Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • Stamped

    I take a dim view, ordinarily, of the silly habit large organizations have of naming everything. If there’s a big, multi-day story, news networks will give it a name and a logo. New pieces of legislation have to have stupid acronyms that remind the reader of fourth-grade English homework (think of the USA PATRIOT act).…

  • Real World Social Media Workflow — How Much Time Do I Spend Listening?

    Social media maven Beth Kanter has been attending a conference on nonprofit use of technology. One of the speakers was Wendy Harman, who runs social media for the Red Cross. Beth has a great recap of that session here, with these key takeaways: First thing every morning, [Wendy] spends a couple of hours listening –…

  • Looking For Mr. GoodBlog

    My friend Adam Pagnucco, who writes a blog on Maryland Politics called, natch, Maryland Politics Watch, had a fascinating post just the other day. Actually, it wasn’t by him — it was by his wife, Holly Olson. In it, she chronicles the history of her husband’s involvement with MPW and blogging, and announces there are…

  • Run A Local Newspaper?

    Yesterday two things converged that really got me thinking about localism. First, I published my analysis of Rockville Central’s reader survey. It was my first chance to see what the readers of my hyperlocal news site really thought about my volunteer work over the last eighteen months or so. It was very gratifying, and at…

  • Living In Public

    My friend Thomas Kriese pointed me to a piece by a NY-based VC named Fred Wilson. It’s about “living publicly.” There are a lot of ways you might take that term — in this case it describes the state that it seems many of my friends experience these days. With all the blogging, Twitter, FaceBook,…

  • Selling To Business And Thinking About Using Social Media? You're LATE.

    A remarkable report crossed my desk from the Groundswell folks at Forrester Research. It’s a study of the social media habits of a representative sample of business-to-business buyers. These are the folks you imagine are dry. Buying stuff for their company, from other companies. Where’s the innovation to be had there? Well, you’d be surprised.…

  • Selling To Business And Thinking About Using Social Media? You’re LATE.

    A remarkable report crossed my desk from the Groundswell folks at Forrester Research. It’s a study of the social media habits of a representative sample of business-to-business buyers. These are the folks you imagine are dry. Buying stuff for their company, from other companies. Where’s the innovation to be had there? Well, you’d be surprised.…

  • "I Divorce Thee . . . "

    I recently witnessed an interesting event.  Some people I know on Facebook, who had sort of reconnected after a long hiatus since childhood, got into a political argument and appear to have “broken up.” Each side had their points, but it was a great example of how hard it can be to engage with people…

  • “I Divorce Thee . . . “

    I recently witnessed an interesting event.  Some people I know on Facebook, who had sort of reconnected after a long hiatus since childhood, got into a political argument and appear to have “broken up.” Each side had their points, but it was a great example of how hard it can be to engage with people…