Entries Tagged 'government regulation' ↓

Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy

Underemployment: Obama’s dirty little secret

Even the best-qualified, highest-skilled, and hardest-working Americans are up against it these days. Yes, even those Americans who still have jobs! We all know that the official unemployment statistics are vastly understated, in that they focus only on claims for unemployment compensation. The stats do not properly account for older workers who have taken early retirement after losing a job; young workers who cannot enter the labor force; “discouraged workers” who are still looking for work, but whose unemployment benefits are exhausted; disabled persons who could work to a limited extent, but who aren’t being hired; and American citizens who have had to travel overseas, often at great sacrifice and financial loss, to find work.

But perhaps the biggest of the dirty little secrets hidden by the official unemployment statistics is underemployment. I know about this from personal experience. Despite all of my qualifications, I have not been able to find full-time employment in over two years. The reason? With all of the hidden ramifications of Obamacare looming over everyone’s heads, along with the other past and future attacks on private enterprise, nobody wants to hire full-time people at all if they can help it. Certainly nobody wants to hire someone over 55 for a full-time job where the employer will be forced to provide overpriced health insurance or be fined for not providing it. Some people may call it age discrimination, but it’s the government that is causing it, not the prejudices of private employers.

There’s no need to take my word for any of this. Look at any job board or want-ad listing and notice the proliferation of part-time, temporary, and contract assignments, and the relative absence of full-time jobs with benefits. For example, a retail store that would normally hire two or three full-time employees will instead hire five part-time employees for 15 to 30 hours per week, at minimum wage, perhaps with commissions, but no benefits. A recent Gallup Poll also reveals large-scale underemployment in the form of part-time workers who want, but cannot get, full-time employment.

The liberal elite wants it that way

Of course, the liberal establishment pretends not to know why unemployment remains so high. Case in point: NYT: Mystery for White House: Where did the jobs go? [H/T: Rodan]

That conundrum, which reclaims center stage in Washington this week, is this: Why is unemployment so high?

The whodunit has flummoxed economists in both parties for a year. In 2009, as the new Obama administration grappled with the financial crisis, joblessness rose nearly two points beyond customary recession forecasts.

Part of the uncertainty concerns why. More consequential now, as the administration and Congress determine what to do, is whether the unemployment spike reflects a short-term or permanent shift in demand for workers.

But seriously…

I have studied economics and I know this for certain: All they have to do is repeal Obozocare, resume drilling, seal the borders, and end the H-1b program, and unemployment will drop three points within a month. I guarantee it!

But none of that will happen until we somehow muster the political will to force our government to do that. Or until enough States secede and decide to govern themselves in the interest of their own citizens.

One way or another, we need to free ourselves from the predatory liberal elites who flout the will of the people and who serve only their own interests and those of our foreign enemies.

The Obama administration, together with the liberal establishment in academia, the mainstream media, the NGOs, the foundations, the Ivy League, and the UN, all have reason to want unemployment to remain high. Why? Because, though it may make the Obama administration look incompetent in the short run, as it did with FDR, it will create more dependency on the government and increase centralized government power in the long run.

Dependency, the Liberals’ Natural Resource explains how this nefarious system works:

A Heritage Foundation report shows that thanks to multiple government programs, the proportion of Americans in some way dependent on government largess has suddenly jumped by 31.2% since 2001 after decades of much slower increases. Even in inflation-adjusted dollars, America now spends thirteen times more on public welfare than it did in 1965. Dependency has snowballed in health care, public welfare, and housing, and the upward trend seems likely to continue as Obama’s statist polices take hold and baby boomers retire. Indeed, the president plans to spend some $10.3 trillion in welfare over the next decades. In a nutshell, Uncle Sam is replacing the family, the church, private charities, and all other non-government sources of assistance, and this means regular jobs for the new caregivers. And it feels good to work for Uncle Sam: Benefits included, the average federal workers in 2008 earned double what those in the private sector took home. So it is hardly unexpected that since about January 2008, some 7.9 million private sectors jobs have disappeared, while 590,000 public sector jobs were created — and this trend seems to be multiplying. It’s a thoroughly modern ménage à trois of dependent citizens, well-paid government employees ministering to them, and harried taxpayers footing the bill.

