Director of Defense Research & Engineering, the Gallup Organization and Visionaire Media will be hosting a two-day symposium, “iDiplomacy: empowering the private sector and citizen diplomats in the digital age.” The symposium will examine the evolving role of media and entertainment in public diplomacy due to new technologies, social networks and the democratization of communications. International relations are no longer restricted to governments and the globalization of media now includes consuming, producing and sharing media with people around the world. Every citizen is a diplomat. iDiplomacy will assess the impact and future influence of modern media and social networking technologies on public and personal diplomacy, and determine how to empower both the public and private sectors and all American citizens to build bridges to other cultures to create a healthier world.

If you have received an invitation and need information please email info@visionairemedia.com.

iDIPLOMACY AGENDA

DAY 1 – MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2009

9:00am – 9:30am Registration
Continental breakfast

9:30am – 9:45am Welcome by Chairman Ben Riley, Principal Deputy, Rapid Fielding, Office of the Secretary of Defense

9:45am – 10:30am Introduction of participants
A working definition of public diplomacy. Semantic issues in brief.

10:30am – 10:50am Gallup presents the state of the world: What are perceptions of the U.S. around the world?
Presented by Warren Wright, Senior Partner, The Gallup Organization

10:50am – 11:10am A brief history of public diplomacy
Presented by Matt Armstrong, Blogger, Mountainrunner.us

11:10am -11:30am Coffee break

11:30am – 11:50am Public diplomacy work being done now
State Department: Duncan MacInnes, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of International Information Programs.

11:50am – 12:10pm Public diplomacy work being done now
DOD: Rosa Brooks, Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

12:10pm – 12:40pm Success stories

12:40pm – 1:30pm Lunch break

1:30pm – 2:00pm The new media landscape
Presented by James Fowler, Author, Connected: The surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Political Science Professor, UC San Diego

2:00pm – 3:00pm Panel discussion: how have new technologies and social media changed the game and how can they be used as force multipliers
Adam Conner, Washington DC Associate Manager for Privacy and Global Public Policy at Facebook
Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs,
James Fowler, Author, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
Josh Klein, hacker of social systems, computer networks, institutions, animal behavior, and the publishing industry
Peter Marx, vice president of Production and Technology for Mattel

3:00pm – 5:00pm Breakout session #1
New multi-platform initiatives, strategies and projects that leverage new media

5:00pm – 5:15 Coffee break

5:15pm – 6:00pm Groups from session #1 present to plenary and discussion

6:00pm Adjournment

7:30pm Hosted Dinner
Sponsored by CACI

DAY 2 – TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2009

8:30am – 9:00am Continental breakfast and check in

9:00am – 9:30am Brief recap of day 1
More success stories w/new media successes

9:30am – 11:15am Breakout session #2
More initiatives and public/private partnerships

11:15am – 11:30am Coffee break

11:30am – 12:30pm Groups from session #2 report to plenary and discussion

12:30pm – 1:15pm Lunch

1:15pm – 2:15pm General discussion: larger conference agenda/deconfliction

2:15pm – 3:15pm Breakout session #3 What is the agenda for the larger conference?
Groups by: 1) public diplomacy ‘toolbox,’ 2) regional solutions, 3) what the legislative agenda should be, 4) Blue sky

3:15pm – 4:00pm Groups from session #3 report to plenary and general discussion about next steps.
Wrap up

Chairman bio:

Ben Riley is the principal deputy of Rapid Fielding in the office of the Director, Defense Research and Engineering. He is responsible for policy and oversight of fielding capabilities that counter unconventional and time-sensitive threats. He facilitates rapid technology transition within the Department through discovery and demonstration of advanced technology concepts and works with interagency and coalition partners, industry, and academia to facilitate the timely satisfaction of validated priority operational needs.

Prior to assuming his position in September 2009, Riley served as the director of the USD(AT&L) sponsored Rapid Reaction Technology Office (RRTO) and Chairman Combating Terrorism Technology Task Force (CTTTF). In this position he interacted and coordinated with both Department of Defense commands and organizations and other government departments on identifying technologies and technological trends to address combating and countering terrorism operations. Previously, Riley was senior research associate in the Georgia Tech Research Institute of the Georgia Institute of Technology.  He was assigned to the Office of Naval Research in Washington, DC.

Military assignments as a Captain in the United States Navy included serving as military deputy to the deputy undersecretary of Defense (Advanced Technology) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He participated in the initiation of the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program and was responsible for direction and management of a wide range of ACTDs including those related to helicopter maintenance; unmanned aerial vehicles; employment of a laser radar; countermine operations; privatization; distributed collaborative planning and information systems; and logistics.

A Naval flight officer, Riley completed five tours in different Patrol Squadrons in P-3 aircrafts, conducting anti-submarine warfare and surveillance and reconnaissance operations. He completed three aviation commands and tours and served in a number of staff positions. Additionally, he served as Assistant Navigator on board USS AMERICA (CV-66). Captain Riley retired from the U.S. Navy on September 1, 1997.

Riley received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and master’s degrees from the Naval War College and Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island.

