K Street Cafe

Governments and Citizens: You Don’t Own Your Tweets
(Cheeky Fresh)
If you don’t own your tweets, then who does?  And it’s not just about Twitter, it extends through all of Web 2.0.

Facebook vs. Google: Game On (CNN Money)
Competition is mounting between the two Web giants as Facebook releases several new features.

How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive
(Library of Congress)
Ever tweeted on Twitter? Congratulations, your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.

10 Books to Seize What is Happening with Grassroots, Communications + Marketing (Advocacy 2.0)
Discover 10 great books to help you understand and capitalize on the current trends in grassroots, communications and marketing.

Twitter Claims 105 Million Registered Users (CNN)
In a first time announcement about its number of accounts, Twitter has declared that it officially has over 105 million registered users.

Gates Slams Wikileaks for Releasing Shooting Video, Site Promises More Evidence (Hillicon Valley)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized the owners of the web site “Wikileaks” for releasing a video last week showing U.S. troops mistaking a group of Iraqis for terrorists and ultimately killing a dozen people.

Open Government: Idling in the Driveway (Sunlight Foundation)
Earlier last week as part of the Open Government Directive, the rubber was supposed to hit the road with respect to agencies releasing data. Unfortunately, some agencies avoided the requirement altogether, while others simply stated that  a plan on how to identify and release data would be created. 

Mobile App Developers Tackle Africa’s Biggest Problems (CNN)
Mobile app developers are sprouting in Africa to help tackle some of its biggest problems, many creating applications that can be used with phone text messages.

Anticipating Agency Plans (Sunlight Foundation Blog)
With today being the deadline for agencies to produce Open Government Plans, John Wonderlich shares his thoughts on what is necessary for those plans to create real change and accountability.

Court Ruling Strips FCC of Internet Authority, Hands Congress a Tough Task (Hillicon Valley)
A  Tuesday court decision stripped the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of authority to regulate the Internet, a major defeat for President Obama who has long called for rules that prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with Web traffic.

This post has been reprinted from the SocialFish blog where it spawned a great conversation in the comments. We’d love to know what K Street Cafe readers think.

Dear Association CEO,

Tired of social media yet? You’ve surely had many conversations, at this point, with various people in your organization, about using social media to advance your mission. Everyone–from your marketing director and your publications manager, to your advocacy guru and your conference manager–has some idea of how they should be blogging, tweeting, or creating a social network.

That’s all well and good, and (stop us if we’re wrong) you’re not disputing the myriad business advantages of starting to build a social media presence in this day and age when many of your association’s members are actively communicating using these tools. But you’re a little worried…

• You’re worried about how much time will be involved in getting all these activities going.
• You’re feeling the stress from other managers and directors who have tight budgets and too much work spread among too few people already.
• You’re concerned that with lots of people doing little experiments in a piecemeal fashion, there will be duplication of effort and wasted time and energy.
• You’re particularly concerned about lost revenue from traditional sources like your paid job board.
• And, let’s be honest, you’re not particularly comfortable with letting just any employee speak for the organization (and your PR director isn’t either). You’re keen to get some guidelines and policies in place but everyone has different ideas for where to start.

So then, the challenge your organization faces is how to evolve into a social organization. This evolution will affect individual staff, internal processes, and the structure and culture of your association. And the challenges can’t be solved in an instant. You’ll probably want to help assign them to your people to tackle one at a time (or one area at a time).

But you, as CEO, have a different challenge.

Your own challenge is not about determining how your association applies social media tools in the right way, nor how particular tactics achieve specific objectives. Fundamentally, your role is to help your staff prioritize and defend their ideas by having them tell you why and how they advance the mission of the association. You are closer to the mission, the vision, the strategic objectives of the association than anyone else. You must live the mantra of “clarity over control” – in other words, that those activities that are very directly and clearly driving the mission of the organization require less control because all stakeholders – staff and members – know why this work is important and relevant to the association. They know the strategic intention of that work and their role in making it actionable.

If you can help your staff be clear about how their social media activities will advance the mission, you can begin to lay the groundwork for becoming a more social organization. The digital age (the advent of the social internet) demands less of a “mechanistic”, top-down, controlled system and more of an organic, evolving ecosystem. Your role, as CEO, is that of facilitator within this ecosystem. You are now the master cat herder – and here’s a secret you probably already know. How do you herd cats? …You tilt the floor. You point everyone in the right direction, not just through words but through action and through intent. The world around us is shifting, and you have a crucial role to play in what these changes mean for your association and this industry.

Sincerely Yours,

Maddie and Lindy
SocialFish