…

Here’s what makes this “new wealth” so attractive: In today’s uncertain economy, it far outshines the old wealth of building things and selling them at a profit. For one, jobs ministering to the dependent are labor-intensive and immune to mechanization. Government jobs are also wonderfully secure. It is inconceivable, for example, that a counselor working with Vietnamese gangs in Los Angeles will be replaced by an industrial robot or that under-employed social workers will also be asked to direct rush hour traffic to trim labor costs. This is not the cost-cutting-obsessed airlines where passengers make their own reservations, print boarding passes, stow their own luggage, and bring their own food. Nor can these interventions be outsourced to foreign competition. Helping the less fortunate has a permanent “Made in USA” label attached — Toyota has no interest in tackling the pathologies of those living in Detroit.

The supply of these jobs-generating assets is also inexhaustible. America will never, never run out of this newly discovered “wealth.” We may deplete our oil and ravage our forests, but what are the odds of drug addicts, the mentally ill, young unwed mothers, and others needing intervention vanishing? Those mired in pathology are a truly renewable natural resource. Social problems do recede, but rest assured, replacements are easily found (e.g., sex addiction). In a pinch, just open the borders and receive a bountiful fresh supply. And compare the ease of setting up an in-school clinic to mentor anorexic, non-English-speaking adolescent girls with low self-esteem versus building a factory. The former is instantly shovel-ready.

Read it all.

In other words, if the government stops the private sector from offering relatively secure, remunerative, full-time employment to American citizens, that will eventually leave the government as the only source of good jobs on American soil. This is how the federal government creates a new class of Soviet-style apparatchiki. Of course, those jobs ONLY go to those who actively support the regime and do their part to enhance the careers of those already in power, while keeping everyone else down.

Now what?

Our goal is to re-empower ourselves and our families, and decentralize and take back control over everything that has been usurped from us. That means we need to go on the attack to discredit the liberal establishment and all its pomps and all its works, anywhere and everywhere it appears.

We must overcome not only economic underemployment, but the underemployment of the human spirit.

To that end, please turn your attention to this excellent article: Read the rest of this excellent article at America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. [H/T: doriangrey]

… Consider: The ruling class denies its opponents’ legitimacy. Seldom does a Democratic official or member of the ruling class speak on public affairs without reiterating the litany of his class’s claim to authority, contrasting it with opponents who are either uninformed, stupid, racist, shills for business, violent, fundamentalist, or all of the above. They do this in the hope that opponents, hearing no other characterizations of themselves and no authoritative voice discrediting the ruling class, will be dispirited. For the country class seriously to contend for self-governance, the political party that represents it will have to discredit not just such patent frauds as ethanol mandates, the pretense that taxes can control “climate change,” and the outrage of banning God from public life. More important, such a serious party would have to attack the ruling class’s fundamental claims to its superior intellect and morality in ways that dispirit the target and hearten one’s own. The Democrats having set the rules of modern politics, opponents who want electoral success are obliged to follow them.

…

Reducing the taxes that most Americans resent requires eliminating the network of subsidies to millions of other Americans that these taxes finance, and eliminating the jobs of government employees who administer them. Eliminating that network is practical, if at all, if done simultaneously, both because subsidies are morally wrong and economically counterproductive, and because the country cannot afford the practice in general. The electorate is likely to cut off millions of government clients, high and low, only if its choice is between no economic privilege for anyone and ratifying government’s role as the arbiter of all our fortunes. The same goes for government grants to and contracts with so-called nonprofit institutions or non-governmental organizations. The case against all arrangements by which the government favors some groups of citizens is easier to make than that against any such arrangement. Without too much fuss, a few obviously burdensome bureaucracies, like the Department of Education, can be eliminated, while money can be cut off to partisan enterprises such as the National Endowments and public broadcasting. That sort of thing is as necessary to the American body politic as a weight reduction program is essential to restoring the health of any human body degraded by obesity and lack of exercise. Yet shedding fat is the easy part. Restoring atrophied muscles is harder. Reenabling the body to do elementary tasks takes yet more concentration.

