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Mike Kujawski's Blog | Navigating Digital Disruption Posts

One week, two excellent events: #CbocSocial and #FWD50

This post features my key takeaways and notes from two events I attended earlier this month here in Ottawa.

1- Public Sector Social Media (#cbocsocial) –Where Canada’s social media leaders gather to discuss the most effective strategies for the most powerful media.”

2- Forward 50 (#fwd50) – “A three-day conversation on digital transformation held in Canada’s capital city, bringing together citizens, the public service, elected officials, technologists, and innovative thinkers from around the world.”

Both events were geared at the public sector, albeit very different audiences were present for each. The first event (#cbocsocial) attracted many comms folks along with those responsible for running their organization’s social media channels. The second event (#fwd50) had many senior government leaders, program and policy folks, as well those interested in the general advancement of government  through modern disruptive tech. Ideally, I would love to one day see these audiences overlap a bit more at each others events to build up cross-functional learning and reduce existing silos. I do realize however that with limited training/conference budgets it’s wishful thinking on my part. Nonetheless I found both events very valuable. Here are some of my high-level key takeaways from each along with general notes from specific sessions.

Why the Canadian Digital Service is a major milestone for Canada.

Over the course of the past two decades there have been numerous initiatives / movements relating to the Government of Canada and the digital space. I can see why it’s hard for people to get excited about yet another one. However, having worked as a management consultant (specializing in the digital channel) with nearly every federal department, I’m convinced the Canadian Digital Service (CDS) is a legitimate major milestone.

The bots are coming! Are you ready?

Last week we held our MARCOM Annual Conference (more on that in a future post) where I moderated a roundtable discussion on bots. I thought I ‘d share a few notes from my handout.

Working Definitions (sometimes used interchangeably)

  • Bot: A piece of software that is designed and created to automate the kinds of tasks we would usually do on our own such as making a reservation, adding an event to your calendar, opening a program or displaying a summary report (e.g. general personal assistant bots such as Siri [Apple], Cortana [Microsoft], Echo [Amazon], Google Assistant [Google])
  • Chatbot: A computer algorithm typically built within a messaging platform that is designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via conversational interfaces (e.g. Hyatt chatbot on Facebook Messenger or H&M chatbot on Kik)