Whatever your take on the EDIT Tax, the EDC and their role in economic development efforts, this is a new and welcome level of transparency.

Shaffer's posts so far are authentic and to the point, bypassing some of the marketing spin that it might be tempting for an organization of the EDC's prominence to engage in when they know site selectors are looking.  She links to related resources, encourages questions and feedback, and makes repeated commitments to opening the lines of communication between her office and other voices in the community.

Having civic leaders, especially the ones responsible for significant decisions that shape how taxpayer dollars and other resources are used, sharing their thoughts about process, data, challenges and succeses can only be a good thing in the long run.  Imagine what it would look like for every government official and civic leader in our area to publicly share some insights now and then about how they do what they do?

Thanks to Valerie Shaffer and to the EDC  for making this kind of sharing a part of their communications plan.

This week the Palladium-Item's editorial page rightly took the local Wayne County Democratic Party to task for being too quiet and minimally effective in local politics. (I am on the P-I editorial advisory board but I did not contribute to that piece.)  Today's edition features some analysis of the local party's current leadership, with about the amount of internal finger pointing you'd expect from an organization in some disarray.  It's the candidates! It's the leadership! It's the unions! We just need to get on Twitter!  And so on.

I've followed local politics for a while now, perhaps never so closely as last year when I was a candidate myself running on the Democratic ticket.  It was an eye-opening experience in many ways, including discovering first-hand the significant organizational deficiencies in the Wayne County Democratic Party (and how well-organized the local Republican Party is, due in no small part to the tireless efforts of its Chairwoman, Misty Hollis).  Unfortunately, I've seen some of those deficiencies come into play again in this year's campaigning.

In the name of trying to address that imbalance (as the editorial linked above says, "where there are too few voices and competing public ideas, a community ultimately suffers"), I offer some unsolicited advice here to the Wayne County Democratic Party, eight ways to be more effective.   (I'm enough of a political junkie that I would enjoy doing a similar analysis for the local Republican or Libertarian Parties, but I don't have enough first-hand knowledge to do it well.)

