Dennis McDonald's Web Site

By Dennis D. McDonald

Peter Turner and I are both Alexandria, Virginia residents. In late 2007 we talked  about starting up a monthly invitation-only discussion group that would meet in “Old Town” Alexandria, Virginia. The purpose: to informally meet and discuss web strategy, technology, association and membership organizations, and interesting items in the news. 

Meeting VII, Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group, July 17, 2008

•  Postponed so members can attend TwinTech.
  

Meeting VI, Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group, June 19, 2008

 
June 19’s meeting was convened at 6pm in Alexandria at New Target Inc. Thanks to all — a great discussion! Thanks to New Target for hosting (and for Pizza!). Couple of items:

• Michael Auzenne - here is the web address for Doostang which seems to be trying to appeal to young professionals these days: http://www.doostang.com/. In my own attempts to use it I’ve noticed some clustering of internship opportunities.
  
• Maddie Grant brought up RSS as a topic last night and I have posted a blog post this morning about that:  Is RSS a Victim of its own Success? Comments invited!
• Chris Parente mentioned FEMA emails — here is the address (I think) for signing up for the email service he mentioned last night: https://service.govdelivery.com/service/user.html?code=USDHSFEMA
• I also mentioned that the city of Alexandria VA provides a similar announcement service via email and text messaging - I don’t think they are using Twitter yet: https://enews.alexandriava.gov/index.php?CCheck=1
• Chris led the discussion of a definition for 2.0. I located the following post of mine from 2006. The fact that we can discuss and define 2.0 from primarily an application perspective is, I think, an advance: The Many Changing Faces of Web 2.0.
• I’ve added July 17 to the group’s calendar for Meeting VII. RSVP now using the group’s private CollectiveX groupsite!
  
• Also, next week I’ll send out a note about recruiting additional members for the grou — be thinking whom you might want to ask.

Meeting V, Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group, May 15, 2008

May 15’s meeting convened at New Target Inc. in Alexandria. Attending the meeting were Peter Turner (MCI Group), Jeff De Cagna (Principled Innovation), Joe Pringle (ForumOne), Maddie Grant (Washington Center for Psychoanalysis), Andrew Wright, Carlo Ross (New Target), Lindy Dreyer, Laura Machanic (New Target), and Clarence Wooten (CollectiveX).

During the second hour Clarence Wooten, CEO and President of CollectiveX (Columbia, Maryland) demonstrated the new features of CollectiveX 2.0.

Meeting IV, Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group, April 17, 2008

April 17’s meeting, convened at New Target, generated some enlightening discussion. At the meeting were Chris Parente (Strategic Communications), Maddie Grant (Washington Center for Psychoanalysis), Carlo Ross (New Target), Andrew Wright, Keith Casey (Casey Software) and Dennis McDonald (yours truly).

The first half of the meeting was devoted to an open discussion, then Keith made a presentation about and discussed technical, business, and operational aspects of WhyGoSolo.

Some of the evening’s key discussion points:

• Chris Parente asked for ideas on applying social media to a “reverse auction” business. This set off a discussion of the current state of web metrics, how to incorporate social media “thought leaders” in the promotion strategy, and how it might be necessary to treat buyers and vendors differently.
  
• Keith felt that an attempt to recruit involvement of “A listers” for a reverse auction promotion might be less effective than recruiting a larger number of “B listers” and used an “aggregated long tail” argument to support such an approach.
• Andrew and others pointed out the continued rise among the technically savvy of Twitter and how this was impacting both blogs and use of RSS feeds. Several members of the group noted their use of RSS readers had declined somewhat and that Twitter use might actually be resulting in increased attention being paid to actual blogs. (At one point Andrew referred to Twitter as “human RSS.”)
  