The grandparents of today’s Americans (132 million in 1940) had opportunities to serve on 117,000 school boards. To exercise responsibilities comparable to their grandparents’, today’s 310 million Americans would have radically to decentralize the mere 15,000 districts into which public school children are now concentrated. They would have to take responsibility for curriculum and administration away from credentialed experts, and they would have to explain why they know better. This would involve a level of political articulation of the body politic far beyond voting in elections every two years.

If self-governance means anything, it means that those who exercise government power must depend on elections. The shorter the electoral leash, the likelier an official to have his chain yanked by voters, the more truly republican the government is. Yet to subject the modern administrative state’s agencies to electoral control would require ordinary citizens to take an interest in any number of technical matters. Law can require environmental regulators or insurance commissioners, or judges or auditors to be elected. But only citizens’ discernment and vigilance could make these officials good. Only citizens’ understanding of and commitment to law can possibly reverse the patent disregard for the Constitution and statutes that has permeated American life. Unfortunately, it is easier for anyone who dislikes a court’s or an official’s unlawful act to counter it with another unlawful one than to draw all parties back to the foundation of truth.

Read it all.

By 1389

How to stop the arrogance of power

A recent post on this blog, Is the US the last fortress standing? raised the issue of what peaceful means are available to get rid of a bad government in the US. At present, we do not have much recourse, other than to move toward state sovereignty and eventual secession.

But with a suitable Constitutional amendment, which we could put into effect as soon as we have the political will to do it, we could add one more effective tool for enforcing government accountability.

Senator Lindsey Graham is out of line

In the Blogmocracy comment thread, Signs of Sanity Surfacing in New York City, I became involved in the following conversation:

FurryOldGuyJeans wrote:

Sen. Graham: Tea party will die out

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said much of his work is “completely opposite” from the Tea Party and predicts the movement will “die out.”

“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham told The New York Times Magazine in a profile that will be published Sunday, The Hill reported Thursday.

1389AD wrote:

Lindsey Graham is a disgrace. He is also whistling past his own graveyard. The Tea Party movement is very strong in SC, and he’s accurately perceived as a sellout. I doubt that he’ll be elected again. Unfortunately, his term won’t be up for another four years.

FurryOldGuyJeans wrote:

There is always a recall election, if SC law allows for such.

1389AD wrote:

We don’t have that. Every state should have recall for ALL elected officials and, IMO, also for firing unelected bureaucrats, for nullifying unpopular laws, and for voting entire agencies out of existence. The same should apply to the federal government.

I do NOT believe in allowing plebiscites or ballot initiatives for the purpose of taking any “positive” action, such as enacting any new laws or regulations, or putting anybody into office, or spending any money. That leads to all kinds of problems with demagoguery and mob rule. Recall should work purely in the negative, as part of the checks and balances, as a restraint on reckless government action that does not enjoy the consent of the governed.

Why not term limits?

I do not think enacting more term limits will be the answer, and here is why:

• Term limits affect both the good and the bad, in effect throwing out the baby with the bath water.
• Term limits do not provide the voters with a mechanism for undoing the results of election fraud.
• Term limits allow a bad government to do too much damage before the term limits become effective.

As Glenn Beck points out, the body of four-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s was scarcely cold before the US enacted a Constitutional amendment limiting the Presidency to two terms. While I have no quarrel with that amendment, it fails to address our own predicament. By definition, term limits do nothing to stop a bad elected official from doing irreparable damage during his current term in office. Right now, we are looking at a situation in which we need to remove a bad president and many bad legislators as soon as we possibly can. We simply cannot afford to wait until 2012 for the president and 2014 for some senators who are actively flouting the expressed intent of their constituents, as though they do not expect our elections to matter any longer by the time their current terms expire.

Recall is an option we need

It’s time for American activists who respect the Constitution and the rule of law to begin a movement to enact an amendment to the US Constitution to allow recall elections to remove a president or any other federal official, and to allow any State to conduct a recall election to remove any of its US Senators or Representatives.

At the level of each State, we need the same thing, for removal of a bad governor, state legislator, or other state official. At this moment, the need for this at the federal level is priority number one.

As anyone with even the most rudimentary powers of observation and cognition already knows, the US federal “stimulus bill” has nothing to do with putting unemployed Americans back to work and nothing to do with rebuilding our lost industrial base.

It is all about expanding the scope of government control, at any cost.

