small talk 2.0

Last week, on December 20-24, Israel MFA and IDF hold a joint training seminar under the title: "Diplomatic aspects of Political-Military Cooperation". The program was the first of its kind: the participants, as well as the lecturers, came from the two organizations. The goal of the program was to improve the mutual understanding of the ways the two bodies operate and to see how the cooperation between them could be facilitated on the wide range of issues. Among the issues discussed was the operation in emergency situations, working with the media, policy planning and others. You could read more about the program here: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364487721&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull I was one of the coordinators of the program, and also had the chance to make a presentaion about the idea of Government 2.0. Never miss a chance to spread the gospel of Digital Government... Happy Holidays to everybody!

Very good article about the 2009 developments of Government 2.0 in US. http://fcw.com/Articles/2009/12/07/FEAT-Gov-2dot0.aspx?p=1

La semaine derniere, le Departement de Formation du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres israelien a inaugure un nouveau cours : « Diplomatie a l’age des Media Sociaux » Ouvrir un cours special centre sur les Media Sociaux est un tout premier pas, non seulement pour notre ministere mais aussi pour tout le secteur public israelien. Le but principal de ce programme est la formation des diplomates a l’utilisation des outils propres aux media sociaux. Le cours comprend trois parties : 1. Connaissances de base est les outils fondamentaux propres aux Media Sociaux– reseaux sociaux, blogs, wikis, etc. 2. Revue d’ examples de Gouvernment 2.0 et Diplomatie 2.0 en Israel et dans le monde. 3. exercices pratiques sur l’usage des outils propres aux Media Sociaux dans le travail diplomatique. Je vous tiendrai au courant quant aux prochaines rencontres sur mon blog et Twitter

Last week the training department of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs opened the new course: "Diplomacy in the age of Social Media". It's the first time not just in our Ministry, but in the Israel public sector in general, that there is a special training program dealing with social media skills. The major goal of this program is to train the diplomats to use the tools of social media in their work. The course includes three parts: - basic knowledge and skills in social media, including social networks, blogging, wikis, - review of the best practices of Government 2.0 and Diplomacy 2.0 in Israel and in the world - practical exercices and sumulation of social media use in diplomatic work. I'll update more on the meetings of the course (scheduled once a week), here and on twitter.

Look here: http://ow.ly/Dvgn This is the essence of what the diplomats stationes on the host countries should when they plan public diploamcy through social media tools.

Here is the PP presentation, about the use of Web 2.0 tools by Israeli diplomats, since 2004. There are also some tips on how to work with social media. http://ovdeimedina.ning.com/group/web20/forum/topics/short-pp-presentation-on

Last week (October 27-28) I represented our Ministry's Training Bureau in the Second Meeting of the EMPTA Network - the network of representatives from Public Administration Instituitions in the Euro-Mediterranean area. The conference was held in the Scuola Superiore della Pubblica Amministrazione, Rome http://www.sspa.it/ (below see a symbol of the school). The conference was a real success. First of all, the fact that the representatives coming from countries which don't have diplomatic relations, sit around the table and talk to each other - is an achievement in itself. There were no discussions of political situation - just the dialogue about the issues important to all of us - in Israel, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and of course our European neighbours. We were discussing the skills and competencies that are necessary for all public servants in our area. Despite the differences in our cultures, in our backgrounds and our political systems - the conc...

Here is a link to the wonderful post in GovLoop about using the social media tools in the right way: http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/military-and-government

The following link leads to an intersting article by Ernst Sucharipa, Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. http://campus.diplomacy.edu/lms/pool/BD%20materials/Sucharipa.htm The article was written a couple of years ago, but many conclusions are even more relevant today. There are two points that I'd like to bring to your attention - one talks about the transformation in information sharing between the diplomats and the institutional consequenses of this change, the other deals with the characteristics of a future diplomat/ 1. Information sharing" "The introduction of Intranet-systems has brought about most important changes for the diplomatic service. Among them: - direct contacts between all officers, without the need for prior authorization, to get a message, an inquiry, an information note out or to get it received. The welcome results are higher motivation, no loss of time and greater sense of responsibility among younger colleagues; - development of an infor...

One month ago me and my good friend Alex Gafni created the new social network for public sector employees in Israel. The example for us was the american government network GovLoop that was created one year ago. After one month of activity we have 40 members and 10 groups, most of them created by two of us. So far this network's activities are based on our enthusiasm. It could be expected that not everybody will jump into active participation. So we will keep doing it, until we'll become a fashion first, and later - a tool for networking and inforamtio n sharing. And this will happen sooner than we think...

