8:00 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.

Chairperson’s Welcome & Speed Networking

Become acquainted with your fellow conference attendees in this fun and fast-paced forum!

H. Giovanni Leusch-Carnaroli, Director, Global Public Sector
GRANT THORNTON LLP
Training Chairperson

9:15 a.m.

5 Ways To Perform And Measure Citizen Engagement: Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate & Empower

“Citizen Engagement” is a feel-good term that every government agency tries to incorporate into its operations in some way, but how do we, as social media professionals, understand and execute "engagement" activities?

This session will explain why you should turn your attention to "Public Participation" rather than focusing on "engagement," and will detail the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) spectrum of citizen participation that forms the basis for this training. The IAP2 states that "the spectrum was designed to assist with the selection of the level of participation that defines the public's role in any public participation process, [and] shows that differing levels of participation are legitimate and depend on the goals, time frames, resources, and levels of concern in the decision to be made."

You will learn the tools and tactics to spur various kinds of participation, not only with stakeholders outside your office or agency, but within it. Specifically, you'll learn how to conduct and evaluate programs that:

1. Inform: provide the public with balanced and objective information to assist them in understanding the problems, alternatives, opportunities and/or solutions
2. Consult: obtain public feedback on analysis, alternatives and/or decisions
3. Involve: work directly with the public throughout the process to ensure that public concerns and aspirations are consistently understood and considered
4. Collaborate: partner with the public in each aspect of the decision-making process including the development of alternatives and the identification of the preferred solution
5. Empower: place final decision-making in the hands of the public

Gadi Ben-Yehuda, Social Media Director
IBM CENTER FOR THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

9:45 a.m.

The Advantages Of Integrating Social Media Into Your Communications Strategy

A new survey on local government’s use of social media states that 94% of city government uses Twitter, 90% t use Facebook, while 50% are using YouTube.

This session will address the advantages of integrating social media tools into your communications strategy and provides examples of the operational objectives that are possible to achieve, including how to:

• Communicate directly with your audience without the encumbrances of going through mainstream media
• Create coverage yourself, without having to seek it out Manage your agency’s brand through unified messages and icons

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr, Senior Public Affairs Specialist
Timothy Barnes, Enterprise Director for Information Technology
COURT SERVICES AND OFFENDER SUPERVISION AGENCEY (CSOSA)

All-Star Speakers:
"Great content & advice on tackling social media."

10:15 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

10:25 a.m.

Morning Refreshment & Networking Break

10:45 a.m.

Digest Session: Brainstorm Ideas With Your Peers To Solve Your Biggest Social Media Obstacles

Some of you may be novices in social media, some of you may already be knee-deep in trying to understand what tools to use and how, while some of you may be already tacking the next big thing! Regardless of where you may currently be in your social media experience one thing is common – you all are here to learn how to overcome certain obstacles. During this session, you will start to share common obstacles, ideas, and solutions with your peers at a similar level & experience. Don't miss this engaging session tailored to your own issues and questions.

11:15 a.m.

How To Choose The Right Social Media Tools
To Get Your Message Out

Genome Alberta is a not-for-profit research organization based in Alberta, Canada. They use social media extensively to raise awareness with the general public, reach key influencers, and engage the science community. Their efforts have earned them a nomination for an Alberta Science and Technology Award and they ran a live BioRadio ‘broadcast’ from the International BIO Convention in Washington recently.

You’ll hear how they have integrated a variety of social media platforms with their web presence, outreach activities and print communications, and have worked with an Open Source community to develop their own 3rd party social media application.

You will leave this session with ideas, tactics and strategies on how to get your message heard through the clutter on social media, including how to:

• Select the right social media course for your audience and for the task at hand
• Make efficient use of your content and resources
• Pull together both social and mainstream media in your communications strategy toget the best return on your communications dollar

Mike Spear, Director of Corporate Communications
GENOME ALBERTA
@mikesgene

11:45 a.m.

How To Build A Social Media Program From Scratch: Strategic Planning, Policy, Best Practices And Implementation

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is using social media to engage key stakeholders and communicate the value of its scientific research and technology development.

In this session, you will see a suite of social media tools turned into a dynamic, integrated social media and web outreach program. You will learn a variety of practical skills that can be easily applied within your own organization, including how to:

• Add a social layer to your website to increase audience engagement and build awareness for your mission
• Leverage all available social media and web communications assets to make the most of your content
• Optimize your website and social media posts for maximum discovery by search engines
• Collaborate with partner organizations to highlight synergies and connect with key audiences

Dr. John Ohab, Public Affairs Specialist
U.S. NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

12:15 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

12:25 p.m.
Lunch On Your Own -- But Not Alone!

