GovZine

One of the great things about new digital platforms like openNASA is that they allow us to easily connect, share, discover and expand our experiences.  This includes sharing with each other those experiences that inspire us and impact the way we see the world.  Today, I thought I’d share a talk I heard the last semester of my MBA experience at the University of Texas by one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs, Gary Hoover.  Hoover created Hoovers.com, the world’s largest Internet-based provider of information about enterprises and is also well know for essentially creating the big box bookstore we know today.  His pioneering venture, Bookstop, was eventually sold to Barnes & Noble and became a cornerstone for their industry-dominating superstore chain. Today, Hoover is the “Entrepreneur-in-Residence” at McCombs Business School and spends much of his time today sharing his experience about creating and building lasting enterprises and inspiring students to do the same.  I’ve included a picture I took this morning of the back of his business card, which summarizes his talk.  It’s a list of 8 key ideas on how to create successful business and is a list that he has refined throughout his career.  Hoover gives this talk regularly, in fact he’s shared this now over 700 times on every continent but Antarctica.  This is also the topic of a book he wrote in 2001, called “Hoover’s Vision: Original Thinking for Business Success.” The rest of this post includes the detailed list (as posted on Hoover’s personal website) and if you’d like to watch Hoover give this talk, I’ve posted links to his webinar and the slides as well.  My hope in sharing this with you today is to spread these great ideas further, challenge us all to think differently, and inspire us to continue to do things that amplify our impact and reach.

Hooversworld blog | Gary Hoover Webinar | Presentation Slides

Gary Hoovers 8 Keys to Creating and Building Lasting Enterprises

1. Curiosity — nothing is ever discovered by looking in the same place as everyone else, or looking in the same way as everyone else.  All discovery starts with exploration. Ask a lot of questions. Go beyond the first “why.” Study the mundane, the “everyday.” Travel, observe, talk to people. Read, go to concerts, try new things. Look at other industries. The answers are rarely where you expect to find them. Opportunities are everywhere.

2. History — you can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you are coming from.  Watching key long-term trends is a critical part of successful leadership.  What are some of the trends to watch today? What large demographic shifts are at work? What can be learned from the leaders of the past, including those in your own industry and company?

3. Geography — we all come from somewhere, we all grew up somewhere.  In a shrinking world, it is more important than ever to understand people and places. Do you know the population of your metropolitan area? Do you know the growth rates of your county and surrounding counties? Do you know what is going on in countries around the world, which places are rising and falling and why? What are people leaving some places and moving to others?

(I believe the above three mindsets are the keys to dreaming up innovative new ideas that relate to the real needs of real people.  Once you have a mission in mind, the points below kick into gear.)

4. Clarity of Vision — can any third-grader understand your vision?  Or are you trapped in double-speak and buzzwords, an alphabet soup of acronyms, and jargon?

5. Consistency of Vision — do you stick to what you are good at and what you believe in, through thick and thin? Do you have a consistent purpose?

6. Service — the only valid reason for the existence of an enterprise is to deliver products and services to people, to somehow make the world a better place. The minute you think that power resides in the boardroom or in Washington, or that your company can be made great through making good deals or acquisitions, rather than through focusing on the customers, you are most likely at the beginning of the end. Serving others well must be the top priority – your other stakeholders including suppliers, community, investors, and employees will then have something to share.

7. Unique Vision — do you sound and look like all your competitors or do you stand out, following a unique path that is true to your enterprise and your soul? Differentiation is the key.

8. Passion — if you aren’t doing something you love, you will never be the best at it!

It’s been a big week for social media professional development at Strategic Communications Group. On Monday we had Kelly Collis of CityShopGirl come in, and this Wednesday Patrick Lafferty, long-time CMO for the Travel Channel visited the agency.

Check out my partner Marc Hausman’s excellent blog The Strategic Guy for more on Pat’s talk. Pat focused on the elements of social media the Travel Channel deployed, including the most successful branded app campaign ever launched on Facebook, called Kidnap.  I asked him what tools he used to track the effectiveness of these socmed campaigns.

