well into writing my first book on Government 2.0 and the “open data movement” that’s happening around the world as we speak.  During this experience of exploration within government, I’ve managed to have some very interesting discussions and exchanges with thought leaders in Canada and the US.  There’s a distinct overlap of social media, and this is where Web 2.0 applications are really shining and driving innovation.  The return on investment for Open Data is a higher quality of life for citizens and a considerable savings in tax dollars.

Freedom to Create, Spirit to Achieve

Rather than make this about the book, I thought I’d provide another short list of applications or projects that are available as a result of government releasing data.  A process which I’ve said many times on Twitter that our own Government of Alberta needs to work towards immediately.  We need to be forward thinking in Alberta and of course, it takes more than simply stating, Freedom to Create, Spirit to Achieve. If one believes the propaganda behind the current Alberta brand, then it’s high time we act on it.  I’m not referring to our oil industry, royalty reviews or the environment.  Rather, our strong Alberta tech community putting words into action and leveraging our strengths, which are considerable and should be given “more credit.”

SIDEBAR: Not looking to sound overly critical, but why are we spending tax dollars to “rebrand” a department that has connections and rapport around the world at a time when what we really need is an “open government directive” and policy with teeth?  Just think about the simplest of tasks for the over 700 people in this department that now have to take the effort to explain to people across Alberta and around the world, “no it’s still us, but change our name and update your address book.”  Further, in the interest of transparency, every government worker should have a complete LinkedIn profile so that they can be easily reached.  How’s that for making you feel uncomfortable?

This is constructive criticism from the heart – it’s also motivation, inspiration and evangelism for this great province and its’ people inside and outside government to embrace what’s already here and has been since 2007.

Below are just a few open data examples and sources from around the world on how government can work as a platform for citizens to leverage:

Government of Canada 2.0 Wiki

Code For America

Police Act Review Wiki

Streetswiki

OpenStreetMap

Edmonton Data Catalogue

City of Edmonton Social Media

Vancouver Data Catalogue

Vantrash

Toronto Open

Stumblesafely

Everyblock

Lords of the Blog

CitySourced

GovTrack

Citizenvoices

Patients Like Me

Sermo

There are countless more applications and websites being launched, it seems daily, as more and more governments open their data to the public.  I encourage bloggers across Alberta and beyond to create your own list and share it with the world.  Increased accountability, transparency, participation and collaboration are the results.  Those detractors from this movement are typically worried about privacy and security issues or they simply don’t get it.  Privacy and security are important and yet, not barriers to be used as excuses for inaction.

For those government jurisdictions considering the open government movement here’s a list of guiding principles to get you started.

First thing’s first. What is foursquare?

That’s an excellent question!

As stated on foursquare.com:

Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.  We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.

foursquare.com home page

Think twitter, but instead of answering the question ‘What are you doing?’ and writing in 140 characters what you’re up to, foursquare lets people know where you are when you ‘check-in’ to any location you specify and vice versa. Now, you may be asking how secure is this app? It’s as secure as you want it to be. If you don’t want people to know where you are, you simply don’t check-in. For instance, you may not want people to know where your house is, so you don’t have to check-in when you are home. Some people choose to check-in at a location within their neighbourhood, rather than use their actual address. However, an important part of social media is being transparent. And it may be seen as misleading to check-in at a location when you aren’t actually there, regardless of how close you happen to be.

What makes a social media app valuable is how mobile it is. Foursquare is offered on the iPhone, of course. And can be accessed via a mobile web browser for devices without an app. According to foursquare.com, Blackberry and Palm Pre apps are in the works. Foursquare can also be accessed online where additional features can be used, but the whole point of the app is to be mobile.

So, how is foursquare a valuable app for tourism and hospitality in Alberta?

Well, obviously it only works if the tourists use foursquare and the mobile app. Given that those two things are in place, tourists can locate information about any city in Alberta that they are visiting. Provided that foursquare has the city listed in their system. Right now that’s not the case, but it’s getting there. Say someone from the US is visiting family living in Edmonton. They want to go out for dinner, but they don’t know any of the local restaurants. Using foursquare, they can use ‘Nearby Tips’ that lists comments from other users giving, well, tips about restaurants and businesses they’ve visited (As seen in the picture to the right). The great thing about this feature is that you don’t have to be ‘friends’ with anyone in the particular city. It’s just a list from all foursquare users in that location.

The other great thing about this app for tourism and hospitality is that once it gets more popular, there will be more entries from tourists themselves. So, it won’t just be content from the locals, but also tips and reviews from people who visit the city. Now, this means good and bad reviews. But this gives Alberta Tourism and the hospitality industry an indication of what tourists honestly think of some local tourists destinations, including restaurants, in real-time. This will give them essential info about what tourists want to see more of, what they don’t like so much, etc. Of course, some things will be out of the industries control. If the food is bad at a particular restaurant, there is little Alberta Tourism can do about that. But other concerns/issues may become obvious, and provide insight into changes that can be made. After all, it’s their job to ensure people want to visit Alberta, and have such an enjoyable time they wish to return, and recommend it to others! Every tool that is available to the consumer that provides information on the products and services to tourism/hospitality stakeholders is valuable. The technology is there. Foursquare enables some interesting real-time interaction between consumers, and the tourism and hospitality industries. It’s like a real-time comment card and a repository of comsumer behaviours. So we recommend that the stakeholders within the tourism and hospitality industry become very familiar with this application and it’s advantages.

We started this prototype process by inviting college students to participate and in fact a few did. Because of ongoing discussions, we haven’t put any resources behind marketing the project, as we were waiting for a more opportune time to move forward. After the soft launch on Twitter we were notified in less than an hour that Premier Stelmach’s staff were actively searching for answers as to who was behind the site. After it was determined through our communications that our intent was not malicious we had asked if there may be an opportunity to discuss the future of the site and the potential of having Premier Stelmach’s direct participation. Those meetings have not as of yet happened.

In the meantime, so that Albertans have a better understanding of the differences in functionality and approach between dearpremier.ca and Ask Premier Ed we’ve prepared a brief comparison of models below.

Further Examples of Communication Models:

Ask the President

Open for Questions (Official WhiteHouse.gov page)

Prime Minister Harper’s Facebook Page

US Department of Health and Human Services

The US Department of Health and Human Services is the department responsible for communicating information about the H1N1 flu virus. The department has recognized the need to communicate within the social web so they have their own dedicated social web team.

Beyond that, they’re listening and taking action as required.

Yesterday on twitter I mentioned that I appreciated the positioning of information and the URL of “flu.gov.”  Today Andrew Wilson, a member of the HHS new media team responded and thanked me for spreading the word.  Please keep in mind this all happened on a Halloween weekend.

Clearly it’s one thing to monitor online discussion and another to have a dedicated team of responders who are community building and socially managing relationships.  President Obama has put his trust in his administration to communicate necessary information and those decision-makers are in turn putting their trust in front-line communicators with a “funded mandate” to communicate directly and in this case “internationally.”  Pretty cool if you ask me and there is evidence of this model deployed throughout the US government. The HHS site is listed below.

http://www.newmedia.hhs.gov/about.html

Here’s a short list related to the US H1N1 online infrastructure:

http://www.flu.gov/

http://twitter.com/flugov

http://www.facebook.com/H1N1flu

The facebook fan page listed above was updated on this past Friday with up-to-date flu vaccine supply status information.  I would consider this a positive example of a government agency working and operating effectively within the real-time web.  Could they do more?  Sure but clearly there’s a willingness and a plan.

The GOA is by enlarge, sticking with a standard broadcast model to mass-communications.

