The Marine Corps Marathon Team went full force this year promoting social media engagements. For the very first time, runners were able to have their split times automatically post to their personal Facebook and/or Twitter pages, allowing family and friends to track a runner’s progress. Our MetroStar Systems Team was proud to help the MCM Team enhance social media engagements at the MCM events by displaying live tweets on large screens at the expo, dinners, pep rallies, and of course, at the race. Leveraging myStanly, our customizable moderated Twitter display solution, we were able to capture tweets with the hashtag #36thMCM and approve it for broadcast.

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we had myStanly Teams moderating and live tweeting from the Health & Fitness Expo. The displays sat at both t-shirt pick up stations and sandwiched the Brooks Running store. People had the chance to see their tweets on the display screens almost instantaneously, getting their few moments of myStanly fame! Exhibitors were able to broadcast their booth specials and giveaways, and we were able to help spread the word without the message getting lost.

On Friday, there were multiple events taking place so we gave people the chance to virtually be at all places at once through the Twittersphere.

The Runners Club mixer was an exclusive event for members of the MCM Runners Club. We were able to give those were were not available to attend an insider view of what was happening at the mixer by tweeting updates and pics, and those at the mixer, updates of what was going on elsewhere.

Later that evening, we attended the VIP Hall of Fame dinner at the Washington Post building, where special individuals were inducted into the MCM Hall of Fame. The United We Sing girls began the evening by singing the National Anthem and the honored inductees were recognized for the positive impact they have had on the Marine Corps Marathon. Messages of encouragement and support for runners were projected onto a large wall visible to all diners as they enjoyed a beautifully catered buffet dinner. Price is Right host, Drew Carey, was also in attendance as he prepped to run his first marathon.

Saturday, the day before the race, weather conditions were not looking good; temperatures were in the low 30s, heavy rain, high winds, and even some snow in October – not ideal running conditions! However, it didn’t stop all those who have been preparing for this race. Runners continued to flood #36thMCM with their tweets, sharing their pre-race jitters and excitement. We even had a small Twitter contest at the expo where three lucky runners tweeted to win a free myStanly t-shirt! Congratulations to our winners Anna, Ndegwa, and Joanne! Our MetroStar Systems Team headed home to prepare for the BIG event, Race Day!

Taking us to 3:45a.m., Sunday October 30th, sitting in the car, preparing to embrace the bitter cold…

As we prepared for race kickoff, bundled from head to toe, we departed the car and made our it down to the finish line where we first saw myStanly illuminating the dark sky with the Washington Monument standing proudly in the horizon.

The cold didn’t seem as bitter as the sun started to rise, droves of runners made their way to the start line, and friends, families, spectators filled the course. At race kickoff, 30 thousand runners charged DC, and tweets did not slow down. Even runners on the course continued to tweet! Our VIP badges allowed us direct access to the finish line and we were able to capture Reuben Mwei and Amanda Rice, the first finishers of the MCM10K for men and women, respectively, as they crossed the finish line and live tweet their victory pictures. A few hours later, marathon runner, Army Reserve 1st Lt. Charles Ware, rounded the corner towards the finish line becoming the 36th Marine Corps Marathon winner with the best MCM time since 1997 at 2 hours, 19 minutes, 16 seconds.

“A Single Drop of Water is an environmental awareness project that uses the arts, specifically photography, to document the journey of water. Our goal is to raise awareness about this importance resource, it’s scarcity in some communities, and water pollution. The project will provide photographers with a platform for sharing their images and stories. Winning entries shall be exhibited in New York City, and will be used in future Statement Arts education materials to teach students about water and inspire them to produce their own artistic work.”

The Photo Contest Sponsor, Statement Arts, chose the Votridea Contest Platform to run and effectively manage their online contest, including file uploads, voting, content moderation, analytics reports, and more. Contestants pay a small entry fee to submit their photo; the proceeds going towards the Statement Arts programs and the contest prizes.

Contestants who enter become eligible to win a $1500 Grand Prize and their photo exhibited in New York City as part of the World Water Day celebrations! Submissions are already underway, so the time to act is now!

To learn more about A Single Drop Of Water visit: http://www.asingledropofwater.org/

MetroStar Systems is excited to launch our ‘Social Innovation Toolbox‘ that features three brand new products and services.  The Social Innovation Toolbox features tools that offer creative and effective means to engage with and leverage your communities.  Your community could be your fellow employees in your company, all of the Facebook fans on your fanpage, or all of the citizens in your city.  No matter how small or large your community is, our Social Innovation tools can help you.  Here are some details about the tools:

• SMART Service (Social Media Aggregation and Research Technology) – SMART Service let’s you target, collect, filter, analyze and channel content from any social media platform.
• VOTRIDEA (Social Contest Platform) – The Votridea contest platform gives you the power to engage and grow your community through contests and promotions.
• SPIGIT (Idea Management) – Our partnership with Spigit offers you their idea management solution where you can accelerate your organization’s innovation by capturing ideas from your employers, customers, and partners.

