Gov2!

Tim O’Reilly describes “Gov 2.0″ as government operating as a platform. This is a terrific description of what is currently evolving within many a legislative ecosystem.   I’ve been a long-time, vocal advocate both on this blog and in public presentations for an open and engaging government.  In particular I’ve focused my thoughts on our provincial government here in Alberta.  Imagine the Government of Alberta as an open collaborative platform where citizens get to contribute directly in the outcomes that affect us all.  We live in the greatest province, jurisdiction and country in the world.  I believe all three tiers of our government structure need to be on that leading-edge as well.

Think Gov2

I wonder just how many within government are spending time contemplating what Gov2 is and how it will impact their work within government?  If you’re not doing this, you should be.

Whether you’re a rural town or urban city council, a provincial Cabinet Minister, MLA back-bencher or MP, you must spend time learning about this.  Stopping the rural brain drain takes more than a Facebook fan page and an events calendar.  Want to get inside the heads of the locals regarding a new policy?  Gov2 is where it’s at.  Traction is being gained all over the world in this area, and the amount of success being gained is substantial.  Are you so upset with your present government that you’ve started a new party?  Gov2 holds a lot of promise if you can integrate it quickly into your processes.  For a party that is gaining momentum, establishing social media channels is great but not nearly enough.  Your policy platform must include Gov2.  Opposition parties should be racing to understand the finer elements of Gov2 and how it impacts citizen engagement should they ever want to lead in their jurisdiction.  Want to get elected in your next election and have a spectacular campaign?  Well, you already know what the answer is…

Attend this conference

If you fit in any of the above scenarios, then you should look to attend the upcoming Advanced Learning Institute conference (ALI) in January, taking place in Edmonton, Alberta.  The line-up of speakers is great and I anticipate learning a tremendous amount from all the great stories and examples that will be presented during the four day conference.

Further, I’m really looking forward to this conference for a number of other reasons.  As Chair of the conference I’ll have more responsibilities than my normal role as a single presenter which I’m so excited about I’m shaking in my space boots.  I’m also excited at the prospect of getting to meet all the new presenters and conference goers coming into Edmonton to learn more about social media and Gov2.

I’ve heard from Kelly Flynn with ALI that the registrations are coming in very well for this conference which is terrific and it’s great for the Edmonton region to be hosting such an important conference.  Here’s the agenda that the folks who attend from all over Alberta, Canada and the US will enjoy.

Now I’m off to continue working on my presentation material for the conference, I have high expectations of myself as I know all the presenters do.  See you next year in less than 30 days, this conference will be an excellent way to kick 2010 off.

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.”

Talking Social Media with the Edmonton Mayfield Rotary Club

Walter is speaking about social media today the Edmonton Mayfield Rotary Club, and I’m (Mack) here to liveblog it! We’ve also got Krysta here recording some video that will be posted soon. Stay tuned to this post for updates!

What is social media? There’s a lot of buzz these days.

“This is not a fad, it’s quite serious.”

What’s the difference between today and a decade ago?

• Today we have a two-way broadcasting system, instead of a one-way.
• Individuals are just as powerful as organizations.

What are organizations doing today?

• They are stuck using old methodologies.
• Generally, they don’t work with the “creative class”, people who have been plugged for most of their lives.
• Most corporations want to control the message. It’s deep within their DNA.
• Companies need to learn to let go of some of that control. Not 100%, that would be reckless, but some change is required.
• Yes, once the company lets go of some control, some negativity will creep in. There’s fear. Companies are afraid they will put their brand at risk if they embrace social media – and that’s just not the case.

An example – Dell.

• Jeff Jarvis explained on his blog what a terrible customer experience he had with his Dell. He continued to blog about it over time, and called his situation “dell hell”.
• His message connected with others, who also blogged about it. Dell however, wasn’t listening.
• Eventually, Dell got the message and changed what they were doing.

Another example – Jeep treats social networking like another channel – example provided by Forrester Research.

• They woke up one morning and decided they had to be “cool”. So they started a Facebook group.
• The most popular Jeep group isn’t the official one, however, it’s a group created by a fan.
• Jeep missed an opportunity to built rapport with the existing community.

Where do you start with social media?

“Do you have the guts to encourage transparency within your organization? You need to be real, with customers and employees.”

Then you can get started.

1. Listen to the Internet, to find out what people are saying about your product or service. Don’t assume they aren’t talking about you.
2. Harness the collective intelligence of others out there on the web. Find out who the market leaders and influencers are.
3. Once identified, you can work with them on a word-of-mouth campaign.

Does this work? Just look at Barack Obama. By far the most successful campaign in the world.

