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”.

Blogger Seni Thomas shares some profundity at Conversation Agent about the nature of social networks in the forthcoming year.

The primary purpose of online networks, up to this point, has been to congregate around interests, hobbies, and passions to create communities. In 2008 I predict networks will become more tha[n] social. In 2008 we will see the growth of innovation networks, or i-Nets. Networks that allow ideas to attract people and people to discover ideas.

i-Nets, in a nutshell, are networks that layer advanced people search capabilities, democratic content voting, and collaborative applications over a social foundation. Think of a mash-up between Google Apps, Spock, Digg, and Facebook.

i-Nets, according to Seni, will be catalysts for strategy consolidation, allowing research, planning, design, and creative functions to work with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. It’s the kind of prediction made at the onset of every new business year — but the explosion of social networking interconnectivity and communications suggests that this generation just might be able to follow through on the promise.

The whale-naming competition launched by Greenpeace provides a perfect example of how the participatory nature of today’s Internet is coming full circle, redefining appropriate organizational communications.

The as-yet-unnamed whale, a South Pacific humpback, is going to be named Mr. Splashy Pants—man, it’s as fun to type as it is to say—and Greenpeace has citizen-driven media to thank for it.

The name is on a list of thirty candidates that includes plenty of wholesome, heartfelt, inclusive appellations from myriad cultures and literary traditions. The overall tenor of these names is very much in the Greenpeace wheelhouse; they’re warm, reassuring and guilt-free—like an organic-wool pullover.

But some of those Rainbow Warriors must have a sense of humor, because they allowed Mr. Splashy Pants to make the list—and make it it did. It’s good to know the organization knows how to lighten up, but I’m willing to bet that they thought they were merely indulging in a good inside joke.

Then the citizen-driven Web found out about Mr. Splashy Pants. The ballot page was posted on BoingBoing, Digg, and Reddit. Those content-aggregator communities spread the word faster than you can say, “Call me Ishmael,” and everybody got to voting.

The results? Mr. Splashy Pants is out front with 71 percent support; Humphrey, a comfortably wry choice, is a very distant second with only 3 percent. The rest, from Aiko to Mira to Shanti, might as well hit the showers.

What’s the point? The people, when aligned behind a common cause, are frighteningly powerful. And this weight is not merely influencing the options organizations offer to audiences; it is changing the very way organizations communicate. Greenpeace has no choice but to respect the intent of these communities. Of deeper significance: They are tempering a relatively intense mission with a modicum of humor. And this is hardly hurting its message.

Other organizations, regardless of their political leanings or industry, should pay attention. There’s something Mr. Splashy Pants is trying to teach us.

Suggesting that technology should be used to further governmental transparency, presidential candidate Barack Obama explained his plan to appoint a Chief Technology Officer. As detailed on VentureBeat:

The CTO’s mandate would be quite different from the Cybersecurity czar appointed under the Bush Administration. Bush’s czar helped defend against cyberattacks. Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials holds open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.

Government 2.0? Imagine the visibility and accountability. Now imagine trying to explain it all to this guy:

Asus recently began selling a $399 Linux Laptop, the EeePC (on sale here), with a $299 version to be launched soon. That’s a very low price for a 2 lb., 7″ display machine—usually ultra-portables belong to a high-end and expensive category. The Toshiba Portege R500, for example, retails for $2000 or more.

The EeePC is getting great reviews and apparently has been selling one every two seconds in Taiwan. It isn’t the only affordable Linux machine making mainstream inroads—Dell has been selling Linux Unbuntu systems, and Everex just started selling a sub-$200 Unbuntu machine at Wal-Mart. But the EeePC is the first cheap ultra-portable to be marketed to a new niche—not business travelers with money to spend, but average computer users who want an affordable way to take the Internet with them. (The only affordable laptops with a similar form-factor, and perhaps Asus’ inspiration, are those in production for the One Laptop per Child project).

Asus is achieving success in a traditionally perilous niche. UMPCs, for instance, failed to catch on: they were too expensive. And while devices like the Pepperpad are less expensive, they are not cheap enough to capture the market. Tapping this niche isn’t just about creating the right Internet device; it’s also about breaking a certain price barrier. Asus is breaking that barrier both by offering Linux instead of Windows and by eliminating a regular hard drive in favor of 4GB of Flash storage.

