Todd Van Hoosear, one of the principals of Fresh Ground, a Boston-area communications firm, joined me on my Disruptive Dialogue podcast to discuss his recent trip to the DEMO Spring conference in Palm Desert, California. Presenters at the event get 6 minutes to convince an audience of media, investors, and entrepreneurs that their new product [...]
March 2010
Organizations should not proactively monitor what their employees are doing online. There’s an asterisk we’ll get to in a moment, but tracking social networking behavior, what sites workers visit, the content of emails, and other electronic behavior should not be on the list of workplace activities. Now let me be clear: I believe employers have [...]
Most of the time I read recently released books, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good books out there that were published more than a few months ago. I’m not talking the “classics” — which honestly don’t generally appeal to me all that much (with apologies to my old English teachers). There are books from [...]
Online consumer product reviews have changed the way I shop. Rarely do I make a purchase without checking on the web to see what others have experienced themselves. I take into account the assessments of professionals, but I value the collective judgment of multiple consumers more. The system works when many people take the time [...]
Sometimes it’s a good idea to eat one’s own dog food. Or so they say. I often complain that folks overlook the power of email as an effective tool for communications and idea-sharing. Sure, blogs are great. RSS feeds are useful. And automated emails alerting to new blog posts are simple enough to set up. [...]
When I began to read Jason Fried and David Hansson’s Rework, my first impression was: here we go again. As the book opened up, it had a lot of the tired old rants that reminded me of the part of 37 Signals I like least, as well as some of the same nonsense that Tim [...]
My team at DCI Group is expanding again. I’m looking for some talented communicators to join our group to help develop and implement effective digital strategies for Fortune 50 clients, major trade associations, and other public affairs campaigns. DCI Digital works collaboratively with the others at our firm to create an integrated communications approach for [...]
When a speaker or author drops the “f bomb,” utters excretory expletives, or launches a lusty cuss word, it doesn’t add emphasis. It doesn’t make them look cool, hip, and smart. It makes them seem crass, juvenile, arrogant, and less than they are. I say this not because I’m a linguistic purist. Far from it. [...]
The Boston Globe carried a story in its business section today that really resonated with me: “No-Move Moves.” Katie Johnston Chase writes about several senior corporate executives who work at companies hundreds or thousands of miles away from their home and family. While I’m not the CEO of a company with tens of thousands of [...]
Bias, for Lack of a Better Word, is Good
by Chip Griffin on March 29, 2010
Kara Miller, an instructor on media issues at Babson College in Massachusetts, writes in her Culture Club blog at Boston.com about conflicts of interest in the media. Her focus is on the intersection between media coverage and sponsorship of media outlets. She concludes: Commercials, certainly, are not new to news shows. But there is something [...]