Government 2.0 #Win?

Last week, we convened a gathering of the Government 2.0 #fail crowd.

The purpose of the meeting was to:

(a) Determine the format of the event,
(b) Identify the target audience, and
(c) Start to craft the topics that would bring forward some of the most pressing issues in government; let alone Government 2.0.

Emma Attunes, Maxine Teller, Steve Lunceford, Justin Franks, Dan Mintz, Steve Guagliardo, and myself were in attendance. Steve Radick, Mark Drapeau, Lewis Shepherd, and Lena Trudeau were not able to make it because they were at conferences, on travel, or some combination of the two.

It was probably one of the most productive meetings I have ever been in. It’s great to work with people who are both smart and equally committed to the cause. One of my action items was to close inform all interested parties on what decisions were made and where we are going from here.

We arrived at decisions in four areas – Audience, Attendance Management, Format, and Title

Target Audience

We are looking for government workers (Federal, state, local, tribal, international, . . .) who:

(a) Are skeptical of the value of social software in government
(b) Have problems that involve bringing together large numbers of people or have sizable datasets that need to be organized, rationalized, and/or shared
(c) Think they have a problem that can be solved with social software, but are not sure
(d) Are responsible for (or have some degree of responsibility for) the problem

As you read this list, may think that you (or someone you know) only fit into one of the criteria above. That’s ok. We want to meet you or your friends even if only one component of the criteria applies.

Semi-Invitational Event

Encouraging people to talk about complex and important issues like risk, agency objectives, and real/imagined obstacles is a central objective of this workshop. The audience and speaker composition involves people who have been involved in multiple aspects of a Government 2.0 implementation or solution. This audience and speaker set would include detractors that often do not wish to spend time attending “another Web 2.0 conference.”

Our approach to getting the people we want in the room is to make this an invitation-focused event. To this end, we will be sending out invitations to a limited number of people. This list may be expanded with an invitation-by request process. Certainly, we will want the invitees to suggest others people they know that might be good speakers or participants at the event.

I recognize that this may seem a little exclusionary. I further recognize that this approach runs counter to our collective ethos of transparency and openness. However, I think that we are demanding a lot from people who are on the fence of adoption. My personal opinion is that we need to give a little to get a little. In this case, we need to make the event more private so that those who are not comfortable sharing publicly today, may share publicly tomorrow.

Format and Progression of the Day

We will be using a one-day “round-robin” format I’ve written about in a previous blog. Each attendee will select a track or interest area. The agenda structure will look something like this:

08:30 – Welcome and Introduction
09:00 – Introductory Speaker
09:30 – Workshop Track 1 (Room A)
Workshop Track 2 (Room B)
Workshop Track 3 (Room C)
11:00 – Lunch
12:30 – Formidable Opponent Debate: Celebrity Guest Appearance by Steven Colbert (ok just kidding – But we will have 2 experts in web security intellectually duke it out)
12:30 – Rotate
12:45 – Workshop Track 1 (Room B)
Workshop Track 2 (Room C)
Workshop Track 3 (Room A)
14:30 – Rotate
14:45 – Workshop Track 1 (Room C)
Workshop Track 2 (Room A)
Workshop Track 3 (Room B)
16:15 – Keynote speaker
17:00 – Close

Finally . . . The Title

After brainstorming a wide cast of titles and themes we settled on:

Mapping Success: Can Government 2.0 Work for You?

We selected this title because it balanced out our desire to state the challenge space in a positive way, but also express the potential for strategic, technical, and implementation #fails.

Next Steps

We have scoped enough of the workshop’s details to proceed with defining the agenda, tracks, and budget. I’ve already received some very excellent ideas through e-mail and from comments on this and related blogs. Thank you soooooo much for those.

We’ll be iterating on those ideas and others over the next two weeks and we’ll get an agenda out to everyone as soon as we can line-up the presenters and speakers. We are shooting for an February date for the workshop.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you in February!

Stupidity Is Invincible

My father gave me this gem over the weekend. I decided that a blog post about it would be appropriate. Putting a little context around the quote . . . there are times when there is someone or some entity that is deadset on moving in a particular direction. No matter what stands in his/her/its way, the decision has been made (no matter how dumb) and we are “going forward.” (The funny thing about “going forward” is that you need to actually stop going backward.) There can be many reasons for this state of affairs . . . politics . . . religion . . . laziness . . . or whatever . . .

My favorite reason is, “We’ve just always done it that way.”

The definition of stupidity is pursuing a previous course of action and expecting a different result. In an organizational context, the pursuit of stupidity can be an art and a science. So one day you may find yourself being impacted by stupid decisions and organizational directions. So what do you do? There are many strategies to employ. We’re just going to talk about one today.

