September 27, 2005

Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 26, 2005

Last Week’s Government Technology Executive News

There was a lot of good content and news in last week's Government Technology Executive News (GTEN) newsletter, so I've thrown it up on the web. Tell me what you think.

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12:22pm | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - wireless - workforce | no comments

September 24, 2005

Blogs and Technology News

Public relations professional Alice Marshall wrote an interesting article about how blogs are affecting technology news. She picked out a quote about something I said.

Alice said about her article:

This topic was inspired by an article in a trade journal. The writer talked about how the combination of site statistics and blogs has changed ideas about newsworthiness.


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9:13pm | govtech web site - blogs - public relations | no comments

September 22, 2005

Great Reading at the Global PR Blog Week Blog

Here are some quotes I like from some of the new articles:

Elizabeth Albrycht:

Over the past year I have become increasingly convinced that the primary function of corporate communications/public relations today is network building. By that I mean that all of our strategies and tactics need to be focused on building, extending and nurturing the entire universe of connections (by which I mean people) possible for an organization.

To put it in slightly more technical terms, I am relying on interpretations of Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law. The former states that the value of the network is the approximately the square of the number of users. The latter states that when you enable connections between nodes on the network to take place, the value of the network grows exponentially. What that means for our subject is that you should be motivated to grow your network in terms of numbers of connections as well as to enable members of that network to communicate with each other as well as with your organization. Participatory communications tools like blogs are particularly well designed to help you do both of these things.

Matías Fernández Dutto:

Internal blogs are not a fashion or a modern practice, they are a great idea. As we have seen, it generates an excellent resource for internal communication which impacts productivity and strengthens emerging leadership. To participate, to talk and to keep conversations through internal blogs, a unique communications perspective and experience is born.

Dave Taylor:

Blogs, by themselves, have no constraints or requirements. They're just communications tools waiting to be sculpted into something useful, interesting or entertaining. And in that vein, I continue to look forward to the day when creative writers really have that moment of inspiration and start to show how story blogs can become some of the best and most engaging content in the blogosphere.

Ryan May:

When bloggers discovered that Kryptonite’s U-shaped lock could be easily picked with a Bic ballpoint pen, the company’s sales were hit hard. Kryptonite lost an estimated $10 million is just 10 days according to Fortune magazine, a pretty big hit for a $25 million dollar company. Blogs were blamed because they posted videos of how to pick the lock and Kryptonite ignored the problem.

Something often miss about blogs is that they typically get better placement within Google and other search engines, because of the number of sites they link to and that link back to them.

Stephen J. Dubner:

Blogs being so popular has to do with the advances in technology and the fact that most of them are free to develop. They aren't one-way communications vehicles. They are about building two-way relationships. They are the perfect form of true interactive communications vs. email or a website.

People blog about issues that are not addressed well in the media. Bloggers are filling in the cracks. They are illuminating information that was previously overlooked. Bloggers fill in the cracks and are adding value to what can be a puzzle reporters are piecing together. I know many journalists, who although initially critical of blogs, have now come to truly rely on them and endorse them.

John Cass:

The focus of any blog posts should be on thought leadership and responding to customer enquires, companies must also monitor and respond to any blog posts out in the community. A little like the telephone when the telephone rings its important to pick up the telephone, companies are finding that when a post online is made its important to find comments about their company and respond if needed.

Jeneane D. Sessum:

Not every high-level executive, however, has a power blogger within, just waiting for the opportunity to engage the market in debate and express himself or herself online. It takes a combination of personality and proficiency, of wit and wisdom, and the ability to write well, to make a blogger—CEO or otherwise—worth reading.

Blogging Is “Complementary To”—Not a “Replacement For”

Friend and his company have seen first hand the tangible benefits that occur when the CEO and the company’s mission, vision, business model, and value proposition are aligned. And, according to Friend, blogging can play a role in facilitating this authentic convergence.

Italo Vignoli:

When I have started my blog in early 2005, after almost one year of thinking, it was a natural choice to write in Italian. The problem was to find readers: Italy is a country where the discussion about PR has always been restricted to a minuscule group of professionals, while the rest of the industry does not seem to care at all.

