Late last week, a headline from our local “Patch” news service caught my attention – Police: Group of Teens Cause $1,500 in Damage at General’s Ridge Golf Course. I opened the story expecting to find names and ages attached to the accusation, but there were none. In fact, other than a description that the [...]]]>

Late last week, a headline from our local “Patch” news service caught my attention – Police: Group of Teens Cause $1,500 in Damage at General’s Ridge Golf Course. I opened the story expecting to find names and ages attached to the accusation, but there were none. In fact, other than a description that the individuals were shirtless and had a dog with them, there were no other details that had been confirmed. The perpetrators haven’t yet been identified or caught. So how do we know they are teenagers? They could be 20 years old – or 40. For that matter, how do we even know the dog was a German Shepherd? Yet these details were reported as fact. Is there any danger in assigning an age label to crime suspects when they haven’t yet been caught, let alone accused? Would it have been just as acceptable to report their race or religion?

It’s been quite a few years since I matriculated from Penn State with a journalism degree, but I still remember the endless days of sitting in class picking apart real headlines and leads for any sign of bias. Not only did we look at our own work, we examined the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Sometimes it seemed impossible to find ethics issues in products from such venerated media outlets, but we dug until we did. Now I don’t have to look far at all for instances of ethical breaches and bias, and I often feel very alone in my need to pay attention to such details. Does the rest of the world just accept this new era of “anything goes” reporting?

A recent after-work viewing of Page One: Inside The New York Times cemented the nagging feeling that it’s not  just newspapers that are disappearing, it’s the care and commitment to accurate, factual reporting that they represent. From All the President’s Men to The Paper, our culture has tried to emphasize the importance of getting it right, even at the expense of getting it second. Now those films, and that sentiment, seem naive and nostalgic. I mean, we’re all reporters, right? I can post whatever I want on Facebook or Twitter, and it can be seen around the world in a matter of minutes. Of course, if we could count on each other for accurate, first-person accounts, it would mean that Natalie Portman, George Clooney and even William Hung are all dead – because Twitter said so.

This month, the practice of journalism was further rocked by allegations that NewsCorps-owned outlets invaded the voicemail accounts of several British citizens, including a young murder victim and relatives of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is plenty of outrage around the situation, but will it finally wake up the public enough to demand a return to the ethics and standards that were once a hallmark of reporting?

The irony is not lost on me that I am writing this piece as a public relations professional rather than a currently working journalist. Like so many of my wide-eyed fellow journalism graduates, my picture of traveling the world to uncover scandal and save lives was far from the reality of fast-food wages and hours spent rewriting stories on a local fight over back lit awnings. However, I’ve never set aside those basic journalism ethics in my PR work. As a communicator for social change, I often have an opportunity to pass along critical information that can help reporters investigate their own stories. I know it’s in my and my clients’ best interests for those journalists to be fair, accurate and unbiased – even if the results are not as flattering as I would like. I know that once the line is breached – whether or not it’s on behalf of my cause – it’s hard to cross back to the other side.

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I’m an avid Twitter user. While I use Twitter for news monitoring and information gathering, I also use it as an engagement tool — sending messages directly targeting Tweeters or adding hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a hash sign and without spaces, occurring within a tweet.

It’s surprising how many organizations and spokespeople on [...]]]>

I’m an avid Twitter user. While I use Twitter for news monitoring and information gathering, I also use it as an engagement tool — sending messages directly targeting Tweeters or adding hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a hash sign and without spaces, occurring within a tweet.

It’s surprising how many organizations and spokespeople on Twitter miss the opportunity to target their messages and boost visibility by not including relevant hashtags in their tweets. Each hashtag on Twitter automatically becomes a link to all posts that have recently used that hashtag. Via hashtags, Tweeters can isolate tweets regarding a specific topic or discussion area.

Twitter hashtags by Search Engine People Blog, on Flickr

According to TweeSpeed, more than 80,000 tweets are sent per minute. That’s a lot of content to wade through. Searching by hashtag helps Twitter users zero in on the right tweets and cut Twitter noise and distractions. Often, communities and ongoing conversations are built around hashtags and understanding and engaging with these communities can help Twitter campaigns.

