SMILE

It was a great honor to speak at the 1st annual SMILE conference a little over a week ago in Washington DC. I was fortunate to meet a bunch of folks who I have met on Twitter, but had never met in person. I would also like to thank Lauri Stevens from ConnectedCops.net for organizing and running an excellent social media law enforcement conference. If you were unable to make it to the event here is a brief run down of Thursday 04/08/10 presentations.

The morning started off with Jack Holt from the DOD discussing how this organization is reacting to the changes in communication that is occurring via the internet. Social media networking sites, blogging, real time information and how the leaders at the DOD are dealing with this new media. The next set of presentations was a tag team effort by Chief Alexander of Boca Raton PD and his PIO Mark Economou. They discussed together “building a brand” as a law enforcement agency and how the Boca PD is adapting to the new media change. It was definitely enlightening to hear how their department has adapted to the new media changes. One specific example is how they only distribute press releases via Twitter or Facebook. They have conditioned the “media” to adapt as well and there has to be some satisfaction on being able to better control your communications plan. The morning came to an end with my presentation on podcasting. This was a 101 level presentation to explain what “podcasting” is and how easy it is to actually do. Podcasting is a digital media file (audio or vide) that can be subscribed to, but ultimately is downloaded from the web. A podcast is extremely easy to share because it ends up as a URL, which can be Tweeted, sent out as a status update, or emailed, etc. Mike Bostic, former LAPD Deputy Chief with Raytheon and Matthew Le Veque of the Rogers Group discussed social media and systems integration, which frankly is mind blowing. Sgt Tim Burrows from the Toronoto PD had a great chat about maximizing social media results with the minimal tools at hand, ain’t that the truth. The most interesting, yet scary presentation was from Peter Berghammer who discussed “hacking” attacks and how to deal with them. The day wrapped up with our European friends Mike Alderson, Marga van Rijssel, and Gordon Scobbie all discussing various efforts they are making in social media across the pond.

The evening “town hall” style conversation MC’d by Mark Economou (excellent job) was a fantastic conversation regarding social media in law enforcement and social media and national security issues. Thought such as, “what happens if power goes down, cell tower connectivity goes down, or you are hacked beyond immediate repair, huh? These questions are tough to answer and as Jack Holt eloquently stated “we have a of a lot of duplicate technologies, but not a lot of resilient technologies.” Social media and new media are changing the way people become informed so much so that in the near future you will probably see law enforcement officers wearing camera’s as part of their normal duty gear to protect against altered video from a citizen. Scary, but reality. MV

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