Greg Palmer

Two Screens: Banana Republic and BBC

2010-01-02T02:41:06Z

Haven't done this in a while...

The first screen is at Banana Republic, where they ask buyers to rate various aspects of an item they've purchased, such as the overall fit and various specific fits. In this case, customers thought this coat I wanted to buy was too big.

The second site is BBC. They've gotten it right when it comes to old/expired/stale pages. A big header informs the reader that they've not reviewed the content since June, 2008. It still worked for my purposes, but it was a nice touch to make the reader aware up front. Lots of websites should adopt this practice.

Leveraging Yahoo's UI Library to Speed Development

2009-12-14T19:07:50Z

Often, government agencies suffer from "not built here" syndrome. It's similar to "not an enterprise vendor" disease. Not built here syndrome significantly slows web development as it forces developers and designers to recreate the wheel every time they want to release a new feature. There are plenty of reasons why government has this attitude, but it'd serve us well to remember that the outside world and the relatively open developer community on the web has probably solved 99% of the problems before you encountered them.

So it disappoints but doesn't surprise me that no big government agencies are featured as users of Yahoo's User Interface Library (YUI). It's good enough for LinkedIn, JetBlue, and Marketwatch, but it's "not built here," so developers spend mountains of time solving problems that have free, open-source solutions that are compatibility-tested by one of the world's premier internet companies.

Yahoo provides CSS frameworks to speed design, javascript libraries for rapid interaction development, and examples/best practices to create compatible, open websites. I tell government web departments all the time to let YUI do the easy stuff so you can focus on the interesting parts.

And, to prove that I eat my own dogfood, all of my sites are build using the YUI Grids stylesheet.

Give it a try - I think even the most experienced front-end developer will be surprised at how much it speeds development. Finally, am I missing anyone in government who is actually using this?

The Social Digital Divide and Engaging Constituents Online

2009-12-14T19:07:11Z

I've been a fan of danah boyd's work for years now, but I'd never seen her speak at a conference. She managed to make the Personal Democracy Forum audience really think and pay attention, which isn't the easiest thing to do with the tweeting, laptop/iPhone-toting crowd.

danah opened her presentation by asking the PDF crowd - are you on Facebook? (everyone raises hand), then - are you on MySpace? (two hands stay up). This was a great way to illustrate how neatly real-world social divisions are mapping onto digital spaces. It's also counter-intuitive - Facebook and MySpace are hailed as social bridges and places to connect.

But the reality doesn't match the hype. Users on social services tend to recreate their physical social networks and don't leave mental room for new people or perspectives. The network then acts as a key reinforcer of existing values, rather than an agnostic space to create new social value.

As danah put it, the migration of white, more affluent users from MySpace to Facebook may well represent a new "white flight." It's worth reading danah's various papers on the sociology of online networks.

For government, not engaging on both MySpace and Facebook means abandoning entire segments of the population. This social schism is as much a piece of the digital divide as broadband access and affordability. So what can government do?

First, acknowledge that connecting with constituents may mean engaging in online spaces where you're not completely comfortable. Many social media staffers are young, well-educated, and exist within the "Facebook bubble." But knowing that you have to make this effort may be half the battle.

Second, find out where key influencers in your community are online. Go to your community, don't expect them to come to you. Are they on Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? a local site? Wherever they've gathered online, that network possesses key sociological value for that particular constituency. Yes, there's the digital "white flight" problem, but if MySpace fills key sociological needs for its users in ways that are different than Facebook. So get on there and figure out what those constituents value.

Finally, take it seriously. The segregation of online networks is troubling, but taken seriously in the short term, it can provide you with key insights into constituencies that you may not hear from on other communications channels. You can learn and adapt to serve your constituents better.

Reluctant Governments: First Steps to Engaging on Social Media

2009-12-14T19:06:16Z

Social media is a valuable way to engage constituents in an ongoing dialog and build support for legislative/agency initiatives. So why's everyone so afraid of it? For years, government didn't have to engage constituents on an everyday basis - they could rely on communications efficiencies (the lack of social media) to effectively limit discussion.

Today that's no longer the case, but lots of government managers and directors are afraid to hop online and engage with constituents via social media. This guide is for those of you with reluctant bosses who know you need to get your agency/cause/boss online.

