Monthly Archive for October, 2008

29-Day Giving Challenge: Here we go!

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 31, 2008
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I’m really excited to participate in the 29-Day Giving Challenge with Britt Bravo and many other changebloggers.  Britt is always a great insiprer for do-good-er-ness and I hope you’ll join me in 29 days of giving, leading up to the US Thanksgiving holiday!  I think this will be a great way to feel the giving spirit of Thanksgiving, as our new location in London, UK, isn’t naturally lending itself to celebrate this year.

DAY 1 (Oct. 30th)

The London Underground, or tube, has recently put up ads that ask when you last smiled at another passenger.  As a ‘foreigner’ I quickly noticed how many people here become quite steely on public transportation, there isn’t much conversation, let alone eye contact or smiles.  The ads suggest that you can change someone’s day by smiling at them on the tube.  So, I started doing it yesterday as my first day of giving: giving away smiles!

The results?  Well, as I’m sure you can imagine.  Some people were very confused, others just ignored it, but some smiled back and passed it on!  A smile can go a long way, start one today! :)

Day 2 (Oct. 31st)

Today, I guess I didn’t technically give anything away, but I put myself out there.  I joined School of Everything and created my teaching (and learning) profile.  This way, I can connect to people right here in Camden or around the world to share skills and knowledge that I have.  This is what the site says:

School of Everything connects people who want to learn with passionate teachers in their local area. The award-wining site is free to join for both people who want to learn and people who want to teach.

Teachers register online and create a personal page giving information on their lessons, the qualifications offered and the format in which they teach - for example workshops or one-to-one sessions. Potential pupils find a tutor who’s right for them simply searching by subject, learning category and location. They can then send them a message, arrange to meet and begin learning their new subject.

I met the co-founder, Andy Gibson earlier this week so School of Everything was on my list of things to investigate.  Once I visited the site, I just had to participate!  Try it out for yourself, or connect with me!  I’m looking forward to the connections, friendships, and all the shared learning to come!

Join in with the 29-Day Giving Challenge!

Great reads from October 31st

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 31, 2008
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These are some links I wanted to share from October 31st. Find me on Delicious for more!

Great reads from October 29th through October 30th

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 30, 2008
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These are my links for October 29th through October 30th:

  • 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero | 43 Folders - Looking to reach inbox nirvana? Here is a great series full of tips, tricks, ideas, and reminders about controlling the inbox, and not letting the inbox control us.
  • digital mentor wiki - I'm planning to participate with some new friends here in the UK on the digital mentor project; check it out and join in!
  • “Managing” Your Brand in Social Media - This is an issue many organization fear, and that holds them back from participating in the online space with their communities. Learn from some greats (Sarah Durham and Farra Trompeter, Big Duck) about managing your organization's identity in social media. I'm sure that they will offer, as always, some very fun case studies, too!
  • WeAreMedia: Social Networks - Build the Nonprofit Social Media Tool Box - Come on all you social media experts and nonprofit organizations trying these tools, what can you add to the mix?
  • Idealware: New article:- The Basics of Email Metrics - Good read from Idealware "covering what email data you might want to track, where to get it, how to make sense of it in calculated metrics, and modifications to improve your results."

Huddle featured in LinkedIn Applications

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 29, 2008
in networking and storytelling
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Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

Many individuals and organizations are testing and exploring new ways to collaborate on projects and connect work virtually.  LinkedIn, an online network of more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, serves as a networking space for business professionals and the job posting service is seeing more and more activity.  Today is the launch of LinkedIn Applications and Huddle is a featured app!

What are LinkedIn Applications

Much like adding applications to your profile on other social networking sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn Applications let you pull in content you are creating across the web —blog posts, presentations, and even travel plans—and display it on your LinkedIn profile to share with your network.

LinkedIn Applications enable you to enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective.

You can determine who can view your application content and even contribute content via the application in LinkedIn without visiting the other site, like with the SlideShare app. Check it out!

What is Huddle

Huddle is an online collaboration tool providing secure online workspaces with powerful project and collaboration tools.  Connecting your online workspace with your business contacts can be a powerful combination for your work or business.

The Huddle Workspaces application for LinkedIn includes all key functionality of Huddle.net and you can easily sync it with your existing Huddle account. Simply log into LinkedIn and you can immediately set up workspaces to use with as many of your LinkedIn connections as you like.

You can try out Huddle for free; learn more.

Check out the LinkedIn Application directory to add applications to your profile, or learn more about using LinkedIn as a social networking tool.

Bookmarks for October 28th

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 28, 2008
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These are my links for October 28th. Find me on Delicious for more!

