Author Archive for Amy Sample WardPage 3 of 17

So you’re interested in social media…

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 4, 2008
in roundup, socialmedia and webtools
. 12 Comments

Beth Kanter just asked me, “what is your best introduction to social media blog post that you would point a noobie to?”  My answer was, “hmmm - good question!  I’m not sure.  Maybe I’ll have to write one tomorrow!”  So, here it is!

Ready = Resources

Where do I find ‘em and what will they give me

Knowing how to find answers to your questions is the most important part of adoptiong new technologies.  You can’t have all your questions now, because you don’t even know what lies ahead.  Here are some of the best places to go first when you need to know how to use something, how to do something, or why you would be interested:

CommonCraft:  These guys get to be a category unto themselves because they are that cool.  They have a series of videos that explain social media tools “in plain English,” meaning pictures, sketches and fun stories that make even new and complex technologies seem fun and manageable.  Check them out!

Blogs:  There is A LOT of information out in the blogosphere for FREE.  Take advantage of it!  AllTop has a nonprofit page that can get you started finding blogs to read.  Once there are some you like, check out the other blogs they link to in posts or in the sidebar to find even more good ones!

WeAreMedia:  One of the best reasons to take advantage of information online is that it’s been crowdsourced.  What’s that mean?  Projects like WeAreMedia are the culmination of many smart people pooling their smartness, not just one person on a soapbox.  The WeAreMedia wiki has a toolbox to help you get started with all kinds of social media tools and is a wiki, so it can continue to be updated and improved.

Groups:  Why connect with groups?  I know that working in a nonprofit organization on tech/social media/web ’stuff’ can be a lonely job as you’re often the only one doing it.  Connecting with communities online like NetSquared and NTEN mean you can learn, share and collaborate with others around the country and the world working on similar projects, using similar tools and/or facing the same issues.

Set = Strategy

Thinking about you need, not what you want

It’s hard to avoid the “shiny new tool” syndrome; believe me, I know!  But it’s worth it.  Thinking about what your organization is doing now, where you want to be/go, and then how to get there will help you most appropriately pick the tools to do it.  Resources like the POST method and other social media guides can be fun to use (make it a strategy afternoon in the office!) and help focus social media adoption.

Here are the 3 most important things to remember:

  • If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
  • Tools are only as effective as the resources to maintain them
  • Social media doesn’t just mean Facebook

Go = Give it a try!

You’ll never know til you try it…

Isn’t that what they always say?  It’s very true for social media.  You can read all about Twitter and watch other people use it, even, but it really doesn’t make any sense until you do it yourself.  This is true for understanding how tools work but also to see how they could be put to use organizationally.  It wasn’t until many people started blogging for themselves (about a hobby or their family) that they were able to see the way their organization could use blogs to tell stories, share information, and create community.

Don’t be nervous or scared.  You have the resources at the top of this list to help you answer questions and feel your way through.  Like I said, you can’t know the questions now; you have to start using the tools and then ask as you learn.  It’s exciting and fun - and watch out, this social media stuff is pretty addicting!  :)

Keep us posted how you do and what other resources and support helped you as you started out!

Image: Ready…Set…Go! by Saskia B

10 Tips from Tu Diabetes

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 3, 2008
in roundup
. 2 Comments

Manny Hernandez, from Tu Diabetes, has posted his list of 10 tips for social media use by nonprofit organizations.

Don’t know Tu Diabetes?

Manny is the man behind this growing community creating opportunity for individuals with diabetes (themselves, in their families, or beyond) to connect, answer each other’s questions, and generally share with one another about life with diabetes.

His top 10 list includes everything from social networks to online fundraising.  Check it out!

My favorite part?  “1)  Join NetSquared” of course!

London Net Tuesday - Social Media Exchange December

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 3, 2008
in events and net tuesday
. 4 Comments

Last night was the second London Net Tuesday event and another success for the local nptech community to share ideas, ask questions and learn together.  This month, we took a different approach - instead of focusing in on one tools or story, we had a Social Media Exchange to celebrate the festive time of year.  Here’s how it worked:

(Video by David Wilcox after the event.)

