Skiing, Water Parks, Dating and Politics (Three Ways To Engage Your Online Community)

You might ask what does Skiing, Water Parks, Dating and Politics have in common. The answer… Social Media! I would like to begin by providing a shout out to a company that gets it! Vermont’s Jay Peak Resort was named to the Top 10 North American Ski Resorts Utilizing Social Media. Here’s a great exampleRead… Read more »

Late Bloomers and The Evolution of “Social”

“…[W]e live in a society with peculiar expectations about the time course of success. We think that if a child isn’t blossoming as fast as the others in grade school, he or she will be hard pressed to eventually flourish.” Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D Candidate, Yale, Psychology Today, November 2008 The Social Evolution is inRead… Read more »

Mind the Gap: How Innovative Partnerships Can Help Fill the Funding Gap

In my introductory posting in the “jennovation” series for Govloop and Phase One Consulting Group’s Transformation in the Federal Sector Blog, I introduced you to an innovative platform known as the Department of Education’s Innovation Portal. This week I want to describe a little more about how that portal, in combination with data.ed.gov and theRead… Read more »

Social Media: Taking Stock in Your Government

Much of the hand-wringing in government social media practice – or more so, the decision-making behind whether to have a government social media practice – centers on return on investment, or even “return on engagement.” Does it work, and how do we measure whether it works? From measuring retweets, to numbers of fans, unique blogRead… Read more »

Inbound Marketing – Good Book!

Inbound Marketing – Get found using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah is a fast, two hour read with a lot of good points. We differ about building websites, blogs, LinkedIn, and generating followers, but our differences are not antagonistic, more matter of emphasis, like the blind men describing theRead… Read more »

The Tele-Commuter Mindset – a series

The Distributed City Model This past weekend my wife and I visited southern Minnesota’s Bluff Country. Bluff Country really goes into Iowa and Wisconsin but I guess Minnesota came up with the name first and … well, the point is, politically defined regions and politically defined tourist areas like Bluff Country all suffer from theRead… Read more »

Weekly Research and Best Practices

Research 1. Digital Economy Rankings 2010 (06/2010) Economist’s annual benchmarking study of the digital development of seventy countries. Study finds evidence that the digital divide is narrowing and that in some cases; developing countries are adopting innovative technologies faster than developed countries. http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/EIU_Digital_economy_rankings_2010_FINAL_WEB.pdf 2. Australian Government’s Draft Social Media Handbook (July 2010) – This “unofficial”Read… Read more »