Today in the Washington Post, Columnist Stephen Barr, laid out some survey results indicating that roughly a third of young Americans would consider working for the federal government if they were encouraged to by folks close to them, like parents or teachers, but also if such a request came from our next president of the U.S. That sounds like great news in light of the retirement wave that is getting under way as baby boomers exit civil service. Except that the critical phrase is “IF they were encouraged to.” Apparently no one is asking America’s new workers to join federal service.

At first that seemed like an easy problem to fix; start encouraging them. But with what and how. I mean after that parent or teacher or president says, “Hey, you should check out working for the federal government,” then what? Where will that person look? What will s/he find? How will s/he be engaged?

What moves someone from consideration to motivation? And on the flip side, how does a particular government agency convince that now motivated person to pursue that one agency over any other? We can try to think of our government as one giant employer, one big happy team, but when workforces get thin agencies will absolutely be competing against each other for good employees. So how do you get yours?

Barr quotes Patricia McGinnis, president and chief executive of the Council for Excellence in Government, who dropped one hint as to how to move beyond encouragement to inspiration. She says 18-to-29-year olds are “more responsive to interactive communication and personal attention than people have realized.” Time to start realizing it people.

Social networks, live chat customer service, user-generated content, they all fall into that category of interactive communication and personal attention. Young Americans, certainly well-educated, tech-savvy young Americans (AKA prime job candidates for federal agencies) rely on interactive communication as much as other generations came to rely on the evening news or the morning paper. Remember when PR was getting mention in the op/ed section of the paper? Or maybe even a mention on the news? What a coup! It moves a bit faster now. It happens a little lower in the weeds now. It’s person to person, or may I suggest employee to potential employee.

Based on the survey results Barr references, it sounds like the federal workforce stands to benefit from at the least some encouraging words, from parents, teachers, and even Mr. or Mrs. President, to explore a career in federal service. Beyond that, it’s up to each agency to shoulder the load and move young Americans from curiosity to engagement. How will you do it? Well for starters you can check out a white paper written by some of my friends here at Mind & Media, “Recruiting the Next Generation of Government Using Web 2.0”.

With apologies to Al Gore, the Web’s bona fide inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee believes that the Internet has barely found its proverbial feet. As he explained to BBC News:

“The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience,” he said.

“The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues.”

Sir Tim predicted that the web’s ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.

From collaborative opportunity to planetary management — that kind of power begs participation.

What comes first? The story about your organization or the work that the organization performs? Maybe you’re thinking, “Story? What story? I come here, I work, I go home.” I hear you. That’s the day-in-day-out grind. That’s the work. But what is the story of your work, your organization? Call it a story, a brand, a mission, whatever. Everything, everyone, has one. So, did the work cause the story or did the story cause the work?

Seth Godin dropped a great post on the topic recently, which got me thinking about that in terms of the federal agencies we work with. Specifically in terms of how those agencies recruit new workers. Do federal agencies have a story? Absolutely. And as organizations of public service, each agency was started with a story. In the most basic definition, they were formed to support some public need, and that is the beginning of the story.Heads up federal recruiters, your audience—your potential workforce—is impacted by your agency’s story as is stands today. Is the story good?

As Seth illustrates, if you start with a good story of who you are and what you do, then the work is focused and supports the story. It becomes cyclical and unified. His logic is good, but it assumes the workers are living the story, feeding that cycle. If workers are living in the weeds, doing the work day-by-day, but are not living the story, then the cycle can dissolve. Then what becomes of the story? Certainly the federal government has to turn up the heat on recruiting to fill a vacuum left by retiring baby boomers. But only looking outward can be a mistake. Simply shouting a story (is it the real story?) out the windows is hollow. Savvy recruits—children of Internet research and social networks—will discover the true story fast enough.

Recruiters need help from the agency leaders. How does the agency’s work and workers impact the story? What can you do to remind current employees of the beginning of the story and to encourage them to take part in the story? If the workers believe in the story, and work to support the story, then the recruits will hear it, loud and clear.

I’m pretty much a beanpole, so I don’t have room to complain, but nobody likes to pop a button off their pants the day they turn a year older. I did that today; kind of demoralizing. Getting older is not my favorite thing, but at least we humans have an opportunity to up our worth each year.