Especially but not solely surrounding the delivery of  H1N1 related information.  There is definitely a segment of any jurisdiction’s population that responds to the approach of traditional media and mail out brochures.

Back in Alberta, yesterday we were provided a press conference by Alberta Health Services on Halloween.  One hour prior to broadcast as per Simon Ostler of Global Edmonton TV on Twitter to inform us of the clinics being shut-down and a refocusing of resources towards high-risk patients.  No other official approach online within the real-time web directly from the government could be found.  (If you find something let me know here so we can get the word out.)

Evidence suggests that the premier’s office ensures that whenever possible Mr. Stelmach is not in a position to personally interact with the general public in any way online unless it’s a one-way broadcast approach.  That is the prudent approach used to limit exposure, limit interaction and allow a team who’s experience clearly resides outside of the real-time web to remain in control.

Top of mind penetration

Yesterday I posed an informal challenge on Twitter:

Quick test – without using google can someone tell me the URL for GOA #h1n1 info in #AB off the top of your head? No cheating. #ableg

The result: Not one person was able to come up with the GOA’s website address for H1N1 information off the top of their head.  The process of effectively and regularly informing Albertans via a multi-channel process probably isn’t getting through.  I’m focusing in on the open dialogue and communication that should be happening in-between press conferences?  In the most recent 5 posts there’s nothing H1N1 related on the “Your Alberta” blog for example.

The GOA might suggest that the basic information Albertans need is already provided by them and they would be right.  Here it is: http://www.health.alberta.ca/

Something I like is that if you look around the site, it’s fairly easy to navigate and there is some great information there and some direct commentary by Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer.

I cannot directly attribute the facebook group listed below to the GOA, I believe it is an Alberta Health Services effort and I know Todd Herron from his work related to Alberta Wellnet so I believe this group to be credible.  Despite that, Herron hasn’t updated the group since Oct 28th and we’ve had a fair amount change since then.

Public Health Alerts

Ultimately what I’m finding and others may agree or disagree, is that there’s a fragmented approach, a continued lack of social strategy, that in itself is a basic flaw in the overall GOA communications strategy.

My recommendation

The GOA should have a dedicated and top-notch social web enabled communications team distributing this important information in real-time via multiple channels supporting all key stakeholders through their efforts.

Here’s the problem, governments operate with all sorts of political agendas.  Certain folks are threatened and want to justify and protect their jobs. This is often done by controlling the message internally and keeping activity within the limits of their skill-sets.  This is rampant throughout all levels of government bureaucracies.  IT departments want control, consistency and get territorial over their particular area.  Many get bogged down in auditing processes that act as barriers to progress.  Public relations wants to direct and control messaging via their department and the social web represents a chaotic eco-system.  Ministers want control over the message and activities of their portfolio which can directly conflict with government effectiveness and its ability to deliver services to you and I.

A shift in thinking is required

This quick and dirty comparison is really talking about the difference between the US government’s online strategy involving a recognized need to manage the online relationship with the general public in a social web context.  That compared to the GOA’s less socially inspired approach which has a near zero commitment in this area when compared to what is possible across the entire government.  The US has a sustainable social web relationship management strategy for communicating in the real-time web.  The GOA is content to continue to leverage the traditional public relations model with a couple of isolated efforts on behalf of brave insiders.

Frankly, it’s not much of a stretch to think that this blog post might not sit well with Mr. Stelmach, Ron Glen, Tom Olsen and the rest of his team within the premier’s office.  Despite that fact I want to be very clear, my team and I are here to help this province and our fellow Albertans by leveraging our skills in this area.  Some will attempt to twist these words as adversarial or negative – that’s not my intent. Rather the point is to simply communicate information that could be of help.

Frankly, this is not a new concept.  Communicating ideas online has been happening for years in all sorts of ways.  What we’re suggesting is that this process can be chaotic and unorganized.  Our solution is to provide a very simple series of websites that empowers the everyday citizen.  There are so many citizens who may currently make limited use of the Internet in their lives.  We hope this very focused concept that’s easy to use will inspire them to contribute their great idea for their local city or town in just a click or two.

These sites will be providing the ability for local citizens to participate at their local level and potentially affect change on a macro-level.

Every time there is a new idea posted, the Twitter accounts for each site are updated. If you’d like to follow from Twitter, the usernames are @futureedmonton, @futurecalgary and @futurereddeer.

Here’s the twist:

We’re loosely tying these sites together to provide a macro perspective on the ideas of what Albertans are contemplating. Everything will be crowd-sourced, right down to “functionality requests” of the sites themselves and how they evolve. We believe the elegance of this concept is in it’s simplicity and we encourage you to participate by voting, commenting or submitting your own idea for your city.

We’re also launching a special offer for towns and cities in Alberta today so tune into Global Edmonton at 5pm.

I’m also extremely grateful for my business life.  Many know that fusedlogic has grown over this past year and has had the opportunity to work with several really terrific clients, we’re a long way from the one person operation I started in 2000.  Beyond being grateful for the business, the people on the team are the true engine and I’m very grateful for their hard work and commitment.  Paul Ney, Evan Adnams, Genoa Adnams, Troy Wason, Debra Ward, work tirelessly to do their best for our clients and it shows in the social media work we do.

This week in particular, I’m grateful for all of the people who supported the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.

Notables were John Wilson (@SirThinks) who wrote a great blog post and along with several others, @cyclopsphoto, @pixelens, @livingsanctuary to name a few, took copious amounts of photographs these last 10 days to visually document our Fringe in their own way on flickr for the world to see.  By the way, thanks to them the Edmonton Fringe now has the largest Fringe related flickr group with over 1300 images all telling a story about Edmonton and the Fringe.  This is just one of the terrific things we were able to accomplish with the help of the community, not to mention the amazing ticket sales this year topping over 90,000.  The way these #yegphotographers provided their perspective was terrific and it was really cool to be a part of.  Also, I feel like I know these folks a lot better as a result of that experience which I’m grateful for. Thank-you for all of your support.

Earlier today I was reading Chris Brogan’s blog post Take 10 Minutes – Meet a Trust Agent.

I began to reflect on the various people and relationships out in the world that I have had an opportunity to cultivate and wondered what it took in my mind to be a Trust Agent?  Below are 10 in the Edmonton area that I’d like to mention.

Social media is about conversations and relationships.  Beyond that, the most important key to social media is a person’s ability to “build and maintain trust.”  Trust is critical in all areas of life, but especially online within chosen networks or micro-tribe(s).  The Edmonton region is a bustling micro-tribe and if you spend any amount of time online with Edmonton on your mind, you’ll no doubt recognize these people below identified by their Twitter handle below and in no particular order.  They all stand out as Trust Agents in my mind for one reason or another.

@ZoomJer, is a local Realtor.  Jerry is also a rock solid member of society.  He goes out of his way to create opportunities to help and support others.  In particular his #yegicecream events for @RLPShelterFdn are a big hit.  Jerry protects those he respects and holds accountable in his own way those who step out of line.  I first met Jerry when he attended one of my seminars well over a year ago and he and I maintain our conversation regularly.  Jerry is a “Zoom” family man first, strong digital citizen second, all of which makes his real estate business thrive as a result.  A true example of what Chris Brogan calls a “Trust Agent.”

@KenChapman46 is one of the most politically active digital citizens I know on the planet Earth.  Beyond politics and policy, Ken is a proponent for justice and equality.  You will always know where you stand with Ken as you’re measured based on your actions.  When it comes to politics, Ken understands how it affects our community and holds those accountable for their statements, actions or inaction as the case may be.  I have found Ken to be a loyal, trust-worthy person, who’s friendship I appreciate.  If you want to know what’s going on in politics days before it happens? Ken is your man.  That’s not to say he speaks out of turn, rather that his blog and predictions are typically accurate or not far off the mark.

