To download a .pdf version of this presentation, please click here.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

For the period October 2 through October 9, 2008, the following are this blog’s “top ten” Managing Technology posts, ranked in descending order by the number of unique pageviews recorded by Google Analytics:

1. A Short Definition of “Strategic Planning”
2. What’s the Difference Between Innovation and Creativity?
3. Learning to Use Google Analytics
4. How Can Community Based Social Media Support the Next Census?
5. Business and I.T. Must Work Together to Manage New “Web 2.0” Tools
6. Learning to Use Google Analytics, Part 2
7. How To Develop a Business-Aligned Social Media & Social Networking Strategy
8. Lessons Learned from Using Google Docs
9. Control, Responsibility, and the Evolving Role of Community Management
10. Learning to Use Google Analytics

By Dennis D. McDonald

A recent AP article titled Census: Big Brother anxieties could hurt count reports official concern that the next US census is threatened by public anxiety about government activities such as immigration control and anti-terrorism measures. This made me wonder how the Census Bureau will be training its employees to overcome this public concern, and how collaborative technologies such as social networks might be used to share “best practices” among Census staff with community relations responsibilities.

U.S. Census Bureau director Steve Murdock is quoted:

“We have a lot of fear about government intrusion; we have a very contentious debate going on about immigration,” the agency’s director, Steve Murdock, told The Associated Press.

To combat people’s hesitancy, the bureau will work with local governments and organizations such as churches and community groups to make sure people understand what the census is and that the data won’t be shared, Murdock said.

This is serious problem. We need these numbers to do all sorts of planning, congressional redistricting, and benefit distribution. Unfortunately, given recent history, people are also concerned that government-collected data might be used for reasons other than what is stated officially. 

Here’s a timeline of upcoming Census events; as you can see, events for the 2010 census are already underway:

Fall 2008	Recruitment begins for local census jobs for early census operations.
Spring 2009	Census employees go door-to-door to update address list nationwide.
Fall 2009	Recruitment begins for census takers needed for peak workload in 2010.
February – March 2010	Census questionnaires are mailed or delivered to households.
April 1, 2010	Census Day
April – July 2010	Census takers visit households that did not return a questionnaire by mail.
December 2010	By law, Census Bureau delivers population counts to President for apportionment.
March 2011	By law, Census Bureau completes delivery of redistricting data to states.

As an example of the “community outreach” described by Murdock in the AP article, here is an extract from a recently announced (August 2008) “partnership specialist” position:

DUTIES: The incumbent of this position serves as a Partnership Specialist. The Partnership Specialist is responsible for developing partnerships with state, local, and tribal governments; community-based organizations, faith-based groups; schools; media outlets; businesses; and other grassroots entities in communities within the regional office area. The Partnership Specialist also provides support to census field operations such as Recruitment, Be Counted, Questionnaire Assistance Centers, Non-Response Follow-Up, and others.

I’ve suggested elsewhere that social networking might have a role in promoting community level energy conservation. Moreover, anyone paying any attention to how the web is being used to recruit and manage volunteer effort in the current US presidential campaign will see how useful web based methods are in promoting and managing grassroots local communication efforts. It’s easy to imagine how existing online tools and techniques could be adapted to support the upcoming Census, for example:

• For a given community, establish a web site about the census process and how the community benefits.
• Clearly identify all census staff with direct links to the conduct of the census in that community. Names, pictures, interests, and contact information are critical. Do the same for community representatives who also agree to participate.
• Maintain and update a calender of local events (e.g., speeches at local community organizations, presentations, training sessions, etc.).  
• Post audio and video of these local events. 
• Record and distribute questions and answers. 
• Maintain interactive discussions that surface, as much as possible, fears and concerns about Census data and how it will be used. 
• Give members of the community an opportunity to clearly discuss and state their concerns and issues. 
  
• Provide a mechanism for community representatives to “promote” or “escalate” important questions and answers when wider sharing seems appropriate. 
• Provide a mechanism for regional management to monitor local activities and to communicate information to local representatives when that is appropriate. 

Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

Courtesy of Wordle, here’s a “word cloud” frequency display of the words used in the titles of this blog’s ten most popular blog posts over the past week:

1. Authors will always need to create unified and organized pieces of intellectual property that encompass one or many ideas. 
   
2. Creating a work as long as a book forces authors to think, plan, and organize work that often requires a full length book to present.
3. Serious readers will always need and value the thought that goes into creating such works.

Using the FeedBurner service I have added an email subscription feature to this blog.

To receive new blog posts from this blog’s Managing Technology section, sent via email, do the following:

1. go to this page, 
   
2. supply your email address, 
   
3. fill in the security code, and 
   
4. acknowledge the email sent by FeedBurner.
   

