Zora Neale Hurston: Harlem Renaissance Folklorist

January 2011

Zora Neale Hurston Harlem Renaissance Folklorist

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” –Zora Neale Hurston

An American folklorist, anthropologist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, [...]]]>

Zora Neale Hurston: Harlem Renaissance Folklorist

January 2011

Zora Neale Hurston
Harlem Renaissance Folklorist

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” –Zora Neale Hurston

An American folklorist, anthropologist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston has been described as “the most successful and most significant black woman writer of the first half of the 20th century.” Perhaps best known for her controversial 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was made into a 2005 movie starring Halle Berry, Hurston also published three other novels, two books about folklore, and more than 50 short stories, plays and essays in her lifetime.

Born in Notasulga, Ala., and the fifth of eight children in her family, Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Fla. — the nation’s first incorporated black township — near Orlando. Because Eatonville was not integrated, Hurston grew up with no awareness of racial inferiority. At the age of 13, however, her idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end when her mother died and her preacher father remarried a younger woman with whom the teenaged Zora could not get along.

With her formal education incomplete, Hurston left Florida in her early teens to work as a maid to the lead singer in a Gilbert and Sullivan traveling troupe. Over the years, she worked at various menial jobs, eventually turning up in Baltimore in her mid-20s without having finished high school. She later attended — while working as a manicurist and a secretary — Howard University and Barnard College. Hurston studied anthropology at Barnard, and with the help of Franz Boaz and Elsie Clews Parsons, was able to win a six-month grant that she used to collect African American folklore. She also later attended Columbia University. After college, Hurston began working as an ethnologist, eventually incorporating her knowledge of culture into her fiction writing.

In 1925, Hurston went to New York City and began writing fiction. She is closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance and is considered an influence on writers like Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Gayle Jones, Alice Walker and others. Her work is an important source of black myth and legend.

Hurston’s last book was published in 1948, and as her popularity waned, she worked at various times on the faculty of North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, Warner Brothers motion pictures and on staff at the Library of Congress. Eventually, she returned to Florida where she died in poverty in 1960, her work nearly forgotten and thus lost to most readers.

In the 1970s, Alice Walker, best known as the author of The Color Purple, helped revive interest in Hurston’s writings. Today her novels and poetry are studied in literature classes, women’s studies and black studies courses, and have again become popular with the general reading public.

It is hard to believe that 2010 is already coming to a close.

This marked our first year of the InSites blog. We’ve greatly enjoyed the opportunity to share some of our thoughts and expertise with all of you. We’ve also been thrilled to get your feedback in the comment fields and via e-mail. Thank [...]]]>

It is hard to believe that 2010 is already coming to a close.

This marked our first year of the InSites blog. We’ve greatly enjoyed the opportunity to share some of our thoughts and expertise with all of you. We’ve also been thrilled to get your feedback in the comment fields and via e-mail. Thank you to all of our readers that have helped make this endeavor a success. We look forward to continuing to learn and grow with you as we head into 2011.

Through the end of the year, we will be sharing a series of posts under the title, “A Year of InSites.” Authored from a wide-range of Vanguard employees (in addition to some of our core bloggers), these posts will relate some of the communications, public relations and social marketing lessons we learned in 2010.

We also welcome your thoughts, lessons or observations from 2010 in the comment fields on this post or any others.

Thank you, as always, for reading, and we’ll see you in 2011!

All eyes in Washington were glued to a House subcommittee hearing last Friday. Members noted as the proceedings began that it was probably the most attention paid to the body by the public and the media since Bill Clinton’s impeachment. They owed it all to Comedy Central funny-man, Stephen Colbert, who was invited by [...]]]>

All eyes in Washington were glued to a House subcommittee hearing last Friday. Members noted as the proceedings began that it was probably the most attention paid to the body by the public and the media since Bill Clinton’s impeachment. They owed it all to Comedy Central funny-man, Stephen Colbert, who was invited by Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren to share his experiences with the United Farm Workers “Take Our Jobs” effort. Lofgren praised Colbert’s ability to bring public attention to an important issue as a media celebrity.

You don’t have to look much further than a Google search on “Colbert” and “Congress” to realize this wasn’t the attention Lofgren intended. Stories about Colbert dominate the coverage, while discussions of immigration and agriculture are buried, despite being the focus of the hearing. Regardless of whether you believe Colbert was in line by cracking jokes during a Congressional hearing, his testimony is a perfect reminder of some of the potential pitfalls of enlisting celebrities to support a cause.