Ready to start adding hashtags to your tweets? Here are some tips to keep in mind when harnessing the power of Twitter hashtags.

1. Check hashtags before you use them. Search Twitter using your desired hashtags and follow the existing conversation. Is it the right audience and appropriate for your organization or campaign? Think of it as audience research; listen to how people are using the hashtag before jumping into the fray.
2. Search your message for hashtag opportunities. Sometimes you don’t have to add words in order to create a hashtag. Just use the words in your message strategically. Hashtags can appear at the end or within the message you’re sending. When you only have 140 characters, you need to make every character count.
3. Be selective and join the right conversations. Don’t go overboard and add lots of hashtags to your message. Evaluate the conversations and then pick the best ones to include in your Twitter message.
4. Highlight Twitter users in your message. Identifying Twitter user names in a message is like a hashtag that targets people instead of topics or subjects. People track conversations in Twitter by users’ names as well.
5. Spelling counts. Be responsive, but double-check what you send out before you click the “tweet” button. A spelling mistake in a hashtag puts your message in a different conversation.
6. Experiment with different hashtags for different results. After you identify some potential hashtags for your campaign, cycle the hashtags through varying messages and track results, such as click-thrus and retweets. Variation and monitoring results can help you focus in on the best hashtags to meet your campaign goals.
7. Check out your followers and other organizations’ favorite hashtags. See what hashtags Twitter users with similar messages  are using in their tweets. Perhaps another user or organizations created a conversation already that you can also benefit from joining.

If you’re looking for good hashtags to start communicating for #socialgood on #Twitter, check out this great flyer featuring 40 hashtags for #socialgood or read this great post by @Socialbrite regarding how #nonprofits can facilitate a #conversation using hashtags. You see, finding and creating #hashtags in your messages can be very #easy. You just start by adding the hash sign.

When USA Today launched in 1982, it heralded a new era for print journalism, featuring briefer articles and more colorful designs, photos and illustrations in newspapers. Twenty-eight years later, the second most widely read newspaper in the U.S. is changing the game again.

Recently, USA Today announced a reorganization of its newsroom, eliminating 130 jobs [...]]]>

When USA Today launched in 1982, it heralded a new era for print journalism, featuring briefer articles and more colorful designs, photos and illustrations in newspapers. Twenty-eight years later, the second most widely read newspaper in the U.S. is changing the game again.

Recently, USA Today announced a reorganization of its newsroom, eliminating 130 jobs and restructuring how the paper will cover the news. The reorganization will shift USA Today’s emphasis towards its digital media operations to capitalize on readers’ interest in online and mobile content, reflected in the decline of the paper’s print sales.

USA Today’s predicament is shared by other papers on today’s newsstand. Since hard economic times sped the descent of print and advertising sales of national, regional and community newspapers, publications such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, and Charlotte Observer are also exploring new business models.

However, these new content strategies should give communicators some cause for concern. USA Today described its new arrangement as “a new way of doing business that aligns sales efforts with the content we produce.” Such close collaboration between editorial and sales departments will change what news is covered and how, making it even more difficult for hard-sell social issue stories to get published.

In 2006, The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that with the advent of online news content and 24/7 TV news cycles, the public’s newspaper section preferences were changing. According to the study:

Nine-in-ten people (91%) who say they often or sometimes read a newspaper spend at least some time on news about their city, town or region, but 88% say the same about national news stories, and 84% spend time reading international news.

Three sections of the newspaper have grown significantly more popular since 1985: business and financial news, news about religion, and articles about food, diet and cooking.

The study also discovered that younger readers, under the age of 30, expressed little interest in newspaper editorials and opinion pages, 35 percent either skip the editorial pages entirely or 17 percent just glance at
them. Only 15 percent of 18-29 year old readers spend time reading the op-eds.

So what do Pew’s revealing findings mean?

