This week two major aerospace events are taking place on opposite sites of the planet. In Hong-Kong, the Asian Aerospace conference and exhibition started with several major announcements from about 400 exhibitors. In London, the annual Defense Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) takes place over the next four days with over 1400 exhibitors. The shows expect 10,000 and 30,000 visitors respectively. And yet, if you searched twitter you’d barely notice these events existed.
The technique used by every one else in the world to promote and track events on Twitter, the use of hashtags, doesn’t seem to have made its way into our industry yet. There are no official codes promoted by organizers or media outlets. The few people talking about the show are doing so to their followers and in an uncoordinated fashion. What a wasted opportunity! To be fair, FlightGlobal, always making good use of twitter and whose parent company is organizing the Asian Aerospace show, timidly used “AA09” in some of its posts and is tracking the term on its special show page. But that is not a hashtag and they should know better, especially when they are not using it consistently in their own posts. AviationWeek also started using AA09 late Tuesday, and they are also reporting on DSEi. They are posting news and photos on their home page, but did they take up where the organizers failed and create a DSEi hashtag? No! You know who did? Disarm, the anti-arm protest group did! They set it up at #DSEi. And they have been using all day to organize and report their protest efforts against the exhibitors at the show.
Even large organizations like Rockwell Collins and Thales, both tweeting their news from DSEi, missed the opportunity. Neither seem to understand this simple technique: if you tweet without a hashtag, you are likely to only reach your followers. For example, @thalesgroup has 150 followers on twitter. But if they added a tag like #DSEI09 (which should have been created by the organizers) they could have potentially reached the thousands of show visitors tuned to that stream.
So, show organizers, aerospace media, and large aerospace companies, let’s go over this one more time:
Select a hashtag early and start publicizing it before the event on website, conference material, and on Twitter itself (next up: #NBAA and #DXB09 (DubaiAirShow)).
During the show include the hashtag in your tweets (preferably at the end) and do it consistently.
During the show, track, archive and publish the hashtag stream, paying attention to what is being said and respond or collaborate as appropriate.
After the show, review the stream’s archive to find key lessons and impressions about the event.
That doesn’t seem like rocket science to me, does it? And it was done quite successfully at the Paris Air Show in June. So why are we not taking advantage of it? Especially when traditionally less advanced groups like the US Government “bureaucrats” are now fully embracing these techniques and making great strides in the process? You want to see how it is done, check out #gov20 and #gov20e streams. By the way that event had only 400 attendees!
I was very encouraged to see the organizers of the recent OGI conference (1105 Government Information Group) embrace the use of Twitter from the on-set of the event planning. They established the #ogi tag early, made good use of the platform for early buzz, and enlisted the use of strong talent like @mixtmedia and @lostonroute66 for support. So, how did it all turn out?
The Statistics
I collected the #ogi statistics from July 10th to 22nd (8pm) and found a total of 4839 posts from 653 unique accounts (Full stats in Excel format). For a conference with about 500 attendees that is an impressive number. By comparison, usage of Twitter at the recent Paris Air Show (the largest Aerospace and Defense show in the world attended by tens of thousands of visitors) only generated 2471 posts in 5 days! The top 20 contributors (by number of posts) were:
Posting was fast and furious during the first day of the conference (3116 posts – 64%), actually causing #ogi to appear on Twitter’s Global Trending Topics at number 10 shortly before 9am and going all the way to number 4 (in the world!) by 10:30am. This was partly due to the keynotes generating so many posts:
Dave Wennergren (Deputy CIO – DOD) (198)
Aneesh Chopra (US Chief Technology Officer) (500)
Tim O’Reilly (766)
David Weinberger (273)
Vivek Kundra (US Chief Information Officer) (296)
With #ogi trending on Twitter we saw the activation of some spam accounts, but although noticeable it never became more than a small temporary nuisance with less than 50 spam posts in a period of two hours.
The Observations
Here are three twitter related thoughts I had at the conference, in no particular order:
The twitter board (pic) showed at the conference was very nice. It showed a live feed of the #ogi stream. It is based on a development by Daniel Dura and you can get the customizable tool at http://www.danieldura.com/code/twittercamp. The placement of the twitter screen was of great debate by the attendees, starting with the feed on the two side screens and then later moving to the middle screen with the side screens showing the speaker slides. It seems to be distracting to some attendees who were trying to read the screen while following the speakers at the same time. My take is that a moderated version could have been better (no need to show irrelevant posts), and that two smaller screen on the extreme sides would have been less distracting (but can you really deal with 5 screens?).
