Just goes to show, you don't have to be a genius.

Alright, I commented earlier this week on my buddy Dave's blog that we can look forward to the Obama Administration using the web as a direct-to-the-people communications platform. Today the Associated Press released an article with the same point  of view. I'm not crowing here, just pointing to the wonderful Change that is happening. This change in particular is the web effect finally getting to the political and governmental process.

The promise of the web from it's earliest public application has been the "democratization of content and information, and the power that goes with it." Ironically, nearly twenty years later, we have the literal Democratization of the political process and the ultimate in political power given to the man who was smart enough to embrace the web.

Read the referenced article. I love the quote about how Republicans will be watching for "White House web outreach that appears overly political." Gang, you know the beauty of the web is that you can build your own audience and reach out directly to them too. Better yet, look for a bipartisan approach that directly involves every American, regardless of political party to engage in the political process, and see just what is being done to move our great country into the better economic and world standing. Another irony that it takes a "community organizer" rather than an "Experienced Executive" to leverage the web to organize us into a nationwide community. Gee Rudy, I guess that's what they do!

Social Media and Business transparency

I can't help but wonder if social media can have a tempering effect on business and social practices. Your social circle wields a lot of influence. Apply social media and you have an even greater reach and frequency. Those of us who look at Social Media as a business tool embrace it to inform, influence and, in the best cases, generate new products and profit for our companies. In a very real sense, smart companies are letting themselves be influenced by their customers to great mutual benefit.

Can wider adoption of social media empower the public to be the non-governmental regulators? Can't an active and vocal customer and public constituency also create a dampening effect on poor policies and practices? I'm no financial pundit by any means (ask my wife), however it seems like now there are all sorts of experts who have come forward to deride the kind of financial derivatives that have contributed to the current financial meltdown. Where were these guys while these "bets on bets of bets" were being created? There must have been a lot of folks watching, talking, playing, predicting within the financial industry. If these industry people were blogging, tweeting, discussing the pros and cons, would it have effected the direction of the market or the creation of these products?

Hobbes (yeah, remember your college Political Science?) held that the government needed to exist to help keep the "leviathan" of man's true nature in line. I wonder if a more connected, social society would be an effective way to temper man's true nature, one component of which is greed.

Look at it this way. Most people try to be reasonable about cause and effect. We recycle, reuse, reduce for good reason. And we do so because it's easy, but, and let's be honest, right now there is a significant social component to recycling. What would you think of someone who completely shunned recycling?

Well, would we feel the same about unfettered, more public, greed?

Would widespread adoption of social media create a similar effect on greed and the creation of financial instruments that are so esoteric as to really only be understood by and benefit the few?

If the voice and reason of the many were expressed, would the same financial products have been created, or would the consumer constituents have informed a better product line for these companies?

I just wonder.

Too much access!

Facebook, Netvibes, Flickr, YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Blogs, Twitter...and the list goes on and the list changes. But what doesn't change are my needs to easily monitor, then step in and out of the right conversations. I use Netvibes for this, although I have colleagues who use Google Sites, iGoogle, Friendfeed and increasingly Facebook.

I guess my big issue is that I want to separate my business info and connections from the purely social. When I'm at work, I want to track the media, marketing, pertinent industry news, agency work, etc. without being distracted by the ongoing purely social interactions.

Of course, that may make me a poor social media expert, but maybe the big idea here is that we all need effective strategies for separation of work networking (workNetting?) and "neighborhood/home" social networking. Otherwise "Social Media" becomes a distraction rather than an asset.

I don't expect that there is one approach that fits all, but I'm going to set up a business related feed on Netvibes (with a public version as well) and run my social consolidation through Facebook with a Friendfeed app.

How do you monitor and separate/filter your feeds so you can be productive at work?

Still here, I think.

Alrighty then, looks like good science prevailed and we are all still here. Sure enough there's a new pile of feral cat pooh on my lawn, so we're even in the same universe (or the Cosmos has a very twisted sense of balance).

NOW FOR SOME COOL SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY that a colleague pointed out to me. Check out how Popular Media has created a few very useful social applets for websites. I love the Social Notes.

The end of the world...thanks to LARGE HADRON collider

This is probably my last entry. Tonight, while America sleeps, a band of "rockstar" physicists will start up the LARGE HADRON Collider at CERN to find the Higgs Bosun "God Particle". Shortly thereafter the time-space fabric of the universe will be ripped apart and we will all be sucked into the resulting black hole.

On the other hand we could also all be instantly shifted to another parallel universe. I hope in that one we all drive spaceships and get to carry laser pistols and the feral neighborhood cats crap on the village idiot's lawn, not mine.

CNN and the use of Social Media

I, like millions of others watched the milestone speech of Barack Obama at Invesco field last night. And yes, I have a lot to say about the speech, but for this blog, I'd like to point out a couple uses of social technology that I thought were noteworthy from the coverage.

I watched the coverage on CNN. Aside from Wolf and Anderson, every other reporter on the panel for the last few days was scrolling through their Blackberry's while commenting on the events, particularly when McCain was rumored to have chosen a Veep candidate. A couple of them even had two Blackberry's. (Why do you need two?) Each analyst commenting that they were receiving emails from their contacts regarding the news and rumors.

On Thursday night at Invesco field, much was made of the realtime fundraising through text messaging that was happening. I got a kick when Wolf Blitzer described texting as an example of how the Democrats are using the "cutting edge social media."

What I really liked was how, at the end, one correspondent, positioned in front of a large touch screen was bopping between you tube videos from inside the arena posted from cell phones, including qik posts.

It made me wonder how scripted it was as an example of the grassroots popularity of Obama.
Think we'll see the same at the Republican convention?