  • What type of blog should your nonprofit write? - Kivi does a great job, as usual, of putting together a great post to help you as your organization begins blogging.
  • New Research: Consumers Like Social Media Marketing - "New data from a survey of 1,092 consumers by Opinion Research Corporation found that 85% of social media users thought companies should interact with them through social media. This is strong validation for social media marketing. Consumers, tired of being shouted at, are ok with properly managed social media marketing campaigns like those we do for our clients."
  • Top-12 Nonprofit Facebook Applications - Great explanations and run-downs of the major applications in use on Facebook.
  • Seth’s Blog: In Defense of Raising Money: a Manifesto for NonProfit CEOs - "You’re devoting your life, your spirit, your energy, your faith into making the vision you have of a better future into a reality. So why are you so scared to ask people for money?"
  • Remember the Milk - Organize your work the way you want, get all the reminders you need, and check things off your list! You can use it by yourself, with your team, or even with the world.
  • tweet4good: Donate and fundraise using Twitter - Donating to a nonprofit or even a cause is as simple as your other 140 character messages! You can also use this as a nonprofit organization in your online fundraising work.

Final Push for a World Diabetes Day Doodle

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 27, 2008
in challenge and community
. 1 Comment

Manny Hernandez and the Tu Diabetes community needs your help! Their goal is 20,000 signatures in an appeal to Google to consider doing a World Diabetes Day doodle on Nov. 14th.  Right now, they are about half way there.  Tu Diabetes has partnered with other diabetes organization to help raise awareness and reach the 20,000 signatures goal.

You can sign the petition here!

Help get a World Diabetes Day Doodle

Interview with Jeff Robbins - Drupal & The Future!

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 24, 2008
in interview
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Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

Jeff is part of a team excited about the future of the web with Drupal.  You may have heard some of the early news already, but more is sure to come.

What’s in the works?  “…an easy-to-use platform for groups, individuals and businesses to create powerful dynamic social websites. Historically, these sites required huge time commitments and expert developers; this platform will allow users to harness the power of Drupal and its wealth of add-ons with a streamlined point-and-click, drag-and-drop interface. With these tools, even newcomers will be able to build feature-rich multi-user websites that go beyond the boundaries of simple blog sites.”  -Lullabot news

I recently connected with Jeff to get the complete story.

lullabot logoJeff’s background, in his own words

Over the last couple decades, Jeff has had a varied connection with the world of the web, including projects with O’Reilly in the early 90s (like buildling the Global Network Navigator, the first website with ads), starting Liquid Media (web design company), performing and making music with Orbit (band, member), and serving as the defacto ‘tech guy’ for A&M Records.

After the band’s contract ended eight years ago, Jeff jumped into the world of web 2.0 by building websites with his wife; clients included bigger and bigger names (like Ringo Star!).  The team was using Wordpress and Movable Type for the client websites when they decided on Drupal for a specific project.

The same thing that has happened before

As Jeff worked through this new project with Drupal, he experienced the state many have before: “starving for Drupal information” in a sea of praise for the platform and the many, many options available.  This is when Jeff reached out to the Drupal community for help and connected with Matt Westgate.

The two wanted to start a company that would provide the help so many people need, including Jeff, when starting a project with Drupal to avoid getting overwhlemed.  And thus, Lullabot was born with a central focus on empowering people with workshops, podcasts, as well as hiring people who are involved in the Drupal community as experts to help out.

What is Drupal?

According to Wikipedia, “Drupal is a free and open source modular framework and content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP. Like many modern CMSs, Drupal allows the system administrator to create and organize content, customize the presentation, automate administrative tasks, and manage site visitors and contributors.”

Jeff describes Drupal as a blogging software on steroids.  A blogging platform specializes in one type of content (blog posts), whereas Drupal can handle any kind of content and has the capacity to build things that aren’t content management-based, like e-commerce systems.

So, where did the idea come from?

Jeff and Matt attended N2Y2 in San Jose, CA.  The pair entered the conference with the goal of better understanding what was going on in the nonprofit community and how they could help.  What they found, though, was a huge community of people who had already been told they should use Drupal for their project or website but had no resources on how to do it, told they should get an ‘expert’ to do it so they don’t ’screw it up.’

After scratchy voices and lots of new connections, they realized there was no good way to help individuals individually—it was a problem that needed to be tackled at the platform level.  As Jeff explains, “Drupal is the promise of modular ease, but it isn’t actually that easy.”

So, Jeff wrote an article about how Drupal will save the world.  He said, “wouldn’t it be great if…” as a way of brainstorming how to tackle the platform level of the problems and confusions he was seeing people experience, like: wouldn’t it be great if there was some entity that could give the Drupal community a chunk of money (Jeff suggested $50,000) to work on the platform for a year with the specific goal of making it easier to use.  They didn’t get the money, but they did get interest and ideas.

