How to make the flowers bloom: why open data is necessary but not sufficient to make a difference

[cross-posted from London Datastore http://data.london.gov.uk/blog blog post of 31 March 2011] Earlier this month, colleagues from local and central government, bloggers, community activists and developers got together at an event organised by @Madwdata – making a difference with data http://www.madwdata.org.uk/ to discuss how open public data could be used to make a difference. The MakingRead… Read more »

In Search of Ideas: How Counties and Towns are Trying to Tap Citizens’ Smarts

***Part of our month-long series on Creating a Digital City with PDF – Check out all our analysis*** Karen Wilkerson is the city administrator for tiny De Leon, Tex., and her job won’t be getting any easier anytime soon. Like localities across the country, De Leon, a town of 2,433 as of the 2000 U.S.Read… Read more »

Breaking Down the Social Business Roadmap – Strategy

Reposted from our AIIM Community Blogs – http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/community/Breaking-Down-the-Social-Business-Roadmap-Strategy In continuing of the series of our AIIM Social Business Roadmap blog posts, I will be looking into the topic of strategy within an organization as one of the 8 steps needed in order to be successful in this new digital age of business, social collaboration andRead… Read more »

A Socratic Discussion on Seven Aspects of Social Media

Last week, I was invited to teach a class on social media at the University of the District of Columbia. The class was part of the business school, so my take-aways were different than what Steve Radick gave to his class, in the communications school. I think it would have been interesting for both ofRead… Read more »

In praise of user testing – part 1

We have ran some user testing recently and what an eye-opener it was. So how did we go about this? Well by trying to find users who were interested in our content. I have already described how I helped to identify the persona of performance measurement specialists. The usability supplier then dug up the relevantRead… Read more »

New Website Tracks FOIA Withholding Challenges

There’s a new FOIA website in town. The other week, FOIA.gov was launched by the Department of Justice. This time, it’s not a government FOIA site, but one done by Syracuse University (with a grant from the CS Fund/Warsh-Mott Legacy). Designed to bring more transparency to FOIA withholding decisions, the new site — http://FOIAproject.org —Read… Read more »

NRG Energy brings electric cars to Texas

NRG Energy is bringing electric cars to Texas with a new program that will create a network of 70 electric vehicle charging stations throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. An additional 50 stations are also slated for the Houston area as well as another network along the Interstate 45 corridor, by the end of nextRead… Read more »

NRG Energy brings electric cars to Texas

NRG Energy is bringing electric cars to Texas with a new program that will create a network of 70 electric vehicle charging stations throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. An additional 50 stations are also slated for the Houston area as well as another network along the Interstate 45 corridor, by the end of nextRead… Read more »

Has Social Media Killed the RSVP?

What got me thinking today, however, was the RSVP return. Before the party, only 8 people had RSVPed and yet, more than 40 people were in attendance. A similar situation occurred several month ago when I shared invitations to my daughter’s birthday party. We had invited 12 kids and only 3 RSVP’s arrived in advanceRead… Read more »

Canberra Conference Centre Proposal

The Canberra Times reports to day in “City’s waterside vision revealed” (by JUDITH IRELAND, 11 April 2011, 2011 12:07 PM), that it is proposed to build a $327 million conference centre and hotel complex. I was previously consulted on the design of a hi-tech dialogue centre as part of the development. My suggestion was toRead… Read more »

Tech