Political innovation in St. Louis

I love what the multimedia team has been doing in St. Louis. (They have a VERY talented group at work there.) The latest, a project with the politics team on Gov. Jay Nixon's State of the State address from this week, is spectacular. They used word clouds, which I touted in 2008 when Erica Smith started doing them on her graphicdesignr site (and the Post-Dispatch also ran online — and possibly in print, though my memory isn't great on that).

But this time, the Post-Dispatch expanded on the idea, so by clicking on a word in the cloud, it takes you to that word in the speech. AND, they added a cool pop-up video that provides entertainment and facts during the State of the State address. (For entertainment's sake, I especially like the MissourEE vs. MissourAH count that pops up in the top right corner.) And the video timeline is broken into sections, so you can easily skip to the part where Nixon discusses jobs or health care.

Great job to everyone! (I haven't talked to anyone there since Wednesday, but it appears the project involved the talents of Christopher Ave, Brian Williamson, Erica Smith, Tony Messenger, Greg Jonsson, Matthew Fernandes and Rick Mach.)