46alpha

Deployed

2012-10-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

I arrived back at ISAF Headquarters in January, 2012, and am serving as a Strategic Communication Planner as a part of my SAMS utilization tour. This is the third time I have been assigned to this HQ - first with ISAF 5 (Canadian-led) and then with ISAF 6 (Eurocorps-led).

My intent was to do occasional posts while here, but for a number of reasons I decided to take a hiatus. I have been keeping my own notes on relevant StratComm topics that I want to eventually write on, but I thought it would be better to wait until I can look back on it rather than trying to write when Im in the middle of it. Once this deployment is complete, I can then look at all my notes a little more objectively and hopefully get some posts up that are relevant and thoughtful.

So until thus one is over, you can still catch me on Facebook and Twitter.

U.S. Servicemember renders salute during the 9/11 ceremony at HQ ISAF, Kabul. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Christopher Harper) Photo Courtesy of ISAF Media.

Is G+ worth adding?

2011-08-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

I was interested in seeing what Google + was all about just like the rest of the techno-social-media-geek world was. After receiving an invite and working on it a day or two, my initial impression was that it was just GoogleBook. Yet another stream of information, links, funny photos and videos, people talking about Google +, people talking about other people talking about Google +, yadda yadda yadda.

I wanted something that made me more productive, something that helped me get things done rather than being yet another stream of information that I passively watch roll down the screen. I saw some potential if there was integration with all their other Google products, but it just reproduced the same features more or less that I already have on "the book" and didn't really live up to my expectations (it is still in beta by the way, and still invite only).

But, I found some things that was more in line with what I was looking for in the Chrome browser extensions. I am normally a Safari user but have since migrated over. Here are some of the extensions I have added:

Voice search. With the built-in mic on my Macbook Air, I can now click the microphone icon and say what Im searching for instead of typing.

Google Translate via GTools+ extension. This extension gives you several things, but the one thing I really like is it allows me to follow people who post in languages other than English, and with the click of button, automatically translates it to my language of preference based on my settings.

Unlimited Picasa photos. This may cause me to move off of Flickr. Free is better than $25/yr for Flickr Pro.

Extended Share extension. Gives me access to Facebook and Twitter so I can monitor and post to all three sites, all from one screen.

Buttons. Nothing really new here, but have added buttons on the browser that links to several other sites now visible from the same screen (Safari extensions are very limited).

Video Conference. With 'Hangouts,' you can have up to 10 people online in a video chat room.

The business version of Google sounded even more promising as there was mention of better integration with Google Apps, Docs, Analytics, etc.

The drawback right now is that I have to be on my laptop and have to be using Chrome in order to get these features and the iPhone app is extremely limited. It would be nice if these features were available from any browser and on your phone and/or tablet.

No way to know if G+ will continue to grow or just fade out like Google Wave and Google Buzz did, but I am intrigued enough to spend time on it and see how it evolves. Most of my friends/family are on Facebook and G+ doesn't have the numbers yet, but a little competition for "the book" might help both up their game.

How Designers Think

2011-07-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

We are starting the Design portion of the curriculum here at SAMS, and to kick things off we had an orientation to the topic of Design by some of the members of Populous, a global design practice with an office in Kansas City. Populous, among other things, was responsible for the LiveStrong Stadium here in Kansas City that is now home to the MLS team KC Sporting.

The intent of the brief was to explain the process of how they take a project from a vague concept to the delivery of an actual building. The process is no doubt different for every project - different owner personalities, different goals, conditions, timelines, budgets, etc. As has been mentioned before this year to us, there is no silver bullet solution that can be applied uniformly to every circumstance.

What I appreciated was their passion for the process. When starting a project, there are so many things which are unknown and the skill is in taking all your experience up to that point and establishing a common framework with which to proceed. They seemed to enjoy the challenge of the process.

Some takeaways:

Design is intellectually informed decision-making.

"Everything in the world must have design or the human mind rejects it. But in addition it must have purpose or the human conscience shies away from it." John Steinbeck

"Form follows function" Louis Sullivan

On handing projects off to another member or team: it is important for the receiver to have the history and context, as much as possible, when taking over a project. The genesis of a project typically has an idea which all subsequent ideas are derived from. If the new team does not understand this context, the project can easily move away from its foundation.

Cast your intellectual net wide. If design is about connecting all the correct dots, you need to make sure you have a lot of potential dots with which to connect. If your education and experience is very narrow, your pool of 'dots' will be limited as will your solutions.

The title of this post is also the title of a book Im currently reading, "How Designers Think" by Bryan Lawson. Photo taken from www.livestrongsportingpark.com.

Vicksburg Staff Ride

2011-04-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

I spent the last week in Vicksburg, Mississippi on a staff ride with my SAMS class. We spent the week prior in preparation, looking at the history and context of the campaign, and studying one of the more prominent individuals on either the Confederate or Union side. I was assigned to be Gen William T. Sherman throughout the week in Vicksburg.

While it was good to look at the tactics and battles of the campaign, those were...as my instructor likes to say, "mildly interesting." The real intent behind the staff ride was to see what lessons learned there were that apply today, see what is useful to me that I can take away as an operational planner, and to reveal more of what an operational planner is.

Prior to leaving on the trip, our instructor said that many SAMS students come to realize at some point during the week the reason for being in SAMS. The light bulb comes on, and it did for me.

There are a number of potential topics to write about, so at the moment I'm just trying to organize my thoughts. Some of these concepts were explained to us extremely well, so I'm in the middle of trying to write these down so that I am able to eventually articulate those same concepts to someone else, just as good as they were originally articulated to me.

Great week with lots of new things learned.

Why it's good to write

2011-03-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Whether your blog has an audience of one or one-thousand, here is a good way to look at your writing.

I always tried to explain to others that one of the reasons I maintain a blog is not because I really desire to have an audience, but that among other things it helps me gather my thoughts and ideas. It also forces me to work on my writing skills (or lack thereof), and keeps me up to date with some of the latest communication tactics and techniques. For me, it is my self-imposed forcing agent that makes me work on some of the things that I professionally want to work on.

I previously called this blog my 'mental dumping ground,' but I think Lynn Hunt does a better job of explaining the process of writing. Writing leads to thinking. (Link to the article on Historians.org is here)

How Writing Leads to Thinking (and not the other way around)
By Lynn Hunt

Writing is stressful. Sitting in my computer chair my neck and shoulder muscles almost immediately tense up as I dig around in my brain for the best phrase or even any coherent string of words, whether I am writing an essay like this one, a book chapter, a letter of recommendation, or an email message to a friend. Writing is time-consuming. It’s a great way to pass the time on a long airplane flight because you lose track of the passage of time altogether. It’s even better, from that point of view exclusively, than watching an episode of Mad Men on your laptop. Writing means many different things to me but one thing it is not: writing is not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in my mind. Writing is a magical and mysterious process that makes it possible to think differently.

