Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. Its etymology can be traced to the unlicensed nature of the transmission, but historically there has been occasional but notable use of sea vessels – fitting the most common perception of a pirate – as broadcasting bases. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation. Rules and regulations vary widely from country to country. In countries such as the US and many countries in Europe, many types of radio licenses exist, and often the term pirate radio generally describes the unlicensed broadcast of FM radio, AM radio, or short wave signals over a wide range.

In some cases radio stations are deemed legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially when the signals cross a national boundary. In other cases, a broadcast may be considered “pirate” due to the nature of its content, its transmission format (especially a failure to transmit a station identification according to regulations), or the transmit power (wattage) of the station, even if the transmission is not technically illegal (such as a web cast or an amateur radio transmission). Pirate radio stations are sometimes called bootleg stations (a term especially associated with two-way radio), clandestine stations (associated with heavily politically motivated operations) or Free Radio stations.

Doug French has an interesting opinion on the the matter, “While totalitarian governments seek to stifle the human spirit and initiative, there are always brave souls who either pierce or work around the walls that governments erect. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, highlighted by Jeffrey Tucker’s recent blog post, works on behalf of your rights in the digital world and has created Tor, making it possible for people to browse the Internet without being detected by government busybodies. Tor depends upon volunteer servers to provide proxy routes to shield thousands of users a day from detection.

Mises.org is one of these volunteer servers, helping to, as Tucker explains, “spread information, which might be the most important defense against despotism that the world has today.”

This heroic struggle in the digital world is reminiscent of the fights over the radio waves in the mid-1960s depicted by the recent movie Pirate Radio (a pared-down version of the British theatrical release The Boat That Rocked). The movie has received spotty reviews at best, with complaints of thin character development, excessive length, and the fact that many of the songs in the soundtrack were actually released after the period portrayed. But these are niggling complaints about a movie with an amazing ensemble cast including Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Emma Thompson, incredible soundtrack, and inspiring storyline.

Of course, the movie leads one to believe that the battle with the British authorities was all about on-air content, with Kenneth Branagh portraying obsessed tight-assed Tory government minister Sir Alistair Dormandy, who promises his fellow ministers he will stop the “drug takers, lawbreakers, and bottom-bashing fornicators.” Dormandy dispatches his smarmy sycophant underlings to devise a way to shut down the raucous rock ‘n’ rollers who broadcast from international waters — offshore in a rusted converted cargo ship — to millions of adoring fans in the UK.

The boat’s captain and radio-station boss Quentin, played by Bill Nighy, is a walk-the-talk libertarian defying the authorities all the while trying to keep his stable of misfit DJs in line in order just to stay in business, reminding the crew that governments everywhere and always are against freedom. Each time the government thinks it has forced him off the air, Quentin comes up with a clever solution to skirt the authorities — until, that is, the passage of the Marine Offenses Act.

However, the real reason for pirate radio had more to do with the BBC being the only licensed broadcaster in the UK; it was restricted by union agreements as to how much recorded music could be played on the air. In response to the radio pirates, the British government did introduce a law to prohibit unlicensed broadcasting from offshore transmitters, but it didn’t ban rock ‘n’ roll.

As it turns out, famed radio pirate Radio Caroline played as much Sinatra as British Invasion pop, and according to Slate, the programming actually tended “toward the middle of the road.”

British state-owned radio “struggled to satisfy the broad and changing tastes of the nation’s listeners,” writes Eric Hynes.

Into the void steamed pirate radio, bringing with it not only more choice, but also sponsored shows and slick advertisements. Pirate radio proved that markets were neither being served nor exploited by the BBC, a bad-for-business reality that even buttoned-up Britain had to acknowledge.

So the real story is about the government allowing radio stations to sell advertising and earn profits. Ultimately, the on-air pirates forced the BBC to expand its offering and soon commercial radio was legalized.

