Admiral Allen: Meet Prof. McAfee
Watching (me and) my age cohort figure out Facebook, Twitter and the like is a little like watching my mother figure out ATM cards (“What is it? Why do you need one?”) Harvard Business School’s Andy McAfee is now first encountering his Twitter angels and demons here, for example, trying to make sense of it all. The whole social networking thing for us older dudes veers to the mortifying , can get downright embarrassing, and remains a bunch incomprehensible, except when you see some breakthrough applications. Well, breakthrough for us, anyway. Then the light goes on, kinda.
US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen’s Facebook page is that — it straddles the goofy stoopid kid stuff of Facebook with a corporate leadership play in eye-popping ways. Admiral Allen is now chronicling his trip north to Alaska — with pictures and text detailing his voyage. The public sees him here; the entire USCG community sees him right next to the troops, on station, seeing what they see. It’s updated every day with his personal comments. So it extends his visibility through the channel they live on, and shows him “in theatre” — no one can say Thad Allen is stuck behind a desk. It makes transparent and democratizes all at once without diluting the Commandant’s rank, stature, or status — actually, one suspects, boosting all. It does wonders, also, for DHS Secretary Mike Cherthoff — visible in the Admiral’s pix in a US Coast Guard uniform!
