Getting Things Done – Page 8

Are you experimenting, focusing or executing?

bullseye

If you are leading an organization, it seems there are three main speeds you should be going.

Experimenting — new ideas, creative thought, innovation
Focusing — paring down the projects and efforts to get to our clear mission
Executing — moving forward toward that mission

The trouble seems to come when we’re trying to do all of them — or none of them — at the same time. That’s when we get distracted and lose our way.

Staying focused on one of those speeds at a time is more than difficult enough. Now think about being able to cycle through them in the life of an organization when you know you either need new ideas or to find a focus or to make good on that mission. That takes remarkable leadership.

Categories are themes and tags are topics: WordPress users

Word cloud of terms used on this site, as of March 1, 2013, using Wordle.net.

WordPress, among the most popular web content management systems in the world, offers users an out-of-the-box solution to organize content in two ways: tags and categories. To better understand those words, I’ve taken to referring to tags as the topics of the site and calling categories the themes of the site.

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To develop a community, you first need a common set of facts

In journalism conversations, there is a lot of concern about the need for a public square, a place in which a community can learn and share a common set of facts.

It’s something I’ve talked about in research from the Knight Foundation. The concern of filter bubble, in which the personalization of the web allows us to only reach information that confirms our beliefs, rather than challenges it.

Nationally and in some cases statewide, there is a growing patchwork of meaningful journalism practitioners. Though lacking in many ways, there is a wealth of niche and hyperlocal news providers developing in many corners of the country.

But the hole remains in broader metro regions, where broader metro daily newspapers have been hardest hit. They were, largely, the purveyor of these common sets of facts to build broader community.

We aren’t witnessing the end of this powerful form, I believe, we are simply waiting for the transition.

NEast Philly: traffic, data and graphs on a hyperlocal news site

neast-referrals — All-time referral traffic to NEastPhilly.com, as reported by Google Analytics on March 3, 2012.

Quietly last fall, NEastPhilly.com, the hyperlocal news site for Northeast Philadelphia, marked three years since having been launched as a college project by now WHYY NewsWorks feed blogger Shannon McDonald.

Though I spent much of that time contributing coverage, I now play the role of web editor, helping keep the site up and functional. Shannon has had more than 20 contributors, a handful of them to date, and has done serious journalism and meaningful community coverage, on her own and with outreach from residents and readers.

Though an after-hours labor of love of hers, I’ve remained impressed with the relative impact of NEast Philly, so, three years later, I wanted to share some metrics.

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SEO: the difference between the basics, the detailed and spam

There’s no shortage of conversation about the end of search engine optimization. As search gets more personalized — cache and cookies and the rest — ensuring that your business, organization or another site ranks highly when people use web search tools becomes less straightforward.

Still, it’s naturally something that I get asked about a lot — how do I get more people to find my website online?

Continue reading SEO: the difference between the basics, the detailed and spam

5 ideas for hackathon projects

I attend a lot of hackathons, considering either I’m organizing them or sponsoring them or covering them. Though I hope to slowly change that a bit, I’m no programmer.

Still, sitting around these events has led me to conceive of and, in some cases, suggest projects that never actually happen. Maybe they someday will. Here are some that have crossed my mind:

What Neighborhood am I in? — For Philadelphia, GIS shop Azavea has a map layer for Philly neighborhoods (which are not formal political boundaries) though I’m not yet sure I completely agree with them :-). Still, that’d be a good start to a tool that could (and should) easily be brought to other cities. Give an address, intersection or your current location to find out what city neighborhood you’re in. (I’d love for this to perhaps also combine other map layers like political representative, city services including trash days, neighborhood groups and other information) **There could be a tab breaking down zip code or neighborhood-specific Census information like rental/homeownership, crime, etc. (Other ‘hood lists exist)
Parking flow chart — I thought it might be cool to have a little yes/no web app that would help drivers to decide where they can park in given situations. The GPS tool could follow parking regulations and have yes/no functionality: “are you 25 feet from a fire hydrant,” “is a weekday,” or whatever.
‘Fuck You’ world map — Translations and pronunciations of ‘Fuck You’ (or, OK, perhaps a few phrases) in as many global languages as humanly possible. Helps to see different native or national languages and learn a simple phrase.
Easy budget visualization tool — Lots of governments have PDFs or deep budget information. Some even offer some visualizations themselves, but I wonder if there could be some tool that could suck up some of that information and offer more interactive, variable and more easily updated online displays to be shared more readily.
Neighborhood news tool — For specific-enough neighborhoods or parts of the city (i.e. “West Oak Lane” or “Southwest Philadelphia” we could create RSS feeds pulling from a variety of sources.
School approval heat map — Erika will know this better than I do, but I’d bet there’s a map layer of school locations (or one could be created), though catchment is less available and more interesting, and the AYP or perhaps test school averages could be used to visualize the success of schools in different neighborhoods.
Transit black holes — A visualization of SEPTA bus/train/trolley routes (and/or frequency) and display what areas are least served.