Anderson started off with an interesting example – the infamous Twitter fail whale. Countless users have bemoaned the unreliability of Twitter, though in fact, the service has been down only occasionally and it’s gotten dramatically better of late. He contrasted this with a couple of stories about government sites. In the first, he had to pay taxes in Delaware for his corporation but their web site was down for the entire weekend before his taxes were due. In another example, he wanted to pay a traffic ticket he received in Truckee, CA, but the town did not take credit cards online, something a teenager could’ve set up. These are much more critical tasks than updating your Twitter feed.

Four Web Rules of the Google Generation

In Anderson’s view, the Google Generation (those who grew up with the Internet) expects government sites to work as well as commercial sites. But I think any regular user of the web thinks this way, no matter the age. He listed four rules of the Google Generation. This is what they expect:

1. Everything should work all the time. 
2. If you can’t find it on Google, it doesn’t exist. 
3. Meet us where we live (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter).
4. We want to interact with your content.

Unfortunately, as Anderson listed in his Delaware example, not everything works all the time on .gov sites. Also, while optimizing your content for Google is a great idea, not all .gov sites do this and some government content is hidden in databases which Google has a hard time searching. There are just a few examples of government in Facebook or Flickr though this is a common practice in the .com and .org worlds. And the idea of people discussing, rating, ranking and remixing government content on a .gov site is something I’ve never seen before (but would love to).

Obstacles to Web 2.0 in Government

Any discussion of Web 2.0 in government soon turns to the innumerable obstacles to bringing social media to government sites. Anderson made the point that these barriers are similar to those to any large company or organization.  They include:

• Outdated technology 
• Legal concerns
• Privacy worries
• Procurement hassles
• Archive issues
• Lack of urgency

In the commercial world, this is why smaller companies are the innovators. They are not saddled with a content management system purchased in the 1990s nor IT policies not updated in more than a decade.

Black Wire/White Wire

Anderson had a story bound to terrify any government CIO. At Conde Nast, he was saddled with many of the same restrictions that afflict any large organization. Old emails got deleted after 30 days, server space was limited, vital email got stuck in spam filters and no one could install software on their machines without approval. His team was frustrated by these restrictions which hindered their effectiveness.

His solution was to opt out of IT support by setting up his own DSL network and servers in his office. Anderson showed the setup, with a black wire for the IT department’s connection and a white wire for his DSL hookup. The black wire only got plugged in to print. In his view, the role of the CIO should be to provide a fat pipe to the Internet and maintain the printers, not tell people what technology they can use.

Consumer Apps > Enterprise Apps

One reason that Anderson cited for seceding from his IT department was that his staff was used to consumer applications (like Gmail and Google Docs) that were superior to their enterprise equivalents (Outlook, Word). Not only were these consumer apps easier to use, they were also available anywhere. Anderson uses Google Docs exclusively. He also listed the new US CIO, Vivek Kundra, as a proponent of using consumer technology in the public space. In his previous role as CTO for the District of Columbia, Kundra brought these apps in-house and established wikis and data feeds to make local government more efficient.

Web 2.0 Thinking

Finally, Anderson presented a list of good and bad words. These are words and phrases to be encouraged, with their bad counterparts in parenthesis:

• fail fast (approval process)
• hosted/cloud (client/server)
• nimble (planning cycle)
• experimental (safe)
• beta (signed off)
• messy (static)
• sure! (maybe next year)

Anderson is an inspiring speaker, particularly on the subject of “failing faster”. He made the point that he’s failed lots of times, in lots of different ways, but each experience taught him something. Failing is a necessary byproduct of experimenting, something that should be encouraged across government.

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But how do you find an agent? She provided five really good tips:

1. Attend writer’s conferences. No matter what genre you write in, or where you live, there’s bound to be a conference for you to attend. Conferences offer opportunities to network with writers, editors and agents. Fellow writers can be a good source of information on agents and what they like. Also, the writing business is based upon relationships and attending conferences are a way of making those connections. 
2. Contests. Agents and editors judge writing contests. Winning a contest could lead to a book deal. Be sure to check out who’s judging the conference to make sure it’s reputable.
3. Guides to agents. Your bookstore has several guides to literary agents, such as Writer’s Market and Jeff Herman’s Guide.
4. Dedication pages of books. Does your favorite author thank their agent in their acknowledgements?
5. Online sources. AgentQuery, AAR Online, Mediabistro and Publishers Marketplace were all cited by Wheeler or members of the audience as good resources.