Readers of this blog may have noticed that I have posted a link to a brief (one-minute) questionnaire survey; the survey link appears near the top of the left hand column of my blog (or you can click here).

When you answer the questions on the survey and press the “submit” button, the data are transferred to a Google Docs spreadsheet; only the time of the posting is recorded and there is no data captured in the spreadsheet about the individual respondent.

Google makes a series of “gadgets” available that can be used to manipulate and display the data collected via the online form (which you can see here). One gadget is the following display of the relative frequency with which different response text terms in question number 3 (“Which of the following topics interest you?”) are captured by the survey:

I think this is neat.

To see how your own responses affect the display, fill out the questionnaire (the link is here). After you click the “submit” button, the above display should be refreshed.

Can you think of any useful applications for this easy-to-use survey-and-display application? Use the “comment” form below to discuss.

Other Survey Questions

I posted Painful Lessons Learned from Using Google Docs last week when I discovered a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet form questionnaire, and a series of documents missing. That post was a followup to a very positive earlier post, Lessons Learned from Using Google Docs.

I was wrong. I found the items I thought were lost and I’ve restored a link to the questionnaire on the top of the left column banner of this blog. (If you have a minute to spare, I’d appreciate your answering the 5 questions; click on the link under PLEASE TAKE MY ONE-MINUTE SURVEY to see the questions.)

Here are five more podcasts I’ve been subscribing and listening to lately:

1. Center for Strategic and International Studies. A Washington DC think tank. Mostly speeches to small groups where the common refrain is “So And So Needs No Introduction.” Lots of solid and informed opinions about diplomacy, legislation, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and what’s really going on around the world. (It’s always a pleasure to listen to folks who spend most of their time outside the beltway.)
2. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics. Always informative reviews of historical events that relate in some way to what’s going on now — vice presidential disasters, religion in politics, objectivity in the media, etc.
3. History According to Bob. Bob enthusiastically talks about recent and ancient history — Etruscan government, the death of Charlemagne, what happened after Napoleon left Egypt, etc.
4. PRI’s The World In Words Podcast. Each program discusses some aspect of language, words, definitions, pronunciation, etc. Always fascinating as an exploration of cultural similarities and differences.
5. The Thomas Jefferson Hour. Historian/academic Clay Jenkinson portrays Thomas Jefferson in weekly discussions about architecture, religion, politics, literature, and many other topics. It’s always fascinating to hear the viewpoints of “Thomas Jefferson” in the light of today’s culture wars.

In How Microsoft Can Win The PC/Mac Campaign my friend Jeremiah Owyang asked for comments about the new Microsoft “I’m a PC” advertising campaign.

I commented (I was #15). I said the new commercial was “infinitely better” than the previous two Seinfeld commercials. But I didn’t see the point. Nevertheless, the comments do provide a really interesting cross section of positive, negative, and/or thoughtful views.

Submitted for your approval, here’s a Wordle display of the words (I deleted “September” and “19”) used in Jeremiah’s blog text and the subsequent comments (1 through 43):

What does this tell us? Beats me; what do you think?

Here are six ways local governments can use social media to help promote energy conservation. If you think of more please comment below this post or send an email to ddmcd@yahoo.com:

1. Establish a gateway or portal site on the municipality’s web site. 
2. Publicize named experts.
3. Establish neighborhood working groups.
4. Work with energy utilities. 
5. Openly investigate procurement of alternative energy sources. 
6. Promote transparency in the municipality’s own energy consumption. 

Your city probably already has a municipal web site that describes municipal services, organizations, and departments. There should also be a clearly identified and linked page or region specifically devoted to energy conservation that provides a constantly updated view of information people, discussions, and groups involved in energy conservation.

This page should display a master calendar of energy related events and should connect with social media tools such as blogs, networks, and discussion threads that reflect ongoing conservation activities and interests.

Some of the elements on this “front page” should be automatically generated and some should be created and edited by city staff. Make sure to keep this page constantly refreshed and changing. Also, provide a way that people can subscribe to receive updates via email and RSS subscription techniques.

Finally, offer an online search tool that web site visitors can “tune” to target the energy portion of the web site or the city’s whole web site.

Make it easy for the public to identify and contact individuals within the city government who are responsible either for managing specific conservation activities or who are tasked to track specific energy related topics or activities. Provide each of them with a page they maintain themselves that provides a description of their own areas or expertise, their contact information, and automatically generated links that reflect their involvement in discussion groups and their own calendared activities.

Individual blogging (i.e., individually maintained web sites where articles and discussion threads can be posted) should be an option where each “expert” can express his or her views on topics of interest and establish direct communication with the public.