The Stimulus Bill’s Hidden Attack On What We Eat, Drink, And Smoke

It’s on pages 66 and 67 on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created a $1 billion “Prevention and Wellness Fund.” Of that, $650 million went to Kathleen Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services and has been used to start a new program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” (CPPW).

Where does that giant pot of grant funding under the CPPW go? What it calls “MAPPS Interventions for Communities Putting Prevention to Work.” MAPPS stands for “Media, Access, Point of decision information, Price, and Social support/services.” In other words, strategies for changing our behavior, for social engineering on a large-scale, and, it seems, circumventing the normal democratic process. In a 14-page guidance for grant applicants, the CDC details tactics that grant applicants should include in their plans. It includes “counter-advertising” against targeted products, complete tobacco usage bans, limiting “unhealthy food availability” (the really bad stuff like “whole milk, sugar sweetened beverages, high-fat snacks”), and of course taxes (or in CDC lingo: “changing relative prices of healthy vs. unhealthy items”).

A supplemental document explains in more detail what the targets are, including restricting availability of soft drinks “in homes, schools, work sites, and communities.”

Oh, and by the way…since when has there ever been anything wrong with whole milk?

You heard it here first: America is headed toward a future that combines the worst of North Korea with the worst of shari’a law. Truly a fate worse than death.

What a tragic irony!

In case you haven’t heard, Satyam was the fourth-largest IT outsourcing company in India, with 55,000 employees (or so they claimed). The CEO, Ramalinga Raju, recently resigned after admitting massive financial fraud. As of this writing, the company is almost out of cash.

Here we go again…

Satyam has done business with companies and governments in over 60 countries, including the U.S. This scandal appears to be even larger in scope than the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal of late 2001. Price Waterhouse, the Indian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is facing close scrutiny over having signed off on Satyam’s audits.

Obviously, the much-touted Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after the Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle did nothing to prevent the recent collapse of the U.S. real estate, stock market, and financial sector. The take-home lesson is that once any corporation becomes multinational in scope, and politically well-connected, no laws, no regulations, no bureaucratic restructuring can possibly keep it honest if its management chooses to do otherwise.

Another reason why outsourcing is wrong

Outsourcing and offshoring are always and everywhere the enemies of accountability. The further away one’s trading partners are located, the harder it is to comprehend what they are up to, and that will never change.

Why corporate cheating is contagious

Whenever one major company in an industry has been “cooking the books” to promote or exaggerate its own success, what effect do you suppose that has? Think about it! Every other executive, every other company in that industry will be pressured to match or exceed the cheater’s inflated results, by fair means or foul, or face the wrath of board members and stockholders.

Some news links and other sources:

• Business Standard: Regulators, government tighten noose around Satyam
• Business Standard: Government supersedes Satyam board
• Wikipedia: Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
• NYT: Satyam Chief Admits Huge Fraud
• IHT: India hears calls for Satyam bailout
• IHT: Auditor in cross hairs over fraud at Satyam
• The Australian: Police arrest Satyam founder, Government sacks board
• Information Week Blog: Satyam And Its 8-Year Ban from World Bank
• Bloomberg.com: Satyam U.S. Investors File Actions Alleging Fraud (Update2)
• TheDeal.com: Enron went bankrupt, but what of Satyam’s future?

Perhaps some of this would be funny if it were not so sad.

Note: The screen capture was taken by 1389AD from www.satyam.com, shortly after the announcement. The pixelated area was blurred in the original.

That’s right: Air France to begin study of inflight cell phone use.

But don’t get too excited. The test will run for just six months, only within Europe, and only on the Airbus A-318. And the experience will be just as regimented and micromanaged as everything else having to do with air travel in the twenty-first century:

During the first three months of the study, passengers will be allowed only to send text messages and e-mails. But during the second three months (originally the study was scheduled to last a year), passengers will be allowed to make voice calls. According to Wi-Fi Net News, calls can only be made above 10,000 feet and depending on passenger feedback, cabin crew can disable the service at any time. As you may expect, the satellite calls will be $2.50 per minute. Also, passengers will not know they’re flying on the test aircraft until after they board.

Hmmm…wonder what would happen if a flight attendant were to overhear a passenger using a cell phone to complain to someone about the airline, the plane, or the flight crew?