1. Make it much easier to get involved.  Whether someone wants to throw their hat in the ring as a candidate, volunteer for a campaign or otherwise offer their skills, there's no clear entry point for being able to act on that interest.  You have to know the right person to call, and just hope they have the time to be responsive.  The party holds meetings at times and in locations that sometimes aren't accessible or convenient. Rules and processes for party operations and governance are conveyed as stories around the campfire instead of clearly written documentation, creating a lot of work for someone trying to understand how they can best contribute. The local party needs to remove these and every other barrier it can to encouraging engagement and involvement from those who might want to give their time and talents.
2. Open a headquarters location. Retail politics may not be the future of political campaigning, but in Richmond and Wayne County, people still assign important credibility to brick and mortar operations, more so than efforts organized entirely online or in living rooms. Having a visible, dedicated and accessible location to coordinate efforts of the party seems essential, and we know that the local Republican Party makes good use of their headquarters facilities for just that.
3. Reframe the role of unions. Labor unions have historically been heavily intertwined with the Democratic Party, and that's usually been a good thing for representing the needs of lower- and middle-class workers and families. But over the last few years, unions have been vilified by conservative efforts to paint unionized workers as greedy, lazy and unreasonable in the face of tightening economic times. (Even as I type, local city officials are trying to finalize a budget for 2013, and the mentions of negotiations with unions representing city workers has that disdainful flavor of "if those darn unions would just stop being so unreasonable, we could get something done here.") If the Democratic Party wants to see sustained support from the assembly-line workers, teachers, fire-fighters and law enforcement officers here, they need to help change the public narrative about what value unions bring to conversations about the health of the community, and re-establish themselves as a rallying point for those who care about equitable pay, fair and safe working conditions, and the promise of self-advancement through honest, hard work.
4. Find professional, distributed, diverse leadership from non-candidates. Building and maintaining an effective political operation is not work that can be done in one person's spare time.  And when candidates themselves try to do it, the work of convincing voters to support a particular individual gets too easily confused with the work of building a strong organization and advocating more generally for its candidates and platform.  The Wayne County Democrats need a diverse and widely ratified leadership team with clearly defined roles.  It needs leadership that is consistent beyond whomever happens to be running for office in a given year.  It needs leaders capable of strategic planning, complex logistical coordination and facilitating effective communications across many election cycles.
5. Use technology tools for marketing, organizing and campaigning.  The local party seems to rely largely on 20th century communication tools for its work, and that leaves it at a severe disadvantage here in the 21st century.  Democrats in Wayne County need to quickly invest in technology tools as a core part of their work, from informational websites to social media to voter databases to online donor relations.  When they do, they can amplify and improve volunteer coordination, strategy communication, and engagement with the populations they need to reach.
6. Rebuild a relationship at the state level with the Indiana Democratic Party.  As far as I can tell, state-level Democratic political leaders and local Democrats don't really communicate with each other very often.  When I sought state-level connections as a candidate myself, I was told not to expect much, and indeed my calls and emails went largely unanswered.  Whether this is because of old baggage, bridges burned or just miscommunication, it represents a significant missed opportunity.  All politics may be local, but we know that the state and national political apparatuses bring infrastructure, funding and connections that are essential even in municipal and county races.  Again, the local Republican Party certainly takes good advantage of what's happening at the state and even national levels within their party, and they get results because of it.
7. Design a grassroots fundraising and donor-relations strategy.  There are a lot Democrat-leaning people in this community who have extensive experience with cultivating and sustaining a base of donors, but none of them seem to be involved in the local party.  The result is that when the Wayne County Democratic Party wants to raise money for its campaigns or other activities, it is left to an awkward combination of one-off, low-yield, high-effort events and then begging past significant donors to get out their checkbooks once again.  We know that Barack Obama's successful presidential bids have hinged on soliciting a wide range of donation amounts from a large number of people, and then keeping those people informed and excited as the campaign progresses; local Democrats could do the same here.
8. Create a detailed guide for potential and first-time candidates.  I spent the first few months of my own campaign last year trying to gather the basic information I needed to know about being a candidate at all, let alone being a successful one.  This involved a labor- and time-intensive series of meetings, phone calls, emails and follow-up efforts that I could have been spending on building my campaign.  Throughout my entire campaign, no one could clearly articulate exactly what kind of support (financial or otherwise) I could expect to depend on from the Democratic party.  If someone wants to become a candidate on the Democratic ticket, there should be a clear, accessible set of resources to make getting started the easiest part of the whole experience.

These obviously aren't the only ways the Wayne County Democratic Party can be more effective, and no doubt some with more political perspective or experience than I have will find valid faults with this list.  I'm sure some of it even sounds like sour grapes from a losing candidate.  But as disapproving as some of the above might seem, this list isn't about criticizing any particular person or trying to place blame.

I believe that the Wayne County Democratic Party, its leaders and candidates could play a critical role in the revitalization of our community and in making local government work better for the people who live here.  I think that despite all of the strong local organization and momentum of the Republican Party, there are still plenty of conversations where the voices and effective actions of the Democrat Party are greatly needed.

I hope the above ideas contribute something useful toward meeting that need.

At the same time, I'm seeing the word "transparency" used in a lot of different ways, some of which skew the meaning in unhelpfully, possibly harmfully.  I've also had a few people ask me for specific ideas of what more transparency might look like in this community.

So, while I've no illusion that any definition I suggest here will be broadly accepted, I think it's worth trying to clear away some of the fog about what kinds of transparency we (those whose futures are intertwined with that of the city) could expect and ask for from our leaders.  I also think it's worth taking stock of how well Richmond leaders are doing at being transparent.

What It ISN'T

Let's start with a couple of things that transparency is not in this context:

• Transparency is not about government or community leaders being at the beck and call of anyone who posts some random question on a blog or Facebook page and waits for an answer.  If I post here, "I wonder what the cost of taxpayer-funded project X was?" and someone in authority doesn't call me in 24 hours with an answer, I can't claim a lack of transparency. That's just me failing to ask the question directly of the right people.
• Transparency is not about government or community leaders just being available to answer the questions they're asked.  Let's say the a city official did call me up with the budget for project X.  Or that I left a voicemail for my City Council representative and he or she called me back.  That's not transparency, that's just responsiveness, and it's a part of the job description for most people who are employed by taxpayers or who are responsible to the interests of a certain constituency.  (Responsiveness is certainly a prerequisite for transparency.)
• Transparency is not about compelling the exposure of the private and potentially painful details of sensitive personnel conversations that any organization or government must sometimes conduct.  There are rare exceptions to this, when the details of the conversation are material to a more substantial question or claim about quality of leadership, use of taxpayer resources, etc. but in general an organization must be able to keep performance-related conversations private unless the personnel involved grant permission for their disclosure.