Because writing is an act that is far from completely accessible to our conscious minds, recommendations about how to write history may well be irrelevant. And yet they are not useless, if they can make writing seem less like scaling a Himalayan peak after having spent a lifetime as a couch potato. I know that is how I felt when I confronted the task of writing my dissertation. Doing research seemed so much easier, even those days in French archives when the archivist seemed not to comprehend a word I was saying, or those nights when I lay awake wondering which two French cities of 1789 I should compare out of what seemed an endless array of choices. Notecards with city names—Amiens, Blois, Caen, Dieppe and so on—turned over in my dreams, which is an awful waste of dreamscapes. But no, there is nothing quite like the terror of the blank page or the empty computer screen in front of you.

My first rule, in such a situation, is not to look at notes. In the era of digitized databases, digital photographs of manuscripts and archives, and digital copies of notes taken of books and archives, such a rule is yet more imperative. Even when I was preparing my dissertation, when my handwritten notes could fit into a carry-on suitcase (it was blue with a flowery pattern and more or less joined to me at the hip when traveling), the rereading of notes posed a serious menace. Some of my fellow dissertators spent months going over their notes hoping for manna from heaven, a eureka moment, or just enough inspiration to get started. Reorganizing your notes is a form of house cleaning; it might make you feel good about yourself as a tidy person, but it will not produce a chapter—or even a page. Only writing can do that.

I say this in part, I confess, because I have always been and will always be, I hope, a terrible note taker. Before the computer revolution—that is, for my dissertation and my first two books—I took notes longhand on yellow legal pads, had no filing system, and in any case, once I started writing, I discovered, as many do, that I had taken notes on the wrong parts of books or documents or had not written down something crucial such as the page number or the exact French wording.

Documents that have turned out to be vital to my argument, which I only discovered sometimes after writing the draft of a chapter, usually required multiple consultations, which makes having copies handy, to be sure, but it is usually impractical to copy everything, even if you knew what that everything was. Taking notes, and even more so, ordering microfilms, photocopying or digitally photographing documents, will not get you to the heart of the problem. At least while taking notes you have done some thinking, but in general, your thoughts will remain stalled in the fog of infinite possibilities until you start writing them, not as notes, but as prose arguments.

My second rule, when looking at the blank screen, is called the “radish rule” in honor of my grandmother, who never published anything but did produce many radishes in her garden. Every day in the summer she would call my mother and inform her of the number of radishes in her garden at that moment, a number that grew steadily over time until the end of the season. You want the number of your pages to increase steadily over time, culminating in the completion of a first draft. Whether you use an outline or not (I jot down bullet points in no particular order as a way of starting), what really counts is momentum, not momentum as in a jet racing forward to the completion of its route but rather momentum as in three steps forward, two steps back, two or three pages written (maybe even five!), then revised the next day while another one, two or three are added, and so on. If you are tearing up all your pages and throwing them away day after day, if you are changing your tack every day you sit down, if you are waiting for inspiration to come before writing the next page, your problem is not intellectual, it is most likely psychological, painfully so.

Admittedly, momentum requires a certain tunnel vision. This is one of the dirtiest of the dirty little secrets about writing. Everything about history and life itself is potentially infinite (except one’s life span, unfortunately). There is always another document that could have been consulted, just as there is always another fact about a friend or partner that if you knew would make you understand her or him better. But life is short and if you want to write more than a dissertation or one book or two books and so on, you have to limit yourself to what can be done in a certain time frame. You cannot accumulate pages if you constantly second guess yourself. You have to second guess yourself just enough to make constant revision productive and not debilitating. You have to believe that clarity is going to come, not all at once, and certainly not before you write, but eventually, if you work at it hard enough, it will come. Thought does emerge from writing. Something ineffable happens when you write down a thought. You think something you did not know you could or would think and it leads you to another thought almost unbidden.

What is that something ineffable and how do I know this? I do not belong to some kind of occult organization with special séances on the magic of writing, unless you want to so describe, with some reason, the guild of scholars more generally. Everyone who has written at any substantial length, whether prose or poetry, knows that the process of writing itself leads to previously unthought thoughts. Or to be more precise, writing crystallizes previously half-formulated or unformulated thoughts, gives them form, and extends chains of thoughts in new directions. Neuroscience has shown that 95 percent of brain activity is unconscious. My guess about what happens is that by physically writing—whether by hand, by computer, or by voice activation (though I have no experience of the latter)—you set a process literally into motion, a kind of shifting series of triangulations between fingers, blank pages or screens, letters and words, eyes, synapses or other “neural instantiations,” not to mention guts and bladders. By writing, in other words, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts. Is it any wonder that your neck gets stiff?

Even as your pages proliferate like my grandmother’s radishes, they must be weeded and thinned out if they are to grow to an optimal size. Nothing is more important to writing than the weeding, thinning, mulching, and watering that is known as revision. Sometimes another eye provides the added sunlight needed for new growth. I have picked up countless tips about writing from the editors assigned the thankless task of improving my prose, whether in a scholarly book or a textbook. You can only really figure out what you think if you first put it on paper and then develop some distance from it. It has to be a part of yourself, but a part that you are willing to release from yourself. Most problems in writing come from the anxiety caused by the unconscious realization that what you write is you and has to be held out for others to see. You are naked and shivering out on that limb that seems likely to break off and bring you tumbling down into the ignominy of being accused of inadequate research, muddy unoriginal analysis, and clumsy writing. So you hide yourself behind jargon, opacity, circuitousness, the passive voice, and a seeming reluctance to get to the point. It is so much safer there in the foliage that blocks the reader’s comprehension, but in the end so unsatisfying. No one cares because they cannot figure out what you mean to say. How much better it is to stand up before the firing line and discover that no one ordered your execution. The most the critics want is an intense fencing match, and you are more than up to the challenge because you have honed the edges of your research and said forthrightly what you thought.