@ChrisLabossiere is a local businessman, one of the founders of ProTraining.com he is an active digital citizen.  Chris was recently voted onto the board of one of our clients, Edmonton Economic Development Corporation and through that appointment he’s continually looking for ways to make Edmonton better.  My experience working with him on Change Camp and other ventures has taught me that Chris isn’t shy when it comes to sharing his opinion, and thank-goodness because he’s usually bang on in his assessment of the situation.  Sometimes he takes too many shots at himself, but Chris is a stand-up guy.  Frankly Chris, you should make a run for city council.

@Out_Inc is empowerment personified.  Shauna keeps herself very busy with her successful marketing company Out Enterprises Inc., and we almost had a chance to work together on a project.  I look forward to the day when a project comes along that makes sense for us to collaborate on.  Beyond her work life what makes Shauna a “trust agent” in my mind is her endless source positive energy and giving spirit.  Shauna is well known for coordinating with ZoomJer on charitable events and that sets her apart.  Not everyone steps up to organize and inspire others to give, Shauna does it often and she does it well.

@jdarrah is a digital gentleman among citizens, the fact that he believes strongly in building a enviable quality of life for others to enjoy in his community through his work at the City of Edmonton (#yeg) and privately is just one of the character traits that sets him apart.  I’ve come to know Jason better through our work on Change Camp and he’s top notch.  A smart and diplomatic voice in any room is in part what makes Jason a trust agent.

@bingofuel is one of Edmonton’s unique characters.  Always fun and unexpected, Adam blogs, helps run the very successful OilersNation and works with the Dub5 crew.  As if that wasn’t enough he recently started the unusual podcast, the Unknown Studio with @Scottybomb.  Mr. Fuel is pure digital citizen and a proponent of Edmonton through and through.  He’s searching for your pride Edmonton and he’s not going to stop until he finds it.

@livingsanctuary is a quiet, yet powerful voice for her micro-tribe via the community paper Boyle-McCauley News.  Paula readily lends her voice in support of issues, events and causes that need her help.  A proponent of equality, justice and humanity, Paula is a trusted source of positive energy.  I must admit that I have not spent time off line getting to know Paula and yet her activities online make her stand out in a positive way.  Thank-you Paula for your support.

@CaryWilliams is a key member of Edmonton’s NextGen group.  I first met Cary in person at Michael Janz’s IDEAfest, I called him “Astroboy” all day (ask him why) and our conversation continues to grow from there.  I interviewed Cary regarding NextGen and social media for my column in the Edmontonians Magazine, unfortunately it was replaced by a request from the publisher to cover another story.  Sorry Cary, maybe we can try that again in the future.  Cary is a “trust agent” because he believes in community roots, he believes in innovation and he believes in the empowerment of Gen Y.

@mastermaq is all about Edmonton, if there’s news to be had about the city, he’s all over it and likes to break the news first.  Due to his many media appearances, Mack is one of Edmonton’s most recognized digital citizens and he keeps everyone well informed about Edmonton via his blog.  He’s also not afraid to take a stand or offer his opinion, as we witnessed during the Edmonton City Centre Airport debate.  Another reason why you’ll recognize Mack is because it seems that he is at every social event happening around town, those he isn’t organizing himself that is.  Mack, you’re also someone who I think should run for city council.

@GriffMLA is about the truth, about being honorable and a voice for others.  Having had a few opportunities to meet with Doug and learn more about Doug and what it’s like to be an MLA, it’s clear to me that not only would I personally not want the job.  I also admire those who step-up, in the same way I admire goaltenders in hockey, they have to be just a little “off” to want to have players wire pucks at their head.  Doug is a very dedicated family man and digital Albertan, it’s clear he loves this province and offers a sound voice in the chaotic world of Alberta politics.

Edmonton’s online community has many folks who may be considered Trust Agents.

This is not a list made to the exclusion of others, you’re just as cool on this list as you are off it.  The true purpose was to take Chris Brogan’s lead and help identify certain meaningful traits in others that I have met online.  Too often people are given too much credit because they know something about the technology.  Chris Brogan along with Julien Smith’s work on Trust Agents is a game-changing look at how people and trust are the real power components behind social media.

Another personal motivation for this list was so that I express my gratitude and start a conversation by recognizing in a small way the good work that others in the community are doing and how that influences every day life for the rest of us.

This Edmonton social media project is designed to generate awareness.

Awareness for Edmonton and our Fringe festival in other parts of the world.  We’re doing a number of things to accomplish this goal, one such activity is the live streaming video.  Tonight we finished broadcasting our 3rd Fringe related show.  First was the Edmonton Fringe VIP reception, second was last night’s live webcast of a show out of Seoul, South Korea – Choon-Hyang: True Love.  Tonight the excitement continued as we worked with actor Eric Davis from New York City who plays the entertaining and engaging Red Bastard, once again watch for these clips to be uploaded.

Broadcasting a live theatre act is a unique experience for all sorts of reasons.

You’re not really sure of the challenges associated with the venue until you get there and assess the situation, which in this case, has to be done in-between productions and with next to no time before going live.  Tonight we were really packed into Venue #3 or ACACIA Hall for example.  Heat was a problem and caused a brief shut down right at the beginning of our live broadcast, fortunately not much longer than a 5 minute outage was experienced as we switched computers.  Not something that’s ever happened to us before but once again going live on-location means anything can happen.  Thankfully we have an experienced crew.

Other things that we have to address on the fly are the nuances with the show itself, doing one off broadcasts means we rarely have any prep time.  So for example, we have little to no idea where to position the camera in anticipation of the next shot, that unpredictability can be troublesome, dark venues, no space, lighting apparatus in the way, you name it.  In order to do this well the fusedlogic team just needs to be really good at their craft.

With that in mind, I’m proud of our team, they’ve done a tremendous job of dealing with these little details and I believe with the exception of the one unexpected heat related shut-down which could have been far worse, everyone and everything has performed really well.  Certainly, this social media work has been great for Edmonton’s Fringe festival, giving it the recognition it deserves as a leader in many ways and no I’m not just saying that because they’re our client or because I live in the region.  If you like the fact that Edmonton is known for great festivals and you attend the Fringe, then this benefits you.  If you’ve participated directly in these social media efforts in some way then it has hopefully enriched your Fringe experience this year.  If not, I’d like to hear about it so that we can make it better.  Post a comment, send us an email or a DM, let the Fringe know directly if that’s better.  We are constantly looking to learn and gain experience, we never stop looking to innovate.

By the way, I simply cannot bear it any longer, I’ve got to let the cat peak its head out of the bag.  Just for fun and because we have absolutely nothing else to do (dripping with sarcasm), we’re going to be launching an iPhone application “very” soon, as well as, a Twitter app.  This will be under our custom application division fusedlogic Labs.  Just thought I’d throw that out there…

As the Chair of Edmonton’s ChangeCamp, I can attest to the fact that the above question continues to be contemplated by the steering committee to some degree each time we meet.  As this innovative and smart group continues to wrap its collective group of heads around what ChangeCamp means to us as individuals and as a pseudo organization, new things are discovered each time.

For those of you in Edmonton and the surrounding area who are wondering about this event and if, why and how you might either volunteer or be a direct citizen participant, here is a short explanation of not only what ChangeCamp is but also how you can contribute.

The centralized question constructed by the original ChangeCamp group in Toronto is as follows:

“How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?”

Below is a PowerPoint deck generated by Mark Kuzniki, a ChangeCamp steward on the subject and provides great insight into the general philosophy behind ChangeCamp.

