Potomac Forum, Ltd. – The Forum of Choice for Government & Industry Since 1982 ^TM

June 22 -23, 2010

On-site  Registrations at the City  Club will be accepted.

Please register between 7:30 - 8:30 am.

 New Special Reduced Registratoin Fees for Social Media/Web Symposia

  As of June 9th, Potomac Forum Social Media/Web Symposia Registration fees have been further reduced in support of the Administration's Focus on Reduced Federal Spending.  Please see the new lower fees under "Registration Fees"  (below).

  
 

Symposium Description

Building Better Government Websites:

Tactics and Methods for Better Content, Compliance, and Strategy Training Symposium 
Creating processes  to improvecontent, strategy and compliance to accomplish Open Government and Agency Mission Objectives

This series was rated EXCELLENT by past attendees.

A continuing education training symposium focused on content, compliance and findability for federal executives, managers and employees who supervise, create and maintain or review government websites or web content .

Information on government websites must be "findable", relevant and compliant with federal mandates. These converging requirements require reanalyzing of both process and strategy to manage and govern website content as well as improving strategy around the website content.

This symposium will help CXOs and their staff, Web managers, Communications, IT, program managers and Inspector Generals responsible for supervising, developing, maintaining or reviewing Web sites or content understand how to manage the expanding roles of websites in government and at the same time create  more effective agency websites.

Keynote:

Our keynote speaker Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian, has been heralded as a visionary for the future of government websites. He will talk about the Smithsonian's radically transparent strategy process and how they used social media tools consider new ways of thinking about audience, authority, and mission. Michael is then combining the President's goal of improving collaboration and participation with the public while creating a improved website strategy for the Smithsonian.

Special Guest:

Vanessa Fox is a leading search expert, currently looking at ways the Federal government can make data more easily accessible to the American people through search engines.  She will discuss how search has changed audience behavior and top ways to evaluate your site and improve its findability in search engines. In particular, she'll focus on how search data can help you understand your visitors and ensure your website provides for their needs.   Vanessa, is known for creating Google Webmaster central and was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search.  You can find some of her recent articles about this topic at: http://radar.oreilly.com/vanessa/

Major Topics

• Creating Web Development and Information Strategy
• Creating Relevant Web Content for your audience
• Doing a ROT analysis (Redundant, Outdated, Trivial content) to improve your site
• Understanding the impact of search on your sites usability and findability (from Vanessa Fox, the creator of Google Webmaster Tools)
• Ensuring your site is compliant with federal mandates
• Managing and creating collaborative teams to creative effective websites and content quickly.
• Managing and evaluating content creation
• What makes for an award winning government website. (From the team winning WMA's Best Government Website Award)

What You Will Learn

• How government agencies are implementing user centric or citizen centric approaches to web design and development.
• How to plan and execute a ROT analysis to improve usability and effectiveness of your website.
• How to implement processes to ensure compliance with federal mandates.
• How to to create collaborative teams for more effective web development and governance.
• How search engines view your website and how viewers use search.
• Describe how web policies can be leveraged to successfully manage content and prevent risk of occurring.
  Define how to implement controls that can detect content issues and and set off triggers for escalation and resolution.
• Describe corrective controls that can appropriately solve content management issues.
  

Why You Should Attend

If you supervise, create and maintain or review government websites or web content and will be required to meet new objectives or publish more content and there is an expectation that the website improvement in usability, governance, content management and accomplishing agency or open government goals.

Who Should Attend

Format

• Presentations, panel discussion, and collaboration with attendees and speakers

Agenda

Speakers

Keynote Speaker:

Michael Edson
Director, Web and New Media Strategy
Smithsonian Institution

Michael Edson is the Smithsonian Institution’s Director of Web and New Media Strategy. Michael has worked on numerous award-winning projects and has been involved in practically every aspect of technology and New Media for museums, including content development, digitization, blogging, gaming, public access to collections, information architecture, networking, place-of-business applications, programming, project management, graphic design, animation, audio and video production, mobile platforms, and citizen-created content. helped create the Smithsonian’s first blog, Eye Level, and the first Alternate Reality Game to take place in a museum, Ghost of a Chance. Michael has a BA from Wesleyan University.

Guest Speakers:

Noreen Costello
Web Manager
Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) 

Noreen Costello is a content manager for the Defense Information Systems
Agency's award-winning websites.

DISA's primary public Web site, DISA.mil, and the agency's BRAC
Information Portal were recipients of
the 2009 Web Marketing Association's WebAwards "Best Military Web Site"
and "Best Government Web Site," and both sites were recognized
with Gold Screen awards from the National Association of Government
Communicators.

As a senior member of DISA's Web Team, Noreen focuses on
delivering plain-language, user-focused content for DISA's public,
controlled access, and classified websites as well as for internal Web
communication products. Noreen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in
marketing and a Master of Science degree in public policy.

Instructors:

Vanessa Fox
Co-Founder of Jane and Roboet and Creator of Google Webmaster Tools.