You do not need to believe me, because professional help is always around the corner. The best advice about writing that I ever got was many years ago from the poet and prose writer Donald Hall. His book Writing Well was then in an early, if not a first, edition (it is now in its ninth), but he also generously read the pages of those of us who were junior fellows in the Michigan Society of Fellows. He was a senior fellow, and I knew that my dissertation needed serious work. From him I learned that writing requires an unending effort at something resembling authenticity. Most mistakes come from not being yourself, not saying what you think, or being afraid to figure out what you really think. His approach was not at all solipsistic, for he also recommended a different kind of attention to others who write. When you are reading a book that grabs you, consider how the author accomplishes that effect. What is it that draws you in? What makes you think it beautiful or forceful or astute? Which quality do you cherish most? What can you learn about writing from it? Assistance is available close at hand but you have to know where to look for it.

In short, one is not born a writer but rather becomes one. Learning to write well is a lifelong endeavor. Graduate programs tend to assume that students come with already acquired writing skills that simply need to be polished. History instructors only rarely if ever give courses in writing; we assume that graduate students learn by osmosis, by imitation, and by correction of flagrant errors. We have begun to pay more attention to teaching as a learnable skill. We should do the same with writing. Even if there is no one way to do it well and no recipes to follow, we all might benefit from more attention to writing. I know I always can.

How to work for a S.O.B.

2011-02-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

My instructor has a 1963 version of the Army Officers Guide, and in it there is a section titled "How to Work for an S.O.B"

Given that this was published in 1963, many of the senior military leaders at the time were likely veterans of WWII and/or Korea. There was no recognition of PTSD for these individuals, and the assumption is that many of them handled their problems on their own through a variety of methods. I would dare say that if the publishers felt so inclined as to put a section like this in the Officers Guide, there probably were some challenging supervisors during this period.

I copied the section of the book, and below is the text. I think it is worth a read:

BEGINNING OF TRANSCRIPT

How to Work for an "S.O.B." In times past there has been much conversation in the service about the difficulties of working under certain officers. An officer was invited to write his views. His answer is reproduced below.

Dear Sir:

You asked if I'd write a piece on how to work for an S.O.B. The mere thought raised wells of sympathy within me for those unfortunates, who as I did in times gone by, now suffer under a hair shirt boss who is intolerable. How to live with the Grouchy, the Unreasonably Impatient, the unfair, the Mean and Vicious - the summation of all the S.O.B's I've ever served under? My enthusiasm was the more exalted by the thought that I might be able to help those who had fallen on such evil times as to inherit an S.O.B. as unit commander. Ah, the troubles I've known from S.O.B's!

Well, I took pen in hand and began to cast about among the multitude of my S.O.B. supervisors to select the most horrendous one as my opening illustration, so as better to explain how I survived my painful ordeal while retaining my sanity. With elation upon discovering my perfect example, I began to describe old General Blank, the biggest S.O.B., surely in all the world. As I wrote, however, I began to recall how, after I grew to know General Blank, I learned of his nerve-shattering war experiences in Asia, of his being finally relieved of his command and sent home more or less in physical collapse. I recalled his singular touchiness about his wife, a nosey young lady who caused no end of trouble within the command, and I wondered if the great differential in ages between Blank and his young wife -25 years- made him thus sensitive. These and other things about Blank occurred to me. On second thought, I decided he was not my candidate for Senior S.O.B.

When I remembered Major Dumguard, though, I knew I had my prize S.O.B. Dumguard's extreme impatience, his growled answers, his sudden violet angers over nothing, his indifference toward my problems-these and many other characteristics of a bonded 100 proof, aged in the wood S.O.B. came to my mind. Yet my resolve faded when I remembered Dumguard's young son hanging so long between life and oblivion with spinal meningitis; the deep shock of his wife's death; the fact that he lagged in promotion far behind his colleagues.

In fact, I must admit it, I can tell no one how to work for an S.O.B. because I've never worked for one. I have worked for men who were suffering from illness physical or mental, and who vented symptoms of these on me occasionally. I have worked for men who were bewildered, discouraged, tired, hurt, nervous, miserable, afraid. These too have made my life unpleasant. But I see now that these men were not true S.O.B's. They were human beings in some sort of trouble, men in pain, whether from real or fancied ills. Therefore I must turn back to you unmarked the page on S.O.B's. I can't recall a one. Is it possible there aren't any?

All the letter says, really, is that juniors and seniors alike are human beings with human frailties but each in his way doing the best he can for a purpose he believes worth while. We figure the letter deserves to live.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Special thanks to Kathryn Fulton and Stackpole Books for allowing me to reprint the above excerpt.

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army. Taken from an article by the U.S. Army Center for Military History on Operation BIG LIFT which occurred in 1963. Link to the article here.

The Early Bird...Social Media Style

2011-01-27T05:46:00.000-08:00

Paper.li is a social media site that creates a daily, online newspaper by aggregating the posts of your Twitter or Facebook friends. I learned about it several months ago after seeing a number of Twitter posts that looked like "The MY NAME HERE Daily is out! Top Stories by LINK LINK and LINK."

I didn't really want to create a 'Mike Nicholson Daily', or '46alpha Daily' utilizing all 14,000+ Twitter friends, but did come up with the idea of utilizing a Twitter list of only DoD and DoD-related Twitter feeds. Considering many of the feeds are official Twitter accounts, walla, the Social Bird was born.

Very easy to set-up and no maintenance required to keep it published and promoted every day (which is why I see so many of them - truly 'Fire and Forget')

I use it just to get a jist of what some of the DoD social media sites are pushing out that day. It appears the the "Top Stories" are either randomly selected, or picked with some kind of algorithm, but I enjoy seeing articles that I might not otherwise see buried among the crowded social media landscape.

CSI pub: The Army & the Media in the 20th Century

2011-01-16T13:17:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of identifying a topic for my SAMS monograph, and wanted to pass on a great 100+ page book from the Combat Studies Institute titled The US Army and the Media in the 20th Century.

I originally grabbed the book off a shelf at the CARL library here on Leavenworth earlier this year (they give away CSI publications for free) but did not yet have a chance to read it. After week one of SAMS, I emailed Dr. Robert Davis who was introduced as one of our Seminar leaders to get some initial guidance on monograph topics.

I didn't know much about Dr. Davis and pitched a couple of monograph ideas related to PA and found out that he was coincidentally the author of this book.

It covers the Army and the media from the Spanish-American War up to the beginnings of the War on Terror. Its a quick read and worth a look with some interesting background information on the history of our profession.

ArmyLive design needs more tweaking

2011-01-14T00:51:00.000-08:00

I havent checked ArmyLive in awhile, the official blog of the U.S. Army, but when I did yesterday I noticed some changes - and I don't think for the better.

There are a series of items across the top which don't look like they belong. After clicking around I discovered that they are categories of blogposts, but you wouldn't know by looking at it.