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Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 20, 2005

Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 18, 2005

New Blog About Content and Technology

I've started a new blog called Intersection. It's about the intersection of content and technology.

My intention with this blog is to discuss, examine and discover new ways of using technology to make information on the Internet more useful.

I'll be keeping up this blog here, as well.

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7:03pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

Global PR Blog Week 2.0 is Comming

This is awesome. From the Global PR Blog Week 2.0 blog:

The Global PR Blog Week 2.0 is an online event that will engage public relations, marketing and business professionals from around the globe in a discussion about how new communications technologies are changing public relations and business communication.

The event will be held online, on this weblog, from September 19 to September 23, 2005.

During this year's five-day forum, participants from Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States will publish 70 case studies, articles and interviews on new communications technologies.

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3:38pm | web technology - blogs - public relations | no comments

IT Workforce Issues and Content

This month's cover story of Government Technology magazine is about workforce issues in state government IT. It is a really interesting article all the way around.

One of the things that interested me was the talk about the content on government websites in relation to younger generations. From a section of the article entitled The Right Medium:

Oregon's Scott Smith thought Oregon.gov, the state's new portal, would pass the critique of even the toughest audience -- his 16-year-old son. Smith is director of operations of Oregon's Information Resources Management Division (IRMD), and is also manager of the state's E-Government Program.

One night at home, he said, he showed the portal to his son and got a little surprise.

"I took him to the Oregon.gov portal and navigated through a lot of the different layers and different agencies," Smith recalled. "I told him we have 95,000 pages of information out there, and he just wasn't impressed. I was dumbfounded, and told him, 'This is a big deal. This is a lot of information. We've never had this before.'

"His comment was, 'Yeah, but you can't connect to it,'" Smith said.

12:59pm | govtech web site - egovernment - enterprise architecture - best practices - open government - workforce | no comments

September 17, 2005

Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 16, 2005

Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 14, 2005

The Larger Campaign for Digitizing Government

I recently mentioned Wayne Hanson's editorial about the Digital Communities Initiative. The editorial is an edited version of an email he wrote and sent to some of the staff and executives of eRepublic.

In a response to the email, Center for Digital Government's Paul Taylor said:

This is good stuff. Thanks for copying me on it. I was struck by two things.

First, the stories in your note point at digital communities as a matter of digital governance as much as e- or digital government.

Second, I understand where you were going with the criticism of e-government having become “everything that government is doing.” At the same time, that observation is a huge win for us. It is not so long ago that there was a huge divide – at least at the level of perception -- between the citizen-facing applications such as portals at the front end and the legacy systems, enterprise applications and mission-critical infrastructures in the back office. We have had no small role in bringing front and back together under the rubric of digital government.

We would do our audiences a great service if we keep contextualizing the “new thing" as part of a larger campaign for modernizing or digitizing government. One of our strengths, and one of our opportunities, is to demonstrate the continuity among what may seem as separate activities.

With so much scrutiny on how government spends scarce taxpayer dollars, track record matters. The public sector IT community has a track record that spans a half century, although that body of work often is portrayed as a series of fresh starts – each catalyzed by the introduction of a new technology – rather than continuing to build on a foundation that has been doing the heavy lifting of government for 50 years.

With another 36 gubernatorial elections next year, we will have a fresh injection of new kids on the block. Will they be starting over (again)? Or will they be recipients of a rich inheritance of practices and propositions on which they can build their own legacies? State CIOs ought to reflect 30 or 40 years of experience – not 1 year of experience 30 or 40 times? If not us, who will tell the larger, longer story?

I agree we should pursue digital or connected communities, aging in place, and all the tough issues of the day – but I hope we do it in a way that provides the context necessary to see the that public sector IT community is the natural and obvious choice to be trusted with solving the next big problem.

12:18am | technology governance - egovernment - best practices | no comments

Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 13, 2005

Nick’s Daily Picks

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September 11, 2005

Nick’s Daily Picks

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