Flash storage certainly helps reduce price, but why so few gigabytes? The idea is that customers are doing more of their work and storing more of their data online. With this fact in mind, the EeePC includes links to Google Docs and other online applications (although it also includes the free Microsoft Office-compatible OpenOffice.org suite). Here’s a user review that I think captures the essence of the need that the EeePC satisfies: “Good form factor. Basic apps are all I need. Browser very fast. Boot in a little less than 15 seconds.”

There are a few industry lessons here. The first is that hardware devices are becoming commoditized because of the predominance of Web applications. More and more, such devices are not the endpoint for users, but merely (preferably lightweight and fast) tools to reach the place they really want to be—online.

Here’s the take of Tom Krazit of Cnet:

“End users desire the ability to take the full Internet with them, the experience they have on their PC, in a nomadic or mobile fashion,” said Gary Willihnganz, director of marketing in Intel’s mobile group. That’s language straight from the playbooks of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt, both of whom this year have emphasized their commitment to delivering a PC-like Internet experience on a handheld device.

Tim O’Reilly also puts it well:

We are starting to see the real blurring of handhelds, cell phones, cameras, and other consumer devices. Everything is becoming connected, and computing truly is becoming pervasive…. As people get seamlessly connected, wherever they are, devices become less important, even throwaway, and the continuity of the user’s data becomes most important.

O’Reilly’s conclusions are borne out by the PC market decline in Japan in favor of smaller devices. They are also borne out by the recent entry of Apple and Google into the mobile phone market. In fact, Google Android could drastically change the phone market by leading the market toward open source, unlocked phones that allow developers to bring wireless devices to the next level by giving users more choices when it comes to applications. It’s a move similar to the opening up of the Facebook API (with new competitor OpenSocial in pursuit) to allow a greater level of connectedness over the Web—not just via links, but via data exchange and functionality. The point is to bring state of mobile phone technology up to speed with the latest developments in Web applications, and that means especially making them more compatible with social networking and video-sharing applications.

So here’s how I trace these connections:

Social Networking–>Web applications predominance over client software–>Open APIs/Open Source–>Hardware lightening and commoditization in favor of social network access

That’s how I think cheap and lightweight hardware like the EeePC, the “cannibalization” of proprietary software by open source, recent developments in social networking, and Google Android are related.

Wikipedia’s recent edits page is long overdue for this mashup, which allows you to watch in real time as recent anonymous editors are located on a world map. Enjoy watching someone in the United Kingdom edit American Old West while a North Carolinian tinkers with Social Darwinism.

Reminiscent of Twittervision’s enhancement of Twitter, WikipediaVision can be surprisingly addictive. And it’s another great example of simple online applications that combine publicly available information to great effect (in this case, using the Google Maps API, hostip.info, and GoNew’s IP to country service).

We’ve had some compelling conversations recently, with clients and prospective clients alike, about outreach and awareness opportunities available in Second Life.

More frequently, however, we have people asking us to explain what the heck Second Life is. We’re hardly experts (I’ve just learned how to get my avatar to change from jeans and a t-shirt into a tuxedo), but we’re keeping a close eye on this increasingly rich, somewhat controversial virtual paradigm. We’re even kicking around the idea of creating an SL company presence, perhaps after the new year. I suppose that means soliciting bids from cyber-contractors.

In the meantime, this video provides a straight-ahead Second Life intro:

I recently found this question on Linkedin:

Right now social networks and blogs dominate the web landscape. What do you think people will be utilizing online 8–10 years from now? Are there advancements in software or web development that you think will become as pervasive as social networks/blogs/etc.?

 

I took a stab at answering, but soon realized what a truly difficult question this was—and how lame my response really was (something about real-time virtual reality and that we’ll all be immersed in virtual worlds, but that technology is already here).

The truth is, who knows what the Web will look like in 8 or 10 years? A decade ago we were excited by email. AOL had the only visual Web interface and tons of people were using it. HTML was the language of the Web, and video had to be small to be seen well.

I did appreciate the creative analogy in this response:

I don’t see this Internet thing keeping people’s attention that much longer. Remember Beanie Babies? Oh, the Internet will be around but it won’t be top-of-mind. People will be used to just like they are use to TV, Radio, and the Telephone. I mean, do you really get excited to watch TV or talk on the telephone? And who even owns a working radio these days. The online world will go the way of the automobile. A necessary evil. Of course, the automobile will be online in a decade or so, which means there won’t be any need to step into the offline. I just hope virtual scent will be created by then because I’d really miss the smell of gasoline when I filled my tank.

