It was another awesome year at GovLoop. We:
- grew to over 63,000 members
- trained over 10,000 individuals at monthly online trainings
- launched 12 research guides and infographs
- hosted 8 in-person events
- got a sweet ping pong table in the office.
In addition to those milestones, here’s my favorite 10 GovLoop items of year:
1) New GovLoop Stickers – When I first saw these, I went “wow!” – our designer, Jeff Ribeira, really rocked it. But it wasn’t until I started bringing them to conferences that I saw their power – people went crazy for them. Government Wonk, Government Innovator, I Am Not Red Tape, and – my favorite – Not Your Father’s Bureaucrat. Want some? Send an email to steve at govloop dot com.
2) GIS Infographic – I felt like I was in Sim City when we launched this interactive infograph. It’s not your standard infograph to print out. This was one you could zoom in and out with hotspots throughout. Really awesome – Check it out here!
3) Todd Park Joining GovLoop – It was a Friday morning and I was excited to walk into the White House Old Executive Office building to meet with Todd Park and tell him the GovLoop story. Five minutes into our conversation, he quickly said, “That’s awesome. Can I join right now? Keep on talking, I’ll join as you share.” Awesome, indeed (check out the story and friend Todd here).
4) BYOD Report – Bring Your Own Device is one of the top issues CIOs are facing – a great opportunity to save money and increase employee morale. We partnered with Oracle and put together an awesome guide to implementing BYOD. What I loved the most was how we engaged the GovLoop community in the guide from 100+ surveys to interviews with CIOs that are implementing BYOD like Kimberly Hancher, CIO at EEOC.
5) New Calculators – I love calculators – they are a great way to quickly use open data and share stories. This year , we launched a salary calculator and telework calculator. Both took off like crazy. Personally, I love calculating how my net pay changes as I move toward my retirement. Also, the telework calculator showed how much CO2 and $ I was saving from working at home.
6) PathtoPMF.com – This year we partnered with the Robertson Foundation for Government to host PathToPMF – an unofficial tour guide for the Presidential Management Fellowship. We conducted 60+ interviews with current/past PMFs, agency PMF coordinators, and career counselors to get insights/tips on the process. It was amazing to see the reaction to the product as over the course of the application process, we were able to help over 9,000 unique people, respond to 200+ comments on our blog and host a great Google+ Hangout with OPM and an expert who happened to be in Liberia.
7) Hearing Teresa Shea speak at NextGen 2012 – Our annual conference Next Generation of Gov’t Training Summit is always one of my favorite weeks of the year. This year we had 600+ folks from 50+ agencies and speakers that crushed it, like Matt Mullenwag of WordPress & Todd Park, CTO. However, my favorite speaker was actually a winner of our GovLoop speaker contest. Check out this awesome talk from Teresa Shea: “A Journey Into Blindness – The Blind Professional”
8) Virtual Conference and Trainings Galore – We truly kicked it up a notch this year with 15+ free online trainings and our first-ever virtual conference. It’s been amazing to see the response on topics from advancing your career with social media to open source and cybersecurity – every time there are hundreds of you from across the globe attending and asking important questions.
Side Note: this month we rolled out VIP rewards for our top attendees and will continue to run this program next year. Do you want to make sure you receive these updates? Sign up for alerts here (and make sure on the following page to click free trainings/events).
9) Revamped Jobs – This year we relaunched our Jobs site – it’s like Kayak for USAJOBS. Built on top of USAJOBS, we integrated with LinkedIn to show who you know at the job, mashed up job locations on a Google Map, connected it with GlassDoor for user reviews of agencies and created some new filtering. Want to know jobs with multiple vacancies or high promo potentials? We got it. Furthermore, we continue to pick the top 10 jobs each week for 10+ categories (we are now at over 10,000 folks who receive our jobs updates).
10) You – Yes, it sounds like a cheesy Time magazine cover but you, GovLoopers, are my favorite part of GovLoop. I have had so many awesome conversations the last year with members, whether it’s over beers at conferences or on email sharing ideas to improve GovLoop. I’m constantly amazed at the amount of passionate, innovative leaders in government who are determined to help improve government. The projects people are working on are so important and the tenacity, drive, and desire to make big change for citizens is amazing. I feel blessed that I get to collaborate with all of you every day.
Many congrats Steve, to you, Andy, Stephen, Jeff, Emily, Pat, Lauren and the entire GovLoop team! You all deserve many accolades for being so AWESOME in 2012!
GovLoop is an excellent online resource — and not just for us govies. In addition to all the invaluable work you do, add this to the list (which is a big deal from a PR perspective):
Enhancing the reputation and public perception of U.S. Government employees by highlighting innovation, sharing information, and educating the public generally about all the great work we govies do. THANK YOU!
DBG
PS — Looking forward to GovLoop surpassing 100,000 members in the near future.
Nice. I arrived at my desk this morning to find a “Not Your Father’s Bureaucrat” sticker dangling from one of my monitors. I dig the sticker; noted the tiny ‘govloop.com’ in the graphic; googled “not your father’s bureaucrat” – et voila! I believe I joined govloop several years ago, but now I am compelled to revive my interest and attention. Thank you, Mystery Sticker-placing Person!