The book is a guide for the social media novice – the government employee who is tasked (either by assignment or design) to develop and support the agency’s social media efforts. The book covers the origins and value proposition of social media in government. It explores the most successful tools and how to use them.  We also cover the strategies, policies and tactics to ensure a successful launch and long-term value. The guide includes dozens of real-world examples and several case studies and testimonials from government 2.0 rock stars to help make the content practical and accessible.

The peer reviews starting rolling in about a month ago and I am happy to report that we’ve just submitted our edited manuscript back to the publisher for review. Please join me in a collective woot on reaching such a great milestone!  If you think this book might be helpful, please stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to a release date.

I was both inspired and intimidated by the level of expertise at the front of the classrooms and in the chairs around me. This is a conference for people who are passionate about prose. The sessions busted myths and brought reality to our brains. We heard about theory and idea development mixed with practical pointers from those who have proven themselves as writers and experts in the field of publishing. I pulled a couple of overarching themes from the sessions.  The speakers and topics brought to life the advice you can find across the blogosphere:

• If you want to do this, you’ve got to really want it badly.  There are no half-ass attempts.  Do it or don’t. It can be done, but you are really going to have to bust your butt.
• The writing itself is probably the easiest part of the process.
• There is a lot of debate between self-publishing and traditional publishing. And although conference organizer Dan Smith admittedly was a proponent of the traditional route, the conference did a good job of balancing both approaches.
• Regardless of how good you [think you] are, invest in an editor. If you can’t afford an editor, get yourself into a critique group.  This is especially critical for self-publishing writers.

Due to some familial engagements, I missed the opening sessions on Friday night, but I got there early on Saturday.  The first session I attended was Mike Allen‘s The Last Redoubt: Writing Short Stories for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Markets. To date, my works have been non-fiction and a full-length novel. But since all of my outlines for future fiction works seem to consistently wind up in the spec-fic areas, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Mike’s passion for the genre and the craft was very obvious from the moment he started. He provided us with a practical approach on how to get your short spec-fic work published. He toured us through some of the most well-known online publication references like Duotrope and Ralan. Mike’s approach was very casual – he engaged us in a conversation instead of lecturing at us. He answered several questions about the genres and the technical approach to the craft and how to get your short stories, flash fiction and novellas in print in the spec-fic publications. I’ve never tried flash fiction before, but last night, after this session, I jotted down my first.  Who knows…maybe it’ll show up in Weird Tales or Mike’s own Mythic Delirium collection someday!

Following Mike’s session, I stuck around in the same room for a double-shot of Spec-Fic advice with Rod Belcher’s session called: Selling the Sense of Wonder: Writing, Marketing and Surviving Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror. Rod recently sold his first novel to Tor books. Rod pursued his passion with a traditional publishing route, “pouncing” on an editor at Tor during a writer’s conference. Rod’s session was a great reality check for those of us who have a low tolerance for waiting. His was a multi-year journey of persistence, agonizing re-writes and lengthy hurry-up-and-wait exercises.

The last morning session I attended was Marketing Your Self-Published Book. Conference organizer Dan Smith introduced the topic but quickly relinquished control to Rachael Garrity, a local editor, and Janeson Keely, an internet guru. This session was a non-stop stream of technical advice for perfecting your self-published work (USE AN EDITOR, NOT YOUR MOM!) and promoting it online through tools like a blog, facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. The content was good, but honestly, I didn’t write much down in this session because I am already doing all the things they suggested.  Yay me! : )  The speakers strongly recommended one book: John Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!, so that one is now on my to-do list.