Limit your topic

First, pick a small topic. It'll be tough to prove that your agency should have a general blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account, but it will be fairly easy to prove that those things could help a specific and current initiative. If my experience is any guide, they'll be worried about public comments and discussion. There are two great points to counter this:

First, that discussion is going to happen anyway. It's better to take it seriously and play an active role in hosting it than it is to ignore it.
Second, by creating a limited scope of discussion around a relatively non-controversial topic, you'll show that it's not the end of the world to host a discussion and that it won't sabotage the larger goals of your agency.

At the Department of Education, I created "Going Green in NYC Public Schools" because we've got some great green initiatives going on and it's a topic that I think the public can rally around without getting mixed up in the larger world of City politics. It was also a way for me to create content outside of the normal bureaucratic world, hopefully setting an example for more personable future engagements with the public.

Finally, I got approval to start using our dormant Facebook and Twitter accounts (though I'm now thinking we should be on MySpace) to promote the blog.

Promote the heck out of it

Once you have some initial content up, start promoting it within your agency and community. Internally, leverage the heck out of your Intranet, employee newsletters, Facebook networks, etc. You want your employees to be your best and most fervent evangelists. Chances are they've been wondering why you *haven't* been on social networks, so they'll jump at the chance!

With very little promotion, our blog posts were getting a few thousand hits a day, our Facebook page was hopping, and we had 800 followers on Twitter.

Curate and Participate

Authoring content is one role of managing social media, but your primary role is to curate and participate as an official representative of your agency, both internally and externally. I found that there was *a lot* of pent up energy in our community - as soon as I opened the door, people were excited to talk to me and know that there was a person on the other end. So even though my primary role was in product management, I quickly became the de facto "spokesblogger" for the DOE.

The majority of my time spent on social media is watching and learning what conversations people are having and trying to add some value to those conversations. For instance, some of our schools use biodegradable sugar cane cafeteria trays, and parents were rightly asking why all 1,500 schools don't use those trays. The answer was simple - we give schools the choice to pay for the more expensive biodegradable trays if they choose to do so - but it was an answer the public never would have gotten. I think it even convinced some additional schools to begin using sugar cane trays.

Participating isn't the only aspect of this - you'll need to curate the comments and audience contributions. My advice is to try to be liberal with your curation policy; respectful discussion and a diversity of views is valuable. Part of this is picking a topic that you think will self-limit the scope of discussion, but you'll have to gently guide the discussion in order to keep your community on topic. If worse comes to worse (and it sometimes does) you'll need to delete a few comments and remind the the community to keep things on-topic and above-board.

Measure your success

You can talk all you want about social media, but your bosses will want to see some measurements of success. I measure the classic metrics - traffic, "joins," etc, but I also try to provide some measure of engagement, which is a lot tougher.

If a blog post gets 5,000 views and no comments, I don't consider that a successful effort. But if a blog post gets 1,000 hits and 20 comments, that's a big success. I don't use numbers to measure engagement, but I like to see the following:

Citizens engaging with each other. I shouldn't have to keep the discussion going; people should do that amongst themselves. I represent one perspective.
A dynamic discussion with varying points of view. I don't just want people to agree with us - I want to know the real opinion of our constituents and hopefully convince internal stakeholders to pay attention and possibly adjust policy as a result.
Lots of signal and little to no noise. "DRILL BABY DRILL" and those sorts of things should be kept to a minimum. I started by not deleting any comments, but eventually got rid of the useless stuff.

These are subjective measurements, but that's ok - you'll know when you're building Whuffie.

Prove it to your bosses

Your bosses were probably skeptical at first, so once you've built some Whuffie online (social capital), it's important to prepare some materials to prove to your boss and their bosses that your work is having a positive impact on the agency's operations and public image. I prepare a one-page summary of our web operations every month to remind everyone that we're so gigantic (18+ million page views per month) and can have a huge impact. Now, I include our interaction rating on Facebook, number of Twitter interactions, followers, etc.

Expand and Repeat

Once your non-controversial pilot project is proven a success, it's time to start looking at expansion plans. What other topics will generate public interest in your agency's work? Who should author those efforts? How can you leverage your initial work to create more successes?

What was your first step engaging on social media? How did you prove to your bosses it was worth it?

Crisis Communications: H1N1 in New York City's Public Schools

2009-12-14T19:05:15Z

What Happened

In mid-May, New York City's Department of Health (DOH) realized that the H1N1 (swine) flu was spreading in distinct pockets throughout the City, particularly through children, the afflicted, and the elderly. At the Department of Education, we knew that our 1,500+ schools could be a key transmission point for the flu, and we were already seeing higher-than-normal absence rates at selected schools whose geography correlated with DOH's data.