Below the three rows of categories there is now a slideshow with three rotating articles, right below that is 'Featured Stories' with those same three articles, and below that is 'Editors Picks', and below that is 'Latest Headlines'.

So just as a means of providing constructive criticism, here is my input. The three rows of categories is too much - its this entirely new banner of stuff below the actual 'ArmyLive' banner. If you add the slideshow as another banner of stuff, you have to scroll down to actually get to any of the initial content.

The slideshow is OK, but the photo's are not formatted for the dimensions of the slideshow. We went through this with the Iron Brigade blog several years ago when first getting it online. We had to upload a photo that was specifically cropped to the dimensions of the slideshow, otherwise the slideshow player will crop it for you or it will stretch your photos out of proportion. Either way it doesn't look good.

Isn't 'Featured Stories' & 'Editors Picks' and then 'Latest Headlines' & 'Recent Posts' all a little redundant?

My recommendation - get rid of the three rows of categories on top and stick them on the side as a widget, probably as a drop-down. If you want to keep the slideshow, just ensure it looks a bit more professional with photos that are cropped correctly. Get rid of the 'Featured Stores' section. Take your 'Editors Pick' section and just call it 'Latest Headlines' or 'Recent Posts' and make all the latest headlines in that same format - photo on the left side with a little snippet of info.

That way when you click on the blog, in your browser you would see the 'ArmyLive' header, 3 rotating posts in the slideshow, and several of the latest posts below. On the right you'd see a category drop down, your blogroll, and maybe the Flickr widgets all on the same single screen without having to scroll down.

Different isn't always better. All you folks in the Online & Social Media Division are doing a great job, but just wanted to offer up my initial impressions of the blog redesign.

The need to stay current

2011-01-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

I turned the news on last night to see the ongoing coverage of the Arizona shootings yesterday. In case you've been under a rock, a 22-year old opened fire outside a supermarket where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was hosting an event. From the reports I watched and read, there were about 3 dozen people in attendance when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire and killed 6 people before he was tackled by two individuals (Link to a CNN article here.)

An incredibly tragic event conducted by one or two deranged individuals and my heart aches for those families who were affected.

There is lots I could write about this event from multiple perspectives:

From the Public Affairs perspective I could talk about several news outlets who appear to have initially traded speed for accuracy when reporting the death of the Congresswoman when in fact, she had not died. But I think Jamie McIntyre already did a good job here.

Or I could write about Sheriff Clarence Dupnik's comments given in his news brief. The Sheriff, while giving an update to the press and public on the facts of the case, continued to make comments regarding the extreme right/left radio rhetoric in the country. The following day we know that it was pure speculation on his part, but he never specified when he was giving facts and when he was giving his personal opinion which made for a somewhat confusing brief. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't accurately answer how many people were actually killed at the time, 5 or 6. It was 6. But I think Megan Kelly did a pretty good job here.

Or you could take the Sheriff's comments regarding the rhetoric and discuss whether or not it has an impact on unbalanced people like Loughner. Pick your side because there are arguments for either. Does rhetoric from guys like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin affect people like this? Probably. Should we blame the rhetoric for the actions of a deranged human being? Probably not.

All of the above would be huge blog posts in themselves, but the one thing that ran across my mind when I switched on the TV was 9/11, and here's why.

One of the ways that 9/11 changed me personally is that I don't like being away from news for that long. Prior to 9/11 I really didn't mind if I didn't know what was going on in politics, government or current affairs on any given day and stayed up-to-date with occasional updates during the week. After 9/11, I found myself not wanting to be out of the loop for any extended period of time. When I flipped on the news and discovered that this had been already going on for a couple hours and I didn't know about it yet, I could't believe it.

There are lots of things that have helped create the 2.4 second news cycle that we currently have. Some of it is advances in technology over the past 10 years, some of it is social media, some of it is the changing business of news media, but I wonder how much of it is post-9/11 psyche?

Every time an incident like this occurs, I think back to 9/11 and how since that day I cannot be away from current events for more than a few hours. I can't be the only one.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year

2010-12-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

Photo Courtesy of the U.S. Army Flickr Photostream

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Part of it is because I've been extremely busy at work finishing up ILE and for the past 2 months, the Red Team Leader Course (which was excellent by the way).

The other part of it is, as previously mentioned in another post, just social media burn-out. Looks like Im not the only one, a recent 2010 Pew Internet Report showed that young people (don't know if Im still classified as 'young') are blogging less. It looks like blogging has peaked, but it may also be that people are engaging in other areas like Facebook or Twitter.

For me, I blogged about 16 times this year which is not a ton, and have drastically reduced my active social media presences'. Not much Twitter any more and no more Flickr-Pro (I stick with MobileMe for now). I played around with going all Google a few months back, to include Gmail, Picasa and Buzz, but it just didn't work for me. I haven't updated the Facebook page in awhile, but I have maintained my personal Facebook posts.

What will 2011 bring for me? For one, I'll be in school for another year attending the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Ft Leavenworth. SAMS is not a Public Affairs Course; the curriculum is more focused on Army operations, planning, etc, but I should be a more complete PAO on the other side. I'm going to attempt to blog more and stay engaged in the PA/PR/Social Media World a little more next year than I was this year, but I'm not sure what the best methods for me will be while Im reading several hundred pages a night in SAMS.

So until my first post of 2011, just wanted to wish everyone a great holiday season and Happy New Year.

MAJ Mike Nicholson

A Red Teaming PAO

2010-10-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

What the heck is Red Team?!? That was my question when I first got to CGSC and my classmates and I were discussing our upcoming electives.

Red Team is a course run on Fort Leavenworth by the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies. There are several courses, the primary one being an 18-week course, a 9-week stop gap leader course (which I'm in), a 6-week member course, and a 2-week practitioner's course. The 9-week course is offered as an elective during ILE. While other ILE students are taking 8 different courses over the course of our last 2 months, Im taking the 9-week Red Team Leader Course.

As far as I can tell after my first week, Red Teaming is the process of attempting to look at problems, solutions and perceptions through the lens of other people in various cultures. It is a way of structuring "out-of-the-box" thinking and getting into the shoes of someone else. Lots of reading (150+ pages a night), and lots of culture, religion, politics, beliefs and thinking about how you and others think.

Most of my peers didn't understand why a PAO was going to attend the Red Team course since it was assumed by all of us to be primarily an Intel/G2 course, but I can see a lot of goodness in it. I originally took it just to broaden my capabilities as an officer, but I think there is going to be a lot of things I'll be able to carry over into my work as a PAO.

