Elastic Thought

A "Small Business" asks: "Where is the love?"

We're not ones to be politically motivated, nor do we/I often blog about one political party or the other.  And hopefully this comes off as rather non-partisan, but paying our federal payroll taxes on Monday while listening to how "small businesses" were going to save the economy on the radio inspired this post.  There is no larger point to make that hasn't been said before, so if you are so inclined, you can get everything you need to know about my point of view from the title of this post. For the rest of you, here is the basis for my question.

We are one of the "small businesses" that have the overwhelming charge of providing all the jobs that are going to bring this economy out of neutral.  A big responsibility to say the least.  And so some extent, I think that we are doing our part.  We provide salary and benefits to a core group of employees (categorized by LinkedIn as 1-10 employees), but also provide work and money to a cadre of freelancers, vendors, and other agencies that help us in our client deliverables.  Two of our freelancers were recently laid off from larger agencies and we've given them the platform to start their own companies. 

And we're proud of that.  We doubled our size from 2009 to 2010 and were able to purchase ourselves from our parent company to own ourselves outright based on our own client work in under 2 years. 

But enough of the braggadocio.  Here's the point: 

Since we've spun off and created our small agency, we've received several things from the politicians looking for us to help pull this economy out of the ditch.  We've received our tax vouchers to send in with our payments, we've received account IDs for workers compensation, we got letters from the local tax authority explaining the penalties of not paying them their money in a timely manner.  Money generated from our payroll nonetheless.  We have plenty of schedules, coupons, instructions, and 5 folders worth of information on how to pay our money. 

But you know what we don't have?  Help. 

We don't have a letter from the city mayor's office thanking us for setting up shop in downtown Saint Louis vs. Saint Louis county (where there isn't a local tax).  We don't have anything from the State of Missouri asking if there is any way they can help us become a successful (tax-paying) business in the State of Missouri.  (And believe me, there have been plenty of people asking why we are in the Midwest and asking that we move).  No state senator or congressman/woman has offered their assistance in any way.  Or even acknowledged our existence. 

We haven't even gotten any recognition from local organizations whose job is to attract companies to the region and create jobs.  We're helping them do that job for them by quietly being successful on our own merits. 

Well, our own merits and the help of other small businesses.  You see, everything we've gained, any help we've received, and the talent pool we draw from to help us with our business has all been other small businesses.  Everything around us from the printing shop for business cards, to the places we eat lunch, to the freelancers we use in client work are all small businesses out to help each other.  Our landlord, our CPA, even our bank is a small, local bank who was willing to loan us money when the national banks drug the process out. 

So what's the point of all this?  It's simply to say this: If you are going to make speeches about how small business is the economic engine and driver of jobs to get this economy going, then you need to do more than state the obvious.  Don't just send tax deadlines and ignore the part where we need to be successful to make those tax payments.  On a national level, this may be more policy-related, but on a local level, there is so much improvement that is needed and can happen.  Somebody just needs to actually pay attention and genuinely be appreciative of what small businesses do for the region.  Don't just pay them lip service.

Social Media goes to Washington

Recently, I was discussing how social media could open a window into the procedures of legislation and increase communication in our democracy.  I got some great feedback on that, so, first, thank you.  Given some information and further research, I wanted to update that posting with some additional information.

The research points to two areas (as with any conversation, there are two sides) that need to be reviewed.  First, are the tools out there that allow for disseminating information to the public online and that allow for public discourse?  And second, are the senators and congress members allowed to communicate using these tools or others?

Let's start with online outlets for the public.  I'd like to point out the Sunlight Foundation for their work in this area.  Their site works "to help citizens, bloggers and journalists be their own best congressional watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency."  They have even begun a new project for working towards further transparency--The Open House Project.  This project was started "to study how the House of Representatives currently integrates the Internet into its operations, and to suggest attainable reforms to promote public access to its work and members."  And as part of that larger work, they have launched Publicmarkup.org to open bills to online, public review.  This is a great step towards the proposed tool of putting the legislation language online and allowing for discussion and debate in a public forum.  For instance, here is the information on the latest economic rescue plan.

There is plenty of room for improvement, but this is a great first step.  You can see that in a lot of instances, they have to look for the PDF posted by one of the parties or administration.  They then have to parse that information and quickly get it online.  To quickly accommodate this, the sections are put up in large chunks that are then open for comment like any blog posting.  On closer inspection, you can see that the House creates these PDFs from an XML document, so it stands to reason that there could be a more automated way of doing this.  And...if the metadata is put into the original XML, there could be a more organized way of posting them, so that smaller bits of the legislation can be categorized, organized, and tagged to create more poignant and relevant debate for each point in the bill vs. the large "chunks" we have now.

However, I have to reiterate that this is a wonderful first step in transparency and working towards a more open process.