Mr. Popularity

It is a very exciting time to be an Enterprise 2.0 evangelist. With the economy in dire straights and likely to see more troubles, the need to find cheap collaborative solutions is only getting stronger. If you are a social software evangelist, then that means now is a good time to be talking about these solutions for your business. You’ll be a pretty popular gal/guy if you have the right solution that fits a pressing business need. With that popularity now comes responsibility.

Deploying a social software solution is a lot of work. There will be elements of your organization that want you to fail. Others will want you to succeed. There will be others that will wait-and-see what happens. Expect to be alone and expect people to never understand your worldview. Some will actively and openly fight your efforts. This is somewhat expected, but what is not often expected in the converse. Well-intentioned people can also do you damage. The advice I can offer is be aware of who is supporting you and what they are doing. Personal integrity and making your vision known are your best defenses. That’s a topic for another post . . .

Pick Your Battles

Let’s suppose that your solution has been adopted by your organization and that others are using it. You are Mr. Popular. So with this new found popularity and the wave of your triumph, you have been given some political capital. The judicious use of your political capital will become important in the days ahead.

I know what you’re thinking: “Hold on Drake . . . I won. I proved all the detractors wrong. I’m done.”

You just think that you are done. Stupidity is indeed invincible and it will continue to attack your defenses again and again. Distraction techniques and time burglars will surface. Their primary objective will be to defend the tried and true ways of the past and fit your social software solution into their existing business processes. Most of the time this is unnecessary noise which distracts you from your objectives. The effect will be a reduced level of adoption on your social software platform because you are spending your time fending off time bandits. At an early point, you must quickly identify who are the people you wish to persuade, champion, “bribe,” or ignore. Keeping in mind that some of these folks will shift over time, you must keep ties with all players to assure your initiative’s success. Take the time to build your alliances in peace, not in war.

The Strategy of Stupidity – A Warning

One of the most successful defeat strategies an organization can employ is co-option. This is the invitation to join the budgeting committee, the unusual promotion, or your sudden involvement in board-level decisions. These are all means to separate you from the crowd which put you in that place of reverence. My advice? Dance with the girl who brought you. Under no circumstances should you ditch the crowd that supported your ascendancy. The crowd will keep you grounded and check your assumptions (and your ego). Power is an alluring prospect, don’t let it go to your head. Keep in mind, the smaller the circle of deciders, the higher likelihood that you will cater to those localized interests.

Change is best affected from the inside and in the trenches. If the circle of power is closed, work to open it. This invites more heads, more buy-in, and improves the enterprise above all else.

Think community, not self.

My Father, My Mentor, My Hero

Learning and mentoring opportunities are abundant in this world. If you’re like me, you rely on your father to guide you in tough times.

I went to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center recently with my father and son. While my son is really fascinated by trains, he has a passing interest in airplanes. I guess we are priming the pump for future interests. I had never been to the center; my father had gone many times before. As we were walking through the exhibits, my father was describing what planes he saw on the Enterprise. He pointed at the the F4 and mentioned, “[T]hese were on the carrier all the time.” It was at that moment it struck me, “He has actually seen these in service.”

You forget that your parents lived lives before your own.

My Mentor

My father retired from Federal Service in 2003 and achieved some significant degrees of success (See the Systems and Services Hammer Award). So I rely on him a great deal to advise me on any variety of topics.

During the whole outing, I was peppering him with questions about my career, the decisions I had made, and his experience in similar circumstances. The topic of the day was how I interact with others and what I need to do to improve my interpersonal skills. Between the moments of childcare, he obliged me with answers. The most valuable piece of advice?

Make open statements, not closed statements. Open statements are free of judgment, turn listeners into participants to the conversation, and build consensus. I recognize that I am a rather judgmental person, so this is an extra-special challenge for me. Open the conversation with an invitation, “I am thinking about X. I am thinking about X because of [circumstance A] and [condition B] and [perception C]. What do you think?”

Closed statements are less about an invitation and are more directional. Your intent is to drive action or derive a result that suits your needs. This approach constrains participation and supplies listeners with tasks to accomplish. This is neither good nor bad, but it draws a bright line for me between management and persuasion.

My Hero

My father embodies what it means to have dangerous ideas. He thinks very directly about a problem and derives a solution rather quickly. He has arrived at the conclusion long before others do, but he won’t tell you his thoughts until he hears yours. Whether he adjusts his idea to incorporate yours will be unclear to you, but either way he will capture your approval. He also thinks big and goes bold. If there is a legacy that he left on government it was his deliberate measures to reduce government spending in information technology and services. Something that, only now, I fully appreciate.

I am lucky to have you as a father and Ben is lucky to have you as his grandfather.

Thanks, Dad. I love you.