“You know, I’m not sure. That was the agency’s job,” was his response. Ah, those were the days. I remember being the client, and letting the agency sweat the analytic details. But for the past six years, I’ve been the agency and good reporting is always a topic with clients. Luckily, Pat followed up with an email to me with some of the analytic tools his agency employed to keep him well informed.

I’ve listed them below, with links and a snippet of description from their sites. As you can see, the space is getting crowded fast:

• Radian6 — “a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web.”
• Sysomos — “brings business intelligence to social media, providing instant and unlimited access to all social media conversations”
• Crimson Hexagon — “opinion analysis platform enabling companies to distill meaning and derive actionable insights from online opinion”
• Meteor — “measure, manage and monetize your earned media”

I have heard about a couple of these before, but haven’t done a deep dive since the tools we use for clients have been sufficient to date. Here are some of them:

• MyMediaInfo — my agency switched over to this tool from a competitor in the spring, and in addition to being a strong PR database it offers good social media monitoring
• Social Oomph (formerly TweetLater) — right now I use mainly for Twitter keyword alerts, better click analytics than bit.ly and identification of socmed power users
• Social Mention — pretty straight-forward, get a ping every time you or a client is mentioned
• WordPress — very powerful and flexible platform, clients use both the .com and the .org hosted version. For analytics the cloud .com version offers very good Google based analytics, and also additional Quantcast numbers I’ve been exploring lately. The hosted version offers a number of tracking plugins – we use Wassup and StatPress for multiple clients

Of course social media isn’t all about tools, it’s about behavior online. And there are no right/wrong answers here, since the socmed analytics market is rapidly growing and evolving. But if you’re running socmed activities for business purposes, the benefits have to be quantified – or the project won’t continue to be funded.

Example of Social Media Analytics Dashboard from SAS

Fellow PR and Marketing professionals — care to help out here? What have you used, and what socmed analytic tools do you recommend? Let me know via comment or email, and let’s spread the knowledge.

But first — let’s all have a relaxing Labor Day weekend!

Last spring, my former supervisor at NASA, Beth Beck, pointed me to a new scholarship competition that GovLoop (a social media network for government employees) was running. For my entry, I wrote an essay on my aspirations to break down the barriers in government through the use of technology and social networking. As it turns out, my essay has been selected as a finalist and is now up for voting. I’ve cross-posted it below. If you like it, please go over to GovLoop, check out some of the other finalists, and vote – I’d love your support!

Far too often, it seems that Americans have the perception of their government being a monolithic block, incapable of progress, change, or efficient functionality. While this may be true in some cases, it’s not something that should be allowed to continue. American government lacks the trust of its citizens, and the goal of getting it back should be our top priority.

Our government needs to be for the people. It needs to be open. It needs accountability. It needs to leverage technologies to enable citizens to participate and collaborate in the same way they do among their coworkers, friends, and family. By paving a road of information, ideas, and community between policymakers and everyday citizens, a new bond of trust can be formed, and fresh insight into our most troubling problems can be found. Our government, to an extent, has already begun to work on this challenge. Efforts such as Data.gov, the Open Government Directive, and increased citizen financial oversight have placed previously unavailable tools in the hands of the public. But what’s next? How do the tools made available get used by the average person who is likely to only use a .gov domain once a year when filing their taxes? How do the thousands of comments, criticisms, and questions flooding government inboxes everyday turn in to real, implementable solutions?

That’s the problem I want to work on. I’m fascinated by the intricate network of our government – the massive flow of information, people, and ideas that passes through a complex, and sometimes bizarre, system that runs our nation. It’s a network that is social by nature, but in most circumstances is virtually impossible to gain access to by an ordinary citizen. I want to work on breaking down the barriers that prevent the free flow of information to the people and on building the infrastructure to support their direct involvement in their governance. I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to sample what a difficult challenge this is. As a Policy Studies and Economics dual major at Syracuse University, I’ve had the chance to spend the last semester living in Washington, D.C. and working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Some of my work has tackled these very issues, and I realize the huge challenges in making such change. As much as I’d love to jump in and get my hands dirty, I also need to go back to Syracuse in the fall to finish my degree and, most likely, obtain a graduate degree before pursuing a real career in the public sector. The CampusGov and GovLoop scholarship will enable me to continue my educational pursuits, in the hope that I can use the skills I gain to help bring positive change to a process that sorely needs it.

