By adrielhampton,on May 2nd,2011%
My Empire Avenue story began in February 2010,at lunch at Max’s in San Francisco with Chris J. Moore,CIO of Edmonton,Alberta,Canada. EAv,as it’s colloquially known to early adopters,is an Edmonton company,although it has staffers as far afield as Denver. Chris and I were colleagues from Gov 2.0 circles,but were meeting together for the first time IRL. He told me about this hot startup he was experimenting with in a friends and family beta,and how it provided a measure of one’s social media stock in a virtual market,and promised an invite when the site allowed in more members.
Flash forward to April,and an invite from Chris. I took a bit of time to sign up,and when I did,all the news was about the “Great Reset,”in which the 400-some friends and family beta testers had seen their stocks reset to 10.00 “eaves”per share after months of play and experimentation. A number of today’s top EA players were in on that first beta,and they knew enough to quickly climb during the invite-only beta I participated in. In these days,having Edmonton as your profile city was pretty much enough to send your stock soaring upon signup. I had an in with Edmonton,having written a couple well-read blog posts about its thriving Twitter community and thereafter appearing on the radio with Brittney Le Blanc and Mack Male,local social media celebs. When I joined the site,I quickly found many people I knew,and my stock soared. Like many have come to know,Empire Avenue is quite sticky (or addictive,if you want to call it that),and I made it a goal to get in the top spot. I held No. 1 for a while,and learned that small social media sites in a gaming environment can breed intense – and even bitter – rivalries. After losing the top spot for a while,I made it a goal to be at No. 1 when the site opened to the public in July 2010. During a two-week family trip to Tokyo,I spent much of my time building alliances and flipping stocks to successfully meet that goal. As I expected,being at No. 1 when many people discovered the site meant blossoming share sales. I was also participating in the Empire Building Network,a fabulous group blog by Bill Pitcher that sadly has gone dark during the current growth boom at EAv,doing advice posts and vlogs. In October,I met my first major goal for participation in EAv,a speaking gig in Edmonton. While I was in Alberta,I met many of my Empire friends,and also its co-founder and CEO,Dups. I stayed in town with Lance Taylor and his family,and we visited a local dinosaur theme park that traded on the Avenue. Lance and I also took advantage of the EAv rewards program (not active now,but very likely to be resurrected in the future),taking in a free lunch at Outback Steakhouse on eaves. Like Foursquare’s early efforts at rewards programs,though,that lunch took a little work,as the on-duty staff had no idea what we were talking about when we requested our “reward.” When you first start playing Empire Avenue,it seems pretty easy. With a decent amount of engagement,your stock keeps going up,and passionate players see their stocks easily double and triple. But the game mechanics get much,much,much harder as your progress. I was once at 102 eaves per share with only a little more than 50,000 shares outstanding. Now I’m at 142 with more than 200,000 shares sold –I have to move thousands of shares to move fractions of an eave. As you hit the pinnacle,you can lose a week’s worth of gains in one overnight adjustment of the market makers,the complex social media algorithms that govern the site. In the fall of 2010,I mourned every falling in love with this beta. A wrenching adjustment to the market makers plunged my price by more than 10 percent in one night,and it became clear that the EAv team was looking to emphasize gaming over its former “influence”measurement goals. I had briefly put an official government account on the site through my core social media work,and had also encouraged other Gov 2.0 folks to get involved. But all a sudden,we were participating in a “stock market game”where fictional characters were able to dominate through tactics like mass commenting on Flickr pages and pumping out scores of Tumblr posts per day. Many of the core EAv players took something of a break in the winter and early spring,pulling back from active engagement. “Mamas,don’t let your babies fall in love with a beta,”was my refrain. But our melancholy changed in April 2011,as attention from Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang brought a flood of activity to the site. It’s been funny to watch people who don’t get the site,or who think somehow the fact they didn’t know about it means it’s new,blog their criticisms. And it’s been heartening to see a crop of new fans blog about how well done and engaging the site is. I’ve always thought EAv had the most potential of any social media site since Twitter (“How much effort would you put in to be one of the top 10 people on Twitter or Facebook,if you’d been in on the beginning and seen the potential?”we used to ask each other.),and it’s great to see other say the same. In its ongoing evolution,Empire Avenue has grown to be both an engaging game and a place for solid social media metrics. Now that EAv’s been formally “discovered”by a huge number of the social media in-crowd,I expect it will have a great future. It’s much better than Klout for evaluating social media network metrics,and the rewards platform and premise of real returns for networkers who can bring attention to their favorite brands have huge promise (it was initially envisioned as a place where people could easily share in revenue relationships with big brands). The complexity of the game will soon be realized by the newest EAv all-stars as they plateau after hitting the brick wall of the market makers. We early adopters will see our places on the leaderboards upset by the genuinely famous,and the markets will roll on. Happy eaving,everybody. By adrielhampton,on April 23rd,2011%
Guest post:Milly Doolan,The 2012 Project  Politicians discovered the versatility and advantages of the Internet as a campaigning tool most famously in 2004 when Howard Dean used social networking to reach voters and donors. In 2008,Barack Obama and his team took online campaigning to a new level,not only by raising record-breaking funds,but also by creating a network of volunteers.