Celebrities do have the ability to shine a light on important issues. But how that celebrity represents the issue—and how the public and media respond to the celebrity’s involvement—is key in their ability to help. If it is believed that the support is disingenuous or inappropriate, their participation can distract from your core message. It is a danger that House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers clearly recognized: He thanked Colbert for drawing attention to the hearing, and asked Colbert to withdraw himself from the proceedings before testifying. Conyers anticipated that the testimony would do the issue a disservice.

Before inviting a celebrity to represent your cause, consider the most appropriate way to engage them and a target audience. It made sense for the United Farm Workers to engage Stephen Colbert for the “Take Our Jobs” initiative. Colbert could—and did—use his show on Comedy Central to highlight the issue in his own way to an audience that loves him. Inviting him before the United States Congress, however, places him in front of an audience that doubts his sincerity and qualifications from the start. As a result, any mistake or questionable decision is amplified.

It is important to choose a celebrity that will represent your cause well and help deliver the message you intend. As Scott LaLonde recommended in his tips for celebrity recruitment a few weeks ago, providing talking points and preparation is key. Had Colbert delivered testimony that was an earnest, honest and straightforward perspective on the issue, the tone of the coverage could have been much different. It would have been a newsworthy departure from Colbert’s well-known persona.

Instead, Colbert advanced his own comedic agenda. Lofgren either didn’t anticipate that Colbert would testify in character or didn’t consider the reaction that could have resulted if he delivered a comedy routine in a Congressional hearing. Either way, the focus was on Colbert instead of on immigration and farming.

Celebrity involvement can provide a big boost to a cause. But like any other communications tool, you must consider your goal, audience and message before extending an invitation. Be sure to prepare your celebrity and make sure he or she will represent you well. Otherwise, the celebrity might be the story and leave your message behind.

Tomorrow, InSites bloggers will be celebrating Social Good Day by contributing blog posts about the issues central to our work at Vanguard Communications.  According to Mashable and (RED), Social Good Day is an opportunity to provide solutions to the challenges facing our world:

We’re interested in unleashing fresh thinking about how social media can raise [...]]]>

Tomorrow, InSites bloggers will be celebrating Social Good Day by contributing blog posts about the issues central to our work at Vanguard Communications.  According to Mashable and (RED), Social Good Day is an opportunity to provide solutions to the challenges facing our world:

We’re interested in unleashing fresh thinking about how social media can raise awareness and create solutions for social issues around the world. It starts with each community coming together and contributing ideas and, more importantly, solutions. Whatever community you’ll be participating in we want to know, “What’s your solution?” Let the world hear your ideas through social media!

At Vanguard, our mission is communicating for social change and we incorporate social media strategies into all of our practice areas in some way, shape or form.  We’re excited about this event that merges two important communications areas into one opportunity to raise awareness. We are looking forward to joining this larger conversation and share our ideas for solutions to some of the issues that matter the most to us.

Tomorrow, we’ll release a blog post every hour touching on issues such as agriculture, energy, environment, health and mental health, and youth and families.  Please join us in the comments and on Twitter using the hashtag #socialgood to share your own insights into how to use social media for social good!

Update (9/29): We hope you got a chance to read all of our Social Good Day posts, including:

Reduce Stigma Surrounding Trauma-related Mental Health Issues Using Social Media

Family Farmers Can Help Diminish U.S. Health and Environment Crises

Common Core State Standards Can Help Solve the Nation’s Education Crisis

Taking Care of Mind and Body is Critical to U.S. Health Care Reform

Graduate the Electricity Grid into the 21st Century

Growing a Stronger Economy Through Family Farmers

Mad Men, Troubled Children

On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out its long-awaited, location-based offering called Places.  Like competitors foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook Places allows users to “check-in” at locations, such as businesses, public spaces or even their homes, to broadcast to friends and connections where they are and what they’re doing.

We’ve previously discussed location-based advocacy in regard to foursquare [...]]]>

On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out its long-awaited, location-based offering called Places.  Like competitors foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook Places allows users to “check-in” at locations, such as businesses, public spaces or even their homes, to broadcast to friends and connections where they are and what they’re doing.