On the advice of DOH, it became clear that we'd have to close select schools in order to prevent the spread of disease. As importantly, we had to be clear about why were closing particular schools, why others would stay open, and we had to reassure parents and the public that we were taking the right course of action. It's easy for situations that affect the public health, like H1N1, to quickly spiral into panic.

There aren't many templates for this sort of thing - public health crises don't happen that much anymore in the United States. We've got a decent public health system that keeps the transmission of communicable diseases and the ill effects of them to a minimum. New York City itself is larger than all but the most populous 12 states, and our public school system alone is larger than the 8 least populous states with 1.1 million students.

What We Did

From the online communications perspective, the first thing we did was decide to make clear that our website should be considered the most reliable source of information. It's easy for the media to twist a story and we knew it was critical for the public to know that the Departments of Health and Education, along with Mayor Bloomberg's office, were the *only* official sources of information.

I placed a key line at the top of our website that doesn't sound important, but is - "This page will always contain the most updated information available." Citizens are used to the government moving a bit slow, and they rely heavily on the media. I wanted to set the expectation from the first moment that our website was a canonical source of information.

Second, we began listing the "last updated" time on both our homepage (which gets 9+ million page views per month) and our H1N1 "canonical information" page. There were points where we were updating these pages several times a day and when school closing decisions were happening on a rolling basis, so it was important for everyone to realize that we were updating very frequently.

We didn't try to reinvent the wheel - we didn't have the time, expertise, or desire to be the Health Department - so we asked them to keep their URLs stable and we linked out to their key FAQs about public and personal health related to H1N1.

Finally, I dedicated a large portion of my time to fielding online inquiries from concerned parents and citizens. These came in through our Twitter account and especially our Facebook page - parents wanted to know why particular schools were not closing, why others were, and how to protect their families. I did my best to get them information specific to their local community; with over 1,500 schools, the answers could be vastly different for each parent.

I also used Twitter and Facebook to "correct the record" anytime discussions veered away from the facts. Realistically, that's one of the biggest fears of government leaders when engaging online, so the value of active engagement and participation cannot be overstated.

What We Learned

So what did we learn about government communications in a crisis? A few key things:

People rely on the web. Traffic to our H1N1 pages spiked and rose each day as we were dealing with H1N1. People were visiting multiple times a day and wanted the latest information.
Keep it simple and set expectations. Once people knew to expect the most up-to-date information from official NYC.gov sites, it was clear that the sensationalist feedback loop the media uses was damaged.
Engage, don't just release. When people have questions, provide answers. It's not just about press releases and blanket statements; people can draw lessons from specific information you provide. For instance, if I explained to one parent why we didn't close a particular school, other parents understood better the broad criteria that had already been explained.
Your community reinforces itself. If you're not there, someone else takes control. If we had not engaged on H1N1, I suspect that the public's reaction would have been more severe. Clearly we would have done *something*, but it was about taking measured but meaningful steps - doing the *right* something - that helped everyone keep their wits about them and kept a limited physical outbreak from becoming a psychological crisis.

What about you? Have you been in the middle of a public crisis where online communications played a key role?

Greg Palmer is the former Director of Web Communications for the New York City Department of Education.

Why Pete Cashmore is Wrong on Privacy

2009-12-08T01:22:33Z

Internet superstar Pete Cashmore wrote an article on CNN about ten big trends for 2010. As usual, Pete's on the mark, but his last point strikes me as not fully on target.

"We're seeing the ongoing voluntary erosion of privacy through public sharing on Facebook and Twitter, the rise of location-based services and the inclusion of video cameras in a growing array of devices," writes Cashmore.

Saying there's a "voluntary erosion of privacy" is taking a stand on one side of a multi-faceted issue, and it obscures the benefits of sharing and personal information distribution. An erosion of privacy implies that people are giving less thought to their personal public/private sphere, but in fact the opposite is true.

Because of online social services and geo-location, the barriers are lower than ever to determine your personal line between public and private. Lower barriers to entry naturally encourage people to explore sharing opportunities that they didn't have before.

So people are actually being more thoughtful (not less!) about their privacy, its limits, and where they want to sit on the privacy spectrum. Cashmore's proposed erosion of privacy is actually an individual testing of limits using forms of communication that weren't previously available.

