Communication

A recent survey showed that 35 percent of mobile workers check their email before doing anything else, including getting dressed or eating breakfast. Is your email newsletter dressed for success?

Here at Forum One, we love helping organizations make real progress on some of the world’s most pressing issues - education, poverty, the environment, global health, and international development to name just a few. More often than not, a key to making that progress is connecting the thinkers, doers, influencers, and decision makers that have a stake in the world, and the initiative to change it.

That’s why we love Drupal Commons. It’s a collaboration toolkit that’s ready made and based on proven online community best practices. Commons lets us spend our brain-cycles creating and sustaining the right conversations, cultivating participation, and moving the real work of NGOs forward - not just writing the code to support them.

Ramadan is traditionally a time for Muslim families to come together, enjoy one another's company, and reconnect. With the exponential diffusion of mobile in the Middle East, technology played a much larger role in this year's annual festivities. Muslims used mobile technology to share greetings with friends, make plans, and experience a "virtual Ramadan."  Companies took advantage of mobile alerts to market products and reconnect with customers for the season in real-time. Different "Apps" and SMS services also played a role, providing reminders for daily fast break times, direction on which direction people should pray or Qibla, and information on how to donate money to different charities.

After nearly 10 years since it's formal inception, most of us in the web strategy world are really starting to understand the critical role that content strategy plays in the overall success of any web communications plan. From web redesigns to social media marketing, content strategy holds the key to your organization's ability to grab your audience's attention, connect with them in a meaningful way, and mobilize them to take action on your behalf.

A few weeks ago I once again had the privilege of presenting at the Nonprofit Technology Conference on the topic of storytelling. During the last two conferences I've spoken on Putting Storytelling Strategy into Practice and The New Culture of Storytelling.

Tim Bonnemann of Intellitics.com shares his thoughts on trends in open government and online participation during the South By Southwest Interactive conference.

In an increasingly networked world, smart nonprofits are finding ways to enlist the help of "free agents" to help them make progress on
their issues. Danielle Brigida of NWF shares some insights from a recent panel at SXSWi.

User adoption is tricky. Naturally, everyone tends to focus on the technical aspects that surround adoption: picking a solution that fulfills the list of user needs that have been identified. I assume most people start there because it is arguably the easiest part to grapple with; at least you can quantitatively evaluate and compare various solutions. But what about the people/social factors that influence adoption?