• Carlo brought up recent experiences in which RFP’s were being issued in situations where the issuing agency was known not to have the funds available for a contract but might actually be using the procurement process to gather information. Dennis commented that, while social media and social networking might actually be able to streamline and accelerate the procurement process, bureaucratic rules might actually prevent improved communication taking place between buyers and sellers, at least in the public sector.
• Keith discussed the ideas behind WhyGoSolo and its goals and operations:
• The system, which supports the ability to tie together messages between diverse social networks, lets people create a profile where they can list the type of events and experiences they enjoy.
• This profile information enables people to find other people with similar interests.
• The system also enables providers of events, shows, tickets, etc. to make information about specific events available; this information can serve as the basis for individual members finding others who may also be interested in attending a specific event (i.e., “why go solo?”)
• One thing the system does is — if the member’s profile is set up this way — to send an announcement to Twitter describing the event that an individual intends to attend.
• Discussion of the system’s operation covered a variety of topics, including:
• A focus on last minute attendance options in practical terms seemed to target the system’s appeal to those with flexible schedules (i.e., non-parents)
• Maddie and Dennis discussed the potential for such a system to help association members seek out opportunities to work together in situations where members might be coming together from different associations,
• Keith mentioned some of the metrics and tracking capabilities of the system, which included a note about the frequency with which an individual member actually attended an event he or she had agreed in advance to attend  (the “flake out score”)
• Keith also demonstrated the ability to use the system to research another member before agreeing to attend an event with him or her. He also discussed the ability to better plan for attendance at upcoming events based on recorded behavior data stored by the system.
  

Meeting III, Alexandria Web Strategy Discussions Group, March 20, 2008

March 20’s meeting, hosted by New Target, generated some lively and thoughtful discussions. At the meeting were Peter Turner (MCI), Conor Sibley (CollectiveX), Chris Parente (Strategic Communications), Maddie Grant (Washington Center for Psychoanalysis), Carlo Ross (New Target), and Dennis McDonald (Independent Consultant). Topics included:

• Chris talked about “Social Media Press Releases.” His comments included “The term Social Media Press Release is a bit like “Web 2.0” – it really depends on what you’re including in the term,” and “Don’t forget that companies issues press releases for a lot of reasons besides generating publicity.”
• Maddie discussed some of the realities of promoting social media use among the “over 50” generation crowd in a professional organization. Mentioned during discussion: for some people email is still considered to be an “advanced” tool for collaboration.
• Peter discussed the challenges of promoting tools and services (such as social media) into organizations for which its adoption might require a paradigm shift in both the organization’s business strategy and in how it manages its operations. Carlo discussed some of the practical impacts this has for selling information services to associations.
• The group discussed how sessions at professional meetings and conferences are increasingly being “broadcast” via liveblogging and Twitter and how this is changing expectations concerning privacy and content ownership.
• During a discussion of how to monetize network based services, Peter discussed Innocentive’s marketplace for buying and selling research services as well as its creative use of online video.
• The group chatted about “answer” types of services; Dennis described his recent use of Linkedin to locate reviewers for an article on strategic planning he is updating. (Note to the group: Linkedin added company profiles to its service on March 21.)
• Conor provided technical insight into email standards and the current lack of identity validation procedures for email. He envisioned a “semantic web” enabled environment where an electronic communication agent evaluates available channels and networks to locate a “best route” for reaching another individual’s agent—as opposed to the current system where multiple networks, inboxes, and physical addresses need to be navigated, sometimes manually.
• Dennis complained that, while the rising use of social networks might be facilitating within-group communication and collaboration, we may also be returning to the “bad old days” where multiple incompatible email systems created disjointed communications. Dennis admitted he sometimes uses old-fashioned email as a centralized tool for monitoring message traffic on various social networks but, given his age, that’s probably to be expected! Coincidentally, Dennis found this post on ReadWriteWeb: The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere.
  

Why Alexandria?

Why should we do this since there are already a ton of networking meetings (breakfast, lunch, dinner, cocktails, Starbucks and otherwise) in DC and in other Northern Virginia areas?

It’s just about time, we think, that a group start up in Alexandria. Some Alexandria background: