Prior to Domo, I ran the New York office of The OutCast Agency. For someone in technology, it was an envious position. I had a front row seat to some of the hottest technologies coming to market and the newly-funded companies behind them like Facebook, Lytro and Zynga. I also worked with a killer group of people who were big social experimenters and always trying out the newest, coolest technologies.

So when Josh starting talking about the #domosocial experiment, I started to twitch with excitement. Being back in an environment that embraces and thrives in trying new things is awesome. I know for some, however, social can be a bit scary, especially in a culture like ours where product secrecy is the name of the game.

To this end, our Social Media Guidelines and Best Practices deck was one of the first pieces of content we focused on. I wanted everyone to feel that we had their back when we ask them to join us in this program. Josh will share and discuss the most important guidelines and best practices with everyone today — and he’ll even offer a one time presidential pardon to someone in our company who may have violated one of the sacred “do nots” on the list. Josh has mentioned something about ex post facto….

When we started planning this, Domo already had a Social Media policy in our employee handbook, but it wasn’t necessarily widely-adopted. We had pockets of people in each department who followed it, but the entire company wasn’t aware. We thought launching this experiment would be a great time to update the guidelines, prepare for some of the questions that might arise during the experiment, and re-introduce the policy to everyone. Our Social Media Guidelines let employees know what type of behavior we’ll tolerate and what we won’t — in other words, it’s a good tip sheet for how not to get fired. The Best Practices Training goes over the basics of being a good social communicator: how to do it up right, be authentic, add value. This training is intended for anyone who is relatively new to social and/or wants to have more confidence engaging via social platforms. This foundational deck will be the first of many trainings. We’ll offer more advanced trainings by leveraging internal Domo experts. We’ll also send out daily tips and reminders on ways that people can rock the social.

What I’m looking forward to in this experiment is sharing what we learn with others, plus the conversations I expect we’ll have internally about what we’re learning and how that will impact our product. I’m also excited to see us using social as another weapon to outpace competitors — no matter where they are or how big they may be. This will be fun!!! What I’m worried about most includes squeezing all this learning and activity into an already too-short day. Trying to find a rhythm where I can engage and learn from new technologies, while still getting the rest of my regular work done, is something I’ll need to figure out.

By the way, I’ll be posting the combined deck on our resource center soon. Keep an eye out for it. I welcome any feedback that you might have.