In other words, "transparency" is not a synonym for "communication" or even "gossip." We know there are those who are capable of saying a lot without actually saying anything useful or meaningful, and so we must be careful not to mistake an exchange of words for being a transparent approach to leadership.

What It IS

So what is transparency, especially in the context of government leaders and community-building organizations?

Transparent behavior is when someone holding information or facilitating a process proactively works to make that details of the information or the inner workings of that process accessible, easily understood, and free from pretense.

What might that look like?

• When there's an decision up for consideration that might bring about noticeable change or that might be problematic for some population, transparency includes proactively seeking broad consultation and inviting substantial dialog that has the potential to impact the decision that is eventually made, even if it results in a public airing of conflicting viewpoints
• When there's information or data that's being used to define an issue or shape a decision, proactively making that information publicly available as early as possible, online in its most raw form, for anyone to examine, search, sort, cross-reference and comment on, even if they might be able to draw different conclusions than the prevailing opinion
• Transparent behavior entertains the idea that with more eyeballs looking at given problem space or set of information, there's a better chance of mutually beneficial plans or solutions emerging than if there are fewer people with access to the same.

Let's Get Specific

"No really," you say, "give us a really specific example!"

Here's a basic one that I talked about in my campaign for City Council last year:

Let's say I want to attend a City Council meeting and understand how an issue I care about works its way through the legislative process.  I need to know who has the power to influence the outcomes, what structure of proceedings they will use, and at what points along the way I might be able to provide input or request action.

I can try to find the Council rules of order on the City website, but they're not there.  I can try to sort through what Indiana state law says about how city councils can operate, but that's going to take a while, and may not give me all the pieces.  I can call  up my City Council representative and ask them to walk me through it, but do they really have time to do that for every resident of Richmond?  And what if they disagree with my stance on the issue, are they really going to help me as much as they could?  Finally, I realize I can call the City Clerk's office and have them fax me a document from 1986 that lays out the rules and procedures for conducting City Council meetings.  (Here, I'm posting a PDF scan of that document for you in case you actually find yourself in this situation.)

That's a lot for an average everyday citizen to do just to understand how an ordinance they care about might get through City Council.

A transparent city government is one that makes the mechanics of its governing processes easily accessible and might even go to the trouble to explain what Section 30.07, Rule II, subsection (G) actually means in practice.  A city government that isn't transparent doesn't bother, setting the bar incredibly high for community members who might want to observe or participate in their activities.  In the worst cases where officials benefit from obscure processes, they actually rely on how inconvenient it might be to access this kind of information.

Need some more examples? Sure:

• Making the agendas and minutes of government meetings available online as soon as they're available
• Publishing city budget and expenditure information in electronic spreadsheet form for detailed analysis
• Allowing residents to subscribe to e-mail alerts about upcoming meetings of interest
• Having city officials fill out and then publish conflict of interest disclosure forms that list organizations they or immediate family members have a financial relationship with

This isn't a fanciful wish list.  Many cities around the country, big and small, have made providing this kind of transparency a priority, and regularly dedicate staff time and financial resources to making it happen.

The Role of Online Tools

You've probably noticed that a lot of the above refers to publishing information online.  Indeed, there are efforts underway globally to redefine "making information public" to equate with "publishing that information online."  The web represents an incredible tool for government and organizational transparency, if only by removing the arguments that cost or inconvenience are a barrier to making information available.  We must not ignore the parts of our population that don't have convenient, reliable Internet access, but that's not a reason to hold off on using these tools.

