Communications

Frederick software company employee uses resources to help native Haiti

[source — gazette.net] For Rosemary Dyer, clicking the refresh button on her Facebook page for the last two weeks has been a matter of life and death. The Haiti native, a quality assurance analyst at the downtown Frederick software-building and technology company, Yakabod, has been using the social networking site to find out what happenedRead… Read more »

OpenGov is Real (I’ve added it to my spellcheckers)

February 6, 2010 — OpenGov websites and Public Engagement Tools A week ago, OpenGov with the progress of the Open Government Directive moved to a new level, and one that many of us in the community have long anticipated. The schedule laid out by the OGD prescribes an almost ‘lightening round’ (for the slow, deliberateRead… Read more »

Pip.io comes out of beta, mostly

I wrote about Pip.io at the end of October and I was very impressed with the product in its beta form. If you have not yet read the post, you should. The product, as I wrote about it then, has not changed dramatically in terms of functionality. The team has focused on the underlying platformRead… Read more »

How Should Elected Officials Use Twitter?

My husband loves USA Today (no offense to him or the paper, but it’s mostly because of the colors and graphics). A few weeks ago, he called me at work to ask if I’d seen their story “More governors finding Twitter tweets sweet.” (Background: This is relevant to me since I oversee social media forRead… Read more »

Best Practices: U.S. Coast Guard Uses YouTube to Recruit New Guardians

When I first started exploring social media recruiting, I kept asking myself one question. How do you successfully use YouTube (or any video sharing site) to recruit? Well, I think I have found my answer. I recently ran across the Coast Guard’s YouTube recruitment channel. The channel made its debut in March of 2009 andRead… Read more »

Employee Engagement/Organisational Culture Surveys

Has anyone else observed the phenomena of employee engagement/organisational culture surveys being conducted across organisations by Human Resource/Organisational Development/People areas and then the results being cascaded down through the hierarchy? It’s a bit like drip feeding people information and is, well, disengaging. Wouldn’t it be great if the results of these surveys were anonymised byRead… Read more »

Plain Language Awards

The Center for Plain Language, a 501(c)(3) with headquarters in the DC area, is giving awards for the best plain language documents and websites at a ceremony at the National Press Club on April 29. They’ve just extended their entry deadline to March 1. Entries are free this year. They’ll be giving ClearMark awards inRead… Read more »

EPA Open Strategy & Request for Input

Yesterday, I spoke to Lisa Schlosser, EPA Director of Information Collection, on the recently epa.gov/open and their request for input in their open government plan What excites you most about Open Government? Having the opportunity to reach out to so many members of the environmental community of interest is extremely exciting – we need engagementRead… Read more »

The Google “Buzz” Kill

If you haven’t already heard (and if you haven’t I assume you live under a rock) Google is going to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter with the soon to be released “Google Buzz”. Since Google has yet to activate “Buzz” within my Gmail account, I will save my opinions as it relatesRead… Read more »