So what do you get a site that literally has everything for its 10th birthday? How about video “Fireworks”? (to borrow a phrase from TechCrunch commenter Sarwat Jamaluddin). What about a video that not only creates visual fireworks, but also helps tell your story — one that has multiple layers and is often not discussed?

And that’s what we did. In a collaborative effort to capture a historic moment in time for Wikipedia, we announced this morning “The State of Wikipedia,” a digital short aimed at teaching the layperson Wikipedia’s initial concept and consequent evolution into becoming one of the most visited web sites across the globe.

And what better person to tell the story than the man behind Wikipedia than Jimbo himself?

While loyal readers of this blog know well the circumstances in which Wikipedia was created, including its explosive early growth, the establishment of the Wikimedia Foundation and the project’s reliance on volunteers, we can’t ignore the truth that most people only know to visit Wikipedia if they need a quick and reliable digest on any given topic.

Launching alongside Wikipedia’s 10-year anniversary, the JESS3 team has produced a video that is a foundation to not only educate but also to spur the conversation around the future of Wikipedia.

JESS3 graciously worked closely with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikipedia community to produce “The State of Wikipedia” (the fourth installment in the “State of” series, which includes The State of the Internet, The State of Cloud Computing and The Future of Revenue).

After months of collaboration and the magical elements of production, we are now excited to be launching this piece of art and quite frankly, what we hope will become a time capsule as the future of the platform, community and articles continues to unfold.

When we originally began talking about the upcoming anniversary with longtime colleague + best bud William Beutler, best known for his authorship of The Wikipedian since early 2009 and as user:WWB to the community, it only made sense to collaborate directly with him as an Executive Producer for this digital short.

We look forward to see what the next 10 years hold for Wikipedia and how it will continue to help add contours, diversity and permanency to information the world over.

Note that The State of Wikipedia is a project released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA). The puzzle globe logo is a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation. This project received 100% of its funding from JESS3 and did not take any outside payment from the Wikimedia Foundation or others.

Written by:
Leslie Bradshaw | President & Co-founder of JESS3
Becca Colbaugh | VP of Client Services & Production of JESS3

What do you love about Wikipedia? What does its future hold?

After having posted about some of the ingredients to success at JESS3 (see: You Are Only As Good As Your Last… and Why JESS3 is the Agency of the Future late last year), I am moved to again think about what it takes to continue to innovate, to come up with the unthinkable.

The video resurfaced on our radars thanks to Harry Brignull over on 90 Percent of Everything (see: Classic Interaction Design TV: IDEO Nightline Episode). It is like ESPN Classic, but for UX fans instead of sports fans.

Top 14 things to take away from the video — or more aptly put by the Nightline reporter “The Recipe for How Innovation Takes Place” includes…

1. “Your research and design skills are not limited to the web.” – Harry Brignull
2. A lot of hours.
3. An open mind.
4. A boss who demands fresh ideas be quirky and clash with his.
5. Chaos can be constructive.
6. Teamwork. A great deal of teamwork.
7. Project leaders can be deemed so because they are good with groups, not just because of seniority.
8. Build an eclectic team. Biologists, engineers, MBAs, linguists, designers, marketers, psychologists.
9. In a very innovative culture, you can’t have a very hierarchical structure of ‘here is the boss and here is the next one down and the next one down.’
10. Find real experts, don’t try to learn everything yourself.
11. One conversation at a time.
12. Encourage wild ideas.
13. Defer judgment.
14. Build on the ideas of others.

What ingredients would you add to this list? Anything you disagree with? Tweet, comment, Facebook it or email me directly to share!

UPDATE: Community additions list will start here…

1. “Execution. Innovation can only sustain itself when not only the atmosphere is set for new ideas, but it is also set up to execute on those ideas.” – Nate Taylor | @natejtaylor on Twitter (could not agree more with my social media ag buddy Nate!)

Today, thanks to the umpteenth view of Jimmy Wales asking me to donate with his forlorn glance, a little down time waiting for the night to end / day to begin, talking a lot about Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary (big things in store from JESS3 on this, more to come), reading Bill’s “top 10 of 2010” round-up over at The Wikipedian and, finally, the impression that broke the camel’s back (so to speak) from Robin Wauters over at TechCrunch who heralded just now: “Wikipedia Still $1M Short Of Fundraising Goal For 2010 (And Why I Donated)“… I donated, too. And borrowed the parenthetical header (thanks Robin!).

As a believer in public goods like NPR and Wikipedia, it is up to all of us to do our part.