We’ve previously discussed location-based advocacy in regard to foursquare – but this announcement from Facebook ups the ante by bringing a half a billion people into the location-based check-in world.  Facebook’s reach among social network users ensures that more people will be checking in–for better or for worse.

Just as businesses are growing increasingly aware of potential benefits from check-in services, nonprofits and advocacy groups should be aware of how location-based social networking can help them.  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t be afraid to create a place and check in. Facebook has made it very easy to create a “Place” in their new service.  While the program aims to identify businesses or landmarks, there is nothing to say that you can’t just as easily create meeting spots, rally points, or strategically-located sites around key areas.  Trying to get a school board to pay attention?  Add your own “Places” around public schools or libraries with your message included.  Want to impact a member of Congress?  Ask supporters to check-in at their district offices using strategic messaging. Because all “Places” are public, other users will see these messages when they browse potential check-in spots.  The opportunities are limited only to your imagination.
• The benefits of location-based check-ins are immediacy and proximity. The business community has embraced check-in services, because it lets companies communicate with a customer at exactly the right moment–when they are in the business and ready to make a purchase. Advocates using check-in services should look to greet potential supporters with a call to action tied to where they are and what they’re doing.  Encourage passersby to join a nearby rally, or provide potential advocates with talking points, phone numbers and email addresses so they can take immediate action.
• Know your place. Advocacy groups and nonprofits now have new, virtual locations as part of Facebook Places, whether they like it or not.  Make sure you own your own, official Place that represents your organization, and monitor how people interact with it.  This can be your headquarters, offices or meeting points – but make sure you’re the one defining your Place.
• Location isn’t everything. Facebook Places is new and exciting, but it remains to be seen how it will be embraced.  Like any digital offering, use Places only as it makes sense to you–don’t let the buzz force you into rushed strategic decisions.  Keep your goal, audience and message in mind.

Keep an eye on Facebook Places to see how it develops.  It has tremendous potential for businesses and advocacy groups alike–but only if people embrace it.

Bravo, Old Spice.  Bravo.  Your viral ad campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa is one of the most brilliant social media-based advertising campaigns that I’ve ever seen. It is certain to become a case study in how to effectively reach huge numbers of people.

How many people?  Let’s recap now that one week has gone by since Old [...]]]>

Bravo, Old Spice.  Bravo.  Your viral ad campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa is one of the most brilliant social media-based advertising campaigns that I’ve ever seen. It is certain to become a case study in how to effectively reach huge numbers of people.

How many people?  Let’s recap now that one week has gone by since Old Spice started posting videos on July 12.  I calculated the total number of views the campaign had received by adding the “Views” figure displayed publicly for each video to find the sum for all of the videos in the effort.  As of 6:45 PM EST on Monday, July 19th, videos categorized under Old Spice’s “Responses” playlist had received a staggering 36,229,190 views.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective.  36,229,190 views since the campaign started on July 12th is:

• 517,559 views a day, 21,564 views an hour, 359 views a minute, or about 6 views per second for a solid week.
• 85 times the number of views of Sarah Palin’s YouTube videos; 8,320,523 more views than John McCain’s YouTube videos; and only slightly less than 25 percent of the total number of views of Barack Obama’s videos.  As a note of clarification, we’re talking about views of the videos themselves.  YouTube refers to this number as “Total Upload Views.”
• If we figure the videos average about 30 seconds each, it totals 301,909 hours, 12,579 days, or 34 years and change of viewing.

Like I said, staggering.

How on earth did Old Spice pull this off?  Crystal Borde, in her post on how this campaign might seed ideas for advocacy videos, makes the excellent point that Old Spice took care to target influential accounts on Twitter.  But on a bigger picture scale, Old Spice recognized the value of integrating their traditional and online campaigns to maximize impact.

In Crystal’s post, she linked to the ReadWriteWeb post on how the videos were made.  That article links to this blog post by Mark Borden, who interviewed Wieden+Kennedy’s Iain Tait for Fast Company.  The entire interview provides a great analysis of the project,  but this response in particular stuck out to me:

One of the unique things taking place in the studio is we have a team of social media people, we have the Old Spice community manager, we have a social media strategist, a couple of technical people, and a producer. And we’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community.

It’s not just picking people with huge followings, it’s a really interesting combination.

