You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear, and algorithms... It has never been easier for designers and non-designers to create great websites that even five years ago would have cost a fortune to build... design is dead. There is more to design than the pixel-pushing of visual design... The real designers, problem solvers... able to co…

podcast listening is generally done via your earbuds or in the confined space of the car. There’s nothing more intimate than having another human being speak directly to you. - Seven secrets of podcasting success — Medium

The four phases of self-driving car development suggest we’re 5-10 years out. - Self-Driving Cars Disrupt the Crowd | Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Digital Business

I spoke to seven news organizations - Recode, The Verge, Reuters, Mic, Popular Science, The Week, and USA Today's FTW - about their decision to suspend comments, the results of that change, and how they manage reader engagement now... Here's how they're all using social media to encourage reader discussion. - What happened after 7 news site…

to boost donations and promote their brands... organizations to sensationalize their coverage, which can, in turn, distort public perceptions about the nature of social problems... The NGO sector includes organizations with annual budgets that rival those of small countries, yet many operate with minimal oversight. News organizations can help a…

Richard Edelman "... arguing my own case, for a vertical (PR) that grows into related areas in a horizontal manner" No mention (yet) of how communications impacts other internal programmes, like innovation, ideation, training, employee engagement ... - The Big Squeeze - Edelman

second-generation gender biases are ‘work cultures and practices that appear neutral and natural on their face,’ yet they reflect masculine values and life situations of men... Does your organization exhibit second-generation bias? The following three factors signal that this may be the case. - Here’s Why You Can’t Attract, Develop and Retai…

“Audience engagement editor” is a job that didn’t exist until a few years ago. But now those with the title wield heavy influence in the industry, shaping both how journalists cover events and how readers consume news... this new breed of editor crafts online tone and relationships with readers... elevate a publication’s online persona by crea…

The visuals team ... the product of merging two groups: the news applications team, who served as NPR’s graphics and data desks, and the multimedia team, who made and edited pictures and video... The multimedia crew wanted to make pictures and video that were truly web-native, which required web makers. And our news apps lacked empathy... Pictu…

we built an Interactive News team from scratch... a tight-knit group of editors and newsroom developers ... creates tools and processes ... to disrupt a print-first workflow. Here’s a look at how we got there and what we learned along the way.... A newsroom developer is only a Slack message away...we have three content editors embedded in diffe…

An open app platform will let digital news publishers play with the big guys... Siri was also shown answering basic news and information questions while you watch... imagine uses for breaking news and other journalistic purposes. - Apple announces an app platform for Apple TV, potentially big for news outlets investing in video » Nieman Jour…

Apple TV isn’t the TV-killer ... but it does create a significant opportunity for digital publishers and video companies... a built-in App Store, which for the first time will enable third-party developers to build apps for the platform — an important milestone for Apple and potentially the future of video. - The new Apple TV is great for We…

readers finished 94% of the longform pieces they started... with much faster download speeds and the advent of the tablet’s “lean back” reading experience, journalism has seen a rise in “longform” ventures... analytics offer an incomplete picture of reader behavior, and little real insight into how readers engage. Page views, entrances, ti…

Storytelling at its finest... should evoke a visceral reaction in its audience. There's something to be said about inviting that audience to participate in a story ...the options for how to do so are infinite... Here, we explore some great examples of interactive and crowd-sourced storytelling at its finest. - Crowd-sourced storytelling: How…

The nuances of building and maintaining communities can really only be learned through extensive practice, both as a participant of other groups and as an active designer of your own. There is no better way to learn this art than by taking a critical look inside as many communities, both successful and crumbling, as possible. For those getting …

it’s been recommended over 6,500 times... the problem is this: the article is… crushingly insubstantial... there are dozens of similar pieces churning around Medium at any time: how to listicles, life-hack guides, autodidactic treatises on ‘personal growth’ etc etc... in the spirit of “if you can’t beat them join them”, here is my hastily co…

My future self is awesome. He doesn’t mind taking up any task I save for him... and never complains about any work I decide he will do for me in the future. My past self is a dickhead. He keeps screwing things up and my current self always has to clean up after him... If he had planned ahead a little better I wouldn’t have to manage all this s…

With just a handful of hacks, meetings can be speedier, more productive, and more enjoyable for everyone involved. - 9 Science-Backed Methods for a Happier, More Productive Meeting

What is this wiki? It aims to be a practical resource, almost a sort of handbook, for leaders wanting to create radically more productive, soulful and purposeful business and nonprofits, government agencies, schools and hospitals. 

the most effective transformation initiatives draw upon four key actions to change mind-sets and behaviors... role modeling, fostering understanding and conviction, reinforcing changes through formal mechanisms, and developing talent and skills.... successful transformations are nearly eight times more likely to use all four actions than to us…

"Harness your productivity with these ideas." I took issue with a few of these via sidebar comments, but most are good. - 28 Ideas for Becoming 5 Times More Productive Every Week — Personal Growth — Medium

The absence of hierarchy does not necessarily mean no structure. - Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs — Holacracy — Medium

At Buffer, we create all the images for our blogposts and social media sharing without any outside design help. We rely on a handful of amazing tools and resources to get the job done, and I’ll be happy to share with you the ones we use and the extras that we’ve found helpful or interesting. - 23 Tools and Resources to Create Images for Social …

In this class, we uncover the narrative structures and strategies used by social change practitioners and entrepreneurs for building community and inspiring action... a workshop for makers and social entrepreneurs ... storytelling to transform themselves, their teams, and their broader communities. - Transformative Storytelling — Foossa Files …

let’s step back and look at the furies of the year so far, as the pace of 2015 media changes whets our appetite for 2016. Here are 10 could-be headlines for the season ahead.

First, some useful definitions: "Imagination is envisioning things that don’t exist... Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge. Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions. And entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas, by inspiring others’ imagination... the way to innovate is to look a…

Technology First starts by selecting a very specific medium for communication, then creatively exploits its full potential.... the opposite of blank slate.... Enable creative thinking by embracing arbitrary constraints. ... Put emotional adjectives in front of specific technologies... Pick an everyday interaction and internet-enable it. - Ne…

Thinking of pursuing your next idea? Read this definitive guide first... a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is all about verifying the fact that there is a market where your potential company can call home and bring in paying customers. It’s about finding your early adopters and seeing exactly they are willing to pay for.... [but] an entreprene…

- How They Did It: Part II — Medium

A bunch of useful tools for telling stories, with examples. - How They Did It — Part I — Medium