Drupal will save the world

Jeff then attended O’Reilly’s Foo Camp where he presented on how Drupal will save the world, talking about the ideas he, Matt and others had been thinking about and discussing.  This is when Google’s Jeffrey Veen posed the question of whether people even need to install the software or not—why can’t they just do all that they need to on a website?  Jeff couldn’t come up with an answer of why they shouldn’t.

Together with Ed Sussman, formerly of Mansueto Digital and FastCompany.com, the idea emerged to form a business out of this idea.  The team grew to include Karen McGrane from Bond Art + Science, who’s experience includes designing the current version of NYTimes.com.  The team began working away on this new project to allow users to build Drupal sites via the web in an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop, type fashion.  They were working quietly, experimenting internally, until Friday the 10th when Ed announced he was leaving to come head up the project.

What now?

There is no name yet, and it is still quite early, but the group is in progress with the idea, and with the process of finding investors and hiring developers to make Drupal easier to use.  They want to build something that is more feature rich than Ning but faster and open source.  It is a graduation from the blog, though it’ll have an import fundation so you can move over whatever content you have elsewhere.  It will also be optimized to run larger scale website than most blogging software as it assumes a higher ‘high end.’

Who is it really for?

There are a lot of different groups, and everybody needs a website!  Jeff asks the question, “what website would you build if you could?” and says there are endless options.  People who are building websites, web designers, and the like will probably be interested first, for natural reasons; but Jeff hopes the tool is for everyone!

And for the future…

Jeff compares speculation of the future to the developments in the past: it used to be about code, functionality was held very close to the chest for developers and companies.  Social networking helped change that as companies began building the same applications for people to select friends on their platforms, and once the same features were being reproduced everywhere, the magic was gone.  What’s magical now, is how we assemble features, which tools are put together and how.  While there is definitely still skill involved, it becomes less of a hurdle and more people can start doing larger things online.  The building blocks are out of the way!

Do It With Drupal logoDo It With Drupal

In addition to this new project, Lullabot is organizing its first large-scale Drupal event — a 3-day learning conference called Do It With Drupal. The event is happening at the Marriott in the French Quarter of New Orleans, December 10, 11, and 12th. Speakers include many “big names” in both the Drupal world and online community building experts. There will be sessions on building and nurturing online communities from Flickr’s community manager Heather Champ and author Tara Hunt. Sessions will be given on Drupal building blocks such as Views, CCK, and Organic Groups, from the programmers who wrote them. jQuery author John Resig will be speaking as well as Lockergnome’s Chris Pirillo. There are also some fun sessions such as a look at clone sites of YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter, all built in Drupal.

Do It With Drupal is meant to be an easy on-ramp into the Drupal community and all sessions will be geared at attendees with a wide range of Drupal experience. If you’ve ever felt that drowning-in-Drupal feeling, this event could be of great help!

Check out Do It With Drupal for more information and registration.

Nonprofit Blog Exchange: Reflections on Blog Action Day

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 24, 2008
in blogging and community
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As part of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange, I visited the Social Butterfly blog recently - the Nonprofit Blog Exchange connects bloggers in an effort to expand the sphere of readership and exposure (to learn more, check it out).

I was already familiar with the blog, and Social Butterfly’s twitter, too.  But, I realized the blog wasn’t in my RSS reader and thus I was missing many wonderful posts!  I suggest that if you are interested in social media, marketing, and the intersection of the two, you subscribe as well.

Social Butterfly’s post about Blog Action Day, really caught my eye.  Here’s how it begins:

What is poverty?

In researching the answer to this question, I couldn’t escape the purpose behind a campaign by the Association of Public Health Schools and the Pfizer Foundation recently created called “What is public health?” This campaign works to better brand ‘public health’ to the public, while also raising awareness, education and encouraging participation in the public health conversation. Participants are asked to put red “This is public health stickers” on items that they feel represent public health. My challenge: What would this look like if the question: “What is poverty?” was asked?

I read on, and encourage you to as well, but that question stuck in my head.  If we were going to try to put a sticker on everything that labeled it as, “This is Poverty,” how would we even begin? The definition of poverty, or at least as we think of it in public service work and public policy, is so vast and multifaceted.  The number of stickers we would need is unbelievable!

Then, as if she was reading my thoughts, I saw this tweet from my friend Audrey:

spinnerin:  Frustrated by people’s tendency to talk for everyone outside developed countries as though we know exactly what they need.