Here are a couple recent articles on Red Team:

U.S. Strategists Seek Afghan Fixes Outside the Box, Kimberly Dozier, AP (September 25, 2010)

What do Red Teams Really Do? Bilal Y. Saab, Foreign Policy (September 3, 2010)

Red Team, Mark Perry, Foreign Policy (June 30, 2010)

Red Team Journal (not run by the UFMCS schoolhouse)

I'll try and post periodic updates on the content of the course and its application toward PA.

Image downloaded from here.

PA, Soft Power, and where I think we are headed

2010-09-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

“A majority of military officers — especially the mid-career officers in the O-4 and O-5 paygrades — support giving more money and strategic emphasis to nonmilitary initiatives such as diplomacy and economic development in order to advance U.S. security interests, according to a recent poll.” Army Times, 27 September, 2010.

I have a great deal of interest in “soft power” because I think it will become increasingly more important in the years to come out of sheer economic necessity.

It is no secret that many of the western nations, to include England, Germany, and the U.S., are having financial “issues” on the domestic home front and are looking at ways to decrease military spending. For example, England is looking at a reduction in military spending by approximately 10%-15% with a reduction in their military personnel of about 20%. Germany is looking at reduce the number of their military personnel from 250,000 to 163,000 while eliminating its mandatory conscription.

The global “great recession” has greatly impacted the economies of the world and have caused governments to rethink how they are spending their money, and defense spending is naturally one of those areas that can be expected to be looked at.

The term ‘soft power” was originally coined by Joseph Nye, a Harvard University professor and author of a book with the same title. It a nutshell, soft power is about getting others to want the same outcomes you want without coercion or bribery. It is being able to influence without using either the carrot or the stick.

If you look at our current communication theorists, there are a number of similar things being discussed along the same lines as soft power. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith talk about being a Trust Agent in their book of the same name, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom talk about being a catalyst in The Starfish and the Spider, and Brian Solis has numerous posts on his blog about being an influencer. All these ideas gel neatly with Nye's ideas on soft power and they are all similar concepts only communicated within different contexts and using different terms.

I believe that over the next decade, soft power will take on new emphasis. The various sources of government leadership will look for more ways to achieve our goals through non-kinetic means, but in conjunction with the military. In my opinion, "soft power" will come to mean many things just like "strategic communications" did when it was the latest and greatest DoD buzzword.

With a majority of my fellow field grade officers supporting the use of other initiatives like diplomacy and economic development to advance our security agenda (according to the Army Times poll), we should expect to eventually see more diplomatic/economic ideas take hold in the senior military decision-making process.

So what should we expect? For those of us in the PA field, I think that we will be asked to serve more and more as diplomatic/military liaisons ensuring that the military themes, messages and most importantly our 'actions' are nested with, and are advancing the diplomatic agenda, even more so than we currently are. I think there will be more things thrown under the "strategic communication" umbrella, and we will be asked to either lead or be a part of more holistic communication and soft power programs.

Additionally, I think there is going to be a greater need to identify and measure the sources, impacts and effects of strategic communications and soft power. PA has made great progress in identifying indicators that allows us to measure some aspects of the media, our products, and public opinions over the last decade, but I think the “measurement” business is only in its early stages.

I would love to get an inter-agency position at some point, but with our high OPTEMPO those positions have been hard to come by. As operations in Iraq are ramping down, and presumably operations in Afghanistan doing the same at some point, I would expect that PAO’s will eventually get more education, training and experience with diplomacy and hopefully some time spent working in exchange programs with the state department.

All of the above is not to say that I think that our core work as military public affairs will change, I just think that we will eventually be asked to take on additional roles in the future.

What say you?

Photo courtesy of Getty Images. Downloaded from here.

The First Television President

2010-09-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

I just spent the afternoon at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, and have some good PA-related information on our first "Television President". There were a number of quotes and information signs along the tour, so I'll just post them below:

The First Televised Campaign (Information Board)

Television shaped the 1952 Eisenhower campaign in revolutionary ways that confirmed the power of the new medium. The GOP's elaborate TV strategy included using the Nielson company for televised conventions, and producing many "I Like Ike" commercials.
The First Television President (Information Board)

Because of the 1952 presidential campaign, with its exciting images of the Republican Convention, television was becoming a major source of political information for more and more Americans. As Franklin D. Roosevelt had pioneered the use of radio, Eisenhower was the first President to take advantage of the expanded opportunities to speak "in person" to the American public. His news conferences and addresses from the White House established new precedents and expectations for the presidency.

Eisenhower understood that television was revolutionizing politics. He could now address the American people through the new medium, urging them to support policies or explaining difficult decisions. Roosevelt had effectively used his famous "Fireside Chats" on the radio, and Ike tried to muster the power of television to do the same for his agenda.

Quote:

If the television craze continues, we are destined to have a nation of morons." - Daniel Marsh, president, Boston University, 1950

Televised Press Conference (Information Board):

Until 1955, press conferences had been "off the record." Journalists could not quote the president until they received an edited, "official" transcript from the press secretary. In that year Ike began allowing television coverage of his press conferences. However, the press conferences were not live broadcasts; film was released to the media for broadcast later. Still, an important step had been taken in providing the American people with candid documentation of their president at work."

"I don't want to look like a movie star!" (Information Board)

Ike was not naturally at ease in front of the television camera. He appeared so stiff and awkward during a 1952 campaign appearance on Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" that the great journalist advised him to seek professional help. Eisenhower agreed to work with actor Robert Montgomery.

They rehearsed speeches ahead of time, and Ike finally agreed to wear makeup and blue shirts. Montgomery directed that all camera equipment and crews be hidden behind a black cloth with a hole for the lens, so that Ike might be less intimidated by the process.

Lights, Camera, Action: The Press Conference (Information Board)

During his eight years in office, Eisenhower held 193 wide-ranging question-and-answer sessions with news reporters, more press conferences than any president before him. The conferences were held in the Executive Office Building, now named the Eisenhower Office Building.

Unlike today's format, which features the president entering the White House pressroom from a long hallway behind the podium, Ike strode into an often-mobbed room, pushed past reporters, and stood behind a large table. He generally did not speak from a lectern, and often paced back and forth while he considered reporters' questions and formulated his responses.

The Eisenhower Complex consists of the library, the museum, his actual Abilene boyhood home, and his grave, and if you've never been I'd highly recommend going if you're ever in the area.

Photo: The photo on the right is of Eisenhower's teleprompter taken with my iPhone. Ike won an Emmy in recognition of his extensive use of television.