The software we use can’t share that hope. A ridiculous comparison, but I couldn’t help make it after the timing of two events: Only mere minutes after the demoralizing button pop I found myself reading yet another Federal Government RFP including yet another requirement for Windows 98 compatibility. Me, I can shed a pound or two. Windows 98 couldn’t be more obsolete. Buried next to it is Netscape Navigator.

Here’s the skinny on Windows 98:

The most recent edition of Windows 98 was released in mid-1999, so it’s coming up on being nine years old. To put that in perspective, Windows 98 is older than the birth of SCORM and Flash-based video.

Stats released in January of this year tout Windows 98 as holding a whopping .4 percent of the browser market. Even Linux claims 4.4 percent! We don’t have to cater to that bugger! Windows 98 was officially dropped from Microsoft support in summer of 2006, and finally, Windows 98 can’t run either the latest Microsoft browser or the media player. All that means it can be challenging to create cutting-edge web-based products when they MUST function on the Windows 98 dinosaur.

Sure, we can chalk up this archaic requirement to an RFP template being reused for the last 9 years. But let’s not forget that RFPs beget contracts. And contracts beget lawyers. Let’s do a favor to the developers and in turn to our audiences.

Dear RFP authors, please update the specs!

Ypulse, which touts daily news and commentary about Generation Y for media and marketing professionals, just concluded their College Mashup conference on Friday. The focus was on how to connect with today’s totally-wired college student. Something that may be of interest to marketers, sure, but should also be on the minds of employers, too. For employers trying to fill the void left by retiring Baby Boomers, recruiting IS marketing. So what messages work?

An event sponsor, Survey U, offered up some stats related to what these kids want in their advertising. So if you want their attention, check this:

60% of respondents said being truthful is extremely important, while only 15% gave the same importance to being stylish, and only 8% felt it was extremely important to exude cool. That’s great news.

Say you’re recruiting for a federal agency; it will be much easier to talk honestly about a job offering or agency in general than it will be to try to inject style or coolness into public service.

Honest language is more evergreen, too. Imagine trying to write messaging that exuded cool. Sure, I know there is a massive ad industry trying to do that very thing day in and day out, but they don’t sleep. When you try to exude cool, you risk your message being oh so not cool by the time it hits the audience.

Style and cool are two things that move very quickly and are hard to nail just right. But honesty? Hopefully that comes pretty easily.

On February 12, Microsoft will be pushing an automatic update to PCs far and wide that will transform Internet Explorer version 6 into version 7. The blogosphere is abuzz about how to avoid the update if you want to and is asking how Microsoft can tuck a software update into what should be security updates. That’s neither here nor there to me. Why folks would purposely avoid the update is outside my lane. I leave that to IT units at individual offices and agencies. I’m actually kind of psyched to see it; perhaps less cross-browser testing is on the horizon!

See, browsers are not like televisions. Different brands don’t all work the same. Imagine being a video producer and delivering your product to a broadcaster, then stopping by Circuit City for the big debut. Wouldn’t that be a surprise if one TV shifted the picture out of frame while another resized the image to bizarro dimensions, and a third finally displayed the video correctly. Well, you could just produce three versions of your show, right? One for each kind of TV. That’d be a hoot. We may not have to generate completely separate products, but web developers do wrestle with a similar scenario.

Despite the best efforts of organizations like the WC3, browsers just don’t all work the same way. They don’t display content the same way. Pieces move or resize or disappear completely. Depending on the goals of your organization, those differences can have large impact.

The latest stats show Internet Explorer 7 holding 21 percent of the market. IE6 holds 33 percent, Firefox 36 percent, and then a steep drop down to Safari, Mozilla, and Opera. Notice the name Netscape isn’t even tracked anymore! Depending on your goals and audience, you may need to test your websites/applications on all of those browsers (not to mention platforms like Mac or PC) to make sure everyone is seeing the same thing and enjoying the same experience.

So how do you decide how much time and effort to put into cross-browser and platform testing? That depends on what you’re doing. If you’re facing a closed audience with predictable systems, you may be able to cut down on testing. For example, a DoD agency targeting an internal audience can feel pretty good about things as long as they’re targeting Internet Explorer 6 (until Feb 12?) and Windows XP. Meanwhile, that same agency may have a public-facing website, one offering critical information or training, one that could reflect on their image and mission. In that case, how accommodating should it be? Is it OK to serve up content that may look wacky on a Mac because it holds such a small share of the market? I’m happy to say that’s not my call. But I could help you think through it. And would you believe it comes down to time and money? I know you’ve never heard that before.