The statistics reinforce USA Today’s conclusions: the way people receive their news is changing. Readers no longer need to rely on morning newspapers for yesterday’s news. Instant access to real-time news and opinion on the Internet means they can follow today’s news right now. Also, it indicates new business opportunities for advertisers who are promoting products related to those content areas.

As a result of this trend, newspapers are responding and taking steps like USA Today to reorganize and develop new ways to deliver the news and capitalize on new sales markets. These changes will make it harder for communicators to get soft news pitches in print. However where there is a will, there’s a way.  Just as newspaper publishers are discovering new ways to reengage readers, perhaps communicators should take heed, too, and find new ways for soft stories to be newsworthy…and marketable.

My fellow InSites bloggers Crystal Borde and Chris Connelly have given the campaign kudos in previous posts (see here and here, respectively) and there have been countless articles written about its success. Yes, we all laughed out loud and loved it. So, how much of a success was it?

According to this blog post on [...]]]>

My fellow InSites bloggers Crystal Borde and Chris Connelly have given the campaign kudos in previous posts (see here and here, respectively) and there have been countless articles written about its success. Yes, we all laughed out loud and loved it. So, how much of a success was it?

According to this blog post on AdFreak Old Spice agency Wieden + Kennedy provided these stats on the success of this integrated effort:

• The YouTube/Twitter social media response campaign was “the fastest-growing and most popular interactive campaign in history.”
• More people watched its videos in 24 hours than those who watched Obama’s presidential victory speech. (Which most of us can agree is kinda sad.)
• Total video views reached 40 million in a week.
• Campaign impressions: 1.4 billion.
• Since the campaign launched, Old Spice Bodywash sales are up 27 percent; in the last three months up. 55 percent; and in the last month up 107 percent.

View Wieden + Kennedy’s video presentation on their campaign below.

That’s incredibly impressive, but now what?

In typical PR firm fashion, my colleagues and I were discussing successful viral campaigns recently and the Old Spice campaign came up. We talked about how successful and funny the campaign was, but where does it go from here? Most companies and individuals can only dream about creating a great viral campaign, but what will Old Spice do now that it has a whole new segment of people paying attention to it?

Part of a strong integrated media strategy is knowing what the next step is if you succeed – especially in the fast-moving world of social media.  Gaining attention is only half the battle.  For example, looking at the Old Spice Twitter feed since the campaign ended reveals that messages have fallen off and direct engagement with followers has disappeared.  Now that Old Spice has a captive and engaged audience, can they keep it and use it to continue driving sales?  Only time will tell.

Last week’s announced demise of Google Wave reminds us that effective execution and promotion are at least as important as a good idea.

I was one of the early Google Wave proponents who spent weeks desperately seeking a coveted invite into the exclusive community of initial users. I loved the idea of melding productivity and [...]]]>

Last week’s announced demise of Google Wave reminds us that effective execution and promotion are at least as important as a good idea.

I was one of the early Google Wave proponents who spent weeks desperately seeking a coveted invite into the exclusive community of initial users. I loved the idea of melding productivity and social networking tools into one tool on my desktop. I had visions of collaborating across clients and countries without need for tracking e-mail strings and endless versions of documents. When a colleague finally sent me an invite, I jumped on to what I imagined to be a virtual cruise ship filled with innovation and idea-sharing. What I found was a bunch of canoes paddling in circles. Forthwith are some lessons I’m taking away as we wave goodbye to Google Wave.

A good brand can lead a horse to water, but it can’t make him drink.  Google Wave initially benefited from the solid, yet innovative, Google brand. Few people understood exactly how the tool would change our lives, but we believed it would, because Google said so. I actually had more discussions with people about the tool in advance of its release than I did using the tool. The problem was that Google Wave seemed complicated and exclusive, exactly the opposite of Google’s friendly, accessible brand.

Stephanie Hannon of Google Wave | Photo From Flickr User niallkennedy

A whole bunch of people in the same place isn’t the same as a community.  Google Wave was seen as a collaborative tool that could streamline communication among communities. Yet, I found myself patching together a network of unlike-minded friends to even try out the tool. Google’s cautious approach to the roll out of the Wave served to discourage early adopters who wanted to dig in with their pals and see what was under the hood.

