Grassroots Enterprise

Bill McIntyre, Grassroots' fearless strategist, business development ninja and closet origami champion, is rightly always prodding me to write more on the Grassroots "Thinking" blog.

A dozen times a week I have an elevator conversation with Bill where I tell him about something interesting I've found on the web and he says "ok, cool, you should write a post about that" and then I say "why yes, Bill, I'll have it to you by Tuesday" and then I promptly don't write it up.

It's not because I don't want to -- it's because I read a great deal online, so when I sit down to write something for the Grassroots blog I've already moved on to the next thing I'd like to write about.  It's a vicious cycle.  What to do?

I've got pre-school kids who LOVE my laptop, especially when I'm working at home.  They're sort of like cats...whatever you're doing - they suddenly take an interest.  Unlike cats, you can't really toss your kids off the couch and besides there's a cool solution called BabySmash! that I just learned about.

As babies smash on the keyboard, colored shapes, letters and numbers appear on the screen. Baby Smash will lock out the...

The other day I found out that Michael S. (someone I don't know personally) was now a partner at a local firm I do business with...and I learned about this change 2 days before the company announced it.

No, I'm not pre-cognitive but I do use LinkedIn and they just introduced me to a new feature called Movers and Shakers.

These are LinkedIn users in my "industry and geographic region" who have updated their profiles to include company changes or news positions at their current...

Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) is coming and if you can't ride this wave then get off the beach. OLED is the rising tide getting ready to flood our shores and make a big splash in the realm of visual information feeding.

Today's competitive landscape is all productivity-and the big question is, "How are we going to get more productive?" The answer: Mostly through the use of devices that display important information on an electronic display. Gone are the days of the CRT (they are still around but are being replaced by LCD and Plasma at an incredible rate). But OLED offers several advantages over the current crop of popular display...

A pandemic has been eating away at the blind trust on the Internet, a cohesive glue that made it once safe to uncritically believe anything you read. It has debilitated productive discussions in email, on message boards and among blog comments: It is the Rickroll. After festering for months within a certain sub-culture, it has erupted across the broader Internet in the past weeks, perhaps peaking with YouTube's Rickrolling of everyone on April Fool's Day.

We'd like...

I'm a self-admitted INTJ, prone to intellection, folk music and healthy bouts of meditative introversion. So I was as surprised as anyone when I started using Twitter -- the microblogging tool that allows you to tell the world (or just your friends) what you are doing -- at any given moment (so long as you have a phone or a connection to the Interweb).

The odd thing is I've counseled clients on Twitter and advised them on its utility. I've even spoken at a conference extolling the virtues of the tool -- yet a tweet of my own never left my fingers. It just wasn't for...

PR Week's most recent presidential campaign analysis examines the value of third-party attacks on McCain (who is otherwise free and clear to campaign) while Hillary and Barack battle for the nomination.
The news analysis included my view:
"It's like having your little sister stick up for you...ultimately, it's not going to be very effective, and it might lead to some embarrassment [and]...may come back to hurt the very candidate they're trying to support."

Following is an excerpt from the Washington Post about our guru of engineering, Bob Florian and his son, Matt.

When Matt Florian signed onto his Facebook account recently to check the status of his 400-plus friends, he had a friend request.

It was from his dad.

Matt's dad, Bob Florian, swears he didn't have anything nefarious in mind when he asked to friend Matt. (He's also friends with his daughter Katie, 15, but don't tell anyone.)

"I even told them it would be okay if they didn't want to friend me," he said.

But the elder Florian had a legitimate work excuse. He and his colleagues at Grassroots Enterprise, a D.C.-based community political action network, use Facebook to get their clients' messages out. For the several months prior to his "friend" request, he'd peppered his son and daughter with questions about how the Web site worked...

Seinfeld did a show about "close talkers". Lovers are called "pillow-talkers". And the most successful politicians?....they are "slow-talkers".

Average pacing for a public speech by Obama, JFK, FDR or Martin Luther King range between 90 and 105 words per minute (wpm).

By comparison, Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher are fast-talkers clocking in at 188 and 133 wpm, respectively. Phew!

So, is there a science behind this? According to a recent article, "Speechwriters say the average speaking speed for politicians making public presentations is between 120 and 125 words a minute. This compares...

If you thought MySpace was just for fun, think again. The 800-pound gorilla of the social utilty playground industry recently launched MySpace Impact. Impact provides a vehicle for politicians, non-profits and civic organizations to connect with MySpace's online community...