I’m not sure I agree, but I sure hadn’t thought of that.

Ten years ago, we had maybe an inkling of how the use of applications would evolve. While the technology itself has remained pretty steady, how we’ve used it has expanded exponentially. What was once a home for static websites is now an infinite realm for interactive social networks, blogs, and wikis. Who would have guessed?

So, how will the Internet landscape look in 2017? Your guess is certainly as good as mine. Take a crack at answering. I’m interested to see what you think the Web will be.

The consistently insightful Valeria Maltoni over at Conversation Agent shared her thoughts on Penelope Trunk’s career-catalyzing advice, as taken from the pages of Trunk’s book, Brazen Careerist. Among suggestions like turning down promotions and making sure you hit the gym, you should:

Start a blog—starting a blog is the equivalent of letting people into the way you process information and form opinions; it’s a way to see if you exercise critical thinking and flex your writing muscle articulating on topics of your choosing. This is part ideas lab—the place where I test concepts to see for myself if they hold water. Sometimes I do not know exactly what I’m thinking until I commit it to writing and invite others to poke holes into it. The process is so transparent that it cannot be easily faked. It’s also a way to let others inform our thinking without having specific agendas—on a peer to peer level, with peer being defined as interested person/thinker. This is a very different process from the one we encounter in corporate America, where the person’s title may be the driver in decision making.

Right on the money, Ms. Maltoni.

Blogging is a way to take ownership of your professional, intellectual turf. It puts you in the spotlight (or the crosshairs), but understanding that responsibility liberates us, allows us to take risks, worry less about appeasing authority, and concentrate on innovating, on evolving—on being a thought leader. If a blog is a conduit to that kind of dialog, or allows you to raise your expertise profile, then by all means blogs are on the thought-leadership vanguard.

Put your ear up to the boardroom door; that panicked, scrabbling sound you hear is the old guard trying to understand what the kids are up to these days and grousing about how they can’t control it.

“The risk of insult is the price of clarity, and it is a price few are willing to pay.”

So wrote Roy H. Williams in his 1998 book The Wizard of Ads. That quote had formative impact when I was a tenderfoot copywriter. Almost ten years later, the words haunt me as I try to decipher ways to wield Web 2.0 influence. And that’s good; we can’t make new media all things to all people when, in fact, it requires more specificity than I ever had to sweat for a print ad or 30-second radio spot. If we try too hard to appeal to the largest possible audience, messages become murky and incoherent—but that doesn’t stop some people from trying.

Call it Silver Bullet Syndrome—a gut-wrenching affliction that’s regrettably common. Most of us have faced the indecisive decision maker who is “not quite sure what they want, but knows what they don’t want” (words that cause creeping dread), or someone who is positive there’s a perfect concept, ideal theme, or flawless sequence of words and images that will magically appeal to everyone, every time. They torture themselves, and everyone around them, looking for that silver bullet.

What a waste of talent and energy. Hoping for that kind of breakthrough and that kind of result consistently produces watered-down, ineffective messaging that does much more harm than good.

I once sat in a conference room brainstorming with a client for three hours on taglines for his Web startup. After 180 minutes, we had a list of three- and five-word phrases a mile long, any one of which would have been adequate, and a few that were quite good. But he couldn’t commit. He finally decided that he didn’t need a tagline, that visitors would figure out what his site did on their own. He was out of business in three months. Granted, that’s because his business problems were deeper than marketing, but if he had concentrated on creating an honest explanation of what his company did rather than making some ham-fisted attempt at universal appeal, perhaps he’d still be in business.

Remember that your largest possible audience isn’t that “known quantity” you’ve already identified. The largest possible audience is one you never captured in the first place because you weren’t clear enough. You owe it to yourself to be honest with your identity, and then tell the world in straightforward terms. Offend or confuse a few folks? So what? You’ll more than make it up in new adherents who get what you’re about without having to wade through obtuse explanation. And here’s the kicker: On the Web, we won’t give you that chance anyway. If we don’t know who you are and what you’re about in an instant, we’ll kill you with a click.

Stop trying to find universal communications cure-alls, messaging panaceas that appeal to everyone. Instead, concentrate on what you do well. Convey it with all the precision and clarity you can muster. Don’t waste your time and money searching for silver bullets.