Hynes believes that writer-director Richard Curtis was wise to focus on the “fight for the right to party instead of the fight for the right to sell adverts.” But the fight against a government monopoly and edict that stifle commerce and keep consumers from consuming the media they desire is a story worth telling and championing. Consumer choice drives innovation and human progress. As Ludwig von Mises emphasized, it is consumers that “decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality,” whether it’s Beethoven, the Beatles, or some of both.”

RSA, The Security Division of EMC Corporation, is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States, and maintains offices in Australia, Ireland, Israel, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India, China, Hong Kong and Japan.

RSA organizes the annual RSA Conference. RSA’s well-known products include the RSA BSAFE cryptography libraries and the SecurID authentication token.

RSA was named after the RSA public key cryptography algorithm, which was in turn named after the initials of its co-inventors: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman.

Alan Shimel has some interesting comments about recent RSA happenings, “I was speaking to Adrian Lane of Securosis last night about the comment I made on their blog last week. I said, “does anyone expect to see a real live demo on the floor of RSA?”

“Securosis is an information security research and advisory firm dedicated to transparency, objectivity, and quality. We are totally obsessed with improving the practice of information security. Our job is to save you money and help you do your job better and faster. We’re here to cut through the noise and provide clear, actionable, pragmatic advice on securing your organization.”

Is there anything beyond the great bag you get when registering? Yeah, it sure is pocked full of paper, chatchkes, and CDs. Does anyone read that stuff? Do you? What is the real value of RSA to you?

The RSA show is a great event. It truly is where the security industry gathers. But does anyone actually look at demos on the floor anymore. Are we just so used to seeing paid magicians, booth babes (yeah they are here in force this year) and canned power points. Do we really want to see products working here? Hell I am not sure we really see if products are working when we buy them even.

But does that mean RSA is without value? Of course not. It is a great networking event and business development orgy. On top of that, if you don’t show up here people ask why. Did they not have enough money for a booth? Are there other problems there? Many companies spend their precious marketing dollars on the booths, the giveaways and all that is involved in bringing a team here for the show. But would they be better off keeping their powder dry?

The answer is you have to understand what are your goals for attending RSA. Based upon that you need to then figure out what resources are going to be required to achieve those goals. If lead generation is what you are after, frankly there may be more efficient ways of filling the funnel with leads. If branding and “being seen” are goals, there is not a better venue. If channel and partnerships, M&A and business development are on the agenda, RSA may very well be nirvana.

But if you have not figured out what is important before you jump in here, you are probably wasting money and time. I see and unfortunately have been involved with companies that didn’t learn this lesson. Bringing down bloated amounts of personnel, signing up for a booth beyond their means and needs, just screams mismatch between goals, resources and methods. Don’t make that mistake. Dig in beyond the bag at RSA.”

“A widget is a stand-alone application that can be embedded into third party sites by any user on a page where they have rights of authorship (eg. a webpage, blog, or profile on a social media site). Widgets are fun, engaging, and useful applications that allow users to turn personal content into dynamic web apps that can be shared on just about any website. For example, a “Weather Report Widget” could report today’s weather by accessing data from the Weather Channel, it could even be sponsored by the Weather Channel. Should you want to put that widget on your own Facebook profile, you could do this by copying and pasting the embed code into your profile on Facebook.

Embeddable chunks of code have existed since the early development of the World Wide Web. Web developers have long sought and used third party code chunks in their pages. Early web widgets provided functions such as link counters and advertising banners.”

Peter Kim writes, “Remember widgets? In the early days of corporate social media (i.e. 2005 – 2006), widgets were all the rage. They were light and viral; the minimal effort to support them post-lauch made them more attractive to brands than blogs or podcasts.

Fast forward a couple years and I was speaking with Bob Garfield of Ad Age about widgets. This is the piece of mind that I gave him about widgets, which he published in the weekly and I think in his book:

“When you can combine utility with the purpose of your brand, that’s the opposite of why people hate marketing. Instead of fooling them with the old brand-marketing song and dance, it’s not a promise; it’s a reality: ‘This is what the traffic is like. This is what the weather is. This is what the stock market is right now.”