Join a group of your colleagues for a themed lunch with an informal discussion surrounding a specific social media hot topic. Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing communication concerns.

1:55 p.m.

How To Deliver Your Messages Among The Chatter: Content Aggregation And Its Importance In Having A Successful Social Presence

With the rise of public involvement in social media and the emergence of new social avenues, the volume of online content continues to grow. In early 2009, Twitter users sent 2 million tweets per day, by mid-2011 Twitter users were sending 200 million tweets per day. The explosion of information exchanged through social networks makes consuming it all virtually impossible. Finding a way to make your digital voice heard among this chaos is becoming increasingly difficult.

So where do you begin? How do you find your place among the chatter? One of the first and most valuable steps is determining where your online communities already exist. Most likely people are already talking about you, whether you have a virtual presence or not. It’s important to establish where people are talking about you, what you do, and what’s important to you.

After you have established where you belong in the social-sphere it is important to develop your content niche. One of the easiest strategies for success is to become a portal of information, a content aggregator. Become the authority within your niche that not only provides content created by your organization, but also content created by your community.

Content aggregation is the future of successful social presence! The overwhelming mass of digital information available to citizens lends to the paramount importance of finding a way to make your agency stand out among the noise.
You will leave this session understanding how content aggregation can help your organization, the best tools and techniques, including:

• How to find your niche community to ensure that your digital voice is heard
• How content aggregation plays an important role in the future of social media
• Ways to communicate with your audience in an effective way
• Why content aggregation is important and how it creates success

Sally Dadjou, New Media Specialist
RECOVERY ACCOUNTABILITY & TRANSPARENCY BOARD
@Recoverydotgov

2:25 p.m.

Using Social Media To Strengthen Relationships And Improve Service Between Your Organization And Your Community

Cranberry Township constantly strives to build connections between government, residents, and business owners through the use of many different communications tools. By adding social media tools to Cranberry Township’s communications plan, they have been able to strengthen those connections, and improve customer service by engaging people in conversations.

This informative session will discuss the path taken by Cranberry Township to integrate social media into their overall strategy, including: four different Facebook pages, a YouTube Channel, Twitter, and RSS feeds from their website.

You will leave this session the tools necessary to use social media to effectively communicate with your citizens, including how to:

• Integrate social media tools into your marketing plan
• Managing time, increasing efficiency - technology can help you
• Measure success
• Stay in the loop- keeping up with changes and news related to social media

Cindy Marzock, Communications Specialist
CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA

All-Star Speaker:
“Excellent information and a great presenter, very knowledgeable.”

2:55 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

3:15 p.m.

Digest Session:
Hands On Demonstration Of Popular Social Media Tools

Your choice to sit and view a hands on demonstration of a social media tool of your choice. Learn the techniques to use a social media tool correctly in order to engage your audience, push content to the media, gain feedback, and drive results.

3:45 p.m.

Understanding The Value Of Connecting Via Social Media: Improve Your Work Efficiency And Quality

Everywhere we look we encounter some type of connection. Consider a GPS or a map. These tools give us information that helps us get where we need to go. Along the way it is common to discover a new road that is a connection to the road you are on that can take you more directly to the road you need to get to. This is called a hidden connection and often times it can make your journey easier, faster, and better. Each and every hidden connection increases your knowledge of the overall network and as you connect more, you learn more and as a result become more efficient.

Same is the case with people networks, as we know them; social networks.

As you encounter something that you need help with we often look to our people networks to help us with the issue. More often than not, we discover that it wasn’t Bob your neighbor who finally helped you but rather his sister’s cousin’s brother who had the skill set that you were looking for to achieve what you needed.

This forward-thinking session will provide you with simple tips and techniques to utilize connections at the touch of a button, connections that will make your work easier, faster, and better than before, including how to:

• Use social media efficiently for work
• Add value to social media in the workplace
• Take stakeholder feedback and incorporate it into your action plan

Kimberly Allred, Program Analyst, Office of eDiplomacy
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

All-Star Speaker:
“Good example of large scale internal effort.”

4:15 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

4:20 p.m.

Day One Wrap Up

4:45 p.m.

End of Day One

5:00 p.m.

Networking Reception: Please Join Us!

