Yearly Archives 2013

At this month's 501TechNYC meetup, I had the chance to meet about 50 colleagues in the non-profit tech field and present a version of our NTEN panel, "3 Faces of the Digital Manager," originally given in April with Laura Brahm, Danielle Brigida and Yesenia Sotelo.The worst part was not having my killer co-panelists from the NTC in Minneapolis. But the best part was spending the final 30 minutes brainstorming with the entire room. The assignment was to make a longer list of "words to live by" when managing digital change inside an organization.For context, here's the introduction to the NYC talk, followed by the list we built up together. Every organization has a different "culture of tech," and every web manager, digital strategist or social media editor uses a different approach to get things done. Your style for managing change is as important as your tools or your budget. And there's no single…

I have a recurring dream where I'm at work. In a meeting. And we're talking about a new technology project and everyone's excited, even the managers who don't know all that much about tech.

Or maybe I'm not remembering it right. Maybe the managers are skeptical and annoyed, even though they do know a little about tech. Or maybe no one's excited, and we have to explain the whole plan again from scratch. And I'm dressed in a towel. It's all blurry and I can't remember if people think the new tools are a great idea or some overhyped add-on that makes no sense.

And that's when I realize: I am wearing my clothes, but it's not a dream.

If there are enough interviews like this one with Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, maybe wrong-headed social media thinking by insiders will be laid bare faster and die out sooner.Stevens comments on reader-driven narratives reveal some of the bad social media assumptions that weaken traditional institutions. When crowds use social tools to become more than consumers of news, institutions that think like this will be blindsided every time.In today's environment,  Stevens said,  "news is whatever people decide news is." "I don't think that there is a legitimacy litmus test that you can put on it," he said. "The question that news organizations have to ask themselves and do ask themselves every day is what kind of news do we want to validate?"Stories like the "47%" video and Romney's "binders full of women" fumble "took on lives of their own online," according to CNN's Reliable Sources interview of Stevens. They definitely did, and social media…

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