Social Media: Organizational Policy of Use

The social age has arrived!  Even if you try to stay away from social media, it’s unavoidable that others will do the same. Phrases like “friend me” for Facebook, or “follow me” for personal, industry and corporate blogs have become commonplace. “Liking” or rating your level of satisfaction or agreement with an article, a service, or a product became common practices embedded as part of our daily routine.  The latest we have heard about both private sector and government utilizing social media is Law Enforcement’s utilization of Facebook to deliver Amber Alerts and President Obama’s use of lingo from several social media sites during the latest State of Union address. Social media is unavoidable. Sooner or later we all will be there directly or indirectly.  Social media is emerging as a whole new frontier for the GIS community and the possibilities for outreach and community involvement are expanding rapidly.  Through technological advances organizations and companies are able to reach a larger and more diverse population, enabling new marketing strategies and creating new opportunities to involve their target audience and gain feedback. Technology is evolving quickly and the entire industry is seeing the benefits. The channels to enable an easy and effective way to share ideas, communicate, and discuss trends changed forever the speed and the ways things are done. Many of us have started conversations about social media and are arriving at the critical juncture that occurs with emerging technologies, “How do we use social media?” “What are the impacts of using social media (personal, professional, organizational, policy)?”.   While on the surface this may seem like a very straightforward question when you consider how social media sites work it can quickly become a more complicated discussion.   It becomes a discussion of not only how to use social media but in what ways as an organization, or a professional or even the average person should use it.  Social media in its very nature has a way of obscuring the fine line between a professional and private persona.  It is in the organizations best interest to clarify this line if possible to ensure that everyone understands clearly when using social media as part of an organization outreach if the response is of the individual or if it is part of that person’s professional responsibility.  This discussion is already being considered by many social media sites.  In January of 2011, the social media site Facebook altered its terms of use to become friendlier to governments in the hope to increase use by those public entities.  As social media sites continue to be used to reach out and communicate, organizational policies will become increasingly important. Bottom line it is that it’s recommended that organizations and companies have specific policies about the use of social media in an attempt to draw a more defined line between the persona and the professional that shares a comment, like or participate in social media forums. When is the individual no longer the professional and vice versa? Answering “the professional is the 8 to 5 individual” lately is not always considered to be accurate. The recommendation is that any policy of social media usage is better than no policy. What is your organizations policy in regard to social media?  Has one been discussed, if so do you know what it is?  Let us know by sharing your comments on our BLOG or LinkedIn groups.  Written by Claudia Paskauskas and Keith Smith

Day on the Job: GIS Analyst

Wesley Catanzaro is a cartographer and Geospacial Information System (GIS) Analyst for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He uses GIS technology to gather and organize information in order to improve pedestrian infrastructure. Part of ConnectEd's Day on the Job series, Wesley discusses his daily duties and the knowledge needed to be a Cartographer and GIS Analyst.

Welcome to the CFGIS Blog

Welcome to the CFGIS blog. If you are wondering what the CFGIS blog is and what type of topics we will be talking about then I have great news, I am going to tell you all about it.

First what is the CFGIS blog and why have we decided to bring it to you in a blog format? As you probably know CFGIS was created to coordinate, integrate and support the Central Florida GIS community. But why a blog?

In today's culture, social media is emerging as a great tool for professionals to come together and discuss issues and as technology continues to change, coordination and support becomes even more critical especially in the GIS community, we are creating this blog to facilitate conversations about technologies, management strategies, and articles that are important to the Central Florida GIS community.

The key piece of this blog is to facilitate conversations, we want your comments and input on the discussions. We want to create an environment for those in the CFGIS community to discuss topics and potentially assist one another, helping all of us improve through collaboration our individual programs and strengthen the overall GIS community. So don't be shy about contributing your experiences, knowledge, or concerns.

The second piece is the type of topics that the CFGIS blog will feature? The answer is simple, the blog will discuss all topics that relate to GIS and the CFGIS community. This blog is meant to be a living breathing creature, the amount of discussion generated around a particular topic will likely drive whether those types of topics continue to be brought forward for discussion or not.

In closing we hope that you find this blog to be meaningful and are very happy to be adding another great resource to our CFGIS community.