Blogger Outreach & Relations

1105 FOSE Meet-Up: Cybersecurity, Cloud Technology and Social Media

May 21, 2013 by Sarah Kneip

We participated in a great onsite meeting at FOSE 2013 with top notch leaders in the information technology community. This guest post from CTOVision recaps the insights and discussions on the importance of cybersecurity, cloud technology and social media. The original posting of this blog can be found here.

1105 FOSE Meet-Up: Cybersecurity, Cloud Technology and Social Media

Guest post from CTO Vision

1105 Media Group, organizers of the FOSE and GovSec Conferences & Expos, hosted an FOSE 2013 Blogger & Speaker Meet-up on Wednesday, May 15 at FOSE.

I always look forward to the blogger meetups at events, because they offer a chance to get some visibility on other tracks or key points you’ve missed. It was a varied group. We had folks from all walks of life who work in the cyber realm, and the breadth of experience added to the conversation.

This meet-up included influencers, Ajay Budhraja, Chief Technology Officer, EOIR at the United States Department of Justice, Gadi Ben-Yehuda, Director of Innovation and Social Media for IBM Center for The Business of Government, Andrew Scott, Social Media Coordinator at Carahsoft Technology Corp. Paul DeSoza, CEO of CSFI, Sayngeun Phouamkha, VP of Business Development at CSFI. Lindy Kyzer, Editor at Clearance Jobs, Erik Johnson from DC Gov and Michael Russell .

Right now the federal government is going through an incredible IT transformation. They are moving from IT as a way of getting work done, into IT as a strategic asset for business. The federal government is adopting today’s trends; mobility, agility and open APIs that are opening up federal IT and making it more functional and delivering more to our citizens.

Much of the talk focused on open data and data access. We talked extensively about the increasing amount of noise in the ether. From the deluge of tweets, to the host of open data released by governments it is becoming harder and harder to identify the signal. Paul De Souza of CSFI has created an open-source intelligence operating center for the CSFI that uses Silobreaker to create their own operating picture, and to create their own intelligence products. They also use the TVEyes capability to monitor TV streams from their smart devices, increasing their awareness of what discussions are occurring in the world.

We also discussed how data is driving government, and see OSINT and other capabilities de-silo’ing the data. However, this led into the conversation of how the government can lessen the impact of social media providing valuable OSINT to our adversaries. Ajay brought up the importance of cloud data, policy and accessibility. While some organizations have social media policies, a government-wide policy that clearly states social media policies could be beneficial. parental blocker Limited access to social media could also benefit the government and limit exposure. While social media can be a great asset to the citizenship of the country, we must be cautious that it does not endanger those citizens.

To access the full program agenda and find out about FOSE 2014, visit www.fose.com.

About CTOVision.com
At CTOvision.com we write about technology, with a focus on technology of relevance to enterprise technologists. The blog was founded by Bob Gourley, CTO of Crucial Point, a high tech consultancy. We also publish technology concepts and evals at our sister site CTOlabs.com.

Our premier publication is our monthly technology review. Every month we send

this to over 12000 technology thought leaders. This monthly summarizes reporting from the CTOvision.com blog as well as tech trends from the IT industry. The monthly also provide links to our technology assessments. Other products include our Daily CTOvision.com summary, the Daily Fedcyber.com summary, and the Weekly Government Big Data Newsletter.

How Nonprofits can Raise More Money Without Asking for More Money

July 23, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

What does a struggling economy do to struggling nonprofits? According to a new study from Giving USA, charitable giving only grew by 0.9% in 2011. And guess what? Little growth is expected in 2012.

Depressed yet? Never fear. In this excellent post on Frogloop, Allyson Kapin outlines some ways nonprofits can boost donations in 2012. One tip that stood out to me:

Don’t always ask for money. Many nonprofits are so focused on raising money and meeting their budgets, they often don’t treat their donors as important stakeholders in the organization. Your donors are a critical part of your community and want to be a part of your organization fighting for social change. Show them how they can help you meet your mission through actions, volunteer opportunities, social events, etc. Give them several paths to engage with your organization and make them feel like they are a valuable part of your mission. And of course you can ask them for money along the way.

To many nonprofits, this may seem counterintuitive; but Allyson makes an excellent point that ultimately comes down to your relationships with your donors.

If you take the time to identify your key advocates and build relationships with them, the return will be worth the time investment. Offer value and make them an important part of your efforts and organization, and you will see them giving more of their time and money in return.

Here are some ways nonprofits can build relationships with donors:

Identifying key advocates and influencers: Conduct research to compile a list of those who are your strongest advocates or can influence others to do so. Check out this handy infographic from SmallAct and BlackBaud on identifying your influencers and scoring them for fundraising efforts.
Developing opportunities of value: Think about all the different ways these key advocates can help your nonprofit – such as, like Allyson mentioned, volunteer opportunities and social events. Other ways might be through online word-of-mouth – spreading the word through their social networks through a blog post, tweet, donation widget, etc.
Reach out: This is where you engage your advocates without asking for money. Ask them where they want to be involved and develop those opportunities for them. Focus on those who respond to your outreach and concentrate your community-building efforts on them.
Keep building those relationships: Keep key advocates and influencers updated with new information and opportunities, ask for their input on a continual basis, and use their feedback. Through ongoing relationship and community-building, you can develop broader fundraising programs that engage not only them, but their communities.

INFOGRAPHIC: How to Identify and Empower Your Social Media Influencers

July 12, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

Blackbaud, in partnership with Small Act and the National Wildlife Federation, recently published an interesting whitepaper on social media influencers and how to identify them for fundraising efforts. What I found most interesting about this whitepaper (which you can download here) is how influencers are scored based on how many networks on which they’re active, how large their networks are, and how engaged they are with those networks. The whitepaper breaks influencers down into 4 groups:

What’s even more interesting, is while Key Influencers and Engagers make up only 6% of total influencers, they have a total average estate value of over $700K. So, when it comes to engaging social media influencers for your next fundraising campaign, those two groups should be your biggest focus.

But, don’t discount Multichannel Consumers and Standard Consumers. While not as active on social media, they’re prolific (94% of total influencers) and still wield considerable donation power. They should be engaged in different ways, since they tend to be influenced more than influential – following the recommendations of their social media networks, friends and family.

Blackbaud produced this useful infographic, which defines each of the four groups and gives a good overview of the information contained in the whitepaper: