Monthly Archive for July, 2008Page 2 of 2

Where can you find BlogHer without going to the conference?

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 15, 2008
in events
. 0 Comments

Right here!

This Friday - Sunday is the annual BlogHer conference, taking place in San Francisco.  “BlogHer’s annual conference is like no other — it is the thrilling diversity of the blogosphere come to life! Featuring technical labs, educational workshops, intense discussion sessions, relevant sponsors, speakers from every corner of the blogosphere, established and new, and plenty of opportunities to network and socialize.”

Unfortunately, I can’t make it to San Fran for the conference.  BUT! I can make it all the way to my computer and into Second Life!  What’s Second Life? It is an “online, 3D virtual world imagined and created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.”

The BlogHer conference will have simultaneous events taking place ‘off-line’ and online in Second Life.  I will be attending events throughout the conference via my virtual Second Life self. Are you attending it on or offline?

I will be live blogging from within Second Life - so you can follow along with me, ask questions and leave comments in real time whether you are in Second Life, at the conference, or sitting back at home.

All you have to do to be included is watch this blog!  The live blogging (with CoverItLive) will be hosted here.  I’m excited to share with you all the experience of attending this conference virtually, as well as getting participation from you while I’m there!

Other BlogHer folks will also be live blogging and commentating on the events throughout the three days on the BlogHer website.

Have you attended a conference in Second Life before?  Has your organization considered using Second Life as part of its social media strategy?

Social Actions & Social Actions Labs - Lot’s about to come your way!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 15, 2008
in socialchange and webtools
. 4 Comments

Social Actions “connects individuals with actionable opportunities. By helping people to take action, our work is increasing the scope and impact of the citizen sector,” while the Social Actions Labs builds web applications that draw on the Social Actions API.

Great, but why am I interested?

What Social Actions is really doing is combining the ‘what-you-can-do’ stuff of the social change web into one place that you can search, link to, rely on, and even (with a widget from the Social Actions Labs) integrate into your web site or blog!  How great is that?!

Social Actions helps individuals and organizations use social media to plan, implement, and support peer-to-peer social change campaigns so that grassroots solutions to local and global problems can flourish.

Toward this end, Social Actions:

  • Provides a search engine of peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
  • Aggregates peer-to-peer social change campaigns from 14 unique social action platforms;
  • Publishes materials for individuals on planning and implementing peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
  • Distributes materials for nonprofits and foundations on engaging constituents;
  • Connects technology consultants and thought leaders with nonprofits and foundations;
  • Encourages collaboration among social action platforms.

I may be biased (full disclosure: part of the project mentor group), but think I’m understandably excited.

That IS awesome! What can I do?

Do you want to take action now?

Maybe you want to help identify the 3 -5 initial applications for the Social Actions Labs!

Try out the new (beta) search interface to find social actions you are interested in!

Or, you can sign up to stay abreast of more developments!

Wanna hear more?

Social Actions founder, Peter Deitz, has a great interview with Corey Pudhorodsky on the 501c3Cast from July 14th.  You can listen to it here!  If you don’t already, you should also add Corey’s awesome 501c3Cast podcast to your itunes or RSS library!

If you were able to integrate actions for volunteers, supporters, and interested citizens to take part in, where would you put it? On your organization’s home page, blog, action center page? Would you want it on your personal site or other social networking pages?  What about the social networking spaces for your organization?

Upcoming Events in Portland

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 15, 2008
in events
. 0 Comments

We have two great events coming up here in Portland - the July Net Tuesday and 501 Tech Club.  I’m really excited!

Net Tuesday: Effective Websites for Nonprofits

We will learn about conversion, testing your website and campaign language, and the attributes of effective nonprofit websites (especially for fundraising!).  It should be a great opportunity to examine websites from organizations in the group and relate new learning.  Hal Newton will be our opening presenter, but we want everyone to participate when we open it up to discussion and conversation.

Do you have resources you want to be sure are included?  What about a great case study?

501 Tech Club: Municipal Wireless

Join with members of the Personal Telco Project, NTEN and the City of Portland to learn more about and discuss the history, progress, and future of municipal wireless.  This is a great opportunity to hear about efforts like MetroFi and Personal Telco, as well as how you can get involved in improving your neighborhood’s networks.

If you aren’t from Portland, what have been successes or failures in your city with municipal wireless?