Wheeler strongly suggested doing your research before querying an agent. Few things irritated her more than a query letter pitching a project (like a screenplay) that she doesn’t handle.

This is just a fraction of the valuable information she provided in a two-hour long session with a lot of questions and answers. Wheeler is a new member of the Writer’s Center faculty and will be conducting a workshop in the spring.

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The nonprofit to be pimped was Student Movement for Real Change (SMRC), an organization that was founded to connect American college students with schools in Africa that need assistance. Students apply for internships that, “provide college students on-the-ground development experience, cultural immersion, and the necessary leadership skills to develop sustainable projects that address local needs through a 6 or 8 week internship (depending on the community) in developing communities” to quote the SMRC web site.

Vanessa Carter of SMRC gave a brief overview of SMRC and the challenges they face. Like many nonprofits, they’re a very small organization with a limited budget. Their main marketing objectives are to obtain:

• Interns. They’ve had success getting applicants for their programs in Africa through the use of Google Ads. These search-based ads are how most potential interns find out about the program.
• Donations. They recently redesigned their web site and it includes a nice red donate button on the home page. They’ve also had limited success raising money through Facebook Causes.

The question Vanessa had for the group was, “Out of the sea of social media tools – Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, blogs – which is worth doing?” With a very small staff, limited time and a reluctance to learn anything complicated, which of these tools would be most effective for her organization?

The group weighed in with their advice. Many of the participants were active users of these tools and brought lessons learned from applying these tools to similar nonprofits. They provided both strategic insight and concrete tactical advice:

• Facebook: Given that SMRC wants to reach college students, Facebook would be the place to prioritize. While some of the group thought that Facebook was too broad of a social network, the consensus was that Facebook was the network that college students are on all the time. The advice was that SMRC should expand its presence on Facebook.
• Facebook Ads: Facebook knows an extraordinary amount about its users and can provide very targeted ads, which is pretty frightening, but would be effective for SMRC. The ads could be run when students are looking for internships.
• MySpace: While a comment was made that MySpace was “over”, this service is used by vast numbers of high school students, who might be future SMRC interns.
• Google Ads: SMRC has had success with Google Ads but the advice was to look at the metrics behind the campaigns, to analyze what search terms were working and adjust accordingly.
• Twitter: Nothing brings out controversy like Twitter! The group went back and forth about this, about the wonders of Twitter (I agree) but that it’s really an early-adopter tool and not yet mainstream (I agree again).
• Blogs: SMRC already has a few blogs on their site. Everyone agreed that blogs are necessary in this day and age but that more guidance is needed for bloggers and that they need to be done more consistently.
• Video: The wonders of the Flip camera were much extolled, for it allows video to be cheaply shot and uploaded to YouTube. This would be an ideal tool for SMRC.
• Email Listservs: It’s very Web 1.0 but is still an effective tool.
• The SMRC web site: While the site was just redesigned, the group thought it could be improved upon through the addition of the tag line, describing the organization, and by better using the home page real estate.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Nonprofits need better tools to manage their relationships with donors. Nobody seemed too excited about their CRM system.

At the end of the meeting, the folks at Genius Rocket offered to help Vanessa produce a video ad for SMRC. So, she not only left with a long (and hopefully useful) list of to-dos, she also received some donated assistance. And all of us geniuses who offered our help got tasty snacks and the satisfaction of helping a good cause.

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Now that I’m not working in an office, people are curious about what I do all day. I told a friend of mine that I was taking a couple of weeks off to go down to Florida. “Take off from what?” he retorted smartly.

But the truth of the matter is that I am busy. I’m writing a mystery called Murder in Ocean Hall.

The other question I get is, “What tools are you using?” There’s almost a fetishization of writing tools out there, as if creativity was a matter of getting the right notebook or pen set. Or, if you’re a geek, getting the right piece of software, one that will magically draw out your work of genius and put it on the page.