Click here to vote on GovLoop – my essay is #7

Strategic Communications Group is not a b2c PR shop, but we’re always looking for online success stories that can help clients. So we were excited to have the CityShopGirl herself, Kelly Collis, visit the agency to talk with our staff. Kelly is the person and the brand behind the successful CityShopGirl.com email alert service, and shared some thoughts and best practices from her first 18 months in business. Check out some of the press coverage she’s garnered here.

Kelly’s background in politics, PR and online marketing have all contributed to her current success. She’s a life long DC native who has worked for former Congressman Tom Davis, the Freedom Channel (way ahead of its time back in 1999) and DBC Communications. At DBC she got into consumer PR and then directed marketing for NationalJeanCompany.com. That was it for her — she told Strategic she was “hooked on online analytics” from then on.

One thing Kelly shared that’s been highly successful for her is to closely follow thought leaders via social media. She did this to make initial contact with the fashion scene here in DC. (She called it stalking — our term for it is social media mapping.)  She has had great success with leveraging her online brand for live events, which Strategic also does for some clients.

Obviously the main channel for CityShopGirl is email, and Kelly’s large, squeaky clean opt-in list is the on-ramp to a hugely desirable demographic. There’s no better way to reach thousands of food and fashion conscious DC women, 18-49 with no kids and lots of disposable income. She just scored a partnership with recently launched TBD.com for advertising representation and further distribution.  We discussed how the media business model for hyper local news coverage is uncertain, but it’s definitely benefited her business.

Here are a few tactical nuggets she shared:

• List size doesn’t matter — focus on the open rate for email campaigns
• MailChimp is a good tool for managing email — flexible and with really good analytics reporting
• Twitter — just jump in and start — Kelly had no plan at first, now its her #1 channel for customer dialogue and #2 for traffic
• Off line events drive online brand involvement — a single Sex in the City event netted her 400 new subscribers

Even if you’re a fashion clueless male, there’s something to be learned from Kelly’s success. At the least, you’ll have something to talk about with the women in your life!

1. Leaders led. They saw a problem, and they jumped to action. They didn’t worry about possible recriminations from bosses. They showed the moxy that all successful leaders must have. They knew the right thing to do, and they did it.
2. The community came together and acted as one. We trusted one another because we knew one another. We had a governance structure – the newly-formed Federal Web Managers Council – in place and ready to operate. And we had the government Web Managers Forum, an extended group of web managers across government and across the nation who had been comparing best practices and sharing problem-solving for 5 years. We had the infrastructure, and it worked.
3. Most important, we looked at our customers as a whole. We, as a cross-government group, talked about the spectrum of needs of the people affected by Katrina: need to find their loved ones…need for housing…need for food and clean water…need for medical assistance…need to volunteer to help. We didn’t need a contractor to do an analysis. We didn’t spend months making sure we covered every esoteric want. We used our common sense and kept to the basics. Then we asked every agency what they could bring to the table in those categories; we chose the best, most useful of those options (we didn’t throw in everything but the kitchen sink); and we formed “lanes” around customer needs, with lane leaders to keep us organized and make sure we didn’t stumble over one another. We listened to our customers – every day - through email, through phone calls, and through government workers on site; and we added to and adapted our content accordingly.

In this installment of the Work, Wine and Wheels interview series I talk to 20+ year PR professional Marc Abshire.

Marc has had a protean career — he’s served as a Public Affairs Officer in the Air Force, written speeches delivered by the President of the United States and he’s directed PR efforts at leading technology companies. You won’t hear it from him, but he was also in the Pentagon on 9/11 when the plane hit.