After a great lunch in the Hollins University cafeteria, my first afternoon session was author Brooke McGlothlin‘s: Self-Publishing: The Whys and Hows. Brooke is a very successful self-published author of several non-fiction works for women and mothers. She is strictly e-books, no print, no POD (at least for the foreseeable future). Brooke attributes her continued success to social media and hard work. She established a community of interest early on and continues to advance by keeping the conversation going.  She uses social media to draw her audience in as friends and not customers. She recommended that you establish your platform BEFORE you start promoting your work.  In addition to social media, Brooke also recommended using an online newsletter platform, like aweber.com, to keep in touch with your audience. Brooke uses extensive giveaways to coincide with her book releases and each time, she more than recoups any investment. For social media novices, she recommended Amy Porterfield’s Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies. Brooke prefers to focus on the craft of writing.  She relies on a network of other talented people to design her covers and format her works for e-book publishing. She created an awesome list of  resources on her on website for others to use.

After Brooke’s great case in favor of self-publishing, I headed over to Babcock Auditorium to hear from Gina Holmes, the very successful traditionally-published author of Crossing Oceans and Dry as Rain. Gina wrote five novels before finally landing a publishing deal with Tyndale House. Persistence, both in the writing itself and the self-marketing and writers’ conferences and the like were what paid off for her. She recommends setting yourself up with a writing goal (1000 WPD is reasonable). And she, like the others before her, stressed the invaluable insight of a real editor, regardless of your genre or your publishing route. Be ready for painful rewrites and remember that you do not always have to say “yes” to recommended changes. And make sure your first work is absolutely top-notch. The average length of most début novel submissions are 80-90K words.  Anything more than that is just an easy opportunity for them to say “no”. Gina recommended several resources to improve your fiction-writing skills:

• Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Brown and King
• Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
• Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

After Gina’s session, I headed over to Amy Gerber-Stroh’s Getting Your Story in Motion: Film and Screenplay Writing. I love movies and who doesn’t picture their written work turned into a cinematic feast someday? Amy, an assistant professor of film at Hollins University, provided a brief but interesting history lesson on film adaptations. The biggest tidbit I got from this session was how vastly different screenplays are from novels. Screenplays are on average 90-120 pages total.  (1 page = 1 minute)  Yikes…that’s some serious cutting for those of us in the novel-writing arena! The easiest way to do this is to cut introspection to a minimum.  Replace it with good acting to help convey background, tone, emotion, etc.  Personally, I am going to shelve the movie idea until I can get a couple of novels off the ground first. : )

Overall, this conference was excellent.  Not only did I glean much salient information, I got to do it in an atmosphere of camaraderie. As far as I could tell, egos were checked at the door and there was a tone of encouragement throughout. If you are in southwest Virginia and you are a writer (published or not!), check it out next year.  I’ll see you there! If you attended this year, please let me know what you thought.  How were the sessions that I missed? Did you catch the same stuff I did from the sessions above?  Let me know if you post your own review – I’d love to hear from other attendees!

I applied and got an auto email thanking me for joining the Pinterest waiting list.  Wait…what?  I have to wait to join?  Why? A you really checking up on me? Do you need to see my credentials? After venting my frustration at being wait-listed, I did have a couple of big-hearted pals who took pity on me and sent me an invite to speed up the process:

Four days later, I was finally got the “approval letter” from Pinterest directly, but by then I was already in.  By the way, drop me a line if you want a personal invite to check it out for yourself. I can’t seem to find any online resource about why they choose this process for inclusion, but I did find a lot of people asking the same question as me.  However, the process isn’t slowing down their use rate.  According to Alexa, Pinterest pageviews have increased 128% over the last three months, even though it has been around since March 2010. And according to their Wiki page, the company was valued at $200 million in Oct 2011. What am I missing?

To be fair, Pinterest has never claimed to be a game changer. Their stated mission statement is “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people.” But other than being able to post pictures, what’s the appeal?  I can see how this would be great for visual designers, photographers, interior designers, etc. to strut their stuff. But what about the rest of us? Just to see how it works, I created a board focused on the Imminent Zombiepocalypse. Last week I started adding images to it and since then, it has had hundreds of “likes’ and “repins” and new “followers”, but so what? I didn’t post anything that wasn’t already online or anything original, so who cares? I am not a renowned zombieologist, I’m just a guy who thinks zombies are fun. I contribute nothing original. How does the fact that Jenna or Kyle or JumaniXL repinned one of the images from my board help to “connect everyone”?

