(As also published this month in the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce Biz Connect newsletter). As the Obama administration settles into office this year, what’s described as the “most connected ever” group of leaders are quickly focusing on how to leverage the groundswell of “social media” use and expertise demonstrated by the campaigns. Social media, proven useful in politics, is rapidly being adopted by students and families, and is dramatically changing the landscape of traditional news reporting. But is it good for business, here in Loudoun and Northern Virginia? Social media may be difficult to define, but you’ll know it when you see it. It’s about talking back to the web, sharing your opinion, and participating in a multimedia dialogue among interested people in public – anonymously or not. There are many styles of online conversation and tools – from those focusing on photos or videos (like “Flickr” and “YouTube”), to reviews (like Yelp”), to those focusing on profiles, expertise o...

Planning to Attend Government 2.0 Camp this March..."Convening the Tribe of Government 2.0". Follow my Twitters at http://www.twitter.com/tedmclaughlan .

Here's a great video on why linking is an essential part of digital writing, found over at Debbie Weil's Blog

The practice of leveraging digital asset management and exploitation techniques combined with social media tools to provide new ROI opportunities from existing corporate information assets. Socialize your digital assets (but still treat and manage them as information, that has both explicit and implicit value). That's right - another new mashonym - i.e. mashing up some key terms and acronyms pulled from the swirl of Web 2.0 to come up with a new one.... Fun with terms I've invented so far: - Mashonym - Web 2.0-driven mashups of social media acronyms - Avonym - DAS - Digital Asset Socialization - see above - Ecovent - Ecosystemic (i.e. ecologically perceived and managed) events - i.e. the cause-effect context of a temporal, geospatial event to faceted ecosytems.

I had the privilege of spending many hours over the past several days immersed in expert discussion about Information Sharing, from several different perspectives. In the "open source" Web 2.0 community (at last week's Potomac Techwire Internet Outlook 2009 event), the consensus seems to be that there's a short period of "wait and see" ahead of us, to find out which online information-sharing social media capabilities will become the next big thing...Twitter's very much wait and see, Facebook has excellent fundamentals and a strong core framework, and 20-somethings on Myspace are increasingly "icked out" by the quickly growing population of 40-somethings. Everyone in the room raised their hands when asked if they were on LinkedIn . Regardless of the platform and tool, one thing was certain; online information-sharing and user-defined data aggregation (i.e. mashups) is in full-blown growth mode, and privacy is dead. That's right, according t...

Great post recently about the Government 2.0 " Brand Ambassador ", in FCW by Mark Drapeau. "It’s easy to see governments and their agencies as nameless, faceless monoliths, something impersonal or, even worse, untrustworthy. But that notion only prevails because government culture remains steeped in traditional ideas about public relations and outreach work, notions that have become archaic in an Internet-enabled, hyperconnected world. As private companies are learning to embrace social media to manage brand reputations, governments also must adapt if they wish to communicate more effectively with their citizens and stakeholders — their customers. Just like private companies, agencies need to manage their public identity — their brands — to create trust and loyalty. " This is great insight, as organizations such as DHS are stepping up their efforts and awareness around leveraging Social Media, both from a "push" perspective (i.e. communicating and engaging...