Independent Thinking » Obama

Opening Day 2010

Daria Steigman — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:10:30 +0000

Taking a day away from the office. It’s Opening Day 2010, and I’m off today to worship at the altar of baseball. Me, President Obama, and 44,000 other sports fans at Nationals Park. Have a good Monday, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Photo by sigckgc (Flickr).

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Obama Changes the U.S. Brand

Daria Steigman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:22:22 +0000

Like many people, I was impressed yesterday by how effectively the Obama transition team had worked behind the scenes to rebrand the U.S. government. By 12:02 p.m., the first tweets were showing up alerting people that whitehouse.gov now belonged to the new president.

I realize that every new adminstration, like a corporation after a merger, moves quickly to slap its name up on the door. But the Obama team has already gone one step further by setting up a blog, identifying the White House’s director of new media (Macon Phillips), and creating an opportunity for ordinary Americans to provide feedback.

Time will tell how effective President Obama and his team will be in creating a truly participatory process. Governing isn’t easy, and the mechanics of government can, at times, be unwieldy. On his Innovation Insights blog, Scott Anthony offers three lessons from the corporate world to guide government transformation: 1) you can’t just get better at what you’re already doing; 2) start small; and 3) invest in human capital.

In his inaugural address, the president said that the question “is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” If he can successfully harness 21st century tools to bring more voices to the fore, and to incorporate into policy our collective views, expertise, and experience, our nation will surely be better for it.

Using Data Visualization

Daria Steigman — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:51:07 +0000

The Washington Post published a very interesting pair of word clouds recently of the McCain and Obama campaign blogs. The visualizations are stark — both campaigns talk about Obama a lot, McCain little (his blog) or not at all (Obama’s blog).

Visualizations can be a powerful tool for getting your message out and making sure you’re getting the right message out. And word clouds are just the start. Check out these 10 great data visualization tools.