I was really taken with this story on social engagement because it sheds light on a dimension of leadership that isn’t often written about, if at all.  Judith Ireland makes an interesting observation about the enduring love the Obamas have for each other and the positive impact it has on the President’s ability to inspire his constituents.

So what place does this story have in this blog – especially one that has been focussed of late on internet security?  It’s to do with a display of truthful engagement and how we might live this in our own social encounters and communications: that is to say to engage successfully through any social media by starting from an honest grounding.

Now it’s personal: loved-up Obamas win our affectionOf all the iconic images of the United States presidential inauguration this week – the red, white and blue banners, the marching bands and stylish array of winter coats – one will be remembered above all else: the President and First Lady having the first dance at the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball.

via Canberratimes

It makes the world of difference to have a live project to learn anything.  Imagine trying to learn to cook by just reading recipe books!  For me, getting onto the social media bandwagon meant getting my teeth into a blog for my work.  After about 60 hours of intense learning and trials and tests, I was able to create one called Volunteer News for St Vincent de Paul Society Canberra Goulburn, my employer.  Being a charity, it was a really easy decision to donate my time.  But I am also gaining many rewards.  In a nutshell, I’ve trained about 600 volunteers since January last year and I want to keep the conversation going with them.  Yesterday was the big day when I got the nod from the power that be for it to go live.  We did so with the the post below, which was broadcast on the Vinnies Twitter feed and Facebook page.  Today, our audience will receive their first RSS-to-email newsletter, which they’ll receive every month (unless they choose to unsubscribe):

This is my first blog.  I decided to embark on it because everyone said that if you want to get into social networking, you need a blog.  But I never really thought I had anything to say, or anything of interest to share.  My interest in social media has grown such that I now scour the newspapers for stories about this stuff.  I then found myself sharing stories with friends and colleagues.  Hey, I thought, take people on my journey of discovery of the social networking world.

So here I am.  I bought myself the snazzy domain name socialinsight.net.au (.com and .com.au already taken … clearly not an original name!), downloaded WordPress and uploaded it to my server, pointed the domain name to my server and away I went.  My blog is now officially here.

And for those of you familiar with WordPress, you will know that I’m using the basic Twenty Ten template without even changing the header image.  Well I’m into clean and simple and I like this image.  It says something about going on a journey – and that’s just what I’m doing.  Would you care to join me?