Don’t share your best practices! Share the ones that are ‘Good Enough’.

Posted on 09. Apr, 2009 by ken@clickforhelp.com.

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Lovisa Williams of the Department of State summed up the problem of building on cross agency’s efforts as “Don’t share your best practices, share them when they are good enough.” It sounded like a good start to a blog post.

I put the full post for this here. For more on workplace collaboration check out the workshop I am organizing on April 23rd.

Summary:

If collaborative efforts begin with sharing final outcomes which the authors don’t want to change because they have invested in these as being final, then essentially the collaborative process doesn’t begin. It’s more of a building on lessons learned than a collaboration .

It’s kind of like growing your vegetables in your own walled garden and only sharing the seeds after you have harvested the first successful crop.  In order to build an agile and responsive government, we need to all plant  seeds at the same time and figure out together how to get them to grow in the first season.

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[Room 120] Brainstorm - Bridging the Web 2.0 Generation Gap (Slides)

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by akrzmarzick.

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Below is the slide deck that I used to seed the conversation - co-facilitated with Jessie Newburn and Doug Black.

Gov20Camp - Generations Gov20Camp - Generations akrzmarzick Slides from the Government 2.0 Camp in Washington, DC on March 27-28, 2009. An abbreviated version of a longer set of slides that deal with the generations and Web 2.0/Social Media.

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great stuff

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by Lea Terhune.

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Thanks to all at Gov20Camp. The values discussed in Gary Hamil wsj story  http://bit.ly/634VK were pretty much implemented at the camp. Interaction with individuals, groups, all very productive. So what’s the next step? How about some follow-up sessions?

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[Auditorium] Running a Federal Blog

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by lkthrock.

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[Auditorium] Running a Federal Blog with Jeffrey Levy of EPA

EPA launched a blog called Greenversations on Earthday in 2008.

Had some people from State come to consult on best practices (State’s blog is DipNote)

Focus on Mission, Mission, Mission

Why communicate?

What do they need to know?

What do you need to know?

Wanted to get people jazzed about the environment.

Why blog?

Put a human face on the agency (aka the big black box).
Share personal stories of environmental thinking (e.g. buying a car, gardening).
Share the breadth of government work (dye’s used to color your sheets to pesticides on the food we eat - all regulated by EPA).
Speak in a new way (the way that isn’t a press release or a planned speech).
Supplement, not replace , other channels .

On Comments:
Simple, clear comment policy
- Be civil (don’t attack or use vulgar language)
- Don’t spam
- Stay on topic
Comment policy is linked on the blog. Comment section says “Read the Comment Policy, Leave a Comment”
Comments are usually approved in a day

EPA’s experience: 11 months, 6000 comments, 10 nasty ones (most came in the first month)

Nervous management? Point to other agencies that are doing it.

People seem to respond to the idea that an agency is blogging - a cool lightbulb effect.

Three regular features every week:

Question of the week (Monday)
- Gets the most comments: usually 50 or more (e.g. do you bike to work? do you buy bottled water? cloth vs. disposable diapers, etc.)
- Some have received hundreds of responses
- Advertised to 55,000 news release recipients

Science Wednesday (wants to promote that EPA is, in fact, a science agency)
- Run by research/development office

Bilingual Thursday (
- English/Spanish were in the same post, now split
- Managed by our Hispanic Liason w/three writers

EPA has been astonished with the articulateness and thoughtfulness of comments.

Q: What is response policy?

A: Encourage bloggers to respond, don’t require them to. No complaints to date on what’s happening with EPA’s comments.

Original goal/intention was 3 posts a week. Since onset, it has defied expectations and posts are daily.

Q: Process of launching the blog?

A: Strong requirement that everything reside on EPA.gov, so launched an experiment on an HTML site that couldn’t accept comments.  Then set up a TypePad account (flowoftheriver.gov). Made case for a real blogging platform (requirements). Started using WordPress hosted internally (LAMP server that hosts blog and wiki) and then had the conversation with State Department to understand their best practices. Within EPA, individuals interested in blogging needed to get their managers approval and they had an intro conversation with Jeffrey. Created a blogger guide: www.scribd.com/levyj413.

Q: How do you work through approvals with very scientific posts/comments?

A: Your role is whether it’s vulgar, etc. not the scientific discussion.

Q: Did launching your successful blog make people want their own?

A: Yes, but that has been balanced by commitment or quantity of content realization.  We can give them their own categories pretty easily. Logistically it’s easier for them to do it through Greenversations.