If you look at the Sunshine Review's checklist for what a transparent city website looks like, you'll see a lot of these kinds of requirements:

• Comprehensive budget information
• Meetings and agendas
• Details about elected officials, including party affiliation and conflict-of-interest statements
• Details of audits, contracts, and lobbying relationships
• Comprehensive information about accessing public records

and so on.  Sadly, the City of Richmond's online presence leaves so much to be desired when it comes to facilitating transparency and accountability of government processes.  Some key officials still don't have publicly available email addresses.  Public officials have acknowledged these challenges and yet there doesn't seem to be much movement to address them.  If Richmond truly wants to engage its community members in transparent, open government that invites broad participation and dialog, it needs to address these missed opportunities for using digital tools.

(Full disclosure: my company Summersault has a general financial interest in helping people build and use online tools.  Beyond that, in 2011 Summersault was invited to submit a proposal for redeveloping the City of Richmond's website.  Following some strategic planning work we did for the City about their online needs, we determined that our services and approach were not a good fit for the project's requirements, and declined to submit a proposal.)

The Public Record

Lastly, I want to comment on the role of the public record in relationship to accountability and transparency.  A disconcerting trend has emerged in Richmond among some public officials where they basically refuse to have substantial interactions about their decisions or decision-making process in a way that is on the public record.  They're doing this by inviting those interactions to happen in environments where either (A) they have complete control and editorial censorship power, (B) there is no publicly accessible permanent record of the exchange, or both.  This includes:

• Conducting off-the-record conversations with constituents on private Facebook pages
• Conducting off-the-record conversations on audio or video programs where no archival recordings are made available
• Inviting constituents to have their questions answered in off-the-record private phone calls or personal email exchanges that aren't subject to Freedom of Information Act requests

Let me be clear: I have nothing against the use of any and all of the techniques to facilitate conversation and disseminate information.  I applaud city leaders who are making use of social media and other tools to increase the amount of information exchange between them and those who they represent.

The important thing is that these exchanges are happening in addition to what is put on the public record, not instead of it.

Statements made on private Facebook pages, in personal emails or in personal phone calls can be considered confidential, and is not a part of the public record, so by their nature limit the way they can be made available equally to all interested parties, verified, and referred back to over time.  I know a number of people who choose not to use Facebook or who don't listen to talk radio, but still expect to have access to information from their public officials.

In a worst case scenario, if a public official doesn't like where a conversation is going on Facebook or changes their mind about something they've said, they can just remove the posts there or block access by those they don't want to engage.  No matter how good anyone's intentions are, this possibility alone prevents these private exchanges from enabling the kind of accountability needed for transparent, accessible government.

We have a lot of media and pseudo-media organizations in Richmond that could potentially be a part of creating and maintaining the public record.  There are some gaps to be filled in, especially in the area of retaining and archiving past copies of news stories, interviews and broadcasts.  I'm thankful that we have a public access television station that is able to record and archive many government meetings.  I'm thankful that we still have a local newspaper where the stories they investigate and publish live on forever as public record.

The Palladium-Item in particular still presents civic leaders with the daily opportunity to communicate with (I believe) the largest single audience of constituents of any other media organization in town about the issues and opportunities facing Richmond; I hope more public officials make good use of that over time. (Again, full disclosure: I'm a member of the Pal-Item's volunteer editorial advisory board, but this post and the views in it are not necessarily those of the paper.)

Why It Matters

For some, the question of what transparency is and what it looks like in practice may be tedious, annoying, or just academic.   After all, how can we afford to spend time talking about what PDF file is on what website when there are urgent issues of crime, poverty, economic depression, educational challenges and more that we need to address?

The answer is in part what I wrote about earlier this week in saying that civic engagement doesn't end when we vote our chosen leaders into office. If we're to actually make a dent in breaking out of problematic cycles and really "moving the needle" in Richmond's prospects for thriving, we can't just wait for help to arrive in the form of political leadership or new private investment.

We need to make it so that anyone with even a passing interest in addressing the challenges we face can be fully informed and fully engaged, and transparency from the stewards of our shared resources (tax dollars, public infrastructure and more) is essential for that.  We love to gasp at the stories of the federal government paying obscene amounts of money for products or services and we delight when watchdog groups catch this "fleecing" in the name of saving taxpayer dollars.  Shouldn't we crave at least the possibility of letting observant third parties find new efficiencies at the local level, too?