The twitter posts consisted mainly of notes taking. The organizers made good use of the tool to solicit questions but mostly ran out of time before they could be asked (should they be answered off-line?). There was a little bit of stream augmentation with contributors posting links to videos, books, surveys and websites mentioned by the speaker. I think this later use is in its infancy and will provide much value in future events. In addition, I think it will become essential for organizers to collect and distribute twitter account info for the speakers so they can be mentioned properly in the posts.
When you have an event with over 500 attendees, how do you interact with the audience without going to the podium for boring announcements? You use Twitter! I was very impressed by how the organizers followed the stream and reacted quickly to the comments from the crowd. Issues with hashtags, wi-fi, screens, refreshments and other logistics that showed up in the twitter stream were handled promptly and smoothly. I regretted the organizers did not use electronic surveys for the break-out sessions (paper seemed a bit “old fashion” in this context). I am sure they were concerned that not everyone would be able to access them, but it would be an interesting experiment to have the feedback surveys online and publish results live! May be even provide rewards for reviewers and speakers!
All in this entire event made extremely good use of social media and I look forward to follow the evolution of the “digitally interactive conference” in the next few months.
There is an organization that, in the last 6 months, has embraced leading edge technology, open information exchange, collaboration amongst departments and with external partners, focus on customer service, speed of deployment, as well as experimentation with game-changing ideas. Is this organization some kind of Silicon Valley start-up driven by a few highly caffeinated Gen-Y associates full of big ideas? No! It is in fact our US Government!
At this week’s Open Government and Innovation conference in Washington, DC, over 700 attendees from every branch of the government shared (See Twitter Stats) and discussed the President’s deep commitment to open and transparent government. All of the subjects listed above were covered with enthusiasm and with a “can-do” attitude I have rarely witnessed before. Even more impressively, this conference was sponsored by the Department of Defense with great energy from its Deputy CIO, Dave Wennergren. In his opening remarks on both days, he emphasized the culture of change that is sweeping the government and the fundamental belief that “Relentless Sharing” of information and knowledge is the way of the future for society as a whole.
I could not possibly do justice to the inspiring keynotes that were presented and I encourage you to spend the time to listen to them online. They are available with sound and slides: Aneesh Chopra (US Chief Technology Officer), Vivek Kundra (US Chief Information Officer), Tim O’Reilly (Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media – and father of Web 2.0), and David Weinberger (author of “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder”).
What does it all mean? Because of the innovation imperative created by the advance of new technology in society, the government is shifting from a “command and control” model to a “communication and collaboration” model. Great ideas exist “out there” and new technology allows us to harvest and develop them. Taking full advantage of concepts such as Social Media, the government is becoming a convener of game-changing collaborative approaches rather than the initiator of rigid and lobby-driven policies. Transparency becomes the default position to establish trust and gain efficiency. In six months, the government has already accomplished huge progress on that front. Just to name two, check out http://www.data.gov for open information sharing, and the IT dashboard at http://www.usaspending.gov for a clear view of the government investment in IT.
So how does this impact the Aerospace & Defense industry? To put it simply, this is the end of “business as usual”. This shift in the government’s approach will create three profound changes for the industry:
Major overall of systems procurement: Do you want to see a glimpse of future procurement? Check out http://www.defensesolutions.gov. No longer will system procurement be driven from a set of requirements, it will be driven instead from capability requirements. Open standards, 21st century infrastructure, and information sharing mandate will throw the doors open to innovative ideas from all corners of the world. “Great ideas will get funding regardless of the rules”, Chopra was quoted as saying. There will now be spiral development focused on collaboration and on quick win systems that will embrace risk management rather than risk avoidance. Accountability will be enforced through transparency, and businesses will be measured based on value and innovation rather than only schedule and budget.
Shift to “mission focus” and “customer service”: the government will lead the way in demanding results in terms of service and mission support. They will ask “how can you solve my problem” rather than asking for a specific solution. They will demand collaboration, information sharing, continuous improvement and innovation. A major contractor may think that they can adapt to that change, but this will permeate throughout the rest of the business and consumer world where customers (and employees) will ask the same from any organization. Businesses will have to change the way they operate not just to adapt to the government but for all of their customers.