Social Media Exchange

How it worked:
The room (which was a round cafe with an upstairs) was set up with four designated sections downstairs and two upstairs.  These topic areas were marked by labels on the wall and included:

  • blogs & Twitter
  • photos / Flickr
  • voting & e-democracy
  • tagging & social bookmarking
  • social networks & communities
  • videos / YouTube

Everyone was given a game board of sorts to fill in while filtering throughout the room.  For 45 minutes, participants were able to move from section to section and join in or start conversations with others in that topic area.  The game board had prompts for notes and questions including:

  • Best example of tool in use
  • Best lessons learned
  • How to evaluate for success
  • New idea for my organization
  • New contact for questions/ideas

The participants in the Social Media Exchange had a chance to:
- hear about examples of social media in use
- get new ideas and contacts
- share their stories, lessons, and ideas
- have fun!

Collaborative Roundup

After the free exchange period, the group came together for a roundup of the conversations and ideas.  I had a piece of paper on the wall for each of the six topic areas and the group supplied examples of organizations, events, conferences or individuals using each tool to be captured on the paper.  We also discussed lessons learned and things to keep in mind.  This gave people who hadn’t made it to one of the topic areas a chance to gain some of the key take-aways and ask questions.

You can see photos of the 6 collaborative roundup sheets on the London Net Tuesday meetup group!

Have you participated in a similar exchange event? What did you like most/least about it?

Were you at London Net Tuesday last night? What were some of the best conversations or ideas you went home with?

Connections, Collaborations, and Friends = 09NTC

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 3, 2008
in community and events
. 14 Comments

What’s 09NTC mean?

That’s the ‘tag’ or nickname for the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference!  I’m going to be there, and would love to see you there, too. :)

NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, which provides webinars, online office hours, 501 Tech Clubs, affinity groups and other resources for the nonprofit technology sector, has put together a great line up for this Spring:

The 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference will take place Sunday, April 26 through Tuesday, April 28 at the San Francisco Hilton.

The NTC is THE place to engage around the technology issues that face the nonprofit sector. Nearly 1200 people will come together from across the country and around the world to connect with our peers, learn from our heroes, and change the world.

While it’s unclear what the future holds, one thing is certain: the need for our services will be greater than we’ve ever known.  Now, more than ever, nonprofits need to invest in technology to create efficiencies that increase our effectiveness.

It’s true that our sector will face remarkable challenges in the coming year. Joining us for the 2009 NTC will put you among those poised not only to meet those challenges, but to rise above them.

Why do I love the NTC?

Because it offers a terrific opportunity to learn more than your brain can hold, discuss ideas new and brewing, find new partners and meet up with friends.  (Picture is of Beth Kanter and I, taken by another great friend, Adam Nicholson, at last year’s NTC.)

Working as the in-house techie for nonprofit organizations can be a lonely job - whether you are an “accidental techie” or self-selected social media evangelist.  The NTC provides a few solid days of connecting with others in your position and field so when you go back to the office, you have a much larger and richer community at your fingertips (or mouse click, or Twitter feed) to reach out to for support, information, questions, and on-going conversation.

You can learn more about the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference on NTEN’s website or register!

Are you planning to attend 09NTC?  Leave a comment below and we can all start to connect!

Wrangling your RSS feeds

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 2, 2008
in rss and webtools
. 10 Comments

I have quite a few colleagues who commiserate on Twitter or emails about the daunting task of checking the RSS Reader because the number of feeds, the number of unread posts and the sheer time it takes to get through it all is too intimidating to approach.  For many people, an RSS reader is a helpful way of staying on top of news, information, and conversations happening across the web without having to visit hundreds of websites every day. But if it is too enormous a task to even check the reader, staying on top of information is no longer possible.

What’s an RSS & an RSS Reader?

If you’re wondering what RSS means and how an RSS Rreader works, the wonderful team at Common Craft has a video just for you:

My RSS Reader in Practice

I use Google Reader.  There are lots of options out there, browser based tools (like Google Reader), desktop applications, etc.  I use Google Reader because it works for me and that’s really all it comes down to (since a reader is a reader is a reader, well, mostly).

The key to using an RSS Reader isn’t necessarily in the reader you choose, it’s how you wrangle all those feeds!

3 Keys to Wrangling Feeds

#1.  Folders are your Friends

Your feeds aren’t gone, they’re just grouped with their friends!

We use folders for everything: email, server documents, file cabinents, etc., and your RSS Reader should be no exception.  Folders let you group feeds by the topics that make sense to you.  Don’t be afraid to be too specific, because being to vague just means all the feeds are in one folder!