Picture courtesy Rakerman (via Flickr). Some rights reserved.

One of the primary messages I’m taking away from efforts thus far is that the social web enables conversations between citizens as everyone knows.  A group that arguably has been the least likely to engage openly in those conversations is government.  ChangeCamp events across Canada have certainly produced results, solutions and concepts outside of social media and for all levels of government which is a testament to the richness of the process.  I suppose given the fact that my company derives its revenue solely and directly from engaging in social media every single day, it’s safe to say that I’m a bit biased and yet I recognize there are all sorts of issues that we should and will tackle together.

What happens on ChangeCamp day?

ChangeCamp is a day-long event designed to provide the average citizen with an opportunity to communicate with others face-to-face for lively and meaningful discussion surrounding key issues.  Most, if not all, of those issues will be supplied the day of the event, on the fly, by the citizen participants and by all three tiers of government.  Have a pet-peeve, idea or solution that government should know about?  Come out the ChangeCamp.  Want to increase transparency, accountability and have a technological answer to offer on how to accomplish that?  Come out to ChangeCamp and let your voice be heard.  This is where we plan to take the conversation to the streets of Edmonton, Alberta and drum up support for citizens in action.  The Edmonton ChangeCamp braintrust is adamant that our event include folks outside of the immersive world of the social web.  Average Albertans, everyday Edmontonians, non-twitter, “off-line” members of society must be included in this experience for it to be effective and truly representative of our greater Edmonton community.  All are welcome, (although seating will be limited of course).

Picture courtesy Rakerman (via Flickr). Some rights reserved.

ChangeCamp day will not only provide you with an opportunity to voice an opinion but subsequently also be a part of the solution.  Working on the strongest ideas put forward, you will collaborate with other participants in working groups called “labs” to identify a clear path forward on a given issue.  This “lab” portion of the day and will involve putting your thoughts into practical, actionable advice, all of which will be recorded and organized by the ChangeCamp Edmonton facilitators and observers.

We then plan on having some time set aside for review of all of the concepts (time permitting) identified throughout the day.  Follow-up will consist of the ChangeCamp Edmonton community staying in touch online and at future events in order to sustain and hopefully even grow what was started this year.  All suggestions will be put forward to government by the steering committee in an appropriate manner, we’ll make sure they know about your work and hear your voice.

For more information please visit the Google group and join us as either a volunteer or participant.  The steering committee will be posting a new website within approximately seven days or so from now.  We’re looking to secure a location for a date in and around the last week of September.  As soon as that can be done, we’ll announce the date and location to everyone.  Also, this is a volunteer event and as such there will be some limited expenses, so if your organization would like to be a part of this from a sponsorship perspective

please contact me for more details.  walter[at]fusedlogic.com

Picture courtesy Rakerman (via Flickr). Some rights reserved.

Interesting links to check out:

ChangeCamp Canada

ChangeCamp Flickr Group (pictures)

ChangeCamp Organizers (videos)

ChangeCamp Edmonton Google Group

ChangeCamp Ottawa Google Group

ChangeCamp Toronto Website

ChangeCamp Vancouver Website

Regarding the redesign of fusedlogic.com, we’d love to hear your comments, suggestions and ideas to ensure we have a great site.

Think the logo should be relocated like was suggested by @ivansf   

@ivansf @eadnams grats. You should center the logo #fusedlogic 

Let us know.  That’s not a bad idea actually Ivan, thanks, have the entire logo centered would probably look better.  What about sections or content you think is missing?  Let us know.  This also includes the type of blog content that is important to you.  Essentially, we’d love to hear from you on all topics and please include your concerns as well.

Finally, you’ll notice that we’re working on changing how we describe ourselves too.  Soon gone will be the word “strategists” from our midst.  Why you ask? Simple, ultimately we’ve always been about “engagement” and we intend to continue to demonstrate that fact. We’re Alberta’s only 100% dedicated social media engagement firm.  Over the past 10 months of our 9 year total history, we’ve worked with the MacEwan School of Business, ATB Financial, Government of Alberta, Edmontonians Magazine and several small business owners to name a few. Further, we’re proud to announce Edmonton’s Fringe Theatre Adventures as a new client, more to follow on that announcement soon.   

Regardless, we’re excited about the short-term and very excited about the mid-term…Thank-you for your support and friendship, we look forward to the conversation including your comments ahead.

Watch @fusedlogic @paulney and @eadnams on twitter as well for updates.

Friday April 3 was the culmination of a big project for fusedlogic: MacEwan BlogCamp. It was Edmonton’s and, as far as we know, Alberta’s first blog contest. It was a unique opportunity to combine business, social media and education in one cool package.

We’d like to congratulate the top three MacEwan bloggers:

1.  Carla Putnam
2. Patrick Finegan
3. Peter Jaffray

The prize for first place was an Apple MacBook. In addition to the contest winners, we’d like to congratulate everyone who participated. Blogging for nine hours is not easy under the best of circumstances and blogging for nine hours in a busy cafeteria would be even tougher.

But, our bloggers persevered and we had a lot of interesting posts. We gave them a variety of topics to blog about and we were impressed with the results.

Judging

The winners of the blogging contest were chosen based on a number of factors. We had a voting system in place that ranked posts based on the cumulative net difference between a thumbs up and a thumbs down rating given by blog post viewers. In addition, we also judged the blog posts based on originality and quality of content.

Sponsors

Our sponsors came through for MacEwan BlogCamp in a big way. We can’t say enough about how happy we are that they sponsored our contest and made a huge contribution to the success of BlogCamp.

The team

We would also like to thank Jana Clarke, Sarah Parker, Laura England, Joseph DiFabio and the rest of the Grant MacEwan College team for giving us the opportunity to help put on this event. It was a lot of work but it was a blast! Grant MacEwan College really put on a good show for everyone involved.

And to the fusedlogic team, thank you as well: Walter did a great job hosting BlogCamp and all the other tasks he had; without Evan and Paul we wouldn’t have had the website or the video running virtually glitch-free; Genoa did a great job keeping everyone organized; Doug kept everyone on track with his project management skills; Krysta did a great job with her video as well.

Ultimately I think we succeeded in our goal of helping to raise the profile of the MacEwan School of Business and we’re confident that will result in more inquiries about the School of Business. MacEwan School of Business really is a good choice for a business degree in Edmonton, Alberta and beyond. We’re looking forward to the next BlogCamp!

MacEwan BlogCamp photos

If you’re interested in having a look at some great photos of MacEwan BlogCamp, have a look at Bruce Clarke’s Flickr photos. He has 166 photos there to look at. Bruce made my job tough to decide on the best photos to post here because they were all good.

Alain Saffel

When I speak to a client and use the word “bravery” in part I’m referring to this trend as a barrier of entry into the consumer’s psyche. Emotional engagement can only happen if both parties are willing and accepting participants, some feel that to get there a spectacle is required and there is definitely truth to that.

Social contract or social investment?

Some refer to this engagement between brand and consumer as the beginning of a “social contract,” I’d like to make the case for the use of the word “investment.” I recently expressed my opinion on well-known Forrester researcher Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and referred to a portion of our recent work with MacEwan School of Business as the example.

Owyang’s post was a higher level discussion about how consumers information was given out via various social network platforms and the ability of an agency such as ours to scrape that data, turning it into meaningful intelligence as the basis for the “contract.”

My point of view is that reaching an emotional level of discussion with prospective clients, consumers or partners is a key event in the relationship and can only happen with certain conditions present. Many efforts within the social web and across many industries do not accomplish this at all, at any level. Others do reach that level but unfortunately the emotion is anger on behalf of the consumer.