While I’ve certainly been guilty of this in the past, I’ve been tending toward simpler and simpler tools. And, with my time, I’ve really discovered the value of something I once despised – routine. Routine is like a healthy habit, one you can’t put down.

Here’s the schedule and the tools I’ve found to be best for me.  It’s my Monday to Friday schedule. It’s one writer’s day:

7:30 AM to 8:30 AM

Curiously, I wake up at the same time I did when I had a real job. I haven’t sunk into dissipation nor do I stay up all night watching movies. I get ready for the day and check my email to see if I have anything important I need to respond to.

location: home
computer: iMac
tools: Safari, Gmail
drink/food: none
noise: Pandora, Radio Paradise or none 

8:30 AM to Noon

This is my core writing time. I like writing at Caribou Coffee and I’m fortunate to live within a couple blocks of two different Caribous. Why don’t I write at home? It’s easier when I’m surrounded by other industrious people with laptops and away from the distractions of home.

I try to write 1000-2000 words every day. I write in Pages, because it’s not cluttered or distracting like Word. And it will run on my almost six year old PowerBook, the little Apple laptop that refuses to die. I keep my outline in TextEdit, an even simpler tool. I use Safari for research.

location: Caribou
computer: 12″ G4 PowerBook
tools: Pages, Safari
drink/food: coffee (dark roast), cranberry scone
noise: quiet chatter, endless loop of Caribou Xmas music

Noon – 1:30 PM

After making stuff up from whole cloth, I’m usually hungry and mentally spent. I have lunch, watch the news for a little bit and check my email. I watch CNBC without really paying attention to it – it’s just sort of on.

location: home
computer: iMac
tools: Safari, Gmail
drink/food: orange seltzer water, sandwich
noise: CNBC/CNN

1:30 – 2:00 PM

Nap! I admit it, I take a nap. Not every day but one of the perks of working from home is being able to do things you’d never do in the office.

2:00 – 5:00 PM

I try to work a full day, as if I had a real job. I’ve got a lot of things I can work on, such as:

• research and write a blog post
• make comments on other blogs
• read and answer my email
• read interesting blogs and web sites
• look for markets for my short stories and screenplays
• edit photos and upload them to Flickr
• submit pics for photo contests
• conduct research for my novel
• edit my novel
• brainstorm ideas for my book and update my outline 
• explore new Web 2.0 technologies
• update my Twitter feed
• check out blogs and sites related to Web 2.0 in government
• signup for events in DC on Web 2.0, photography and other subjects of interest
• look for interesting places to work at in the future
• set up lunch or coffee with friends and colleagues
• read a book

location: home
computer: iMac
tools: Safari, Gmail, Twitter, WordPress, Adobe Lightroom, Pages, TextEdit, Stickies
drink/food: chai tea, snack of some kind
noise: Pandora, Radio Paradise or none

5:00 PM

I’m done! At this point, I’ll go for a walk, break out the Wii Fit or go to the gym. Or maybe just have a drink.

I try to leave things where I can pick them up the next day. For example, I’ll have an idea of what I’ll write tomorrow and be turning things over in my mind. I’m thinking about what happens next in my story.

This type of routine seems to keep my sane and productive, perhaps because it mimics the schedule I had when I worked. I’m not averse to flipping my days around, however, and write in the afternoon instead of the morning. Or even taking a day off, especially if the weather is nice. Or working on a Sunday and taking off a Monday. Doing so keeps things from getting stale and feeling like a chore. After all, the routine is for me. It’s not something I’m enslaved to, it’s for my benefit.

But why keep a schedule like you’re working in an office? It may be pretentious, but I’m going to quote Flaubert on this one:

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

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SXSW Panel: Government Sites Try Not to Suck
Vote for me!  Using a provocative title, I’m trying to sneak some government web folks into hipster-laden SXSW. 

SmartBike DC
These “rent by the hour” bikes have started to appear on the streets of the District.  I’d love to try one but I already have two bikes I don’t ride.

GovLoop
It’s Facebook for feds! 

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