I am not the ultimate example of folder usage, but I’m still happy to share.  Here’s a screen shot of my Google Reader.  You can see the folders (well, half of them as I’d need to scroll down for the rest) on the left side.

amy sample ward google reader

(It’s harder to see than I would have preferred.)  My folders include:

  • Applications: Blogs from applications like Twitter, Google, YouTube, and Facebook
  • Delicious: Feeds from Delicious tags like NPTech, Net2ThinkTank, and my name
  • Friends & Family: The blogs of my parents and friends, obviously
  • Fun: I highly recommend starting a folder for and subscribing to feeds from websites and blogs that have nothing to do with your work but add a laugh to your day!
  • Fundraising: This is where the segmenting of nonprofit-related feeds begins
  • Individual Blogs:  People who span content-specific folders or that I identify by who they are and not their field or organization
  • Jobs: Feeds from Idealist and other jobs searches to stay on top of the new positions in the industry to circulate to friends, colleagues, and readers
  • Journalism:  This is a folder for citizen journalism and traditional news outlets using social media
  • London- Individual Blogs:  Similar to the Individual Blogs folder above but specific to contacts from/around London
  • Marketing:  Industry news and consultant blogs about marketing and social media
  • Media:  Industry news and consultant blogs about media (social media, multimedia, digital media, etc.)
  • Media Law: News and updates about legal cases and issues related to social media and Internet use
  • Mobile: People, projects, consultants and more working specifically in mobile development
  • My Blog:  Search and alert feeds based on my name, my blog, etc.
  • Net2 Team:  The blogs and delicious feeds from colleagues at NetSquared to stay on top of what everyone is reading and thinking about
  • News:  Technology, social media and general news feeds
  • NPLeaders:  Blogs about nonprofit leadership
  • NPNews:  Blogs and industry aggregators about nonprofit sector news
  • NPTech:  Blogs from individuals and groups (like NTEN) focused on nonprofit technology
  • Organizations:  Blogs from organizations that I’ve helped, I’m watching, I’m interested in, or are good examples
  • Other: Things I just couldn’t categorize or didn’t want to start a folder for (limited to only a handful of feeds)
  • Philanthropy:  Blogs and industry leaders covering philanthropy issues, trends, etc.
  • PR:  Like the media and marketing folders, general Public Relations consultants and groups
  • Research:  Feeds from firms like Forrester and others
  • Social Change:  Blogs and aggregators like Social Actions and others focused on helping individuals make change
  • Tech: Technology-specific feeds, beyond nonprofit usage or social media
  • Webinars: Feeds from organizations providing webinars to circulate with friends, colleagues and readers

#2. The Art of Skimming

Skim milk isn’t for everyone but we can all handle a lesson in skim reading.

This blog post was spurred mostly by an exchange on Twitter with a friend:

citizensheep: Been putting off wading through Google Reader. Must be done though, so here goes…
amyrsward: @citizensheep good luck with that! guessing your reader is like mine…four digit unread :)
citizensheep: @amyrsward Yes, it is! And I’m not very good at skimming (getting better though). Any tips?!

Skim reading doesn’t mean you aren’t reading.  You just prioritize what you read.  Most RSS Readers show you content in a way that make this easier.

  • Try reading the post title and then just the first few points (things in bold or section headers)
  • Scroll through the post quickly and see if videos or links pop out
  • Look for lists or pull-out content (might be able to just read those instead of the whole post)

It takes practice, but you’ll be happy with the result when you can cut down the time it takes to wade through all the posts!

#3. Let Go of Status

We’ve all learned, I hope, that status isn’t everything in life—you really just need the substance.

The greatest part of using the RSS Reader is that it isn’t like email with a delete button.  Once you’ve read something, it is marked as read, but it isn’t gone!  You can search in your reader for content, feeds, specific posts, etc.  How does this help you?

I prioritize my folders.  Ones that usually have less material that I want to share than others will have less of a chance to catch my eye.  For example (and to be honest), I don’t find as many posts that I read completely or share with others from the PR or Marketing folders.  When I open them, I read the titles and skim for important sub-topics or lists but if the first 5 or so don’t get me to stop and read (and there are 30 more unread posts in that folder), then I’ll just hit ‘Mark all as Read.’  And I don’t feel bad about it or that I “missed” content.  Why?