Again, let our community leaders strive not just to meet the basic legal requirements of disclosure, but to proactively offer the documents, reports, data and on-the-record conversations that will make members of the public their collaborators in government efficiency, instead of their adversaries in a struggle for power and information.

Do you agree with this call to action?  If so, I hope you'll share it in some form with your elected officials and ask for their response.

Do you have alternative definitions of transparency or other thoughts about what should look like in your community?  I hope you'll share your comments below.

Most of the strife centers around the firing of RP&L General Manager Steve Saum; the short version is that the Board of Directors unexpectedly removed Saum from his position after a negative performance review, and Saum along with others are concerned that he wasn't given due process.  After the story hit the media, there's been additional concern about the way the RP&L Board has (or has not) communicated the reasoning behind their decision and what it means for the future of the utility.  There's a story in today's Palladium-Item with some new revelations about the proceedings.

Few are in any good position to pass judgment on these matters.  In my limited interactions with Steve Saum I've always found him to be a person of good intent and competence in his leadership.  I also know most of members of the RP&L Board well enough to say they are people of good intent and great care for the future of RP&L and the City.  (Full disclosure: I ran unsuccessfully for election to the RP&L Board last year.)  And no matter what you think of any of their actions or decisions, it's just a painful and messy thing when matters of someone's employment and livelihood (or managerial methods) become a topic of public conversation.

But even with the limited facts available about this series of events, it seems there are some missed opportunities to reflect on moving forward:

First, if an employer thinks an employee is performing poorly, the annual performance review is not when they should find out about it. That this apparently happened in this case is the sign of a broken review process.  If indeed Mr. Saum had gone from performing "commendably" as his last review indicated to "unsatisfactory" and not serving the needs of RP&L, or even if he was just rubbing members of the RP&L Board the wrong way, as his supervisors they had an ongoing responsibility to communicate that clearly at the first sign of a problem that might even remotely lead to his termination. "Here's our concern, here's why this is a problem, here's what we want you to do about it, here's when we'll check in again."  If the board members were getting employee calls about Mr. Saum's managerial decisions, they had a responsibility to include him in a constructive conversation about how to address those employee concerns well before they were used as evidence of his own poor performance.   Yes, there are some kinds of incompetence or insubordination that might necessitate fast, decisive action, but there's been no indication by any of the RP&L Board members that Mr. Saum's failings were so serious as to immediately endanger the future of the utility.

Second, in any given employment conversation, if the boss or supervisor is an elected official, the rules of the game change.  The same is true if the employee is in a leadership position of some prominence or public scrutiny, such as the head of a public utility.  Put those two together in the context of any kind of disagreement, and you have a recipe for an uncomfortable situation at the very best.  We should wonder whether it makes sense for elected members of the RP&L Board to be conducting performance reviews of the RP&L GM.  Are they in the best position to know how well the GM has performed?  Is there too much of a power imbalance for it to be a collegial, respectful conversation when disagreement occurs?  Or will the pressures of public scrutiny always mean that these review conversations are a power struggle instead of an opportunity for true professional development?

Third, an employer has a unique burden to bear if they're going to give someone a negative performance review without firing them on the spot.  If you've just told someone they aren't doing well enough at their job and then asked them to get back to work, this can put them in a pretty difficult position for figuring out what to do next.  It's important to provide some clear next steps, especially when what happens next affects a lot of other employees, not to mention RP&L's in-progress projects and customers.  That someone is frustrated about a negative performance review is not in itself a cause for their termination.  That they ask hard questions about the processes and information used to create that review is not a cause for termination.  Of course someone is going to be defensive if you've just told them they suck at their job. Of course someone might want to take some drastic actions to try to get on a more solid footing.  But if a supervisor and employee can't have an honest  and open - even if tense - conversation about their different perspectives on how that employee is performing with a focus on how best to move forward, then the review process itself is probably a waste of time.

Why does any of this really matter to the rest of us?  Isn't this just between RP&L and Steve Saum?