So do people make mistakes? Sure, but it's because they're testing their own limits and exploring their place in the world around them. Sometimes ignorance leads to accidental disclosure of previously private information, but that's a problem technology can solve. What technology has enabled is far greater - the ability to share your life with others, meet new people, and gain from their knowledge, experiences, etc.

And what has enabled that explosion of humanity is the idea that you have more granular control over your privacy. If you didn't have that granular control (think back to pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, etc), you would by default assume all of your life was private, even among people with whom who may now be willing to make it more public.

So you can share particular pieces of your life and maybe even consciously make the decision that those pieces are the ones you think will be most valuable to others. And you can keep others closed off from the rest. And that's not an erosion of privacy at all, but instead an expansion of the limits of humanity, and and exploration of how sharing our own knowledge can contribute to the common good.

Science is Awesome, Number Infinite

2009-12-03T03:00:17Z

Watch as this meteor burns up in the atmosphere and lights up the ENTIRE SKY. Amazing footage from South Africa. (via Bad Astronomy)

The Media's Moderate Bias

2009-11-11T02:55:29Z

James Poniewozik hits on one of my biggest pet peeves - moderate bias in media coverage. This idea that journalists are unbiased and have a responsibility to present all points of view is terribly flawed. The rise of public relations flaks and rampant doublespeak killed that long ago.

As anyone following health reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias -- i.e., a preference for centrism -- whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle." You see it whenever an organization decides that "balance" requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious: "Some, however, believe global warming is a myth." (Moderate bias would also require me to find a countervailing liberal position and pretend that it is equivalent to global-warming denial. Sorry.

When I started Keystone Politics, and again when we launched CitizeNYC, we don't look to show each side of the story equally. We have a clear editorial view that, while it doesn't come through in all of our editorial choices, isn't something we shy away from. We're looking for the truth, and that usually means one side looks worse than the other.

Two Screens: Huffington Post and Livestream

2009-10-29T18:32:38Z

Hey everybody - just a quick Two Screens post, which is where I point out two screenshots that recently caught my eye.

First, I was watching Leo Laporte's talk at the Online News Association conference and was underwhelmed by the Livestream player. It's a great service, but I think the player could be easier. Actually, I think this about a lot of video players. Check out the "on-air" and progress boxes on Livesteam's player. Both are really small and tough to read or understand. Vimeo is the gold standard for me.

Alright, next up is Huffington Post. I was browsing on Tuesday and noticed that the words "Professional SEO" appeared right below my profile photo. I have no idea why, but it looked like the site had been hacked by malware.

AND a bonus screen. This ad for enterprise network services came up and the word survey is spelled "servey." Not exactly inspiring my trust.

Wishing House Was On Tonight? Here's What You Missed

2009-10-27T01:14:21Z

So, Fox decided that there wouldn't be a new episode of House tonight, but that's ok - I'm here to fill you in on exactly what you missed.

The episode opens in an ornate opera house. If you're from anywhere near Princeton you'll assume its got to be New York, but for the sake of House let's just call it the Princeton-Plainsboro Opera House. Anyway, quick shot to the contralto belting out a few lines, sweating, looking a little sick. Cut to a shot of an unstable lighting fixture swinging precariously above her. Is she having a heart attack? Will the light fixture fall? C'mon, you're a bright kid, you can outsmart House!

The fixture falls, glass flies everywhere, the audience gasps, but the massive stage light narrowly avoids the sweaty, corpulent singer. In the VIP boxes, an old man - presumably a donor of some sort - gasps a little harder than the others and slumps over.

Cue theme.

I won't spoil the details for you, but here's the rundown. Foreman thinks he knows what's wrong with the man. House thinks he's wrong, but is too much of an arrogant prick to offer a real suggestion, leaving his minions to perform needless and probably painful tests on the patient.

Cuddy gets angry at one of a million of House's wacky antics. Cut to Cameron and Chase fighting. How long til those two get a divorce anyway? They're too pretty to be married. Thirteen leaves Foreman a voicemail. It distracts him so much that he does something wrong with the patient and misses a critical clue.

Back to the conference room. Foreman realizes the clue he missed. House chastises him. Chase isn't paying attention because he murdered the Omar al-Bashir stand-in. House chastises him. Cameron is on the ball, but worries about the emotional stability of all the men in the room. She says so. House chastises her.

The patient deteriorates, and the team complains that they're still missing something. But what? Is it lupus? Cancer? Wilson is called in and says it's not cancer, which might still mean it's cancer because he's not as smart as House. No one is.

