Over-confidence: A Cautionary Tale
The last couple of weeks has been an amazing learning experience for me on many levels and I wanted to share some of that with you while protecting the identity of the people involved. Certainly, I remain careful to ensure that the team and I at fusedlogic never stop learning and certainly never rest on our laurels. Highlights include a visit and presentation to CIPS in Winnipeg, Manitoba and then to the US, for OpenGov West situated in Emerald City, (Seattle).
Social Media is “too-risky”
During this snap-shot in time, I’ve been told more than once that social media was deemed to be “too-risky,” with a public servant stating over a great lunch – “I know you’re right but that’ll never happen where I work.” Although the support for that stance is eroding as time passes and solid case-studies in government arise. Or as one public servant stated to me, as the “old people with canes in control retire,” – not my words…
I’ve witnessed people from government agencies in one instance talk publicly about open government as a necessity, and in a shocking bit of irony, pullback right in front of my eyes from a positive opportunity to promote an already approved message, suggesting it would be “too-risky.”
I’ve listened to and witnessed an organization with multiple billions in assets be stretched so thin they couldn’t contemplate the identified large deficit in their digital communications and the impact it is having on their overall business success.
I was told a variation of an all too familiar story. One elected official reciting work colleague comments that “they didn’t need to learn anything about social media because their staff handled that.”
The Art of Honesty
I’ve been in sessions and witnessed images hand-drawn by public servants that depict they’re present situation in terms of the use of social media was akin to being in hand-cuffs and in jail. A further comparison was made between a “horse-drawn wagon” reality as opposed to the required “jet” depicting the level of sophistication in approach, and a top-heavy organization with a major barrier wall between leaders and staff just to name a few.
I’ve been present for exciting announcements of new Open Government projects. Witnessed a provincial government look to take it’s first few steps towards convincing the internal powers that be social media is something to be embraced, while members within another state confidently they’re pretty much leading the way. To which I shudder internally about, especially when I compare that statement to what I’ve learned from my time speaking with CTO’s and CIO’s from cities and jurisdictions in the US and other parts of Canada.
Zombies! Really?
I’ve been shown How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, which when translated was really a fun representation about how to manage or mitigate potentially negative outcomes related to citizen engagements. Finally, who can forget my experiences with Microsoft this week? The level of oddity, frustration, arrogance, pure excitement for change, creativity, honesty and innovative ideas while sitting in sharing circles can be summed up as very rich opportunities to learn. And will be added to fusedlogic’s now 10 year history as of yesterday.
Though someone may have deployed one or more social channels, it certainly doesn’t ensure engagement, even competence. We’ve got people adding “social something” to their list of unrelated or fringe services. This was highlighted during a moment of clarity when an employee from a very recognizable organization admitted that despite winning some sort of an award, the reality was she was really disappointed at this organization’s use and internal grasp of social media. Stating, “we really don’t have a clue.”
The Blind Side
A repetitive point, was that the limiting factor and barrier to real progress within government often lies with the decision-makers. Who are at risk. Why? Many are not directly participating within the social web and yet have approval powers over the use of social technologies within a company, government or department. I’ve witnessed frustration and fear on the faces of public servants, as well as, on the faces of elected officials much more than joy in this respect. That despite some spouting confidence.
Finally, in two separate instances over the last 14 or so days, I had the opportunity to talk with people from what we’ll call “two communications groups.” In both instances, there was definite over-confidence. Both of these groups, were in government. The number one most important point that I can pass on from these conversations is the following. I believe their confidence, indeed their over-confidence will definitely be their undoing. Unfortunately, the next PR disaster is always just around the corner and can come from anywhere. The scary part in this instance is not really the impending firestorm, but that these departments as represented by these few people seem to feel they’re ready. The level of negative complacency emanating from one public servant related to her “I know it all” attitude caused a shift in energy in many others around her. Apparently she felt justified because her government has deployed a spattering of social channels and it seemed to me that she was ready to stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier and claim victory. Which in this case is an appropriate analogy.
After chatting and more importantly listening, major deficits were identified or confirmed. I probed looking for knowledge of how to deal with certain issues, responses included examples that had little relevance or revealed issues within the hierarchy. The trap? That being generally aware social technologies exist seems to provide them comfort and a false sense of security in their ability to operate effectively in the space. This is the same trend among those who are attempting to position themselves as a resource in the private sector.
What am I really attempting to say?
Over-confident communications personnel PLUS decision-makers (Deputy Ministers, Assistant Deputy Ministers for example) who lack deep understanding of social ecosystems, technologies and Open Government trends EQUALS future headlines of disaster for that government. The very same can be said for the enterprise equivalent.
I am thankful for these experiences and for the last 10 years. fusedlogic will continue to guard against over-confidence, while embracing every chance to learn and innovate on behalf of our terrific clients, I hope you will too.
Social Media for Government Presentation Elements
Here are all the parts and other info from the Pre-Conference Workshop, Social Media for Government Edmonton on January 25th
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
Edmonton Social Media promotes the Fringe once more…
Wow, what a day today at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. First, it was a great on camera interview with street performer Billy Kidd, watch for that to be uploaded soon to the Showyouours Youtube channel. We talked about Edmonton, social media, of course the Fringe and her experiences abroad, such as living in Bath, U.K. Billy also does a great trick with my $20.00 dollar bill and yes I do get it back…
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…
fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge Leads to a “Happy Mind.”
