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When I started Gov20LA in the fall of 2009 it was because I saw the immediate future. Governments were turning to Web 2.0 (Gov 2.0) to change their mode and methods of communications and engagement. We ran with that theme in 2010. 2011 I saw that Digital Diplomacy was changing the world, and we focused on that. The week we did the event, Tunisia, then Egypt fell (day before we did it.) Given that we had world’s collections of government social media experts, including a British Ambassador and representatives of 5 Foreign Governments in the room; many outside watching online were asking if my event somehow caused those revolutions… Umm, No.

In 2012 we did the first ever live presentation on Pinterest at an event that was also streamed; and we focused heavily on the success stories like Data.Gov and how the social media landscape was changing all of our interactions, whether in politics or personal.

This year, we are focusing on social media in emergency management; and how it is being used in the military and intelligence circles as well as at the local levels. So this week’s events in Boston just highlight the themes previously chosen. I did not plan it this way, and honestly wish there was no tie in to such horrific news. But. There it is. I am very proud of this event. It is not something I do to earn money – but rather to teach all of us that we own the government. We are the shareholders and can hire and fire our leaders when we need. Do not forget the power you have. Join us on Saturday in Malibu at Pepperdine for what promises to be another powerful event. www.gov20la.com and thank you for your patience with all my posts and updates about this.

Authored by Alan W. Silberberg
Founder, Gov 2.0 L.A.

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THANK YOU ALL!

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Once a year. That is right. Once a year I open my business a bit more to offer my services at a discounted rate for a limited time. From now through January 15, 2013; I will offer a 25% discount of all the digital, social, tactical and strategic offerings of my company.

Typically we help large companies and government agencies understand the deeper ways to utilize social, mobile and what tactics and strategies apply to each situation. We have and continue to do a lot of work with elected officials here in the U.S. as well.

“DIGITAL SWORD + SHIELD”

We apply the same cutting edge social media, search tactics strategies; and tools as we do for Governments around the world to both private and publicly held corporations.

➜ Digital crisis communications
➜ Digital branding and messaging

Why us? Proof is in a live search.

➜ Tactical and strategic analysis of usage of the current social media platforms you are on, and training in new use patterns and engagement cycles.

➜ Creation of routine that affects SEO; Search, Social Media and creates a series of digital markers to mold your story. We apply the personal touch of sitting across a table and having a cup of tea with someone, but digitally.

➜ Training in the basics of engagement, storytelling and audience building for the digital world we all live in and how best to maximize your exposure on your website and in social media to bring an engaged audience to you and convert to paying clients.

➜ Merge online world with offline human aspects of good story telling, audience enrichment; how offline, online worlds combine in not so obvious ways affecting your business today.

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3 tiers: Government, Large Business, Small Business each with their own pricing categories.

The offer is 25% (twenty five percent off all fees through January 15, 2013.

So contact me today for a chance to take your agency, your company or even yourself to the next several layers of engagement and making your social presence work for you.

http://www.silberberginnovations.com/contact/

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In the last 5 years or so “Gov 2.0” (Government 2.0) has grown from being a name coined by William Eggers to now becoming the umbrella term for serious change in Government, and not just here in the United States, but around the world.

Many people, including myself have written much about the term Gov 2.0 – everything from “What is Gov 2.0” to lists of people leading current efforts. Lots of other angles have been covered by both the traditional media and online media.

I focus primarily on people power and how people are at the heart of any Gov 2.0 discussion, whether in print or in person. In fact I have called Gov 2.0 a “good revolution” and as we have all seen in the last few years, this is true regardless of country. I do not mean to state that Gov 2.0 is causing revolutions. Far from it. However, the openness and transparency that Gov 2.0 efforts around the world advocate for; driven by mobility and the cloud – have allowed people to be heard. To hear each other, those people whether in government or civic life, in business or entertainment.

Now thanks to the “Triangle of Gov 2.0″ which is the social media and open computing use; the mobile and device specific tools; and the cloud which facilitates both; we now see individual people gaining access to information and power never seen before in our history in more than one country at a time. Now this is happening in multiple places.

