PdF Chat Time with Cheryl Contee

Cheryl Contee, Partner at Fission Strategy, specializes in helping non-profit organizations and foundations use social media for social good. She is also the co-founder of Jack and Jill Politics writing as Jill Tubman on one of the top 10 black blogs online.

She has over 13 years of award-winning interactive expertise and previously served as lead digital strategist for Fleishman-Hillard for the West Coast in San Francisco. Cheryl has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, BBC and CNN among other media appearances. She received her B.A. from Yale University and has an M.B.A. from Georgetown University.

1:10 PM Anna Curran: Cheryl, Currently you are Partner at Fission Strategy, a firm "Inspiring social good through social media." Can you tell us about your background? Also, can you tell us about some of the interesting projects that you are working on at the moment?

1:12 PM Cheryl Contee: I started out in IT and as the Web was becoming more viable as a communications platform, I steered my career in that direction. I love the fact that my work is focused online. It's exciting to be at the crossroads where politics, technology, communications and creativity meet. Right now, Fission is working with the leading coalition in support of immigration reform. We also work with several environmental & human rights nonprofits and with foundations in addition to other clients.

1:17 PM  Anna Curran: While at Discovery Communications you launched 40 multi-lingual web sites. What advice do you have for campaigns or elected officials who are developing bi-lingual or multi-lingual websites?

1:16 PM Cheryl Contee: Establishing a multilingual web presence can be challenging, especially if your staff resources are limited. I don't recommend trying to create an exact mirror of your site in different languages. This is usually ineffective and often culturally no well-received.

Instead, focus on creating strong sites with similar messaging. Check the site with native speakers and with partners who share the same culture as the site. Make sure you are getting the basics down for your multilingual sites. And do your homework: don't make your Spanish language site orange and red. Don't be insulting. Spanish language sites require 30% more text to say the same thing. This can really impact your navigation for example. Budget as much or more money for your bilingual site as for your English site or create a scaled-down version that's well-done.

1:17 PM  Anna Curran: The impressive list of accolades you have received includes Cool Site of the Day, Pollie Awards, SABRE Awards, Webby Honoree, People's Choice Award, Web Award, and Showalter Award. Could you tell us about your favorite project that lead to one of these awards?

1:23 PM Cheryl Contee: Indeed. I'm really proud of the Webby Honoree and People's Choice Award I won along with my client at the time: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for their Voices of Genocide podcasting series. I helped the USHMM launch their first email newsletter program and blog. Very exciting and powerful. It was an honor and privilege to do that work.

The USHMM was embarked on a campaign to highlight the work that it's doing now to fight genocide. Most people at the time saw the museum as only about what happened during WWII. So I think the podcast series filled a whole in global discourse on genocide and also showed that the museum was ready to reach out to younger generations about the genocide still happening today. It made USHMM more accessible and more relevant and people responded to that. My role was to provide strategic and some technical support to the initiative. I was proud to be a part of this project. The recent shootings at the Holocaust Museum, which is an independent government agency actually, show how important their work still is today.

1:31 PM  Anna Curran:Can you tell us about your motivation behind founding Jack and Jill Politics? Who is Jill Tubman? What does she blog about?

1:37 PM Cheryl Contee: I was concerned at the time about the way that African-Americans and our perspectives were covered in the media and also wanted to help encourage the holding of black leaders accountable. I founded Jack and Jill Politics under a pseudonym so that I could write freely and soon invited co-founder Baratunde Thurston (Jack Thunder) to join me so that there would be a balanced male-female voice coming from the blog. Jill Tubman therefore is my alter ego. She blogs about all kinds of issues from an African-American middle class point of view.

1:39 PM  Anna Curran: Who do you look to for inspiration? Do you have any mentors?
1:42 PM Cheryl Contee: Actually, I love the TechPresident blog. It's great. Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend is amazing as is Angel Laws of Concrete Loop. I've been lucky to have some great mentors. Right now, I'm learning a lot from our Fission Strategy team members which include Roz Lemieux, Beka Economopolous and Jess Teal who supervised all the print and online design for the Obama campaign. I'm inspired generally by the Obama 2008 team -- an incredible group.

1:43 PM  Anna Curran: On twitter you posted a link to BlacksGoneGeek.org,
an online community for African Americans in IT. What is you involvement with this organization? And can you tell us what groups you get the most out of?

1:44 PM Cheryl Contee: Clay Johnson at Sunlight Labs has also been a great friend and mentor. That's one brilliant visionary and technologist. I was recently invited to speak last weekend at the Blogging While Brown conference and BlacksGoneGeek was one of the organizations a fellow speaker mentioned. I'm on the board of Netroots Nation and also advise the New Leaders Council. I find both of these organizations vital to the progressive movement since they are devoted to dialogue, organizing and promotion of America's future leaders.

I also highly recommend the New Organizing Institute. From these organizations, I continue to connect with amazing people that inspire me and make me think smarter.

1:49 PM  Anna Curran: Can you name some names of people who inspire you?

1:50 PM  Cheryl Contee: Barack and Michelle Obama. Seriously. have you read Dreams from My Father? I've just finished the audio version that Obama reads himself. He actually does the voices of his relatives and people in his life. Hilarious and very moving.

1:51 PM  Anna Curran: Finally, What keeps you up at night?

1:53 PM Cheryl Contee:The tilt toward appeals to white supremacism on the right and the calls for "revolution", "secession" and so forth. I think that's really scary and dangerous stuff that must not be tolerated if we are to remain one nation, indivisible. Some of the things that people like Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity and others are truly appalling, racist and unpatriotic if you're really paying attention.

Media Matters, TPM, DailyKos and Think Progress are all doing a great job of tracking the madness. Just look up Michele Bachmann in Media Matters-- disturbing stuff!