Yearly Archives: 2013

It’s a Federal Snow Day! What You Need to Know

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! Due to snow, federal agencies in, D.C. are closed Tuesday. OPM said emergency and telework-ready employees required to work must follow their agency’s policies, including written telework agreements. (The information below is copied directly from OPM) Non-Emergency Employees (including employees on pre-approved paid leave) will beRead… Read more »

Social Software Platforms: High-Level Guidance for Organizations

Summary: This post offers high-level guidance for organizations looking to acquire and implement a social software solution to facilitate communication and collaboration in a secure environment via a private digital network (e.g., an enterprise 2.0 or social business platform, a social intranet, a digital community). It provides considerations for getting started, selecting a social softwareRead… Read more »

Interesting elsewhere – 10 December 2013

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web Five Ways to Learn Nothing from Your Customers’ Feedback – Rob Markey – Harvard Business ReviewAnonymity in customer feedback is, frankly, overrated. People want to be heard. They want their feedback to be acknowledged. They want to know that the time they invested sharing feedback meantRead… Read more »

Great Brands Are Different

I was reading a book by Steve Yastrow this week entitled, “We: The Ideal Customer Relationship,” when I stumbled upon this insight… we are defined not by the things that make us similar, but by the things that make us different. Brilliant! The great corporate, philanthropic and personal brands that come to mind are theRead… Read more »

3 Ways to Increase Your Value at Work

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein 1. Spend an hour a week thinking of new ideas you can implement at your federal place of employment without being asked — and present them to your manager. 2. Get in the habit of skimming a lot of publicationsRead… Read more »

The great Gov 2.0 ‘sporting’ contest between Australia and Britain

Not this urn… It’s December, and Brits and Aussies alike have turned their thoughts to Christmas, family, parties, holidays and travel. There’s also a very special content underway down-under between Britain and Australia, consuming the thoughts of millions. It all revolves around a very particular type of urn… An urn containing the ashes of AustralianRead… Read more »

Engine Light: A Simple Monitoring App

Code for America has lots of projects. These projects are written in different languages, hosted in different places, and have different levels of complexity. When I joined CfA in October, a few of these apps used New Relic and a couple were monitored via Pingdom. It important for us to have a basic view ofRead… Read more »

Storytelling: The Most Powerful Communications Tool in History

We are storytelling animals. It’s what differentiates us from our primate cousins. We are literally Homo narrativus. We use stories to assign meaning to our lives, transmit vital information and communicate with future generations. Without our storytelling ability, we would never have evolved out of the jungles of Africa. Human history begins with stories, likeRead… Read more »

Budget Deal on the Horizon? – Plus the DorobekINSIDER’s 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER: 2013 was the year of cybersecurity for State government. New threats dominated the landscape. What else? Find out in our end of year retrospective with NASCIO’s Executive Director, Doug Robinson. But up front: Budget deal expected this week amounts to a cease-fire as sides move to avert standoff- House and SenateRead… Read more »

Free Copies of “The Practice of Peace”

We recently saw a post on LinkedIn from the good people at the Open Space Institute about a great opportunity that we wanted to share. They are giving away copies of The Practice of Peace by Harrison Owen, one of the creators of Open Space Technology! But this offer will only last until December 31st,Read… Read more »