Blogging about blogging. How meta can you get?

Not long ago, I made the acquaintance of a young, energized public servant.  I was impressed by their¹ enthusiasm, imagination, expression and boundless drive to create.  I encouraged this person to start their own blog and share their ideas with their colleagues at large.  To my delight, my challenge was accepted and the resulting material was as good as I’d hoped: a wellspring of inspiration and discussion.

Then, one day, it all disappeared.  Because of strong divided opinions within their shop about external social media engagement, my colleague had deleted their entire blog—without backing up any of the material.

I was saddened, but not surprised.  I’d experienced a similar crisis at the beginning of my own public service career.  There wasn’t a heated internal debate, nor any direct warnings from supervisors about the content of my writing.  In fact, the awareness of social media within my division was only just beginning.

What I did experience, from orientation sessions and interactions with new colleagues, was the subtle and constant reminder that I was a public servant now.  As a government employee, my life was at greater risk of coming under the microscope.  Everything I said and did, everything I wrote, my personal and professional life—it all needed to be more carefully groomed and diligently managed.  Don’t wear your ID off-site, don’t publicly discuss any issues that are unfavourable to the Government, don’t broadcast strong opinions that could be interpreted as partisanship, and absolutely do not speak to the media.  By extension, I interpreted that as a cue to try and erase anything I might have produced that might fall outside the lines of generic male public servant.  For expediency’s sake I just deleted everything.  Some of it I’d backed up, some of it was lost forever.  The next morning the sun still rose and the stock market didn’t crash, nor did Doctor Who arrive in the TARDIS to shake a stern finger in my face and lecture me about compromising the future of Earth history.  All considered, I take this as an indication that I must have retained the good material.

I reverted to homogenized anonymity, and all was well.

Then, in August 2009 I discovered² GCPEDIA, and it was really hard not to notice the number of employees who were openly blogging or tweeting.  Furthermore, they had the brazen audacity to actually add themselves to lists, where other rabble-rousers had already neatly organized themselves into snappy little tables, complete with links to their potentially offending material.  Egads I was inspired!

Nearly instantly, intoxicated by equal parts of  “Hey! She’s doing it! Why can’t I?” and “Ha ha!  They can’t fire us all!” I launched a Twitter account of my own and embarked on this little blog for good measure.

Fourteen months along I can honestly say, its been almost universally beneficial to my career.  Here’s why you should start a blog (and/or a Twitter account) of your own:

1. You can’t distinguish yourself if hardly anyone knows you exist

You have career aspirations; we all do.  But how can you differentiate yourself from the other 250 candidates in the resume pile?  How can you make sure that your resume remains filed on or near the top?  Don’t be anonymous.

There’s a reason that successful people have PR representatives.  For one thing, they can afford it, but for another it helps to keep them in the public consciousness.  But fear not!—less successful and less wealthy people like you and I have the option of  “promoting” ourselves by creating something publicly accessible (a blog or a Twitter account) and widely useful (insightful commentary, instructional articles, great links).

While I started working for the Government of Canada in May 2007, for all intents and purposes I don’t feel like really existed here until August 28, 2008.  After that day, I started meeting dozens, then hundreds of other publics servants.  My definition of public service changed significantly with the realization that my engagement with my own colleagues through the GC’s Web 2.0 toolkit and these external channels could be beneficial to Canadians as a whole… and a part of my job.

I am no longer anonymous, and that’s a good thing.

2. Increasing your personal network beyond your physical workspace

In an ideal world, I’d exist independently of the space-time continuum. I don’t want to be limited by the number of hours in the day and the number of people I’m in close proximity to.  With social media, I don’t have to be.  Now I can benefit from the experiences of people from everywhere in my government, or any government. They know the things I haven’t learned yet; they’ve read the things I haven’t found the time to search for; they’ve discovered the things I never believed even existed.