Also see:

• Air France and OnAir launch World’s First In-Flight Mobile Phone Service on Board International Flights

• Cell phones on planes: Part three

  Since cell phone towers don’t reach thousands of feet into the air the cellular signals will be converted into satellite communications that will vault into space and then connect to a ground network.

• Computerworld: Why cell phones are still grounded

This just in (1/8/08):

How a backseat driver could bring terror to new Dreamliner

The technology used by the new generation of aircraft is now so advanced that aviation officials fear that terrorists could use it to fly the plane.>

Aviation regulators have refused to certify Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet until it redesigns its computer system to protect against such an event, The Times has learnt.

The Federal Aviation Authority is concerned that terrorists could use the Dreamliner’s in-flight internet system to connect to “systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the aircraft”.

In a report released last week, the FAA said that Boeing had left the pilots’ computers open to attack by connecting the Dreamliner’s entertainment system to the pilots’ controls.

A hacker with a computer and some IT training potentially could hijack the system from his seat.

Pipe Bomb Discovered at Palo Verde Nuclear Plant

The suspect was identified as a contract worker, but at that time, the suspect’s name was not released.

Bomb Mystery at Palo Verde

Ryan Randazzo and Allison Denny
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 3, 2007 12:00 AM

Sheriff’s detectives continue to investigate how a pipe bomb got into a contract worker’s pickup bed Friday, triggering a lockdown of Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and trapping thousands of employees there for about seven hours.

Roger W. Hurd, 61, of Hartsville, S.C., said he was unaware of a pipe bomb in his maroon Ford when he was stopped by Arizona Public Service Co. security officials at the entrance of the nation’s top-producing nuclear plant, sheriff’s officials said.

APS security did not find more explosives after an extensive search of the plant and its grounds, located about 50 miles west of downtown Phoenix, eventually lifting the lockdown at about 3 p.m., the utility said.

. . .

Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies found nothing connecting Hurd to the incident after a search of his Goodyear apartment, Arpaio said.

“We feel the person driving the truck, according to him and the investigation so far, didn’t have anything to do with it,” Arpaio said.

Hurd was not arrested but was held for questioning at the checkpoint before leading investigators to his apartment. Arpaio said he did not expect Hurd to face charges.

It does not appear Hurd is a terrorist, said Capt. Paul Chagolla, a sheriff’s spokesman.

“No nexus with terrorism is in our investigation at this point,” Chagolla said.

The upshot:

The contractor who drove the vehicle is not considered to be a suspect. The security worked well enough to keep the vehicle with the pipe bomb from approaching the nuke plant. But this shows how easy it is to plant an IED or other contraband in or on someone’s vehicle, either to discredit the owner of the vehicle, to boobytrap the vehicle, or to cause other harm that will be blamed on innocent parties.

In the interests of accuracy…

One of my pet peeves is the delivery of an announcement ruling out terrorism, even before investigators have any clue about the incident.

In this case, it would have been more accurate for the spokespeople to have acknowledged that Hurd is not a suspect, that they don’t have a suspect yet, and that it is too soon to rule in or out terrorism on the part of anyone else.

Why do news stories about security incidents tell us so little?

Why are suspects’ names and backgrounds so often omitted from the news when the incident involves national security? What is being kept from us?

Typical reasons:

• No real suspect has yet been identified: Something dangerous was found, but it’s too soon to say how it got there, or why. This appears to have been the case in this incident.
• Downplaying faulty or inadequate security procedures: There are doubts as to whether security procedures were properly designed and enforced, and nobody wants to look bad in the news.
• Political correctness: News media and the authorities typically keep identifying information away from the public whenever a suspect is from a predominantly Muslim country, or has a Muslim name–or when there is some evidence of terrorist ties or motives. It’s politically incorrect to talk about such things! As in the case with the Virginia Tech mass murderer, someone can be motivated at least in part by an interest in Islam or jihadism even if he or she is from a part of the world where few people have such associations.

Don’t let the public start asking about personnel policy…

Does the facility hire foreign workers under the H-1b visa program? This could explain an across-the-board policy decision to delay or avoid answering any questions about security incidents. In this day of mandatory “diversity” at all costs, the powers that be wouldn’t want taxpayers and voters to wonder about the obvious security risks inherent in allowing noncitizens to work in IT and engineering jobs at all, much less in a nuclear plant, of all places!