For more information about the tools in our Social Innovation Toolbox, please visit our website http://www.metrostarsystems.com/socialtoolbox/default.aspx

Source: www.FederalNewsRadio.com

You can read the web article “How Web 2.0 tools help victims of Hatian quake” and listen to an MP3 of the interview to learn more about these efforts.

How can you help?  A great benefit of technology and social media tools is that it makes it easier for us to help those in need. Here are some resources, links and information on how you can assist earthquake victims:

The following organizations are accepting SMS donations (U.S. only):

• SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
• SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
• SMS text “GIVE10″ to 20222 to donate $10 to Direct Relief

For more information and ways to donate, you can visit the websites of these organizations that are providing support and aid to the earthquake victims and international relief efforts:

• American Red Cross
• UNICEF USA
• Yele Haiti
• Doctors Without Borders
• Direct Relief International
• Ushahidi

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti and all of those who are helping with this humanitarian emergency.

]]> http://blog.metrostarsystems.com/2010/01/15/how-web-2-0-tools-help-victims-of-hatian-quake/feed/ 1 http://blog.metrostarsystems.com/2009/10/28/congresscamp-unconference-notes-thoughts/ http://blog.metrostarsystems.com/2009/10/28/congresscamp-unconference-notes-thoughts/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:10:48 +0000 Gerald Irish http://blog.metrostarsystems.com/?p=1630 ... ]]>

I attended a couple of sessions at the Congress Camp ‘unconference’ a few weeks ago at George Washington University.

I had never attended an unconference before so part of my reason was to get a feel for what they’re all about.  My weekend itinerary was jam-packed so I was only able to attend 2 sessions and lunch but even so it was definitely worth my time to come out.

Engaging Citizens in Subcommittees

The first session I participated in was focused on the question of how to get citizens engaged in Congressional Subcommittees when legislation is getting drafted.  The major issue was that drafts of legislation are usually written under tight deadlines and as a result Congressional staffers often have difficulty performing the requisite research for the bills.  The result is that staffers often rely on lobbyists and small groups of experts to provide input for drafting policy.  Citizens rarely gain any influence into the process.

But now with advent of Web 2.0 tools Congressmen have the opportunity to solicit and incorporate citizen input into the subcommittee legislation creation process.

• How does one determine the location and identity of participants?
• How to verify the expertise or quality of user submitted opinions, data, content?
• How to incorporate citizen input in a timely manner?
• How to moderate comments and user forums?

The consensus from the participants was that the technology exists to answer all of the major questions.  The major challenge then is to craft technical solutions to mitigate the human challenges to citizen participation.

My take on things was that crowdsourced input could be filtered by a rating/moderation system.  Some of the participants brought up concerns about the quality of citizen content but the answer to that is that no system is going to be 100% clean and tidy, and at the very least there’s a chance of finding outstanding citizen ideas and solutions if they are engaged (as opposed to now where there is little to no chance of this).

A good idea that came from the session was that one need not to use an approach the relies totally on random citizen input nor totally on expert opinions.  A hybrid approach of sorts could possibly get the best of both worlds.

Advocacy Software

The advocacy software session was focused on issues that the current crop of advocacy software creates for the Congressional offices that deal with the output of said software.

One of the overarching issues that came up was that of authenticity.  How does one go about ensuring that communication from constituents is real?  How do you make sure the 10,000 emails your office received on an issue actually corresponds to 10,000 people who feel the same way? When advocacy software is generating this mountain of email it’s hard to tell.

There was one Congressional staffer in this session who shared some of the problems his office encountered.  One is that advocacy groups often send emails on issues on the behalf of constituents who opt into their mailing list.  But when the Congressman’s office tries to contact some of these citizens who sent these emails sometimes the citizen either didn’t agree with the position written in the email or had no idea an email was sent on their behalf.

One attendee posed a provocative question about whether or not email as a marketing tool or advocacy tool is still relevant or effective.  The email campaigns generated by some of the advocacy software solutions are so rife with useless email that many times Congressional offices simply ignore them.  With each passing day email-based marketing becomes less and less effective.

To me, this is a piece of a very large problem on the internet, which is, ‘How do we filter content so that we can find the valuable stuff and ignore the worthless stuff?’ Some combination of filtering, authentication, and new forms of communication will probably be the answer. In other words, it doesn’t seem like there is a silver bullet as of yet.

The session closed up with a discussion of some political advocacy software that is available commercially. There was also discussion of an open source solution called CiviCRM that can plug into the Drupal content management system. Ultimately I didn’t get much out of that discussion since I had never used that sort of software.