Now The 2012 Project,a national non-partisan campaign,is utilizing social media to recruit candidates to run for state legislatures and Congress. The campaign,in partnership with Rutgers’Center for American Women and Politics,takes recruitment to a new level by looking for women out of the traditional pipeline and women who may never have considered politics. Women’s organizations from both parties continue to recruit women to run for office. However The 2012 Project believes it shouldn’t fall to them alone to find candidates. The campaign is specifically reaching out to baby-boomer women,those aged 45 and up,as they are ideally positioned to run. These women,typically at the top of their careers,may have fewer family responsibilities and are likely to have deep roots in their communities. In order to inspire record numbers of women,The 2012 Project understands that traditional recruiting mechanisms are not enough – there needs to be a surge in outreach. Straight out of the gate,the campaign launched and maintains active Facebook and Twitter accounts and seeks to keep building its community. It has also connected online with more than 85 allies across the United States covering the political spectrum. 1992,the last “Year of the Woman”,was no accident. A coordinated focus on electing women in that post-redistricting year,combined with watershed events including the Clarence Thomas hearings,saw 24 additional women elected into Congress. There was no similar spike in 2002. The 2012 Project functions on three levels. It first aims to educate women by reaching out online and speaking at major conventions and regional meetings in each designated field (you can view video of an outreach session at Brookhaven Lab). The second goal is to inspire through stories told by current and former elected women about why they ran and why it makes a difference to have women involved in high-level decision making (people can find short,engaging profiles of these leaders on Facebook). Finally the 2012 Project will connect women interested in running with leadership institutes,campaign training programs and fundraising networks in their states. Women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population and only 16 percent of the U.S. Congress. The 2012 Project understands the urgency and the opportunity of the next big election cycle. It also understands that to make this effort worthwhile,every available mechanism of recruitment should be used,including social media. Consider yourself invited to help find great women or step forward yourself. It’s time. By adrielhampton,on March 29th,2011%
Before launching official social media sites,it is very important to have a strategy specific to your organization. This does not have to be a heavy policy document,but it is essential to success and ongoing evaluation to have stated goals,milestones and next steps in mind. This template is based on U.S. EPA web manager Jeffrey Levy’s social media approach,“Mission,Tool,Metrics,Teach.”
Designing a strategy works best when organized succinctly. For example,the research firm Forrester has built a practice around their POST Method:“People,Objectives,Strategy,Technology.”
Continue reading ‘MTMT’:Templating Social Media Strategy,Jeffrey Levy Style By adrielhampton,on March 26th,2011%
Bought my first SLR camera today,a Nikon D3100 (Amazon affiliate link),which from what I’ve read is a very strong full-featured camera,for the nice price of $599 for body and single lens. 
I bought mine at Best Buy down the street,where I love the service,and added the two-year protection plan,since I have a habit of dropping things. Sure enough,before my second shot,I’d dropped it lens first onto the concrete. Continue reading Shooting:Nikon D3100 and a Day At the Park By adrielhampton,on February 26th,2011%
Dennis Herrera,City of Attorney of San Francisco,is running for mayor of San Francisco. Here,he opens his new campaign office at 1645 California St.,with a packed room of supporters,and talks about the role of municipal government. “The most progressive thing that we can do is make San Francisco a model for a city that works,”Herrera says. Continue reading Dennis Herrera:Faith in Cities By adrielhampton,on February 24th,2011% By adrielhampton,on February 8th,2011%
 A decade ago,my editor at the San Francisco Examiner,David Burgin,took on a crusade to clean up San Francisco’s Market Street,which he figured should be The City’s own Champs-Élysées. In a series of strident editorials,we bemoaned “The Mess on Market”and the unsavory conditions of what passed for a skid row in SF,Sixth Street.