This is about the little boy or girl sitting at a table, hungry and waiting for mom and dad to put a bowl of food in front of them…and nothing happens. They can’t afford to eat. This is about the homeless person who shows up to a mission for a hot meal only to return to a box under a bridge when it’s done. This is about the single mom trying to make ends meet and feed her hungry family. This is about the dad who has lost his wife and is devastated, depressed and somehow finds himself in a place struggling to feed his family.
If our challenge helps one more person, child, family eat- it was WELL WORTH the effort.
Many may have thought that we forgot about this charitable social media project, the Facebook group and flickr groups have seemingly been ignored and it’s all over before it really got started…WRONG! Our work has been to inspire and organize and then inspire and organize some more. Starting with keeping Edmonton’s Food Bank in the loop, which has led to a discussion at the provincial level with the Alberta Food Bank Network Association, we hope to involve the national and international organizations shortly.
Achieving a “happy mind.”
The fragmented photo group approach wasn’t going to work. So we found some great and very giving people for the construction of a centralized website to house all the photos. This is being donated by Victor Rubba and his Crazed Coders of Edmonton. Victor assures us that the site which is to be located at www.happymind.ca will be fully operational on August 15th, 2009. We chose “happymind” by the way because it represents two things: One, the state of mind after donating. Two, D-DAY or donation day for this challenge will be in support of and coordination with the central message from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who is scheduled to speak in Calgary, Alberta on October 1st, 2009.
We want to get his attention by scheduling this on September 30th, 2009.
SIDEBAR: I was invited to meet with and speak to the University of Calgary steering committee on the topic of social media at one of their meetings this summer. This great group of people responsible for inviting the Dalai Lama to speak inspired me to align this challenge with their efforts around actNOW and what we’re doing perfectly supports the message from the Dalai Lama of achieving a “happy mind.”
Trying to collect 1 million photographs representing 1 million donations from people around the world predominantly via social media is a daunting task and one I know we’re all up for. There have been many social media initiatives for the purposes of charity that have done very well in the past. Twestival comes to mind, I attended the Edmonton event and that model is brilliant and we’d love to inspire a similar effect in cities around the world. The 12 for 12K gang continues to do great work each and every day as well. The real challenge here is to get folks not only to donate food but then take a picture and upload it. We hope you’ll agree, that in this day and age of uber connected citizens, donating a picture is not too much to ask in order to achieve a “happymind.”
Our plan remains simple.
Go out to the universe and ask for your help. To support you, we’re working through Rotary International and still need to reach higher within that organization. Anyone know John Kenny President of Rotary International? By the way, Rotary has 1.2 million members and great communication channels within their organization, Rotarians are very special people and their help would be spectacular. We’re also approaching other organizations with considerable size such as the Lutheran Church of Canada and Edmonton’s World Trade Centre organization. We’ve had numerous discussions with Share Our Strength on their ability to help promote and support this initiative. They have agreed to promote this to their 40 thousand newsletter subscribers and we are very grateful for that. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if President Obama, Prime Minister Harper made a donation and posted a twitpic? They both have twitter accounts, so does Premier Stelmach for that matter. What about other world leaders? How about the United Nations? There are people out there with connections to get folks like this involved. Please reach out and touch them…
Does anyone know somebody at Feeding America or having anything to do with the Pound for Pound Challenge? Please contact me at walter[at]fusedlogic.com your help is greatly appreciated.
What about brands? How can your corporation benefit? Simple, own this event, put your brand behind it, your marketing message of inspiration. We want to share this experience with you, it’s about feeding the hungry for us and we know we cannot do it alone.
How can you help?
1.) Donate, take a picture and upload it to www.happymind.ca once it goes live or the facebook, flickr groups already in place today.
2.) Inspire everyone in your personal network to donate food and a picture at work, home, friends and family and the world at large via all means possible on or before September 30th, 2009.
3.) Be creative, persistent and inspirational in your communications regarding this world changing challenge, we won’t stop after September 30th and we must surpass the 1 million photos. Hold tweetup food drives in your city on September 30th and post the pictures. Write a song, make a video to inspire others and post it on Youtube, (our channel).
4.) Be an Ambassador! Get your local organizations like the food bank, Second Harvest, Rotary Club, chamber of commerce, church, mass media, politicians, schools etc involved. Send them the link to this blog post or others that explain the goal and what to do.
5.) Use Social Media: On Twitter (@fusedlogic) please use the hashtag #happymind, on your blogs please consider posting a “happymind” badge. Spread the word through Facebook, with well over 200 million people, we can do it folks, take minute to inspire others.
VERY IMPORTANT: Please tag your photo with “HAPPYMIND.”
The Great (Edmonton) Airport Debate
The debate between closing and maintaining the Edmonton City Centre Airport (YXD) has heated up as of late. With City Councilors set to make a decision on July 8, opinion is still widely divided between the two view points.
With that in mind, fusedlogic will be hosting the “Great Airport Debate” at our studio in Sherwood Park. We currently have Mack Male (creator of notmyairport.ca) and Dave MacLean (creator of saveourairport.ca) lined up to continue a discussion they began last week, but were unable to continue due to time restraints. Well, we don’t have any of those here. As well, we may be adding a few more guests to sit on the discussion panel – we’ll update this post as soon as any are confirmed. Read more