So which brands are more likely to embrace the concept of emotional centric “social investment?” I believe those who’s cultures are built on a foundation of mutual respect, giving and caring. More specifically, I think brands with women involved in key leadership positions are more likely to take these sensitivity and psychological issues into consideration when building out their marketing campaigns. This habit should serve them well when engaging the rest of us within the social web.

My personal social media journey started in 2004 and I’ve been studying these types of aspects ever since as well as participating. Certainly, I’ve made mistakes in the past; sometimes I can be a bit forward and offer an opinion when silence should have been my course of action. Having said that, I think that my grasp of the social web, and more importantly people, is stronger for these interactions, good and bad. This I feel, translates into a stronger customer experience here at fusedlogic.

Out of curiosity, a quick tally of all projects past has the number of ones with women as the key stakeholder in the lead. Further, fusedlogic’s best client experience ever (from our perspective at least and I hope theirs too) on all accounts is MacEwan and it was led by Jana Clarke, Marketing Manager for the School of Business.

We’ve been fortunate to have many great clients and this project was a ton of fun, very productive and went off with little to no issues. The organization was phenomenal to work with, as was her team, the majority of them women. Please don’t read anything into this discussion that isn’t there, I’m simply stating statistics. fusedlogic doesn’t specifically target women entrepreneurs or executives; it just seems to have progressed that way. For example, we have recently been asked to supply 3 proposals and 2 of the three are to organizations led by women.

Am I being stereotypical throughout this discussion? Probably. The more important question should be whether I’m off base with what I’m saying. Is my assumption that men are more likely to gravitate towards the term “social contract” vs. “social investment” in terms of general approach correct?

What about the flip side and my belief that in the above context women are more likely to approach business as an emotional “investment,” which I believe then provides them with an advantage over men regarding their social media marketing efforts? Do you think men are more likely to laugh at this E-Trade commercial and even go around calling their friends “shank-a-potumus” afterwards? I know I have, I think it’s hilarious, if you have research to the contrary I’d love to see it.

Ultimately, my experience has shown that the social web is an “investment.” If I forget that fact I’m promptly given my hat and shown the door. What about you?

Written by Walter Schwabe, have a wonderful Easter long-weekend everyone.

It’s an application that you can run on an iPhone or an iPod Touch and it allows you to do mobile surveys. It’s certainly cooler than the old pen and paper method and it tallies all the data automatically.

I’m familiar with the application as fusedlogic used it in a recent Edmonton social media project. It was cool that we were able to post real time survey results to the site. Who knows, maybe you’ll get more people responding to surveys because you get to plunk your answers down on a cool gadget?

Cool sites you’d have never known about

One thing I like about the Social Web Meetup is hearing about all the different projects people are working on and the different, cool websites they run across.

We had an opportunity to share our own site or a cool site we’ve been on, and here are a few:

East West Connect – Tait Lawton does Chinese translation and Chinese online marketing.

Community Intelligence – Tamara Stecyk’s blog. Congratulations to Tamara in her new job at Edmonton’s Foodbank.

Wefollow.com – This site, started up by Digg’s Kevin Rose, and is a Twitter directory organized according to interests. So, if you’re into #socialmedia @mashable is at the top of that category. Of course you should be following @fusedlogic as well! One thing to keep in mind is that just because someone is at the top of the list it doesn’t mean they’re an expert. Not by a long shot! These days I’ve noticed a large number of Twitter users out there who have thousands of followers and are following thousands but have a small number of Tweets. Numbers do not equate to knowledge, as much as some of these instant “experts” might hope.

Utils.me – It’s kind of a fun way to describe your utils, or relative satisfaction. Just add the hashtag #utils 50 or #utils -50 (or whatever number you like). Then check on the utils site and see the graph of your relative happiness over time. Doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose, but I’m sure someone will come up with one!

There were definitely more sites shared than I’ve listed and I probably missed yours. Let me know and I’ll put it up on the list, or just leave a comment with your site URL and a blurb about it.

Off to Brewster’s

After the last few Social Web Meetups we’ve headed to Brewster’s at Oliver Square where we’d reserved 20 seats. We’ve had no problem filling them either! We’ve always got to pull in a few more chairs. I had to laugh after reserving the tables there because they somehow had the impression that we were some kind of online dating service! I assured them we were not. I don’t know if anyone’s ever had a date because of a Meetup or a Tweetup in Edmonton, but you never know. Got any stories?

One thing that I have always enjoyed about the Social Web Meetup is the diversity of the group members. The experience level ranges from novice to veteran. There are some really interesting people who attend and I really enjoy hearing their stories. It’s great to be able to chat more at the pub afterwards too, and last night it seemed like almost everyone from the Meetup made it out to the pub. It’s the day after the Meetup and I’m already looking forward to the meeting next month!

Alain Saffel

We’re in the Grant MacEwan City Centre campus cafeteria right now and the place is busy! We’ve got our bloggers up and running now.

We’ve also got a blogging contest for everyone else on the net too. We’re promoting it on Twitter, and here. So, if you are interested, you can win cash for a blog post. You just need to do one post! Easy as pie, isn’t it? Think you’re good. Give it a shot. You blog, post the link on the page and we draw the winner randomly. Later on in the day we’ll decide if we really like one post and throw some prizes at that person too.

Mike & Lenny videos

We’ve got parts one and two of the Mike & Lenny series up and running. Check them out and let us know what you think.

Mike & Lenny video, part 1

Mike & Lenny video, part 2

Just in case you haven’t heard of Blogcamp, it’s happening April 3, starting at noon at the City Centre Campus of Grant MacEwan in downtown Edmonton. It will run for nine hours, and MacEwan students will be blogging about a variety of business and personally chosen topics during that time.

Blogcamp bloggers will have the chance to win great prizes, with the top prize being a MacBook.

How does this affect you? Well, you’ll have the chance to determine who the winner is. At the bottom of each blog post we’ll have a thumbs up and thumbs down. You get one vote on each post and you can comment as well.

Let those bloggers know whether you agree or disagree with what they’ve got to say. You’re also more than welcome to go to the campus cafeteria. There will be lots happening!

We’ve also got the trailer for the Mike & Lenny video up on the MacEwan Blogcamp site. Check it out and let us know what you think. The full video will be rolled out April 3.

In recent weeks the Edmonton twitter community has grown considerably. Why? Well, some members of the local media have decided to fire-up their Twitter accounts and publicize doing so. Even the City of Edmonton has gotten into the act. In fact, Albertans from many walks of life are joining Twitter, including those in political circles, but that’s another whole series of posts.

So, I’ve decided see where the Edmonton Twitter community feels it fits when compared to the generally accepted best practices described in the well-known social media standard Groundswell. You’ll notice that I’ve thrown in a bit of my own interpretation for good measure as well. Figure 3-2 on page 43 of Groundswell shows The Social Technographics ladder. Many members of the Edmonton Twitter community may fall into one or more of the following technographic groups.

Where are you in the Twitter universe?

Joiners - essentially, you’ve joined Twitter because you were encouraged by something you read, watched or a even more likely because you’ve been encouraged by another Albertan to join. You may also belong to at least one social network such as Facebook or Linkedin. In fact, to be considered a real Joiner you’re setting up profiles in several places.

Just for fun I’ve provided a short-list below of new members within the Edmonton Twitter community that may fit into this category based on current level of followers. These folks are at 100 or less followers (this number is a moving target so it’s not exact). There are many new users but these are a few that happened to use the #yeg hashtag at the time I was writing this post.