A decade ago,Market Street really was a mess. Walking between City Hall and my offices at the corner of Sixth Street,I sometimes squeezed an uncapped ink pen in my pocket for some feeling of security. And it’s still bad enough for business that even seedy strip clubs go under,and office space is filled with temporary art installations. But the efforts of the last decade are finally bearing fruit,with the best to come. Twitter,my favorite company,is likely to open up shop in the Mid-Market,just across the street from my office in Fox Plaza. City officials have proposed a cap on payroll taxes for businesses in the area,legislation that aims to bring Twitter into the old SF Mart furniture emporium,a grand yet near-empty building now called “Market Square”and represented by one of the City’s most well-known lobbying firms. Since the days of Burgin’s Examiner,there have been a lot of changes to the Mid-Market,which stretches from Powell St. to Van Ness. The iconic and futuristic federal building opened up,brining an influx of white-collar commuters into the neighborhood. Stretches of the Mid-Market are closed to traffic but buses,the historic streetcars,and taxis,and cyclists have taken advantage of the traffic controls and expanded bike lanes in great numbers. Burning Man is looking to set up its corporate HQ in the Warfield Building,where The Examiner used to live. Real estate titan Angelo Sangiacamo,in a deal brokered by bellicose former Supervisor Chris Daly,is well underway with transformation of a low-rent lodge into a Miami nights-inspired condo complex. Fox Plaza,where my office is,will eventually get a new second tower,and there are new signs of life with a hip coffee and wine bar kitty corner from Twitter’s presumed HQ and an Andersen Bakery opened up in our lobby in just the past few months. What a difference a decade makes. By adrielhampton,on February 3rd,2011%
 It is never a good idea for any account to ignore messages. I have the distinction of being the first Congressional candidate to announce their campaign through Twitter (this resulted in more new Twitter followers than Election Day votes,but that’s another post). Back in early 2009,social media had not quite reached ubiquity in U.S. political campaigns,but by the time the Democratic field shook out,each of my competitors had a Twitter account,most featured prominently on their respective websites. As I campaigned on social media,I split my Twitter accounts,using one for personal and work-related topics,another solely for campaign messaging and community building. Of course,I also used Facebook and was an early political adopter of Ning,PitchEngine,MixedInk and NationBuilder. While there was a bit of mockery of my smaller campaign account,the social media portion of my campaign was largely successful. It helped generate free media in Politico,The Hill,National Journal,the Sacramento Bee and scores of smaller publications and blogs. Social media conversation connected me with several volunteers,including Carroll Eristhee,who donated her superlative design skills to my campaign. By the summer,there was actually a bit of competition on the Twitter,as the front-runner candidate,then-Lt. Gov. John Garamendi empowered a savvy campaign staff to do a generous amount of messaging through his social media channels. One staff member later told me that Garamendi had been concerned that I was ahead in the Twitter follower count (a fact I occasionally posted in my campaign status,urging Democrats to follow the Lt. Gov). Flash forward to February 2011. In campaigns from suburban mayor to Presidential,social media is practically mandatory. However,effective usage is still lacking. In the 2010 ‘Big Book of Social Media,’Wayne Moses Burke,founder of the Open Forum Foundation writes about his frustrated vision for the service,‘GovLuv,’which connects constituents and their representatives through Twitter: Upon further examination of the way social media is being used to communication to Representatives,we found that it is actually acting more like a relief valve for citizen’s frustrations …Instead of having discussion and sending meaningful messages,citizens and advocacy groups are utilizing the available channels to effectively yell at elected officials.
While that sort of antagonism remains a dominant form of social media political discourse,the campaign setting is different. Often,smart Twitter users are looking for meaningful connections to candidate and a campaign beyond the meet-and-greet and press release. Still,it remains common for campaign accounts to have zero interaction with their Twitter followers. Last night,I tweeted,“Is it acceptable for campaign Twitter account to ignore @ messages?” Several of the responses were nuanced. “Cut off baiting,but response should be standard,”tweeted Darryl Armstrong. “It depends if they’re being trolled,”wrote another of my connections. “Sometimes it’s not worth it to engage with detractors,but they should be acknowledged.”