Here we see the true spirit of integration that made this campaign the overwhelming success that it is.  Social media experts, creative experts, technical experts and producers were all working together to make a product in real-time that supported the overall goals of their client, and stayed true to Old Spice’s brand and message.  What’s more, the team put strategic thinking into their online outreach decisions – just as you would for any traditional outreach campaign – to ensure that their efforts would impact as many people as possible.  They took a long-established brand and a relatively new advertising campaign and adapted it to make it compatable with an emerging medium. All while staying true to Old Spice’s overall marketing and communications goals.  It is worth noting that this was a campaign that was taken very seriously, and involved substantial investment of time and resources.  While not as expensive as say, a Super Bowl spot, it demanded time commitments from a broad team, extensive strategic planning and investment in the medium.

Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy, again, bravo.  You’ve set a pristine example for communicators everywhere on how online efforts can inform, support and enhance traditional outreach strategies – and vice versa.

Woody Guthrie: Working Class Balladeer

July 2010 Woody Guthrie Working Class Balladeer

“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are [...]]]>

Woody Guthrie: Working Class Balladeer

July 2010
Woody Guthrie
Working Class Balladeer

“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”― Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie was born in Okemah, Okla., on July 14, 1912. With a love of singing and music instilled in him by his parents, Guthrie took to the road in 1931 after an oil boom — and following bust — left his family and hometown in financial ruin.

After departing for California in search of work to provide for his wife and three children, Guthrie landed a job hosting a radio show on KFVD radio in Los Angeles in 1937. Singing traditional music alongside some originals as part of his hosting duties, Guthrie quickly developed a devoted following among the thousands of relocated migrants living in California who counted on him to remind them of their shared past and experiences. While on the air, he used his radio program as an outlet for social commentary and criticism on behalf of the migrant workers that were struggling in desperate poverty. Guthrie established himself as a champion of fairness and justice, taking on corruption in all forms and advocating for union organizers fighting for the working class. In this role, he was among the first musicians to use his platform as an entertainer to become an advocate for social justice.

As a migrant himself, Guthrie identified strongly with the homeless and disenfranchised, sentiments that he ensconced in songs such as “I Ain’t Got No Home,” “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” and “Hard Traveling” — all of which sought to give a voice to the voiceless. After his affinity for the road led him to leave Los Angeles, he continued to travel and record while maintaining an affinity for social commentary. During World War II, his passionate objections to fascism led him to serve in both the Merchant Marine and the Army. While in the service, Guthrie wrote numerous anti-Hitler, pro-war songs such as “All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose” and “Talking Merchant Marine” to help boost the morale of his fellow troops. He was ultimately targeted by the anti-Communist Red Scare in the aftermath of World War II, but remained an outspoken advocate for free speech and workers’ rights until his death in 1967.

Although he rarely won awards for his music in his lifetime, Guthrie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.

Celia Cruz: Diva for Democracy

June 2010 Celia Cruz Diva for Democracy

“Celia was an absolute pillar as a human being and one of the most unselfish humanitarians I have ever met and am sure I will ever have known.” – Marc Anthony

Internationally renowned as the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz was born in Cuba in [...]]]>

Celia Cruz: Diva for Democracy

June 2010
Celia Cruz
Diva for Democracy

“Celia was an absolute pillar as a human being and one of the most unselfish humanitarians I have ever met and am sure I will ever have known.” – Marc Anthony

Internationally renowned as the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz was born in Cuba in the 1920s. Her lifelong devotion to education was instilled in her by her father, who had hoped she would become a teacher. Cruz, however, dropped out of the national teaching college as her musical talents became increasingly undeniable, instead attending the Havana National Conservancy of Music. After joining the Cuban big band La Sonoran Matancera in 1950, Cruz departed for extensive tours of North and Central America, taking her to Mexico in 1959 when Fidel Castro assumed power. Rather than return to Cuba, Cruz and her band sought asylum in the United States – leading the new Castro regime to bar her from ever returning home. Cruz became an outspoken critic of Castro, and an American citizen in 1961, going on to become one of the top selling salsa artists of all time. Releasing more than 70 albums, three GRAMMY® awards and four Latin GRAMMY® awards, Cruz rooted her music firmly in Cuban styles. With her success, Cruz became a Cuban icon – a representation of what was possible without the limitations of an oppressive regime – and used this status to give back to the Hispanic community. In 2002, Cruz and her husband founded the Celia Cruz Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds for underprivileged students seeking to study music, while also supporting the fight against cancer.