If there was some sense that this was an exceptional case of miscommunication or poor HR practices, I might not bother to blog about it.  But I hear too many stories in our community of employers and employees missing opportunities for more humane and constructive conversations around areas of conflict or disagreement.  The Really Cool Foods closing in November represents some of the worst of this: having employees show up to work only to be blocked at the gate as their employer announces going out of business that day.

The RP&L Board's treatment of Mr. Saum is different, but no less a setback in any efforts to find a model of "doing business" that honors complexity of differing interests and needs, human dignity and effective conflict resolution. I don't claim to be any expert at this, and as an employer myself who's had to struggle with these issues, I know I still have much to learn.  As with every such case, it seems worthwhile to try to learn some lessons that will help us know how to do it better the next time around.

In the meantime, let us hope for some kind of clarity and closure for Mr. Saum and for members of the RP&L Board.

There are a lot of different strategies out there and each person has to find what works best for them.  Here are a few queries that might help you think about how well your strategy is working for you:

1. Are you able to work through your e-mail inbox in a reasonable amount of time every day, respond to or delegate time-sensitive questions/comments, convert messages into to-do items, or otherwise file them away on the first pass through?
2. Do you make good use of e-mail filters available in your mail reading program to highlight/tag/sort messages in ways that make you more productive?
3. Are there mailing lists or other regular notifications that you could unsubscribe from or have re-routed, to minimize the e-mail that you just delete or file on a regular basis?
4. Do you have a system for filing email that allows you to quickly and intuitively retrieve messages (sent and received) that you need to review without a lot of searching or jumping around to different folders?
5. Are you purging or archiving old messages in a way that makes sense for your role and your use of email?
6. Are your auto-"check for new mail" settings calibrated to (or turned off for) being productive? (i.e. Do you really need to know about a new message the instant it comes in, or would it be okay to review new messages once an hour?  A few times per day?!?)

If you're not employing any particular email management strategy, may I recommend the "Inbox Zero" series of articles from 43 Folders?  There's a great video of a presentation about this approach to get you started.

What other tips or strategies do you use to keep email useful to you as a tool, instead of getting overwhelmed by it?

What a world of pure and unflinching justice we could then live in!  To walk around knowing that the slogans and invitations on billboards, newspaper ads and television were all required by law to be true, and that onerous fines and the shame of the public eye awaited the occasional miscreant who would stray from this noble code.  No need to worry about being deceived or misled as a consumer; we could always have confidence that advertisers would stand by their claims.

Like I said, I was young.

But at the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I do think there's been a notable shift in the standards we hold marketers and public figures to when it comes to truth in advertising.  Seems like somewhere around the mid 1990's, we kind of gave up on it.

Was it when the Coke vs. Pepsi wars heated up?  Or maybe it was when product manufacturing was being outsourced to other countries and business owners became disconnected from quality controls in their production processes?  Or maybe it was when we stopped expecting politicians to tell the truth and started betting on just how outrageous their lies were.  Or maybe The Internet made it so much more difficult to police advertising claims that no one even bothers anymore unless it's a particularly egregious case.

But there are more important things to worry about, right?  Caveat emptor and everybody for themselves, and let's focus on the national debt or poverty or obesity, right?

I'm not so sure.  I think deceptive marketing practices deserve more of the blame for the state of the world than they get. I'm glad to hear that some high schools and colleges are teaching young people to be more aware of how marketing influences their buying choices, but the majority of us are still very much subject to the power of the marketing machine.  And when that machine is telling us to do things that are against our own best interests, it matters.

A few recent examples I've heard or seen just driving around town:

"Fast and fresh!"
Many fast food restaurants caught on long ago that fast food was associated with unhealthy eating, and that dietary advice was shifting toward recommendations of freshly prepared food with more natural ingredients.  The end result is the self-contradiction that you can have mass-produced food from a restaurant that is both "fast" (because it was pre-prepared halfway across the country in a warehouse and trucked to you frozen or full of preservatives) and "fresh" (because it has a piece of lettuce or tomato on it that was recently washed).  Or, "we have a salad on our menu, so we offer healthy eating options for everyone!" This undermines people who are trying to make healthier eating choices for themselves and their children by convincing them they can have it both ways, and it undermines local/regional food producers who actually ARE bringing you fresh food that you could prepare within a few days for a healthy meal.