The patient almost dies. Three to four theories have turned out to be wrong. What could it be? A young, beautiful stranger appears. Nope, it's not House's delusion, it's the patient's maid. She's been boffing him on the side for some time now, and turns out she's got any manner of STDs. But now, she feels bad and wants to save him.

That's it! He's got a lymphosciatic melonomic case of herpes! Why didn't we think of that sooner? Just give him some goddamn antibiotics and send him on his way to apologize and/or divorce his wife of fifty years and live the rest of his short days in Cabo with his hot maid. Everybody wins.

House is still alone and lusting for Cuddy, who's also lusting for him but has bigger things to worry about since she seems to have lost her baby that she wanted so much. Where is that thing? Maybe Thirteen stole it when she disappeared. Cameron and Chase are still barely speaking, and Foreman is on his trajectory to become the next House.

End scene. See you next week.

The Future of Human-Computer Interaction?

2009-10-26T16:33:21Z

This is a really well-thought-out view of what might be next to replace the mouse. I'm sold and want this now! Be sure to watch until the end as they do a great demo.

I'm Sure Our Relationship Would be a Real Home Run

2009-10-26T15:55:32Z

Amazing. There are no words.

Mac Sends a Love Letter to Chase Utley @ Yahoo! Video

Live Feed, News Feed? WTF? Explaining Facebook's Big Changes

2009-10-25T16:11:10Z

So you say you're confused about Facebook's new homepage changes? Me too - it's confusing at first, but pretty easy to understand once you get the hang of it.

The Live Feed is the easier one to understand - it's a live view of what's happening in your entire network. Who's posting what, who's becoming friends with who, etc, all as it happens. Unless you manually remove someone from your feed (just like you always could), you're seeing all the news that's fit to print, or something of that sort.

The News Feed is something altogether different, and ultimately it will be the more useful of the two feeds, because it automatically displays the news Facebook thinks is most interesting and relevant to you. How? Facebook isn't saying, but it's combination of lots of different factors - how close you are to the person, how many people comment, share, or click "Like" on a piece of content, how close you are to those people, and I'm assuming lots more that we don't know about.

Hopefully that helps! I'm going to be researching this change in more detail, so please share your questions and thoughts with me.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, Right?

2009-10-23T13:24:18Z

Hey there, friends. It's been a whopping 22 days since I last blogged. Forgive me, Father. I'll say 10 Hail Mary's and promise not to do it again. And really, this post isn't anything special, but some miscellany:

The FakeAPStylebook Twitter account rocks my world and makes me laugh multiple times a day. Gems like this one make it all worth it: "The noun "Wang Chung" should be capitalized, but not the verb." Good to know.
The New York Times only lost $25 million this quarter. That's almost break-even. (2008Q3 they lost $150 million)
I've mothballed GovTechNerd in favor of some more exciting projects.
I'm starting a new website with some friends. It'll be up very soon, but in the meantime check out CitizeNYC on Twitter and Facebook. Lots of cool stuff happening there, including...
Our very own web podcast show, hosted by Ryan Davis and me.
I can't wait until Going Rogue comes out, nicely timed to launch the same day as Going Rouge. Yup, that's serious.

Ok, well we're all caught up now, right?

Two Screens: GQ and Target

2009-10-01T19:19:18Z

I'm a big proponent of great copywriting. I think it has the power to salvage an average site, and is the only thing that takes a site from exceptional to outstanding. It's a shame when big brands don't engage in robust content strategy. Here are two examples:

GQ Magazine: I was reading an old profile of Ted Kennedy, and this was the footer of the article. What's bothersome? Who goes to GQ or any other monthly magazine for "breaking news"? No one. Lesson: Don't pretend you're something you're not.

Target: Every once in a while I order something from Target (given that there are none in NYC). This was the response screen after I placed my order. Sins? Multiple.

"We cannot confirm the price of an item until your order enters the shipping process..." What? Telling me rules *after* I order, and right after you thank me for my purchase?
"...a small number of items on our Web site may be mispriced..." followed by a few lines of instructions basically saying if they figure out they should have charged you more, they cancel the order.
And finally, a note tacked on to the end saying not everything might come in one box.

Ok, what's so crazy about this? Not much that's complicated, but again things that should be addressed with great writing and content. This page isn't a genuine "Thank You" at all, it's a terms and conditions sheet, hidden *after* you order. Boo Target. Bad customer experience.