Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • Performatives In Social Media

    Ever since I discovered them, I’ve been fascinated by something called “performatives” in speech. These are statements that inherently change the state of affairs. The classic one is “naming,” as in “your name is. . . .” Before the statement, I did not have a name (or it was different).  After that statement, I did. It…

  • Permanence

    In this week’s edition of my podcast, Public Life Today, I talk about my friend who’s a civil engineer. The other day, he happily observed to me that none of his bridges had ever fallen down. It caused me to rethink a few things about my own work. What if I approached my work with…

  • Tell Me About The Time You Failed

    I’ve had more than my fair share of occasions to hire someone. I’ve done it on my own, and in teams of people. I’ve been the one making the decision, and I’ve been in an advisory capacity. There’s a question I always ask, but that I myself have never been asked. Indeed, when I ask…

  • Social Media As Gateway

    A North Carolina foundation has announced that its Facebook fan page cracked 1,000 fans. The Pretty in Pink Foundation in Raleigh, NC provides financial help to North Carolina women diagnosed with breast cancer. “Pretty In Pink Foundation Reaches Social Media Milestone,” blares the headline. Says the executive director of the foundation: “Reaching this key social…

  • Make Journalism Pay Its Way?

    Some time ago I made what I thought was the best case I could make for why philanthropy ought to support Journalism. Today I want to argue another side of that. To be clear, my article about nonprofit Journalism was not about bailing out newspapers. It posited a split between news gathering, Journalism, and news…

  • Fishkin and WMD

    Stanford professor James Fishkin is a luminary in the civic engagement field. He is the developer and chief proponent of something called “deliberative polling” and he heads Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy. He recently posted and article to his blog at the San Francisco Examiner in which he complains that our “political system is struggling…

  • A Lesson In Collaboration

    I recently spent an evening with two friends, working on a soundtrack for a DVD. My friend Ed Corr’s company, OPX, is creating a video presentation about what the office of the future might look like, if you ask the twenty-somethings who are going to have to work in them and design them. To its…

  • My New Company: The Mannakee Circle Group

    Today I am launching a new company called The Mannakee Circle Group. This will be an extension of some of the work I already do, but it also represents a renewed focus on helping organizations engage better with their public. The name comes from a crossroads of sorts in the town where I live —…