If you’d like to add your name to this list to increase follows just leave a comment with your twitter profile name and what category you feel you fit into best.

• http://twitter.com/JenCrosby
• http://twitter.com/michaelbridge
• http://twitter.com/jodinechase
• http://twitter.com/Carywill
• http://twitter.com/eglinski
• http://twitter.com/cfsmith
• http://twitter.com/DavidCronin

Spectators - After joining the community, a lot of observing Twitter and its culture takes place. This is of course a natural activity and, not to worry, everyone does this to some extent as this eco-system continues to evolve. We’re all learning…that’s one of my favorite things about social media in general. The opportunities to learn from others are immense and I consider myself to be a life-long learner. Having said that, as a Twitter user, your updates are very low as are your followers – you’re watching quietly.

Through observation and learning, confidence begins to increase and gradually this impacts activity type and volume. Conversations, exchanges of information, direct messages, link posting all increase. The newest members of the Edmonton Twitter community become more involved in terms of the types of Tweets and level of participation. Generally, an increase in tweet volume tends to happen and a need to “break the story” or “RT” (re-Tweet) interesting tweets also starts to take place. Possibly the courage to post links of their own blog posts or the first Twitpics start to appear – personality really starts to shine through.

Critics - As ones’ personality starts to shine more and more within their tweets. I believe a further diversion of grouping starts to happen. Commenting, taking positions on various subject matter that before may have been considered controversial like politics for example starts to happen. The person has much more confidence now and so rating, reviews and criticism tends to happen more. Further, if the person is sarcastic in nature, a skeptic or generally negative this also presents itself.

Collectors - Personality and confidence allows the newest members of Edmonton’s Twitter community who are remaining active to communicate things like hobbies. Music, photography are two top ways people start to demonstrate these traits. Links to other profiles on sites like flickr and Last.fm are used.

Creators - I’ve left this category towards the end because when it comes to Twitter I think that this group is really a catch all in a lot of ways. If you’ve created even one Tweet you could technically be considered a Creator. However, I define Creators in this case to be Twitter users who are active in almost all of the technographic categories in some way, have several profiles, share numerous types of content from video, audio, photos, links, opinions, etc. The most active of all the groups, Creators are separated by the reason they’re there: to build relationships, to build an army, to build credibility, to build intelligence and observe trends.

Autobots - (I’ve invented this last group.) Twitter naturally has this built in ego-meter that is your “followers” total. Some fall into the “I must have a million followers” mentality and I admit I watch my own numbers too. How can you not? Having said that, some go to great lengths to “monetize” their Twitter activity somehow. For example, let’s say you like to sell e-books, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” However, an Autobot would then employ various automated software apps to auto-follow people and almost certainly auto-direct-message (DM) people with their affiliate e-book selling site link. Now just like with Viagra spam, if the 8% of people who got those spam emails didn’t buy Viagra via this method then the spam industry may not exist.

Be wary of those who are strictly focused on just creating a larger number. Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research tweeted this recently:

@jowyang bloggers are arguing about how much 100,000 twitter followers is worth http://tinyurl.com/c3z6nk I say earn trust, not buy it

Walter Schwabe

That was a lot of fun everyone, that said, I’m tired and now going radio silent.

Walter

Tonight was the first ever ChangeCamp Edmonton meeting where some like minded citizens came together to discuss government and citizen engagement under the umbrella of ChangeCamp.ca (Edmonton wiki is here and the Google Group is here.)

The group included the following folks on Twitter: @Imparo, @ChrisLaBossiere, @JillLaBossiere, @jdarrah, @davecournoyer, @mastermaq, @paulney, @eadnams, @dibegin and myself @fusedlogic

The Steering Committee adopted as a starting point – this question.

“How can we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?”

What was clear from tonight’s discussion in my mind is that there are definitely people out there who think that the gap between government and the average citizen is wide and consists of too many barriers for real substantive change, meaningful discussion and innovation.

There are pictures and more info to check out @mastermaq’s post on tonight’s meeting as well.

By the way, tomorrow I’m presenting at IDEAfest – 10:05am Room B, Tory Basement 95, University of Alberta Campus and will be giving away cash during my presentation entitled “How YOU can use social media to change the world.” This will be a live “social” experiment that I invite you to be a part of…

See you there,

Walter

It’s not ready for public consumption yet, and the iPhone app will be available through iTunes.

The program seems to be an internal social media tool and with project management elements. It will be interesting to see the final product. I think it’s something that could be quite useful for most companies.

Edmonton social media community expanding

We started out our discussion about social media in Edmonton by watching a CTV story about Twitter, with several Edmontonians featuring prominently in the story.

Media interest in Twitter has grown substantially in Alberta, particularly in Edmonton lately. Many media organizations have jumped on board and are now experimenting with the medium.

With this media interest there has been curiosity among its viewers and consumers, and according to Mack Male, the number of Twitter users in Edmonton has grown by 50 per cent over the last month. Nice!

Social media community changing?

Edmonton has a vibrant social media community and we’re quite friendly. There was a question whether this will change as time goes on and the community grows. One thought was that instead of meeting as one large group as often happens, people will begin to gather in smaller groups.

There were some comments about people joining Twitter and billing themselves as social media experts or social media gurus. Typical hype. Kind of hard to bill yourself as a social media expert when you’ve been on Twitter for a week, nobody’s following you and you’ve Tweeted a couple dozen times.

One person who could legitimately bill himself as a social media expert in Alberta is Walter Schwabe (@fusedlogic). There aren’t many in Alberta, but the number is growing across Canada. Mack Male’s another one here in Edmonton.

Mainstream media and social media

My favourite part of the discussion was also one of the more contentious ones. Recently mainstream media organizations have been going through a lot of difficulty due to the recession. There seems to be some glee in social media circles about their difficulties.

Mainstream media in Alberta is beginning to join the social media community, and Edmonton’s media especially. It’s obvious they’re quite new to the medium and are having a few growing pains. Who hasn’t though? I’m willing to give anyone new to Twitter the benefit of the doubt, except for spammers or the instant social media experts.

My only observation is that Alberta media organizations seem to have jumped into the game without much of a social media strategy. I could be wrong. I they think they could use an effective social media strategy to cut their learning curve and increase their social media impact.

Continuing the discussion about social media

We again made our way to Brewster’s Pub in Oliver Square for drinks and discussion. I had reserved for 15 people but we had many more people than that. Not bad for a Monday night!

We were lucky to have Alberta MLA Doug Griffiths join us at Brewster’s. He’s also on Twitter as @GriffMLA. The Alberta government has made a strong push to get involved with social media. It was good to hear Doug’s perspective on it. He said he’s had lots of good feedback on the Alberta government’s social media efforts. On a side note, I thought it was interesting that he was on the CBC show The Week the Women Went.

I believe that your perception of a given situation is reality for you. In other words, if you perceive that the government isn’t transparent, then that’s your reality.

Here’s my perception based on what I’ve witnessed after having worked with government and advised government affiliated organizations on social media. Two internal cultural segments exist within government surrounding the discussion about the social web.

I designate those two segments as “the brave and the fearful.” The “brave” are those who read Groundswell and then attend conferences similar to the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media for Government event that’s wrapping up in Ottawa.

By the way, should you like to observe the conversation on twitter the hashtag is #ALI. Or, try the conversation by links like this PDF by @mikesgene which shows chatter about the usual suspects such as, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Second Life, wikis…etc. The undertone of these tweets is that many are focused on implementing the technology as soon as possible, which is where many begin their social media learning journey.

