The cloud and the public sector - water and oil? | Ovum March 05, 2009, 9:32 AM — Public sector CIOs should look to the leading cloud computing providers for insights into architecting the next generation of government IT infrastructure as an agile whole-of-government utility – rather than creating outdated, inflexible shared services and outsourcing arrangements. The emerging logic of cloud computing Public sector agencies are not immune to the pressures being placed on all organizations this year to cut costs and boost operating performance. The flurry of economic stimulus spending under way across the globe might create the appearance of 'spend, spend, spend' by government, but the reality is that governments themselves are being beaten by the hammer of the economic crisis. This climate of austerity is likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. Cloud logic and public sector IT management We need to move beyond this 'at-the-margins' thinking and explore the applicability of cloud logic to the core operations of government IT.
How to Write Powerful Bullet Points If you have sat through too many presentations where the presenter read the full text of their slides, you have probably wondered, “How can I avoid droning on and on and focus on just the key information that my audience needs?” One part of the answer is to create bullet points that you can expand upon. When using bullet points on a presentation slide, there are some key ideas that you should keep in mind. A Bullet Point is Not a SentenceToo many times a presenter puts an entire sentence as a bullet point. Reveal the Key Idea OnlyA bullet point is supposed to be a short summation of the key point that you want to make. Use a Consistent StyleWhen using bullet points, make sure that they have a consistent style. Observe the 6 by 6 GuidelineIn order to keep the amount of information in each bullet point concise and to keep the slide from looking cluttered, you should keep the six by six guideline in mind. Additional resources for creating effective bullet points:
Bally Total Witness All Foodbuzz - Foodbuzz Special: Ad Network & Exchange Guide - Special Report: Ad Ne Advertisement Confused by Where to Click? We're Here to Help on 04.14.2008 So Much Info, so Much to Test Out By Abbey Klaassen on 04.14.2008 Top Sellers Have a Say About That Whole 'Pork Bellies' Line ... Website Traffic: Why Can't We All Agree? By Nat Ives on 04.14.2008 Contextual Targeting Boosts Loyal Following By Jonathan Lemonnier on 04.14.2008 New Metrics Give 'Credit Where Due' By Laurie Sullivan on 04.14.2008 Everybody Into the Pool By Mark Risis on 04.14.2008 Ad Exchanges See a Premium-Level Future By Daisy Whitney on 04.14.2008 Want to Target Online? By Erik Sherman on 04.14.2008 Merging Acquisitions Into AOL Ad Network Lead-Generation Winds Through Privacy Issues By William Hupp on 04.14.2008 Advertising Age
Top 5 Tips for Hosting a Customer Community Brian Oberkirch of Small Good Thing moderated a wide-ranging exploration of customer service communities at yesterday's Customer Service is the New Marketing summit. (Flickr photo by dougfl07.) Matt Mullenweg of Automattic summed up the panel's threads well with a single metaphor: If everyone showed up to your house for a party, would you stay away? Probably not. You'd stay at home, make sure that everyone had a drink, keep weirdos from doing strange things off in the corner, and herd guests into the right room given their numbers and general mood. How does this simple concept apply to hosting a customer community? 1. Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency works with clients (including both Timbuk2 and Get Satisfaction) to navigate community creation or engagement. The bag company Timbuk2 is a great example of this practice in action. By following her community's lead in creating company engagement, Roll has had an extremely successful experience in creating customer relationships. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Building Employee Brand Passion : Part 3 - Left The Box March 12th, 2009 by Samir Balwani A brand exploring social media can’t hire a community manager and expect instant success. It takes more, and for some companies it means evolving the brand culture. For social media to be most successful, the marketing can’t stop at the marketing team, but instead must be company wide. credit Aligning Brand Culture When someone thinks new media brand culture, the usually think Google. At Zappos sharing, social media, and customer service are ingrained in their culture. So what qualities help a corporate culture align with social media? Identifying Passionate Users Obviously, the larger the company the more difficult to identify passionate employees. My first suggestion is to simply ask. Then, make it part of the hiring process. Empowering Your Brand Enthusiasts Once you know who your most passionate employees are, you have to channel that passion. The first thing to do is create a “social media engagement guideline”. Are you passionate about your company?
Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts | chrisbrogan.com You’re writing and podcasting and videoblogging your face off and it’s starting to feel like no one’s paying attention. You want to get the right comments, and meaningful conversations started, or you want your peers to come and start a lively discourse. How do you get your best posts out there in such a way that people will come by and add to the body of work? (Note first that I’ve said “best posts” and not “every post.” If you abuse any of this, it goes poorly for you pretty quickly.) Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts Bookmark your best posts on Delicious. **Update: Here’s what people on Twitter said you should do: Perhaps you have some other ways to promote? Photo credit, KungPaoCajun ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Genesis Framework The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. With automatic theme updates and world-class support included, Genesis is the smart choice for your WordPress website or blog. Become a StudioPress Affiliate
Redesign/Communication Brief The purpose of this document is to make sure we’re all on common ground. We’ve been through the kickoff session, had conversations, and taken lots of notes. The community has also provided additional feedback about the initial questions. Now, we need to articulate our understanding of the goals for this project. We will be referring to this document throughout the project. The Task at Hand Mozilla.org, launched in 1998, is the home of the Mozilla Project. Happy Cog is working with Mozilla Foundation staff and the Mozilla community to address the redesign of the site to accurately reflect the site's current role as a gateway site for the Mozilla Project and various Mozilla properties, along with being repository of official content. Project Goals and Objectives There are several strategic goals associated with this project. Primary Goals: Additional Goals: Site Audiences Based on our discussions, the following is a quick snapshot of the main user audiences of the site: Key Design Attributes
Alex Frankel on How Employees Create Brand How are brands defined by their internal culture? How are customer-facing employees defining and marketing their company's brand? Alex Frankel, author of Punching In, came to Customer Service is the New Marketing to share his undercover experiences as a corporate culture chameleon. When Frankel started the project, he assumed that he would be an equally good worker in any environment. Who companies hire is key to building and sustaining corporate cultures. Training is the second key part of establishing culture. Apple Stores encourage that you shadow an experienced employee for a few shifts, and do so in a highly interactive manner. By dressing in a brown UPS uniform or a green Starbucks apron, the individual transforms herself to represent an otherwise-anonymous corporation. Apple Stores = Integrated + Interactive + Inspirational Starbucks = Screening + Training + Working UPS = Economy of motion + Efficiency of delivery + Excellence of service
From Blah to Blockbuster: How You Can Build a Blog That Excites You’ve launched a blog and have been at it for a while now. But the results you’re getting aren’t what you had hoped for. Despite posting regularly, traffic is still low and you’re still waiting on that first comment. Don’t worry, most companies find themselves in this position when they launch a blog. Presenter Mack Collier Mack Collier is a social media consultant, trainer and speaker. His social media 'homebase' is The Viral Garden, which in 2 years time Mack has grown into an influential marketing/social media blog with a monthly readership of over 125,000. Mack is also a frequently requested speaker and has presented at some of the top social media conferences and events, including South By Southwest Interactive, MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer, and Small Business Marketing Unleashed. Who Should Attend? Anyone who is blogging now and wants to improve their efforts and create more interaction and excitement on their blog. What Will You Learn? Register Now! You have two choices.
Loic Le Meur Blog: How Do Geeks Get In Shape & 13 Tips To Ge I like to share my runs on Twitter and some of my friends reply often. This morning Mike Butcher said "Got any tips on getting in shape? You seem pretty good at it" so I thought I could share more and would love to hear how you get in shape. There are many geeks I know who care a lot about regular exercise, like Jyri who has shared many of my runs around the Golden Gate bridge, fidlr who runs too and tells me that "interval running" is called "wind sprints" in America or my colleague Cathy Brooks, Net who shared crazy runcasts like running on the Golden Gate bridge, Joi with his diets and various exercises and so many others. How do you do it? Here are some tips, very obvious ones of course. 1. start with friends. 2. start slowly even if you hate it, you will feel good fast, you can even start (or only) walk 3. do it regularly and do not aim at a performance, often is more important. 4. you are geeks, get gadgets to measure and share. 5. change the type of exercise each time. inShare0
Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Blog and Is your head bleeding? Is your heart bleeding? Here's my thought (and, I say this with full disclosure that I am no IT expert and have limited knowledge of the hacking space beyond a personal interest in better understanding technology - peace and love... peace and love...), but the process of text-based passwords needs to be tossed out. Why this is so important to talk about for marketers? The brands that win are the brands that can be trusted. It's like a full time job to manage this stuff, isn't it? It gets worse. Blame the passwords. These systems were built in a such a way that invites problems and challenges. Some thoughts on a better way to connect. I read with interest The Globe And Mail article published yesterday, Fed up with passwords? Organic solutions to technical challenges. In short, we need to use the small things that make us individuals unique from one another as the way in which to secure the content, flow and information we connect with. By Mitch Joel