M+R has lots of smart people on their team, so I always get excited when they release new studies and research. Their recent white paper on storytelling is a case in point.
Do we really need yet another piece about storytelling and fundraising? Yes, we do.
Continue reading →
Lab Day is over! It was hard to really focus on it as much as I wanted to, what with a couple people being out of the office and vote going on in the U.S. House. I’m happy we did it, and looking forward to hearing about the rest of the Web team’s experiences.
Lessons learned about Tableau Public:
The web team here at EDF, inspired by Google’s “20 percent time” (and lobbying by web producer Porter Mason), is experimenting with setting aside occasional Lab Days. The goal is to allow our producers to experiment with new tools, build new skills, and otherwise do cool stuff that wouldn’t fit into a regular work week.
Today is my first Lab Day, and I decide to recreate (or create) some maps we’ve worked with using Tableau Public, which I learned about at a really good data visualization session at last year’s NTEN Conference.
And here’s my first map! Continue reading →
Developing a content strategy was a new challenge, and I found myself turning to a few resources over and over. In case you, too, are ready to embark on this challenge, here are my trusty companions: Continue reading →
Plan, by Flickr user Tintern
We didn’t pick graphic design, or information architecture, or even our aging publishing platform. We thought the best way to improve key metrics was to re-think the site’s content. To us, that meant not only the text of the articles, but the use of images, videos, micro-copy, interactive graphics and features — all the material on the site that helps convey ideas.
That led us off in search of a different kind of redesign. Along the way, we learned a new phrase, “content strategy,” and met a few “content strategists.” This approach has become a powerful tool for us, so I thought I’d share how we got here.
This session covered a lot of ground through back-and-forth with both the panel and the attendees, which was great. Felicity Simmons of the Lucile Packard Foundation did a nice job keeping the conversation flowing.
I was most interested in the conversation about how to extract the most powerful, portable visualizations from a complex set of data. Kurt Voelker of Forum One raised the issue, flagging the problem that so much great data lives only in text-heavy PDF files. Some tips that got tossed out: Continue reading →
There are terrabytes of online writing tips, and most of them aren’t great. But reading through Yahoo!’s web writing style guide made me nod happily. The three articles on writing were particularly good.
Thanks to Tesia Love, who does communications for our oceans team (and blogs in her spare time), for sharing the link.