Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend Tuesday’s Grow Smart Biz Conference, but by all accounts (and there are a lot of them) and my own dipping in and out of the live stream, it was a great success, so congratulations to the entire team and all the particpants and attendees.


Since I couldn’t monitor the entire event live, I won’t do an event recap (which would be superfluous, given all the writeups, reviews, and Twitter posts from the event) other than to say that Senator Mark Warner is a great speaker, but I thought his remarks were a little… stump-y; Ramon Ray is very animated; and that while I’ve heard Steve Fisher present his tips on business cards before, his delivery just gets better and better, as you can see for yourself.


A Tale of Two Social Media Policies?


Now that we’re in October (though the thermometer is currently reflecting December, brrr), I thought I’d just dip into my slushpile of socially-linkshared links and clear out some lingering subjects from September that I didn’t get to do full entries about:


Milbloggers and social media watchers of all types are waiting with bated breath to see the Department of Defense’s recommendations on social media policy for the armed forces. Each of the armed services has crafted its own guidelines in herky-jerky fashion, often taking a few steps forward, then soon after taking them back. So it’ll be good to see some guidance from the top, especially when folks at the top and bottom of the chain of command see the value of servicemembers engaging on social media platforms.


According to reports, the draft memo looks like it’s embracing social media communication usage by troops and their families, which is good news. Of course, the problem is in implementation — I suspect the barriers lie largely in middle management, as is the case with many large institutions. Time will tell.


On the other hand, the Washington Post also just announced its social media policy (internally, but of course it got out), which is being criticized for being overly restrictive, in that it basically bans reporters from having any opinions that could give people a peek behind the newsroom curtain, or be considered partisan, reflective of bias, or otherwise interesting.


Additionally, the Post’s policy addresses some issues of digital bread crumbs and friend/follower relationships — I mentioned the MIT study that could “out” people by analyzing their Facebook networks, and the Post policy warns against friending people or joining groups that could indicate a particular bias, as well as using tools (like search engines) where one could infer bias by watching the trail of queries, publicly viewable or not.


I’ll let the journalism navel-gazers debate the merits of trying to maintain a sterile field when it comes to opinions, versus accepting that people have viewpoints and being transparent about them (to say nothing of going to a more British tabloid-model of aligning with a particular viewpoint, much as Fox and MSNBC have done).


This also ties into a story by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic, “The Story Behind the Story,” on how motivated ideologues are driving the news cycle, with the goal of winning points instead of seeking truth, though I need to think about this some more.


There’s a lot more stuff in my slushpile that you can check out, though for now, I’m going to resume looking forward, so I can begin to fall behind for October now.


Got a comment on the Grow Smart Biz conference, fellow stream watchers, or on any of the other points I allegedly made here? Share it below.




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