Good morning!  Today we will be live blogging the Community Health Forum: Harnessing the Power of Information to Improve Health, put on by the Department of Health and Human Services.  The event runs from 9:00 until 10:30, and will feature a number of fantastic speakers.  We are waiting for everything to get started, and [...]]]>

Good morning!  Today we will be live blogging the Community Health Forum: Harnessing the Power of Information to Improve Health, put on by the Department of Health and Human Services.  The event runs from 9:00 until 10:30, and will feature a number of fantastic speakers.  We are waiting for everything to get started, and will update this post regularly with coverage.

By way of background, the Community Health Forum centers around the Community Health Data Initiative, designed to “launch a national initiative to help consumers and communities get more value out of the Nation’s wealth of health data.”  Data has already been made available on the web, which will “form the basis for the content anticipated to be available through the Indicator Warehouse and which will further the success of the Community Health Data Initiative.”  Today’s event promises to focus on tools and applications in development as part of the project, as well as an overview of current efforts and the future direction of the initiative.

NOTE: all updates here should be considered notes on the information presented at today’s event, and not direct quotes from the participants.

9:21 am – Matt Miller from the Washington Post is welcoming the audience, and noting that this is a preview of “data technology to improve health and health care.”  The official hashtag for the event is #healthapps for anybody interested in joining the conversation on Twitter.

9:26 am – Harvey Fineberg is thanking visitors and introducing the Honorable Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

9:29 am – Fineberg: The Community Health Data Initiative is a prelude to democracy of the 21st Century.

9:33 am - Sebelius: The Community Health Data Initiative is a participatory venture that was launched by a simple belief: people in communities can improve the public health system if they have the information to do it.

9:34 am – Sebelius: Having a transparent government is a step, but the next step is making it interactive – inviting expertise, advice and ideas from citizens in a participatory fashion.  It not only makes for a more accountable government, it makes for a more dynamic government.

9:35 am - Sebelius: The second goal at the heart of the initiative is building a health care system that meets the needs of every American.

9:38 am – Sebelius: moving forward, Americans will have options for their own health care.  What they’re going to need is better information to help them make choices.  We have the data on everything from smoking rates to obesity rates to access to healthy food.  We have hospital information and information from a variety of agencies.  Lots of divisions within HHS collect information – and a lot of what this Initiative is about is making this information available to the public, which has never happened before.

9:39 am – Sebelius is outlining examples of where patients could go online and utilize HHS data to make decisions about their own health care, such as what hospitals to attend, where to live based on community health data, or where to locate a business based upon health data as a component of that decision.

9:40 am – Sebelius: We think that making that information free and user-friendly is just common sense – but to get the full value of the data, we need ideas from all of you.

9:43 am – Bill Corr, Deputy Secretary, HHS: We wanted to answer this important question – if we make data available, would innovators be interested in using it to improve health?  The answer was a resounding “yes,” so we got to work.

9:44 am – Corr: there are many creative developers here today that have already started working on innovative projects, such as interactive health maps and video games that use the data we’ve made available.

9:46 am – Corr: what you’ll be seeing today is only the beginning.  This December, HHS will launch a new website available to the public containing information on national, regional, state and county level health performance data, as well as information on how to improve it.  Users can download this information free of charge and integrate it into their efforts.

9:47 am – Corr: HHS is not controlling, choreographing or paying for the development of these applications – rather, our role is to provide the data to the developers and let them take it from there.

9:50 am – Corr has concluded, and they are preparing the stage for the “Showcase of Tools of Applications in Development.”  As a reminder, you can view this morning’s agenda here.

9:52 am – Presenters from Palantir – a “leader in cutting edge data visualization” – is are on stage now, featuring Alex Fishman.  They are a “Silicon Valley Company created in 2004 by the founders of Paypal,” with the goal of “emancipating information to make government more effective.”

9:56 am – Palantir is demonstrating how using the datasets available can identify high risk populations, understand the services in place to serve those populations, and understand how the government is impacting those populations.  Currently, the team is focusing on child poverty rates in Texas, and using all of the data sets together to derive the relative prevalence of child poverty to overall poverty rates.  Palantir can use the data to filter out other counties on this metric and further hone the dataset to learn where child poverty rates are especially high, relative to overall poverty.  The key takeaway is the ability to drill down into very specific, honed information from the datasets available.  From this, they’ve identified an area northwest of San Antonio with a certain child poverty rate, and are now able to look at the community services available to that population, such as the availability of boys and girls clubs or acute care facilities in the counties they’ve identified.  This gives them a sense to the population’s access to this level of community care.