And, like Robin Wauters and I am sure many (if not all) Wikipedia readers, I too love getting lost in the sea of links that start ISO current news and events or with the (re)looking up an esoteric concept I (mostly) remember from college and ends hours later with a black belt in etiological mining (how’s that for mixed-metaphors).

All of that to say: It is the most amazing display and execution of what we all can accomplish when we come together, in every language and every land, to do something.

And to think, like the fact that we use < 10% of our brains, even smaller still is the % of people who contribute to Wikipedia (even though millions read and reference it every day). Not the first to say it or think it, but boy oh boy, what would the world be like if we all pointed our collective knowledge... not just a few thousand of us, but millions of us, all in one direction. Three words folks: CARE. BEAR. STARE. My team has heard me use this analogy before, but for the record… pointing our unique skills, knowledge, experiences at a single topic, challenge, problem or issue results in collective, team driven, “crowd-sourced” (if you will) success. Incredible to think about the possibilities. Right now, I am thinking big about applying the “Care Bear Stare” to the areas of human / sex trafficking. But I digress.

(Note that even “Care Bear Stare” makes it into the Care Bear entry on Wikipedia as the “Care Bears’ ultimate weapon” … oh so many ways I love thee).

So here’s looking at you Wikipedia. A big, huge… THANKS!

via breakfast in Boston with Flybridge’s Kate Castle

Written by: Leslie Bradshaw | President & COO, JESS3

Well, we are here to make a case for content. Literally.

Working with Eloqua‘s triumvirate Joe Chernov (head of content / communications), Brian Kardon (CMO) and Alex Fisher (head of web marketing / analytics), we demonstrated the value of investing in content creation in our case study, shared visually above and verbally below.

Topline Learnings:

1. Marshal your supporters. Employee trainings, playbook, guidelines.
2. Widen your audience. Go beyond trade pubs and beat reporters, look for adjacent and still relevant groups.
3. Create a cross-platform narrative. Don’t stop at Twitter and Facebook. Look to blogging, social documents and video.
4. Make distribution part of the story. Include those you hope to spread the word from the beginning.
5. Extend the shelf-life of the content. Stagger distribution, just like we did with holding onto this piece of content.
6. ADVANCED: If wonky, lean into it. We took the “School House Rock” approach with The Future of Revenue. It worked.
7. Circle back and remember your base. Create educational materials that empower, advance, inspire. We developed the Grande Guide with Eloqua. It also worked.

Topline Results:
Word of mouth:

• 12,000 visitors to Eloqua’s brand new blog
• 2,600+ tweets
• 30,000+ views/downloads
• 50 blog posts, many from the AdAge Power 150
• Applause from influencers including Scott Monty, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Jeremiah Owyang, Jennifer Aaker, Valeria Maltoni, David Armano and Sarah Evans

Business:

• 43% increase in traffic to the corporate website
• 21% increase in demo views, and it’s VIP to note that demo viewers is our #1 leading purchase indicator
• 12% increase in page views on Eloqua.com
• 14% decrease in “bounces” from Eloqua.com
• Industry-wide recognition / awards (e.g., the WOMMY, awarded by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association; proud members, we are)

What do we love about it?

1. Together they demonstrate the future of media – The New York Times brings its Magazine and TimesPeople to life with video.
2. Each are simple, yet powerful – These vignettes are beautifully shot and masterfully acted.

How would we have designed this site?

1. Allowed each video to be embeddable. There is no excuse in 2010, almost 2011, to now allow your video content to be shared.
2. Pulled in related actor content. No doubt the New York Times has written about each of these 14 actors before; why not use this as an opportunity to cross link the content, get a little SEO love, all while allowing viewers to learn more about those they enjoyed the most.
3. Created individual landing pages for each video. While the lightbox effect creates a certain “view on demand” quality, the New York Times is missing out on not only an opportunity to optimize each piece of content further (again) with a separate landing page (with optimized page title, cross-linking to related NYTimes.com content, etc.), but also the URLs they do provide as permalinks are less than optimized. Check this one out for Michael Douglas: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/12/magazine/14actors.html?ex=1307422800&en=836c4281e8b27e85&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=GN-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M179-ROS-1210-PH&WT.mc_ev=click#7.

h/t Kate Oppenheim

Written by: Leslie Bradshaw | President & COO, JESS3

Based on the talk I delivered at Pew’s Voting Information Technology Summit, a quick diagnostic to give yourself if you are in the public sector (or any sector for that matter) as you head into 2011:

1. ‘Users make credibility-based decisions based on how something looks.’ -Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

Ask yourself: is what we produce as an organization visually engaging? Do we have more words than graphics? When was the last time we refreshed our approach to graphics? If we were a consumer brand, would people “buy” into our marketing and our product based on the “wrappers” we use?

