Managing & Technology — Dennis D. McDonald's Web Site

Dennis D. McDonald (ddmcd@ddmcd.com) consults from Alexandria Virginia. His services include writing & research, proposal development, and project management.

All in Metrics

Robo-Tweets and the Internet of Things: A Survey

Jan 13

Jan 13 Robo-Tweets and the Internet of Things: A Survey

Dennis D. McDonald

Anonymity, Identity, Metrics, Privacy, Security, Surveys, Trust, Twitter

I always thought when seeing the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind that the musical conversation between the alien Mothership and the humans was cut short when the aliens realized they were no longer playing with a human but with a computer program.

Defining and Measuring Enterprise Collaboration

Jan 7

Jan 7 Defining and Measuring Enterprise Collaboration

Dennis D. McDonald

Collaboration, Management, Management Tools, Metrics, Technology, World Bank, Project Management

Recently while consulting on a collaboration metrics project for the World Bank Group in Washington D.C. I updated my definition of collaboration:

How Many Dead People Are On Your Online "Friends" Lists?

Jul 27

Jul 27 How Many Dead People Are On Your Online "Friends" Lists?

Dennis D. McDonald

Metrics, Personal Data Ownership, Privacy, , , Statistics, Twitter

Here are some data on U.S. deaths by age group based on deaths per 100,000 of population:

Jun 6
Jun 6 Geography and Innovation: Additional Metrics for Assessing the Impact of Collaboration on Federal Acquisition

Dennis D. McDonald

Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Metrics, MindMeister, Mindmapping, Procurement, acq, eGovernment

I’ve updated the model of “acquisition collaboration” I first presented in Justifying Collaboration in Complex Programs such as Federal Acquisitions based on some additional research and interviews.

May 19
May 19 An Experiment: How Personal Are Your Personal Contacts?

Dennis D. McDonald

Demographics, Lists, Metrics, Statistics, Surveys

Here’s an experiment you can do yourself if you maintain a personal contact list electronically that lets you add database fields to track different chracteristics and events.

Justifying Collaboration in Complex Programs such as Federal Acquisitions

Apr 12

Apr 12 Justifying Collaboration in Complex Programs such as Federal Acquisitions

Dennis D. McDonald

Collaboration, Metrics, Procurement, , , acq, eGovernment

I’m having an interesting discussion with colleagues about how to justify investments in collaboration-supporting technologies (e.g., blogs, wikis, and private social networks) when the business processes they support are numerous and spread across multiple participants who may not always share common goals.

Apr 8
Apr 8 OMB's New Guidance on Social Media is an Improvement - But There's a Catch

Dennis D. McDonald

Metrics, OMB, PRA, Paperwork Reduction Act, , Statistics, Surveys

There are many discussions going on about the OMB’s recently issued Social Media, Web-Based Interactive Technologies, and the Paperwork Reduction Act. Basically, this guidance makes it easier for Federal agencies to use variety of social media and “web 2.0” tools for interacting with the public without having to go through the expensive and time consuming clearance process required by the Paperwork Reduction Act.

Mar 19
Mar 19 Breakdown of Past 12 Months' Accesses to this Web Site by Browser

Dennis D. McDonald

Over the past twelve months this chart shows the relative frequency of accesses to this web site by different web browsers:

ARRA's Oversight and Information Technology Initiatives

Feb 18

Feb 18 ARRA's Oversight and Information Technology Initiatives

Dennis D. McDonald

ARRA, Data Access, Governance, Information Technology, Legislation, RATB, Stimulus, eGovernment, Metrics, Data Governance, Data Program Management

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009 (ARRA), passed by Congress and signed by the President, is now available online. The text below is an attempt to summarize sections of the law that do the following:

Challenges Facing Recovery.gov and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board

Feb 17

Feb 17 Challenges Facing Recovery.gov and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board

Dennis D. McDonald

Accountability, Data Access, Governance, Metrics, Procurement, RATB, , , Transition, Transparency, eGovernment

There’s a strong possibility that how the public sees and experiences the programs reported through Recovery.gov will have just as much potential for driving economic improvement as the programs themselves.

Sep 25
Sep 25 Google Gadget Tracks Relative Frequency of Survey Text Responses

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Google, Metrics, Surveys, Tag Clouds

Readers of this blog may have noticed that I have posted a link to a brief (one-minute) questionnaire survey; the survey link appears near the top of the left hand column of this page.

Sep 25
Sep 25 I Was Wrong about Google Docs

Dennis D. McDonald

Google, Metrics, Surveys

I posted Painful Lessons Learned from Using Google Docs last week when I discovered a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet form questionnaire, and a series of documents missing. That post was a followup to a very positive earlier post, Lessons Learned from Using Google Docs.

May 7
May 7 How Corporate RSS Supports Collaboration and Innovation

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Change, Collaboration, Cost Analysis, Email, Innovation, Knowledge Transfer, Metrics, PowerPoint, Project Management, RSS, Tagging

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out corporate IT manager Jim MacLennan’s RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise blog post.

Sep 17
Sep 17 Web 2.0 Sites and Ad Dollars

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Metrics, Web 2.0

In Analysis: Why Some Web 2.0 Sites Will Never Attract Big Ad Dollars, Edelman's Steve Rubel discusses data that suggests that certain "web 2.0" sites have poor ad selling potential.

Aug 8
Aug 8 Slumming Through My Web Site Traffic Logs, Part 1

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Metrics

I keep track of my web site traffic numbers. Partly I'm just curious about what I can find out about visitors. I'm also interested in what people do when they get here.

Jul 2
Jul 2 What department should manage a corporate "social networking" program for lead generation?

Dennis D. McDonald

Blogging, Collaboration, Facebook, Metrics, Sales Management, , , Web 2.0

What department should manage a corporate “social networking” program for generating business leads? I thought about this while responding to the question posed on Linkedin Answers by Dave Biskner, How would you implement a staff-wide networking program?

Jun 13
Jun 13 Learning to Use Google Analytics, Part 5

Dennis D. McDonald

Google, How To, Metrics, Search, Squarespace, StumbleUpon, Tag Clouds, Tagging

Google announced on June 12 some additions to the new Google Analytics service. Chief among these is the availability of hourly updates, which allows for more realtime tracking, which occasionally comes in handy.

May 22
May 22 RSS Feeds: Results of a "Full" versus "Partial" Experiment

Dennis D. McDonald

Advertising, Blogging, Facebook, Market Research, Metrics, Publishing, RSS,

Dave Munger in The end of the RSS experiment presents the results of data collected to analyze what happened when his web site turned off partial RSS feeds and substituted full RSS feeds. A reduction in site page hits corresponded to the publishing of the full RSS feeds, presumably because feed reader users had no need to return to the web site -- where ads are visible.

May 14
May 14 How Important is Web Usage Data To You?

Dennis D. McDonald

Collaboration, Demographics, Facebook, Market Research, Metrics, , , Web 2.0

Robert Scoble in his May 13, 2007 We Need Better Statistics post does a nice job of starting off a discussion of the problems currently experienced by anyone who tries to make sense of web usage statistics.