What about background checks?

For a US citizen, an employer can complete an ordinary pre-employment background check in less than a day. That’s fine for a person working as a cashier in a retail store, but that wouldn’t do for a nuke plant worker! A more thorough background investigation, such as that required for a security clearance, can take many months. The only reason that such an investigation can be completed at all is because, for a US citizen, information is available for verification from trusted sources in the US.

There is simply no way to verify such background information with regard to a foreigner with the same degree of completeness, promptness, and accuracy. Given the fact that we are at war, how can anybody possibly think that it is worth the risk to hire foreigners for jobs that allow any kind of access to American IT or engineering infrastructure?

For more government and media obfuscation and foot-dragging, see:

Goose Creek, SC Pipe Bomb Boys

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Last week, FHK took advantage of Techrigy’s offer to try its new SM2 beta.

SM2 was specifically developed to assist corporations track and record internal and external communications through blogs and wiki’s. Techrigy has worked extensively to develop software to help the enterprise monitor compliance with various laws and industry best practices in terms of proprietary information and protecting the company reputation.

The product, however, as Adam Steinberg (“Technology Evangelist“) demonstrated, has potential for managing any type of social media, and may also be useful to any public relations enterprise seeking to track information that is being disseminated via blogs and wikis.

The blogosphere is becoming one key tool in the election campaigns for presidential hopefuls such as Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, and Al Gore, and since 9/11, has been a venu for alternate political news on both sides of the political spectrum, such as Little Green Footballs, and the DailyKOS.

SM2 is a custom aggregator which can sort information from blogs and wikis on any particular topics using a combination of search criteria. A regular news aggregator will search for news based on a search term or list of terms. Techrigy, however, allows the client to use a combination of search commands like name, key campaign issues, privacy violations, and fund-raising. The searches can be set to alarm the client if key events (aka “violations”) occur, or can be done on a pre-scheduled time-table.

SM2 also monitors for liability or other confidential information leakage risks with automatic keyword searches designed to specifically target compliance issues. The keywords searched for are customizable and can be adapted to each company’s particular concerns.

It’s very user-friendly, and gives results in near real-time. Techrigy is offering free demonstrations of the new SM2 beta, and is requesting feedback about how the product can be developed to meet potential client needs. I encourage anyone who is involved in public relations in the blogosphere to take a look.

Also on FHK

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FHK members and staff had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Steinberg, a “Technology Evangelist,” with Techrigy at this week’s Monday-night conference. FHK’s WikiTek, AJ, led the interview, and Adam shared his knowledge and opinions of using wikis as a social networking tool online and in the enterprise, of the future of social networking, and of Techrigy’s exciting new SM2 product, a risk-management tool for social media, which is set to launch at the end of July.

The interview, conducted in chat-room format, has been edited by FHK for length, and clarity.

Social Networking and the Enterprise

FHK: OK…let’s start out with the biggie. We’re looking at a huge boom in social networking for personal use, and to some extent for small businesses. What’s the state of social networking in the enterprise, both within the enterprise, and for reaching out beyond it?

Adam: Well, I think it’s definitely still early for social networking in the enterprise. We’ve been seeing some early adopters, namely the IBM’s of the world. “Social networking” was certainly a buzz word at the Enterprise 2.0 conference a few weeks ago.

FHK: IBM has been using internal e-mail for decades, and extended it to their customers a long time back.

Adam: But, I still think a few F1000 companies think of MySpace when it comes to social networking, so I still think it’s about 12-18 months from hitting mainstream in the enterprise. But we’re certainly seeing action outside the enterprise. It’s certainly growing fast. LinkedIn is huge, of course, and we’re seeing Facebook really becoming a professional network as students graduate from college and enter the work force.

FHK: Is LinkedIn used mostly for recruitment or for other purposes as well?

Adam: Yes, recruitment, but also finding old connections, as I’ve used it, as well as looking for potential startup partners.

FHK: Such as sharing expertise?

Adam: Exactly, and for recommendations as well…However, it’s fallen behind Facebook, and they’ve just announced they’ll open up their platform, similar to what Facebook just did.