Q: How do you get bloggers?

A: We have a good communicators network. Asked them to nominate people to be bloggers. They went out and found good people for us. We’re always asking people. next step is blogger outreach for guest bloggers. Jeffrey also finds people on Twitter - people passionate and consistent on Twitter.

Gratuitous plug  - www.epa.gov/earthday  - submit photos and videos in various categories. Starting April 1st, will feature content that catches EPA’s eye.

Q: Do you have blogs internally on your Intranet?
A: One or two.

Audience suggestion: Set up a google doc or wiki and Tweet that “we’re looking for guest bloggers.” Very fast as a way of generating a guest blogger list. Example: http://www.isteconnects.org/2009/03/13/calling-all-twitter-users-going-to-necc-2009/

With regards to records management, it’s not FOIA-able because it’s online (so already available). Storage is not an issue because it’s very small as far as data size goes.

We don’t allow people to promote products. Too hard to discern between honest third-party recommendation and company promoting.

We don’t have a blogger core yet, will be open to teleconference, live Twitter chats when that is assembled.
Use Vocus, www.vocus.com, to identify bloggers.

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Government 2.0 Camp Recap and Next Steps

Posted on 30. Mar, 2009 by corbett3000.

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Thank you everyone for participating and co-creating Government 2.0 Camp this past weekend. So much transpired that I would be impossible for me to recap it all in one blog post…but…let’s give it a shot anyway!

Friday (Day 1) Recap:

0) I created the Government 2.0 Club Google Group for you all to join and that’s where some conversation is happening at the moment and will be the first place for other events like this. Please join that and keep in touch on GovLoop, Facebook and Linkedin too.

1) I can’t recap all ~55 sessions, but they can all be found here. If you attended any of these sessions, PLEASE COMMENT on the posts to leave your own notes and links. Session leaders, please post links to your presentations there and also edit the wiki as well.

2) Barry Page took some great pictures and posted them here. Andrea Baker created a #gov20camp Flickr Group as well so if you took pics and uploaded them to Flickr please drop them there too.

3) Diane Cline created those super awesome session visualizations you saw up on the walls. Hire her for your next conference! She added so much to ours :)

4) We hosted the US premier of Us Now, a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet.

5) We went to the bar.

Saturday (Day 2)

1) I can’t recap all ~55 sessions, but they can all be found here. If you attended any of these sessions, PLEASE COMMENT on the posts to leave your own notes and links. Session leaders, please post links to your presentations there and also edit the wiki as well.

2) Barry Page took more great pictures and posted them here.

3) Bev Godwin and Macon Phillips of the White House new media team hosted a session asking for input into their efforts. We created #askWH for people to track and continue the conversation on twitter.

4) We discussed what/how Government 2.0 Club would work moving forward. A special thank you to Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club, for flying in from California to provide us with insight into how best to organize a community such as this. We received terrific input and for now the plan is very simple: we’re going to focus on bringing the DC community of government 2.0 practitioners together on a consistent basis without a formal organization. Please join the Google group so you can connect and contribute. We’ll support other chapters however we can.

Blog post round-up:

Government workers debate online citizen engagement

Government 2.0 Camp Meet World Cafe

Playing Along with Gov 2.0 Camp

Gov2.0 Camp is over, but something else is starting

Government 2.0 Camp in Australia

Creating a Citizen Driven Idea Sourcing Platform - from Government 2.0 Camp

More transparency, fewer lobbyists?

Miscellaneous:

@levyj413 found a really nice raincoat left at the school, plus a lightweight shirt. Are they yours?
And last but not least, it looks like a couple #gov20camp items came in under budget and there’s ~$500 to spend so we’ll be announcing a happy hour or something some time soon. If you’re not already on the mailing list, please use the “find out about the next one” ticket here to get a notification.

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Creating a Citizen Driven Idea Sourcing Platform & Needs Matching System

Posted on 29. Mar, 2009 by corbett3000.

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The following presentation will provide you with a detailed recap of Peter Corbett’s session during Government 2.0 Camp on “Creating a Citizen Driven Idea Sourcing Platform & Needs Matching System”.


Creating a Citizen Driven Idea Sourcing Platform & Needs Matching System from Gov 2.0 on Vimeo.
DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION or flip through here:

Citizen Driven Idea Sourcing and Solutions Matching

Drawing by Diane Cline

Drawing by Diane Cline

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