• Defining the roles within digital engagement - One of the big challenges for the emerging field of digital engagement is to define and describe what it is that we do, and establish roles within teams which can enable it to happen more easily, more consistently and on a larger scale.
• 5 Essential Traits for Community Managers - Community manager is the new it position in social media. To establish hardcore communities of evangelists around your brand, you need to have one. However, what makes up a successful community manager? Every community manager must have their own style and idea about how to run things for their company, right?

  Some basic tenets and rules apply regardless of the company, here narrowed it down to 5 essential traits.

• Help Create The Charter in Mixed Ink - Drafting a statment which local authorities, national government and voluntary agencies can sign up to as a comittment to change
• SOCIAL BY SOCIAL - New Book, launched 6th July 2009 at #rebootbritain
  New technologies are changing the way we engage communities, run companies, deliver public services, participate in government and campaign for change. These new technologies are available to all of us. And they offer us an amazing opportunity to change our world.
• 30 Twitter Tools For Managing Followers | Tools | PelFusion.com - To manage your followers or friends on twitter is not an easy task. To be successful on twitter you have to analyze different things. You should know how active your followers are, do they retweet your tweets, do they update regularly and you should know those whom you are following are following you.

  To manage all above things there are some helpful web based applications. Good news is you don’t have to search for them i have already compiled 30 twitter tools for you to manage followers.

• Putting Government Data online - Design Issues - This, 2009, is the year for putting government data online. Both US and UK governments made public commitments toward open data. The TED talk on Linked Data was in February. Groups from the Guardian to the Sunlight Foundation had already been pushing for it for a long time. People like Watchdog.net, mysociety.org, and govtrack.us had been pushing by publishing government data themselves in various formats, including Linked Data.

  So if you want to do this, what should you do? This article addresses this question very briefly, and makes a set of points which will probably be outdated by later developments, but answer a set of relevant question, asked or not.

A Directory of Mobile Phone numbers goes live early next week. All numbers including those belonging to children will be open to unsolicited messages or calls.

It is easy to unsubscribe, but it must be done before the beginning of next week to ensure you are ex directory.

To remove your number click on this link.

You will need to have your mobile phone with you as the unsubscribe code will be sent to you via text.

Please suggest it to your friends, family or those with children who have UK mobiles.

• The Problem and the Fix for the US Intelligence Agencies' Lessons Learned - This post is about a recent study I conducted for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to look at the Lessons Learned problems across the Intelligence Community (IC) and within DIA specifically. Although the study was conducted within an industry that has been publicly taken to task for its inability to learn from its own experience (The 9/11 Commission Report and the Commission on WMD in Iraq) the challenges these agencies face are not unlike those many other government agencies and corporations have to confront.

  In this study I examine some of the causes of those difficulties and make recommendations about how the IC might make better use of what they learn from their own experience. With DIA’s permission I have excerpted both the challenges and some of the recommendations from the larger study.

• The nonsense of 'knowledge management' - Examines critically the origins and basis of 'knowledge management', its components and its development as a field of consultancy practice. Problems in the distinction between 'knowledge' and 'information' are explored, as well as Polanyi's concept of 'tacit knowing'. The concept is examined in the journal literature, the Web sites of consultancy companies, and in the presentation of business schools. The conclusion is reached that 'knowledge management' is an umbrella term for a variety of organizational activities, none of which are concerned with the management of knowledge. Those activities that are not concerned with the management of information are concerned with the management of work practices, in the expectation that changes in such areas as communication practice will enable information sharing.
• Metacrap - Metadata is "data about data" — information like keywords, page-length, title, word-count, abstract, location, SKU, ISBN, and so on. Explicit, human-generated metadata has enjoyed recent trendiness, especially in the world of XML. A typical scenario goes like this: a number of suppliers get together and agree on a metadata standard — a Document Type Definition or scheme — for a given subject area, say washing machines. They agree to a common vocabulary for describing washing machines: size, capacity, energy consumption, water consumption, price. They create machine-readable databases of their inventory, which are available in whole or part to search agents and other databases, so that a consumer can enter the parameters of the washing machine he's seeking and query multiple sites simultaneously for an exhaustive list of the available washing machines that meet his criteria.
• Column 2 : Transition strategies for Enterprise 2.0 adoption #e2conf - Lee Bryant of Headshift looked at the adoption challenges for Enterprise 2.0 technologies in companies that have grown up around a centralized model of IT, particularly for the second wave adopters required to move Enterprise 2.0 into the mainstream within an organization. He points out that we can’t afford the high-friction, high-cost model of deploying technology and processes, but need to rebalance the role of people within the enterprise.

