8:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast & Networking

8:30 a.m.
Chairperson's Opening of Day Two & Presentation: Social Media From The Inside, Out: Six Ways Social Media Helps Increase Your Organization’s Effectiveness And Efficiency

This session will show how federal, state, and local agencies are turning to social media for six tasks that span the gamut from exclusively internal to primarily external uses.

1. Enhance internal management
2. Broadcast information
3. Enable conversation and collaboration
4. Create self-service options
5. Garner constituent feedback and ideas
6. Engage citizens and organizations that can assist in mission-critical operations
   

You will also leave with examples of how agencies are already using social media for each task, and will be able to show how your office can use existing tools, many free, to replicate their successes. Taken together, these six activities form the envelope of social media that agencies can use to increase their effectiveness and efficiency.

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

9:30 a.m.

Integrated Web 2.0: How One City Adopted Social Media Technologies, Established Policies And Incorporated Them Into Their Public Information Tasks

Contemporary information distribution technologies have shifted the one-to-many model of mass communication to an interactive, responsive and flexible model of multiple producers and receivers. To accommodate the shift, government agencies cannot simply add Facebook and stir, but rather are responsible for reporting and retaining information through open records laws, employee relations policies and new forms of writing. The Common Council-City Clerk is one Milwaukee agency that has coordinated a long-term discussion on how this legislative branch of municipal government will adopt these technologies and who will be charged with managing and enhancing them.

The City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has done extensive work to establish policies and procedures related to Web 2.0. In this session, you will take away strategies for integration, effectively communicating through this spectrum of new media, the blending of traditional and new media opportunities, operating social media platforms within the structures of government and incorporating other tools into your public information tasks. After many thoughtful years of surveying the field and laying the procedural groundwork, the City of Milwaukee is "Facebook Official" and the long road to better communication can serve as example to both an agency new to the field as well as the agency looking for the next step.

• Behind-the-information discussions about policy, roles and new media usage that your agency should be having
• How your in-house systems and technological abilities can mirror widely-used social media practices
• Deciding who in your agency should engage Twitter, Facebook and other new media on behalf of your agency
• Flexing your PIO’s writing style and traditional media practices to accommodate a two-way medium

Dr. Julie Ferris, Public Relations Supervisor, Common Council-City Clerk
CITY OF MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

10:35 a.m.

Audio Podcasting: One Way To Save Money And Still Integrate Social Media To Get Results

While almost any 13-year-old may be able to produce and post a video on YouTube, does your agency’s communications plan include showing a teenager wiping out on a skateboard? It takes a more time, technology and know-how to do video right.

If you have a limited budget and little time, audio podcasting can be an easier way to harness social media to meet your communications goals.

Learn how audio can be more cost-effective than video by requiring less equipment, fewer hours and very little support – audio podcasting can even be a one-person show.

• 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 News Media Branch,
Office of Communications and Public Liaison, Office of the Director
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

11:20 a.m.

How To Use Open Source Techniques For Your Project Management Needs: Achieving Organizational Culture Change And Breaking Down Barriers Through Social Media Participation

Open source communities and approaches to project management can be used to power culture shifting techniques to achieve principles of open government transparency and adoption of social media practices. By using open source software and open source fundamentals, government communities can become focused centers of participation within and across their organization. Furthermore, such approaches can break down the barriers that separate citizens from government institutions, agencies, and bureaus.

This session will share open source management techniques that can be adopted by social media champions within organizations and utilizations of open source software, which can aggregate and empower participative communities.

• Build communities to strengthen the case for social media adoption
• Develop social media practices that enable participation by citizens within government
• Identify open source solutions and tools to integrate into your social media platform

J.J. Toothman, Web Strategist
NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated by one of our expert speakers. Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing social media concerns.

1:35 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 social media initiatives.

2:05 p.m.

Leveraging Your Social Media Presence To Gain Awareness And To Reach Your Global Audience

Genome Alberta is a not-for-profit research organization funded by the Provincial and Federal governments in Canada. They make extensive use of social media on both sides of the border to raise awareness with the general public, reach key influencers, and engage the science community.