10:00 am – Palantir is further demonstrating how this data can then be analyzed in the context of the grants that have been awarded to specific areas of the country, how that money is being spent, and what the community is focusing on in terms of their own improvement efforts.

10:02 am – Palantir announces a new site called analyzethe.us, that “allows anyone to use Palantir to explore vast amounts of data only recently released into the public domain.”

10:04 am – Next up, Microsoft Bing.

10:05 am – Alan Rappaport manages a team at Bing that is focused on health search – his background is as a physician and technologist.  Will provide three examples of how HHS data and search have been combined.

10:06 am - First example is finding information on hospital performance using a search engine, which is a complicated task because the data was previously buried deep in the HHS web.  Using the new data, it is brought to the forefront of search results that provides information like patient ratings compared to the state averages for other hospitals.

10:10 am - Rappaport is demonstrating how Bing Health Maps can be used to identify where different counties and areas have specific health issues, such as access to fruits and vegetables.  Drilling down into the data gives specific information on the people in a given county.  Bing Health Maps can be used to explore how many people report having access to fruits and vegetables in their diet in Baltimore County, MD, and then can overlay that data with searches for supermarkets in the area.  This can help drill into issues such as “food deserts,” and provide useful data for the health ramifications – such as cases of diabetes in that area.

10:15 am – Matt Miller notes that data quality is going to be a national imperative.  Once we have the access to use and manipulate the data, we have to ensure that the data is of the highest quality to ensure the applications are accurate.

10:16 am – Valerie Brown, president of the National Association of Counties, is on stage now.  Introducing her team that worked on their applications for “Network of Care for Health Communities,” a public project that is working for and with the National Association of Counties.  It is a web portal at the county level that is offered as a free service to everyone – it is currently up and running and operational in Sonoma County – and provides a wealth of data relevant to their county.

10:22 am – There is a lot of information here, so focusing on obesity as a user-thread to demonstrate how the tool can be used to address an issue.  The system uses a color coded indicator to show how a county is doing on a given issue.

10:26 am – Data on obesity gives a huge range of information on obesity issues in Sonoma County, and provides easy access to promising practices that have been used to address that issue.

10:28 am - Demonstrating how the Sonoma County data can be correlated against the “Healthy People” data.  This allows communities to identify where they are doing well and where they need to focus on improving.

10:31 am - Next up, Asthmapolis, a program begun to help reduce issues with asthma by providing more information about asthma attacks and exposure.  The aim is to identify locations where there is a particular threat for people with asthma, which has been a large challenge for public health officials.

10:34 am - Asthmapolis is showing this video:

10:35 am – By tracking inhaler use, Asthmapolis could quickly identify patients that were having asthma control issues.  Providing patients with an intelligent feedback system helped them improve asthma management.

10:40 am – Ingenix and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) are now on stage – they are working together to look at “data across the continuum,” and how it can be used for improvement within a community.  The idea is centered on IHI’s “TripleAim,” which is working simultaneously to improve the health of the population, enhance the patient experience of care, and reduce the cost of care.

10:41 am – Demonstrating how data can be used to unlock information about the cost of patient care in a given state or community, which can then be compared against similar states and communities.

10:44 am – A key takeaway from all of today’s presentations is how data can demonstrate successes, challenges, and how to improve by allowing people to access information about how others have dealt with the same issues.

10:50 am – Looking at data collectively and comprehensively helps us make improvements without adversely impacting other areas unintentionally.

10:52 am – Google is up next, with a presentation titled “The Best Places to Have Chest Pain in the United States.”

10:53 am – Google Fusion Tables is a cloud-based database that makes it really easy to look at data, visualize it, analyze it, share it and publish it.  Google is demonstrating how this tool can be used in conjunction with the hospital compare database to identify information on heart attacks for New York area hospitals.

10:55 am – Google is now looking at Newark, New Jersey, to drill down to specific information about a hospital.  Google Fusion Tables lets the user customize information that pops up on a map, to provide specific information about the services offered at a given hospital, pulled from the overall database.

10:58 am – Google makes all of the data from Fusion Tables easily embeddable, so it can be pulled on to other web sites.  The data remains fully functional and interactive when it is embedded on a different web site.