Conclusion(s)

A lot of the issues that were discussed boiled down to the question of how best to incorporate Web 2.0 principles into the Congressional law-making process. A major part of the challenge is to convince Congressmen and their staff of the value of interacting with their constituents using technology.

A significant opportunity exists for companies who develop solutions that solicit and organize constituent input to help Congressmen craft better legislation. Any solutions developed to that end will have applications to other parts of government as well, or even the private sector.

Lessons Learned

*I opted not to haul my laptop out for this event.  Big mistake, always bring your laptop so you can try out websites that come up or blog or tweet about the events.

*Some folks spiced up their ‘Hello My Name Is’ tags with some pieces of flair as well as their twitter accounts.  Must do the same next time.

*Live blogging next time might be useful.

*If one intends to lead a session at an unconference, it pays to do a few things right:

• Have an interesting and informative title for your session
• Have a rough plan on your topics of discussion
• Graphics or metrics would be useful, but ditch the boring powerpoint slides
• Personal anecdotes and authenticity go a long way when getting your point across

You can visit http://congresscamp.org/ for complete event info, photos, case studies, tools and other useful resources.

Yes, folks, this Friday, October 23rd marks the end of BlogPotomac. For those of you who may not have heard about the unconference, it is a staple of the DC Social Media scene. Organized by Geoff Livingston (@GeoffLiving) of CRT/tanaka and Livingston Communications, it is a gathering of social media rock stars to discuss and share their ideas on best practices and future outlook.

I had the benefit of being at the last BlogPotomac, and I still notice myself shaking my head in amazement every time I reflect on the experience. As my first real foray into liveblogging (see the post here), it was quite well received, convincing me of two things: (1) that I would definitely be attending the final one, and (2) I’ll have the laptop and air-card fired up and ready to liveblog again.

So, if you’re reading this close to when I’m publishing it, hurry, as there are still a handful of tickets left. If not, fear not! Just be sure to redirect your web browsers right here to SuperNova on the morning of Friday, October 23rd, the year two thousand and nine, (show starts at 8:45 AM) and keep on refreshing, as I will be giving you the up-to-the-(handful of)-minute(s) skinny on what’s being said, and who’s saying it.

In the meantime, check out http://www.blogpotomac.com/, follow @blogpotomac on Twitter, and set your Twitter searches to #blogpotomac. And meet me right back here on Friday.

Source: http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/09/07/DOD-and-Web-2.aspx

The article lists 5 reasons why the Department of Defense (DOD) should embrace social media…

1. Web 2.0 technology improves collaboration.
2. It streamlines internal and external communications.
3. It costs little or nothing to use.
4. It has the potential to attract young recruits to DOD.
5. It’s highly portable.

and 5 reasons why the DOD should not embrace social media…

1. Sensitive information is on the public Internet.
2. The tools can make it difficult to comply with federal regulations.
3. The technology lacks standards.
4. Sharing personal information can put employees at risk.
5. The tools demand a lot of bandwidth.

Expanding on reason #4 of why the DOD should not embrace social media, Ali Manouchehri “suggests allowing employees to post to public sites such as Twitter and Facebook without some kind of parameters is dangerous. For example, a DOD employee could put himself and others at risk by tweeting about his day. ‘Adversaries with poor intent can target federal workers by knowing their routine through following them through a social-media outlet,’ Manouchehri said. ‘Protecting your privacy is certainly an aspect to take into account, and the risk can be detected, mitigated and deterred by following mission-oriented rules of engagement.’ ”

In the article, reporters Doug Beizer and Amber Corrin interview a broad range of government, university and industry experts to present both sides of the argument of why or why not the DOD should embrace social media.  The article provides a great starting point for discussion since both sides of the argument have valid points.  You can read the full article by visiting this link: http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/09/07/DOD-and-Web-2.aspx

We welcome your comments letting us know your thoughts on the article and the overall concept of the game.  You can also join in the conversation at our X-Life Games Facebook Fanpage.

Article Source: Smart Planet.com

More about Smart Planet:

CBS Interactive has unveiled a new website dedicated to people who realize the need to make our world a better place to live, for all of us, and for generations to come. At SmartPlanet.com, you will find thought-provoking progressive ideas on diverse topics that intersect with technology, business, and life, and matter to the world at large.

Try e-diplomacy out for yourself:

Download the free mobile game at the recently revamped X-Life Games.com website. To join the X-Life Games Community become a Fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @xlifegames.

Should CEOs Use Social Networking More?

MetroStar Systems Founder and CEO Ali Reza Manouchehri was interviewed today on Fox Business News on how MetroStar Systems advises CEOs and companies about how best to utilize social networking tools such as Twitter.