 If you don't want to be interactive,stay off interactive media. During my campaign,a staffer for one of my rivals regularly trolled my public messaging. Partisans from outside the district would sometimes rudely assault my liberal positions. However,by engaging even these critics,I built much more than I lost through active Twitter engagement. I gained news coverage for being one of the first to (ineffectively) crowdsource small donations from followers,and had volunteers from other states –and other parties –helping review position papers through Google Docs. My experience shows there is much to be gained from effective use of use of campaign social media. However,it requires active engagement. Fifteen responded to my query. Fourteen said it is unacceptable for a political campaign to ignore interactive messaging on Twitter. The fifteenth was a political consultant. By adrielhampton,on January 25th,2011%
Fire Department App –PSA from Fire Department on Vimeo. Imagine,you’re in the middle of a weekly team meeting when your iPhone vibrates. You stand up and calmly tell your coworkers,“There’s been a heart attack in the first floor gym. I’m CPR trained. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Similar scenarios may soon by playing out all over the country thanks to groundbreaking use of the location-aware features of modern smartphones and access to emergency dispatch information from local fire departments. In the San Francisco East Bay,it could be happening in a matter of days,as the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District rolls out its new ‘Fire Department’app for iPhone,which launches publicly today. I felt the world change
A couple weeks back,I found myself in Chief Richard Price’s office with my friend Joe Hackman,eyes glistening with tears as we watched a PSA video for the application (read Joe’s thoughts on what the new app means to our SF East Bay community). In the video,a 72-year-old man collapses at the lumber store;across the parking lot,a young man in an electronics store gets an alert “CPR needed” – his phone gives him an address and map of where to go,and shares the location of the nearest automated external defibrillator. Sitting in that office,seeing an app that puts real life-saving information at the fingertips of any willing and trained volunteer,I felt the world change. The creators of this application have moved beyond the real‐time Web to the right time Web. – Tim O’Reilly,O’Reilly Media
Chief Price and his staff first conceived of this application more than a year ago,after an incident in which they were having lunch and learned on their radios that a man was having a heart attack just steps away. Heart attack-induced brain death begins in just minutes,and fire department staff simply cannot arrive fast enough to save most people –but any army of CPR-trained volunteers can. And while they have had to be in exactly the right place to respond,the new app will dramatically extend the ability of everyday citizens to save lives. Price told me that he has just 43 firefighters on duty during the day,but in his suburban district of 170,000 people,10 percent have CPR training. “You can see the significance,”he said. Area residents will see the app PSA in local movie theaters beginning this weekend. Price and his staff developed the iPhone application in partnership with the Center for Applied Informatics at Northern Kentucky University. Over the coming weeks and months,he will work with the International Association of Fire Chiefs and developers at Workday to bring the free application to Android and other mobile platforms,and to spur widescale adoption.
 “The value of this application is far too important to society to not ambitiously share it with other communities around the globe,” Price said. In the San Ramon Valley alone,community members who download the new app could help respond to as many as 100 calls a year. Across the U.S.,nearly 300,000 people die each year of cardiac arrest. “I think in the big picture,what we recognize is that of the people who have sudden cardiac arrest,less than one in three get CPR,” said heart surgeon Junaid Khan,president of the American Heart Association’s East Bay board. “Without CPR,a person really has very little chance of survival. For the first time,a smart phone application can actually help save a life.” ‘You can get there faster’
Dr. Khan and Chief Price also talked about the added benefit of creating more responders. Historically,even CPR-trained individuals sometimes balk in the face of crisis,but now self-identified volunteers within 500 yards of a heart attack in a public place will receive push notifications,increasing the likelihood of two or more responders,who can encourage one another and even take turns administering CPR. “I think this is really a perfect marriage of technology with a government service and volunteers who want to participate,” said Kahn. “Every minute lost dramatically decreases your chance of survival. Literally every minute counts.” I asked Kahn about the medical savings associated with early response in terms of less long-term damage. He said more data is needed for such an epidemiological study. “If you get the patient to the hospital before significant damage,the chance that they would successfully recover obviously increases. This app would let you know. You can more likely get there faster than the fire department.” 