What’s the trap?

• There’s a very low barrier to entry. A teenager in their basement has the same power to create something as good or better than you can!
• Don’t assume that large companies have the advantage!

Time for questions!

• Are non-profit organizations making use of social media? Absolutely. It’s becoming increasingly common, it can definitely work for them.
• Can social media be used for scams? Like anything else, there’s always the potential for negativity. Your guard always needs to be up, it’s not specific to social media.
• As a small business, it’s hard to find time to just be there listening. What can you do, can your firm help? Definitely, fusedlogic can help you, this is one of the main services offered. And it can be automated, so that you find out when someone mentions your product or service. The problem affects all sorts of organizations, not just small businesses.
• How do organizations decide which site to use? We have MySpace, Facebook, etc. Which should we use? The first question to answer is, what is your objective? For example, if you know which demographic to target, you can help decide which networks to focus on. And it’s important to know that there are networks out there for specific purposes, such as LinkedIn for business.
• Can you comment on Twitter and what we saw on TV with the presidential election? It’s a microblogging service. You get 140 characters to update. In the case of Obama, his campaign used Twitter to announce when they were at a rally or on the move. CNN used Twitter to highlight what people were talking about during the election. The news breaks on Twitter – a good example is the recent earthquake in Los Angeles. It’s a great tool to quickly ascertain the heart of the story.

And with that, we’re done. Great presentation Walter and lots of good questions from the audience.

Small Business Week in Alberta

October is the month for Small Business Week festivities here in Alberta and across Canada for that matter.  In years past there has always been lots of events to attend and people to meet and this year is no exception.  Speaking of events across the province, here’s a list of many of the events as provided by the Business Link.  Being that I’m a (proud) director of the Sherwood Park and District Chamber of Commerce I’d like to suggest to everyone in the Greater Edmonton Region that they consider being a member of this great organization which has over 900 members and 30 years of history.  There’s nothing in the books that says you can only belong to one chamber.  fusedlogic inc., has been a long-standing member of the Edmonton Chamber and I have friends that like me belong to both.  Sherwood Park and the surrounding area of Strathcona County is a thriving northern Alberta business community and one that you should strongly consider doing business with.

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.

Presenting “Miss Rogue.”

My November column for the Edmontonians Magazine will be about blogging.  I’ve only been given 500 words this month. It seems my first article (Pg 10) was reported to be entertaining, if not a bit “long-winded.” Of course, anyone who knows me well knows that’s completely “in” character for me.  I don’t know – you tell me what you think and weigh in on the picture too.

I wanted my next effort to have a key interview or two, providing you the audience with a nice change from my usual self-indulgent approach.  After some thought (environmentalists will be happy to know that no smoke appeared during my thought process), I wanted to reach out to some serious blogging enthusiasts.  One of those picked was Chris Pirillo, the self-proclaimed “geek” behind Gnomedex – a blogging conference to see if he’d be willing to answer a few questions for my article.  Chris replied, “What questions?”  I emailed six questions to him, and they must have offended him as I’m still waiting for a response.  Most likely, though, he’s just very busy.

Having said that, I’m under a deadline, and Barb the editor would have had my guts for garters if I didn’t get a move on.  So as I usually do in these situations, I picked more than one interviewee to touch base with for just such a time-crunch occasion.  So who’s the lucky duck?  None other than Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt of Horsepigcow.com fame.  Given that she’s in Lisbon at the moment, we opted for an email exchange to save on the cell bill and Skype break-up.  Below is a short excerpt from our email chat.

W: Do you think micro-blogging, in this case, Twitter with it’s growing notoriety is reducing the overall relevancy of the personal blog?

TH: I don’t know if relevancy will be reduced, but, in my case anyway, frequency is reduced. I know a large number of bloggers who post less because they are able to share their ideas quickly and succinctly on Twitter. However, once I’ve had a rigorous conversation on Twitter and ideas come together more coherently, I put them into a blog post. I no longer meander around ideas on my blog. I meander around ideas on Twitter, then post more solid content to my blog. So, in the end, the relevancy is actually increased on my blog because every time I post, it’s been thought out more than it used to be.

W: What are you doing in Lisbon at the moment? Business, a conference?

TH: I’m speaking at SHiFT08: It’s awesome because now that I’ve been on the speaking circuit for 2.5 years, I know many of the other speakers. Brilliant folks. It’s amazing how our ideas start to flow together, too.

The rest of my interview with Miss Rogue will appear in next month’s Edmontonians Magazine edition. I’d like to thank Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt for her time and responding so promptly from the road during an international event where she’s presenting. A true pro.

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