My advice to anyone reading this is to harness their moxie and lobby their represenatives in Washington to stand up for health care reform. Tune out the stupid special interest commercials and get real.  Oh and check out one of these t-shirts: http://www.cafepress.com/Palin_says

Let’s face it–what bothers me about this is the same thing that bothers you all the time, you just haven’t known what to call it. Well, now you do: authentic bullshit. What J. Crew is saying is so unbelievable and rediculous they might as well ask Michelle Obama if she would sport a tat for them after Barack gets re-elected in 2012. Authenticity. Is it really that hard?

Well, if you turn on a morning show you will find out for some people it really is a challenge. The sense of down-to-earthness swelling up in the heart of over-glossed female anchors (and male, if you want to count Matt Lauer as such) when they refer to Michelle Obama being a woman of the people because she wears J Crew makes me rather ill. In what world is a dress that looks like a potatoe sack and costs $188 a bargain?  What’s really sad is women across the country are turning on their tvs listening to these airheads babble on about this and starting to assume there is a norm they are not privy to. No NO NO NO. Don’t get me wrong, I am really happy that Michelle Obama is not wearing $300,000 assembles the likes of Cindy McCain. However, I cannot just accept this kind of trying to be “authentic” bullshit because it is the lesser of two evils. And to the marketing team at J Crew– you can attempt to rebrand all you want but the reality is it is a recession and you there is nothing about your prices that reflect that(.) This crazy have and have not dichotomy is well demonstrated here: http://www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?t=77765

Next thing I know I hear this guy’s voice saying “Hey Rachel, I got your email.” Woahhhhh. Come again?! I look up to my screen and realize this guy is just talking to me as if I am sitting across the desk from him. I can see his desk and seriously, I all of the sudden felt like I was in an office—zoinks! I’m naked!! I can’t be naked in this guy’s office!! Of course, I am not really in his office but this is the odd feeling this whole thing gives me.

When I worked on Capitol Hill, it was like I was living in the business version of NYC Fashion Week. Way too many folks Trumpin’ it up Apprentice style. Of course, I didn’t mind it at first. I was fresh out of college and it felt fun—look at me, I’m a grown up now! However, day after day I soon came to hate panty hose, those oh so crucial but uncomfortable pointy heels, the dread of hot weather and sweat and outrageous dry cleaner bills. There had to be a better way. There was! At dysfunctional nonprofits, you can get away with a lot but it still needed to be somewhat business. I couldn’t do business casual—I had all these awful conservative outfits my Mom made me get for the Hill, my pointy shoes, my clubbing outfits and my sweats.  Take three—now I freelance and one of the beautiful things about freelancing is, for the most part, you can do it in your sweats. You can get up and not worry about drawing in your eyebrows (mine are so blonde and my skin so pale that apparently without significant eye makeup my face appears to be “a white spot”) but now NOW it’s all screwed up!!! The beauty of typing an email is you can sound professional when you’re actually sitting Indian style with bed head and no one knows.

I fear the day now is just around the corner when I too will have to once again turn my thoughts to my appearance, as opposed to the substance of what I am saying. Email to John Doe, take four! We will all also have to be worrying about our tone. This is really going to make it so much harder for people like me who like to be passive aggressive and snarky via words who cannot be questioned because they aren’t spoken and their true intent cannot be completely ascertained in any way—just kidding—I don’t ever do that!

I am at work now so it may be a while longer before I bestow the CapitolMoxie Seal of Approval but I have to say, she looks like she’s got moxie if I have ever seen it. Oh yeah, and she was inspired by Nancy Drew, who wasn’t?! Oh yeah, you Sweet Valley High girls–well, you can keep pouring coffee.  Sonia will keep prepping for her Senate hearing.

Ex: I stress about who I let be a connection on Linkedin, especially if their last name starts with an A. God forbid I slip and let my connections lose their luster by allowing Dolly Akers (unemployed) take over the coveted spot of Joe Aaron, a big wheeler and dealer with a company name that says–”damn, she’s connected!”

Ex: Whenever I pull up my Facebook friends, I always see the updates of my A friends, almost never see the updates of “G” friends.

Ex: If you’re name starts with an A on an online dating site–when someone’s “matches” are pulled up, or a search conducted– “a_very_lovely_lady” will beat out “ZsaZsa” any day of the week (which is really unfortunate bc I would bet that ZsaZsa is the real catch).

Ex: Cell phones. It’s 5:45 on a Thursday night and you just saw a blog post about some great HH specials at that new bar down the street. You want to get some of your peeps together to partake but you’ve gotta move fast. Who are you going to call?! (ghost busters, just admit it. half of you probably said ghost busters)  You’re going to call the first person on your contact list that you could enjoy having a drink with. There are probably a lot of people you might enjoy having a drink with but are you actually going to call all of them no?

A big thing in the marketing jargon world is TOM. TOM stands for top of mind awareness. Think about the TOM of Abby, Ava, Adonnis (yes, that’s a name of a contact of mine–further proof that TOM is aptly referenced when it comes to  the “A” Dilemma ).

LinkedIn aside, from a personal branding perspective, I believe the As are advantaged more than they are disadvantaged in this  alphabetically sorted online world of oh-so-short attention spans.

I bet expecting couples  are probably already trying to come up with names that start with an A  in the hopes it will up their child’s social standing on down the online networking line.

Crazy, no?

The 2009 Federal Performance Policy Forum:
Insights and Ideas to Transform Federal Program Management

(Sounds pretty heavy no?) Well, it is and it isn’t. On the one hand, it’s easy in times of trouble to want to keep the course, to not switch things up too much.  On the other hand, when things are really bad–they may be really bad in large part to the fact we’ve been doing things the wrong way and some innovative thinking is called for.

“Nothing endures but change.” Heraclitus (540 BC – 480 BC)

There is no doubt in my mind any more just how quickly change can happen. I remember when I decided to be a public policy major at William and Mary. It was a hopeful time. The economy was great. We finally had a budget surplus. And I believed I was going to graduate and move to Washington to work on environmental issues and be a part of this huge social policy agenda. Then there was 9/11. I can remember classmates gathering into a random classroom and watching CNN. I definitely didn’t understand the gravity of the situation but one of my government professors did as I can remember him saying, “This will change the focus of public policy for the next two decades.” Sure enough, by the time I graduated and came to Washington– three letters, D.H.S.,  had come to define agency funding levels, the discourse of the national media, the messaging platforms of both political parties and the job prospects of many idealists like me.

When you hear the word bureaucracy– innovation is likely not the first word that pops up in your head.  And yet, it should be. It has to be. Another wave of change has swept into Washington and now is not the time to be timid. Now is the time to be smart and nimble. There is a climate of tolerance towards changing policies that has not existed in decades. People aren’t looking for the same old. I believe most Americans know that we have to plot a new route. Remember that saying, “can’t go over it. can’t go around it. can’t go under it ” well, it is time to go “through it.” For years we have been facing enormous policy issues. The short-term-gotta-get-re-elected-horse-and-pony-show has increasingly drawn politicians away from the roots of problems and fixated on them on the “talking points” of the problem. Using the right rhetoric ain’t getting us out of this mess though.

I am pretty excited to see this gathering of government managers tomorrow. All too often career civil servants go unnoticed. Now I hope these unsung heroes will have a chance in the spotlight. Let’s reach out to them. Tell them we are thankful for their leadership, empower them to speak for us and to draw upon their expertise to drive innovation in a time when innovation is needed more than ever.

You can learn more about InnoGOV on the LinkedIn group I belong to. Just do a group search on there for  “InnoGOV” and message how you heard about Innovations in Government and what your interests are. I am looking forward to having a great dialogue with as many different people as possible on there.

If you aren’t following on Twitter– get with the program here. They are tweeting up a storm . ..

And as for the 100 days . . . not that bad. What Obama has done right is not super complicated, but it’s super smart: give the thumbs up to federal agencies to start implementing a bevy of progressive agenda items while the world focuses on the economic crisis.  Example, an 11th hour Bush ruling on mountaintop removal was reversed (I still have my hangups with “clean” coal but I’m pretty happy to see we’re finally going to attempt to regulate greenhouse gases).

Obama called for an end to Gitmo almost immediately and he has repeatedly made clear the US will not be waterboarding

At the same time he has given the thumbs up for social programs, reached out to Iran, showed he wasn’t afraid to shake  Hugo Chavez’ hand and done wonders for rebuilding our image abroad.

When he started into illegal immigration– I said to myself, please, don’t pull a gays in the military here. He seems to have backed off (thankfully). He still has a decent approval rating so my advice to you President Obama is GO GO GO (and don’t stop to look over your shoulder or this moment will be gone).