People are driving the change. People are adopting the tools. People are leading the way in forcing governments around the world to be more open and accountable. With this innovation of course comes the other side. The very same tools that can promote openness and transparency can and are in turn used against the people by governments, both democratic and not.

But we are so past the “What is Gov 2.0″ phase that I wrote about in 2010. We have blown past the “look the government is using twitter and facebook” phase. Indeed, we have entered the big data and deep analytical tool phase – complemented by more and more machine readable databases that are continually presenting new and innovative uses and creating new businesses and jobs. But people are still at the heart of the matter. Without courageous leaders willing to stand up to the buffeting forces of politics, budgets and fear; we would not be seeing the deep and dramatic changes we are witnessing unfolding in many countries, and many cities, and localities. People are driving this change, this is the constant in Gov 2.0 since 2007.

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Market maturation comes with ups and downs in any industry. With Government 2.0 we have now reached a point in my opinion, based on being directly involved with part of the transformation; that we are quietly seeing a mashup of Gov 2.0 with cyberwar and digital warfare.

We are in an undeclared cyberwar with multiple countries, a “cyber world war” if you will:
We are in a cyberwar every single moment of every day with multiple countries. This is an undeclared war, a digital free fire zone. It is the space of gauss, flame, stuxnet, duqu; and thousands of other variants in dozens of countries.

How does Government 2.0 play a role in cyberwar?

1. The very openness and transparency is easily exploited against each owner of data, web presences, mobile presence; and can be both quietly or loudly used.

2. More and more countries are using funds devoted to new technology transformations to quietly build cyber armies. China has deployed tens of thousands of hackers in officials positions. Many countries are using their sovereign wealth funds to buy into technology providers who can provide both cyberwar and hacking/stealing technologies.

3. There has been such huge focus on engagement and “listening” that sometimes we forget the huge number of fake accounts and purposeful misleading accounts that exist in cyber space now, let alone social media and mobile social apps.

4. More and more civic and public systems are not only being attacked, but in many cases successfully so now. With the spread of truly dangerous malware like gauss and flame, we will be seeing an increase both domestically and internationally of cyber attacks designed specifically to disable and disrupt.

5. The asymetrical aspect of cyber-warfare when compared to what the U.S. is doing on the ground in Afghanistan as I write this is huge. If in Afghanistan we are concerned with the taliban re-grouping and forming new regional (old) alliances; but we know the tactics and the general terrain. War in cyber space means we are dealing with enemies who instantly can change shape, move time, and can be in 30 places around the globe at once if they are good.

The future battlefields are here upon us; although since it is an undeclared war, the media is not focused on the reality yet. Digital bullets might be replacing real bullets but when whole systems like water, electricity, or transportation go down due to hacking, cyberwar or cyber economic espionage; the effect could be the same.

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Are you listening; really listening to the conversations going on about you and your products? As a CEO and an adviser to governments and politicians, I do a lot of listening. I even wrote a blog post about my listening into my industry, Government 2.0.

In the 1990’s and early 2000’s it was “You got mail” as made famous by the AOL advertising stable. Now the new thing is a play on the old one, “You’ve got Klout.” Or do you? Or do you have Peerindex? Do you know your grade on Grader? Do you know what your Kred is? Did you know you can see how many impressions you get through twitter using a variety of tools like Crowdbooster and others?

It’s ok, most people have no clue. But you need to get a clue. It might seem like fun and games as in the social media stock market “Empire Avenue.” But the reality is, people are watching; whether employers, potential employers, clients, friends, enemies, ex-spouses, competitors, the police, governments, and of course giant database companies. It is like credit scores were maybe 25 years ago: they mattered but they did not rule your life like credit scores such as FICO do now. Social media influence and “credibility” are of increasing importance. So these scores, whether real or gamed, whether you subscribe or not, matter.

Real keyword and conversation searching brings your audience to you. Passive or not searching through your social networks does not. It is pretty simple. Relying on one analytical metric to track your progress or that of the campaigns you are running is a false flag. You need to incorporate a constant monitoring of multiple channels in order to really understand what is going on. Indeed as I have written about before elsewhere, social media is a two edged sword, and this applies both to engagement and listening equally.