In this session, you will learn how the organization has managed to take its small size and leverage its online presence to reach out to an international audience using a virtual team based in Canada and the United States. The organization has contributed to the development of an open source news application, which Genome Alberta has adapted to the biotech sector.

Clearing a minefield in Croatia may seem like it is a long way from using social media to your organization or department but you will hear how focusing on your goals and objectives can help you avoid potential wrecks along the way.

• 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 to get the best return on your communications dollar
• Keep your online efforts dynamic and not get stuck in the social media mud

Mike Spear, Director of Corporate Communications
GENOME ALBERTA, CANADA

2:50 p.m.

Afternoon Refreshment & Networking Break

3:05 p.m.

Extending Your Social Media Reach:
Manage User-Generated Content And Reach Your Audience Through Lesser-Known Platforms

In its efforts to engage a global audience to remember and learn about the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has embraced the use of several social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter. However, two of its standout projects rely upon lesser known platforms or in-house production.

Beginning in 2008, the Museum launched an experimental, online learning lab based on a unique record of almost 14,000 children from the Holocaust. “Children of the Lodz Ghetto: A Memorial Research Project” (http://online.ushmm.org/lodzchildren) invites participants to be "citizen historians," researching children from the Lodz ghetto through a site that structures their work, provides user access to data pulled from archival sources, and allows direct feedback from experts and peers. The project has proven their knowledge of Holocaust history, but also poses several challenges, including the management of user-generated content; the relationship between gaming techniques, social media, and experiential learning; and the balance between participant learning and accurate research contributions.  Much has been learned about how investments in user-to-user communication/collaboration can beneficially affect project outcomes.

“Curators' Corner” (http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/curatorscorner/) shares behind-the-scenes stories of our collections. This project began as a “quick and dirty” way to fill a void in the Museum’s online presence. Lacking administration approval for a blog for sharing these stories, as well as staff time and resources to make polished videos on a monthly schedule, we turned to the story-telling platform, VoiceThread.com, to create short slideshows using photographs, documents, and voiceover by curators. It has been a useful tool for quickly producing compelling content about our artifacts and collections and for inviting the public to connect with our work.

• Manage user-generated content
• Use gaming techniques and social media to support experiential learning
• Balance participant learning with the needs of accurate and authentic research
• Simply produce multimedia programs that streamline production and vetting processes

David Klevan,Education Manager for Technology and Distance Learning
Amelia Wong, Production Coordinator for Social Media
U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

3:50 p.m.

How To Utilize Virtual Environments To Engage Your Audiences

By creating a 3-D fully immersive virtual voting center in the multi-user virtual environment known as Second Life, the team at The John Scott Dailey Florida Institute of Government at the University of Central Florida designed a low cost, hands-on poll worker-training program. Fully customizable, the environment allowed them the latitude to create an ideal polling center in which to train future poll workers. Using Second Life, trainees engaged the actual polling place equipment that required interaction and ‘play’ in order learn the responsibilities of a poll worker. By creating a platform that is live all the time, the team was able to offer a flexible schedule of classes that anyone with a computer could attend. A survey completed by the Poll Clerks at the November 2010 elections will determine the success of their virtual trainees but self-reports indicate most feel the training adequately prepared them for working the elections. Hindrances to the training focus on technological issues such as computer and Internet connection speeds as well as a learning curve as we introduced the trainees to an entirely new training platform.

During this session, you will gain an introduction to the multi-user virtual environments and a demonstration of different government installments in Second Life and the utility of the environment for engagement with citizens will be shared.

• How to engage a virtual environment
• Potential for government uses of virtual environments
• An understanding of the platform in order to begin the conversation for future use

Michelle K. Gardner, Coordinator, Admin Services and PhD Student
Texts and Technology Program
THE JOHN SCOTT DAILEY FLORIDA INSTITUTE OF GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

4:35 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.

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