I developed a metric to identify gatekeepers, who increase your influence, and flak-catchers who reduce it. I tested the GREEDY FRAGILE algorithm developed by West Point for drone targeting decisions, which measures how much an individual participant in a network makes it more or less centralized. The results were fascinating. - An x-ray of Bru…

So many memories…

"When starting a new [internal] communication project, asking the right questions of your customer sounds like a no-brainer. But are your questions right? ... Richard shares his method of developing the right questions to deliver the best results –  to start your IC projects right." - The power of critical thinking: How asking the right questio…

Whatever your position, this is worth a read, and worth using in any discussion of science communications: do you 'keep it short and simple', or 'going long and into depth'? "The more you learn about herbicide resistance, the more you come to understand how complicated the truth about GMOs is. First you discover that they aren’t evil. Then you …

“The only way you can keep great employees in the company is by treating them like great employees.... Here are five truly idiotic HR policies that will keep your best employees racing for the exits the minute they get the chance — and keep you re-filling the same positions over and over:" Five Stupid Rules That Drive Great Employees Away, F…

Instead of a link to the signup page of our daily email — where you’d have to enter your information, wait to get a confirmation email, then click a link inside it — you get a supersimple one-click interface.

Publishers may be able to get more value out of their tweets thanks to a new design change on Twitter... on the platform’s iOS or Android apps... stories will get some extra room, complete with lead art and the first few words of a story... part of the company’s plans for bringing more media into your home feed. - Twitter’s new article prev…

TheSkimm is a roundup of daily news aimed at busy professional women in the tone of your “smart friend”... 1.5 million subscribers, ... celebrity fans ... has attracted five presidential candidates to act as guest curators... 40 percent open rate... high engagement and a focused audience. One of the secrets of its growth: a referral program tha…

"@NASA is the 104th most popular Twitter account in the world... and 3.5 million on Instagram. The Department of the Interior, whose stunning wildlife and nature pictures make it the only government agency with cool visual content to rival NASA’s, has just 654,000 ... John Yembrick and Jason Townsend are veterans of other government agencies...…

So I’ve been building a little calculator that is a bit more user friendly than my Google spreadsheet. - Calculating the production of high-quality content - GatherContent: A blog about content strategy and development

"How the Islamic State is leaving tech companies torn between free speech and security is a labyrinthine topic... Today’s 8,000-word-plus story on the subject, part of The Washington Post’s “Confronting the Caliphate” series, comes with the background knowledge and context right in the story itself... Knowledge Map, appears as highlighted links…

In Bristol, a group of companies called the Venturer Consortium is planning the UK's first independent test site for driverless car technologies...The plan is to test the modified Wildcat on private and public roads in early 2016. The plan is to test the modified Wildcat on private and public roads in early 2016.

My EuropCom 2015 workshop on online communities is taking shape. (Update: view all slideshows and key takeways from the session) According to the EuropCom2015 site it'll be held after lunch on Day 1, and will cover:Convening and managing an online community is an extremely effective way of achieving communications goals, but will probably fai…

The last couple of years has seen a revival of the Art of the eNewsletter. I have found myself paying much more attention to enewsletters in my Inbox... than to the marketing junk gushing from social media

"Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works." - Design terminology, demystified — Medium

"AOL's online dominance was such that building sites for the traditional web became secondary ... Companies fought over who had the best relationship with AOL, thereby allowing them access to audiences that their competitors didn't have.... If you're starting to think that 1995 AOL sounds a lot like 2015 Facebook, you'd be right. 20 years late…

"Setting up teams of video experts with pricey editing suites is a significant investment ... and still creates a bottleneck ... Here are three ways to organise video operations that have emerged over the past months out of my conversations with premium European news publishers:"

"Our Analysis APIs analyze text or web pages, extracting metadata and classifying with topics (Functional Programming, Celebrity Gossip, or Hotels) and aspects (review, news, product, video). Analysis APIs can be used to label and organize content, recommend similar content or to build rich user profiles that enable personalization."

Great in-depth look at an email marketing success story. Resonating point: "Don't assume you know who your customers are until they've had a chance to show you." - What Startups Can Learn from Watsi’s Wildly Successful Email Campaign - First Round Review

The 2015 Digital Business Global Executive Study and Research Project by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte identifies strategy, not technology, as the key driver of success in the digital arena. Conservative companies that avoid risk-taking are unlikely to thrive - and they'll also lose talent ... The ability to digitally reimagine the b…

"Despite the differences among the many organizations producing digital video, a consensus appears to be forming around three organizational best practices..." - Building a news organization's capacity for video

The secret to improvement is to realize that all successful presentations have 3 components, the relative proportion of which differs according to what the presentation's goal is. - 3 Components All Successful Presentations Have | Andras Baneth | LinkedIn

Spot the big IF*: "If a fleet of autonomous electric taxis were to replace everyone’s gas-powered, personal cars, we could see more than a 90 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions..." There is no specific reason why taxibots need to be electric. It would be great, but it may require regulation. Moreover, you could replace the current …

Another advocacy piece on holacracy, because "Getting rid of hierarchies might just save the human race" - You Don’t Need a Manager — Work: Reimagined — Medium

Great example of how to cover a social media trending topic via video: "A video featuring a beauty blogger with adult acne has been watched almost seven million times.... shows some of the comments that Em Ford received online after posting images of her face with and without make-up... she wanted to point out the "unrealistic expectations" soc…

there are limits to what digital learning technology can do, and we have to remember that great teaching has always been a primary driver of academic growth... With targeted instruction and mentorship, these likely to fail students ended up getting As and Bs in a hard course at a highly selective university. - We cannot rely on the internet …

The Art of Hosting is a highly effective way of harnessing the collective wisdom and self-organizing capacity of groups of any size.  ... a suite of powerful conversational processes to invite people to step in and take charge of the challenges facing them... better decision-making, more efficient and effective capacity building and greater abi…

there’s no denying that had he been alive today, Orwell – the great opponent and satirist of totalitarianism – would have deplored the bureaucratic repression of HR. He would have hated their blind loyalty to power, their unquestioning faithfulness to process, their abhorrence of anything or anyone deviating from the mean.In particular, Orwell wou…

Design triumphs over content: The CAPS15 conference really looks interesting … if only I could read the programme!

Quite enjoyed helping put together a press campaign for the ECC-Net, one of the Commission’s under-appreciated projects.