Alongside the World Bank and organizations throughout Central America and Washington, D.C. MetroStar will be competing in the Central America Domestic Violence Hackathon Saturday, January 26-27th. Through this hackathon, The World Bank is seeking innovative technologies to assist victims of domestic violence and agencies that aid those victims.

The MetroStar Team will be comprised of computer programmers, web & mobile developers, software engineers, graphic designers, and UX and UI designers. The team is excited to bring its mobile, web and digital practices together to work for such a great initiative.

The team has been preparing strategies, researching existing tools out there and stocking up on their energy drinks for the 2-day event. While they have many ideas on what to create, they’ll hit the ground running on Saturday morning and code through the early hours to deliver a prototype solution.

We’ll keep you posted on the team’s progress through the MetroStar blog and Twitter, so be sure to check back and learn about the MetroStar Team’s hackathon prototype.

Good luck Aditya, Hector, Jorge, Ross, Lee, Dean, and Ajay!

MetroStar’s Hackathon Team!

Be sure to join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram with #DVHackathon and #VDHackathon. See highlights of the conversation through the Zoomph Hackathon Social Mashup.

The post Helping Domestic Violence Victims through Technology appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

1.  Social media should not be siloed from other departments: The social media team should work with other departments to develop and post content. These departments include: marketing, corporate communications, public relations, customer service and legal/compliance. Work with all departments to see how to best utilize social media. Loop legal/compliance in when need be to ensure you dot all your i’s and cross your t’s.
2. Use social media to humanize your brand: Stop selling and start sharing. Use social media as an outlet to tell your organization’s story. Humanize your brand and earn the right to monetize social media outlets and introduce your product or services to your audience.
3. Fans drive content, not your social media team: While your team can help in facilitating a conversation, your fans should be driving the conversation. Cater to what their interests are and help keep the conversation going. Ask them for what they want to talk about, allow them to create content and to take part in a dialogue with your company and other fans.

Overall it was a great summit. I came back with some new perspectives and neat ideas to share with the Team. I look forward to implementing these ideas this year and seeing what’s next for social media.

The post Social Media Themes for 2012 appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

MetroStar Digital had the pleasure of working with the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to launch an online competition challenging developers to create an application that would identify trending illnesses on Twitter. The grand prize: $21,000.

“We hosted a forum last summer where state and local health practitioners discussed some of the benefits of monitoring social media. There was an overall consensus that many local health practitioners would like to be able to use social media to monitor health trends in their community but expressed a lack of time and resources,” said Diana Boss from  Health and Human Services. “The Now Trending Challenge is a result of that conversation. We wanted to address that need.”

Working with the ASPR team, we created the website http://www.nowtrendingchallenge.com/ where contestants could learn about the challenge, register their team, and submit entries.

Our team was especially excited to help launch this initiative. Not only was it an online challenge… but an online challenge based on the Twitter API. We totally geeked out!

Empowering developers nationwide to prototype an application, the site provided potential participants a Toolkit with a list of terminology to be tracked, resourceful links, and the app requirements. In the end ASPR was seeking an application accomplishing two goals: 1) to successfully leverage the Twitter API to identify trending words within geographic areas in a 24-hour period; and 2) to create a method to notify public officials of the trends. Developers were given the freedom to choose the rest: the platform and specific design details of the app.

“The data that local health departments will gain as a result of the winning app could be used in a variety of ways to improve public health situational awareness and communication. It could be used to build a baseline of trend data, engage the public on trending health topics, serve as an indicator of potential emerging health issues within communities, or for cross-referencing against other data sources,” said Boss. “Overall, this will allow local health departments to feel more connected to the pulse of their community and give them a greater understanding of health issues that concern the citizens they serve on a daily basis.”

The challenge judge (Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response RADM Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H.) and technical advisors will be testing out the entries this summer and look forward to announcing the winner by September 10, 2012.

Good luck to all the contestants! Check for updates on http://www.nowtrendingchallenge.com/.

