"the distributed Internet was dropped into an economy that has concentrated power structures with asymmetrical ability to shape it for their own purposes. Whether the old financial services behemoths, the new titans of silicon valley, or the vast government bureaucracies that mine the digital world to monitor their citizens, the dream of a new age…

"Much of what social collaboration tools are designed to support is shallow work, and the stuff of managerial oversight... deep productivity comes from supporting deep work - cognitively demanding activities that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results, and that push our abilities to continually improve - trying to support…

"After years without a central hub on which users could view popular content, Tumblr launched its answer to Reddit’s front page and Twitter’s trending topics in December: a page called “Explore” where anyone — registered on the site or not — can see the Tumblr blogs, search terms and posts that are currently most popular... If Tumblr was once bui…

"On January 17, 2014, President Obama spoke at the Justice Department about changes in the technology that we use for national security purposes, and what these technologies mean for our privacy broadly. He called on the administration to conduct a broad 90-day review of big data and privacy: how these technologies affect the way we live and the w…

Nice infographic on the science behind storytelling, and how to apply it to presentations: "A story doesn’t spark agreement or disagreement but rather participation… igniting 7 parts of the brain… testament to why as humans we love stories…"

"Google is now clearly marking websites in mobile search results that it considers mobile friendly and if that tag isn’t getting displayed around your content, your website may see a drop in mobile traffic. Responsive design is definitely the way to go but will that be enough. How do you confirm if your web pages are considered mobile friendly by…

"Unfortunately, too many managers don't adequately follow through and thereby squander the important time they've invested in coaching. You can make the process more effective by adopting these practices after every session." - Your Coaching Is Only as Good as Your Follow-Up Skills - HBR

"Startups are notorious for this: You’ll have two or three people who are true hustlers, wearing multiple hats, pushing themselves and others to get shit done, while the rest of the group sort of ‘tags along’ and waits for shit to happen. " - The Truth About Collaboration — Medium

An excellent tour of management structures from hierarchy to holacracy, with some criticisms of the latter: "Hierarchies do authority incredibly well... but have some big flaws. They become slow, with decisions taking an eternity to pass up and down the ranks. Innovation from the edges is stifled by top-down control and bureaucracy.... So in the…

A great riposte to Joe Keohane’s "In Praise of Meaningless Work", which descried "meaning-mongering as the new greenwashing". "The problem isn’t that corporate leaders are talking about meaning too much. It’s that they aren’t taking it seriously enough.... It should come as no surprise that the corporate machines that are populated by such inter…

"the Internet has dismantled newspaper’s geographic monopoly & business model ... & also upended the core assumptions underlying the actual journalism ... BuzzFeed as an organization has been figuring out what works online for over eight years now, and while “The Dress” may have been unusual in its scale, its existence was no accident... BuzzFee…

An article aimed at companies, so just substitute "government communicators" for "corporate marketers", and "citizens" for "consumers", as you read: "Technology changes fast ... but consumer behavior changes more slowly. As a result, people tend to overhype new technologies and misallocate resources, especially marketers. "posts from top brands …

"Relationship Economics - how communication & engagement helps business grow relationships with employees and customers to improve their bottom line." Relationship Economics - YouTube

A typically good piece of data journalism from Guardian's Datablog: "The number of people employed on zero-hours contracts reached 697,000 in the fourth quarter of 2014. See the characteristics of people employed on zero-hours contracts in four charts " - Zero-hours contracts in four charts | News | The Guardian

"the system ... counts the number of incorrect facts within a page ... by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings." - Google wan…

"The future of work is screwed. It's being built upon a foundation of legacy thinking and outdated value systems. Instead, the future of work should start with a reboot in company culture and employee engagement." The 10 reasons are both cutting and funny and worth a read. To dig deeper, there's even a free report, summarised in text & video. K…

Comment moderation and online community management strategies for news organisations, but relevant to government sites too: "Comments are a way for readers to connect with one another, and with the journalists and editors reporting the news. But ... can quickly turn uncivil, and news organizations often don’t have the resources or manpower to con…

"From the responsive layouts to the improved APIs ... we’ve reimagined every aspect of the WIRED experience... I want to walk you through our thinking on the new site—to tell you about the technology and design innovations that make this iteration of WIRED possible. We settled on a card-based motif for both its flexibility and configurability..…

"some people have the sense that data somehow makes designers less powerful, that you’re basing decisions based purely on mechanical measures rather than designer intuition and genius... data is what ... turns designers from artists into the most important decision makers in a company... prototypes can really only get you to local maxima ... the…

Good case study, concluding with observations on the role of journalists which also apply to government communicators: "An engaged journalist's role in the 21st century is not only to inform but to bring readers directly into the conversation through... real-time coverage, alternative story forms, crowdsourcing, beat blogging, user-generated co…

"Newsrooms don't need large budgets for analyzing data--they can easily access basic data tools that are free or inexpensive." - Drilling Down: A Quick Guide to Free and Inexpensive Data Tools | Global Investigative Journalism Network

"What was originally intended to be a simple and user-friendly tool for all EU citizens has turned out to be cumbersome and challenging in its use... Stakeholders have come up with concrete recommendations on how to adjust the instrument... first report on the application of the ECI Regulation by 1 April 2015 ... the first step towards a revision…

A whole load of recommnendations for the UK's House of Commons, including some intriguing ones - eg: "We believe the public want the opportunity to have their say in House of Commons debates; we also believe that this will provide a useful resource for MPs and help to enhance those debates. We therefore recommend a unique experiment: the use of…

Quite simply a must read, particularly for any organisation which silos its communications skills and activities: "anyone who wants to get started in real digital marketing should work for a company that sells a specific product to a specific audience... I wanted to propose a strategy to Mozzers on how marketing departments and agencies should s…

A lot of good practical advice here, although focused on teams distributed across the planet, not just Europe. The last recommendation is worth remembering: "Last, but not least... meet as a whole team. Do social things together, give people a chance to get to know one another. Once you connected a real human with the flat, blurry face on the scr…

A glimpse into tomorrow's ultra-personalised web, when these technologies migrate out of marketing into CMS ... "an engine to generate custom sets of tags for each Web site visitor.... the next step is to assemble the tag data into detailed individual profiles for personalization, testing, attribution, and other purposes... These features go bey…

"There is no shortage of stories about companies that create amazing innovations with digital technology ... the software, media and technology industries ... account for less than 10% of the U.S. economy. What about the other 90%? We studied more than 400 large companies ... in every industry, companies are doing exciting things with digital te…

"I’ve seen many successful startups emerge and flourish outside of Silicon Valley, like Hootsuite, Jive, Bazaarvoice, Omniture, Spredfast, Sprinklr, BuddyMedia, BlaBlaCar, Freelancer, and a plethora of Chinese tech companies ... let’s first break down the pros and cons of having your startup be in Silicon Valley" - Your Tech Startup Doesn’t Nee…

I freely admit: I've been a fanboy of the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) since studying their design principles. Those principles are still good. Everything else, it turns out, was not.

"an engine to generate custom sets of tags for each Web site visitor.... the next step is to assemble the tag data into detailed individual profiles for personalization, testing, attribution, and other purposes... These features go beyond Web page tags to capture data from mobile apps, from ad pixels served on external Web sites, and from other s…