If you aren’t in Portland, don’t worry!  I’ll be sure to share with you the conversations and resources from these two great events!

WeAreMedia Project - It’s week 3!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 15, 2008
in issues, socialmedia and wiki
. 0 Comments

Have you checked out the WeAreMedia Project from Beth Kanter and NTEN yet? I am really enjoying this great collaborative project and experiment in working wikily.

Week 1:  Why Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media?  (or not?)

Learn about basic social media concepts and principles, as well as the situations in which social media would or would not help your organization.  Here is a great presentation that introduces social media.

Week 2:  Thinking Strategically About Social Media

Learn about the key ingredients you should use for putting together a great social media strategy, how social media strategy relates to your organization’s other internet and communications strategies, and more!  You can even check out the example group exercise I contributed for creating a social media strategy!

Week 3:  The Social Media Ready Nonprofit: Dealing with Resistance

Learn about the signs of resistence in an organization, how to get organizational buy-in for social media strategies, and which policies are useful for dealing with social media in an organization.  Week 3 collaboration and contribution is happening now - join in or learn more!

What have been some of the hardest obstacles to over come in getting buy-in for social media at your organization?  Were the main evangelist, or did you have partners?

Digital Makeover Project: More thoughts on community tools

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 12, 2008
in issues and socialmedia
. 1 Comment

I posted a few days ago about Simon Fairway ’s Digital Makeover Project focusing on South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau . I didn’t get all of my thoughts out in that previous post, as they relate to the Issues and Priorities outline that Simon and the team put together.

User generated content vs traditional top-down information
 I think with a web site such as SYFAB’s it is a great community building strategy to integrate ways that funding advice could be given by peers as well as the SYFAB staff. Moving some of the request, information gathering, and sharing process online in a public forum-like way, could really encourage participation in the process. People who may have already gone through what someone else is asking about can provide their insights or information while the staff can supplement with data they usually provide.

Communication is difficult with outreach workers/volunteers
I wonder if establishing some basic protocols that include Google Docs or a wiki could help contain conversations or questions to an easily accessed, web-based document. Is a wiki or shared document something that other groups have used to coordinate remote and in-office workers? I am thinking of examples with campaign staff/volunteers and rural nonprofits.

Newsletter is in PDF/mailed
(You can read about this and the other issue areas in the Issue and Priorities document for the project.)  One of the most important aspects of the newsletter is the event and training listings.  What about creating an online calendar on the website, where events, trainings, workshops, major conferences, and even grant deadlines could all be displayed and easily updated?  Sounds like a great way to add value to the SYFAB website.  You could even allow for others to add to the calendar, or submit information for staff to add.  Then the SYFAB calendar would be the go-to place to find out what was going on in the funding field.

Capturing feedback
One of the easiest ways for organizations to create a feedback form without technical expertise is to use SurveyMonkey or other free online survey tools .  You don’t need to know any html or other coding, don’t need to make any forms on your website.  You can create a survey that captures all the information you are hoping to get from users of the site or of a particular program, and even add your logo and other branding materials to confirm to users that it really is your survey.  This let’s you ask for feedback, collect the feedback and analyze it in a web-based platform so there aren’t any lost emails or misplaced paper forms.

Fundraising options
As the Funding Advice Bureau, you want to be sure that you have enough funds to keep helping others secure monies as well!  An online donation process would be easy, as you would just need to set it up and place the donate button on the website.  Checking to make sure that SYFAB is listed in online platforms like Causes and Change.org will allow people around the world using these platforms to connect causes and fundraising with your organization.

What ideas or comments do you have about the above options?  Do any of them reflect conversations or issues your organization’s staff has also faced?  What have been the major conversations points when discussing these issues in your organization?

Digital Makeover Project

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 7, 2008
in case studies and socialmedia
. 3 Comments

Simon Fairway is up to something across the pond: He is coordinating a digital makeover of South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau, a “voluntary organisation and registered charity set up to help voluntary and community organisations get the resources they need.”  The digital makeover project will focus on SYFAB and come to “grips with their organisational challenges, and dreaming up some innovative but appropriate digital solutions for a few of them.”

SYFAB was chosen from many nominations to the Charity Technology Trust because of their pattern of innovation and openness to new technologies.  They also have a staff of 12, making them comparable to many nonprofits.