Do you see any business or personal value in using it? Is it just another online time waster? Is it just for fun? That’s cool with me, ’cause I know those are really popular. But somebody just tell me that so that I can let it go and move on and maybe try Tumblr next. Fact is, I have only a small bit of time for fun these days, and I don’t care to spend it looking at pictures of couches, but that’s just me.  But don’t worry – become a faithful follower and I’ll keep posting those awesome zombie pics!

Kickin' it old skool

Big browser news today in a post on Mashable – Internet Explorer, the long-standing behemoth of browsers can no longer claim their long and tightly held 50% of browser share:

“Safari’s hold on 62.17% of mobile traffic has reduced IE’s overall share of web browsing, despite still claiming 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to Netmarketshare.com.

The Microsoft browser’s diminishing share (49.6%) reflects its near absence from the realms of mobile and tablet, which now make up 6% of web traffic. However, chances are, you gave up on IE long enough ago that this milestone makes you more curious as to who actually still uses the browser.”

Good point.  I gave up IE many, many moons ago. Back in the olden times, I was all about Netscape. Please understand I was a die-hard Machead so anything I could do to escape the clutches of the evil MS empire I would take. I have since mellowed a bit and now realize that there is a time and place for MS…not so sure about IE though. I went straight from Netscape to Firefox on my old home Mac cause they stopped upgrading IE anyway and I was quite smitten with FireFox.  FireFox still holds the number two spot of browser share, at 21.20%.

Nowadays, I am all about Chrome on my PCs and Macs. My mobile devices are all Safari. I was happy to see that Chrome’s 16.60% of the pie continues to grow. Safari on the desktop lags behind at 8.72% because…well, it kinda stinks, doesn’t it?  (Did I just hear the sounds of a thousand simultaneous Machead machinations begin to formulate my painful demise?)

But the bigger question is why does IE still hold the largest market share?  Why do we still use it?  It’s still the Windows default and I suppose it does its job for the casual surfer. Ah well…hamburgers and steaks…chocolate and vanilla…the world is full of choices.  Choose wisely friends! If you are an IE fan OR a Safari on-the-desktop fan, please tell me why…what am I missing?

Call for Documents

FEMA is collecting documents related to using social media during disaster response. As the use of social media increases throughout the county, many jurisdictions are incorporating Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook into their public communications plans. Recently, the LLIS.gov team worked with Harris County, Texas, to develop an exclusive Practice Note, Emergency Public Information: The Harris County, Texas, Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s Implementation of a Social Media Protocol. 

Does your jurisdiction have a similar story? Please email stories or documents to the LLIS.gov Research Team at research@llis.dhs.gov. Alternatively, you can always upload documents through the SUBMIT TO LLIS.GOV tab on the LLIS.gov homepage.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Still not convinced Social Media is important? Try telling that to FEMA Director Craig Fugate’s after you read his testimony on the topic. Kim Stephens over at idisaster 2.0 has a great post on FEMA’s use of Social Media in disaster management and emergency preparedness.

In the Social Media in the Public Sector guidebook that we just submitted to the publisher for peer reviews, we highlighted FEMA’s efforts in social media as a true testament to the value of crowdsourcing when you need quick, actionable information (i.e. immediately following a large-scale disaster.) Check out Kim’s great post for more info! 

Although the kit was designed as a tool for those IT professionals in New York at the local, state and federal level, the tools can be used to start a community of practice anywhere.

It sounds like a great idea to formalize the concepts in such a package, but I wonder if that can actually be a the detriment to the collaborative spirit?  Most of the networks to which I belong relish in the idea of being outside of a bureaucracy.  They focus on personal relationships, quick engagements and responses and the free sharing of ideas and professional opinions. It will be interesting to see how the Kit compares to or meshes with the more well-established, albeit less formal, collaboration tools offered today in government via things like LinkedIn and GovLoop.