Now, unlike before, I know who to contact when I need something, and people know they can contact me for what I can provide.  My blog and Twitter accounts have transmogrified³ my voice mail and e-mail and Twitter DM boxes into conduits of opportunity: expertise inquiries, project collaborations, membership invitations, career opportunities, social gatherings, speaking engagements, training requests…  I help others in the ways I am able, and in return I’ve reaped great rewards from the enormous knowledge base, expertise, and connections of my network of colleagues.

For example:

• How many Directors (or higher) did you meet this year?  How many of them made a point to make your acquaintance because someone else had told them about you?  How many of them phoned or emailed you for advice?  Until my blog, my answer to these questions was “zero”.
• I had four job interview opportunities referred to me in 2010.  Sadly, it wasn’t a great year to change jobs: a lot of positions ended up being eliminated through attrition, including some of the jobs that I interviewed for.  However, one great interview I had resulted in another invitation to another interview.  I owe all of this to people who knew about a job, thought of me, and made an introduction happen between me and someone who wanted to talk to me.
• My network of colleagues (and their emails, voice mails, and requests) created such external buzz about me that it created internal buzz in my own space. My Directorate actually became excited about the use of tools like GCPEDIA and GCconnex, not because of my internal cheerleading, but because other Departments were requesting my assistance.

3. Improving your engagement with your job

Social media’s greatest hurdle in the workplace is the perception that is has no business use because  engagement is a distraction from real work.  There’s that fear that people will spend all day watching stuff like  Charlie Bit My Finger (cute) or Man vs. Bear (funny).  In fact, the opposite is true.

Disengagement leads to distraction and boredom, which fertilizes the ground for the rapid spread of unproductive behaviours: idle websurfing, personal emailing, listening to soft rock commercial-free favourites, and those persistent, longing, ever-so-realistic daydreams about… well, never you mind that!

• Real disengagement happens when a person is rarely challenged by their work, because they are employed in a position that only taps a minute subset of their overall potential.
• Real waste in the workplace happens when people with valuable skills and knowledge remain unknown and unconnected to people who could greatly benefit from their resources.
• Real harm to productivity occurs when people don’t know who to call when they’ve encountered a problem they can’t solve, but may be too embarrassed to look for help within their immediate group for fear of appearing incompetent.

Creating an extended web of expertise where your skillset becomes known to others and their strengths become known to you can go a long way to re-establishing your sense of connectedness with your workplace, your job, your real purpose. That web exists already: you just need to begin weaving yourself into it.

Whatever happened to my friend?  For now, “blogging is still out of the question” in their shop.  But you?  I really think you should climb on board.  Write what you know.  Avoid the controversial and focus on the helpful.

Twitter (technically a microblog, but also called a status update service) is a low hurdle to get you started quickly—anyone can share useful information in a sentence or two.  Start there, then explore Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr, or WordPress to begin sharing even more content.

__________
1 – Indeed, I’m using “their” to refer to a single person in order to avoid disclosing gender. While this may make grammatical purists boil in their own fluids, my I won’t resort to the male-as-normative “generic he” nor the cumbersome “his or her”. My prose is cumbersome enough, thanks.
2 – Well, “crashed it” would be a more fair description, I suppose.  Because I had administrative experience with GCPEDIA’s system software I was promoted from user to Administrator in less than two weeks.  Not long ago, Thom Kearney told me that he still speaks about this as an example of what’s possible, to inspire others. =)
3 – I can’t believe I’ve never used this word in a blog post before. Even if it wasn’t a staple of Calvin and Hobbes, it’s still a fantabulicious word in it’s own right.  Plus, it’s a real word, unlike fantabulicious.

“It is a reality of our time that the same companies promoting health care products are also largely responsible for underwriting their research.”

An excerpt from The Industry of Illness in US Health Care: Why Privatization Is Inefficient – Part 3

The following ad didn’t really fit the tone of my “scholarly” discussion quoted above, but for a short blog post, why not?
(Psssssttt!  Don’t tell anyone.  The Pharmaceutical Industry would be ruined.)