Technorati Tags: CNN, Blackberry, Social Media, Democrats

Repairing Social Nets for Children in Foster Care

My neighbor, Donna, had a retirement party this weekend. After 30 years of service to Bay Area children as a Social Worker and Children's Services director she was sort of dialing back her schedule and semi retiring. But I learned this weekend, that Donna has really been a pioneer who has created a social networking program that is truly changing lives.

I've lived next to Donna for more than 10 years now and have always had nice conversations with her, but very rarely about her work. Early on, she made it clear that home was her respite from the day to day anguish she faced in helping children whose families had fallen apart due to drugs and crime. My wife and I respected that. At parties and in all those weekend conversations, we only scratched the cursory surface of her work. But this weekend, with some of her co-workers congratulating her, I learned just how modest Donna had been.

Last year, Donna created a pilot program, the first of its kind in California and by her co-worker's account, the United States, that uses the data and social technology of the internet to reunite children in Foster care with their maternal and paternal families. The pilot was so successful that a formal program was funded and started. "I was able to show the county that spending resources to connect names and locations in the case documentation with internet searches, in many cases gave us the opportunity to reunite these children with their extended families." Donna told me. "Putting these kids back into appropriate social and familial networks dramatically increases their long term ability to succeed."

The case records and internet searches combined with clinical counseling to smooth the process of reuniting these children with their latent social networks is a powerful solution that is repairing these children and offering them significantly improved chances for a productive future.

Just two examples offered an emotional insight into the program's impact. One involved a young 10 year old who had been in foster care for more than 5 years. A search of his case records led to the location and contact of his father, who had been presumed dead. The man, who at one time had been involved in drugs but long since had cleaned up and become a devoted husband and father, didn't even know he had a son. At the first meeting, the man brought many of his nuclear and extended family to meet the boy. At the end of the meeting, the father expressed his unconditional love for the boy and promised to bring him home. Within a few weeks, the young boy was living with his father and new family. Life improved for that 10 year old in ways that a foster system could never achieve.

A second example was of an older child who had been in foster care for most of his life and was about to "age out of the system", meaning that at age 18 he would be emancipated and leave the foster care system. Certainly there is preparation and programs to help this transition, but still, at 18 your social network is pretty much dissolved. Case and internet searching reunited this boy with his extended family in a southern state. Coincidentally, while in foster care, the boy had become a Master horseman and his extended family happened to be Master horsemen as well, running their own horse farm. Reunited with his family, he instantly had a repaired network and a bright lifelong future as a horse breeder.

Donna followed her hunch that case reviews, internet searches and the right counseling model could repair broken social networks. The resulting program is changing lives. It's a different view of social networks than we, in marketing are used to discussing, but the case study is extremely valid: Strategy, technology and insight combined to create meaningful conversation between people and institutions.

Social work habits: Reboot every now and then

In my role as a Creative Director, as in many jobs, an important part of each day's learning is to connect with colleagues. It's really one of the most powerful learning processes. Associate with smart people and you'll get smarter, that's what my Dad always said, and I know it to be true. Just about every day, I get into the office, grab a cup of java and on my path back to my desk I start the day's "conversation" by stopping in for a quick touchbase with Tom, Chris or Theresa. Usually in these short, informal discussions, I can count on getting and giving some bit of information that is going to make the day, and sometimes even the business, more productive.

Sounds normal and pretty much how business has been conducted for centuries, I'm sure. Only, this is Silicon Valley and this is now. In the last few months new people have been added to my morning walk and the "walk" has been changed to shorter bursts of conversation that last throughout the day. These people are from all over the globe and I converse with them via several means like @jgavilla on Twitter, netvibes, their blogs, linkedin and a few others. In just the last couple of years the tools have been created for anyone to easily expand their associations and daily conversations beyond their immediate, physical world.
Just this morning, I was turned on to Snocap, which I'll share with all my musician friends, a good article on social media spending, found out a good friend was going to be featured on CNBC tonight, and found a much easier way to blog using ScribeFire, which, incidentally has just about killed my preference for Safari (especially combined with PicLens!). And I haven't even gotten into the office and poured a cup of coffee...yet.

As the adoption of these tools become mainstream for business, pleasure, entertainment and more, how will the course of business and even society in general change?

Dad was right indeed and there has never, in the course of human history, been a better environment than the social web to associate with smart people, learn and share.

Social tech, future rock stars and brand fans.

One way or another, everybody wants a fan base of some sort. Could be your parents, your spouse/partner, if you're lucky, your kids. Ask any rock star, nothing is more valuable than your own legion of loyal fans. Social technology is creating, and reinforcing brands faster than ever. You don't have to look far for the evidence. Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, and Seth Godin are by all appearances building nice brands for themselves using, reporting and evangelizing social media and technology. 

And now, smart marketers are asking if, when and why they should sit up, listen and engage their customers in the course of building a brand fan base. Look, the Genie is out of the bottle. People, and companies are all benefitting from deploying a social media plan.

Is it luck, or can you orchestrate the building of brand fans through social technology? I like to think it's a little of both. Frankly, you can build a fan base if you have some social technology out there and good plan to use it. Here's a simple and true example:
Over the weekend of April 25-27, the school my children attend has their annual Spring festival. I run the entertainment for the weekend and was lucky enough to book a fantastic alternative rock band, called Punchface. These guys are fun, entertaining, great musicians, in other words, deliver on their brand promise in spades. They also had every teen and a lot of parents in a rock frenzy. By the end of their 2 hour set, I heard at least two new fans tell the lead singer that they had already visited the band's myspace page and signed up to be Close Friends of the band.

Two hours, two new super fans (who each bought a t-shirt and probably the iTunes downloads). Not bad, and it happened because the band was ready with the brand, product and social tech.