Heading home to join the conversation

Excited delegates are now heading back to their respective bureaucratic worlds filled with visions of changing their particular corner of the world by inspiring colleagues to “join the conversation.” Many will suggest starting a blog, creating a wiki, shooting pictures, video and as many that attended #ALI did, they’ll encourage others to quickly join the twitter community as well. A sort of “citizen journalism meets public sector mashup” if you will.

People like @pameladawn state on twitter that she is “taking what I learned at #ALI and heading back to Saskatchewan.” Who am I to argue with that? I think that’s great AND I think Pamela and her colleagues are probably in for a surprise.

Why? Because over the next few days all across Canada, as everyone shows up to their respective government offices, so too will the second segment of government in this discussion: the “fearful.” And thus the uphill battle begins with the non-believer. If there’s one thing that makes people in government and especially decision-makers nervous, it’s citizens with an opinion who know how to voice it by way of the social web.

Resistance to social media

To a certain extent I understand the root of the resistance. Afterall, often political careers and/or elections are built and destroyed based on a few well-timed words in the media that the social web picks up and runs with, here’s a real gem- case in point.

Pamela may experience frustration while some of her colleagues defend their resistance as being prudent, careful or even risk averse. That said, many of these intelligent, hard working folks won’t come right out and call their feelings what they really are, which is “ignorance driving fear.”

Regardless of how you perceive the resistance factor, experience has shown that these “anti-change agents” are a large barrier to progress into the social web. Sure there are pockets across this great country of activity where the planets have aligned and progressive thinking and open creative minds prevail, yes, even in government there are creative minds. I just simply wouldn’t bet my entire business on waiting for, as one twitter user @jdarrah called it “moving the glacier,” to actually happen at the speed of social media business.

Essentially, this is the “newly initiated and willing evangelist” trying to convince the “resistant and fearful” that having a transparent and open dialogue with the average citizen in a highly effective communications environment with little control over the end message is a good thing. That within government, there are better ways to listen, learn, collaborate, communicate and share ideas with constituents.

Social web victory

Is there a way forward for the newly initiated brave? Absolutely! Here’s one example of a brave leader who has looked to tackle a very tough world issue and by being incredibly brave has generated this awesome social web victory via youtube. However, Her Majesty Queen Raina of Jordan, despite having initially built up a tremendous amount of “social capital” with the human web, she too has lost momentum and along with it possibly opportunity to continue to build her quest to the next level. Having said that, I suspect we haven’t heard that last from the Queen on this issue of equality.

What many of the delegates at the #ALI conference will likely communicate on the conference wiki in a few weeks is that beyond the technology. The real work is done on issues like cultural differences and understanding, commitment and sustainability. These are the factors the must be successfully navigated in order to build lasting results.

As brand new twitter user @doctornaud said in their second ever tweet which was directed to me in response to my tweet about the fact that our governments are so far behind. “@fusedlogic I totally agree but we need to start somewhere.” Exactly right doc, exactly right.

When asking the average private citizen about whether they feel their government is transparent, chances are you’ll likely get sneers, chuckles accompanied by looks that communicate – “are you kidding me?” Well, ladies and gentlemen there are definitely elements within government that really do want increased transparency and more open communication. They’re excited to share the new knowledge they’ve just learned and would like to implement social media solutions to accomplish that goal. That to me is highly cool and it needs to be supported.

ChangeCamp Edmonton

Those of you who consider yourself a part of this group are not out in the cold. Consider joining us at ChangeCamp Edmonton. I guarantee this journey will collectively test our will, patience, creativity and bravery. Further, I believe it will be incredibly fun and rewarding as well.

Chances are that many are about to learn what I perceive to be the most important thing about social media, beyond the technology, social media takes serious dedication and a long-term commitment coupled with brave and meaningful human interaction in order to be really successful.

Walter Schwabe

I want to thank the folks from CPRS Edmonton from the bottom of my heart for not only inviting me to speak with them today but more importantly for supporting Edmonton’s Food Bank and the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge in particular.

As many of you can tell from our blog and (even a bit of press, yeah baby!) or the section entitled “Food Bank” we’ve got something going on with Edmonton’s Food Bank.  As mentioned above it’s the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge.

This really is exciting because outside of our daily client work we can focus on having some fun with our social pals, friends and acquaintances and explore our collective desire to give back.  Contrary to what others may think, I think it’s in our human nature to want to give.  This exercise will help prove my hypothesis.  1 million pictures of 1 million donations in 1 year.  WOW, talk about being able to measure results.  Regardless of where we end up (past our goal…) this will be a great learning experience for all concerned.  Human nature, social conversation and even the advantages and disadvantages of some of the technology…lot’s to observe and learn from.

Plus, for the gadget freaks we get to play with our digital cameras too.  Speaking of which I’ll ensure we get lot’s of photos of the donations made by the Edmonton’s PR society today and post them on our Facebook group

Oh and by the way, look out Calgary, Edmonton’s gunning for ya…I know that my pals in Calgary who are reading this right now are shakin in their space boots (it’s in their nature).  You better go take some pictures of your donation drives before we here in Edmonton get too much of a jump on you…and Flames fans this goes double for you.  Oilers fans will never stand for it…

Welcome to the new Battle of Alberta!

Walter Schwabe

Help us help food banks around the world. Post your picture of your food bank donation.

Edmonton has thrown down the gauntlet! fusedlogic has kicked-off the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge.

The goal is 1 million pictures of 1 million food bank donations in 1 year. It’s a busy time of year for food banks and we met with Marjorie Bencz of Edmonton’s Food Bank to get started.

Christmas is such an important time for every food bank. I was surprised to learn that much of Edmonton’s Food Bank’s fundraising supports the food bank well into the new year. Cash and canned food donations are an important contribution.

Food bank needs don’t stop at Christmas. It seems obvious to say it, but people aren’t thinking about it much in the middle of the summer. At fusedlogic, we’re hoping that this joint effort with Edmonton’s Food Bank will get people thinking about helping people throughout the year.

Please join our groups on Facebook and Flickr. Take a picture of you, your family, your coworkers and your friends making a food bank donation. Our goal is to get one million pictures by the end of 2009, but with your help we think we can do it much sooner.

Walter was on SomethingTV yesterday talking about the food bank challenge.

Challenging other cities: Milwaukee. Anyone else?

The goal is to have one million pictures by the end of 2009.

“We” (Edmonton) believe that we can put up more pictures of individual donations to Edmonton’s Food Bank than Milwaukee can. Now certainly this challenge isn’t limited to Edmonton vs. Milwaukee, here in the Edmonton region, well over a million strong ourselves, we’re formidable people. We’ll take on anybody.

I’m sure Edmonton’s southern neighbour, Calgary, may be up to the challenge. Canada’s other major cities like Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Saskatoon and Winnipeg should be able to find a few people to add photos too. Sorry if we’ve missed your city, but you can join in as well!

Our press release on the food bank challenge went out this morning and the Edmonton Journal has already interviewed us. Now we’ll see if the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is also up to the challenge. I call upon Tannette Johnson Elie (despite being on holidays) to rise to the challenge and get the word out in Milwaukee about the fact that the great City of Milwaukee has been challenged, in a friendly Canadian manner of course.

Because this is almost entirely designed as a social media event, we anticipate that early on it will be the Edmonton tech community that will rise to the challenge. Organizations such as Techvibes may want to blog about it.

Anyone from Techvibes or TechCrunch want to take on the challenge? Alberta bloggers such as Ken Chapman, Dave Cournoyer, Mack Male, Chris LaBossiere, Brad Grier, Dean Owen and many others have also been a big help in talking about this and helping us promote such a great cause.

If you’re in a position to help, please do! No donation is too small. They are all important. Help set a great example for your family, friends and coworkers. We know it’s a busy time of year and it’s easy to forget that there are many who are much less fortunate than we are.

