Preservation of an ever changing digital world is a serious challenge. While traditionally published books can sit on shelves for years, and physically preserved for centuries, digital works can be deleted in a flash and constantly altered. For those that believe in the value of history, preservation of these works is a challenge worth taking. […]
Moving Beyond the Webinar: Four Approaches to Take Your Web Presentation to the Next Level
How often do you find yourself participating in a webinar where the presenter drones on for an hour then finishes with no time for questions? You start to wonder, why not just record the thing and let the audience decide when they want to watch? Oh, that’s right, because if the recording is just a […]
My new goal, less posts higher quality
This will be the last week of daily posts (at least for the near future). This blog will stay active. I’m just going to devote more energy into the creation of better posts. So, stay tuned, I have some big plans.
Copyright laws and kale
One day historians are going to look back at this era as the time in which the notion of intellectual property met its toughest challenge (or maybe even the time in which it was turned on its head). We see skirmishes taking place in the ongoing tech patent cold war, political battles against “piracy” […]
Mass survey reminder emails are inadequate
Email blasts are often not enough to get people to respond to surveys, but we often settle for this type of mass communication when launching on the web. If you want/need a high response it’s all about continuous individualized follow-up. Oh, and being nice helps too.
Animation and Poetry
Today’s cartoon inspired by poet Billy Collins’ Ted Talk (embedded below). I feel like animation is witnessing a rebirth as speakers seek ways to enrich their online presentations. Definitely watch this talk, he’s a funny guy.
Doing what you love, a conversation with Ray Bradbury
Brain Pickings posted a short video conversation with Ray Bradbury the other day. Something he said at the end of the video inspired this cartoon.
Annotating a Paul Ryan budget chart
I was leafing through the house republican budget the other day, it is chock full of charts. Lots of examples of how to visualize political bunk. One of the first charts seemed a little silly, so I thought I would annotate it with a few of my thoughts. If you would like to play at […]
What you should do while waiting to hear if your proposal was accepted
OK, so you turned in a proposal or two last Friday for Eval 2012 and now you wait to find out if you will make that list of presenters. While you wait, why not start a blog? Before you make your excuse, hear me out. It’s not that you don’t have the time to blog, […]
Researchers and evaluators, you should know about APIs
Application Programming Interfaces will become increasingly more important to research and evaluation as the years go on. But, if you’re like many of my colleagues, chances are you don’t know anything about APIs. It’s time to learn, start by checking out this article from Programmable Web. If you’re only going to glance, I suggest scrolling […]
What happens when you use the 1 percent meme about women and land ownership
Just because a stat or “fact” is widely presented, and fits well in your story, doesn’t make it true. With all the Kony 2012 and Mike Daisey talk I keep seeing this argument for popular misinformation. You know the one that says bad data and lies are okay as long as the ends justify the […]
Mike Daisey and the justifications of a liar
This American Life retracted a very powerful and moving story about Apple in China. It appears as though Mike Daisey took a hefty amount of creative license in his story. I appreciate creative license, but if the performance is nonfiction and the lies continue off the stage, it’s just a bunch of lies. Check out […]