Keep promotion simple.  For those who were motivated, Google supplied many tools, tutorials and ideas for how Google Wave could change the way we work. Unfortunately, the tool had so much potential that it was hard to describe to friends and colleagues. Apple’s new iPhone OS has more than 100 new features, but they have focused on just one simple concept—the ability to conduct video calls with friends and family.

Know when to quit.  There are lots of good ideas, but only a fraction become real products and services. Google paid close attention to Wave, and they knew when the product had lost momentum and was putting their gold-plated brand at risk. It’s hard to give up when you’ve invested a lot of time, energy and emotion in a project, but it’s even more difficult to survive a long-term, widespread public failure.

Everyone can be a photo editor in this age of inexpensive digital cameras and a variety of tools available for altering photographs. In the newsroom, however, some photo editing can do more harm than good.

Recently, The Economist took heat for a Gulf Coast oil spill cover that featured an isolated President Obama standing [...]]]>

Everyone can be a photo editor in this age of inexpensive digital cameras and a variety of tools available for altering photographs. In the newsroom, however, some photo editing can do more harm than good.

Recently, The Economist took heat for a Gulf Coast oil spill cover that featured an isolated President Obama standing at the coast’s edge with an oil rig in the background. The magazine altered the source photograph to remove a local elected official standing next to the president. As you can see in a side-by-side comparison by NYTimes.com, the original image and the altered cover tell very different stories. In response to NYTimes.com claims of unethical photo editing, Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist, said:

I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. “The damage beyond the spill” referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.

Well, whether The Economist editorial staff intended to or not, the now-public photo alterations have undermined their cover’s message and impacted the credibility of future cover images as well.

Unfortunately, BP has created its own credibility problem by altering photos, as if their recent PR missteps were not enough. Treehugger.com, one of the most widely-read environmental blogs, reported that a recent BP photo of the company’s oil spill crisis command center in Houston had been altered to add radar images to blank monitor screens. The image appeared prominently on the company’s website. In an article about BP’s altered photo drama, Washington Post energy reporter Steve Mufson’s lead paragraph read:

Apparently BP is no more adept at doctoring photos than it is at plugging deep-sea oil leaks.

Ouch.

Update (7.22.10): more photos doctored by BP continue to come to light, as reported by the Washington Post.

While photos may have to be tweaked or fixed in photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop before production, communicators and designers should be careful that their image changes don’t alter the original, intended message of the photograph. That’s where The Economist and BP ran into trouble.

Every photograph should tell a story. When sharing enhanced images with the public and the media, transparency is key. Organizations must make sure that story behind the photograph and the story presented in the photograph actually match. Any inconsistencies raises red flags from the media, and the resulting coverage can hurt organizations’ reputations and offer the public an unfocused view of the message they originally intended to convey.

This guest post is written by Shelby Benkert, an intern at Vanguard Communications.

Unlike most college students, I tend to shy away from many social media networks. Facebook is my go-to in order to stay in touch with my friends, and I rarely use anything else. I do have a Twitter account, but I have [...]]]>

This guest post is written by Shelby Benkert, an intern at Vanguard Communications.

Unlike most college students, I tend to shy away from many social media networks. Facebook is my go-to in order to stay in touch with my friends, and I rarely use anything else. I do have a Twitter account, but I have never tweeted. I’ve logged on only a handful of times just to check the profiles of the celebrities I am “following.” With the vast selection of social networking tools, I find myself reluctant to enter into a world where you are constantly connected. After reading an article about Foursquare usage written for Mediaite.com, I realize that my hesitation comes from the fact that I simply don’t want people knowing every aspect of my life.