One of the important components of public diplomacy - in the past, in the future, and to even greater degree, in the future - is engagement with different ethnic groups in the host country/city. As public diplomacy strategy requires identification of groups and subgroups as target audiences, in order to try and influence them, the multuethnic environment provides good definition of such groups. The modern day communication, including social media, could serve as a tool for broa outreach effort as opposed to the limired outreach to formal heads of the ethnic groups if they exist. For many years diplomats were aware of the importance of leveraging the influence of ethnic groups. The ethnic communities that originated in the country of a diplomat were obvious and central targets in an effort to improve the image the country they represent inthe host country. Thus, for example, Italian Americans wanted to help their country of origin on US soil, and of course Jewish Americans are involved ...

It is already common knowledge that social media became a tool in recruitment process in the private sector. I would like to bring to oyur attention our experiment with social media (forum in one of the most popular israel's websites TAPUZ ("orange") whan dealing with the candidates to the new cadet course that will start next year. The forum started without our previous knowledge or involvement. We found it accidentally, but immediately started to engage with the candidates sharing information about the diplomatic service in general, about the selection process and encouraging them to contact us directly when the questions were too specific or private. It's not that all the participants respected the rules of civilized dialogue... it is not that we could just give the candidates all the questions and aswers in the written test... But the responces were very positive and encouraging and most of them mentioned that we helped them to understand better the whole process ...

Good article by LA Times journalist Tim Rutten http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oe-rutten24-2009jun24,0,4671617.column

Everybody should listen to it... And act accordingly. http://www.state.gov/r/remarks/124640.htm

Let's say you are assigned to a new diplomatic position abroad. Your responsibilities include public relations, or media, or both. What is even more important - you've decided to engage with the new world of social media which you see as a useful tool in your job. I would like to suggest a few possible guidelines on how you can use social media. The tips Iprovide are based on my personal and work experience with the social networks. If you already have experimented with it, please see this post as an invitation for open discussion on the topic. 1. Social media is a useful tool, not an end in itself , for your proffesional puproses. Therefore, the first task is to decide who is your audience and what are its characteristics. It could be people of certain age group, it could be students, it could be your colleagues from local diplomatic corps, it could be an ethnic group, it could be anything you think is important for your country and your mission. You should be very specific wh...

Insightful sppech about green diplomacy by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: http://ad.vu/bhbp

I'm bringing for your attention an article from LAT about Twitter and how big companies deal with its impact on PR and branding. There are some insights that could be applied in public diplomacy: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-twitter20-2009apr20,0,2701874.story

Dear friends, I would like to introduce to you the virtual reality project that deals with journalism and international affairs. I had a priviledge to meet project's founders, Joshua Fouts and Rita King. And even to give short interview to the virtual world... To say it briefly: this stuff is mind-opening and breath-taking. Simultaneously. http://eurekadejavu.blogspot.com/2009/04/launch-of-journalistic-experiment.html yaron

Diplomats, like anybody else, create their Facebook and Linkedin pages. They even happen to like it... Whenever diplomats participate in the social networking, they do it not just as private citizens. they are always seen as their countries' official representatives. However social networks are non-formal forums, where personal and public areas are interwoven. This condition allows soft influence, as opposed to imposing opinions and positions through the official statements, articles and interviews. On social networks you share your interests, your opinions, your ideas with others, creating your own brand. But because you are still perceived as a person related to the government of one's country everything you share there is relevant to the image of your country. Your own image adds to the image of your country. In the next post you will find a couple of useful tips on upgrading your social networks pages.

Here are some tips by Randy Ingbritsen, from Workforce Solutions at Penn State University: Social networking and Web 2.0 technologies can impact a job search in both positive and negative ways and, in today’s job market, it’s important to make sure Facebook and other tools are not working against you. To tweak your social network: Change the privacy settings on your Facebook profile. The default settings aren’t very private — anyone in your networks can see anything you do unless you make parts of your profile available to only your friends. Review all photos and videos that others have tagged of you on Facebook and remove tags from any that you wouldn’t want a recruiter or potential employer to see. Review comments that friends have left on your Facebook profile and remove anything that you feel is unprofessional. If you don’t want a certain person or people (recruiters, co-workers, etc.) to see any part of your Facebook profile, you can exclude them completely. You can also create tw...

Can diplomats blog? And if yes - why should they? Five years after the social networks revolution - and nobody questions the success of the use of Web 2.0 for diplomatic purposes. Look at all the Facebook pages of the Israel's consulates and embassies, that emerged in US and spread out in Europe. Look at the Twitter press conference hold by NY Consulate, that even was mentioned in Wikipedia article on public diplomacy. The examples are many - yet, wneh we look at the blogoshpere the situation is different. The nature of blogging is expressing the views - as different as they can only be. The nature of representing country's official position is exactly the opposite. Therefore, if as a diplomat you open a blog - what are you going to discuss? Are you going to ask the readers to express their views on this position? Are you going to allow all the views to be expressed without editing? or allow only "good" responses to be published. In both scenarios you are going to loo...