Working with Millennials

2010-09-23T03:37:00.000-07:00

I recently went to my first Kansas City PRSA event which, for this event, hosted Ogilvy's Managing Director of PR Worldwide Mickey Nall.

Mickey talked a little about working in a big PR firm like Ogilvy, as well as some of the latest trends as he see's it in the PR business. I learned that the big PR firms are going through a transitional phase much like traditional media is. Ogilvy will be consolidating a number of its offices and reduce the different stovepipes that it has created. I interpreted the comment to also mean that, just like the journalism world, there will also be some reduction of manpower as well.

One comment he said that struck me was regarding Ogilvy's research into the Millennial generation, or Generation Y (those born after 1980). He said that their research shows that unlike those previous generations that had a focus on wealth (think Wall Street with Michael Douglas or Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties), the Millennial's were more concerned about praise. Yes, praise is what they desired the most out of a job.

Really? Now we know that both praise and/or money is not everything, and I'm sure money is important to this younger generation, but this research bodes well for the military. One is not gong to get rich by working in the military, but we do have a number of command tools to praise our Soldiers for doing a good job.

The other comment about Milllennial's that Ogilvy's research showed is that they are not multi-taskers. Really? With all the smart-phones and connectivity we have, they are not multi-taskers? He said that this generation wants to be able to take a task and complete it, and then move onto the next task (and I'm presuming wanting 'praise' for each action completed).

Believe it or not, I think this also bodes well for the military. Not that a brand new Soldier doesn't have to multi-task, but the level of multi-tasking is far lower for a Private than for a senior NCO or Officer. It would seem that this would allow us to gradually work on increasing a young Soldier's ability to accomplish more tasks at once the higher up in rank they get, and of course giving them 'praise' along the way.

The 'praise' piece also has a down side as well. As Mickey pointed out, this is the generation that also grew up with "everyone's a winner" and as this blogpost points out, everyone getting 4-foot tall trophy for 6th place. People that are used to being praised for producing average or less-than-average results are in for a shock when, in the real world, organizations don't 'praise' them for sub-par or even on-par performance.

So just a couple takeaways from Mickey's speech that I wanted to share that might give you some insight into your new Soldiers and Lieutenants that are arriving.

Image downloaded from here, under Creative Commons.

The Language of "Doctrine"

2010-08-27T23:27:00.000-07:00

I have been working in an exercise here at CGSC and was told that I need to try and speak more in doctrinal terms when I brief. The point being that when you brief a 2,3,4-star commander, some of them are sticklers on the use of doctrinal terms when briefing them. Every boss is different, but it is true that many want this when someone is giving a formal brief.

Got it, but why is it hard for me?

Then it occurred to me that my whole job revolves around not sounding like a Field Manual. I am supposed to take Army/doctrinal speak and translate it into something that the rest of the world can understand, whether it is in text, on camera, etc.

When I take someone and prep them for an interview, and tell them to not use acronyms or sound like they are a walking-talking field manual, most people cannot make the switch. So should it be any surprise that it is hard for me to make the switch back into using doctrinal terms when I talk?

The fact is that I understand the point that was made to me, it is basically "know your audience". When giving a brief to Commanders as a field grade officer, the language I need to use should be more the language of "doctrine" and less Public Affairs-mom-and-pop speak.

For this exercise, I'm acting as a Deputy J5 which means I'm not trying to speak in doctrinal terms about Public Affairs but in terms of future plans for a fictional 'war'.

I'm well out of my comfort zone in a J5 cell - planning and talking about all aspects of land operations at the CFLCC/Corps level- but am trying my best to re-learn this language that I haven't really spoken much in the past 8 years.

Who would you go "off-the-record" with?

2010-08-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

Under what circumstances and with whom would you go "off-the-record" or "on background" with?

On the record, on background, not for attribution and off the record: These are prearranged agreements between a reporter and a source, which govern how specific information can be used. These deals must be agreed to beforehand, never after. A source can't say something then claim it was "off the record." That's too late. When dealing with individuals who are not experienced in talking with reporters, journalists should make sure ground rules and potential consequences are clear, and then perhaps offer leeway. Of course, if the information isn't integral to the story, a reporter can agree not to use it. If you talk to five journalists, you'll likely get five different definitions for these terms. That's why it's important that a reporter clarify the use of these terms with a source before making any agreements. - NYU School of Journalism Handbook

Here is my thoughts on the matter. The decision to go off the record, on background, or not for attribution all depends on your relationship with that reporter. It amazes me to see or hear of PAO's who ask to go off-the-record with someone they hardly know, not knowing that persons professional ethics, morals, history, etc. A relationship with a journalist is just like any other personal or professional relationship - it takes time and some work to establish.

I had the opportunity to work in Norfolk under several U.S. Navy Captain PAO's, and I noticed some distinct differences between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy Public Affairs experiences. One of the things I took away was that the Navy has (relatively) few large naval bases where one could spend an entire career. What this does for their PAO's is give them the opportunity to develop relationships with the local Norfolk-based, San Diego-based, Hawaii-based, etc, media representatives over the course of many years. Many of the military corespondents in these towns stay in their jobs and while the PAO may move to different positions within the same location, he or she still maintains those connections.

When my boss went off-the-record, it is because he already had a long-standing, professional relationship with that reporter.

The Army is at a disadvantage because we have so many more bases all over the world that, other than the Fort Bragg's and the Fort Hood's, we only spend short amounts of time working with the local media reps before we move on to some other location 12-24 months later. I think the Army is at a disadvantage in this respect because we seldom have the chance to build the types of media relationships that our Navy PAOs do. This may be one of the reasons why some in our ranks seem to use "off-the-record" a bit more loosely than maybe they should - because the experience just isn't there.

So who would you go off-the-record with? I don't do it unless I have some professional history with the person and there is mutual trust. It can be advantageous for both parties to be able to go off-the-record or on background, but it's not something that should be done with any media rep that happens to pass through my location on assignment.

Do you have a different opinion?

Image taken from this link.

Google-only experiment done

2010-08-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

So for the last few weeks, I've gone completely Google. I rid myself of almost every social media site (except for Facebook and LinkedIn), stopped using Twitter (I used Buzz instead), Gmail instead of MobileMe (which has been my primary email account), Google Reader instead of Netvibes, Google Chrome instead of Safari, Google Profile instead of FriendFeed, Blogger instead of Wordpress, and Picasa instead of Flickr. I also used Google documents for awhile instead of Word and Pages.

I always look for stuff that would make life easier...simple. So what's the verdict? Even though I had everything Google, it still was not optimum. Google's products feel very disjointed to me. A product over here, one over there, there is no one place to go to see them all. I defaulted to starting at my Google Profile page where I linked in all my sites and went from there.