Marc and I discuss the similarities/differences of public service vs. private sector PR, next generation communication networks and what kind of distribution tools make this crazy job a bit easier. Please click the icon below for the conversation.
Listen to internet radio with Chris and Marc on on Blog Talk Radio

If you haven’t heard about NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS, for short), I encourage you to follow along over the next few weeks as astronauts, scientists and engineers meet in the Arizona desert to demonstrate the latest in NASA technology development research and plan for future missions to the surface of the Moon, Mars and other rocky bodies.  Desert RATS began in 1998, and today is one of the many cool things NASA is doing.  This year, four crew members will live in two rovers from Aug. 31 through Sept. 15 to demonstrate the use of a number of interesting technologies, including:

• Space Exploration Vehicles (PDF) – a pair of rovers that astronauts will live in for 7 days at a time
• Habitat Demonstration Unit/Pressurized Excursion Module (PDF) – a simulated habitat where the rovers can dock to allow the crew room to perform experiments or deal with medical issues. The Habitat Development Unit will be used to evaluate the geosciences laboratory in conjunction with the sample collections and to assess the spacesuit maintenance area inside. This team will also focus on procedures for keeping out the dust, the effects on the overall integrated communications and data system and how easy the habitat is for people to use.
• Tri-ATHLETEs, or -Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (PDF) – two heavy-lift rover platforms that allow the habitat, or other large items, to go where the action is portable communications terminals. The ATHLETE System, which consists of a pair of Tri-ATHLETE rovers, will be remotely controlled both in Arizona and from Houston to demonstrate long-traverse operations during lunar time delays and portable local operations from the personnel in Arizona.
• Centaur 2 (PDF) – a possible four-wheeled transportation method for NASA Robonaut 2
• Portable Utility Pallets, or PUPs for short – mobile charging stations for equipment
• Navigation systems to help guide spacewalkers and both solar and wind-powered equipment, will be demonstrated and tested.
• And a suite of new geology sample collection tools, including a self-contained GeoLab glove box for conducting in-field analysis of various collected rock samples.

For more information, follow the field season on the internet. Here’s how:

NASA Webpage: The official DRATS webpage is your one-stop shop for all activities occurring during the 14-day mission.

Blogs: The DRATS team shares their field experience on their website’s blog.

Flickr: The team is also posting photos daily!!

Facebook: Click “Like” for DRATS on Facebook. This page includes links, photos, comments/discussions from the DRATS team, students and interested citizens.

Twitter: The team is tweeting from @DESERT_RATS throughout the mission—these are brief communications to give a real-time status of the mission activities.

YouTube: Check out videos of this year’s mission on our NASAanalogTV site.

I’ve been in Las Vegas the last few days, celebrating the baptism of my nephew Dustin Parente. It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and in prior years it’s always been for business. We’re at the Trump Tower, and the service has been incredible. Whatever your feelings about The Donald, it’s a great place to stay.

You can’t visit Vegas and not go out for a fine meal. To decide which one, I looked to the expert staff at the Trump and the wisdom of the crowd via Trip Advisor. Trip Advisor had Mon Ami Gabi #12 of over 1,700 ranked restaurants, and the concierge at the hotel recommended it highly. Not only was the food outstanding, but the location right on the strip added to the experience, especially since we scored a table on the patio.

The place was packed and we had a short wait before being shown to our table. We were on the patio just inside the awning, not right on the street but close enough to enjoy the Vegas crowds and the spectacular fountain show directly across the street at the Bellagio. Our waitress Georgi was outstanding — really passionate about food and wine and ready with great suggestions.  The first was a wine suggestion — we were with my Mom and Stepdad and I wanted something approachable and reasonably priced that everyone at the table would enjoy.

She suggested the Paul Jaboulet Parallele 45 Cotes du Rhone 2007, which was very good. It’s a blend of 60% Grenache, 40% Syrah with nice restrained fruit with a clean finish. Cherry dominates, but it’s not simplistic, there’s more going on here than fruit. There was a pleasant earthiness that translated as smokiness to me, not the funkiness you sometimes get with French wines. Here’s a review by Gary Vaynerchuk on the wine — he’s a fan. It’s an incredible value, you can find it for around $11-12 in stores.