Young talent will not tolerate “old ways” of doing business: The next generation of bright minds and leaders coming out of our colleges and universities will gravitate toward organizations that promote a way of working that includes flexibility, communication, collaboration, and the removal of artificial or corporate boundaries. One of the most enlightening session at the conference was the Young Government Leaders panel that boldly and fearlessly described their eye-opening views of work and life. Social Media and Collaboration is natural for them and they will not function without it. Organizations will have to adapt quickly to be able to attract this new talent.
Critics point out that the number one issue with this transparency approach is the concern over information security. Wennergren describes it as a polarity management issue between opposite goals: information sharing and information security. He suggests that aspiring to secure information sharing is an achievable short term goal. Luckily for us, organizations like the TransGlobal Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP) are a long way down the road to solving this issue.
So, since the government is making major changes that will definitely affect Aerospace and Defense, why was Lockheed Martin the only representation from the industry at the event? According to the organizers, the industry does not believe this is happening, not realizing that this change is a result of pressure from the people not an initiative from leadership. “We have no choice”, said Kundra. One small consolation is that Lockheed Martin is set to release their secure collaboration platform as Open Source Software in the next 60 days. Tom Haser says: “We are totally on board, but I am not sure about our industry colleagues”. I for one think that their absence from the dialogue is very telling.
The 100th anniversary of the Paris Air Show was punctuated by many anniversaries, but in the future the 2009 edition will also be marked by the first use of Twitter by professional attendees. Collecting the data stream from Sunday June 14th to Thursday June 18th (professional days), provided an insight into the buzz the show created in the Social Media universe.
Over the 4 days, there were 2471 updates from 979 unique accounts reaching well over 20,000 combined “followers” as well as countless additional viewers who simply searched the stream. This represents a massive audience for disseminating all the happenings from the show.
The Press.
Looking at the top twenty accounts, the two main news organizations dominated the updates. AvWeek and Flight Global made significant use of twitter to drive traffic to their in-depth coverage offered on their website (see also Paris Air Show online Coverage: AvWeek versus Flight). Even though Aviation Week was the busiest unique account at the show, 7 out of the top 20 accounts belong to the Flight Global team. Aggregating the statistics, Flight Global posted 289 updates to Aviation week’s 157 updates. Both organizations rank high on Twitter Grader with average team scores of 91% and 93% respectively, and in number of followers with 5550 and 4207 respectively. They are joined in the top 20 by three other news organizations: News4Paris (80%, 59 followers), GoodPilotNews (98%, 7635 followers), and ATWonline (95%, 408 followers).
The Industry.
Interestingly, the show marked the entrance of some top industry companies in the world of Social Media. Even though many of them had their accounts for a while, this was their heaviest use to date.
It is interesting to note that Bombardier used its account from the beginning of the show, while Embraer joined on the last day. Northrop, Lockheed, Raytheon, Thales, and Rockwell Collins were all represented. As were engine manufacturers GE and Pratt and Whitney. Notable absences were Airbus, Boeing, ATR, and Rolls-Royce just to name a few. Lost opportunity?
Most of the big companies used Twitter in a “traditional” way, simply as a relay for the press releases they had posted elsewhere. However, there were two exceptions. GE started using their accounts early and was very active on the community boards and other social media outlets well before the show started. They also had a YouTube video diary that was really fun to follow. Clinkenbeard, a small US manufacturer of complex cast and machined parts, was the best user of the medium in the industry class and was rewarded with great coverage including a television spot back in Illinois.
It will be interesting to see how the use of Social Media, LinkedIn and Twitter in particular, continues to expand in the A&D industry. Hopefully we will see more “collaboration” and exchange of ideas on all the hot topics concerning the industry.
This week it was the first time in my career that I did not attend the Paris Air Show in person. But this is also the first time I get to really look at the online coverage of the show from the two dominant news sources in the industry: Aviation Week (McGraw Hill) and Flight Global (Reed Business Intelligence).