"Hurry in to our store to save!"
I heard this one on the radio this morning.  "Be the hero of your household's budget," the ad proclaimed.  They want you to come in to the store and spend money so that you can "save" money.  Buy things you might not have bought otherwise and might not need, so that you can feel good you're getting them at a slightly lower price than...someone else somewhere else might or might not be selling them for.   This approach twists the notion that "saving money is good" into the idea that you have to spend money to save money.  No wonder we have unprecedented levels of personal debt and bankruptcy.

"For a limited time only!"
This one is tried and true: the idea that a time pressure will almost always result in consumers making different choices than they would make given time to think through the value of what they're getting.  "I might not have bought a case of gummy bears THIS week, but surely I'll need a case in the coming year or two, and this sale ends TODAY!"  Marketers are telling us that rational responses are not to be trusted and that our gut instincts are what we should go with.  Instant gratification is okay because...then you'll be gratified, and that's all that matters, right!?

There are many, many more.  And I'm sure none of them are all that surprising to you, because again, we've come to accept that marketers are trying to mess with our sense of reality, and that we should just deal with it the best we can.

But why do we accept that?  Why are we willing to subject ourselves to that dance of pain when all we get out of it is some cheap plastic crap, stomach aches and buyer's remorse?  I'm accepting comments for a limited time only.

I try not to give my my money to companies that practice false or misleading advertising most blatantly. But for me, one of the long-term solutions is to be very, VERY intentional about how I market myself and the products or services I'm associated with.

When I market my own business and our technical services, I try to make sure we speak plainly and clearly about what we can and cannot do, so that no one is misled and no end result is hyped up.

When I tell people who I am and what I stand for, I'm careful to note complexity and messiness where it exists.

When I talk about my qualifications for being voted into elected office, I'm careful not to spin or inflate my experience and accomplishments beyond what's real, and to give other people credit where it's due.

When I mess up or say something that might be misleading, I try to go back to correct it as soon as I can.

Sometimes it's harder to be accurate and honest than it is to be catchy and broadly appealing.  Maybe it's that younger version of myself still wandering around in oblivion waiting for the FTC to make it all better, but I still hope for a world where we all practice - and expect - truth in advertising at every level.

Sometimes this reinventing and rediscovering happens because there's been a change in staffing, sometimes it happens because people just don't bother to write things down.  But I'm amazed at the "shortcuts" people think they're taking to work around those cases:

• We couldn't find our username and password to manage our website domain name, so we just registered a new one and re-printed our business cards.  Problem solved!
• We forgot that our last IT person already had a Facebook page setup, so we setup a new one and then asked everyone to like the new page.  Problem solved!
• We're not sure where the source design files are for our marketing brochure, so we'll just design a new one.  Problem solved!

Meanwhile you've lost a bunch of would-be visitors to your website who still have your old business cards, halved your population of Facebook followers, and wasted someone's week on solving a problem that was already solved.

Sometimes it is faster to take a shortcut - I'm guilty of using the "forgot my password" feature on web applications WAY too often because I haven't bothered to do a good job of tracking the password used when I don't use the service but a few times a year.  And there can be value in having a given process considered with fresh eyes and new perspective, even if it is because the old way wasn't well documented.

But when you find yourself repeating this exercise over and over again, spending time and energy (and money?) reinventing or rediscovering some core parts of your operations, you have to wonder if there's room for improvement:

1. Encourage the building and documenting of shared knowledge using tools like wikis, intranets, internal blogs, and shared document repositories, and train staff on how to use them ("All of our key account information related to our corporate website is in that folder on the shared network drive.")
2. Facilitate easily checking in with coworkers before launching something new ("Hey, I'm gonna create our new Facebook page, anyone see a reason not to?")
3. Audit the time your staff spends getting up to speed on core business practices or resources.  ("The last three marketing department hires each spent 10 hours researching and documenting area printing services we could use - maybe there's something wrong here.")

What parts of your organizational operations are being unnecessarily reinvented or rediscovered on a regular basis?

How do you make sure your staff members build on what you and your coworkers already know?

In a non-profit organization board meeting, it might be the Executive Committee or the board chair.

In a small business, it might be the business's owners or managers.