We invite you to join us for a drink as you relax with your peers. All conference attendees and speakers are welcome to join us for this special opportunity to continue networking. Don't miss this chance to benchmark new ideas over complimentary drinks!

Sign up during the day for dinner with a group. Take advantage of Washington, DC's fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.

8:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast & Networking

8:30 a.m.

Chairperson's Opening Of Day Two & Presentation:
Enhancing Transparency, Engaging Citizens & Stakeholders, Eliminating Barriers

The appearance of disruptive new technologies like Facebook and Twitter as legitimate communication tools expose the need for agencies to quickly address gaps in policy and implementation of its media strategy. Agencies need to enable stakeholder and public communications in the social media realm and manage the risks associated with its use. While some agencies are using social media to engage important stakeholders, as well as the public at large, many still do not do enough to engage their partners in the performance planning and monitoring process. We will address policy development, technology adoption, piloting and experimentation, and internal culture change needs.

In this session, you will discover how some departments and agencies are leveraging social media to get input from stakeholders and keep them apprised of changes in operations and policy, including how to:

• Launch a partnership with program partners in the achievement of common goals
• Get feedback on your strategic planning
• Provide regular updates on progress toward important goals
• Share ideas on innovative ways to achieve breakthrough improvements in performance
• Learn how to identify and eliminate unnecessary barriers to improved performance

H. Giovanni Leusch-Carnaroli, Director, Global Public Sector
GRANT THORNTON LLP
Training Chairperson

9:05 a.m.

How To Successfully Balance Security And Open Communication In A Web 2.0 World

As a global organization, with billions of employees, family members, and stakeholders to keep informed, the U.S. Army is breaking down barriers and successfully operating in the social media space, while being careful to ensure security is maintained.

Unlike their civilian counterparts, who don't want to give their competitors any of their secret recipes, the U.S. Army is careful to not give the enemy an advantage. In this session, you will see how the U.S. Army Public Affairs is using social media as a powerful tool in accomplishing its mission of informing the American public, as well as that of connecting Americans to their Army.

Leave this session with the ability to maintain the balancing act in your own organization, including:

• How you, like the U.S. Army, can balance security with transparency
• How to control what is put out via social media
• Knowing why making information available to the American public is beneficial

SSG Dale Sweetnam, Online and Social Media Division
U.S. ARMY PUBLIC AFFAIRS
@DSweetnam

9:35 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

10:05 a.m.

Digest Session: Tips And Tools To Find The ROI Of Your Social Media Efforts

Endless hours posting on Facebook, sending Tweets, connecting on LinkedIn, uploading videos to YouTube, but what is it doing for your agency? Discuss what you’re monitoring, ways that you analyze this, and how you derive your ROI. Are there tools you’re using? Are there  equations that you put in place? Goals you must achieve to deem your efforts successful?

10:35 a.m.
*** LIVE DEMONSTRATION ***
Using Audio Podcasting To Harness Social Media That Will Meet Your Communications Goals With A Limited Budget And Limited Time

While almost any 13-year-old may be able to produce and post a video on YouTube, does your agency’s communications plan know how to properly shoot and post video?

If you have a limited budget and less time, audio podcasting can be an easier way for you to harness social media to meet communications goals.This session will discuss how audio can be more cost effective than video by requiring less equipment, fewer hours and very little support, including:

• The key ingredients to successful audio podcasting: content, quality and cross-promotion
• A step-by-step production process from concept to posting, including the all important RSS feed
• What common mistakes to watch out for and how to make your material stand out in a crowded, new medium
• How to find the strength of the audio medium by understanding the similarities and differences of print, audio and video
• How much it costs to podcast – what are the investments in time and equipment you may need to make
• Tips for measurement and tracking: how to set realistic expectations and get results
  

Joe Balintfy, Information Development Specialist
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
All-Star Speaker

11:05 a.m.

Experimenting With Social Media: How To Find And Engage Your Audience, Get Your Message Out And Track Your Progress

In 2009, the City of Regina, Saskatchewan experimented with social media as a strategy to increase engagement during the municipal elections. Three years later, social media is now firmly established and the 2012 election was the second "social election" in the City's history.

During this session, the City of Regina will share its lessons learned on how you, too, can use social media to increase engagement with your citizens, including:

• Getting your social media program off the ground and managing it as it evolves
• How to conduct surveys on social media usage and analyze the results
• Tools and techniques to determine the ROI of your social media efforts

Philippe Leclerc, Interactive Communications Manager
CITY OF REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN
All-Star Speaker

11:35 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

11:45 a.m.
Lunch On Your Own -- But Not Alone!