Of course with four of us we needed another bottle when the Jaboulet was finished. We wanted to stay with a Rhone, but try something else. With Georgi’s help we discovered another strong value performer, the J. Videl-Fleury 2007 Cotes du Rhone. Similar in some ways to the Jaboulet, to me it was spicier with a deeper texture. It had a fuller feeling on the palate with low tannins and a smooth finish. This made the wine a bit better with the filet mignons ordered by everyone but me, which they said were among the best they’ve ever had. It looks like this wine retails for be found for only around $10 retail.

I went carnivore first course with excellent steak tartare, then had a super pan-fried cod over cous-cous and greens. Everything clicked — the setting, the service, the food and the wine. Usually I’d be salty about paying a big markup for such inexpensive wines, but the experience was so good I wasn’t. It was a nice reminder you don’t have to spend big $$ for French wines  that complement food extremely well.

Of course, even with all that the evening couldn’t compare with meeting my nephew. A big thank you to my brother Mark and his wife Donna for making him happen, and for all the hospitality. We stopped by for some cocktails at Margaritaville restaurant where Mark manages, a crazy busy place that Mark proudly noted typically ranks as one of the top three grossing restaurants in the country. Definitely check Margaritaville out for a more partying bar scene when you hit the strip.

Exhausted from all the attention

This past Friday a story ran that reminded me how massive media layoffs have affected the quality of news coverage. It doesn’t matter sometimes how good the reporter is — he or she is stretched so thin that stories get printed that wouldn’t have just a few years ago.

Background – On Friday USA Today published an interview with Ben Petro, a senior executive at VeriSign. The ostensible focus was the “launch” of a Managed DNS service by VeriSign. A reader without any knowledge of the space would have read the article by Byron Acohido and come away thinking VeriSign just launched something new, in response to the market leader Neustar/UltraDNS (disclosure — my client) being hit with multiple Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Here’s what the reader was not told in the article:

• VeriSign has offered managed DNS for about nine years now — here’s a link to a ComputerWorld story announcing the launch — back in 2001!
• The DDoS attacks referenced were massive and broad, not targeted just at UltraDNS, and were mitigated within an hour
• Ben Petro is the former CEO of UltraDNS, and now is working for a competitor — kinda relevant for readers to know, I would think

In the business this is known as a single source story, and shouldn’t happen in a publication like USA Today. Or from a writer like Acohido — he’s been covering tech for a decade, and won a Pulitzer prize in the late 90′s for crying out loud. We’re not talking about an English major two years out of college — here’s his bio.

So how did it happen? Obviously there is no way to know for sure.  I know Petro from his days at UltraDNS. He’s passionate and can come off as very believable. But a little fact checking, more disclosure and contacting Neustar for a response were clearly required before the publish button was pushed on this article.

I reached out to a few reporters I’ve dealt with for years and trust for their take. After all, I’m hardly unbiased here — Neustar is a client after all. Each one of them told me they are under incredible pressure to publish more copy in less time than ever before. And they’re covering more beats than ever before, due to cutbacks in staff. They simply don’t have the time and resources to get both sides of a story — and even more troubling, their publications aren’t sure the market still exists for well researched pieces.

This is one reason Strategic increasingly counsels clients to focus on social media tactics. By doing so your message is not at the mercy of a media industry that often can’t invest the reporting resources required, due to a business model that hasn’t adapted to the Internet age. USA Today has been hit particularly hard — here’s a story about layoffs and unpaid furloughs earlier this year.

To my readers who work in communications, how have you dealt with this trend? Has this happened to you lately?

• Move content from previous administrations and their initiatives at the end of their tenure.
• Move dated cyclical material (e.g., funding announcements, grant applications, etc.) at the beginning of the next cycle.
• Move press releases, statistical reports, and other serialized content after one year.
• When a program becomes obsolete, move basic program content. 
• If a page on HUD’s public websites is being deleted, review it to see if it should be archived.