In a city council meeting, it might be the President of the council or the group's political majority.

In a community of faith, it might be church elders.

Sometimes we forget the power that the agenda setters can have.  We focus on the outcomes of the conversations that we do have, but we forget or overlook that some conversations aren't conducted in the first place.

Sometimes this is out of practical necessity - a given group of people can only cover so much ground in a given gathering - but sometimes it's because the agenda setters don't feel a given conversation should be had.

In the best case, this choice to exclude certain conversations from the agenda happens because the agenda setters are using their collective wisdom and experience to make the best use of the organization's time and resources.  Sometimes, though, it happens because the agenda setters are afraid of what might come out in the conversation.  A conflict they can't mediate.  A decision they don't agree with.  A bringing to light of things that they would be more comfortable keeping out of sight.

Different approaches to agenda setting work well for different kinds of organizations, but it's always important to remember the power that the agenda setters are imparted.  As an organization evaluates its effectiveness, it might also ask these questions of its agenda setting process:

1. Is it clear who sets the agenda for the conversations we have as an organization?
2. Is it clear what process is followed for suggesting items for organizational conversations?
3. How well do we equitably handle differences of opinion in what the agenda contains?  How do we identify when something is being left out because of pragmatic considerations versus ideological disagreement?
4. Are those who set the agenda representative of the interests and needs of all who are affected by the organization's decisions?
5. What important conversations does our agenda-setting process seem to systemically exclude from our time together in discussion?

Are there other queries that are useful to consider in creating a structure for agenda-setting?

In the organizations, businesses and relationships that you're a part of, what kind of power does the agenda setter hold, and how well is that power used?

I was only scheduled to give one presentation ("How to talk, or not talk, to your clients about Perl") but after hearing some of the opening remarks at the conference that spent too much time and energy, IMHO, declaring that "Perl is not dead!" I signed up to give a new talk about possibilities for re-framing that sentiment.

You can view a video of the talk, or you can view my slides [PDF].

Well, you're in luck!  I really enjoy cataloging and categorizing these kinds of things, and so I've put together this list of 12 kinds of social networking status updates.

Most every status update will fall into one of these categories:

1. I want you to know how happy I am. I have really amazing family, friends, career, hobbies, food, or some other factors that I will go on about publicly to hundreds of strangers, and I just want you to know how perfect everything is in the world right now.
2. I am incredibly busy and productive. But, I'm taking some time out of my incredibly busy schedule to tell you how incredibly busy and productive I am.  But as soon as I'm done with that, it's back to being incredibly busy and productive!
3. I am kind of a big deal. Here's some information about me that's only thinly veiled as informational, but is actually designed to show you how important, successful, athletic, skilled, wealthy, well-connected and/or influential I am.
4. I want you to know how unhappy I am. You won't believe how pathetic and unworthy I am, but I'd like to try to tell you about it anyway.
5. I am really clever and insightful. Let me just say this really clever or witty thing and let you bask in how amazing I am.
6. I would like to tell you about my physical location. Here is where I am right now.
7. I'd like to share about the activities of my child or children. Let me show you how cute and/or irreverent they are.  If you don't have children, consider taking this opportunity to feel inadequate.  If you do have children, consider taking this opportunity to feel like you don't enjoy your children as much as I do.
8. There is an injustice that needs your attention! Some person, organization or company has done something unacceptable and I need you to take action RIGHT NOW to help make it better.
9. I have a link that I'd like for you to click on. It's really interesting, and it's possibly going to change your life.  Come on, just click on it.  What if it's a really cool photo of a cat in some situation you've NEVER seen before?  There, wasn't that amazing?
10. I have a medical condition that I'd like to share about. I'm sick, or I'm getting better, or I'm having surgery, or I broke something, or someone or something threw up on me or I threw up on them.  Let me tell you about it.
11. I would like to comment on some aspect of popular culture. Allow me tell you why a particular television show, movie, celebrity, singer, actor or athlete is in or out of my favor right now.
12. I am mysterious. I would just like to post this string of characters that may or may not resemble words in your language, hoping to increase your confusion while also instilling some sense that I know something you don't.  598234.

Do you have other categories to add?  What kinds of status updates do you tend to post?