IT Manifesto and Collection of things...

Holly Ross posted "A Leadership Manifesto: Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" on the NTEN blog. Please take a minute to go to this post and make your comment, especially if you have a different viewpoint. This is a great post.  Here are a couple quotes that I cant help but share.

"Right now, in our sector, we need technology leaders.  We are standing right on top of a critical inflection point, and we owe it to our causes to make sure that we navigate the change as best as we possibly can. So I am calling on all of you to stand up and lead.  We will follow you."

"The old style of IT management was a command-and-control model.  It was about "experts" making decisions for the end users and mandating those decisions. These days, there are more experts than you think. innovation and expertise in technology can come from any staffer in any role, and technology leaders need to recognize and embrace that.  We need to run IT shops that protect our assets while encouraging this innovation. When everyone's a part of process, the revolution happens much more quickly."

And from out of the comments from Holly:
"tech is definitely undefined and muddy now. It's out of the back room and out in every department at your organization. Think about how we used to deal with IT...."  "now technology is a completely different beast. It's about communicating, conversing, collecting, sharing, advocating and more. It's about all the ways that we meet your missions."

Holly hints that the conversation about technology leaders has only just begun for the next year.  I cant wait to see what comes out of this.

And here are a few other gems I want to share:
Recording of a presentation on IT Alignment that John Merritt and I did for NTEN. It is worth a watch, we were on something of a roll that day.

Slideshow of Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom from Holly Ross.

Forget the Tech, Lets Talk Mission - Great article from John Merritt (he wrote it and just added my name)

And now for something completely different, be sure to take time to order your copy of Beth Kanter and Allison Fine's new book the Networked Nonprofit. Read more about the book and the launch!

Flickr Photo credit: Chris.Corwin

Social Media Comments Gone Wild! What to do?

What if someone says something bad about us on social media? We cant do that!

Isnt that one of the bigger hesitations of orgs using social media? It is easy to think through what to do if the comments are just wrong, but what if the comments are bad but correct, just plain mean or pose a real risk?

I am a huge fan of the Air Force Blog Assessment chart! This is what we used to guide the discussion around how and when we should reply to comments on our social media sites.  This visual worked great to allow non-tech staff to think through and understand all of the options.  It also helped leadership to feel more comfortable with our ability to reply.

But what do you do when the same comments start to cross boundaries and exposure your participants, your members or your organization to real risk?

So in addition to the Air Force Blog Assessment we decided to create a comment escalation flow chart.  This is intended to help our social media authors decide what action to take in addition to the reply.  We wanted to have a documented process for our employees to use and to find a way to keep our Communications & Risk Management departments in the loop.  So here is what we came up with.  We are also working on documenting the actual steps they take but wanted a visual to make it understandable and simple.

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you have similar things in place?

Here is why I decided to share this.  Moderating comments may seem like just another task that has to be done by our authors.  But in this particular pilot launch the authors are working with Teens.  So when they take action on an inappropriate comment, they are actually working toward the goals of their program. By having a conversation with a program participant about responsible behavior online, they are reinforcing the program goal of strengthening self image and how you present yourself.