Now, that addresses public debate, but would congress listen?  Or even be allowed to respond or act on that information?  That depends on current Congressional Franking Laws.  (Background on Franking here)  These are meant to create fairness in election campaigns and protect taxpayer dollars by not allowing Congress to post information (using taxpayer dollars) in ways or in places that can also link to or house inappropriate material. (well, the modern day definition--it started with Postal Mail)  The current rules were based on regulations/updates made in 1998 before any of the the current social media tools we use today were around.  Yes... a world without iPhones and Twitteriffic.

A recent letter by Rep. Micheal Capuano (D-MA), the chairman of the Congressional Committee on Mailing Standards attempted to update the rules to make them more relevant to the Web. In particular, the proposed rule changes dealt with uploading congressional video to YouTube.  

"The goal of Capuano’s letter ... wasn’t to create new restrictions for members’ web use, but to change the rules, which were originally designed to guard against tax-payers paying for political mailings, so that they actually apply to the new technologies. Right now, members who post on Qik, Twitter, or YouTube (among others) do so in violation of the rules."

Apparently, before a member of Congress can post public information on YouTube and real-time social media sites like Twitter, the sites must meet franking guidelines, include a disclaimer and be approved.  Texas Republican John Culberson states, though, that the letter was "to prevent members from using public money to communicate on outside Web sites featuring commercial and political advertisements," and continues to tweet about this from the floor.  The most talked about Tweet being:

"Before I could post a Tweet I would have to get approval of the twits that run the House!" And an hour later: "The Dems will do this unless the Internet community stops them."

But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (right, Physics majors?), so there is a Twitter campaign currently out there petitioning for its use by House representatives: Let Our Congress Tweet.  It has been successful and the site now is distributing a widget, "Capital Tweets" to keep up with the conversation.

In a bit of good news on this front, the debate is not going to quietly fade away.  Member Web use is being reconsidered.  And there has been some movement.  Marketing Vox reports that updated Senate Web linking rules include some of the major social media sites.  Sarah Burris also has some great background on this in her piece on Web 2.0 in Congress.  One other resource is this piece on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

So, we're getting there.  I don't think the debate on and subsequent changes to current Franking Laws would have happened had there not be exposure to the letter brought before the House leaders or the tweets of Rep. Culberson.  Heck, how many of us even knew there were Franking Laws in the first place?  So Tweets from the floor, Sunlight Foundation's Publicmarkup.org and all the great debate online can make a difference.  But we have to continue to watch.

It's funny, there is a lot of debate on the economy and healthcare with less than a month to the general election.  One thing that gets brought up consistently in the healthcare discussion is personal accountability.  That we each need to take an active role in our healthcare, to learn about and research our own symptoms.  That we should bring appropriate questions to our doctors and stay on top of our history because no one else (including your primary care physician) will (or at least very well).  And on the economy, we're still reeling from the credit swap craziness, the commercial paper market freeze-up, and the recently passed economic rescue plan.  With as large of a global crisis as this is, there is lots of blame to go around.

But one thing caught my eye.

Regulation vs. De-Regulation is the topic de jour, with many blaming the crisis on little or no oversight into the "exotic" and "over the counter" debt transactions that are at the heart of this debate.  Trust is shattered.  No transparency was called for.  But here's the kicker...our representatives voted to NOT  regulate these markets in 1998.  And it was not partisan, it passed by a vote of 95 to 5 I believe.  Now, ironically, (but probably not related) this was when the Franking Laws included not allowing Congress to use the Internet for communicating to their constituents.

I wonder if that vote would have passed by such a landslide had the public had any information on the contents of that legislation.  I wonder if "Main Street" would have agreed that the financial institutions were "too sophisticated and smart enough to manage themselves" feeling that guided such a landslide vote.

Let's open up the Franking Laws.  Let's support the Open House Project.  And let's improve the tools that allow us to communicate with our Representatives and allow for transparency to hit a greater number of Americans.  Heck, let our Congress tweet!  But most important, let's stay on top of what is going on.  Democracy is work, and instead of being lazy and letting our Representatives deal with the issues, let's make tools that make it easier for us to do the work that is demanded of the citizens of a Democracy.

I think we can do it, and I'd like to help.

(photo credit Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Columbia Pictures, 1939)

More to come....

Can DIGG save Washington?

