Over the past year a lot of things have driven my extracurricular passions and interests. I thought that after a year of no new posts I’d attempt to synthesize the types of things that have been driving my mind in the past year (or so).
- Congressional data: Congress has been a treasure trove of data with regards to how it operates, the life of an office and lobbyist, and how much candidates spend and devote to getting elected to office. I’m been interested in mashing up these bits of information and data pieces into something that could be utilized by individuals/organizations to do, we’ll, whatever they want with it.
- Airports: I’ve had a long interest with the functional and operational design of airports and general airline operations. For example, I’m absolutely fascinated by how different airlines load an aircraft; some by zone, some by row, others a free-for-all. JFK’s terminal 5 is a beautiful new and efficient model in a post 9/11era of airline travel. Last year SFO reopened terminal 2 (home to Virgin America and American Airlines) as one of our nations newest terminal renovations. For me though, it’s also about the data. The FAA/DoT publishes a ton of raw data on airline performance including on-time performance which I find enthralling.
- The Stock Market: I’m very new to investing but have really taken an interest in how the market reacts to news, quarterly reports, analyst expectations, etc. I’ve been tracking a few stocks over the past 6-9 months that IPO’d and, well, currently thankful I didn’t invest in them. I have very little interest in becoming a day trader, let alone a week trader, but very interested in where the tech stock market is going.
- Podcasting: I’ve got big plans for a podcast focusing on the intersection of technology and government. There are a few podcasts in this arena already and I feel I can bring a new twist on a movement that continues to grow. Between federal a state advances to open data initiatives, there’s a wealth of topics ripe for discussion.
- Book Writing: I’ve been working on writing a self-help/leadership/management-esq book; think of Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve outlined about five chapters and am excited how it’s turning out. I’m still exploring the stories and the angle those those stories play within the overall message.
I’m really excited about the things going on this past year and what’s in store for the future.
The other week at the Adobe Max conference, I listened as CTO Kevin Lynch discussed the new Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. I was pumped. As he sold it (and I believed), this would be a new opportunity for people wanting to jump into the digital publishing space, reducing barriers, and all that good happy stuff. Here’s what I learned that caused my happiness to drain, my wallet to theoretically shrink, and my business hopes and dreams (not that I planned on starting my own digital magazine – just sounded cool), to crumble. (FCC: I’m not paid, endorsed, compensated, or sponsored by Adobe…yet. Adobe: I’ll take a free copy and update this review if you are interested <wink> <wink>)
Adobe is selling 3 versions of the product: …
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The other week I launched TWT on DemConnect. I’m excited about this new stats/data venture and what it means for understanding how people (government officials in this case) are interacting with Twitter. Here’s a short behind-the-scenes look at what I’m doing:
- First, most of this is automated. If you know me at all, and how I like to work, if there’s a way to automate a part of a job, I’ll attempt to do that. In this case, I’ve automated the data collection process. I’ve created software that grabs key data points daily for a selected group of users. Right now it’s grabbing government accounts, but it could in reality grab any public Twitter account. (This will probably feed into a future research project
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I spent some time last week revamping my resume out of the traditional narrative to a more graphical, user-friendly, and somewhat more descriptive format. The use of color, graphics, and images is there to captivate the reader and push them to read more. My resume now tells a different story of my career path and my skill set – beyond the traditional, “I supervised 9 people will working on this project…blah, blah, blah.” It has a focus on short blurbs and really a skill-centric approach. Yes, my traditional narrative resume still exists; to be honest, I’ll probably still send the traditional out if I apply for jobs. However, I’m planning to say something to the effect of: “To learn more about me, check out my …
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I wanted to take a moment to share one area of online outreach that has been highly successful in my office (and we’re seeing a huge adoption in our field): webinars. It started as a simple idea I had in covering a broad topic relevant to the field and has exploded to be our second major marketing and outreach tool for our office (next to our website).
Logistically, these are 60 minute events with presenters including trusted partners or experts throughout the industry. We typically have a 45 minute presentation followed by 15 minutes for Q&A from the audience. We ask attendees to complete a short, 8 question evaluation after attending the event. The following day we post an archive of the video online as …
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I was looking back on this blog and in March 2009 I did a similar post, but more focused on my life. Here’s how that has changed: (yah – long post, but lots on my mind)
- Work: We launched that CMS back in the day for the Department of Defense – it was super cool and unlike anything I still have yet to see in the CMS world. I left the company and now am a contractor for the Department of Justice doing more web development work and communications outreach. I host a monthly webinar series focused on criminal justice topics which has been pretty successful. I have really honed my skills in online outreach and hope to build-up my “traditional” press-shop skills. Ideally
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I’ve been reflecting recently on some research I did in preparing my thesis (pgs. 10 – 14 cover this area) and wanted to recap some thoughts on the roles users/audience members/etc. play in an online community. There are four generally accepted roles users play in online communities:
- Moderators
- Professionals
- Participants
- Lurkers
Each of these roles has a function within the community; and I’d argue that every community (or website in general) has each of these roles.
Moderators: The moderator(s) is usually the founder of the site and the overall administrator of what’s happening online. The moderator is in charge of enforcing policies and ensuring the community stays true to its purpose. One of the main day-to-day responsibilities of a moderator is managing the spam and conflicts …
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Measuring success online should come down to users taking some type of action – more than just visiting a website. While visits and views are good measures of online outreach (they really serves as a baseline statistic), great websites will encourage users to take the next step online. Here are two ways I push conversions for an organization I help with online outreach.
The first way, and the least invasive one, is encouraging users to sign up for our regular newsletter. We send a monthly email newsletter and all we ask is for a person’s email address. We don’t ask for first names, last names, phone numbers, etc. Nothing else – just email addresses. We do this for a few reasons. First, as soon as …
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Continuing on my discussion of online outreach, I wanted to discuss the reasoning behind Tuesday’s being a prime outreach day for us. We send email blasts on Tuesdays; we host events on Tuesdays; we do a lot of Tuesdays. Why Tuesdays? Simple:
- Mondays: people are playing catch-up for the weekend and have that “Monday” feeling. People are less likely to really read messages coming in and are focused on just checking things off their lists.
- Tuesdays: Monday is over and it’s time to focus on work. We send messages in the early afternoon for three main reasons: 1) avoid the morning email blast – people are catching up from the night before, and 2) we’re on the East coast and we want to hit the
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Almost every morning I log on to my computer, do a quick check of my email, then head over to Google Analytics to see how yesterday’s numbers have shaped out. The picture on the right is one of the websites I manage – and as you see, it’s all over the place…or is it?
Our website has trends, in this case weekly. When I dive into the metrics, I’m not just looking at the raw number of hits, but where the hits are coming from, what people are looking at, and also trying to extrapolate some level of content progression. What does that mean? I’m looking at the keywords they used to get to our site (if they searched), what sites they’re coming from, what type of …
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I’m Matthew VB. VB is short for my very long Dutch last name Vanden Boogart (try learning to spell that as a kid, right?) – and was a nickname for a while in college. Matthew, well, that’s my first name – you can call me Matt if you want.