David Armano has been building out an argument for the role of a “community architect” at his Logic + Emotion blog. BusinessWeek has given him a chance to speak to a more general audience this week, and many of Armano’s clear and informative graphics accompany the piece.

The image above is taken from a presentation, Emerging Media’s Impact on the Customer Experience, that Armano prepared for a MarketingProfs webinar last week.

Bob Glaza posted some observations after participating in the webinar:

“The obvious - and foremost - thing for us to remember is we serve people. Whatever our vocation, calling, job, gig - call it what you will - if we are not putting people first - it won’t work. We might call them customer, consumers, readers…but cut to the chase…and its people. And people want good experiences. Part of a good experience is good design. In order to help create good experiences, we need to be good designers. Design is not about making something look good - thought that is part of it - but its more about creating an experience that is pleasurable. “

While Glaza was referring to marketers and more consumer-oriented marketers, his comments apply equally well to the role of government communicators.

As well, Armano’s emphasis on conversation architects, instead of conversation managers, points to a weakness of many of the plans developed by government communicators: a belief that we can manage a conversation at all. Or even manage the environment around messaging and interaction with our stakeholders.

As I’m finishing this post, I’ve realized that Armano’s The End of Thought of Leadership, posted today, provides a perfect capstone to this observation:

“In the conversation economy, dialogue rules. Monologue, and rehearsed presentations play second fiddle. An academic or corporate pedigree is nice—but really doesn’t matter. If you have something valuable to say and you are willing to listen, share and participate—then you have the opportunity to “submit” your ideas and be heard.

These are the new rules of the conversation age, or economy or whatever you want to call it. This is why, if you have adverse reactions when you hear strange words like “blogging” or “twittering”—then you are a fool. I’m sorry but it’s true. I’m not saying that we should all jump on the bandwagon of the latest buzzword or technology that gets thrown out there. I’m actually saying the opposite. We need to investigate the latest tools to the best of our abilities and decide how they impact our own worlds. The blogging movement was never about blogging in the first place—it’s about a new way to share, connect, collaborate, discuss, debate, and ideate.” (Logic + Emotion)

Government communicators have a lot of experience in playing within the ” traditional thought leadership model”: the model that emphasizes formal relationships, detailed policy documents and carefully choreographed private and public dialogues.

Our challenge is to learn how to play within both this traditional model and as participants in a newer, looser, more reactive online environment.

We’re no longer the refs in the conversation game: we’re not even linesmen. We either learn how to dribble, pass, lateral or shoot - or we go home.

Stakeholder relations. Consultations. Public outreach. Town hall meetings. There are countless ways that government organizations claim they are building a dialogue with their citizens and partners. With the growth of online tools and communities, though, the opportunities for contact and feedback have exploded.

The tech community has recognized the challenge this poses to the normal pattern of interaction with customers/clients/citizens. Many of these companies are exploring the idea of a “community manager” to help their organization build effective relationships with these groups.

This is a concept and role that will become vitally important to government communicators (and others) as we grapple with the same changes in our relationship with our citizens and partners. I hope to discuss the implications, the application, and the complications of this technological and societal change in future posts.

For the moment, I’d like to point to several resources that help introduce the role of community manager:

• Jeremiah Owyang’s discussion of the “Customer/Community + Evangelist/Advocate/Manager/Guy/Girl“
• Tara Hunt’s presentation on community marketing at ETech. (make sure to view the slideshow)
• Jake McKee’s Customer Interaction Manifesto.
• Christopher Salazar’s “Who can be a community evangelist.”

One recurring theme to note in all of these materials:

Sometimes, a community manager must push against institutional lethargy, traditionalist obstinance or stubborn pig-headedness in the name of the client/customer/citizen.

It’s often hard to find training and development materials designed for government communicators and available on the web. By that, I mean free. Or low-cost. There are plenty of products and events produced for the public sector, but at quite a cost. $2500 conferences. $250 webinars. $80 photocopied packages of award-winning cases.

The breadth of public relations material and debate available online certainly helps, but these materials often need to be customized to fit the particular qualities of our working environment. Clearly, we’re professional communicators, public relations specialists, and marketers, but our workload often demands competence in a variety of specialized skills.

Corporate social responsibility? Seems awfully familiar to people working on accountability and stewardship files. Community relations? That’s well-trodden ground for municipal flacks working on zoning disputes. Crisis Communications? Try working for a police department, transportation investigation board or the armed forces. Community building? Try talking to some communicators who specialize in public health issues.

That’s why my RSS subscriptions dig into a number of blogs with specialized topics. One group with particular relevance to government PR are community and issues activists: putting all issue-specific quarrels aside (please?), both activists and government communicators honestly want to encourage a two-way conversation on issues important to society.

And, frankly, it seems that these groups and their sponsors are preparing more material and making it available online. Like the latest report from the Communications Leadership Institute.

Discovering the Activation Point, as Green Media Toolshed explains, helps groups find the point where constituents, members and supporters will actually take action in support of an issue. A sample:

• What are you trying to persuade people to do?
• What is the smallest number of people you need to activate to get what
you want?
• How can they be persuaded?
• How many audience segments do they break into?
• Do they bring others with them (i.e., are they a social reference group)?
• How can you test your requested action to make sure it will compel
your audience target?

The report is available after a free registration, and is well worth the download.

Coming off the interactive sessions at SXSW and Community 2.0, Lee LeFever highlights some of the best points made about building online communities. The two extracts that follow will resonate with government communicators considering how to integrate (or expand) their community and stakeholder outreach to include online communities.

 ”Don’t start with technology: This is true with almost any web site. Keep the technology options open while you define what you’re trying to accomplish with the community. Talk to future members, understand their goals, figure out what goals your site will accomplish and then how you can use technology and features to facilitate the accomplishment of those goals.”

 ”Know your pain threshold: Organizations are often not used to seeing negative comments from customers on their web site. In online communities this is inevitable. Your organization will have to learn your level of tolerance for negativity and criticism (each one will be different). In many cases, it is a bad idea to remove critical or negative comments (unless they violate the terms). Often, negative comments will be balanced by the community itself who can become stronger through building consensus and debate.”

That last point will be the most difficult for government communicators: how do you take an effective measure of the pain threshold in our context? It differs from organization to organization, and bureaucratic sensitivity differs greatly from political sensitivity.