Washington trip day 3

This day started with an early breakfast with Faten and Tony. Everyone was slowly getting in to a routine. Scott and a group had gone for a run on Monday and followed it up with a run down the Mall and the monuments today. The photos were superb, what with the sun coming up over the monuments. Their early start gave them some breath taking views of the US capital. Later in the week we will do the monument tour so they will get to experience the early morning and late evening monument experience.

Treasury building

Back to the business part of the trip, we started our briefs at 8:30 and then had a short walk to the American Advertising Foundation (AAF). Here we met with Connie Frazier the COO and Andrea Alsup. It was interesting to hear how this group promotes its clients and has clubs all over the country. This Federation is aimed to be the unifying voice of the advertising industry and forms a link between "the hill" and it's members. Some of the AAF executives a re registered lobbyists and use this position to communicate and pressure senators and congressperson on bills, legislation and regulation.

Chopper on White House lawn

Their goal is to be self-regulating and not to have government regulating them. They also have ~ 200 under grad college chapters, and are starting to set up graduate chapters - we may want to get one in SCU to stay in touch with what is going on in advertising.

Next it was off to the world renowned Press Club for a lunch panel to discuss social media and technology. The panel was made up of 5 people from AARP, tbd.com,

National Press Club

gregslistdc.com, a written news paper and a writer. The venue was very impressive and there were a number of seminars going on. Two of our group went to a republican seminar on healthcare to see what was being said. The lunch itself was good with a great selection of sandwiches, fruit and drinks.

The main topics were around twitter and blogging. AARP now have their CEO and other executives twittering regularly, a radical change for traditionalists. It was amazing to see and hear how popular twitter is on the East coast. Many people use it as a tool to build their personal brand. Both blogging and twitter are mechanism for companies to listen to their members/customers and also a way to communicate quickly to a dedicated audience. Building on the discussion (and theme) with Politico, building your personal brand was one of the themes. For those that tweeted and blogged they referred to this as their digital persona and used it to build their personal brand.

Social Media Panel

Many seem to have dual digital identities, their work one and their personal one. We were told that the key to learning and adopting twitter and blogging is to first find people that tweet/blog about things you are interested in and follow them. Based on this you can learn more and respond/tweet/blog when you are ready or have something to say.

We finished with a brief discussion about the changing business models for the online news media. The key take away was customer/audience orientated content and everything should be considered with the following: "Content, Context, Community and Commerce". Once this was over we took photos in front of all the flags and we headed off to Sun Trust bank.

The SunTrust bank headquarters is only a block from the white house and overlooks the treasury building. As with most of our meetings we were on the top floor, which had a very impressive view, including part of the white house back garden.

While in the closing room we spotted the presidential helicopters coming in and they landed in the white house. Three helicopters swooping in and touching down, two are decoys and one will carry the president.

I missed the landing and takeoff but if you examine the picture closely you should be able to see the helicopters rotors, just to the right of the gold-topped tower.

Our meeting here was with a legal firm that represents clients against the government. One of the things we learned here was how a bill moves from being passed as a bill and makes it through to being legislation and regulations. If you would like to learn more go you tube and check out "I'm just the bill on Capital Hill". We also discussed some of the key technology companies on Capitol Hill, these include Microsoft, Verizon, Google, At&T and a few others. We also learned more about Net Neutrality and the FCC and the impact these have on these large companies.

Italian Embassy

Our day was not over yet! From here we jumped in cabs and raced off to the Italian embassy to meet with the Scientific Attaché. On the way we drove down embassy road, which is very impressive, as is the Italian Embassy.