Do you know the ROI of your mother? Do you need to ask?

There is plenty of talk on the web about return on investment or ROI, and as an economic development professional it is a cornerstone of our analysis.  It should not be the only criteria for a final decision by a community though.

David Armano is senior vice president at Edelman Digital, the interactive arm of global communications firm Edelman and wrote a blog post on this matter The ROI of Your Mother | My Venture Pad

The full quote from From Chris Brogan's blog is in the article. My interest was not only in using community based metrics instead of bottom line financial metrics but also the idea that these metrics only worked one way to assess rather than also influence.

"There were certain things that I did intentionally to help influence a certain behavior; Advocacy. As some of the criticism was documented, a small percentage of "nodes" in the network became activated and advocated on our behalf. Advocacy was the desired behavior. The desired outcome included things like Twitter being pressured to shut down an account which was impersonating me. That was a favorable outcome. Behaviors lead to outcomes—don't forget that."

The first post for this new version of this blog spoke about obstacles placed before people that keep them from participating in their government, be it local, regional or national. The truth is that we can also do it to ourselves, whether as professionals that the community depends upon or as members of that community.

Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy | Video on TED.com

Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy | Video on TED.com

It takes Dave Meslin about 7 minutes to list 7 obstacles to community participation. The first one is City Hall. Part of this blog's mission is looking at ways of overcoming those obstacles.