I will say this: There are standards out there, and if we stick to those when building, our chances for success are good from square one. Further that, simply having the experience and awareness of cross-browser/platform issues is another big advantage. Finally, it’s about paying attention your audience and making educated decisions. My decision would be to dump IE6. One version of that browser is enough for all of us.

A recent article in eLearn Magazine by Jane Hart, head of the Centre for Learning & Performance, delivers the results of a survey she conducted on the Top 100 Tools for Learning. I was pretty shocked at the results of this survey, to which 109 learning professionals replied. For some reason I wasn’t asked to be one of them (joke).

What shocked me? Out of the top 10 learning tools, none of them is an e-learning product! How can that be? We use several great tools to create a powerful e-learning experience, many of which earn us lots of client kudos.

The top tool, according to Ms. Hart, is (drum roll, please) the web browser Firefox (now imagine the sound of cymbals crashing to the floor). The rest of the top ten list included del.icio.us, Skype, Google Search, PowerPoint, Wordpress, Gmail, Google Reader, Blogger, and Word. Word? Really? PowerPoint I understand and could defend, but Word? Skype? I’m certainly a little confused here. We were talking about top tools for learning, right?

How does Ms. Hart defend these survey results? She says:

“Most of the tools are not dedicated learning tools, but rather ones that are being commonly used by people in their daily lives, which suggests to me that learning, working, and living are actually becoming one and the same thing. I believe that therein lies the enormous power of these tools for learning.”

Okay, I’ll buy that, but think there may be another answer as well. If you are developing e-learning, users really don’t need to know what tool was used to develop it. They just want something that works, that is effective.

Ms. Hart does mention many products that first came to my mind: Captivate, Articulate, Dreamweaver, and SnagIt. This is still just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Nowhere in the article does Flash come up, which is certainly one of the most important e-learning products to come along in quite a while.

So why was Firefox number one on the list? In trying to rationalize the thinking here, I could only come up with one good reason: Firefox is a more reliable browser to play back e-learning products developed in the programs that show up later in her list.

I can’t argue how important playback is for the user experience. As developers, we want to ensure a flawless user experience, and Firefox is just plain more reliable as a playback system. That I can’t and won’t argue. But I think we have to start recognizing the technology behind the mere means of delivery. There are so many great ways that e-learning is developed that maybe the next survey can be broken into development tools and playback tools.

Actually, l think I might develop that survey myself.

We all know about “the war.”  The DVD replacement has yet to be decided—will it be Sony’s Blu-Ray technology or Toshiba’s HD-DVD technology?

This week, the war came to the forefront again. With what Toshiba must surely view as “impeccable” timing (read: sarcasm), Warner Brothers announced their intent to drop HD-DVD from their future plans just days before the Consumer Electronics Show. It caused enough rumbles in the HD-DVD camp that they canceled their press conference for CES. As of later this spring, Warner will go exclusively with Blu-Ray. This isn’t small news. Warner was the only major studio that hadn’t picked a format—they were going with both. Their decision to go Blu-Ray leaves Paramount as the lone major content holder still going with HD-DVD.

MacWorld starts next week. One of the rumors (and it is just that—a rumor) is that Apple is going to announce support for Blu-Ray. Apple has been a member of the Blu-Ray coalition for quite some time, but they have, for all intents and purposes, sat on the sidelines while the battle raged.

Is the writing on the wall for HD-DVD? While it may still be premature to make the call (Microsoft is still in the HD-DVD camp…and we can all agree they are not a mom-and-pop operation), I will make the call.

Blu-Ray wins!

Actually, Blu-Ray should have won a long time ago. The storage capacity alone makes it a no-brainer. Currently, HD-DVD has 15GB/30GB discs. Blu-Ray has 25GB/50GB. HD-DVD has approved a standard for 51GB discs (I guess that single gig makes it the format to go with). Blu-Ray has the capability of putting 200GB on a disc.

What is HD-DVD’s advantage? Online content. Your HD-DVD player can connect to the Internet. Now, I may be long out of my teen years, but I hardly find that a compelling reason to go with HD-DVD. Regular DVDs often have bonus material—including the ability to get you to online content. Of all the DVDs I own that have “bonus” online content, have I ever accessed it?  Not even once.

Who is the real loser in all this? The conventional wisdom says it is the consumer. I disagree. Except for the early adopters, the consumer has sat and waited. To me, that is actually pretty impressive. The early adoption phase has simply lasted longer. The real losers are both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Neither has gained a foothold, and there is the real possibility that they’ll both get passed over for online content. That’s a lot of development money to be throwing down the drain.