  External tools are subject to evolutionary forces and either adapt or die quickly, whereas we are forced to put up with Paleolithic-era tools inside the enterprise because it’s a captive market. 21st century enterprises, however, aren’t putting up with that: they’re going outside and getting the best possible tools for their uses on demand, rather than waiting for IT to provide a second-rate solution, months or years later.

• Seth Godin's Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List on Statsaholic.com - There are literally thousands of "web 2.0" companies, and until now, there's been no easy way to compare which ones are getting traffic. The list of 952 sites below was inspired by the list started by Bob Stumpel and then added to by many others

Maybe nothing new here for the seasoned Twitter user, but as always, Lee Lefever does a great job in putting across fairly complex concepts in a simple ‘matter of fact’ way. This new video from CommonCraft covers Twitter Search, and for anyone who wants to know more about ‘trends’ and ‘hashtags’ then look no further, all is explained here.

If you want to see more of the CommonCraft ‘Simple English’ videos, subscribe to the CommonCraft channel on YouTube.

My colleague James Lappin (Thinking Records Ltd) recently hosted and facilitated a podcast with me, Steve Baily - senior adviser on records management issues for JISC infoNet and author of the hugely successful and thought-provoking book ‘Managing the Crowd, rethinking records management for the web 2.0 world‘ and Elizabeth Lomas, PhD Researcher at Northumbria University. I was indeed in esteemed company!

For me this was an opportunity to air the views I had previously blogged about regarding a perceived disinterest or lack of understanding in the public sector (and possibly elsewhere) of how the Web 2.0 world is making traditional records management policies and procedures largely redundant and in some cases completely unworkable.

The podcast (Episode 4)  last 46 mins and covers the following points:

• what impact is Web 2.0 having on the way organisations are keeping their records?
• are current records management practices and standards still adapted to the web 2.0 world with its increased volume, and pace of information exchange, increased diversity of systems and increased pace of technological change?
• what kind of record keeping would be suited to the web 2.0 world? Will the web 2.0 world result in organisations keeping records in a completely different kind of way?

This may be a dry subject for some people, but whichever side of the coin you’re on - the dynamic and relatively undisciplined world of Web 2.0 or the highly disciplined and structured world of records management, I think you’ll soon be affected one way or another since many of the issues go to the heart of how information is created, used, published and destroyed - or not, as the case may be. It’s certainly a polarising topic with few opportunities for sitting on the fence.  Either we accept that information creation is increasingly user-centric and we adapt policies, procedures and technology to cope with this, or we continue to throw money and resource at ECM and EDRM systems based on increasingly redundant policies and procedures that assume centralised control and management of information. Whatever you believe, there is a tension in the system that is going to lead to something breaking somewhere, and soon.

If you have an opinion - let’s hear it!

• CIO > How Facebook and Twitter are changing data privacy rules - CIOs think about privacy the way some people think about exercise: with a sigh and a sense of impending pain. Outside of regulated industries like health care - where patient privacy is paramount - privacy affects CIOs as a corollary of security when, say, a laptop holding millions of people's records is lost or hackers siphon off customer data.

  "CIOs generally don't care about privacy," says Peter Milla, former CIO and chief privacy officer at Survey Sampling International (SSI). Milla says most CIOs either focus on technology, or regard privacy as outside their domain, the province of a chief privacy or chief security officer. He finds both attitudes wrongheaded. CIOs, Milla says, should "want to be ahead of the curve" on privacy.

• socialstrategy:start [Practical Participation] - There are many small hurdles to effective use of social media and technology in public services. In democratic engagement and participation; communications and outreach; education; or just about any other area of work - the same soluble barriers hold up action.

  This wiki builds upon this blog post and offers a space to share learning about how to overcome the many small hurdles.

  Select any of the Hurdles listed below to add your comments, insights and experiences on how they affect the uptake of social technologies, or how they can be overcome.

  You can also find a list of other blog posts talking about this list.