Behind the scenes, provide communication and tracking support to ensure that contacts made by the public via phone, email, or posted comments on each expert’s blog are responded to by a human — ideally an expert — within 24 hours. Auto-generated responses should be minimized. 

3. Build Neighborhood Working Groups

The concept here is “neighbors helping neighbors save energy.” For each identifiable neighborhood the city should provide an easily generated social network that is linked to the main conservation web site but which is open to participation only by members of that community.  Neighborhood calendar, blogs, discussion threads, picture galleries, and voluntary  “citizen profiles” should be quickly and easily available.

Each “neighborhood” should be assigned a city employee who shares network administrator responsibilities with a neighborhood volunteer and who serves to monitor and promote the group’s activities.

The city may promote certain conservation activities city wide via blanket approaches and each neighborhood should be encouraged to develop its own approach to promoting and sharing ideas about conservation, energy saving, recycling, ride-sharing, use of public transportation, carpooling, hybrid vehicles, and related topics. Ideas that are particularly useful can be made available to other neighborhood networks with the agreement of their originators.

The city may also use each “neighborhood community” web site for advertising or posting information about city wide activities, but each neighborhood would be encouraged to create its own identity reflecting unique interests.

4. Work With Energy Utilities

The city should take the lead in working with gas and electric utilities to make data available to the city and to each neighborhood that reflects the unique consumption profile of each. This might be based on the use of “smart meter” generated data or through some other geographically-targeted reporting method that can be provided by the utility as a byproduct of its own customer service or customer relations program.

The goal is to provide local, relevant, and where possible, graphic illustrations of the a mount, type, volume, and costs associated with energy consumption.

5. Openly investigate procurement of alternative energy sources

Solar technology for household electricity generation is still expensive. Nevertheless, private sector and public sector initiatives are emerging to directly and through financial subsidies and tax incentives promote energy generation at the household and neighborhood level.

The city should establish a program to investigate the feasibility of a city-sponsored investment in solar and alternative electricity generating methods and publicize its efforts via a social publishing and networking vehicle such as an off-the-shelf blog or wiki platform. Private sector involvement should be encouraged as should involvement by all relevant city departments including attorney general, finance, public works, engineering, communications, and related utilities.

Plans, maps, and documents for public review and comment should be made available online. Subscription features should be incorporated so that changes or additions can be immediately “broadcast” to subscribers.

6. Promote transparency in the municipality’s own energy consumption

A key part of the municipality’s “conservation” web site should be an ongoing display of all energy related purchases made by or on behalf of the city, including fuel, vehicles, equipment, reimbursement for official travel, gas and electricity purchases (see item 4 above), investments in energy related business enterprises, conservation-related education and training, and cost of energy web site maintenance and support. Such data should be available over time and methods should also be available for public comment and suggestions for improved efficiency.

Comments

In Lessons Learned from Using Google Docs I described my recent use of Google Docs to support collaborative development of a consulting services proposal. The experience I described then was very positive. Google Docs is free and very easy to use, the user interface is functional, and the ability to collaborate on a common document from multiple locations is a terrific feature.

Last week, though, I had a negative experience with Google Docs that has caused me to re-think my position. How typical my experience is I don’t know. That I don’t know how typical that experience is gives me pause about using the service in the future.

I spent part of last Thursday and Friday working on a series of word processing documents as part of a marketing project. This involved the creation and uploading of a half dozen or so word processing documents and spreadsheets. That worked fine. As before, I was pleased at how easy the Google Docs system is to use, including how easy it is to import Microsoft Office and .pdf documents created on other platforms.

In addition to basic document creation and editing I wanted to experiment with the Google Docs “Forms” feature where an online questionnaire can be published and where respondents can answer questions online and feed a secure spreadsheet of data that can then be viewed online. I worked on a series of sample questions referring using my own blog as a test case and posted a link to the questions on the front page of my blog.

Over the weekend I checked in on Google Docs online to see how things were doing. The questionnaire was still available online from the link displayed on the front page of my blog, but the target spreadsheet —- and all the documents I had created over the past few days — were gone from my Google Docs directory.. I searched online for news of anyone else experiencing this and found what appear to be isolated examples of document disappearances, but nothing consistent. I even broadcast a few messages via Twitter asking if others had had similar experiences but go nothing back there, either.

Was my experience totally isolated? Did I do something to cause my documents to be deleted? Was there a connection between my use of the Forms feature and the Google Docs word processor and spreadsheet functions?

I don’t know, and that’s one of the frustrations. Searching Google help files unearths a few comments like mine, but I’m not seeing anything consistent. Is my experience therefore unique? Or is this something that is more common than people are letting on? 

I don’t know, but I am wondering how to approach Google Docs in the future. How about you?

Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

The Knowledge Management Section of the U.S. Army’s Field Manual FM 6-01.1 is a classic example of the formal structure and organization one can apply to just about any organizational process that requires management.

Given the nature of the Army, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. Whether this will be useful in other environments is another question, given the dismissive nature of discussion of informal networks, as in the following from page 3-4:

3-15. Each virtual community has a life cycle and serves a specific purpose. Key to all Army communities are links to organizational objectives and a need for facilitated, managed conversations. Forums that lack these features (most informal networks) tend to focus on nonprofessional areas. The Army does not usually support informal networks.

The text that accompanies this illustration clearly describes the different types of collaboration and the supporting roles that technology can play. The text is also sprinkled with examples of the use of different knowledge sharing methods, as in the discussion of how networking technologies were used in Stryker training:

Stryker Symposium II – Exploiting Online Collaboration

The first Stryker brigade combat team symposium, held in 2005, was conducted at Fort Lewis, Washington. Travel and per diem payments to participants resulted in a significant expense. In contrast, the symposium conducted in 2006 employed an online collaborative learning environment. This environment facilitated knowledge transfer among all the participating brigades, two deployed and four at home station. The 2006 symposium was a two-day event with focused dialog in three discussion areas, one for each Army force generation phase. Leaders from brigades with current experience or specific expertise facilitated each discussion. The 2006 symposium comprised 29 echelon and warfighting function subject groups. Participants in multiple locations engaged in virtual dialog using their normal military workstations. Each subject group used peer-facilitated discussions across all warfighting functions in small breakout sessions constituted from the brigade, battalion, and company echelons.

The symposium demonstrated how a geographically dispersed community could engage in dialog using network-based tools. The nearly 400 symposium participants made Stryker Symposium II the largest online collaborative event ever conducted by the Army.

The symposium demonstrated that meaningful knowledge transfer can occur in an online symposium. Based on that knowledge, the Army moved to acquire the hardware and software needed to form a collaborative network to support the Army’s distributive learning program. The Stryker University began testing this network when the first Stryker brigade combat team returned from Iraq.

While the basic finding of savings in travel and per diem expenses has always been the primary justification for all manners of corporate electronic training initiatives, the fact remains that such collaboration exercises, when managed correctly, can potentially bring together more viewpoints and experience stories than is usually possible with smaller face to face sessions.

Still, there are some caveats regrarding the general applicability of the processes and definitions presented in this document:

1. Figure 3-2 illustrates a pyramidal hierarchy of collaboration styles that I have found to be unrealistic in typical organizations. Just as there are multiple organizational structures that may or may not map to what you see on the formal organizational chart, you also see people engaing in different types of collaboration at different times for different purposes. Sometimes this collaboration can be planned, and sometimes it emerges spontaneously. Fixating too solidly as a manger on a theoretical progression of collaboration types may be less useful than concentrating on identifying when different type of collaboration make sense and making sure the resources are available to support what is needed.
   
2. While the text quoted above does appear to dismiss “informal networks” the reality is that informal networks exist in any organization, they are useful in many instances, they may have little relationship to the formal organizational structure, and to ignore them is to ignore a potential avenue for effective communication and sharing of knowledge and expertise. 
3. The “Knowledge Management Process” outlined in the manual — Assess, Design, Develop, Pilot, Implement — will be familiar to anyone with experience in project management. In other words, it’s a process that lays out the role of knowledge management and how learning can be captured and fed back to improve operations. It’s no better nor worse than any other set of “process steps.” But as I have learned, (a) any process is better than no process at all, and (b) all processes must be adapted to conditions “on the ground” for them to be useful.
4. This section of the manual focuses on Knowledge Management. What its underlying them is, though, is learning — learning from what others have done and making that learning available for others to use. It makes it clear that collaboration and sharing are important elements in any practice-oriented learning environment, and it begins to suggest the usefulness of technology in supporting this collaboration (without going into much detail on this last point, though).
5. Even though the manual is dismissive of “informal networks,” the reality is that distinctions between informal and formal networks are increasingly difficult to maintain. The military’s interest in maintaining control and authority is clearly a high priority, but as we have seen with how easy it is for information to “leak out” from our forward units in Iraq and Afghanistan via blogs and other “informal” communication channels, we ignore the reality of such communications at our  own peril. My hope is that, rather than eliminate all such informal communications and informal networking, we learn how formal and informal systems can coexist and benefit each other.

• Copyright (c) 2008 by Dennis D. McDonald

Thanks to Ike Pigott for pointing this out on Twitter.

This has to be one of the best examples of multi-source news-stream integration I’ve seen, a plugin based on Sprout technology:

Amazing. It is inspiring to see the technology used for good things.

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