I recently took a Gallup Strengthsfinder survey, which helps people identify their talents and what they do best in order to develop them into strengths. One of my strengths is “Futuristic.” I suppose this is why I was drawn to tech PR. Every day I get to read about emerging, exciting technology trends that promise…
If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you know that we often discuss the impact and benefits of being a thought leader. In our business, thought leaders carry the message, elevate and create visibility for the brand and, hopefully, shape or re-shape attitudes and views. If you know Randstad Technologies you probably know…
While channel surfing one evening this summer, I stumbled upon a great miniseries on National Geographic – “The 80s: The Decade That Made Us” followed up by “The 90s: The Last Great Decade.” Both offered the history buff in me an overview of cultural and political milestones that I wasn’t around to experience firsthand or…
With topics like Heartbleed, the Target Hack and the ongoing fallout from the Edward Snowden disclosures constantly in the news, cybersecurity is a hot topic that affects consumers, businesses and government. To stay abreast of major updates, readers need reliable sources of news that they can depend on. A few weeks back, my colleague Kara…
Amazon has consistently proven that it is one of the leading innovators in the internet economy (having announced last year that it would start delivering packages via drone soon.) Now, Amazon has set its sights on another vertical – the smartphone market, with the recent release of the Fire Phone. The phone offers a number…
Product announcements are no doubt an exciting time for a company, its stakeholders, partners and PR team. We recently completed a project for Swan Island Networks and its announcement of TIES for Microsoft CityNext – a partnership built to help local and regional governments “tie” together a wide spectrum of existing information, from both public…
Thought leadership has become a big part of organizations’ communications mix, even for companies like our clients who are selling solutions to government agencies and other businesses, especially here in DC. The idea behind thought leadership is to take the focus away from products and direct it towards the underlying issues that our clients’ solutions…
As PR professionals in DC, it’s our job to monitor the federal marketplace for trends that inform our clients’ communications and marketing strategies. One theme we’ve heard a lot about lately is that in this era of flat or declining government budgets, it’s become almost clichĂ© to talk of agencies “doing more with less.” How…
The news that the U.S. government is giving up control of the Internet – that is, the Department of Commerce announcing it will end its oversight of ICANN, the non-profit that administers Internet domains – brought me back to a time in my public affairs career when I learned first-hand about managing controversies, especially those…
This year the convergence of conferences our clients are attending and our staff are supporting has grown to epic proportions. Okay, maybe not epic, but given the snowy winter this year, these conferences could not have come at a better time to drag folks out of the doldrums. Nearly all of our clients will be…
I read a Washington Post blog recently calling 2013 the year of cybersecurity. While the year saw a profusion of data breaches and leaks, it’s more accurate to call 2013 the year of cyber violations – not cybersecurity. I think it’s more likely that 2014 will be the year of cyber solutions – maybe the…
There is nothing more frustrating than spending time revising a document and emailing your feedback to your team only to discover seconds later that another person was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. Version control is such a vital piece of group projects and manually reconciling different versions is a huge…