Category Archives: Social Media
Posted in Blogging | Client Service | Codes & Regulations | Communication | Education | Leadership | Social Media by Justin Keister, PE, LEED AP (Director of Site Engineering) on March 25, 2013
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I recently had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with some local high school students who are members of the Building Leaders for the Susquehanna Valley program. This group was picked among some of the brightest local students and they meet on a monthly basis. Their February session included an exercise where they were given a hypothetical 200-acre property in “Bright Hope”, USA and divided into groups to propose a development on the tract. After a brainstorming session, each of the five groups unveiled their plans, which ranged from a hospital to a golf course to a power plant.
Over lunch, I joined professionals from the Central PA Chamber of Commerce, Union County Planning Department, Bucknell University Small Business Development Corporation, and Susquehanna Visitors Bureau to quiz a group on their ideas and to provide real-world insight to refine their proposal. After some tweaks (from coal-fired power to natural gas at my table), each group took turns giving a final presentation to the entire group.
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Posted in Alternative Energy | Architecture | Communication | Marketing | Social Media by Marty Muggleton (VP Client Development & Marketing) on January 26, 2012
This chart is the author’s personal opinion on who people choose to trust for news and truth, and who has the most ethical, moral, and/or legal responsibility to be accurate.
I’ve been working long enough that young people think I’m wise. Secretly, I think they mean old and just want to be nice about it. But these are gifted people, with a bright future and we have some interesting discussions. Broad but predictable range of topics – religion, environment, healthcare, politics, and the list goes on.
Over the holidays, I had a couple of interesting discussions on news, truth, and trust. These chats matched up with some free time that let me look at the relationship of news, truth, and trust a bit differently.
The primary role of media is news not truth. They mark the date of an event, and that establishes chronology. You hear on television and radio. “At 11:00 this morning…”. A book or published research attempts to offer truth, by reaching for cause and effect after the event happened. You read it. “We found measurable amounts of…”. Trust, I feel, is established by where you are and what you’re surrounded by.
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Posted in Blogging | Codes & Regulations | Current Events | Information Technology | Politics | Social Media by Brad Breneisen (Graphic Design) on January 20, 2012
As many of you may have noticed, January 18th was Internet Blackout Day in an unbelievably successful attempt for many of the web’s heaviest hitters to show their strong disapproval of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). As companies like Google, Wikipedia, and WordPress “blacked out” their content and urged users to endorse their opposition to the bill, SOPA and PIPA’s sponsors started to run for the hills, but the lawmakers haven’t backed down – even as the amount of endorsements against the bills allegedly shut down congress’ switchboards and melted their servers.
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Posted in Blogging | Client Service | Communication | Innovative Solutions | Marketing | Social Media | Sustainable Design by Brad Breneisen (Graphic Design) on November 10, 2010
Photo: © Fred Fokkelman
The term “branding” – as it refers to an expression of a corporate identity or visual persona – comes from the practice of branding cattle. Branding often starts with research in order to develop a logo and then progresses to various other supporting visual elements or applications. Branding is often dismissed from a budget as an unnecessary expense. This is an understandable misunderstanding of the process and benefits of good branding.
Branding is an investment, and when done right it can pay off big time, not just in attracting attention from your target market and making a strong impression, but also in streamlining the design decisions that employees make every day (often without even recognizing them). The intention is not to be complicated or contrived but simple, supportive, and effective in order to create and maintain a recognizable and beneficial visual presence with your audience.
Things like templates and brand guides are not some fascist attempt to restrict the individual’s creativity, but rather a way to relieve employees from the burden of making small and/or repetitive design decisions everyday that would inevitably contribute to overhead costs and an inconsistent visual identity for the company. The most widely-experienced visual-design processes throughout the company should be understood and addressed during the branding process.
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Posted in Blogging | Communication | Current Events | Initiatives | Social Media by Keith Kuzio (CEO) on October 8, 2010
Photo: Keith “keeps it real” by taking a few pies to the face for the United Way
When I was approached by our marketing team to become an LDG blogger, I agreed, but not without a momentary cringe of nervous trepidation. You see, I consider myself an old school engineer, not a modern age social networker. My introduction to computer technology occurred in the last millennium, nearly thirty years ago, long before the PC or wireless 4G networks. Back then, I fondly remember pounding out “brute force” FORTRAN programming on punch cards in the basement of Packard Lab at Lehigh University. The concept of social networking at E-school back in the 80s could easily have been defined as idle conversation among engineers while waiting for the data center technician to run key-punched batch files through the mainframe computer’s card reader.
So what topics could I, a CEO who’s yet to send his first text message, come up with that would be inviting and interesting to readers who are fully engaging technology in all aspects of their lives? After pondering this question for a few days, it struck me that I will be most successful with blog topics if I apply the same advice that I share with my kids on an almost daily basis.
What is that advice? Keep it real. Every time one of my kids heads out of the house or car to socialize with friends or peers, I tell them to “keep it real.” Over time and through parental discourse with them, the kids have learned the deeper meaning in this simple phrase, and that is – be comfortable in your own skin, be true to your values, and don’t let anyone pressure you into doing something you’re not comfortable doing – no matter what. When our kids’ friends come to the house to hang out, I also share the same message with them. Somehow this message has resonated with them. How do I know? I now frequently get the chance for a good chuckle when a young person sees me in public and shouts out, “Are you keeping it real, Papa Kuz?” even before I have a chance to ask them the same question.
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