Here are some of the first areas identified by Simon and the team working on the Digital Makeover.  (Take a look at the SYFAB website and the blog as reference for the below options.)

1.  Introducing Google Analytics to the website to get a stronger understanding of the volume and demographic of site visitors and the most useful content for service users.

I think this is a great way to begin identifying and learning about core usage of the website.  Many organizations are surprised by patterns that emerge and pages that are popular, as often the view of the organization’s website by staff is very different by users.  Some things that I would look for are

2. Adding an RSS feed to the website’s funding news page, so that regular visitors can be informed of updates to the website.

I think adding RSS is a must; the news page (which is the home page with the current site configuration) as well as the training and IT Project sections (you want RSS wherever content will change and people will want to know about it!).  The blog is in wordpress and automatically has RSS.

3. Establishing a regular email newsletter, initially with events and training information. In the longer term this could provide an alternative to the funding newsletter or members’ case studies.

The email newsletter is a great transition step from mailing hard copies towards only electronic materials.  SYFAB probably has the email addresses of nearly all the members already, but it is still a good idea to send out an email to everyone explaining that an email newsletter will begin next week (or whenever) and will be distributed from info@syfab.org.uk (as an example) so they can be sure the email address is in their contact list (some spam filters will block messages sent to many people unless they are in the contact list), and to reply if they do not want to be automatically added to the distribution list (an opt-out).

4. Migrating the feedback process on-line to make it more efficient as a whole, and providing an opportunity to provide feedback directly to funders.

By migrating feedback to an online process, especially one that is shared/stored and public, you really can serve more people by doing less work!  People that have a similar situation or question can review what has already been answered instead of starting the question/investigation process over.  Creating a learning center (like Tech Soup) or forum-type approach to the question-investigation-answer process, you can relieve yourself of having to duplicate research/work but also allow for other members to jump in and contirubte their experiences and knowledge to make even better responses.

I would like to see this have two parts: one side is for the funder investigation and process, the other is for case studies and success stories.  I think it is important for a collaborative approach in finding information and researching options, but it is also really important that case studies be public and searchable, as well as include feedback/commenting just like the learning center side.

5. Offering multimedia content through the website.

I hate to see any organization adopt new technologies that aren’t appropriate for the specific goals and projects.  That isn’t to say that multimedia options aren’t applicable to SYFAB, but I don’t want SYFAB to feel obligated to grab at cool, new things.

The most valuable and directly applicable avenue for multimedia in the SYFAB site, that I see, is:

  • Record (either video or just audio) main presentations at events
  • Create a video or audio instead of a text blog entry, like a quick tip on searching for funders, or a commonly misunderstood issue dispelled, etc.
  • When compelling case stories are submitted (see #4), interviews be recorded with a representative from the organization and posted in the learning forum and on the blog

6. Re-establish the blog as an informal counterweight to the website that welcomes contributions from SYFAB’s service users.

In the Issues and Priorities document available in Simon’s initial post, it says, “Danny freely admits that if the blog is to succeed, it needs find its niche alongside the website.” This is very true!

You have a few ways of doing this, and the first is to prominently display the blog/link on the website, and vice versa.  It is also helpful to textually link to the blog when discussing something that is mentioned on the blog, etc. (linking textually means you link the words in a setence, opposed to a graphic, etc.).  The blog, if it is going to be the counterweight to the website, should be updated often, at least as often as the website is updated, which is weekly.  If finding content is the issue (though I assume finding time is the issue), you have many resources for digging up content; my favorites include:

  • subscribe to industry RSS feeds, and report on news
  • watch/subscribe to RSS feeds of social bookmarking sites (like del.icio.us) to see sites and stories that others are discovering in your field
  • share something you or your organization learned
  • interview someone from the office/organization
  • ask for feedback or experiences about a certain topic related to the organization’s work or field

As far as the blog goes, there is very little that is social about it, except that commenting is enabled.  Any other social media adopted by the organization, should be displayed on the blog: ie, if you have a Facebook, Myspace, Ning, or other social network presence, the logo and link should be included; if you have a Twitter, Pownce, Utterz, or other microblogging tool, it should be included; if you have a presence on YouTube, Bebo, Blip TV, or other media sharing sites, it should be included; etc.  There are also widgets you can create using tools like Sprout Builder that ramp up your social media feel.  You can also use widgets from tools like MyBlogLog or Twitter that show recent activity.  Wordpress (which you are using for the blog currently) has a number of widgets you can enable to show recent activity as well, like comments, posts, etc.