Have we learned our lessons yet, Toshiba? Of course not. They are still fighting the battle. They will for some time.

Now let’s remember this a year from now and see if I was right or if I will be eating crow.

Sometimes it’s when you experience something that affects how you experience it. Timing is everything, right?

Today my friend, a fellow new parent, sent me to Gever Tulley’s TED presentation titled 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. Obviously that was meant to be taken for what it was, an enlightening commentary on countering the ever-tightening safety regulations that, to paraphrase Tulley, are essentially stunting our children’s educational experiences. I couldn’t help taking more from it, due largely to when I watched it.

There’s been a lot of talk around Mind & Media lately, and in the press in general, about the impending retirement of baby boomers. The federal government in particular is facing huge a wave of boomer-based workforce retirement, with a younger generation that just doesn’t have the numbers to fill in. In response, we’ve had agencies turn to us, as far back as 2003, to help recruit job candidates and train existing workers. After a few years of navigating those waters, I couldn’t help draw some comparisons to Tulley’s talk.

As Tulley tells it, we are ever-increasing the safety measures around our children to the point of immobility. Society as a whole is so concerned with a bruise-free existence that experimentation and experiential learning are stifled, and real breakthroughs in understanding and education are missed. Secure, sure, but stunted.

Back to the fed. They need to recruit and train to tackle an impending disaster. Online media should be the cornerstone of those efforts, but all too often agencies are cocooned in safety and security and watch-dogging to the detriment of the effort.

No hard data to back up this claim, but I’m certain that folks who access federal agency websites or intranets actually use the public Internet as well. They’ve heard of YouTube, they’ve seen a Flash animation, and they’ve listened to streaming audio. To pound it home, do you think 20-something college graduates may be familiar with such things? Graduates who may consider employment in the federal workforce? They live it. They expect it. They want to be engaged. And yet use of, and access to, the so-called new media is often outside scope for federal agencies.

Some examples: I’ve come across folks within federal agencies who want us to stream media for their audience but can’t access the media while at work due to policies that forbid it. I’ve had folks request we use Flash animations to aid in training, only to find that they are unable to install Flash player on their agency computers. And I’ve seen just-in-time online training get mired in months of legal review. Not so just-in-time anymore, eh? What’s frustrating is that they are workers in those agencies who get it and who want to evolve the media that is coming out of those agencies. It’s just an uphill climb.

Perhaps federal agencies are scared of new media or dynamic websites, what with viruses, bandwidth constraints, employees watching streaming music videos, and what have you. Maybe they don’t know how to leverage the technology. I understand the gargantuan federal government isn’t nimble, but a systemic shift in thinking is necessary if they are to compete for recruits or are going to effectively train the workforce that remains after The Great Retirement. Static doesn’t do it anymore. Static content doesn’t attract, engage, or help retain. It sure as hell doesn’t compete. Agencies may consider it playing with fire, but, hell, if we can let our kids do it, how bad can it hurt?

It’s time to let folks get dirty, get a little banged up. This is no time to be timid.

One of President Bush’s last signatures of 2007 was on a bill that will give the media and general public greater access to governmental goings-on.

According to the Associated Press:

The legislation creates a system for the media and public to track the status of their [Freedom of Information Act] requests. It establishes a hot line service for all federal agencies to deal with problems and an ombudsman to provide an alternative to litigation in disclosure disputes.

The law also restores a presumption of a standard that orders government agencies to release information on request unless there is a finding that disclosure could do harm.

This raises further questions as to how this status-tracking system might evolve. There have been attempts in the recent past to implement web-based means to improved government transparency. These were met with skepticism by senatorial old guard (think Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens of Alaska, who wanted no part of a requirement to create an online database of government spending). It looks like this effort will fly for the new year, however. The media is understandably pleased, and government agencies must be gearing up for what amounts to a very real opening of the books.

Transparency might be the as-yet-untested campaign buzzword for the forthcoming elections. A change of administration is inevitable, and as we move in to the second decade of the 21st century, federal agencies should get comfortable with the unprecedented informative and communicative power of emerging media.

The next administration has the opportunity to embrace and help define the means of transparency for its agencies and its electorate. If that helps them keep staff, media, and the general public informed while keeping operations on the up and up, so much the better.