Public Relations Strategery

Because Booz Allen is a Diamond Sponsor of next week’s Gov 2.0 Summit, and I’m on the Program Committee for the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase, I have been incredibly busy trying to pull together presentations, talking points, attendee lists, and other logistics for next week.  However, I did take some time to participate in Tim O’Reilly’s “What Does Gov 2.0 Mean to You?” initiative in advance of the Summit next week.  For me, Government 2.0 isn’t about the tools, but what those tools enable – it’s about more than just creating a blog and engaging in dialogue with the public, it’s about more than just creating a wiki that’s open to multiple government agencies, and it’s about more than just making data accessible to the public.  Gov 2.0 is about what you do after that.  It’s about updating policies because of the conversations you had on the blog, it’s about using a wiki to deliver better intelligence analysis to our country’s decision makers, and it’s about opening up government data to crowdsource IT development, saving money increasing innovation.

There are tons of GREAT initiatives out there, initiatives that we’ll learn more about next week, but in many cases, these initiatives are just laying the foundation for government innovation. Think about it.  Next week, we will hear about lots of exciting Gov 2.0 initiatives taking place at the federal, state, and local levels. But, we’re also going to hear lots of stories about social media bans, offices still using IE 6, and information silos.  Remember that Government 2.0 isn’t just about getting on Twitter or building a wiki – those are just first steps.  It’s about using these tools to create a government that’s truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.

I’ve still got one more day here at BlogWorld, so I reserve the right to add/delete/modify this list to fit in more stuff tomorrow – keep the quotes coming! (thx to SukiFuller!)

I’ve heard some incredibly insightful/funny/wise/profound/outrageous things here at BlogWorld 2008.  Here are the top ten things that I’ve overheard and/or saw in the Conference Twitter feed.

1. “Be You and Be Every Flaw.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
2. “Here’s my best practice on SEO (search engine optimization) – just write good shit.”  – Guy Kawasaki
3. “In order to make Twitter/social media work, your employees need to know HOW YOUR BIZ WORKS.” –Toby Bloomberg
4. “I spend my life searching for negative things people say about me, and then I go and address it.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
5. “Trying to take stuff off the internet is like trying to take pee out of the pool” – unknown
6. “I want a relationship not a one-link stand” – Liz Strauss
7. “It’s not about pitching blogs with traffic, it’s about building relationships with blogs with influence.” – Steve Radick (me!)
8. “Best way to get links is to have an opinion and piss someone off. Then turn off the comments.” – Michael Gray
9. “There is a human being behind every Tweet, blog, and email – remember that.” – Chris Brogan
   
10. “How do you place a value on all the positive changes, and the positive blog posts, and the publicity created?” (in reference to measuring the ROI of social media) – @comcastcares

There are many more and I’m sure that there are others who have already come up with similar blog posts.  Jonathan Gunson already did one just on Gary Vaynerchuk’s quotes from his keynote.  If you have quotes that you liked, or want to respond to some of the ones I’ve collected above, leave a comment below.  Hoping to hear even more nuggets tomorrow….