7.  Optimise the site for search engines.

This, like adding RSS, is a great first level step to advancing any organization’s website.

8. Development of online training opportunities and provision of interactive online resources to help organisations develop their fundraising skills and knowledge.

It would be wonderful to do either live or archived online trainings in the form of a webinar or a screencast.  You can look at tools like SlideShare as well.  Connecting these with the learning forums and case studies would be a great way to add context and user stories.  The multimedia options (#5) are a great way to begin providing some online resources as well.

Follow along with the updates on Simon’s blog on NetSquared here:  http://www.netsquared.org/blog/simonfairway/

This is a social media project, meaning you can contribute and get involved in myriad ways: blog about some of your ideas (tag it with digitalmakeover), video blog about your ideas (tag it with digitalmakeover), or post to the community blog at NetSquared (tag with digitalmakeover).  You can also speak to Simon about other ways to get involved and the project’s progress by emailing him at simon @ ctt .org

What are your thoughts about the digital makeover project and SYFAB’s options?

Posterous is blogging with emails!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 1, 2008
in blogging and webtools
. 10 Comments

I have talked about blogging and micro-blogging before, but what about blogging without a blog?

Posterous is a new tool that let’s you do just that! All you need is email, and I’d put money on the fact that you all have email already! All you need to do is send an email to post@posterous.com and you’ve just posted to your blog!

The subject line of your email is the post title. The message body is the post content. You can even send pictures, audio or video attachments to be posted as well! “If you can use email, you can have your own website to share thoughts and media with friends, family and the world.”

If you send in multiple photos, they’ll automatically make a photo gallery for you. If you send in a link, they will make it an active link; unless it’s a link to a video or photo or some other media, when they embed the video for you so readers don’t have to click to see it. And much more!

I just did it myself. It REALLY is just as easy as it sounds. All I did was send an email. But, it was fun so I did it twice. :) You can see it here!

If you want to try it out, just send an email to post@posterous.com! You can check Posterous out on the web, too; here are the FAQs.

With tools like this that narrow the adoption requirements for blogging and social media use, do you see the culture change or organizational use changing?

Be The Media: Working in a networked way

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 1, 2008
in community
. 1 Comment

NTEN and Beth Kanter are igniting a great collaboration between nonprofit technology social media folks, called Be the Media. This experiment in working in a networked way is a terrific example of social media in and of itself!

Some terrific folks are signing on to collaborate and share their knowledge of social media tools, strategies, and success stories. (You can see the list of participants here.)

Be The Media is based on the beliefs that:

  • With the advent of Web 2.0, more and more nonprofits understand the opportunity of using social media strategies and tools to realize outcomes.
  • Nonprofits that want to integrate social media strategies and tool need practical skills, advice, examples, and methods that will improve their effectiveness.
  • There are many excellent existing social media guides, articles, resources, checklists, and training materials in the nonprofit sector and beyond. Building the curriculum in a networked way on a wiki and offering it through a creative commons license will allow nonprofit practitioners to share ideas and avoid duplication.

Be The Media will:

  • Pull together a wide variety of individuals who will collectively help contribute ideas and pointers to content that is meaningful to the nonprofit leaders and staffers who are charged with integrating social media into their communications strategy
  • Provide a hub for the vetted resources, connections, and conversation on this topic.
  • Provide access to resources such as articles, tips, checklists, presentations, case studies, and individuals offered by people in the network.

I’m really excited to be part of this process! What I am most excited about is to see the way the organizing/participating/leading network grows and changes the content and the way the following/learning network grows and changes the project’s goals and deliverables.  By this I mean to say that I predict those following the project as ’students’ or listeners, etc., have quite the potential to shift where the project goes based on voicing opinions, questions, and needs.  Those participating as leaders/experts will have a responsibility to listen to those voices and steer this experiment in the appropriate direction.

I think it will be a great opportunity for all of those involved to learn a lot about the power of networks as well as the topic areas/individual tools/etc.  You can check out the Be The Media project here.

What questions do you have about social media that you hope to learn more about and want the Be The Media project to address?