2. As data becomes more abundant, ‘the trick is not to make more noise, but to sound different.’ -Joe Chernov, Director of Content, Eloqua

Ask yourself: Is what we produce something that blends in or stands out? Is it just “more of the same” or have we been able to produce something that is really distinctive? Think about using handwriting, cartoonists, illustrators, sketchnote takers, architects and tattoo artists to help you interpret your data.

3. ‘The new frontier for organizations is not only cloud-based collaboration, but also social document sharing. Putting your content on SlideShare enables cross-platform distribution while providing a force multiplier effect from the community.’ -Leslie Bradshaw, President / COO / co-founder, JESS3

Ask yourself: Are we using tools like Basecamp, Google Docs, Drop Box and Instant Message to share files and collaborate, or are we tethered to email and our internal servers? Further, are we allowing people to download, share, comment on, embed and Google our materials, or are they behind firewalls or in “Download Here” PDF format on our websites alone?

Also: Many thanks to the following doers and thinkers for including JESS3, the I Voted foursquare project and data visualization in the dialog at the Pew Elections Initiative / Voting Information Technology Summit in Austin:

– Mindy Finn, Engage & Voting Information Project

– Jordan Raynor, Direct Media Strategies & Voting Information Project

– Matthew Morse, Pew Center on the States & Voting Information Project

– Rosalinda Ortega, Pew Center on the States

– Elyse Berkowitz, Pew Center on the States

– Anthea Watson, Voting Information Project & New Organizing Institute

– Becca Colbaugh, Executive Producer at JESS3 (my co-pilot in just about everything)

Written by: Leslie Bradshaw | President & COO, JESS3

So, to take these questions head on, I joined a killer panel (sponsored by Love & Other Drugs FTW) last week that included:

• Cindy Gallop (former head of BBH America and now the founder of IfWeRanTheWorld.com, a web platform that turns good intentions into concrete actions);
• Host Rachel Sklar (Mediaite founding editor, Change the Ratio Founder, former HuffPo Media Editor);
• Sarah Kunst (contributor, event manager and woman-about-town for nightlife and scene site, Guest of a Guest);
• Brooke Moreland (co-founder and CEO of new hotshot startup Fashism);
• Producer Emily Gannett (marathon athlete, producer, founder, mega connector); and
• Leslie Bradshaw (President & COO of JESS3 — that’s me!) | I was also asked to share what it is like working with / for my S.O. (the Jesse in JESS3), first ever interview sharing on this topic if you are so inclined to watch it in full here.

As Rachel so eloquently remarks: “Each of these women brought a unique perspective to the topic, and we had a spirited and thoughtful discussion, some highlights of which are presented below. The full video from the session may be seen here. Cindy discusses the how the word ‘slut’ is ‘a condemnation and a point of aspiration and a point of pride,’ a clear negative on one hand but lately reclaimed by younger women, proudly.”

The following clips and contextual round up were provided by Rachel Sklar over on Mediaite.

Above, I share our own Alix McAlpine’s www.Sorry-Mom.com – tagline: “I Bang The Worst Dudes” Cindy finds the bright side – it’s a cautionary-tale dating advice site for men!

Cindy dates younger men, “casually and recreationally,” but has one main criteria: “they have to be a very nice person.”

Sarah thinks people should be able to “sleep with or not sleep with whomever they want” Also — forget about the stereotypes. “You can put all of these piece of being female together however you want.”

“No one tells men, ‘Oh, you have three kids and you run a company? How do you do it all?'” “And no one asks a 37 year old guy, ‘Are you nervous about when you’re gonna have kids?’ ‘Why aren’t you married?'” “You wear your uterus on your sleeve.”

Rachel talks about the “love” part of the equation — not “soft-focus LifetimeTV love” but the reality of like-minded professionals who meet at work or in the course of their work can spark. “Our workplace is our professional and personal playground – our work is our life and so we end up meeting people and working with them.” (Leslie is a co-founder with her boyfriend, the eponymous Jesse of Jess3.) Rachel asks Brooke if people treat her differently when they learn she is married. She says not really – or at least up until the ring is impossible not to notice. “When you’re married men still hit on you, but you have an out – which is good, in professional environments.” Also: “Having a visual symbol of your committed status helps.”