Missed out on this competition? Learn about more online challenges at http://www.challenge.gov/.

Interested in setting up an online challenge for your organization? Contact our team on Twitter @MetroStarSystem.

Read more about other great things being done for public health through social media here: http://mashable.com/2012/06/08/social-media-disease-tracking/.

The post Code & Compete: Promoting Health Surveillance via Social Media appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

Pinterest may be sky rocketing to the top of the social media world, but is your website optimized to keep up? If your website isn’t optimized for “pinning” then your content may get left behind. One “pin” from your website has the potential to go a long way. A quick “pin” from your website has the potential to be viewed by thousands of users. But how do you get your website visitors to help spread your website’s content in the world of Pinterest?

Quick tips to help your website be “Pinterest optimized”

• Review all your webpages and ensure that each page displays an image. Even content that is not truly graphical should have an accompanying photo in order to be eligible for “pinning”.

• Code your website’s imagery with proper image (<IMG>) tags to ensure they’re correctly picked up by Pinterest’s browser plug-in. As a general rule at least one image on your webpage should be using an IMG tag.

• Avoid uploading images that contain advertisement text as part of the image itself. Work with your web developer to place the HTML text atop of the image as a separate element. This will help your image appear as “re-pinnable” as possible to Pinterest users. People may not be as likely to “re-pin” graphics with a blatant advertisement as they may see the image as more of an advertisement rather than an inspirational graphic.

• Make your graphics stand out! Displayed alongside other pinned images would your graphic stand out? Choose your graphics carefully. A graphic that stands out on your website may not stack up on Pinterest.

A quick review of your website’s code can help you see where you can make a few simple updates to help your content spread like wildfire on Pinterest.

The post Is Your Website Committing Pinterest Suicide? appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

“Screen-shot-photos-baffler”

 Step 1:  Take 20 screen shots of your home screen by pressing the power and home keys on your iPhone

Step 2: Change the Auto-Lock settings to 5 minutes (so this prank works).

Step 3. Open your photo gallery to the 10^th screen shot of your home screen.

Step 4: Leave the bait (your iPhone) near a friend, luring them into the trap.

Step 5: Sit back and watch your friends try to “unlock” your iPhone by swiping the “slide to unlock”. Little do they know it’s a photo! 

The post A “Techy-Nerdy” April Fools’ Day Prank appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

MetroStar Systems has wrapped up its sponsorship of the Marine Corps Marathon Event this year, and while I’m sad to say goodbye to prime race season in the Washington Metro area, I am not sad to say bye to freezing cold mornings waiting at the starting line.

Here are a few snapshots from the last race MetroStar Systems sponsored, the Marine Corps Marathon Turkey Trot.

Prabin, Monica, Sara, Daniel and I before the race as Daniel prepped the muffin and apple cider table and wished the MSS runners good luck!

Hopefully Mr. Turkey got pardoned!

So say hello to a season relegated to bundling up in warm fuzzy sweaters and sitting by the fireplace. See all you runners next year and be on the lookout for more events sponsored by MetroStar Systems next spring! If we’re lucky on February 2, when Punxsutawney Phil emerges he will leave his burrow, and welcome us to warmer weather sooner than expected.
Who knows, maybe you’ll see a few of us MetroStar runners in the Marine Corps Marathon next year…

Stay warm!

The post A Turkey Trot Farewell to Fall appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

The event had a live web stream of another Sweat for a Vet spin-a-thon at another Sport & Health Club as well an intense spin class challenging the participants to climb over hills and sprint along flat straightaways.

In addition to supporting an excellent cause, it provided me a great chance to meet more of my co-workers and afterwards we hopped over to Silver Diner and enjoyed some brunch…my…pancakes and bacon.

All-in-all it was an excellent Saturday – supporting a great case, getting in a workout and hey, who doesn’t love bacon?

The post You Asked Us To Sweat And Sweat We Did! appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

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