I had the strangest thing happen to me last week.  I was talking to the lead on a big website project, and I asked him, “So what types of content do you plan to include?”  He told me, “Written, video, message boards, podcasting and downloadable documents.”

However, when he sent me the design specs for the site, there was absolutely no room on the page for video. When I pressed him on this issue, he responded, “We’ll worry about that later.”

Huh?Continue Reading

The weeks before and after New Year’s were extremely difficult, and I feel as though I have been moving in crisis mode the entire time.  I made the rookie mistake of thinking the holiday season would be quiet and afford me catch-up time.  Instead, my email set the priorities as clients had last-minute, before-the-end-of-the-year requests.  Plus, as usual, I had added too much to my to-do list, and my kids were home from school.

While it could have been a complete disaster, what happened to my professional work was instead extraordinary—I actually was able to look at each list, each client request, the different pulls on my time, and decide on a priority for each.  In those two weeks, I understood why the same Chinese character is used to represent both crisis and opportunity.  While prioritization has been challenging for me, when forced to do it, I did–with satisfying and positive results.Continue Reading

There is a lot of great conversation around building a great digital communications team.  Most of the conversation centers around the types of professionals you should hire, grow and promote.  But, what if your budget is small? Or, what if you outsourced certain functions, so your core team can focus on strategy?  What should your team look like then?Continue Reading

With digital communications, social media, content strategy, content marketing and decentralized publishing, the world of information moves at an amazing pace—one that many biologists say our brains aren’t even evolved enough to manage.  The ever-accelerating flow of information impacts many things, including how our departments are organized. Continue Reading