If I’m working on a presentation or a specific blog post, I can search in my reader for the topic I’m looking for an it will include those posts that I marked as read without actually reading.  So, if something I need really was there, I still get to find it!  I might have dropped the status of the posts to ‘read’ but I didn’t lose the substance.

What are your tips and tricks for wrangling RSS?

Thank you, Beth!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 2, 2008
in blogging
. 1 Comment

I hope all of you know Beth Kanter, and if you don’t, you can follow her blog at http://beth.typepad.com

Beth is a maven for nonprofit tech and a great resource for organizations and individuals looking to ramp up social media use for their social change work.  She had the opportunity to create a top ten list for Blogs.com and included this blog.  So, a big Thank You to her!

Check out who else is on Beth’s Top Ten NPTech blog list! Beth’s blog, obviously, would be #1 so this list is the following top ten. :)

It’s a great honor and I’m excited to be listed with other friends and bloggers.

What would your top ten list be?  What are your ten most-read blogs, the ones you just can’t work without?

Net Tuesday organizer needed in Phoenix!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 2, 2008
in net tuesday
. 0 Comments

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

Each month, social changemakers and technological forerunners come together at Net Tuesday events around the world to mix, swap stories and ideas, build new relationships, and reinforce our online NetSquared community.  These monthly events offer a great opportunity for people from all stretches of social change and social media to collaborate, whether you’re a developer, innovator, programmer, entrepreneur or part of a nonprofit organization.  The Phoenix Net Tuesday is looking for a new organizer and hoping you’re it!

Are you in Phoenix or know someone who is?

The Phoenix Net Tuesday group has over 50 members and needs a new organizer to help drive momentum and faciliate events.  Organizing a Net Tuesday group offers a great chance to network and get connected to social changemakers in your city as well as be part of an innovative network of on-the-ground collaborators with NetSquared.  Net Tuesdays are currently taking place in 22 cities around the world with more groups starting each month.

Get involved!

Are you interested in learning more or stepping up?  Connect with the Phoenix Net Tuesday group online and contact the current organizer, JD Godchaux, to find out more.  Phoenix would love to have you!

What are your five-a-day?

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 1, 2008
in community
. 8 Comments

We’ve heard that five servings of fruits and veggies every day keeps us healthy.  But, what about our mental health?

Andy Gibson has started a meme asking bloggers about their five-a-day to staying mentally healthy as part of the Mindapples Five-A-Day Campaign:

Mindapples is a social movement to promote individual self-management of mental wellbeing. The original “5-a-day” campaign encouraged people to take care of their physical health through simple daily activities, and we want to do the same thing for mental health. We aim to create a stigma-free public debate about mental wellbeing, simply by asking everybody the question: “What’s your five-a-day?”

So, what are my top five things to do every day, or every week to stay mentally healthy?

  1. Walking away from the computer: as much as I love the interwebs and all my connections there, life is only complete if I take care of the rest of the world and connections offline.
  2. Talking about subjects other than my field of work: it’s true! I really do have conversations outside of nonprofit organizations and social media :)  It helps to have friends and a partner working in many different fields.
  3. Listening to people who disagree with me: this includes reading books or news or some healthy debate.  I feel like talking with people who have a different view point only helps me better understand their point of view but also helps me better understand my own.
  4. Finding new music: both my husband and I love music, whether it’s old, new, on a CD, last.fm, or a live show.  If you have some recommendations, let me know!
  5. Game nights: as much as we love music, we love game nights with lots of friends.  Anything and everything, from pictionary, scrabble, 25 Words or Less, Carcossonne or Settlers of Katan.  It’s great to use some of the normally un-tapped parts of the brain.

You can share your five-a-day with Mindapples here!

Andy asked that we keep this meme going by tagging five people to share their five-a-day, so look who’s next:

You’re invited, too!  Blog about your five-a-day and share your answers with Mindapples!

Five days left to submit to USAID

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on December 1, 2008
in challenge and mobile
. 1 Comment

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

This is your last week to submit ideas to the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge. Proposals are stacking up in the USAID Project Gallery already!  You can read proposals, star your favorites, leave comments and collaborate with project teams, or submit your own!  Check out the newest projects!

Submissions are due December 5th! Submit your idea today!