• Lifehacker - The Google Wave Highlight Reel - Google Wave - We haven't been invited to try out Google Wave (yet? pretty please Mister Google?), but based on the 80-minute demonstration video, we're jazzed about it. Don't have 80 minutes? These eight 30-60 second clips highlight the best parts of Google Wave.
• 500 Internal Server Error - 500 Internal Server Error
• http://steve-dale.net/2009/06/09/bookmarks-for-may-26th-through-june-9th/ - New blog post: Bookmarks for May 26th through June 9th http://bit.ly/QeuHc

• Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies - RT @VenerAbility @stephendale Blog Winner:Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies http://bit.ly/JfMXT
• 10 awesome Twitter tricks - Every Twitter users is looking for the ladder to boost his/her following. You might be one of them trying to increase your Twitter followers. You must be looking for more public reading your updates. For sure you must be tired of trying out weirdest things to build followers in Twitter. It’s not tricky to build a famous profile, but it’s significant to start with the right understanding. Most commonly people try things like tweeting interesting stuffs that spreads with RTs to grow your twitter account into a solid distribution channel. Posting a lot of how-tos microblogs won't help actually, for they get repetitive. what you need to understand is that Twitter is a community for interaction and it is also an effective marketing platform. Why not make the best of Twitter. To make things easier for you we decided to provide you with the 10 awesome Twitter tricks to enhance your experience.
• Directory of Social Media Tools - Media creation and editing tools for graphics, animations, video, audio
• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/technology/internet/18drill.html?_r=1 - RT @Ina rt @dhinchcliffe Big changes:Social networks have officially eclipsed e-mail in general use for the first time: http://bit.ly/FhTpN
• http://steve-dale.net/2009/05/26/bookmarks-for-may-24th-through-may-26th/ - New blog post: Bookmarks for May 24th through May 26th http://bit.ly/MvEU7

I was  asked by the Network of government library and information specialists (NGLIS) to run a workshop session on Social Media Tools for their 2009 Conference, held in London 3rd June 2009. I thought this might be an ideal opportunity to run the Social Media Game that  David Wilcox and Beth Kanter had developed.

I enlisted the support of my colleague Dave Briggs, who I know had run this game before, and set about preparing the cards in accordance with the guidelines on the SocialMedia Wiki.  A copy of the cards is included in the attached PDF.

The following is a detailed explanation of the process we followed for the workshop which others may want to adopt or adapt if they are considering using this game, which I can recommend as a fun way of learning about the benefits and implications of using social media tools for engagement and collaboration.

Purpose of the workshop.

A simple but fun game that enables participants to discuss the merits of different social media tools and their utility and effectiveness in solving various real-world problems. The workshop will help delegates get a better appreciation of social media tools and the issues that need to be considered when deploying the tools in different situations.

Process

Step1:

The delegates were split into three teams of roughly 7 people in each team. Each team was asked to describe a scenario (a project, problem or requirement) related to their work environment. This was set out on an A3 piece of paper structured as follows:

• Scenario - a description of the issue/problem.
• Location - scope of influence, e.g. within a department, across depts., local, regional, national.
• People - the people affected by the issue/problem.
• Other considerations - any other influences or issues that might be relevant to resolving the issue/problem)

Each team was then asked to think of a number between 7 and 15 and write this number on their respective A3 sheets. The reasoning for this is given later.

Step 2:

One member from each team was asked to join one of the other teams and explain the scenario to that team. In effect they were acting as a ‘customer’ and the team they had just joined were now ‘consultants’. Each team was now working on one of the other team’s scenarios and not the one they developed themselves.

Each of the teams was given a set of social media cards, one side of which defined the functionality and on the other side an explanation of the application and the considerations for its use. Each team then set about solving the problem described in the scenario using a selection of the cards. Each of the cards had a points weighting which represented a nominal budget for using that particular feature. At this stage the number defined in step 1 was revealed as the budget for each consultancy team. Each team were required to deliver their solution within this budget, or to justify to their ‘customers’ any reason for exceeding the budget.

Step 3:

Having worked out their respective solutions each team explained their reasoning to the team that had originally generated a scenario, i.e. their customers. The customers were then asked to verify whether the solution met their requirements and could ask the consultant to clarify any points. Any budget overrun had to be justified by the consultants and agreed by the customers.

Step 4:

The final part of this game was a plenary feedback session on any lessons learnt and whether the teams had found the process useful in gaining a better understanding of how social media tools can be used to solve real-world problems, why some social media tools would not be appropriate in some circumstances.

I can recommend this game to anyone who wants to introduce the concepts of social media to their audience whilst at the same time making it a collaborative and fun learning process.