Real-World Civic Innovation Through Online Gaming

Mark Drapeau (Washington, DC) — When you think of “games,” you might think of Gears of War for Xbox, or Angry Birds for iPhone, or perhaps Zynga games for Facebook. But increasingly, people working in the public and civic sectors see value in leveraging games and game mechanics to accomplish real-world change. In that vein,Read… Read more »

Big Data, Big Deal

Yes, big data is a big deal which has contributed to the big hype. But, behind the hype there’s a simple story. For decades, organizations have been making decisions based on transactional data stored in relational databases. Today we extend beyond that critical data, however to leverage a potential treasure trove of less structured data:Read… Read more »

New Paradigms For Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

I was recently asked to present at an Institute For Employment Studies event for corporate HR and Heads of Learning & Development. The slides I used are embedded at the end of this bog, and also available at Slideshare and Authorstream. The title of the event was “Getting maximum business value from your L&D activity”,Read… Read more »

GREAT WORK: 23 bright ways to use social media in the public sector

There was a brilliant update on Twitter the other day which hit the nail right on the head. “The best social media,” it read “doesn’t happen in an office.” That’s dead right. For a long while now I’ve been arguing that communications people should share the sweets, relax a little and learn to let go.Read… Read more »

Steering By The Rear View Mirror

As corporate and government leaders we depend on data and historical trends to make sense of today’s economy. We look at quarterly performance, study charts of changing sales numbers, analyze trends in housing prices, and examine the number of new jobs created last month. Unfortunately, much of the data has been disappointing, or worse, veryRead… Read more »

Presidential Proclamation – National Volunteer Week (April 15-21, 2012)

April 9, 2012 –President Obama issued his annual Presidential Proclamation for National Volunteer Week. The President declared that, ” Service is a lifelong pursuit that strengthens the civic and economic fabric of our Nation. With every hour and every act, our lives are made richer, our communities are drawn closer, and our country is forgedRead… Read more »

Rural Governments and Social Media: The Moffat County, Colorado Experience

Rural local governments across the country have historically had something of a tougher time than their more populated counterparts when it comes to connecting with their citizens. Greater distances, lower incomes, slower Internet access and hesitancy about adaption of certain communications technologies have proven to be the main challenges. This phenomenon is especially prevalent inRead… Read more »

Crowdsourcing Legislative Reviews

The House took steps last year to post bills online for three days prior to voting in PDF and XML format. If Congress truly wanted transparency and feedback from experts and average citizens on the draft legislation, they should add comment boards for each bill. Either at the bottom of the bill or at theRead… Read more »

Daily Dose: Texts from Hillary photographer speaks up

With the creation of the ‘Texts from Hillary‘ photoblog on tumblr, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a massive public relations boost this past week. The images show a hip Clinton texting celebrities and politicians, from Jay-Z and Mark Zuckerberg to Romney and Obama. However, the source of Clintons image, Diane Walker -working for TIMERead… Read more »

Every government project should be a Project WIP

I love Project WIP – Shropshire Council’s blog about their efforts to redesign their website. It’s got a great tone and style, is useful and interactive and gives people a chance to know what is going on behind the scenes, and to get involved too. It’s also really helpful – take their latest post aboutRead… Read more »