This afternoon, I’m going to be at what I consider to be one of Accordion City’s best toy stores: Function 13 (156 Augusta Avenue), a place in Kensington Market that is part tech store, part art shop and part gallery.

I’ll be there for It’s Alive!, an open house featuring the work of Sheridan College’s Interactive Multimedia program. The event is open to all, and judging from some of the stuff I’ve seen on display at Function 13 and from Sheridan, it should be pretty interesting.

Yes, I know that an F-35 Lightning II fighter plane has nothing at all to do with the article, but I loves me some fighters!

Captain David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology for the U.S. Air Force, sent me a revised version of their “rules of engagement” chart for responding to blogs and other online postings, and in PDF form to boot! You can find this chart at the original article, The Air Force’s Rules of Engagement for Blogging.

Update, January 5, 2008: Captain David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology for the U.S. Air Force, sent me an updated version of their chart, whose changes are based on your comments. The chart appears in this article, and you can click on it to download a full-sized PDF version.

You’ve probably seen many articles on companies and organizations saying that they take social media seriously. Here’s one such organization that you might not expect: the United States Air Force. Take a look at the Air Force Blog Assessment chart, reproduced below:

Click the diagram to download the PDF version (455K).

The “rules of engagement” are quite good. You might find them to be useful for your own blogs, whether personal or corporate.

WebInkNow recently covered the Air Force’s approach to social media, which is far more involved than many companies who only pay lip service to the idea. They’ve assigned someone the role of “Chief of Emerging Technology”, whose job is to develop strategy, policy and plans for the Air Force’s “communicators” and whose mission is to use or build web applications as a means of engaging Airmen and the general public in conversation. The goal is to make every single Airman a communicator.

The Air Force has quite a presence on the web, which includes:

• The official blog, Air Force Live
• A Twitter account
• A YouTube page
• Widgets and podcasts

As with the Blog Assessment chart, you might want to use the Air Force’s social media strategy as a model for your own. Check out WebInkNow’s article for more.