Both companies have been long time participants at the show and this year was no different. They both set up dedicated “channels” on their website to bring us all the news and events “quasi-live”. Although the main structure and content of the sites was very similar, each had noteworthy features. Here is my review and rating of both approaches:
Overall Design: Both sites provide News, Blogs, Photos, Videos, and Show History. AvWeek has all of the content “headlined” on a single page for easy access. Flight has tabbed access at the top requiring multiple clicks but its look and feel is “cleaner.” Results: AvWeek 4 – Flight 4
News, Pictures and Blog Content: Both are veteran news organizations and their content was superb as usual. All the major press conferences and announcements were covered. Some smaller stories were also reported, but with several thousand exhibitors at the conference I would have liked to see an interactive “Post your news” section for them to contribute content in an orderly, labeled, categorized, and searchable matter. AvWeek’s guest blogger from Accenture was a nice idea but I don’t think it added much value. Results: AvWeek 5 – Flight 5
Video Content: With the audience’s attention span diminishing year-over-year, video content is becoming prominent at the show. As of the end of Day 4 but excluding show previews, AvWeek produced 14 videos, Flight produced a massive 39! Flight had numerous interviews and show recaps with on screen reporters which were really professional and engaging. I liked the day recap AvWeek was doing but they quit after day 2! So for content, Flight wins hands down. They both used MacroMedia Flashplayer 10 to deliver the video, but Flight’s default configuration was absolutely unusable. You had to click on the small video thumbnail to even know what it was about and most titles were truncated! AvWeek’s setup was much better with video titles and recap you could browse before deciding which video to watch. Flight should have used the same default configuration. Results: AvWeek 4 – Flight 2
Special Features: AvWeek provided its show guide and its show news in high quality WISIWIG format that made you feel like you were there. Flight provided an Aircraft list with daily updated air display times, as well as a “Discussion” tab which gave it a “real time” feel (more on that below). Results: AvWeek 4 – Flight 5
Social Interaction: Both organizations have embraced social interaction, and this event was a time to showcase it. Flight took the early lead by announcing that it would open its news room to visitors so they could come and interact with their editors and “witness” the creation of the Flight and Flight Daily publications. By all accounts this was a great success. Flight also fielded a team of reporters that used Twitter throughout the show to share their experiences, collaborate with exhibitors and visitors, and drive traffic to their website content. I counted no less than 13 veteran Twitter accounts reporting for Flight. By comparison, AvWeek had 4. (See also Social Media at Paris Air Show by the Numbers) Even though AvWeek employs Benet Wilson, arguably the A&D Social Media Queen, she was inexplicably relegated to re-tweeting blog stories from her office in Washington. She did provide a lot of content and kept the AvWeek FaceBook page up-to-date, but she could not compete with the enthusiasm and energy of the Flight team. In addition, Flight provided the cleverest feature of all. By using a widget on its “Discussion” page to display all the twitter posts from the #ParisAirShow stream, it automatically included AvWeek’s posts in their own pages: brilliant! Results: AvWeek 1 – Flight 5
In conclusion, watching the show from my internet browser was certainly not like being there, but it was an enjoyable experience. Both organizations did a good job providing me with the information I was hoping for, but Flight (21 pts) did a slightly better job than AvWeek (18 pts). If Flight had done a better job with their video access page, it would have been a landslide victory. On their side, AvWeek should really start incorporating Social Media in their approach and develop a more interactive relationship with their audience.
There are more major A&D shows coming between now and Farnborough next year, and I think that the idea of news “collaboration” rather than news “publishing” will be the key to success for these two information organizations. I look forward to seeing how they evolve from my browser, my iPhone, and (hopefully) on the ground.
With the 48th Paris Air Show celebrating its 100th year from June 15-21, the show will be covered on Twitter for the first time in its history. Tweets have already showed up well ahead of the doors opening under the #ParisAirShow stream. Other than following by search, who are the 10 people should you follow in Paris:
@parisairshow – The organizers and the main voice of the show
@aviationweek – Aerospace & Defense publications from McGraw Hill. They will ReTweet posts from a number of correspondents at the show.
@flightglobal – Aerospace & Defense publications from Reed International. They will ReTweet posts from a number of correspondents at the show.
@ATWonline – Air Transport World – focused on airlines news
@SpeedNewsTweets – Aviation news provider since 1979
@AeroNews – Aero News Network online for the last ten 10 year and provicer of AeroTV
@uspavilion_news – Official US Pavilion at the show (First users of #ParisAirShow on Twitter!)
@UKSBAC – Official UK Pavilion at the show and UK Aerospace association
@Israel_Pavilion – Official Israel Pavilion at the show
@simpliflying – Airline branding and social media guru
I know this list will grow as the show opens. I will update it / augment it as we go along. Please make sure to use #ParisAirShow in your tweets and pass the word along.