To learn about CPR and AED training in your area,visit the AHA’s website. For more information on the new application and an electronic press kit,visit the SRFPD’s website. To download the SRVFPD’s app now,visit ‘Fire Department’in the iTunes store. Chief Price will be a guest on Gov 2.0 Radio on the evening of February 6,2011,to discuss this new technology. By adrielhampton,on January 11th,2011%
 I’ve run for partisan political office a couple of times. Traditional politics is in my mind akin to cultish religion. You must be intensely devoted to the cause,often to exclusion of others with diverse views and at the expense of diverse experience. On many levels,it is not pleasant for me,and I won’t here explore why I keep doing it. I start with traditional politics because I want to strike a contrast to a new egalitarian mode based on social and technical innovation.
Gov 2.0,in my advocacy,is use of emerging technologies to promote a more transparent,efficient and collaborative government. Gov 2.0,in its co-creations by citizens,bureaucrats and entrepreneurs,represents a dramatic remaking of traditional governance power structures through information sharing,low-cost and open source tools,and increased participation. As a mass movement,Gov 2.0 is very young and green. The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer (link bait,yes). Unconferences can move Gov 2.0 forward,but only from its infancy. As we develop maturity models for Gov 2.0,we need to create new models for community events. This is what we are grappling with after San Francisco’s first CityCamp last fall. CityCampSF wasn’t the first San Francisco-based unconference around Gov 2.0 themes;the organizers of the 2009 California Data Camp helped with outreach for CityCampSF and both unconferences used the same event space. CityCampSF also drew participants from SF GovLoop meetups and the internal City government crowdsourcing campaign InnovateSF.  CityCampSF was an “open space”style unconference. We were successful in bringing together more than 75 people around the theme of civic innovation,and many useful connections were forged. However,despite a number of online channels for continued dialog and participation,the handful of action items identified and the people brought together around the event quickly diffused. Just a few months later,individual organizers don’t know much about how folks who met at the camp are working together or what projects it has sparked or helped grow.
CityCamp is modeled after a number of similar events,including Government 2.0 Camp. But Gov 2.0 Camp was two years ago and its wiki hasn’t been updated in 21 months –it is an important historical event,but it is history. Another unconference-style event,CrisisCamp,is doing much better,buoyed by a formalized parent group,CrisisCommons,which recently secured a $1.2 million grant to foster and staff its work in creating innovative solutions for crisis response and global development. More traditionally styled Gov 2.0 conferences continue as well,including Tim O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0 Summit and Expo,Sarah Schacht’s Open Gov West and Alan Silberberg’s Gov 2.0 LA. CityCamp is also booming,with locally organized events taking off in cities around the world. There is a clear need for low-cost,participant-driven events in the Gov 2.0 space and BarCamp and unconference-styled events help fulfill that need. But there is also a real need for new event models that support progress in the greater Gov 2.0 corpus. During Howard Dean’s presidential campaign,a radical local politician explained to me why he was backing the Dean campaign and stood with the Democratic Party despite core views that skewed left from the national organization:“It’s a good brand.” Gov 2.0 is at this point a brand,and as yet a good one with a very decentralized power structure. Anyone who can compellingly present their vision within a broad umbrella of social tech and open government principles has a say in the future of the movement,and no pundit or corporation has successfully co-opted the brand. Gov 2.0 remains a grassroots movement largely absent any harmful locked-in features. It has advocates with left and right political views,united in concern that rigid legacy systems aren’t compatible with the fluid challenges of today’s globalized and uncertain world.  Amidst this tableau,San Francisco’s citycampers are looking at where we need to go next. We’ve had unconferences,what we need is a local brand to advance. In 2011 in San Francisco,we’re exploring alternative event formats and how to both grow and sustain a local Gov 2.0 tribe. We’re looking at event design to expose traditional advocates to the Gov 2.0 spirit,and to funnel energy into actionable plans. We’re considering regular informal meetups and collaboration with other groups to keep our community energized.
I’m interested in hearing what other citycampers are doing to keep their communities alive and to create outcomes,and to know what kind of role you think events play in advancing Gov 2.0 as a whole. | | |
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