I agree with Graff’s premise that as technology changes and societies’ habits change in turn, expectations for politicians are also bound to change. I think that chain reaction of change is already well underway. However, when it comes to candidate preference I just don’t see the electorate  embracing the same new norms. New Media is supposed to be candid, more personable–but we still want a president that will look slick and in control. I mean, let’s face it– no matter how many views the video got on YouTube, no one in their right mind was about to vote for this kooky old man who spent a painfully long amount of time just staring into a camera and then throwing a rock in the water.

What’s interesting is while top tier candidates like Barack Obama embraced YouTube, Facebook and other Social Media technologies, they didn’t embrace the behaviors. The reaction to Web 2.0 in the political world hasn’t been to be more candid but to be more controlled. Who wants to pull a Macaca after all? What I think will ultimately bring this all to a head though is the fact that people are only becoming more prepared to be citizen journalist, to capture that Macaca moment. Some of these “moments” will be more acceptable than Allen’s though, they will be unscripted and paint our politicians as increasingly human.

People of our generation and the generations behind us, as Graff points out, are growing up in a different kind of world. What will happen when more and more millennials, who see being more personal and open as the norm not the exception, turn 18? Maybe they’ll be watching the West Wing, as a reality show inside of a sitcom. It won’t happen in 2012 though.

There is one inherent problem to  Graff’s so described “devolution” of media power . . . and that is “we the people” and “we the media” = tens of millions. As inspiring as I am sure it was to the handful of people whose questions were actually aired during a CNN YouTube debate– it was frustrating to many more who were not chosen.  Working as a leg staffer on Capitol Hill, I was often amazed by the public’s lack of understanding of the magnitude of mail, for example, that a Senator gets a day. The volume is just too high for any politician to sit there and write everyone back. And so, every office has some templates that can be personalized and mailed back to each constituent. Many I think believe that their question have been answered by elected officials themselves because they continue writing as if they were writing to their neighbor down the street. Every letter won’t be read, but every letter IS counted. Perhaps some people keep writing them because they get a letter back, feel their voice has been heard and are inspired to keep engaged. If we switch to submitting all questions via video one day, will Senator’s have to pre-record a bunch of responses or go through reading every name in the alphabet  so it can be dubbed in . . .

Well, Aaron thanks for writing

Well, Adam thanks for writing

Well, Adelaide thanks for writing

When reading Hilary’s response post on podcasts and vlogs, I couldn’t help but laugh when she said: “It’s bad enough thinking about who wants to read my blog, but who wants to see my face talking about what I think?” I do feel as if it is extremely difficult to put one’s self out there given what we learned in class–it is extremely rare for a blog to get a readership of over 1000.

In her blog post, Hilary is very complimentary of Obama’s social media prowess. Indeed, countless numbers of bloggers, journalists, and analysts of all stripes have given similar “kudos” to President Obama. However, as great as I think it is to have a leader who is more with the times– Obama’s use of vlogs isn’t in and of itself something to be that excited about.

Were Obama’s messaging more informal, his vlog backdrop less presidential, his tie lostened up a little and his words not the same carefully crafted talking points we have come to expect from trained politicians–I would be impressed. But the fact of the matter is, Obama is not really doing something that new. Just switching mediums isn’t what Web 2.0 is about. Switching mediums was what Web 1.0 was about but Web 2.0 is supposed to be different.

As we have talked and talked about time and time again in Professor Graff’s class, the number one thesis of the Clue Train Manifesto is that there are no one way streets. When it comes to New Media, it’s all about the conversation. Just as the “Fireside Chat” with FDR was not really a”chat,” Obama’s vloging is not a conversation–it’s a monologue. And to the extent it is a monologue that will not only be heard but seen by literally millions of people–it’s hard to see it ever being a great example of social media.

In a way, Obama’s vlogs are like Blockbuster’s purchasing patterns . As Chris Anderson pointed out in The Long Tail, you won’t walk into a Blockbuster to find an array of film noir — you’ll find Will Smith’s latest movie and all the other top grossing films. Likewise, don’t expect to go online and see Obama talking in detail about Kashmir  or exactly why it is he loves clean coal technology–expect to see and hear him saying things like, “the American people are hurting” and “we must continue to be focused in our efforts in Afghanistan.” His messaging is going to be viewed by millions just like blockbuster stores will be visited by millions. So generic and mainstream is the name of the game . . . if only I didn’t believe politics isn’t supposed to be a game and being a leader and running a country is an entirely different matter than running a business.