FHK: Why do you suppose that is?

Adam: I’d say they just became stagnant. They owned a niche of professionals until very recently, but Facebook is just innovating twice as fast as anyone else. As younger Facebook users migrate to the workplace, they aren’t going to leave their network behind.

FHK: Do you notice a phenomenon of people networking in one venue, and then moving on, en masse, to the next thing that looks more exciting?

Adam: Sure, as better technologies and networks come along; there is usually a cycle of early adopters and then rapid acceptance, as long as the technology is worth switching. I don’t think you see too many people switching from MySpace to Facebook. I think you see many people, when deciding which network to join, picking Facebook instead of MySpace, now, whereas two years ago, MySpace was the leader

FHK: Our impression is that MySpace is more for the entertainment world, especially music, and fans of specific bands.

Adam: I think you are right, especially now. Previously, Facebook limited its users to college students. They opened it up to anyone last year, and now we see high school students joining Facebook instead of MySpace. It’s really quite phenomenal.

FHK: Well, yes…there’s a prestige factor for HS kids to join with their college soon-to-be peers.

Adam: Yes, that’s certainly part of it

FHK: Where do you see Wikis fitting into the social networking trends: particularly specialized wikis, other than the 900-pound gorilla, Wikipedia itself?

Adam: I think wikis are really going to be huge in the next twelve months. We’re going to see wikis take off just as blogs have, especially within the enterprise. When we first started indexing wikis on WikiTag, we’d search for random keywords reflecting hobbies of ours, and we’d be amazed at the wiki communities that popped up. These were strong communities, with strong knowledge bases around the most obscure topics, so it really seems like there is something for everyone in the wiki world.

FHK: Examples?

Adam: Well, one of the most memorable is Wookieepedia.

FHK: Star Wars in general, or just Chewbacca?

Adam: From what I recall, it’s the complete star wars universe, which isn’t the most obscure interest in the world, but it’s amazing to see the number of users, and how devoted they are to these communities. These communities have existed for years.

Techrigy’s SM2

FHK: What about wikis for software support, wikis for systems support in an organization, customer service wikis…less exciting, perhaps, but more practical (maybe).

Adam: Those are really taking off as well, and I think they’re equally exciting. Just at Techrigy, we’re using multiple wikis with a staff of about 12 people. We’re seeing IBM’s of the world with thousands of wikis.

FHK: What do you think of opening up the support wikis to the customer base, to allow customers and clients to contribute their knowledge?

Adam: Oh I think it’s outstanding. Practically every medium to large size company uses wikis, or wants to use wikis. Its a perfect way to communicate and collaborate with customers.

FHK: What are the steps for getting started with a wiki in the corporate world?

Adam: Well, there are really a number of different platforms. SharePoint really seems to be taking off; they have a nice platform. There are other strong players as well – Socialtext, TWiki.

FHK: What do you think about Wikispaces?

Adam: Wikispaces is a great option as well – in fact, I just spoke with a manager from SourceForge today, who mentioned that they’ve integrated Wikispaces. Honestly, there are many great options. The harder part, sometimes, is convincing management to let employees use wikis and social media.

FHK: What are their objections?

Adam: Well, if hundreds or thousands of employees are using wikis or blogs, how do managers keep track of who is saying what in terms of the corporate image, correctness of information about company products and services, etc.? There are a lot of risks associated with letting thousands of people communicate, especially if the wiki is public and open to customers.

FHK: There are security issues to think about, too.

Adam: Sure, but beyond that: liabilities, defamation, Sarbanes-Oxley, the list goes on. It’s really email to the next level. That’s probably been the biggest obstacle to adoption, not so much technical, but just on an overall compliance level.

FHK: And that’s what your new product is designed to remedy?

Adam: Yes, SM2 is a risk management tool for social media.

FHK: What about the issue of how to get started…I don’t mean choice of platform, but of how to structure the project, how to structure the Wiki itself in terms of what to cover. Does your product address those issues as well…allowing the management to set the theme?

Adam: SM2 helps management know who’s using social media, what they’re saying, and if they are creating liabilities. It’s really a tool to help management become comfortable with these media, because people are going to use them whether management gives the okay or not. If the CEO says no, the employees will just blog from home.

