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Let’s Face It-Real Conversations Require More than 140 Characters
Guest Post: Jenn Whinnem
While we can forge and foster some strong bonds over social networks, nothing can quite replace face-to-face interaction. Moving from Twitter to the tweet-up is a great solution. A tweet-up–a mash-up of the words “tweet” and “meet-up”–is simply a physical meet-up of people who know each other over Twitter. It serves as an antidote to the irony of social media: for all of the opportunities it provides for connection with others on an unprecedented scale, it is essentially a lonely activity. It’s you and your screen of choice. Whether you’re in front of your computer monitor, bending over your tablet or thumbing furiously on your phone, you have to block out the world around you to interact with others. A tweet-up affords the opportunity to meet the person behind the avatar and to deepen the connection.
Next Time Think Human Centered Design
At this year’s Fall Conference in Seattle, we’re holding 14 separate breakouts on a range of topics from storytelling to program/communications collaboration to using data effectively. The post below is the second in our ongoing series highlighting the topics these breakouts will cover.
During the session titled, Bedsider: Sharing is Caring, Jenn Maer, storyteller, IDEO; Bob Morehouse, chief executive officer, Vermilion Design+Interactive; and Lawrence Swiader, senior director, digital media, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy will discuss a unique program created to re-frame the conversation about birth control education. Bedsider’s “big hairy audacious” goal is to create new messages and methodologies to bring about a 20 percent reduction in unplanned pregnancies among single women under 30 by 2020. In Seattle, presenters also will discuss how local partners are successfully implementing a version of Bedsider in Colorado, called Beforeplay, which uses website, billboards, TV spots and social media.
In the Q/A that follows, Lawrence Swiader talks about how a concept called human centered design helped in the development of Bedsider’s communications strategy.
Moving From Web Analytics To Web Evaluation
With this post, we’re introducing a series focused on “tools and tips” that can help you navigate the many online options available to bolster your communications activities and ensure they support your overall strategies. In the first of a two-part series, Louie Herr, a consultant based in Portland, Ore., discusses the “trinity” approach to web evaluations.
Guest Post: Louie Herr
Like many people, I used to think that web measurements primarily revolved around getting a fix on how much time people spend on site, what they clicked to read, the last page they viewed before exiting, etc., and then using those findings to make improvements to hold on to visitors longer. Then I read Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and it completely changed my attitude about evaluating websites.
This Is Not An Annual Report
At first glance you might mistake the James Irvine Foundation’s 2011 Performance Report as just another annual report. But don’t be fooled. According to Daniel Silverman, the foundation’s director of communications, it’s more that. “While it includes many of the features of a traditional foundation annual report, our aim with this publication is to go beyond that approach and give you a deeper look at the Foundation’s progress toward its long-term goals.”
The Irvine report, which this year is available in a new online format, “is based on the Annual Performance Report that we make each year to Irvine’s Board of Directors as a way to measure our impact and hold ourselves accountable,” says Silverman. ”It examines the progress we’re seeing in our core grantmaking programs, as well as other areas that we believe contribute to our impact as an institution. If you’re interested in reading this longer, more detailed document, it is available on our website.”
In the Beginning Was The Word…(Then Came the Picture)
Special thanks to Communications Network member Stefan Lanfer, knowledge officer at the Barr Foundation, for sharing a story about how the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) had an unprecedented success in disseminating findings from a report about sustainable agriculture in Massachusetts. As Lanfer notes in his post on the foundation’s website, CLF “created a simple, elegant infographic that disti
We’re pleased to repost Carmichael’s comments here.
Guest Post: Ben Carmichael
Following months of research we at CLF and CLF Ventures were ready to release a report showing the huge potential for sustainable urban agriculture in Boston. The economic and environmental possibilities by converting just 50 acres are significant.
And yet, on the eve of the release, we wondered: how best to communicate these findings to the public in a way that would make them not only resonate, but be shared widely – and, dare we dream, maybe even go viral.