Presenter bios:

Matt Armstrong is a strategist addressing the landscape of U.S. public diplomacy and strategic communication. He is an advisor to Congress, the Departments of State and Defense, and other organizations in the U.S. and abroad on the policies, practices, structures, institutions, and purpose of public diplomacy, strategic communication, public affairs, or whatever your organization calls global engagement. Armstrong is most known as the publisher of www.MountainRunner.us, a leading blog read by senior policymakers, legislators and their staff, practitioners, trainers, academics, and analysts from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, Congress, foreign government agencies and think tanks across the globe.

Rosa Brooks currently serves as senior advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for Policy. She is on leave from her position as a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she specializes in international law and served as director of Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute. From 2005 to March 2009, she was a foreign policy columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She has been a frequent guest and panelist on MSNBC and a blogger for Slate Magazine’s XX Factor, as well as a frequent guest on Bloggingheads TV.

In 2006-2007, Brooks took a leave of absence from Georgetown to serve as special counsel to the president at the Open Society Institute in New York. From 2001 to 2006, she was an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Brooks has also served as a senior advisor at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, a consultant for the Open Society Institute and Human Rights Watch, a fellow at the Carr Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a board member of Amnesty International USA, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a lecturer at Yale Law School and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. In 2004, she was the co-director of the task force on Democracy, Development and Human Rights Policy for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. She has served on the board of the National Security Network, the steering committee of the White Oak Foreign Policy Leaders’ Project, the steering committee of the Connect US Fund’s Project on Foreign Policy Priorities for the Next President and on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States.

Her book, “Can Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions” (with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman), was published in 2006.

Brooks received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s degree from Oxford (where she was a Marshall Scholar) and a law degree from Yale.

James Fowler is a political science professor at UC San Diego and co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Fowler, along with co-author Nicholas Christakis, was named “most original thinker of the year” in 2008 on the McLaughlin Group. Their research on social networks was featured in Time’s Year in Medicine in 2007 and 2008 and in Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Ideas. He also was named one of the Nifty Fifty “most inspiring” scientists by the San Diego Science Festival.

Fowler’s current interests include social networks, behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, political participation, cooperation and genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior). His work includes studies of how social networks affect legislative success and how altruism and social identification increase political participation.

Connected, published in September 2009, was featured in Wired and named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review. It makes provocative assertions about the extent to which social networks can influence you and how people you don’t even know but are your friend’s friend’s friend can affect your behavior.

Fowler’s and Christakis’s examination of how your friends and their friends can help determine whether you gain weight (and vice versa) was the subject of a New York Times Magazine cover article, “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” last month.

Among other phenomena Fowler has documented, he has shown that the so-called “Colbert bump” is real. In a February 2008 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed that advised Hillary Clinton to appear on Stephen Colbert’s satirical show in order to boost her fundraising numbers. Fowler wrote, “Democratic candidates who appear on ‘The Report’ receive 44% more money than those who do not in the first month after their appearance.”

Duncan MacInnes is principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. He set up IIP’s social media engagement office and his team created the first interactive global public diplomacy SMS programs for President Obama’s speeches in Cairo and Ghana. MacInnes previously established the interagency Counterterrorism Communication Center and set up the State Department’s 24/7 Rapid Response Unit. MacInnes joined the Foreign Service in 1984, and was public affairs officer in Qatar, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Jerusalem and Australia. He has been director of the State Department’s Foreign Press Centers and senior advisor on Iraq public diplomacy.

Warren Wright is a senior partner for The Gallup Organization in its government practice division, which combines the scientific advancements of psychology, sociology, economics and statistics to achieve new insights for governments and for nongovernmental organizations worldwide. Wright also held a lead role in launching Gallup’s World Poll, a groundbreaking project that is an on-going effort to measure the well-being of the world’s citizens for the next 100 years, continually polling a representative sample of 95% of the world’s adult population in more than 140 countries and areas.

Prior to joining Gallup in 2000, Wright was an enterprise developer and entrepreneur and served as an officer of Atlanta-based Jobfinder.com. His leadership roles have included head of sales and marketing within Viacom, CBS and Greater Media.

Wright began his career in the radio and television industries. He has served on many advisory panels and executive committees over the years and has given speeches on diverse topics such as public diplomacy, behavioral psychology, customer retention, authentic leadership and community well-being.

Moderator bio:

Jerome Gary is chairman of Visionaire Media.  He is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker whose credits include Pumping Iron, Stripper, Old Boyfriends and Laughs (HBO series). He has led many public diplomacy initiatives including The Russians (TNT TV series), On the Road in America Seasons I and II, Muslim Women and Life After Death; and in 2007 and 2008, he went to Afghanistan three times leading teams of filmmakers to teach storytelling and filmmaking to television personnel in Kabul and Kandahar.

Gary was on the graduate screenwriting and directing faculty at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies and the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television for many years. He has also taught directing, screenwriting, storytelling and digital filmmaking at the Los Angeles Film School, Esalen Institute, Yale University, Dartmouth, The University of Hawaii and in numerous foreign countries.  Gary was the strategic director of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies from 2001 to 2005.  He has led more than 50 think tanks facilitating creative dialogue between subject matter experts (corporate and government) and creative “out-of-the-box” thinkers from entertainment, gaming, new media, technology and academia.