Join a group of your colleagues for a themed lunch with an informal discussion surrounding a specific social media hot topic. Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing communication concerns.

1:15 p.m.

Group Exercise: Brainstorm Solutions And New Ideas You Can Use

You asked for it, you got it! Interact and discuss solutions to your social media challenges with your fellow attendees and our experienced speakers. You will leave with new tools and hands-on experience and ideas for more successfully applying best practices to your own engagement initiatives.

1:45 p.m.

Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Oh My! How To Utilize The Many Social Media Tools To Engage, Expand, And Add Value To Your Conversation

So just when you get comfortable with conversations on Twitter and Facebook, along come a few new kids to the social media block – welcome FourSquare, Pinterest and Google+, to name a few. What are they and how can you use them to engage, expand reach and add value to the conversation? Let's talk.

This interactive panel session will give you an inside look at the many different social media tools available to you from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, blogs, SCVNGR and QR codes, FourSquare, and more!

You will leave this session with a sigh of relief as you will have a better understanding of which tools will work best for you and how to begin implementing them into your communications strategy.

Moderator:
Anthony Shop, Managing Director
SOCIAL DRIVER

Panelists:
To Be Announced

2:15 p.m.

How To Successfully Work With Internal Stakeholders To Create A Social Media Policy

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has found a way to successfully work with internal stakeholders; including legal counsel, IT security, public affairs, marketing professionals and HTML programmers; in order to develop its social media policy that satisfies the needs of all these offices.

This session will also demonstrate how FHWA prepped for the launch of a new social media site; and followed up after initial launch to build its audience at a steady pace. This session will provide you with tips to launch a new social media presence as well as how to expand an existing suite of social media applications. From the process of initial exploration among a group of your office representatives - to the launch of your site - this session will answer all the "need-to-knows" to ensure success.

Tom White, Social Media/Web Content Coordinator
FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

2:45 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

3:05 p.m.

How To Improve Customer Service And Response Time In Just 140 Characters

The U.S. Geological Survey has successfully managed and used their Twitter and Facebook accounts to not only push out messages, but to improve customer service by being responsive. In this session you’ll get a glimpse into how the @USGS Twitter account has sustained continued growth in followers and reach, as well as gaining a better understanding for what it takes to run the account.

Too many times we think of social media as a way to push out messages never fully grasping how we can pull information, just as valuable, from them. You will leave this session with an understanding of techniques used to improve your customer service skills through the use of social media, including how to:

• Instill passion in your employees that will motivate them to take customer service to the next level
• Manage your Twitter account allowing you to responds to concerns and questions in a timely manner
• Push out messages to your audience that are relevant, memorable, and worthwhile

Scott Horvath, Web and Social Media Chief
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
@S_Horv

3:35 p.m.

How To Build An Effective Social Media Campaign By Creating Engaging Content And Utilizing Different Aspects Of Social Media Platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Blogs

Every 10 years, the U.S. Government launches its most ambitious public mission: the complete count of the U.S. population. As part of the 2010 Census’s commitment to transparency and education, the Census Bureau engaged in a dialogue with the American public through each of its social media assets. Following the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau has continued to find new opportunities to engage with audiences via social media, such as the “40 Days to the 1940 Census Campaign.”

The release of 1940 Census records after 72 years, were the first individual records release in the age of social media and also the first that were made available digitally by the National Archives. This release provided an extraordinary opportunity to deepen relationships with existing Census Bureau social media users and introduce history and genealogy fans to Census Bureau statistics. To build excitement about the release of individual records while telling the story of life in 1940 through statistics, the Census Bureau engaged with social media audiences through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and blogs.

Through several examples of successful social media campaign engagement, focusing on the 1940 Census campaign, this session will provide you with the necessary steps to build an effective social media campaign of your own, including:

• How to create campaign-specific engaging content (such as Twitter chats) that utilize the advantages of different social media platforms and tools
• Integrating new types of content, such as infographics, into your social media campaign
• Creating engaging content on a variety of tools; Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Blogs
• Using lessons learned from campaigns to build upon previous successes

Jennifer Smitts, Public Affairs Specialist
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

4:05 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

4:15 p.m.
Chairperson’s Recap: Key Takeaways And What To Do When You Get Back To The Office

We’ll recap the highlights of the past two days and ask you to share key insights and next steps with the group.

4:25 p.m.

Close Of General Sessions