The speed at which online communication is changing is phenomenal. Odds are your employees and clients are already active users of social media. It’s fundamentally changing the way organizations operate. People have the opportunity to take part in an on-going conversation with their Government by participating more than voting once a year, creating a true democracy.

This workshop will teach you the basics of social media, such as blogs, podcasts, and wikis, while providing you with the purpose and strategy behind these technologies, along with exploring how to leverage these techniques to change the way your organization collaborates and communicates. You will gain an understanding of the risks and benefits of social media, but more importantly, understand the risks of NOT using social media.
Specifically, you will learn strategies, tactics and ideas for:

• Influencing the internal culture toward new media concepts and Web 2.0 technologies
• Introducing and integrating social media in your organization
• Establishing web governance, policy and operating protocols
• Reprioritizing human and financial resources to incorporate social media
• Developing capacity and procedures that facilitate use of social and new media
• Monitoring and assessing success

WORKSHOP LEADERS: Mark Hudson is a Senior Communications Executive with the Public Health Agency of Canada. Mark has spent more than 20 years envisioning, directing and delivering communications, consultation, and marketing strategies to benefit Canadians. Public service for him has included stints with several federal government departments including Health, Industry, Environment, Indian Affairs and the Privy Council.

Marquis Côté is a Senior eCommunications Advisor for the Public Health Agency of Canada and Partner & Web Strategist at digitalOttawa. digitalOttawa delivers eCommunications services and strategies for public sector organizations. They create a foundation with governance review, education and change management and then build project-specific tools to help meet and exceed mandated goals with sustainable solutions.

Testimonials From digitalOttawa Sessions:

“Nice introduction to the use of social media.”
“Good information. I enjoyed the explanations about the different media and tools.”
“They had good professional delivery and interaction with conference participants.”

This workshop will offer a process which will allow you to accurately identify the systems that are right for your organisation’s needs. We will work hands-on with some of the technologies, and explore how different applications deliver the same features. We will then dig into how you can identify which sets of features are right for your organisation’s needs, and give you the tools to identify the software which delivers them best for you.
In this workshop, you will leave with an understanding of:

• What features make up a social networking application
• Current Open Source offerings

By the end of the session, you will be able to build your requirements matrix, with special focus on:

• Audience – Who will be using the tools?
• Editors – Who will be managing and monitoring the content of the tools?
• Administrators – Who are the decision makers or business owners?
• Organisational goals – What are the goals that the tool is being used to meet?
• Additional considerations – cost, hosting, maintenance, etc.
• Matching your requirements with the market
• Staffing and following through with your team

WORKSHOP LEADERS: Marquis Côté and Jason Prini are partners at digitalOttawa. digitalOttawa delivers eCommunications services and strategies for public sector organizations. They create a foundation with governance review, education and change management and then build project-specific tools to help meet and exceed mandated goals with sustainable solutions.

Vanguards’ Lead Information Architect Andrew Hinton argued at the I.A. Summit this year that “Conversation is King!”.

Jeff Parks, President of I.A. Consultants and Podcast Editor for Boxes and Arrows will share his experiences interviewing the world’s foremost experts in the fields of Information Architecture; User Experience; Interaction Design; and Human Factors.

Jeff will discuss how these experiences have helped him grow his business; network; and form a strong community of subject matter experts and partners from around the world through the social medium of Podcasting.

Conversations and experiences from the following events will be shared:

VizThink
Information Architecture Summit
MX San Francisco – Managing Experience through Creative Leadership

As a result of this work in Podcasting Jeff has been invited back to Adaptive Path’s UX Week in August and the IDEA conference in Chicago in October to interview speakers from each event.

May’s Last Thursday from 5-8pm
Location: PUB.101 (2nd floor) 101 York St. (Byward Market)

We (digitalOttawa) were able to speak to many of those challenges with our presentation on an Introduce Web 2.0 & Social Media in the Public Sector – Case Study: Public Health Agency of Canada.

The presentation covered several main topics. The first was the “What” – what is Social Media and how does an individual use it and how can an organization use it to be more connected. Short answer is:

1. Participating in the conversation
2. Initiating the Conversation
3. Sharing Content
4. Social Media in “all” marketing

Next came the “How?” The first step being the recognition that this change will be a large organizational behaviour shift. We then introduced the Six Step approach:

1. Needs Assessment
2. Educating
3. Planning
4. Implementing
5. Coaching
6. Evaluating

Finally we answered the “Why?” and the short answer is because it’s happening and if your organization doesn’t move in the Social Media direction it will fail. The shift of power from the “Matures” to the “Millennials” and “Generation X” was also given as a strong example of “Why” social media.

We also stressed that despite the challenges faced by the public sector it was possible to implement social media! It can be done!

The presentation was very well received, and there was much head-nodding by the public service participants.