1. Listening tools like: Tweetdeck; Hootsuite, Bottlenose, and Google and Bing alerts.
2. Engagement through real conversation not a one way broadcast model; talk to people like you would at a coffee shop or across your kitchen table.
3. Do not rely on just one metric to follow your progress, but rather: think about it like this, times change. Social media is no longer just a buzzword, but really a part of daily life. It might even be like a utility in the near future, something the average person literally cannot live without. Therefore the more you know about what you are listening to, the better.
4. Relate social media to real world business. Ie. If you are a retailer, use your social media in part for customer service with active listening and response to problems. If you are a restaurant, use it to promote chefs specials or bring in someone with a true high definition camera and make a reel of background images of your food to post on Facebook or Google + or to tweet specials. Compare your foot traffic on days when you do this versus days you don’t. Thank your customers, talk to them just like you would in real life.
5. Actively search your social media platforms for conversations going on around your industry, about you or your competitors. Engage with the influencers and some of the outliers alike about the things that drive business to you; and reaching out to those leaders in the conversations to dialog with you on a real basis shows you are both listening and showing the world you know your stuff too.

You can follow Alan on Twitter through @Ideagov and on Google + and on the Huffington Post.

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I have been following closely the debate surrounding the FDA’s call to regulate apps like you use on your smart phone as a device, like a heart monitor or diabetes test kit.

Is this the right thing to do? I am all for regulation of industries to ensure safety and make sure no one dies because a product was used. But this is a whole new era. Is an app a device? Is it a life-saving tool or is it the new shiny toy on your smart phone about which you know nothing about the reliability or specificity of how it works? This debate has been roiling the device/app/regulated industry market for a long time already, but is really heating up this week due to pending legislation currently being “worked up” in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There are many legitimate questions at stake. Capitalism and how it relates to government regulated industries in a rapidly changing world for one. Health and safety of any “tool” whether device, software, hardware, application or just a bandaid; when it comes to being used on humans? Should the government stifle innovation efforts by regulating apps for your smart phone exactly as a medical device? Are small companies who are the primary developers of most apps still – being shut out of a marketplace controlled by only the largest and most set in place corporations and being assisted through legislative and regulatory ruling? What happens when one of these apps is used in a “cloak operation” and is actually something like a private information/financial information thief?

Wait, what did I just say? The harsh reality is the FDA even admits that the “device approval” is one of the hardest processes they put any company through, outside of actual drug approval. Just ask any device manufacturer about their recent run-ins with the PMA (premarket approval). You will get an earful.

But translate this to medical smart phone apps and the FDA. Who builds apps? As stated above, mostly small companies with small numbers of employees (obviously there are clear exceptions.) If the apps are to be regulated exactly as devices then it subjects these companies to lengthy, even multi-year engagements just to get approval prior to selling anything. This flips the market dynamics of most app companies; that are used to making their money off short development/lead time cycles, and short sales cycles. How can most small companies survive this? They can’t; and back to the question of a stifling of innovation in small businesses through the FDA on behalf of the few companies with the bucks to last out this process.

I would suggest the FDA look at how software and hardware is approved under FIPS for example. (FIPS are requirements issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that apply to federal government computer systems.) Additionally I would suggest the FDA create a tiered regulatory system, one for devices; one for aps. Clearly this debate is not going away without a fight.

Make it work.

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Gov 2.0 L.A. Hybrid Un-conference

It Was Amazing. Thank you to all who made Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 a success for the 3rd year in a row. We had over 44,000 people participate in our livestream of the event from at least 19 countries.

A huge Thank You goes out to Callfire, Citysourced, Rockcreek Strategic Marketing, Davenport Institute, TechZulu, for sponsoring and making this event happen.

All of the videos will soon be posted on to our Vimeo Page at http://www.vimeo.com/gov20la and additionally we will be posting the presentations shortly as well.

Enjoy this storify post about the various tweets, photos, blogs, etc coming out of this event.

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Gov 2.0 L.A. Hybrid Un-conference

Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 is here.

Counting down the days now, literally and getting excited to see it unfold. As the founder I am both humbled and quite proud at the same time. Gov 2.0 and Open Government are blossoming around the world as evidenced by the historic gathering this week in Brazil of the Open Government Partnership.