It’s such a fitting point.  When I first started thinking about sticking those “This is Poverty” stickers on things, I started thinking with my home town first, then my home state, and home country.  After that, I started thinking about London, and the UK as I’m now based here and learning a great deal about the world as it is here.  But to start thinking about puting those stickers on things in developing countries was almost unfair.  I can think of many things to put those stickers on, but I don’t live there every day nor do I face or even really understand the real issues, and definitions of poverty as they exist in developing countries.  By putting a sticker on those things, the issues as we see them from elsewhere, are we even setting the stage for help and change?

How do we first get the people IN poverty, to label things with these metaphoric and real stickers of “This is Poverty” so that help can be defined and created most effectively?

Thanks, Social Butterfly for giving me a moment to relfect on my own post from Blog Action Day, and rediscover your wonderful blog!  And, thanks to the Nonprofit Blog Exchange for connecting us!

Checking in on DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 24, 2008
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I wanted to touch base with you all about the DonorsChoose.org Bloggers Challenge taking place this month.  I created a challenge page for this blog and have encouraged readers to get involved.  But, I haven’t had much inspiration to be as dedicated as many other bloggers and want to explain why.

I browse through the many projects on the DonorsChoose.org website, take the time to select ones I think you all would like to support (as I explained in an earlier post, I’m selecting projects that focus on technology in the classroom), and add them to the challenge page.  But, by the time I come to blog about the challenge or encourage donations about a specific project added to the list, they are already funded!  This is great news, that so many projects are successfully reaching their funding goals, but it does make it difficult to inspire donations from readers!

The Bloggers Challenge widget is in my sidebar, so that readers who come to the site, any time, can see the challenge information and participate.  But, it isn’t very compelling to donate any amount of money when the highlighted project is fully funded already.

I have edited, refreshed, and selected new projects for the challenge many times this month, but the same thing keeps happening.  Now, I’m certainly not mad or frustrated.  Quite the opposite - I’m thrilled to know that so many projects I found insteresting and deserving of the spotlight have been funded!  That’s the goal of the challenge, right?

Here’s my question, and I do hope you’ll weigh in: How could I do a better job in the future of 1. inspiring you to participate and 2. keeping up with the ferocious turn over of funded projects?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts!  And, if you have a minute and five dollars, here’s a great project that you can help support!

I teach kindergarten in a low income neighborhood. My students do not have a lot of parental support at home. I have to provide for all their education needs.

I am currently allowing my students to use my big CD player to listen to books on CD. The problem with that is the whole class has to listen to the book being read. It becomes very distracting for some and the noise level makes it difficult for me to work with small groups. Therefore we are not able to listen to the books very often. Listening is a important part of reading instruction. It allows students to follow along and develop word recognition and fluency.

Being able to provide my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones would allow them to listen to books independently. The headphones would allow for a quieter classroom which would be appreciated by all.

By supporting this proposal you are providing my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones. You are also helping my students develop fluency and the word recognition that is important in learning to read.

My students need a CD player and 4 headphones to use in the listening center. The cost of this proposal is $160, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fullfilment.

Help support the Bloggers Challenge and this great project!

Thanks so much for your ideas, thoughts, and participation!

Bookmarks for October 22nd

Published
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Amy Sample Ward
on October 23, 2008
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These are my links for October 22nd from 10:08 to 14:35:

  • Reverse Mentoring and Other Thoughts on Millennials and Organizations … - Allison Fine reflects on her experience and conversations at the Leadership Summit: Creativity and Innovation 2008 in DC - I love that she points to the opportunity in so many organizations for reverse mentoring, or for the younger staff members to 'mentor' older staff with new media tools to help ease adoption and learning curves. I have talked about it before, and have had many offline conversations with many of you about this already, so I know you agree that the opportunity is a great one to capitalize on!
  • Forging Ahead — Social Edge - Just became the MOST READ nonprofit blog. "Kjerstin Erickson was 20 when she launched FORGE. She didn’t have a business plan. She didn’t have a revenue model. She didn’t have connections. And she didn’t have a penny. But she now works in three refugee camps in Zambia, helping 60,000 refugees build better lives. This is her story."
  • SYFAB’s Digital Makeover update - Danny provides a new update on where the digital makeover project is at with South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau. I've been following the Digital Makeover project on my blog and posting responses to their progress and ideas. This time, I just left a comment :)
  • Social Actions & Peer-to-Peer Social Change FriendFeed Room - A place to share news, campaigns, sites, and others resources in the growing and exciting world of peer-to-peer social change. Originally created for the Net Tuesday October 2008 theme.
  • Google Open Source Blog: Android: The Open Source Cell Phone - Exciting news for the Open Source world and for mobile technologies - looking forward to a chance (when?) to play with one!
  • Government 2.0 - Best Practices / FrontPage - Created by a social marketer in Canada, this wiki plans to capture the best practices and examples of government engaging with social media in Canada, US and beyond - in its first week online it had over 5,000 views!