As for my preferences, let me first say that I am big on User Interface (UI). You may have a good product, but if your UI sucks then Im most likely not going to use it. I always thought Google's UI's were somewhat less than desirable prior to this experiment. After using them for a bit, I still feel that way although it doesn't bug me as much as it did before.

Email - Even though MobileMe gets a bad rap, I still prefer it to Gmail. The push email, calendar sync, bookmark sync, iDisk, all just work for me. You can do all those things via Google, but it just didn't seem as polished as MobileMe does.

Blogging - Wordpress is by far still superior to Blogger. I tried Blogger several years ago and while I found some new updates, it is not nearly as customizable as Wordpress is. So www.46alpha.com is now back on Wordpress.

Google Buzz - I did like not being limited to 140 characters, and the interaction was a bit more personalized. More photos, more information, but you cant message people. In order to '@' someone like in Twitter, you need to have the persons Gmail account in your address book. Additionally, most people just feed in their Twitter feed into Buzz anyway.

Picasa - Im split on this one versus Flickr and MobileMe's photo app. I liked that it has a built in editor and it was easy enough to upload photos. No video's though, while Flickr does short videos and MobileMe can do both.

What I did like:

Google Profile - I'll keep that, and am redirecting me www.mikenicholson.me to it. It is easier to remember than http://www.google.com/profiles/nicholson.c.mike.

Google Reader - I deleted my Netvibes page and have gone completely to Google Reader. This was a product that initially I thought I didnt like, but after using it for a bit, it really grew on me. It was also easy to use on the iPhone.

So experiment done. I dont think there will ever be one-stop shopping for me in regards to web/social media sites, nor do I think there should be. One company will never, and should never, serve all your online needs but you still should look for ways to make the mass amount of information somewhat simplified.

Now that it's done, I just need to go back and re-link some of the photos and links on this site that got jacked up during the migration. Back to work.

Looking for 46alpha?

2010-07-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

I'm trying something new and have gone completely Google for awhile. Dont know how long this experiment will last, but you can check it out over at my Google profile.

We need better Infographics

2010-05-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

A number of things have caught my attention recently that gives me the opinion that we need better infographics capabilities in the Army. An Infographic is a visual representation of data, information, knowledge or processes, and we use it all time. The above Powerpoint slide was in a brief to Gen McChrystal and recently made the news. There have also been quotes by Gen Mattis on how Powerpoint makes us stupid and Gen. McMaster who banned Powerpoint altogether.

How many times have you seen presentations that contain incomprehensible slides that only confuse? Im bombarded with them all the time here at CGSC.

With the new focus on 'Design' in FM 3.0, I see increased interest in trying to visually depict something in order to communicate the commander's intent. Design is not intended to be solely a visual product, but more of a way to apply various frameworks for problems, but I still see the need for improvement.

'Checking In' with location-based social media

2010-05-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

The following was a piece written for Army.mil and can be seen here.

'Geo' is this year's Twitter

If 2009 was the year of Twitter, then 2010 is ramping up to be the year of location-based social media services. Geo-location services like Foursquare, Brightkite and Gowalla have rapidly been adopted by users, and many of the sites you've likely already heard about like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter have either already integrated this capability or plan to do so in the near future. These services typically let users 'check-in' at their current location, identify where they are on a map, share that information with their social network, and provide additional comments on what they are doing.

Location-based social media services access your current location either through GPS or a cellular signal. Most of the major cellular networks have the ability to pinpoint your location, and the social media applications that utilize this capability are available for most cell phones on the market. These geo-location websites can either be used alone or can be linked into your other social media feeds like Facebook.

The video here is from the most recent South By Southwest Conference hosted in Austin, Texas and is a great visual that shows a large number of people checking-into eight different social media sites over the course of one week.

Why do it?

Sharing your current location within your social network is just an additional way to connect with friends and family. Most people already provide written updates about where they are and what they are doing, and having a virtual 'push-pin' on a map is just a natural progression. In addition, photos that contain geo-data can be integrated into services like the one Flickr provides, in order to plot your photos on a map for yourself, your own network or the general public.

As for its organizational use, these services have large potential for the private sector. For example, businesses can provide incentives for 'checking-in' at their various location. As for its application towards the Army, we might want to utilize it for community relation events, FMWR or Family Readiness Group events just to name a few. As the usage increases, the collective 'we' will undoubtedly identify more ways to effectively use this type of service.

Proceed with Caution

As a member of the military, you may have some concerns about you, your family or your Soldiers broadcasting their current location in real time. Don't worry, you're not alone. PleaseRobMe.com was created earlier this year and it aggregated publicly shared check-ins in order to help expose the dangers of location-sharing. Every new technology brings about its own concerns, so here are three things you may want to consider before posting your current location on a social network:

1. Who are you informing? Remember the extent of your network and whether it's closed or open to the public. You may not mind revealing real-time locations with close friends and family, but you may want to be somewhat guarded with your check-in's if your network is large and/or publically viewable.

2. Where are you checking in? A good rule of thumb is to never check-in at your place of residence or at work. Revealing these locations, even with a limited network of people, can enable those with bad intentions.

3. What are you revealing? In addition to privacy concerns, those of us wearing the uniform need to remember Operational Security (OPSEC). There are times when we don't want anyone to know in real-time where we are or what we're doing. Just be aware of what your sending, when your sending it, and keep in mind your fellow Soldiers who also have the capability to broadcast sensitive information.

As with any new technology, people are experimenting with these services and finding new ways to integrate them and increase their potential. 'Proceed with Caution' should not be taken as 'do not do it'. On the contrary, when it comes to social media my opinion is ignorance is not bliss.

If you are already utilizing these services or just want to give it a try to see what it's about, feel free to connect with me on my Foursquare account.

Business StartUp in a Weekend

2010-04-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

I spent some time this past weekend at the Kansas City StartUp Weekend. Startup Weekend is a non-profit organization that provides "networking, resources and incentives for individuals and teams to [take a business] from idea to launch." They go around to major cities all over the world setting up these weekend events. I had never been to one before and didnt really know what to expect, so here's what happened in a nutshell.

I arrived on a Friday evening and there was a brief social hour with beer, pizza and music to help get things going. There were approximately 50 people (+/-) there from all kinds of different backgrounds - programmers, designers, business developers, etc. I put myself down as PR/social media.