Fast forward another couple years and I’m listening to Tim Duggan of Mercury Girl speaking about mobile applications. Suddenly everything old is new again; the factors that will make brands’ mobile applications successful are the same principles that made a good old widget: utility, functionality, value.

If you’ve been trying to figure out how to think about the new world of applications, look back at your resources on widgets and run a find-and-replace…it might get you up to speed sooner than you imagined.”

Now there are widgets to keep you updated on widget updates, “Widget Update is a free Dashboard Widget that can automatically check for updates to the all the other widgets that you have installed. It supports Apple’s software directory, DashboardWidgets.com, MacUpdate and Version Tracker. It will present you with a tidy link list of all the updates found, enabling you to read release-notes and download the the updates quickly and painlessly.

If you find Widget Update useful, you may also want to check out its sister-widget, App Update.”

Laser Show and “Big Ideas” Kick-off
2010 Cambridge Science Festival
April 24 through May 2

Cambridge, MA: An extraordinary laser show specially commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser will officially launch the 4th annual Cambridge Science Festival on Saturday, April 24th at noon at the newly renovated Cambridge Public Library. Hundreds of events, almost all of them free, will follow over the course of the nine-day festival.

“What better place to celebrate all things scientific than right here in Cambridge, home to many of the greatest scientists and engineers in the world,” said festival founder and MIT Museum director John Durant. “No place else on Earth has the concentration of superstar researchers, science & math-based companies and big ideas. The Cambridge Science Festival is a way for the whole community to get involved with the globally significant work going on all around us. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!”

Inspired by art, music and film festivals, the Cambridge Science Festival is a multifaceted, multicultural event that promises to make science accessible and engaging, highlighting the impact of science and technology in our day-to-day lives and beyond. Its offerings include adult only debates, presentations and receptions, as well as family focused activities and teen events including a video contest. Last year’s festival attracted more than 30,000 visitors to its workshops, demonstrations, behind-the-scenes tours, talks, performances, film screenings, and more. For the full schedule of events, visit

http://www.cambridgesciencefestival.org

The festival is a collaboration among MIT, Harvard, the City of Cambridge, WGBH, and the Museum of Science, Boston.

Generous sponsors include MIT, the National Science Foundation, the City of Cambridge, Pfizer, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Biogen Idec Foundation, Microsoft, MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program, Amgen, Harvard University, Vertex, Alnylam, BioMed Realty Trust, Cambridge Community Foundation, Draper Labs, Google, IBM, MathWorks, Novartis, Analog Devices and CDM.

For additional information, photos, or to arrange an interview contact Nilagia McCoy at nilagia@gmail.com, or 805.705.6713.

Raoul Sevier, Information Architect with the Executive Office of Health and Human Services recently explained a little bit about what he has been doing lately.

“During the early part of the lifecycle of every web application software project, choices are made regarding the operating platform for the solution, and where to deploy the platform. Operating platforms include operating system choices such as Windows and Linux. Platforms also include hardware platforms such as Intel x86, and others.

What to deploy

Operating system and hardware choices can be driven by vendor-supplied software requirements, or by software architecture choices by projects. Increasingly, organizational consolidation and optimization of procurement and support drives projects to select from a smaller, and more manageable set of choices. Many of the newer, web applications for the Commonwealth are deployed on MS Windows, or Red Hat Linux, running on Intel x86-based server hardware.

Where to deploy

The other key technology design choice defines where the project solution will be deployed. Historically, server deployments were close to the user community to minimize network latency. Increasingly, and especially with web applications, improvements in network bandwidth are allowing server-side processing to take place further from the user communities than ever before.