From Flickr User Trucknroll

As a self-proclaimed “Facebook stalker,” I pride myself on being able to gather any and all information about someone just by viewing their profile. With features like “wall-to-walls,” tagged pictures, photo and wall comments, status updates, and the ever popular “Like” button, Facebook has become, now more than ever, a means of gathering information about someone. In five minutes you can find out somebody’s current location, schools they’ve attended, their place of work, and group of friends. Dig some more and you’ll know about their romantic relationships (both past and present), where they spent their spring break four years ago, and about their Cocker Spaniel named Sallie. And surprisingly, all this information is available about somebody you may not even be “friends” with.

While I think Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has come up with an innovative idea, Foursquare and other social networking sites must be used cautiously. Foursquare has expanded past where to go on a Saturday night to include which Starbucks you get your coffee at on a Monday morning, and where your weekly meeting is held on Wednesday afternoons. Indeed, see past InSites posts from Brandi Horton and Chris Connelly looking at the applications of Foursquare for advocacy work.  All this “checking-in” has lead me to ask the question, how much information is too much? And furthermore, how safe are you being when constantly updating your information?

Communicators should be aware of the privacy settings that exist on such social networks to understand what information people are, and are not, making available to the public.  What’s more, privacy concerns extend to organizational profiles as well as personal settings. We must learn how to use privacy settings appropriately in order to control what information we share on behalf of ourselves and our clients. The consequences of not using privacy settings appropriately are wide ranging. They can be as small as somebody learning how old you really are – or as big as being fired by a client for revealing sensitive information.

So, how do we keep these negative consequences from happening? Here are a few tips to keep you safe and avoid the thin line between staying connected and over-sharing information:

• Check your privacy settings – Make sure that your profile isn’t open for everyone to view and that the information you put up can only be seen by your “friends.”  If you work with a client on a social networking site, determine what privacy settings they will need in advance to meet their goals, serve their audiences, and deliver their messages.
• Be picky when it comes to choosing your friends – Have a plan for how you will deal with friend requests.   The ideal profile is one where you know all of your friends, that way you are not giving out information to people who you don’t know.  Personally, make sure you don’t just accept anyone who sends you a friend request.  For clients, make an advance decision on how you’ll deal with requests from supporters – there are times where you may not want to be associated with certain accounts, and you’ll want to know how to deal with this when the issue arises.
• Be careful with what information you put on your profile – Social networking sites save all your activities. Before putting something on a profile, make sure it is something you won’t mind others seeing today, tomorrow, or 15 years from now. Also keep in mind, employers also look at profiles.
• Limit your location-based status activity – When talking about where you are and where you’re going, be sure to avoid giving too much detail. You never know when a random friend request has fallen through the cracks, so don’t allow people the ability to trace your every move. This could lead to dangerous situations. You’d rather be safe than sorry!  What’s more, make sure location-based updates make sense for a client before activating these features on networks like Twitter or Google.  If you don’t have a need for a location-based feature, there isn’t a reason to use it.

As if BP’s crisis response mistakes mentioned in a recent post weren’t enough, apparently their public relations disasters continue as more oil pumps into the saturated Gulf Coast.

Newly released documents reveal BP’s standard crisis response strategy to be “accentuate the positive, downplay the negative, tell everybody they’re sorry, they’re gonna fix it, they’re gonna [...]]]>

As if BP’s crisis response mistakes mentioned in a recent post weren’t enough, apparently their public relations disasters continue as more oil pumps into the saturated Gulf Coast.

Newly released documents reveal BP’s standard crisis response strategy to be “accentuate the positive, downplay the negative, tell everybody they’re sorry, they’re gonna fix it, they’re gonna do better, and not to worry.” Well, it is good that they developed a crisis communication plan, but it misses a key element—flexibility.

From Flickr User Geoff Livingston

Effective “damage control,” BP’s highest priority, means that your plan should include situation analysis development so your crisis response strategies, messages and tactics are relevant and resonate with your audiences. While taking into account the current news cycle is important when responding to crisis, it should be a part of your situation analysis and not your whole assessment.

And one more blunder of note—apparently BP has hired a private security company to block media from reporting from impacted beaches or interviewing people involved with the clean-up. This exchange between a local reporter and a security guard caught on video is the last thing a PR team would want posted online. These damage control tactics represent short-term thinking and are not helping your cause, BP.

