Many of us were taken by surprise with the latest economic figures coming out of the United States. Sure we understood that Washington politics might be holding things back but I don’t think anyone saw an economic contraction happening.

In fact many commentators have pointed out that worrying, as it is this contraction has been caused by one off factors. And whilst arguments about taxes and spending cuts continue to reverberate around Capitol Hill most of us would expect growth to continue next time around.

And that’s also our experience here at WebsEdge.  We’re currently getting ready for our Spring quarter and have quite a line up of conferences and associations to provide television programs for. We kick off in March with the American Physical Society and end in June with the American Society for Engineering Education.

It’s still early stages but I’m starting to see two major developments for 2013. The first is that people are making plans – they have a lot to talk about. Many of the Universities and Institutes we’re talking too are busy attracting students and working on new research developments. There’s work to do.

The second revolves around engagement. Many of our clients are hungry to reach out to as many of their peers as they can on a global basis using the best tools available to them. As such on-line video and social media in general are certainly rising in prominence.

Let me give you an example. We kicked Materials Research (MRS) TV off last Fall in Boston. Over the past couple of months some 50, 000 people have watched content from those shows on-line.  And on a quite bewildering variety of devices from smart phones to tablets and everything in between.  Of course none of this replaces actually meeting in person and we’re all looking forward to the Spring MRS meeting in San Francisco this April.

So our experience of the three sectors we work in – Health, Education and Government – doesn’t chime with the official news coming out of Washington. So let’s hope we can put the politics into perspective and get on with the real business of the day – driving the global economy forward.

– Stephen Horn, WebsEdge CEO
@stephenjhornNEW BALANCE