The same forces that are leading to making ‘Cloud Computing’ a practical reality are being felt within the Commonwealth. Upgrades to individual site network are delivering more bandwidth, and in many cases the network capacity crosses the ‘tipping point’ where the repositioning of application servers to a more distant location has a negligible impact on user interaction performance. This allows deployment of servers in fewer, comprehensively managed data centers, rather than many computer rooms.

Cloud computing is a way of computing, via the Internet, that broadly shares computer resources instead of using software or storage on a local computer. Cloud computing is an outgrowth of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet.

In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer have need of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.

How to deploy

There is a new synergy that now becomes apparent: when you standardize your operating platforms, leverage network bandwidth, and put all the servers together in one place, ‘Virtualization’ technologies can significantly improve IT efficiency and performance. Virtualization technology allows lightly-used physical servers to be consolidated into the same number of virtual servers running on a smaller number of physical servers.

The result is better use of computing resources, more efficient procurements, and consolidated infrastructure support. More importantly, the result is also web applications that deliver more consistent and high-caliber support to our employees, partners, and citizen

Antibodies are normally produced in response to a foreign protein or substance within the body, typically a pathogen, which is a infectious organism. Normally, the immune system is able to recognize and ignore the body’s own cells and to not overreact to non-threatening substances in the environment, such as foods. Sometimes, however, the immune system ceases to recognize one or more of the body’s normal constituents as “self,” leading to production of autoantibodies.

According to the Harvard Mesothelioma blog, “These autoantibodies attack the body’s own cells, tissues, and/or organs, causing inflammation and damage.

A class of immune agents in our bodies known as autoantibodies has been identified as a potential biomarker for cancer detection, according to a recent study by Denmark scientists.

For the study, which was published in the journal Cancer Research, the Denmark team analyzed blood samples of patients who had been diagnosed with three different types of cancer – breast cancer, prostate cancer and ovarian cancer. Within some of these samples, the researchers successfully identified autoantibodies associated with cancer. When the team looked at blood samples of healthy individuals, no such immune agents were present.

Autoantibodies differ from regular antibodies in that they are specially designed to attack the body’s own tissues, rather than invading bacteria or viruses. Autoantibodies have previously been detected in patients with illnesses such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. For cancer, it appears these autoantibodies assemble in an attempt to destroy particular antigens that form on cancerous cells.

Based on these early results, the Denmark team is hopeful that a routine blood test that looks for autoantibodies could serve as a reliable early warning sign of cancer.

Looking for biomarkers to detect cancer is nothing new. Currently, blood tests search for elevated levels of specific antigens that have been correlated to prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and many other cancer types. These previous tests seem less conclusive than autoantibody tests, however, because healthy cells and illnesses not related to cancer have also be shown to manufacture these biomarkers.

Additionally, these current biomarkers can be difficult to identify until the cancer has progressed beyond its earliest stages. Such is not the case with autoantibodies, which are more abundant in the beginning stages of cancer.

For the study, the research team looked at a cancer antigen class called mucins. Heightened levels of mucins have previously been identified in a number of cancers, which gave the team hope for far-reaching results. An initial problem that needed to be addressed, however, was the fact that mucins are also present with some non-cancerous disorders. To overcome this issue, the team engineered a mucin that was cancer specific (MUC1).

Blood samples of three groups (ovarian, prostate and breast cancer patients) of 20 patients were collected for the research. After passing each sample through a microarray that contained the mucin synthesis, autoantibodies were identified in 20 to 30 percent of the patients. The Denmark team believes that accuracy could be improved by augmenting the mucin design to target other proteins related to cancer.

“Autoantibody tests may be ordered as part of an investigation of chronic progressive arthritis type symptoms and/or unexplained fevers, fatigue, muscle weakness and rashes. The Antinuclear antibody (ANA) test is often ordered first. ANA is a marker of the autoimmune process – it is positive with a variety of different autoimmune diseases but not specific. Consequently, if an ANA test is positive, it is often followed up with other tests associated with arthritis and inflammation, such as a rheumatoid factor (RF), an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), a C-Reactive Protein (CRP), and/or complement protein|complement levels.”