In observance of National Public Service Week, I’d like to recognize some of my stellar peers who are contributing to making GCPEDIA the brilliant, vibrant place that it’s becoming.  Specifically, I want to offer my thanks and a small token of my gratitude to the gnomes and gardeners who are toiling regularly to make our wiki bloom.

Late last week on Twitter, I posted a shot of the shelf over my desk. Among other inhabitants, there is a gnome that I received from Thom Kearney in appreciation of my contributions to the wiki.  I’d like to pay that gesture forward and present one to you as well.

If you have made 1000+ edits to GCPEDIA, please contact me so we can work out delivery arrangements for your gift.

Happy National Public Service Week!  Keep on Gnomin’.

Update: Due to much positive interest from GCPEDIANS, this is now a permanent GCPEDIA Award!

I consider editing (and administrating) GCPEDIA a part of my job, and I always have.  If you read the wording of your job description, there’s probably some significant wiggle room for creative interpretation, provided that your primary product or goal continues to be produced or achieved on time.

For example, do your duties specify that you must:

• Work as part of a team that provides advice, recommendations, and information to project officers and middle and senior management.

Can you use GCPEDIA as a development platform to draft advice or recommendations?  Are you part of a working group that shares discussions, suggestions and findings?  Do you produce reports that could be of interest to public servants across the country if you published them on a wiki?  Could your division benefit from a GCPEDIA presence in order to share information about its purpose, and provide the answers to common questions?  Mention GCPEDIA in your Performance and Learning Agreement.

If you can’t justify it as a tool that helps you to accomplish a primary work objective, or a supporting technology that you need to fulfil performance expectations, add it as a required or developmental learning objective.  You’ve got support in high places.  The Clerk of the Privy Council has repeatedly spoken and written about the importance of GCPEDIA:

• In the Seventeenth Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada as a collaborative technology for enabling workplace renewal;
• In the 2010-11 Public Service Renewal Action Plan as an innovation allowing us to work with greater effectiveness and efficiency; and
• As a knowledge-base for capturing best practices and experiences so we can all learn from them.

“GCPEDIA and similar wikis are vital to the public service of today and tomorrow.”—Wayne G. Wouters

If it’s vital to the public service, it’s a vital component of your learning.  Add GCPEDIA to your Performance and Learning Agreement.  It isn’t taking time away from your work, it is your work.  It isn’t cutting into your value and productivity, it’s adding to it.  It’s an important component of the future public service, but it also provides increased  value to the Government—and ultimately, the taxpayer—here and now.

Let’s face it: few of us (if any) are completely consumed by our prescribed duties 100% of the time.  That said, the Government of Canada is paying for my time and my skills whether I am in the midst of high stress and high volume workload, or in a period of relative calm.  At minimum, donating my spare minutes to GCPEDIA gives the Government more value for their money.  I’m not playing solitaire, doing my banking, or making personal phone calls.  I’m working for Canadians and for my fellow public servants… and on those occasions that I am daydreaming, it’s about “How can I make this work even better for everyone affected?”

Which brings me to the last benefit of editing GCPEDIA: engagement—to purpose, and to people.  GCPEDIA keeps me productive, while allowing me enormous personal satisfaction, creativity, and choice.  “What can I fix today?  Who can I help?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GCPEDIA’s value includes but extends far beyond merely storing the knowledge of those employees that the Government has lost (or will lose). Its hidden value is in capturing and retaining the knowledge, involvement and interest of current and future employees.  In the inventory of qualities that make for an attractive workplace, money isn’t the highest consideration on the list.  In terms of long-term retention, ranking higher is the quality of the workplace, satisfaction with the work, and highest of all, satisfying relationships with co-workers—a perception of connectedness and belonging.

GCPEDIA.  People & Knowledge.  Gens & Savoir.  It’s all right there, under the logo.

Your PLA Homework:

Developmental learning (career path: 1 to 3 year outlook)
Objective:
(1.) To increase my knowledge of Web 2.0 and social media, and their emerging application to the Public Service Renewal initiative.
Learning Resources / Activities:
- Learn and use GCPEDIA, the Government of Canada’s Web 2.0 document collaboration platform.
- Learn and use GCconnex, the Government of Canada’s professional networking platform.
- Attend relevant workshops, Armchair Discussions, meetings, etc. whenever possible.

