Category Archives: Digital Media

I’m not a designer by training. In fact, I am not a designer at all. My extraordinarily talented brother was blessed with all the artistic ability. I’m a writer-turned-content strategist who dabbles in design because my agency lacks the budget for a full-time designer. All of this is basically a long-winded way of building up to the admission that in … Continue reading →

Imagine taking a good-sized bookstore, picking it up, and shaking its contents out onto a football field. Somewhere in the resulting pile of books lie the works of Aristotle, Newton, and Auden, but if you wade in and start picking up books at random, you’re much likelier to get Love’s Tender Fury and Chicken Soup for the Hoosier Soul. We’re … Continue reading →

My last post diagnosed some of the problems that can get in the way of good content strategy. I argue there that one of the main culprits is a lousy content management system, which leads to: Content that isn’t adaptable across platforms. Processes still driven by the needs of print. Enterprise content management systems geared toward facilitating the sharing of … Continue reading →

Web design is about more than slapping a nice palette over top of a grid based on the golden ratio. Nor is it about using the latest CSS tricks (cool as those may be). It’s about thinking of your entire site holistically. Sure, design matters. But so does content. And context. You can’t design a site without first figuring out … Continue reading →

So I recognize that my title is obnoxiously long. I also recognize that I’m violating all the rules I spend my days championing. (Short titles. Most important sentence first. Action in the first 5 words. Keywords.) I don’t really care. This is my blog. About 8 other people read it. On a really good day. I can ramble if I … Continue reading →

So let me start by saying that I’m a sucker for long-form text. The condo my wife and I share in Ballston is overrun with books. My office is filled with the pieces of my collections of philosophy books that I couldn’t bear to give up when I left academia. I never go anywhere without my Kindle. I mean, hell, … Continue reading →

With the Congress in recess (more-or-less) for most of August, and the mad scramble over the debt ceiling debate behind us, all was quiet at CBO this week. CBO’s web team took advantage of the quiet time to get some additional SharePoint training at SharePoint Saturday: The Conference. Simone focused on train-the-trainer and power-user sessions, while Annette leaned more toward … Continue reading →

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick wrote a short piece a couple of days ago about the most recent spat between old school journalists and new media news sites. At issue was the claim that journalists create content whereas sites like the Huffington Post simply aggregate content produced elsewhere. The whole thing is worth a read, but the main takeaway is that journalists … Continue reading →