WEBBMEDIA GROUP Blog

It's been a big publishing month for Webbmedia Group staff!

We're so thrilled to let you know that our Senior Researcher, Sarah Rich, has a new book out: Urban Farms.

Sarah teamed up with organic farmer and photographer Matthew Benson to profile 16 innovative farms located in major city centers throughout the U.S. They've uncovered trends and ideas, and what they've discovered will inspire you.

Urban Farms officially launches this weekend, but you can pre-order a copy right now at Amazon. Click here to read more.

We're also very proud of Cheryl Cooney, our executive assistant, who's just had several poems published in Dream Chasers. You can click to see them on page 12, or buy a copy of the magazine from the site! 

ANNOUNCING SXSW OFFICE HOURS!

We're on a mission to see 100 mobile, social, location and news-based startups at SXSW! If you're a startup, we want to see your stuff. We may offer you advice, we may want to introduce you to our clients, or we may just want to tell the world about your work.

We're booking 15-minute demo sessions at SXSW. If you want to meet with us, request a date and time here: tungle.me/webbmedia. We're holding office hours at both the Hilton and Convention Center.

If our appointments book up, we'll find another time to meet with you in Austin.

Amy Webb explains why you shouldn't attempt to "gamify" your projects or news stories. Instead, apply game mechanics from your idea conception. You'll have better results and will see much higher engagement. Watch to learn why.

MLS 2012 Convention in Miami, Florida (Feb. 20). Attendees included presidents and trustees of foundations and universities in the U.S.

Libraries are much more than brick-and-mortar structures housing collections. They are a vital and important anchor of any community.

On Saturday, Webbmedia Group officially released our Key Peformance Indicator Toolkit For Libraries at the Knight Foundation Library Conference in Miami, Florida. We are making it available to the public today, along with our presentation deck.

The goal of this Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Report and InfoStat Scorecard is to provide the all libraries with a concrete set of metrics that can be used to measure success in a digital age.

Please download it and share with your colleagues. As always, if you'd like to discuss our toolkit further, please contact us.

Tomorrow, Amy Webb will be the keynote speaker at the Knight Foundation's "Re-visioning the Library of the Future" conference in Miami. The topic of her talk will be our new Key Performance Indicator Toolkit For Libraries.

For too long, libraries have been forced to prove their community impact using circulation and foot traffic. But libraries do so much more. They provide critical services to communities who need them. They assist city/county departments in research. They provide a central location for entrepreneurs to meet and for tech visionaries to start new projects. A library is much more than a building and the books on its shelves.

We worked with the Chicago Public Library during the past six months on a variety of initiatives. One of our goals was to develop a set of metrics -- quantitative and qualitative -- that could show the myriad ways a library impacts its community. We developed more than 50 ways to measure impact, and we also created a framework for libraries to set reasonable benchmarks for success.

Our 73-page Key Performance Indicator Toolkit is being released tomorrow night to attendees. This is the first time a new set of metrics, which include digital measurements and an InfoStat, has been introduced to the library community.

We are making a digital copy available to the general public Monday morning. Because we believe so strongly in our research and the metrics we've developed, we are making this toolkit available for free to anyone who wants it. We encourage libraries everywhere to download a copy and to discuss our findings with staff.

Please check back on our Research page Monday morning to download a copy.