Co-founder at Jane And Robot Founder at Nine By Blue Features Editor at Search Engine Land, Vanessa Fox is a leading search expert, currently looking at ways the Federal government can make data more easily accessible to the American people through search engines. You can find some of her recent articles about this topic here: http://radar.oreilly.com/vanessa/Vanessa is known for creating Google Webmaster central and being instrumental in the sitemaps. org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search.
Vanessa shares her perspective on how search impacts marketing and user experience at ninebyblue.comand provides authoritative searchfriendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners, Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and host of the weekly podcast Office Hours. Vanessa speaks regularly at conferences and corporate events and is a prolific writer. Her upcoming book, Marketing In The Age Of Google, will be published by Wiley in early 2010. She was recently named one of Seattle’s 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs.
Vanessa Fox will discuss how search has changed audience behavior and top ways to evaluate your site and improve its findability in search engines. In particular, she’ll focus on how search data can help you understand your visitors and ensure your website provides for their needs.
Contact: VanessaFox@ninebyblue.com

Kristina Podnar is an information management consultant with over eleven years experience helping organizations achieve their content management and portal solution goals. Her experience spans the government, private, and non-profit sectors, as a government employee, management consultant, and entrepreneur.

Kristina is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), with expertise in large-scale cost and time-constrained systems deployments, and the strong ability to support multiple simultaneous projects with strict attention to detail. She was employed in the intelligence community prior to commencing her client work with agencies including the F.B.I., U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. General Services Administration, to private sector clients Delta Dental, BEA (now Oracle), and Fannie Mae, as well as to associations and non-profit organizations American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), St. Jude’s Hospital, CARE International, and PBS.

Delia Konizeski is a Web analyst at WelchmanPierpoint. She conducts behind-the-scenes discovery and analyses of Web operations, tools and processes. Delia also educates current and prospective clients about the growing practice of Web operations management—in addition to helping draft and roll out Web policy and standards.

Armed with a comprehensive knowledge of how successful Web operations work, Delia specializes in crafting Web policy and standards that help Web teams function more effectively. Her clients include the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Maryland Medical Center, Fordham Law School and Delta Dental of Virginia.

Prior to joining WelchmanPierpoint in 2007, Delia managed large internet and intranet sites in the private and non-profit sectors. Her experience working as a Web manager for higher education and health care sites taught her the complexities of managing large-scale Web properties.

As a result, Delia knows first-hand the types of challenges—like internal politics and lack of content ownership—that clients face. And she knows how to help resolve those issues.

In 2006, Delia launched the Healthcare Web Developers’ electronic mailing list to encourage collaboration among health care professionals in the U.S. and Canada. Under her leadership, the list grew into a thriving online community.

Delia holds a BS in Mass Communication from Towson University.

Merry Bruns is a nationally recognized content strategist and leading Web Writing trainer who focuses on customer-centered content, and strategic web writing and editing skills.

Merry has taught her internationally recognized "Writing and Editing for the Web" classes to hundreds of students worldwide since 1997. She holds open classes at the National Press Club in Washington DC, and provides in-house training to organizations and businesses, customized around their content and goals.

Producing and editing web sites since 1994, she brings a background in communications, media and journalism to her work. As principal of ScienceSites Communications (http://www.sciencesitescom.com), she has produced, and edited sites for numerous business, government, educational, and science organization clients.

Her clients for content strategy and training have included Accenture, National Academy of Sciences, BBC London, Porter-Novelli, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Towers-Perrin, Westat, First Coast Service Options, American Chemical Society, the World Bank, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Georgetown University, American Petroleum Institute, Textron, EPA, Jackson Laboratories, Seton Hall University, Harvard Medical School, and many more.

She''''s frequently published and often interviewed about content strategy and web writing issues, and has been an invited speaker and trainer at web conferences, meetings and events nationwide.

Originally from New York City, she now lives in Washington DC.

Registration

 

Note: On-site  Registrations at the City  Club will be accepted.
Please register between 7:30 - 8:30 am.

New Lower Fees: Reduced Symposium Fee in Support of the Administration's Goal to Reduce Federal Spending:  
Government: $995 
Special Government Reduced Registration : $495 
Industry : $1095       
Special Industry Registration:  $595 

Includes Continental Breakfast, Presentations, Refreshment Breaks, and Luncheon

Please Note:
Potomac Forum Workshops and Symposia are 100% Educational Events. The Training is NOT supported to Advertisers or Sponsors. Other "events" tell you what Sponsors or Advertisers Want you to Hear - Potomac Forum Workshops inform you on what you need to know to do your job!  We have over 27 years of providing high quality training to the Government.

Cancellation Policy

Confirmed registrations who cancel within 3 business days of the program will be subject to a $250 cancellation fee. Registrations cancelled after the program starts are subject to the full registration fee. Substitutions can be made at any time. In the event a particular training workshop is cancelled, the liability of Potomac Forum, Ltd is limited to refund of any prepaid registration fee.

Meeting Location

City Club of Washington at Columbia Square
555 13th Street N.W.
Washington D.C. 20004
202-347-0818