The Grateful Dead are kind of like the telephone. Simply put, the more product that is spread the greater influence of that product. With all the attention that digital copyrighted media is getting lately one is left to wonder why? Why can’t we all be like Jerry? Original content producers can take solace in the fact that if their product is spread wide enough they will eventually command a significant part of the industry.

Douglas French summed up the whole issue on Ludwig von Mises’ blog, “The Grateful Dead was famous for letting their fans tape their live shows. I remember being on a flight to Vegas from Seattle with a planeload of Deadheads and the guy next to me had a suitcase full of live concert tapes that he had recorded with each tape meticulously labeled with the concert date and location.

The Dead recognized that allowing fans to record for free widened their audience and the band became one of the most profitable groups in history. The band’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow, went on to become an Internet guru.

Barlow wrote in Wired in 1994 that in the information economy, “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.”

He explained to Joshua Green of the Atlantic: “What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then–the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully.

But we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.”

Move over health care and economic issues the administration is going lunar. The internet is all abuzz with recent reported space privatization arguments from the Obama administration.

According to Carolyn Raffensperger, “The Obama administration is taking on a sacred cow –space missions. They want to privatize the rocket fleet and thereby reduce the costs of NASA so they can balance the federal budget. Of all the agencies that are near and dear to American’s hearts, it is NASA and their remarkable space explorations.

The opposition, though loud and vociferous, has been relatively vague about the grounds for their opposition. The strongest argument they’ve made against privatization is that inexperienced corporations responsible for complex rockets will threaten astronaut safety.

There are better grounds for objecting to selling the public space program. This proposal should be quashed because privatization is the first step in a celestial land grab by corporations. If corporations own the only vehicles to get to the moon or Mars, what is to prevent them from claiming those bodies as their own property?

Here’s the logic. Imagine 10 years down the road when Corporation X owns the only rockets that take tourists and astronauts to the moon and other celestial bodies. Then they lay claim to the airport on the moon and use that as their base for mining the moon for resources.

This is not the first chess move by corporations to gain exclusive access to the moon. For decades corporations have been developing technology to beam advertising on the moon. Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing the logo of your (least) favorite business emblazoned across the face of moon.

Entirely missing from the conversation is whether or not we want corporations to own land on other celestial bodies. Corporations have long understood the value of owning the last frontier – space — and lobbied in the 1970s to prevent the United States from signing the Moon Treaty. A basic premise of the treaty is that the moon is the common heritage of everyone. That does not fit the basic model of the free market, which seeks to privatize benefits and externalize costs.

Until we clarify that space is the common heritage of everyone, not just private corporations in the United States, but everyone in every nation, until we have legally binding treaties to establish the commons and care of the commons, including the celestial commons, for present and future generations, then we need to leave space exploration in public hands. We don’t have to fund it, but we can’t hand it over to private corporations. We can begin by signing the Moon Treaty and acknowledging that we share the moon and all of space with all generations.”

One technological savvy religious leader has made an observation that may send Twitter developers back to the drawing board. Father Tim Schenck says that his church bulletin board still keeps a competitive edge against the social network web 2.0 community.

“Like any modern clergyman worth his weight in used printer cartridges, I e-mail, blog, Facebook and Tweet. I even used Power Point at our recent Annual Meeting. I’m always trying to get our parish to communicate in new and exciting ways. So why is it that the communications tool with the greatest impact on daily church life is still the bulletin board?

I recently had one put up on the wall outside the church office and you’d have thought I co-invented the internet with Al Gore.

People are thrilled! On Sunday mornings you can find people loitering in front of it, reading news clippings (those are from things called newspapers that people used to read on a daily basis), staring at flyers for upcoming events, and even picking up copies of recently preached sermons.

Move over Ronald Reagan, I’ve become “The Great Communicator.” Who knew the good, old-fashioned bulletin board would become a communications miracle?

