About a week ago, I had the good fortune of attending the 2010 Health Communications Media and Marketing Conference* in Atlanta. It was a very solid conference but, more than anything else, it reinforced my belief that many of the practitioners of social media in the gov 2.0 space need to have greater awareness of the research being conducted in social media, social networking and mobile technologies. I have written previously about the gap between these two worlds but frankly had not done much about it other than try to educate myself as much as time would allow.

Now is the time for bolder action. After pondering different approaches for a week or so (and getting some help from my fantastic librarian friends @eagledawg & @buffyjhamilton), I have decided on the following.

• I have created a Twitter list to follow those individuals researching social media, social networking and mobile technologies.
• I have set up a public Zotero group to help collect, manage and share research sources.

Certainly, this is only the start of the process. Effective and substantive integration of lessons learned and best practices from the research community will be a long-term endeavor and will require numerous approaches (and perhaps even be a component of a government Innovations Lab). However, I am hopeful that these first few steps will help push the needle just a little bit further.

Finally, to be done well, this project needs participation from the community. Anyone with a good idea or willingness to actively participate is encouraged to step up. The goal of this effort is to provide useful resources to the broader community and I am a firm believer that ANYONE can have an idea worth contributing. So, for those wishing to become a member of the Zoterao group, please DM me and I will be happy to bring you on board (and as I learn how to use Zotero myself, I will be happy to help others that want to learn it with me). If you don't want to get actively involved but know of a good paper, article or research program, let me know and I'll add them into the Zotero group myself. And if you know of a relevant researcher on Twitter, give me a heads up and and I'll add them to the list.

Now back to work.

*Note: For those interested for more information about the conference, check out the achieved tweets for hcmm10 and the conference summary post from the great folks at AIDS.gov.