11:00 am – Google: the take home message here is that we can start to have conversations – patients, doctors and policymakers – and demand new data as a result of this analysis and conversation.  This data is being made available not only to patients, doctors and policymakers, but also to inventors that will help to change health care.

11:05 am – Final presenter this morning is Healthways, introduced as a company that has created a social networking game that “could become the next FarmVille.”  Today, the company is launching “Community Clash,” a card game that provides health information and taps into social networking conversations to bring alive community health metrics.  The beta of the game is now available.

11:08 am – Community Clash melds video game-type scoring with health data analysis and comparison among cities and communities.  It incorporates about a dozen community health metrics, and includes about 100 million tweets, refreshed with about 1-2 million each day.  The Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index is also included, featuring over 800,000 surveys on health.

11:12 am - Next up, Todd Park (Chief Technology Officer, HHS) and Aneesh Chopra (U.S. Chief Technology Officer).

11:15 am – Todd Park describes how HHS was inspired by NOAA and weather data, and how the federal government has led in providing data for applications.

11:16 am – Park: very important to not only make data available, but to market it to innovators so they can find it and use it.

11:17 am – Park: three step process – liberate the data, build applications from the data, and catalyze change as a result.

11:20 am – Park: What’s to come: 1) Interim Community Health Data Initiative website currently available with downloadable data; 2) New HHS Health Indicators Warehouse, launching December 2010; and 3) New Medicare community-level indicators.

11:22 am – Aneesh Chopra takes the stage to talk about the changes across government related to more open and transparent government.

This concludes our coverage of this morning’s events.  Thanks very much for tuning in!

]]> http://www.vancomm.com/insites/2010/06/live-blog-department-of-health-and-human-services-community-health-forum/feed/ 2 http://www.vancomm.com/insites/2010/05/lessons-from-google-on-creating-media-opportunities/ http://www.vancomm.com/insites/2010/05/lessons-from-google-on-creating-media-opportunities/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 13:41:47 +0000 Chris Connelly http://www.vancomm.com/insites/?p=787

I enjoy Google’s Doodles – the daily updates to their logo – and especially those that are more inventive and off-the-wall.  My nerdy, ten-year-old self rejoices at their hidden inclusion of the Triforce from Nintendo’s Zelda games, which serves as just one example of how creative the Google team can be.  But last week’s [...]]]>

I enjoy Google’s Doodles – the daily updates to their logo – and especially those that are more inventive and off-the-wall.  My nerdy, ten-year-old self rejoices at their hidden inclusion of the Triforce from Nintendo’s Zelda games, which serves as just one example of how creative the Google team can be.  But last week’s fully functional PAC-MAN game – featuring over 250 levels and a kill screen – surely took the cake, and not just because it resulted in an estimated 4.8 million wasted hours.

What impressed me most about the PAC-MAN Doodle was the way Google turned an event completely unrelated to their company – the 30th anniversary of the release of PAC-MAN – into a story that revolved around Google.  In fact, they completely trumped the story: if you use Google to search for “30th anniversary PAC-MAN,” all but the first result (the “Official PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary Destination“) reference the playable Google Doodle.  That is quite extraordinary. Google took a story that had nothing to do with the company and, with some imagination and programming, turned it into an enormous media blitz, including feature pieces from both ABC and CBS.

Communicators and public relations professionals should take note.  Google created a media opportunity by doing three key things:

1. Google was aware. To create the Doodle in the first place, Google had to know that the 30th anniversary was upcoming, and that their audience would appreciate a PAC-MAN nod in the form of a game.  In the CBS interview, the Google Doodlers responsible explain their inspiration: “When we do homepage logos, we always try to focus on our culture of technology and innovation – and things that will be really fun for our users.”  Watch the interview below.  Without this awareness, the story never happens.
2. Google was imaginative. This was the first Google Doodle – to my knowledge – that was truly interactive, allowing users to actually play.  The idea of putting a working video game on every Google homepage is a wild one – and one completely worthy of the media attention it got.  But Google had to dream up the idea in the first place for it to gain traction.
3. Google invested in a wild idea. After developing a prototype in a day, Google gave the go ahead for what must have been a labor intensive, expensive project: creating a fully functional, lengthy PAC-MAN game that could live on every Google page.  The result?  Google got stories from across the globe on the innovation and creativity of their company.