8:00 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.
Chairperson's Welcome & Opening Remarks

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

8:45 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.

• Learning 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

Major Juanita Chang
Director, Online & Social Media Division
U.S. ARMY PUBLIC AFFAIRS
@USArmy

9:30 a.m.

How To Collaborate Behind the Firewall: If The Oldest Federal Agency Can Do It, So Can You

Looking for transparency in government? Then start by promoting transparency within your agency.

The State Department is the oldest executive agency in the United States. As the Cold War ended and we experienced the East Africa embassy bombings and 9/11: the paradigm shifted. The lack of information sharing and collaboration meant that puzzle pieces remain scattered and threats were unidentified. In this shift, the State Department’s office of eDiplomacy was born.

In the intervening years, eDiplomacy initiatives have included:

• Diplopedia – State’s enterprise wiki with over 10,000 articles is viewed by State employees over 35,000 times a week.
• Communities @ State – 64 blog-based online communities, with another 20 communities in the works.
• The Secretary’s Sounding Board – A tremendously popular idea generation and management platform through which nearly one thousand State employees have submitted suggestions for improving the Department and over four thousand comments have been registered on these ideas.
• Coming soon, a Social Networking Platform – A survey of over 900 State employees found a high demand for a “StateBook” behind the firewall.

You will leave this session with insights to bring social software
behind the firewall, including:

• Convincing your IT department to allow social software on your baseline
• Identifying and recognizing your leadership champions
• Setting realistic goals
• Developing your strategy
• Institutionalizing change
• Picking simple technology
• Getting started

Richard Boly, Director, Office of eDiplomacy
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

10:15 a.m.

Break-Out Blitz! Network And Discuss Social Media Challenges With Your Fellow Conference Attendees

This session will open the conversation by connecting you with other conference participants and gain greater understanding into many similar issues, concerns, and challenges that your peers are also facing. Become acquainted with your fellow conference attendees in this fun and fast-paced forum!

11:15 a.m.

Using Social Media Programs to Connect with and Engage the Public

NASA has demonstrated significant success in integrating social media throughout the agency as a way to connect with, and engage, the public. NASA has nearly 1 million followers on its @NASA Twitter account, and more than 200 other social media accounts that connect the public to NASA people and the agency's missions. NASA's successful Tweetup program merges online and offline engagement during in person events at various agency locations.

• Integrate social networking tools into your public outreach and communication efforts
• Identify opportunities for engaging with your organization's audiences in a way that provides information and builds trust

Stephanie L. Schierholz, Social Media Manager
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
@NASA

12:00 p.m.

Using Social Media To Drive Government Innovation In A Time Of Budget Constraints

Social media is a business management tool that allows you to take calculated risks, drive innovation, and generate cost savings for your organization. This is critical in government organizations as we are required to do more with less. Government leaders will need support, courage, and boldness to take risks and a safe space to embrace and learn from potential setbacks. The mission will not lessen but expand — how do you lead an organization to meet those expectations in a time of significant budget constraints?

• How to collect and disseminate information in real-time to handle mission and emergency situations
• How to create a power network by building a community of trust and collaborating with others inside and outside of the organization
• Ways to streamline business processes and functions
• Developing and communicating a common vision with stakeholder input
• Teaching and mentoring our generations of public servants and leaders

Lora L. Allen
Program Analyst
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
@LoraAllen

12:45 p.m.
Lunch On Your Own -- But Not Alone!

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.

2:15 p.m.

Paving The Way For Social Media Within Your Agency

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is a small operating unit (less than 40 people) with a big community, and a huge mission: to improve the performance and competitiveness of U.S. organizations. As a critical way to engage this diverse national community representing all sectors of the U.S. economy and reach a broader audience, tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and BLOGRIGE have been successfully used.

In this session, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will share best practices learned along this journey for you to leverage your limited resources for maximum results. In particular, you’ll learn:

• Practical tips on the dos and don’ts when launching a blog (or other social media tool)
• Ensuring sustainability of effort
• Identifying leadership champions
• Partnering with your Public Affairs office
• Results and benefits

Barbara Fischer
Outreach and Communications
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
@Baldrige_Barb

Zara Brunner
Outreach and Communications, Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
@Baldrige_Zara

3:15 p.m.

Closing The Gap:
How To Use Social Media For Crowd-Sourcing And Collaboration

In a distributed communications environment, where everyone can listen and everyone can publish, citizen groups and communities want to contribute their ideas and needs to decisions makers and program developers. The whole idea of gathering community input and suggestions, and then using that input to help formulate program decisions, is growing by leaps and bounds within the government.

This engaging session will discuss the use of social media tools by the National Cancer Institute including the Provocative Questions website, IdeaScale.com, Confluence, and MediaWiki as enterprise collaboration tools that help facilitate collaboration and crowd-sourcing.

• Think strategically about how to best engage your stakeholders for the purpose of gathering their input
• Evaluate the existing and upcoming social media tools and tactics available to facilitate the gathering of community input
• Close the feedback loop to let your community know what you’ve done with their input and ideas

You will leave this session with the key success factors for effective crowd-sourcing and collaboration, as well as practical tips on how you can apply them to your organization today.

Lisa M. Cole
Director Communications,
Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology
NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE
@lisacole213

4:00 p.m.


Using Social Media As An Internally-Focused Sharing And Learning Tool

The Allentown School District organizes over 18,000 students, teachers, administrators and supporting staff. To take their many challenges head-on, the District began employing social media as an internally-focused sharing and learning solution for its administrators, faculty and staff. The initial goals were very straightforward: break down the cliques and silos, reduce misinformation and identify cross-functional areas of opportunity for collaboration to generate educational, operational and administrative improvements.

The organization is tackling the inherent challenges that come with any new communication technology, including balancing the needs of sharing while considering the sensitivity of information and scale of participation. Sharing across administrator, teacher and student boundaries is essential for holistic problem-solving, yet solving localized problems is sometimes easier solely contained within respective groups. Similarly, large groups of diverse problem solvers can produce innovative solutions, yet openness and trust can often form faster and better in small groups. Additionally, the need to extract and share data between compartmented segments, to optimize the network and its problem solving capabilities, can be challenging.

• Design approaches for large scale learning networks
• Approaches for designing ‘compartmentalized’ learning networks
• Strategies to convert silos into collectives and broker know-how and
  goodwill across them
• Structures for multi-tiered approaches across domains
• Techniques for analysis and planning change

Gerald L. Zahorchak, Superintendent, Allentown School District
PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Michael P Hruska, President/CEO
PROBLEM SOLUTIONS

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 DC's fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.