Politics - Be Informed! JUST VOTE!

Across the country, we will have elections tomorrow. As in any election season, there are candidates to review and issues to understand. It is easy to become an informed voter if you utilize various sources of information.

Understanding credible sources, asking questions, not assuming all facts are true are the hallmarks of learning in campaign season. I've dragged our family to meet the candidate sessions, poured over direct mail and pointed out information in our local newspaper. I've encouraged my neighbors to be informed and vote. I do hope that my fellow citizens will believe that our great country requires our active engagement, understanding various sides of issues, and most importantly voting our conscience!

It may not be a Presidential Election, but it is important... Just VOTE!

Changing the View - Using Social Media for Real Results

I always enjoy the opportunity to speak to college and graduate students. In particular, I challenge myself to get them to view the world in a slightly different way. This morning was one of those opportunities. The Brown School at Washington University invited me to speak to their course Social Work Practice with Organizations and Communities course.

My part was to discuss the impact of technology and social media on the non-profit. While all were users of social media, most had not made the leap to understand the benefit of using in a work situation. We discussed the need for strategy, how real time knowledge can be gleaned from the internet in general and Twitter in particular, how real organizations are incorporating digital into the ways they engage their stakeholders, even showed some examples of funds raised using these tools.

Understanding of the tools requires a foundation of knowledge and a measurable objective. Helping today's graduate student understand how they make the transition from personal social media user to savvy employee who leverages social media is the challenge! I hope that my presentation helped to change their view of social media from incredibly personal to one of strategic opportunity!

The Death of the Pageview - ReadWriteStart

This article gives a good overview of measurement... engagement and behavior change are the key in a new digital age.

The Death of the Pageview - ReadWriteStart

Civics Lessons are Everywhere!

The world is a great civics classroom. Certainly the big elections provide wonderful ways to educate our children about the participatory role of citizens in our democracy, but so too do smaller elections that affect our communities.

This spring our school district has a bond issue to fund expansion plans for our district that sold off a lot of property in the late 70s and early 80s when the enrollment trends were decreasing. Instead of leasing the land and keeping it, they opted to sell to increase the reserves. For years, the district never had to go to the voters for more resources. But in the past few years, our district has had to go to the voters.

This spring:

• Our children have accompanied us to a Town Hall meeting in the building at Westminster Christian Academy which our district is seeking to purchase to use for our students. They watched the presentation, the well-worded, thoughtful question and the ones that seemed to ramble; they watched a decidedly skeptical population of mostly older citizens question the merits of a tax increase (albeit approximately $114 per year on a home valued at $500K) and they watched the public officials answer the questions.
• Our children have seen us put out a yard sign to support the proposition but take it down due to our subdivision indentures, and discuss at the dinner table some of the neighbors views.
• Our children have heard us discuss an email sent by me to encourage our neighbors to educate themselves on the ballot issue, and heard about some of the responses: positive and negative.
• Our children have gone to a Meet the Candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voter's to hear about the issues, and our 10 year old wrote a question that was asked of the 5 candidates for School Board - "Would you consider starting school after Labor Day?"

It has been a remarkably low key election, but one that they can understand and easily participate in... Civic Lessons are Everywhere, you just have to look!

Considerations for developing a social media policy: PRSA

PRSA has a thoughtful article on pointers to think about when developing a social media policy. In AHC seminars, we utilize a number of case studies, but thought this article was worth posting.

Considerations for developing a social media policy: PRSA

Trend Video - JESS3

My colleagues at JESS3 have put together a great summary of the stats related to internet and social media usage.

Check it out.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Why Entrepreneurs Need LinkedIn

As a small business owner, I often discuss the value that I find LinkedIn to have. I call it my souped up electronic rolodex. It can keep you top of mind with your network, provide you with great articles about how to do your job better, give you information to pass to clients... all in an efficient way.

And it a status update I post on Twitter would be of value to my LinkedIn contacts, I merely tag it #in and it automatically appears on LinkedIn.

Why Entrepreneurs Need LinkedIn

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