Sarah talks about how age and gender play into how she is perceived as a professional — though in the nightlife scene chronicled by Guest of a Guest young women are the norm, sometimes, she says, she is subject to more dismissive assumptions. Recalling an event to which she brought a man who was a boldfaced name in the tech scene, she recounts how an acquaintance assumed that she was his date. When Sarah pointed out that the invitation was in fact hers, the acquaintance snorted: “What do you do that you can bring him?”

Rachel asks Cindy: “How are women constrained by what they should and shouldn’t wear? And on the flip side, how are they enabled and liberated by that?” Cindy says that women often put those constraints on themselves: “It is actually the expression of personal style rather than suppression of t that can actually deliver desired business outcomes,” she says. “The way you dress and the way you look is a fundamental part of how you position your own brand.”

Is there a “right” and “appropriate” way to dress, for work and otherwise? Remember Cindy’s advice about self-expression – but remember, too, that how you present yourself becomes part of your brand – so know what you want that brand to be, and how you want it to be seen. Says Brooke: “I do have to watch what I wear. When I dress too sexy or too skin-baring – it does give the wrong signal that you don’t want to give and you want to be taken seriously. And you shouldn’t have to think about that stuff if you’re a woman, but you do…like, ‘I should be able to wear this but maybe it’s not the best thing for me.'” Adds Rachel: “You have to step out of the normative way that you would like things to be and recognize that, okay, there’s a way things are.” But all that said – here’s some key advice from the founder of Fashism: “Everyone should have a Power Bitch outfit.”

Can I sell ad space on my butt and still be taken seriously? This is not a rhetorical question – and the jury is still out. Ripped from the headlines!

Compiled by: Leslie Bradshaw | President & COO, JESS3

48,949 total check-ins
23,256 different venues
58% male
42% female

The big guns…
1. California: 7,074 check-ins
2. New York: 5,941 check-ins
3. Pennsylvania: 2,377 check-ins
4. Florida: 2,374 check-ins
5. Illinois: 2,275 check-ins
6. Texas: 2,106 check-ins

The middle of the country represents…
1. Ohio: 1,735
2. Michigan: 1,702
3. Wisconsin: 1,541
4. Minnesota: 1,179

The second largest cluster behind the “big guns” are…
1. Georgia: 1,991 check-ins
2. Virgina: 1,637 check-ins
3. Maryland: 1,454 check-ins
4. Massachusetts: 1,408 check-ins

Check-ins from places you might have not expected to be checking in…
1. Colorado: 502 check-ins
2. Nebraska: 278 check-ins
3. Nevada: 281 check-ins
4. Idaho: 163 check-ins
5. New Mexico: 116 check-ins
6. Hawaii: 108 check-ins
7. South Dakota: 93 check-ins
8. Alaska: 64 check-ins
9. North Dakota: 57 check-ins
10. Wyoming: 20 check-ins
11. Montana: 18 check-ins

We look forward to analyzing the data further and against national polling data and the actual election results as it all becomes available.

Anything stand out to you? We’d love to hear from you.

Written by: Leslie Bradshaw | President & COO, JESS3

And, with our roots in DC, civic participation through voting is close to our hearts. We also pride ourselves in helping C-SPAN leverage social media in their coverage during the 2008 Elections, where we designed and developed the Convention Hubs and Debate Hubs, respectively.

And so, in this spirit, we give you: I Voted.

Working closely with Eric Friedman and the team at foursquare, the Voting Information Project (Google x Pew Center on the States), Engage and other experienced digital political strategists like Jordan Raynor, David Almacy, Tracy Viselli and Patrick Ottenhoff. The joint effort encourages voters to check-in at their polling place and share that they have voted with their friends through social media. Including the text #ivoted in their polling station check-in will unlock the badge.

The project was designed with three purposes in mind:

1) Encourage civic participation through the distribution of the “I Voted” foursquare badge;

2) Increase transparency by visualizing how many voters are checking-in, and at which polling locations; and

3) Develop a replicable and scalable system to use for the 2012 Presidential Elections and beyond.

For our part, JESS3 built a custom map visualization around cutting-edge technologies like HTML5, using semantic components and new features like the “canvas” element for interactive graphics. I also used some extra night and weekend time to ensure coordination and communications between partners.

The site is accessing over 108,000 official polling locations provided by the Voting Information Project, which were then geocoded by the foursquare team and made available to JESS3 through the foursquare API.

Our case study is live at “Foursquare I Voted” and includes early sketches.

Written by: Leslie Bradshaw | President & COO, JESS3