So we've all seen and heard the news this week.  The "Bailout" failed to pass the House, Wall Street reacted with a 778 drop, and then went back up 485 after coming out of their temper tantrum.  This is not a post about why that happened or who is to blame.  It is a reaction of sorts to one comment I heard in the wake of all the media this has attracted.  The specific comment (roughly translated from memory) is this: 

"I think this is a failure in marketing.  Had we talked about this as an economic rescue plan rather than a Wall Street bailout, we would have seen much different reaction in the House [of Representatives] and from Main Street."  (Martin Kady II,  Politico.com)

I found this of interest as a marketer, but more of interest in thinking about how politics works and how everyone says Washington is broken.  And what I mean by that is in the statement of marketing to the constituents.  We are a representative democracy.  In theory, we threw a bunch of tea in the harbor and campaigned that we no longer wanted to be taxed without proper representation.  We formed a government "...of the people, by the people, for the people..." so that everyone could have a say in their government.  In modern times, we can add party loyalty, administration, and special interests.  But the system is very much a participatory government rather than something that needs to be marketed.  And this is why I wanted to add a comment on "fixing Washington."

We often write about social media being participatory.  We read the Cluetrain Manifesto that talked about how companies needed to relate and engage with consumers rather than market to them.  And I don't think that stops with consumer brands.  I really think government should look at this model as well.  In fact, it really was founded on these principals and has moved away from them a bit.  (OK, a lot)  Are we really a representative democracy when our elected representatives need to market and spin legislation so as to keep us happy?  Does the proper wording of the "explanation" of pending legislation change the meaning of that legislation and what it actually does?  Or more to the point, where is the dialogue with the people in our politics?  You can learn more on the process at The Center on Congress.  Or remember back to the learnings of Schoolhouse Rock.

So, without opening up a debate on how we got here, I'd like to have some fun and see if we can call on social media to help us get back.  In theory, the representation on the Hill was a mouthpiece for the people.  Without a robust mail system and before the Pony Express, this is how the masses were able to communicate to the leaders their opinions on their governing officials and pending legislation (plus, real people can debate better than a piece of mail).  But the system relied on that representative spokesperson to be in touch with their constituencies.  And in cases like we have going on now, where speed is of the essence (if that is your belief), how do you get a pulse of your district/state beyond the emails and phone calls that come to your office?

The Internet has played a big part.  We can read opinions in blogs and editorial pieces.  But politicians don't rely on those solely because a lot of opinions are extolled simply on emotion and what little information they got from the media.  And besides, sometimes their constituents wouldn't understand the full reason for the vote because they "didn't have the full background."  Well, how many pieces of legislation are seen by anyone outside of Congress before the final vote?  How do we get the full background?  Drafts are released to the media, but generally the full detail doesn't fit into the short segments they have to air their reports.

So, what if they were available?  What if legislation was displayed online for all to see?  And what if it were broken into "chunks" that can be commented on and "voted" on (DIGG style).  Opinions discussed point by point (like they do in the House and Senate chamber).  This would show full detail.  It would show the nuances being discussed.  It would show those earmarks we've heard a lot about in this campaign.  And it would give almost instant feedback to the representative what a large part of their constituency is feeling, and in much more detail than the general comments they receive now.

Let's look at the bailout...I mean economic rescue plan.  Debates outside of Washington are often centered around if this is simply helping out the Wall Street CEO's.  Some dove into the points of CEO pay restrictions, Government ownership of equity and assets, oversight, how much money and in what phases, etc.  But there is more to it.  There are clauses and amendments we don't see that effect the vote.  For instance, not enough protection for those in foreclosure, or too much regulation on a "free" market.

Look at the recent debate between Senators McCain and Obama.  Sen. McCain accused Sen. Obama of not voting for more funding to the troops.  Sen. Obama responded that he had voted for the bill to fund troops, but the one attached to a withdrawal time-table.  He then countered and stated Sen. McCain voted to not fund troops, but that was the bill that had a time-table.  He had voted to fund the troops with no time-table.  This pointed out how transparency vs. spin can help restore some faith in Washington.  They both wanted to fund the troops.  Neither were against helping our military.  They just didn't agree on a time-table.

We had to see a debate many months later to see and hear that.  In the mean time we were wondering how a politician could actually vote not to fund troops and protect them.  Well, what if those options had been posted?  What if we saw, real-time, what our politicians thought about the sub-issues contained in the legislation, not just the resulting Yea or Nay?  And what if we (the people) could comment, vote, and discuss these sub-issues point by point in real-time online?  Would it change anything?

I know that the online population is not representative of everyone in this country.  And a DIGG vote doesn't speak for everyone.  But the media that reaches the masses beyond the computer and mobile device get their information from somewhere.  Getting it from the online forums maintained by Congress and representing viewpoints from all aspects of the online user base, and reporting on that activity would extend this new-found democracy and maybe even promote more responsible journalism.  Or at least provide a more democratized place than independents like Factcheck.org to work through the spin.  (Factcheck.org and other watchdog agencies are doing a great job, by the way).

So, can DIGG save Washington?  Not by themselves.  But transparency, dialogue, and some creative uses of social media technology tools like DIGG and Twitter's E08 just might be a great first step.  Oh, and DIGG this in the links below the post.  I'd love for them to see this (or anyone really).

More to come...