From the Project Gallery:

  • ROBO Calls for Health - a developing country proposal
    A Problem in many developing countries is that many people who require medical care for chronic illnesses (high pretension and diabetes) and child health (Pre and post natal) often forget their appointment or to maintain their home treatment plan.   Such situations result in HIV AIDS, loss of ability to work (resulting in economic stress and poverty) premature death including high infant mortality rates. Most of these individuals already have mobile phones through which they can be reached by health care system (village, district, national level).  Through phone calls and/or text messaging patients would be reminded of their appointments and/or home treatments.
  • BizWiz - The Business Helper
    BizWiz - the Business Helper- is a cell phone application that helps small and micro entrepreneurs keep track of their business expenses and sales more easily, streamline financial information, and analyze it on a more regular basis. BizWiz allows the creation of an immediate record of the transaction as it happens, ensuring that expenses and revenues are properly managed.
  • Cell by Cell Community Twitter
    I’ve been involved with community development in urban slums and small rural towns in Brazil for the past fifty years.  There is an assumption by “outsiders” that because of the density of the slums and the circumscribed boundaries of the small rural towns, communication circulates freely and rapidly.  I believe the opposite is true.  Residents of these communities tend to stay close to their residences, sources of food, access to transportation and community services such as schools and health clinics.  They tend to venture out to social gatherings such as church attendance in groups.  They would never think of just walking their dog outside the immediate confins of the street in front of their house or shanty.
  • Global PocketSchool Network (PSGN)
    PSGN is a global open network distributing mlearning-based edutainment solutions to places where there are no schools. This project is to help extremely underserved children develop literacy, numeracy, and life-skills to participate in global information, knowledge, and creative content economy. The philosophy for this is “everyone can learn and contribute to world peace and prosperity.”

Participate in 4 easy steps:

  • Register and/or Login
  • Click on Username
  • Click on “Submit a Project to the Project Gallery” under My Project Idea
  • Select “USAID” from the Prize Tag menu located below Additional Cause Area Tags on the Submission Form

Visit the USAID Development 2.0 Challenge Project Gallery to check out proposals, star your favorites, and comment and collaborate with the project teams or learn more about the Challenge.

NFPTweetup: Nonprofits + Twitter in London

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on November 25, 2008
in community and events
. 0 Comments

Last night was the NFPTweetup - or the Not-for-profit Twitter-users gathering.  Essentially, many great people in nonprofit organizations and serving nonprofit organizations that are connected on Twitter, the micro-blogging tool, wanted to get together offline and really hang out with each other without computers in the way.  There certainly were computers and gadgets floating around the room, but it was mostly just people and drinks and lots of great conversation.

You can see who was there and how it was organized on the NFPTweetup wiki if you are interested in organizing one in your area!

Collaborative Presentations

To add to the educational side of the meetup, Rachel Beer (the woman who wrangled the event together completely) organized a collaborative presentation.  Each of us created a slide about nonprofits using Twitter and sent it to her.  The topic was pretty broad and the slides covered all kinds of information.  Plus, none of us saw the slides, but our own, until the event!  It was great fun to see a new slide pup up and someone surprised to see their work on the wall.  We each took a minute or two to quickly explain our slide and got a lot of discussion going.  Today it was even featured as a Top Presentation of the Day on SlideShare!

NFPtweetup Collaborative Slideshow

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: collaboration socialmedia)

My slide is the one focused on The Womens Museum’s use of Twitter.  Here’s what I did:

A bit of Twitter Metrics:

I visited The Womens Museum’s twitter page online at http://twitter.com/thewomensmuseum

I created some categories and tallied the messages into the applicable categories to measure how balanced the messages were.  Here were the results:

Self Promotion with Links: 6
Self Promotion without Links: 6

Questions with Links: 4
Questions without Links: 3

Fundraising with Links: 1
Fundraising without Links: 0

Affinity Promo with Links: 4
Affinity Promo without Links: 0

Information with Links: 0
Information without Links: 3

I think the numbers are quite balanced!  The messages are true to mission/vision of the museum by including retweets (or forwarding on the messages of others), links to websites other than their own, compliments, transparency, and inclusion.  If you use Twitter for your organization, try measuring the messages with the above categories and see how balanced your messages are!

Congrats to the NFPTweetup for a tons of fun, connections, and a great way to share information!