This seems to be yet another reminder that as communicators we live in an in-between time. While some folks are all digital all the time and others are all newsprint all the time (please wash your hands), most are somewhere in the middle. Being born too early to be fully digital, I guess I’m in that category myself. I’m usually about five years behind most technologies. I get there eventually.

Here’s an example: When we moved here, I tried to save money and the environment by subscribing to the Boston Globe only Thursday through Sunday. I’ve always been a newspaper each and every day kind of guy. Ever since I learned to read I have started my mornings with a bowl of cereal and the sports section.

Now, Monday to Wednesday I feel out of sorts. I wander around the kitchen with my bowl of cereal and it’s just not the same. Which has nothing to do with the morning ritual of arguing with the kids about getting socks on.

So the bulletin board is a window into a simpler time. A time when we weren’t all radically available via smartphone. In time people may stop noticing the new bulletin board. But I somehow doubt it. It’s tangible, it’s visible, and people like it. Plus it never crashes.”

‘Web 2.0‘ that’s the hot topic in local Quincy social circles. It seems like you can’t strike up a tech conversation without some mention about Facebook, Twitter, etc… Beth Kanter, prolific Web 2.0 writer, has some great advice for local quincy non-profits.

“The NASSCOM India Leadership Forum has multiple tracks based on theme. It also has a track that takes place in a large room with roundtables and a designated discussion topic and facilitator. These sessions are not for presentations, but for disscussion and sharing of ideas. I was asked to facilitate a session on the question, “Should CEOs and Executive Directors Use Social Media?”

In preparation for this session, I asked colleagues here in the US to share their collective wisdom so we could see the US perspective. In addition, during a roundtable on social media at the conference, I was fortunate to meet social media experts in India (@nirav@amnigos @pranavbhasin @paritoshsharma and @avinashraghava ) who shared some examples.

In order for social media to have full impact, it needs to scale within an organization. Your organization’s social media strategy should be not implemented by one lonely intern sitting in the corner of your communications and marketing department.

You may be wondering if that means that your executive director and CEO needs to write a blog or have their own Twitter account to share their wisdom. I think it depends.

There are definitely some benefits to having your executive director or CEO being present on social media channels. They can provide a human face to your organization’s work, a unique viewpoint, and serve as a thought leader in your field. And if your organization finds itself in the middle of groundswell or if there is a major news event or a public relations crisis happens and it is being discussed on Twitter or other social media spaces, your CEO can join it without having to get up to speed.

But it is also important to understand that there are definitely challenges to be overcome as well. These includes investing the time to make it successful because a CEO presence on social media is nothing that should be “ghost” written. It has to be authentic, reflect the CEO’s personality. There is also the issue of comfort – both with the technology and being transparent.

Here are some good examples of CEO and Executive Director use of social media in the US social sector:

Holly Ross is the executive director of NTEN, the nonprofit technology network in the US. She uses Twitter to share what’s going on at NTEN, announce new initiatives, and have conversations with NTEN members. She often uses Twitter to get ideas and feedback on NTEN’s various programs. Checking her Twitter stream and sharing some tweets probably takes her 15 to 20 minutes a day and is part of daily routine.

Holly also shares more of her in-depth thinking about the nonprofit technology field on NTEN’s blog. It is not a “CEO” blog where she writes daily, but a blog that includes the voices of NTEN staff and members. This is a good option for CEO’s who don’t have the time or bandwidth to write a whole blog along, but still want to be present in the blogosphere.

Holly’s Twitter account is her personal but it is clearly branded as NTEN. Even the user name, “ntenhross” incorporates her organization’s brand. This is a good example of a “Blended profile.”

Scott Harrison is the CEO of charity:water. charity:water has a huge Twitter following of over 1 million fans and supporters and has a great deal of expertise using social media to leverage fundraising and raise awareness of their work. The Twestival and Charity Water’s house social network are stellar examples. As CEO of
charity:water, Scott is often visiting charity:water projects all over the work. Through his twitter account, he is able to easily first-hand reports and photos of the organization’s work. He is using Twitter for donor accountability. Scott uses his personal account to Tweet which is separate from the charity:water organizational account.