After some opening remarks, anyone in attendence had the opportunity to pitch a 1-minute busines idea to the group. There was a total of 27 pitches which eventually got narrowed down to the top 8 ideas. Everyone then spent the next 20 minutes going around the room to each of the 8 individuals who pitched those ideas asking questions, getting information, and eventually joining a team. I joined the team that was going to do a crowd-sourced food delivery service for local restaurants.

For the rest of the weekend, that team worked on the business to include a business plan, website, promotional ideas, etc, with the end result being a brief to a panel of judges on Sunday evening.

Here are a couple takeaways:

1) Stay the whole weekend. The Startup website says you can come and go if you have other things going on, but courtesy dictates that you inform your team when you cant be there. I could only do Friday and Saturday and told my team up front, but since you are a part of a 'team', you still feel like you're abandoning them if you have to leave.

2) Network. There are some smart, interesting people there. The main point is not so much the end result as it is the process. Wish I could have had that extra day to continue to chat with the other folks there.

3) Choose the team, not the business idea. During that initial 20 minutes of going around and choosing a team, I initially was looking for the best business idea, but quickly figured out that the better way was to pick what I thought might be the best team. I got on a team with a great bunch of talented guys.

It was interesting, something different for me, and would definitely do it again if given the chance.

Information overload? How about 'survey' overload

2010-04-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

So this is going to be a bit of a gripe post, but I have had enough of the DoD surveys! I get survey's every day for just about everything. I recently had a short 5 minute visit to the base medical clinic, and received a survey asking me how I thought my visit went. I dont want to sign the paper log-in sheets at the front desks anymore out of fear that I will receive another email survey.

This past PCS I received 3 different surveys, with multiple email and phone follow-up requests for each survey. I attempted to do the first one, but after deciphering the lengthy email instructions just on how to start the survey, and attempting to go through creating a NEW account specifically for that survey, with yet again another new login and password (with minimum 10 characters including 2 special, 2 uppercase, 2 lowercase, etc etc), I have turned them off, and I know I'm not the only one.

Surveys are good for research and establishing baselines of information, but not for feedback on regular customer service. So here is my recommendation - make sure there is an easy way to provide feedback at the user's prerogative and move away from the death-by-survey tactic. My AKO inbox is full, I can't remember anymore login/passwords, and I just don't want to take the time to fill out a questionnaire for something that was and should be business as usual.

Principles of War applied to Communication

2010-04-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

We are discussing Jomini, Clausewitz, and a number of other military theorists right now, and the Principles of War are a frequent topic of discussion. I like to try and take other frameworks and apply them to communication as a means of articulating better what we do.

So can we apply the Principles of War to modern communications? Here is my stab at it:

1. Objective: So what are you trying to achieve? We often work with ambiguous guidance, so it is important to firm that ambiguous guidance up into something quantifiable. Additionally, if you don't know specifically what you are trying to do then how will you know if you are succeeding? I saw a production section work without any standard other than "go out and get stories", and they produced very little and had low morale. After taking that same crew and giving them a minimum number of products to produce each week, they were ultimately producing that minimum standard of product (usually more), and with a higher quality.

2. Offensive: We should always be on the offensive. Pushing content out, being as transparent as we can, and applying the DoD Principles of Information. Maximum disclosure, minimum delay when actually applied is being on the offensive.

3. Mass: In Napoleonic terms, 'Mass' meant getting all your troops at one decisive point on the battle field. So in communications, it is the message that could be massed. If important enough, take your message and distribute it out on a variety of networks. Hit your audience multiple times and multiple ways in order for it to actually reach them - and I stress 'if important enough'. I am currently getting multiple messages, multiple times from a person that wants to start an ultimate frisbee team. No I don't want to play ultimate frisbee, and no I don't want to receive repeated messages on it.

4. Economy of Force: We all have small offices, so utilize your personnel and resources in order to maximize your output. Do more with less as smartly as you can, and get rid of those large, time suck jobs that provide little actual output.

5. Maneuver: The information environment is in a constant state of change. Don't fall too in love with a communication method because while it may be effective now, it might now be effective 12 months from now. Try to remain objective and open to new and potentially untested ideas.

6. Unity of Command. Simple enough. Strong, flexible leadership is needed to run a PA shop. Give direction and guidance, and take the ambiguity that comes in our line of work and try to quantify it as best you can for subordinates.

7. Security: Most web sites are either a) built by web designers or b) built by web managers. The web designers build sites for aesthetics and normally have little security. The web managers build things that are easier to secure and maintain, and then try and sprinkle a little cosmetics on it. Shoot for the happy medium. If your user interface is awful, no one is going to use it, but make sure it is secure and not easily hacked which can cause its own crisis communication problems.

8. Surprise: Let's shoot for the good types of surprise. New ways of communicating, new sites, new programs, new implementations. Keep experimenting, be flexible and don't get stuck in a rut. Being relevant today means working on the cutting edge, or the 'front lines', of communication.

9. Simplicity: Keep it Simple Stupid. There are gigabytes and gigabytes of content out there that we are all trying to sort through. Emails, social network streams, phone calls, verbal messages, written messages, sticky notes, etc. Message complexity is not going to help.

Image taken from here is of a Solider in WWI with Carrier Pigeons.

So is it useful or not?

2010-03-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

Whenever I sign up for a new social media site and play around with it for 5 minutes, I always ask myself is it useful or not?

Some social media sites are useful, some are a waist of time, and some of them are somewhere in between. So during a discussion today, the question was raised as to whether it is better to jump in early or wait for the best to rise above the rest.

Personally, I like jumping in early on social media sites and technology in general (a.k.a an early adopter). Sometimes you get something that isn't very practical like the cigarette umbrella above, but sometimes you get something really useful. One of the advantages of early embracement is that it allows you to more or less write the rules for everyone else.

Sometimes I'm just not sure about certain social media sites which is why I say they can be somewhere in the middle. This is the way I am right now with Blip.fm and more recently Foursquare. Im not sure if there is value in sending out music tracks with Blip.fm or checking in at a current location to get points with Foursquare, but I still periodically use them. This does several things:

1) Keeps me informed about what is out there. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to the rapidly changing information environment

2) Allows me to try out sites that I may eventually use at work or for a unit, and I don't want to test them out with an official Army account.

3) Gives me a larger palette of options to choose from and a wide knowledge base when implementing communication plans.

Over time the ones that are useful I keep, and the ones that are of no use just fall by the waist side, but at least I know their capabilities and limitations. You may not want to jump into every site with your official Army/unit account, but creating a generic Gmail account and user name for testing out a wide range of websites can be professionally rewarding.

Photo taken from Life.com's 30 Dumb Inventions