Thank you and Merry Christmas! : )

In case you missed it here’s the press release.

Randy described how he started Runningmap, a map site that allows you to plot your jogging routes. He delved into how the software worked and I think everyone was pretty impressed. I think a few people were surprised that he used Yahoo for his maps and not the seemingly ubiquitous Google.

Yahoo got nothing but praise from Randy for their approachability and willingness to work with him to make changes to their software, something that Google might not be so willing to do.

Looking at his software from a user perspective, I can see why people would like it. It allows you to easily draw up customized route maps and view the elevation and distances. I haven’t used the software (not being a jogger) but I plan to tinker with it. The social media element to the software is that you can share the routes and upload photos.

While I may not be a jogger, I don’t see why you couldn’t use this same software to plan walks, hikes, mountain climbing, cycling, automobile trips and more. Why limit it to jogging?

It sounds like there are some interesting plans afoot for this cool site. It is definitely worth checking out.

Smibs ringing the Doorbell

Peter Urban gave us a demo of his Doorbell software, explained what Smibs is all about and gave us all a copy of his “unbusiness plan.” Peter’s approach to everything seems a little unconventional which, when you’re trying to grow your business, can be a good thing.

It’s kind of a collaborative tool that is useful for keeping track of what you have to do every day. I like the idea of being able to keep track of projects in one spot. I’ve found it to be a bit of pain working on different projects simultaneously because everyone uses a different project management tool.

There’s a lot more to it, and I plan on exploring it. I’ve signed up and haven’t had a chance to really tinker with it. It’s in public beta, so check it out. I’m curious what you think of it, and I’m sure Peter would love to get your feedback too.

NAIT

I almost forgot to mention the great location for the Meetup. This time it was at NAIT’s HP Centre. It worked really nicely because it seems like it’s only a five minute drive for me. That’s not the only advantage. It was a good, central location, though the weather didn’t seem to be cooperating. Parking, my eternal frustration, was certainly not an issue at NAIT.

Not sure where the next Meetup is, but I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be nice to get out in January and try to avoid cabin fever.

Alain Saffel

Can you really afford to chill when it comes to your online marketing & social media strategy?

I read yesterday that online shopping by Canadians hit $12.8 billion last year. That’s pretty impressive, but you have to look at the numbers that form part of the story to find the really interesting data.

One third of Canadians 16 and older made purchases online and even more interesting, Alberta led the country with 51 per cent of people making purchases online. Why that is, I’m not sure. Just over half the people from 25 to 34 in Canada made purchases online as well.

According to StatsCan more retailers are offering online shopping, which makes sense. What retailers should also know is that 43 per cent of Canadians have used the Internet to research their purchases, with 64 per cent saying they’ve gone to a “bricks and mortar” store to make their purchase.

How businesses can respond

What it means is that if you’re a business that doesn’t have a solid web presence, you may be missing out. The Internet is an incredible research tool, so make sure your company has the information people are looking for.

For retailers it’s important to have the basics down: solid website, good design, good search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads, but what else? That’s not going to guarantee online marketing success, whatever business you’re in.

A good social media strategy can help tie all your marketing together. Engaging with your market in other ways such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social media can help your business in many ways.

By listening to your clients and potential clients, no matter what type of business you’re in, you can gain valuable information to help serve them better. A good social media strategy will help you do that, and is a win-win for you and your client: you’re doing more business and your client is getting what they need and want.

A good social media strategy is important for online retailers, but also to those companies that are being researched online and contacted off line.

Alberta social media strategy

It’s remarkable that Albertans are leading Canada in terms of shopping online. It should be a wakeup call for those Alberta companies who are ignoring their online marketing.

I would really like to know more about why Alberta leads the country in online shopping. Could it be the booming economy here? Not sure. According to what I’ve been reading though, Alberta’s economy is still strong, possibly the strongest in North America. It’s still a good place to do business.

Online marketing will continue to be a growth industry. It might be a good idea to examine your online marketing efforts and social media strategy to make sure you’re part of the growing online research and shopping trend.

In the spirit of sharing some business news during Small Business Week (and condensing posts because I’m so busy lately,) here’s some interesting new information for you.  Some of you may remember a video I shot earlier this year with Peter Urban of Smibs (featured below.)  At the time, SmibsNet (a collaboration and networking software for businesses) wasn’t ready for public beta.   That all changed last Tuesday with the launch of the public beta and Peter asked me while on Twitter the other day if I’d blog about it.  Peter provided me with a personal invite to sign-up for the beta and fusedlogic is now listed on the site.  This software is very cool and helps to solve the business development collaboration issue that many companies have.  I suggest that you consider signing up and trying it out.

Sidenote: Peter did agree to call me so I could asked him some specific questions as prep for a more in- depth blog post but if you know Peter, he’s hard working and a beta takes a lot of effort.  I’m sure he wasn’t going out of his way to ignore me.   Besides we bump into each other all the time at events and around the neighborhood.  Maybe he’ll bring his SmibsTV crew down the Web 2.0 meetup and present SmibsNet there on Nov 6th.   Below is the video interview with Peter some months ago on Whyte Ave in Edmonton.

Also, Peter if you’re reading this and I know you are, Smibs needs to be a Sherwood Park Chamber member right away…expect me to be relentless on this point.

Here’s the Tweet:fusedlogic #yeg Amber Alert Call 780-423-4567 . 7 yr girl, peach dress/flowers. 20-30 yr old balding blond male. Blue SUV AB license ending in 179 about 3 hours ago from TwitterFox

This information was passed along by others who follow me on Twitter such as @Zoomjer.  Also, @ChrisLaBossiere provided this information from the Calgary Sun while retweeting elements of the info above.

However, I believe the perpetrator heard the Amber Alert because he left the little girl in Evansburg, Alberta, a town 100km west of Edmonton.  Thank goodness she’ll be alright!  Now we all have to turn our attention to finding the scumbag who took the little girl.  In this case, the Amber Alert probably applied enough pressure on this coward, low-life, child molesting psychopath by providing everyone listening with a good vehicle and physical description.

Time and time again I’m living through instances where Twitter is used as a communications tool to reach people in a time of need.  If you passed on this information today while on Twitter, cheers to you and well done.

First, politically you should know that I’m a right of centre conservative.  Having said that, I wouldn’t call myself a political activist at all, certainly not like Ken’s daily routine that’s for sure.  My wife and I vote and we judge people on their character, morals, what they stand for and actions.  Jim Ford is a salt of the earth kind of guy, very experienced and I agree with him that election reform is absolutely required in this riding.  There’s no doubt that he’s a conservative given his history with the PC Party and beyond that he lives out here and knows our community.  A community that myself and my family have only just embraced a few short years ago.  This kind of Uppal-Gate thing (more here) really frustrates me and for that reason and many others I found out while talking with Jim tonight I’m voting for Jim and hoping that many folks in Strathcona County will do the same.  This is an election reform decision, it’s a pro-conservative philosophy move as well.  I just won’t endorse a candidate that’s parachuted in.  I certainly won’t vote Liberal, Marijuana (NDP) or Sierra Club Green either…that said, just to spin this, if I was an American I’d vote for Obama in a heart-beat but that’s another blog post and another country.   There’s a reason why James Ford’s Facebook group:

James ford for MP – Edmonton-Sherwood Park

is open to comment and his opponent’s group is not…Jim wants to hear from you, talk with you and even debate with you if required…yes he started his Facebook group late and still you should join and start a discussion.  Better yet, meet Jim in person, I know once you do you’ll most certainly vote for him.