Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • Video Interview: Public Leadership Beyond Institutions

    John Creighton and I have been thinking a lot about a big shift that’s been happening over the last 20 years. It’s a shift that’s been happening everywhere, but it is having a big impact in our public life. This is the shift from a world ruled by institutions to a world where individual people…

  • Personal And Public Security — What's The Answer?

    By now, most users of Twitter know of what’s come to be called “Twitfail” — French hackers gained access to the personal email accounts and passwords of top executives at Twitter. To prove it, they emailed a large cache of internal strategy documents to the widely-read Silicon Valley blog TechCrunch. After agonizing over it for…

  • How Does The Current Economic Climate Benefit Civil Society?

    I got a note over the weekend: I’m student [at an Israeli university]. I’m doing a Seminar work about Civil society in USA. I’m trying find an answer for the question: What have happened to the civil society in USA through the financial crisis. Is the civil society is getting stronger or weaker from it?…

  • This Is What Leadership Looks Like

    Last week, a story was circulating through social media platforms that illuminated a real bonehead move by Amazon. It was deleting copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from people’s Kindles without their knowledge. Turns out the books being deleted from the popular e-readers were unauthorized editions, and in the Kindle terms of service…

  • Vibram Five Fingers Shoes — My Review

    Many of my friends (both in-person and on Facebook) know that a couple of months ago I bought the strangest looking shoes you can imagine: shoes with toes. They’re called Vibram Five Fingers. Before I told you what I thought of them, I wanted to wear them for a goodly period of time, to be…

  • The Overall Effect Is Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts

    Somehow I have gotten on an “Internet marketing guru’s” email distribution list. I typically just archive the notes without reading them, but for some reason (I think because it came in on my Blackberry) I read the latest one. It was touting a free “telesummit” which is a fancy word for a conference call. It…

  • A Day In The Life Of A Real Reporter

    My friend Adam Pagnucco, who writes the indispensable Maryland Politics Watch, scored a coup last week as Kathleen Miller, a real-live “msm” reporter, agreed to describe a day in the life of a reporter in five installments. People often hold a number of assumptions about journalists, including: They only like to cover negative news They…

  • Are They Joking? Does It Matter?

    I can’t tell if they are mocking me, poking good-natured fun, or are serious. Back in April, I recorded a video that outlined my note-taking strategy. Over the years, lots of people have commented on it in meetings and have been curious about how it works. I’ve got the video embedded down at the end…

  • Organizing Your Institution To Engage Through Social Media

    I’ve got a conversation in a bit with some folks to talk about using social media in an institutional setting. The organization sees itself as a neophyte when it comes to social media, and is a little timid about going whole-hog. I think that pretty much describes most larger institutions (and some small ones). In…