There are a couple of corporate Foundations where we have good examples of CEO’s using social media effectively – in this case Twitter.

Steve Case is the co-founder of AOL and now Chairman of The Case Foundation and of Revolution (investor in Revolution Money, Exclusive Resorts, Miraval, Zipcar, Waterfront, etc). His Twitter stream is where he shares what he reading about philanthropy and technology but also his travels to different social sector and technology conferences. You can regularly see him discussing issues on Twitter with other thought leaders and journalists. His Twitter account is his personal account, but he identifies himself with his foundation and businesses.

Reeta Roy, president and CEO of the MasterCard Foundation, is sending tweets from her site visit to Uganda and Kenya. As background, the mandate of the $2 billion Foundation is to enable people living in poverty to improve their lives by expanding their access to microfinance and education. Reeta is currently in Uganda, where she’s learning first-hand about the Foundation’s partnerships and programs. While the account is the Foundation’s branded Twitter account, she is using it for a project to report on their work in the field.

This is an example of a good idea of how to get your CEO started tweeting. Have them Tweet from the organizational branded account for a specific project. This will help learn the work flow, have more comfort, and see first hand if the social media presence provides a benefit for the organization’s work.

At a roundtable, I had to chance to discuss this question with social media experts from India. They pointed out a couple of examples and I hope to learn more later today.

Anand Mahindra s the vice chairman and managing director, Mahindra Group, a large corporation in India. He tweets about many different things, from his company to his family and travels. He interacts with customers addressing their questions and complaints. Take a look at his Twitter stream and you will see personal insights, news about his companies, and insights about social media.

Mahesh Murthy is founder and CEO of Pinstorm, a digital marketing firm. He also writes a column for the Wall Street Journal. He uses Twitter to share information about company, connect with people, and to research for writing his blog posts or encourage conversations in the comments of his blog.

When Should Your CEO or Executive Director Just Say No To Social Media

Of course, using social media may not be for every CEO or Executive Director. If they can’t sustain their presence on Twitter or blogging, they should stay away. This isn’t to say that they can’t have an assistant who might do some of the scanning and flag items to respond to, but if a CEO starts engaging with people on social media channels and then there is silence – that is not a good thing.

It is also important that CEOs and Executive don’t just tweet or blog for the sake of doing it. They should must have someting to day that is of value or use it for relationship building. Finally, if the CEO cannot take public criticism or wants to have control over what followers or commenters say, then they shouldn’t use it and delegate the role someone else in the company or organization.

Tips

1. Listen First: Before jumping in, it is useful to do some listening first. Are there other organizations or businesses in your sector where CEOs or Executive Directors are using social media. Find those and review how they are using it.

2. Safe Place to Practice: It is a good idea to do a little bit of coaching with your CEO or Executive Director to show them how Twitter works and to avoid too much “public learning.” Some organizations use software like Yammer which is an internal Twitter to practice before setting up on Twitter.

3. Get Past Information Overload: It is important to let busy CEOs know that they don’t have to be on Twitter 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is also a good idea because the thought of opening up another communications channel might be overwhelming for a CEO is already concerned about email and information overload. Help them learn a quick and efficient way to use Twitter.

4. Pick a Small Project First: Before launching a CEO blog or CEO Twitter account, it might make sense for the CEO to start off using the organization’s branded account or blog, particularly if they are not very comfortable with the tools or plan to devote a small amount of time.

5. Share Unique CEO/Executive Director Insights: CEOs have perspectives that others in the organization may not. Whether using Twitter or writing blog posts, they should share their thought leadership, know how, and vision with their fans and followers. A good way to do this is share what they are reading and learning.

6. Let Them Be Who They Are: CEOs and executive directors who are using social media, above, just need to be themselves and let their personality shine through.”