LinkedIn with a Spy? - Cities I've spied in

Previously, I mentioned FaceBook as a tool in the spy trade.  Chris Matyszcyk points out in his blog Technically Incorrect today that the UK's MI6 declared that it is using Facebook to recruit new devotees. I'm sure that TripAdvisor can come up with some great apps for their profile pages.  Though spies are covert by nature, is there something to crowdsourced global intelligence?  Might be a good mashup application one day.

LinkedIn with a Spy?

I was in Washington DC all last week talking to several agencies about new methods of communication and how to reach niche audiences in ways that perhaps the agency hasn't thought of before.  Or... "how can we do something different than the same old Ad Council campaign?"  Of course, there are so many things that we can suggest.

More about that in a second.

In a separate plot line, there are issues with "selling" social media (or new tools, period) to companies looking for new ideas.  And even if they do want to go forward with a program utilizing these new tools, they often force their opinion on HOW they should be used.  Most often, not appropriately.  The toolsets are maturing, and just because you put up a Facebook page (fan page or otherwise) doesn't necessarily get to the point of HOW you used that resource.  As Ash Patel of Yahoo! said:

"That ship has sailed, between MySpace and Facebook and Hi5 and Bebo and other reasons. Even with that, there are 1.2 billion people on the Internet, and only 150 million are using social networks. That's a lot of greenfield."

Now, let's tie in a third idea stream here so we can then bring this all together and get to the Spy stuff.

A technology reaches a critical milestone and is considered a success when people begin to use the tool for things the developers of the tool never imagined.  This is a great marriage of creativity of the users fully understanding the potential of the technology and the developers of the tool creating enough flexibility in the tool to accommodate for these other uses.

So, back to the DC trip.  In talking about creative uses and using the toolset beyond simply being in it, we were talking about moving beyond the profile page and looking harder at the event streams and other capabilities of the interactions in the tools.  What comes next, I can neither confirm nor deny in case anyone of consequence is reading this :), but it was discussed how US spy networks were using a technology similar to Facebook to communicate and pass information and sensitive intel back and forth.

I found this of special note beyond the cool factor of spy vs. spy in the social networking realm, but how important the tools that allow for seamless communication are to sensitive projects and moving beyond the "poke" and the "send me a star wars figure" functionality that the clients we speak with will tend to gravitate towards in an effort to debunk Social Networking as a legitimate strategy in the overall program.  To date, there are few other tools that allow the type of back and forth conversations with a multitude of people that is so important in campaigns.

So if trying to bring a Facebook (or other social networking strategy) to the table as part of an integrated campaign, and when faced with either a) the propensity to be satisfied with just a profile page, or b) the push-back of "it's just for kids," think about the crucial nature of foreign intelligence and the true power of conversation buried at the heart of the program.  It may get you a second look at that social media proposal you have in front of your client.

Oh, and if "Curveball" starts following your Tweets...  

More later....

Social Media in Government

I'm sure the Internet is filling up today with a myriad of opinions on Barack Obama's acceptance speech for the Democratic candidacy, and even as I write, the Republican pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. This is not an opinion on either. Rather, it was a good excuse to talk about how the government and politics is using social media.

Currently, I've moved from a large PR agency working to communicate messages for mostly Fortune 500 companies to a smaller social marketing firm focusing on government, non-profit, and healthcare communications. And, wow, do these new clients "get it." We've always known that politics has been an innovator in the use of communications methods, but sometimes that can get buried in the rhetoric of all that is negative with policy and public institutions. Though this will look skewed towards Democrats, they do seem to use technology more--from Howard Dean to the latest use of text messages to announce Barack Obama's VP candidate, etc.

More importantly is the the campaign speak of conversation, "you're campaign," straight talk and other ways of including the public into the dialogue. Though we may be cynical about these promises, the foundation of what is being said there is important. People want to be heard. People want a stake in something, and feel they had influence on the outcome. Now imagine if companies had to go door to door to ask you for your purchase instead of marketing to you. Imagine if they wanted to include you in the dialogue and give you a stake in the outcome. This is social media marketing.

We've seen plenty of examples of companies use the mash-up concept to allow their audiences to create User Generated Media that could be aired on TV (even the Super Bowl). But imagine if these same people had access to the development of the product? Take a look at Dell Ideastrom or My Starbucks Idea for how this can work.

But not all social media ideas can work in the same manner. One thing that always struck me as odd is how agencies feel that active communities and "robust" conversations are going to happen for every product their client of the week wants to push. How many people do you know that are going to set up a profile, pick an avatar and daily come to a site to talk about new and better ways to clean the bathroom? Now, given the amount of knitting blogs there are (~10,000), maybe a few will. But put a social network together for community leaders to share ideas on reducing youth violence in their communities and watch just how "robust" a conversation there can be. These tools were almost meant for this. More to come....