Digital Engagement 4Cast

Join us as we talk to Amy Shropshire, Brand Awareness Manager for Postoli LLC and Professor of Graphic Design at Columbus State Community College, talks with us about her experience in marketing, her new One-Page Marketing Plan (available here!), and her experience as the Marketing Director for Drupal GovCon. With degrees in Digital Design and Graphics, Advertising and Marketing Communications, and Marketing, Amy understands how to translate strategic goals into actionable items through multiple channels. Amy crafts compelling stories of how customers are using products/services and shares with us freely the resources she's created to help her clients get a head start.

Join us as we discuss the challenges of creating effective video content for nonprofits and small businesses with Alex Herder, President & Creative Director at The Duke & the Duck. Having built his video production business from scratch with partner, Dave Ellington, Alex's experience has vetted him to the struggles and joys of working with a wide range of clientele and video productions. His broad perspective gives him the ability to advise those looking to hire a video production company on what pit stops and red flags to avoid in the proposal all the way through to the end product.

You would not know it by her LinkedIn profile, but Kristen is a seasoned and sought-after strategist. After becoming Chief Operating Officer of Fenton Communications at age 28, she left to start her own firm, Spitfire Strategies. Kristen tells us why its important for organizations to ask themselves the tough questions, and how to take the long view by building capacity. He approach is rooted in her days as a young pool shark.

For this episode, we are joined by Jennifer Curley of the DC-based public relations and event planning company, Curley Company.  Jennifer talks with Heming and Bryan about executing an event in DC, and how to rise above a somewhat cluttered environment and get attention for your event.  She shares various strategies for telling the story of your event and maximizing your engagement.

From DARPA to The Donald, in this podcast Professor Alan Rosenblatt takes us on a tour of online politics. The internet, he contends, is not about information, it’s about communication, and says what we are experiencing now is a revolutionary change in the democratic process. The internet, and specifically social media, improves political discourse because public officials are forced to interact with their constituents. Alan tells us about a time when the Republican party was actually leaps and bounds ahead of the Democrats in leveraging this technology, and shares how Senator Al Franken still needs to make good on his promise to Alan to wear a satellite dish on his head. The era of the scripted politician is over. Listen now.

Scott launched a nonprofit five years ago, with an ambitious plan: to build a bridge over the Anacostia River. If he is successful, in 2019 there will be a $45 million, three-acre park connecting long-divided neighborhoods Anacostia with Capitol Hill. We talked to him about how he's turning this vision into a reality, and what it takes to build an organization to accomplish such an audacious goal.

The idea was first hatched by Harriett Tregoning, the former Director of the Washington D.C. Office of Planning. She recruited Scott to see if it would be feasible to transform an old freeway bridge into a park and activate the large amount of green space along the underused river. The bridge would serve four ambitions: improve the health of local residents by providing access to safe places to play in the adjacent neighborhoods; re-engage residents with the Anacostia River; stitch together the city; and become an anchor for equitable and inclusive development in an often neglected part of the city.

Before embarking on this quest, Scott worked in museum education for 20 years, most recently as Vice President for Education at the National Building Museum. But he left all that behind to form an organization to build the bridge.

Now you can find him, or one of his staff, out most evenings, engaging with the community and raising community support and funding for the project. According to Scott, building a nonprofit is all about building trust, and jealously guarding your time.

We sat down with Allyson Kapin, co-founder of Rad Campaign, to talk about the challenges of achieving gender equity in the technology space, and in particular, the work she is doing to raise capital for women-led startups. Did you know that only 7% of investor money goes to women-led startups?!

Nathaniel Pearlman joins us for a discussion about what motivates him to start, build and sell companies. And he's done that a few times. He's probably best known as the founder of NGP VAN and as the Chief Technology Officer of the 2008 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. He's got his finger in a lot of pies at the moment. And when he's not working, you can find him roaming the streets of DC late at night, or chopping wood in Vermont, thinking about new digital products and services, and ultimately, ruminating on what makes him happy. Get ready for a Zen discussion....

Special guest Melissa Thompson, a freelance editor, and former Senior Video Producer at Greenpeace, joins Heming and Bryan to talk about creating compelling online videos. Melissa discusses the creative process that goes into planning sucessful shoots, and some of the tricks & tools of the trade. Melissa also has some advice for those who want to get started making sucessful short videos.

Join us as we take a look at how different companies take an approach at hosting websites with Aaron Porter, the Technical Sales and Partnership Director at Blackmesh. He shows us that Blackmesh's unique system of support as a website hosting company makes them a great, customizable, and effective hosting company.