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Nonprofit Taglines: Small Words, Big Impact

Nancy Schwartz has been investing some time recently in studying taglines (organizational and campaign slogans and the like) used by nonprofit organizations. In addition to the survey she's running, she explores the three main benefits of good taglines and looks at several examples of the role of a good tagline in the effective branding and rebranding of an organization. Posted: 6/9/08; 9:20:05 PM #

Patterns for Sign Up and Ramp Up

The smart folks at Adaptive Path have produced an excellent library of Patterns for Sign Up and Ramp Up - web design elements that support new user registration and engagement of various sorts. They looked for patterns across twenty different applications (primarily commercial, but still relevant) and identified both trends and tactics. This guide is available as an online presentation and as a free 70 page PDF download. Posted: 6/9/08; 9:14:45 PM #

Performers versus Non-Performers
	In Performers versus Non-Performers, Sue Mackey has started a conversation about the difference between measuring production and measuring performance. I suspect many of you have both opinions and experience with this question and I would love to read them, so I encourage you to dive into the comments at Navigating Soft Skillss and share your ideas. Posted: 6/9/08; 9:10:14 PM #

The Epoch of Incredulity: The Eleventh Megatrend

In The Epoch of Incredulity, Gavin Clabaugh articulates a trend he wishes he could have inserted into the book MegaTrends, back when he worked on it with John Naisbitt. This is the trend that I have often called "Scaling Up Listening" and which he refers to as "from sampling to monitoring" - the ability to gather real time information from across an enormous network, in real time. On the one hand, this could really just be about spying on people. But on the other hand, it represents a new kind of ability to both see and participate in large scale social enterprises, whether it's keg parties, or map-making, or citizen engagement. Posted: 6/9/08; 9:05:53 PM #

Key Differences Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

I didn't really think I was going to comment much more on the often tedious subject of "Web 2.0". But, in the current issue of First Monday, Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy offer an interesting analysis of what they see as the Key Differences Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Although I think the entire Internet is Web-2.0-like from its inception, on a web site centric basic, that is less true. (Meaning many web sites were, and still are, conceived as static publications, even though they are embedded in this extraordinarily interactive medium. Perhaps that means that they really went backwards? That they have been at Web 0.1 and are only now catching up with the nature of the Internet itself?) The authors actually do some pretty rigorous analysis of features and draw some important conclusions about how this changes the metrics of success for web sites. Posted: 6/9/08; 8:56:57 PM #