A fundamental attribute of Aerospace & Defense companies today is they must be dynamic. Enabling a net-centric data strategy – decoupling applications and data – combined with the emphasis on communities of interest and project areas, point towards a future enterprise model composed of socially networked dynamic groups, forming, disbanding and re-forming as opportunity needs dictate. The corporation’s information architecture in this environment must be responsive, extremely agile, and able to cope with the unanticipated to provide the business leaders and innovators the speed they need to succeed. Ensuring timely and trusted information is available where it is needed, when it is needed, and to those who need it, is at the heart of the future enterprise and an effective, federated, and dynamic approach to IT architecture is absolutely required.
As DoD transforms to become a Net-Centric force, information becomes one of its greatest sources of power to achieve an information advantage for its people and mission partners. As such, the DOD has lead the way in establishing standards, guidelines, and architecture interchange best practices to achieve information superiority. The DoDAF 2.0 (Department of Defense Architectural Framework) provides guidance on planning, developing, managing, maintaining, and governing architectures through a coherent semantic and structural metamodel. In addition, DOD is embracing commercial enterprise integration standards developed by the Object Management Group among others to be able to implement technology faster with its IT vendors as well as share information outside the enterprise (e.g. UPDM with the UK MoD).
DoD mission partners and A&D companies as a whole could learn a lot from the work undertaken by the DOD in this field. One place to get caught up will be the DOD Enterprise Architecture Conference to be held in St Louis, MO on June 1 to 4. This event is is sponsored by the Director of Architecture and Interoperability (a DoDAF 2.0 guru), Office of the Deputy CIO and hosted by the Association for Enterprise Integration (AFEI). Below is a quick highlight of some of the technical subjects that will be covered at the event from Walt Okon, a DOD Senior Enterprise Architect.
————————————————————————– FEBRUARY 2010 UPDATE
US DoD Launches Social Media Hub and New Policy
Check out http://socialmedia.defense.gov ————————————————————————–
At the AFEI Change Management conference in Washington, DC, two Department of Defense officials at the forefront of social networking gave insights on the impact of this technology on the traditionally “comand-and-control” organization.
Dave Wennergren, Deputy CIO, DoD and Vice Chairman, Federal CIO Council, offered ten cultural change ideas for organizations contemplating new projects:
10. Ride the wave of change happening in society. Take advantage of technologies such as Service Oriented Enterprise, Web 2.0, and Cloud Computing.
9. Move with speed because time is your ennemy
8. Learn to manage challenge polariy. For example, how to balance Information Security versus Information Availability. Should you think of it as Secured Information Sharing?
7. Status quo can’t get a bye. Start from a new proposition and set aside small funding for experimentation. Surveys show that small IT project have a 34% success rate versus 1% for projects over $10M.
6. Tell the story behind the change simply and effectively to counteract the status quo story.
5. Leverage the power of teams (not just inside your organization – use social networking)
4. Describe your objectives in a meaningful way that everyone will relate to
3. Be a learning organization and cater to the Net generation
2. Embrace transparency to develop trust
1. Remember that it is all about each other. Leaders will get the behaviour they exhibit.
Also in attendance at the conference was Jack Holt, Senior Strategist for Emerging Media DoD/DMA (@jack_holt). In this exclusive video interview, Jack shared a couple of annecdotes about the use of Social Media at the DoD.
There will be much more to come from the DoD in this field and one good place to watch it all unfold is in their official blog DODlive at http://www.dodlive.mil/.
The Association For Enterprise Integration (AFEI), a subsidiary of the
National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), held their first
conference on strategy, leadership and execution of organizational
transformation in Washington, DC on April 30-May 1. The
conference focused on the role of leadership in change, effective
strategies for managing both technical and organizational change,
building effective partnerships for managing transformation, and
assessment methods.
In this video, Dave Chesebrough, President of
AFEI, recaps the first day of the conference and previews day 2.
At the end of the conference, I caught up with Jack White, VP of Solutions Development for TechTeam Government Solutions and Conference Chairman to get his impressions about the two days.
The complete conference agenda and speaker list can be found here.
The entire Twitter stream can be found under hashtag #afeiCM09 or by
cliking here.
Ludo Van Vooren, a 15 years veteran of the industry, blogs about eBusiness, Social Media, Internet Marketing, and International Business Development.