Back in September of last year, sometime after I was already entirely swept up by obsessive compulsive wikignoming—grafting and pruning the site in a way I hoped would make it prosper—it occurred to me that a similar role should exist to help users grow and prosper.  I created the Peer helper category on GCPEDIA, made a shiny new badge for myself and pinned it to my homepage, then did almost nothing to promote it, short of maintaining a high-visibility presence in the recent changes log, and jumping in to help whenever I saw someone in need.

I have this tendency to do a lot behind the scenes, but say little about it.  This probably explains why I was made an administrator on GCPEDIA, but also why no one from Communications has called to ask if I’d be willing to leave my job as a policy analyst and come work for them.

If you need another example, a colleague of mine recently expressed surprise that accounts for @GCPEDIA and @GCconnex exist on Twitter.  I wasn’t surprised.  I started them, and still manage them.  Other than a couple of (arguably self-serving) #FollowFriday announcements, I haven’t done a lot to promote these either.

In my own defence I can only say that the accounts are highly unofficial.  I took the initiative to reserve them because I felt they would (and should) eventually have future official use by the Government of Canada. For now, I use them to transmit information on service outages and new content, although they were also allegedly responsible for rickrolling nearly 60 of you this April Fool’s Day.  Unofficially.  But I digress…

Recently, I attended a meeting where it was announced that, at present, about 100 new users create accounts on GCPEDIA each day.  I’m pleased with this growth, but also greatly concerned about retention.  Ultimately, active usership is more significant and meaningful than total users and volume of new signups.  Who’s caring for these people?  Technical support is critical, and as far as I know, the project has experienced a recent staffing shortage.  How many users will GCPEDIA lose in short order if recent signups can’t find dependable, accessible, timely assistance with their problems?  What percentage of our collective intellectual assets are failing to be captured by the wiki because fear or lack of knowledge about editing content outweighs the desire to share?

I’ve been a wiki administrator since 2005, and a user for far longer, but I think many of us assume a comfort and ease of use of wikis, and a common knowledge of wikimarkup that doesn’t exist.

Not long ago I provided group instruction for about 40 people.  It was productive, but I had difficulty meeting the combined needs of the participants at both the speed and the technical level that they individually demanded.  Some were ready to dive into complex design and formatting, while the majority were extremely anxious about attempting even basic text entry.  The more experienced group was bothered by the interruptions to discuss fundamentals, while the less experienced users became overwhelmed by complex discussions.

This was the Government of Canada in microcosm—a shared desire to contribute professional knowledge, but a greatly variable level of technical knowledge.

This doesn’t need to exist as a barrier, nor do staffing and funding levels need to remain a critical determinant of our ability to retain users and capture their ideas.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that Jesse Good, Suesan Danesh, Amy Thorne, and Paula Ibbotson have joined me to assist users who need individualized support to help them achieve their personal or group goals on GCPEDIA.  I will continue to remain available as well, to the greatest degree that I am able, to provide training and support to groups or individuals in person, by phone, and over the wiki.

I’ll conclude with an excerpt from my blog on GCconnex, posted last September.  It’s written in the first person, but consider it an invitation to contact any one of us:

If you’d like to get your knowledge up on GCPEDIA but are unsure about the markup and layout, please contact me. If you’ve got a good start going, but things are becoming tangled and complex, or you need to add something new, just write or call.

I’m more than happy to help you to whatever degree you’d like, from a bit of coaching to taking a lead in structure, design and coding.   I can teach you the markup, show you by example by formatting and arranging the data as you need it, or even edit it with you live and in tandem during a phone call.

Don’t feel like you need to be an expert to get started on GCPEDIA.   This is, above all else, a collaborative tool.  Those with content but no software knowledge can help and be helped by users with the technical knowledge but no new content to share.

So… let’s get started helping each other.