FHK: Are there tools for validating information that is put into the wiki?

Adam: We actually don’t address this, as we aren’t part of the wiki or blogging package. We’re more of a monitoring layer on top of the content. I think that would be setup on the IT level, in accordance with company policy, etc., although we can do some monitoring to verify this.

FHK: What kind of reports does your software generate?

Adam: SM2 will provide real-time notifications of compliance violations. For instance, if you wanted to know anytime someone posted a SSN, or anytime someone used a curse word on the company wikis, or anytime someone blogging from home started bad-mouthing the company. There are an infinite number of rules that an organization can create within SM2, which does come loaded with a base set of policies.

FHK: What about making sure that valid customer complaints are being addressed?

Adam: Hmm, that’s an interesting angle we haven’t really thought about; we’ve been more concerned with compliance and risk-management, but that’s an interesting angle.

FHK: SM2…it covers more than Wikis then?

Adam: Yes, it does blogs, as well. Blogs are probably the bigger risk, especially away from the work place.

FHK: What you’re talking about, with the blogs, sounds more like organizational reputation management.

Adam: Yes, that’s almost exactly it. We do a few other things with compliance, namely record retention, but I think you hit the nail on the head.

FHK: What would you like our community to know about your SM2 product, Adam?

Adam: Really, we’re just hoping to help speed up the adoption process of these social media by addressing some of the concerns organizations have with these media…Not the right to control what people are saying, but to know what people are saying.

FHK: Would your software be helpful for political campaigns, activist groups, and the like?

Adam: Absolutely. How does a campaign manager know what people are saying in the blogosphere, particularly staffers?

FHK: Right now, they’re using Google Alerts, or something similar. Some of the liberal candidates have had embarrassing experiences with blogging misbehavior on the part of their staffers.

Adam: I was just thinking of that…SM2 would have been helpful in that situation.

FHK: What about chat room behavior that may be traced back to individuals?

Adam: SM2 doesn’t address that directly; I think there are other IM compliance packages that do address this behavior. IM is another huge risk for organizations.

What to do with Wikis

FHK: Adam, back to your experience in working with Wikis, Do you have suggestions for making wikis more searchable online?

Adam: Use WikiTag!

FHK: We have signed up for WikiTag, but tell us more about it for the benefit of our readers.

Adam: Well, WikiTag actually started out as just a side project, but we’ve seen a real need for it. We’re hoping to work with all of the wiki farms and start indexing their content, allowing users to tag those wikis, obviously, to make them more searchable. That combination of indexing and tagging would be a nice start. As I mentioned, there are so many small gems out there in the wiki community, that we really need a way for people to be able to find these wikis and connect with others.

FHK: How does a wiki organizer go about using WikiTag to tag their wiki?

Adam: Just go to http://www.wikitag.us/. Click o the “share a wiki” link, and then register your wiki. You can tag it with keywords describing that wiki as well; then, anyone will be able to search and find your wiki. If your wiki has already been registered, you can add additional keyword tags by doing the same process.

FHK: Do you tag specific pages within the wiki?

Adam: Right now, the technology doesn’t limit that, but we’re encouraging people to just tag the landing pages of each wiki so that people have a nice directory of wikis, and we don’t get overrun with thousands of redundant pages.

FHK: Do you think your policy management software could be applied by the Pentagon for milblogging-control purposes?

Adam: I definitely think so. It’s a perfect application for SM2, and it’s a shame that the military doesn’t allow our soldiers to communicate from abroad via social media. Certainly, there are security concerns, but hopefully a policy can be created that will address those, and maybe SM2 will even play a role.

FHK: Are you talking about potentially using the technology for security/surveillance?

Adam: Well, more for monitoring information flow.

Contacting Adam, and Techrigy

FHK: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know, Adam?

Adam: For those that might want to implement social media, particularly in an organization, I encourage you to head over to http://www.techrigy.com/ and check out our white papers – we have a nice library of information there about social media. I’ll also be glad to help anyone anyway I can – feel free to contact me at adam@techrigy.com

Also posted on the Ft. Hard Knox Blog.

Follow-up: Post on Adam’s new blog, Techrigy

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