Public Strategist

A digital citizenry isn’t interested in talking to an analogue government
David Eaves 
(h/t Martin Stewart Weeks)

Listening looks easy, but it’s not simple. Every head is a world
Lauren Currie

I totally respect the need for caution and propriety, after all I was a civil servant, but you can’t on the one hand champion social media in government and on the other seek to manage and control the agenda. It just cannot work, and it won’t.
Jeremy Gould commenting on a post by Dominic Campbell

Organisations cannot learn not to be surprised by the future.  They can learn not to be surprised that they are surprised by the future.
Paraphrased from comments by Ian Livingston.

Innovation requires failure.
@rufflemuffin

Sixteen-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue might get the bulk of the press, but it’s in the extremities of government where much of what shapes the lives of citizens takes place.
Nancy Scola

There are very serious reasons behind many of the projects I’m working on at the moment, but this gravity doesn’t preclude the use of a little panache or showmanship to add to the effectiveness of the end product. Indeed, in many cases it’s the lack of style that’s been the problem in [...]

The Web is not free. It charges customers their time. Successful websites deliver the most value for the least time.
Gerry McGovern

It looks like a simple and clever solution. But in UI design, very often familiar beats clever.

Stefano Attardi, commenting on Leah Culver’s post, Log in or sign up?
(via @marxculture)

It appears to be a permanent part of the human condition that long term deadlines without short term milestones are rarely met.
Joel Spolsky, in an essay on student computer science projects, which has much wider interest and implications.
The more you think things through first from someone else’s perspective, the simpler the solution you [...]