Here’s a new communication strategy free-of-charge—provide full disclosure, access and transparency to the media.

Let them see and document it all: the oil spill containment process, polluted marshes and beaches, oil-covered animals, BP employees helping in the clean-up effort, local fishermen collecting oil from the Gulf. Answer all of their questions and make it clear that BP has nothing to hide or leave unanswered.

By doing so, you let the media tell the full story to the public—and your shareholders—and allow the public to draw its own conclusions and be your judge and jury, instead of relying on aggravated reporters to paint the picture.

Wow. The BP PR team just can’t get it right. Even fifty days plus after one of the worst environmental disasters in history, the BP crisis communication strategy (if there is one) continues its downward spiral and never ceases to surprise me.

Recently, the Christian Science Monitor reported that BP has been buying up top [...]]]>

Wow. The BP PR team just can’t get it right. Even fifty days plus after one of the worst environmental disasters in history, the BP crisis communication strategy (if there is one) continues its downward spiral and never ceases to surprise me.

Recently, the Christian Science Monitor reported that BP has been buying up top Internet terms related to BP and the oil spill to push their messages and improve the public perception of the company. Really, BP? Is this the best way to communicate with key audiences and rebuild a tarnished brand? When Saturday Night Live’s next season premieres, count on a Weekend Update Really?!? commentary from Seth Meyers on this one.

From Flickr User lsgcp

Let’s face it: BP is collecting quite a laundry list of communication missteps.  Their gaffes and mistakes will be analyzed and used as examples of poor responses in crisis communication 101 classes for decades to come.

Hopefully as PR professionals, we won’t personally have to deal with a crisis the size and scope of the Gulf Coast oil spill.  Nevertheless, here are a few lessons learned from BP PR strategy to add to your own crisis communication preparedness kit.

1. Prepare spokespersons to be spokespersons. The Boy Scouts’ motto – “Be Prepared” – should be the mantra of your organization’s spokespersons. BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has not represented the company well in interviews thus far. Since crises happen unexpectedly, spokespersons should be prepared at all times for media interviews. Identify potential crisis scenarios in advance and then train spokespersons on how to conduct themselves during interviews and important messages to remember. Spokespersons are your most public presence during a crisis, so make sure they look AND sound good when talking with the media.
2. Manage your audiences’ expectations. Since BP’s oil rig exploded in April, the company has done very little to manage anyone’s expectations about stopping the oil spill and cleaning up the mess — whether Gulf Coast residents, the White House, Congress or the American public.  As a result, it seems no one really knows what is happening – and public outrage grows. When communicating during crises, we must tailor talking points and materials to relate reasonable, achievable next steps. These messages will help keep your audience informed and prepared while keeping their expectations realistic. If BP was more measured when discussing options for dealing with the leak and the recovery process, they would give the impression they were in more control of the situation and ease resulting frustration with their response.
3. Listen first, and then communicate where it makes sense. BP’s attempts to manage the crisis by buying Internet search terms related to the oil spill or trying to shutdown a BP Twitter parody profile were not the best use of PR resources. Instead, they should have taken a page out of Toyota’s crisis communication playbook: listen before you speak. BP PR strategy fails to listen to important audiences not only for responding to this crisis, but also for repairing their brand. During crises, communicators should devise methods — whether formal or informal or online or in-person — to first listen to the needs and perspectives of your audience and then determine where, when and how you will communicate with them. While it’s good to start this practice at the beginning of crises, it is never too late for mid-course corrections and to start doing more listening than talking.

There is a long road ahead for communicators involved in the Gulf Coast oil spill. However, it’s never too late to admit errors in judgment and attempt to communicate differently during a crisis.

So listen up BP PR team. Please do the PR profession a favor and start implementing a communication plan that can be a credit to us rather than perpetuate the notion we’re just flacks and spin doctors. The truth is that right now, you’re not even making “spin” look very good and communicators, the environment and America is paying for it. Like SNL character Oscar Rodgers (a.k.a. Kenan Thompson) says, “Fix it!”

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!

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