For the third year in a row, Gov20LA will be having an equal split of men and women speakers. This is something not often accomplished at technology related conferences and events as I noted on Twitter:

3rd year! Going to have 50/50 split between men + women speakers. We had panel addressing this issue in 2010. bit.ly/dqizQ0 #gov20— Gov20LA (@Gov20LA) April 18, 2012

For the third year in a row, GOV20LA will be live-streaming the event and taking audience questions through Twitter, Facebook and the chat embedded in the live-stream itself. There is lots of chatter about the event this year on Twitter, Facebook and Google +. Here are some selected pre event Tweets on Storify:

The agenda for the event is amazing. We have once again some of the best and the brightest in the world.

April 21, 2012

*ALL times PDT (Pacific Daylight Time)
Check in and Coffee. 8:00am-8:30am

Opening Remarks by Alan W. Silberberg, Founder of Gov20LA 8:30am – 8:40am

Pete Peterson – Executive Director
Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership 8:40am-8:50am

Lewis Shepherd – Engagement with Government through Technology and Gamification. 8:50-9:30am

Gabriela Dow – Public-Private Partnerships for Incubator / Startup Success. 9:30am-10:00am

Alena Popova – Open Government Conversation from Moscow, Russia, with Alan Silberberg. 10:00am-10:45am

10:45-11:00 First Pacific Ocean and Mountain View Break

Andrew Nebus – Tales from Social Media, Homeland Security and First Response 11:00am-11:45am

11:45-12:45 Lunch overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Mountains.

Jeanne Holm – Open Government with U.S and India Partnership 12:45pm – 1:30pm

Nigel Cameron – Technology changes Engagement. 1:30pm-2:15pm

Julianne Shinto – Shaping a message in a new reality. 2:15pm-2:45pm

2:45pm -3:00pm Second Pacific Ocean and Mountain View break.

William F. Marion – Mobility, Social Media, Crisis and First Response, Old vs New Technology in Government. 3pm-3:45pm

Komnieve Singh – How mobile and telecom tech is changing Government. 3:45pm-4:15pm,

Christina Gagnier – Privacy and Security in the Cyber Age. 4:15pm-5:00pm

Closing remarks by Alan W. Silberberg

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Gov 2.0 L.A. Hybrid Un-conference

As the 3rd annual Gov 2.0 L.A. (Gov20LA) approaches on April 21, 2012; I have been thinking a lot about why I started this conference and what it means for you, for me and for our futures. A few years back I wrote this piece “What is Gov20LA All About?”

In the 3 years since we have seen huge growth in social media, cloud computing, mobile technologies and the subsequent explosion of citizen involvement with our governments. This has caused all kinds of situations, good and bad. On the good we are seeing country after country begin to adopt open data and transparent aspects to their internal and external operations. We have seen citizens empowered to use their voice, many for the first time ever. We have witnessed several countries fall to “soft power” of people organizing, and then acting on the organization to effect change of a type we have never seen in our collective human history. On the bad, we are seeing totalitarian governments around the world cling to these new technologies and indeed even the people’s response to them; to crack down, imprison people, kill people and break up organized groups.

I have written in the past about the two headed side of #gov20 and social media in general with regard to Governments and the people who interact with them. This dichotomy is growing, not abating. We see people using technologies to force change yet at same time we are witnessing governments around the world investigate the same technologies to prevent change.

Gov20LA was created to act as a forum to collect the best and brightest people and their ideas and enable them to tell the world their stories. The idea has always been to empower people through learning about the cutting edge applications of technology in government and by the companies servicing them. We feel that by letting you see the speakers in a casual, yet live setting online – we all can learn from the human conversation and dialogue.

Technology is great, solves lots of problems and saves money when properly applied. The problem with most technology conferences and events is they are too jargon laden and usually do not encourage open dialogue with the speakers. We do the opposite. We want the dialogue. We want our speakers interacting both with the live audience in the room and the global Internet TV audience. So we have created an open environment, with some truly amazing people from inside and outside government leading the dialogue.

I am personally so humbled and excited by the continued awesome response Gov20LA receives worldwide. I can’t wait for this year. Join me. Thank you.