Archive for the 'events' CategoryPage 3 of 5

Knight News Challenge is back with meetups!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on October 6, 2008
in events, fundraising and workblog
. 2 Comments

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

knight news challenge logoThe Knight News Challenge is giving away around $5 million in 2009 for the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs!

What fits the challenge?

Knight wants to hear your ideas for improving local online news, growing community engagement, integrating Web 2.0 tools with local neighborhoods, developing publishing platforms and standards that support local conversations or innovatations for visualizing, experience or interacting with information. Share your ideas and you can win the funding for your project and support within a vibrant community of media, tech and commnity-oriented people who all want to improve the wold.

Who should apply?

Applications for the 2008-09 cycle will be taken starting September 2, 2008 and close on November 1, 2008. For more information, visit the Knight News Challenge site. Here some easy rules for application in the 2008-09 Knight News Challenge:

  1. Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base.
  2. Serve the public interest.
  3. Benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

You can even get support for your application before you submit! The brand-new News Challenge Garage is a site where prospective applicants can talk with mentors and peers, check out previous winners’ applications and improve applications before the final submission.

Connect in person!

Knight is hosting meetups around the country to connect with interested participants in person, to share ideas, ask questions, and start brainstorming. Here are some upcoming events:

An RSVP is required for all events; contact Susan Mernit for more information.

For more information, visit the Knight News Challenge site.

Net Tuesday London in the works!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on October 3, 2008
in community and events
. 1 Comment

As most of you know, I’m now located in London, UK and the community builder at NetSquared.  I’m really excited to be here and to connect with the nonprofit technology community on the ground in the UK.

As part of my offline community building for NetSquared here, I’m laying the ground work for the first Net Tuesday London!  I’m hoping we can hold our first monthly event this November, and want it to really be something that fills a niche, connects nptechers, technologists, consultants, nonprofits and social changemakers.

If you are here in London or the UK, below is a link to a survey to help gauge what your goals and preferences are for Net Tuesday London.  I’d really love to hear your thoughts, and to see you there in November!

Thanks so much for taking the time to fill out the short survey; it should only take 5 minutes or so.

Here’s the survey!

Let me know if you have any questions about NetSquared, Net Tuesdays, the survey or anything else!

Online Engagement: London Fundraising Summit

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on September 25, 2008
in events and fundraising
. 0 Comments

Today was the second day of the London Fundraising Summit from the Center for Nonprofit Success.  I presented with Jonathan Waddingham, the Charity Champion at JustGiving.org, about online engagement and fundraising.  It was a three-hour session and we could have gone all day!  Great attendees, conversations, and learning taking place.

Jonathan’s presentation focused on some great examples of nonprofits using a range of social media tools.  My presentation concentrated on the why and how side of things, including some examples from the e-Nonprofit Benchmarks report.  You can see Jonathan’s slides here.  After our presentations, we had a few rounds of small group activities with short scenarios and prompts calling on the new online engagement and fundraising ideas Jonathan and I talked about.  The groups did an excellent job creating strategies for engaging their fake organizations’ communities.  Thanks so much to everyone who was there!

Here is my presentation:

Lfs Online Fundraising Preso Asw

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: engagement fundraising)

Here is the PDF version with all my speaker notes:

LFS Online Fundraising PDF Asw
View SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: engagement fundraising)

My main points included:

Conversations = Conversions

  • shouting rarely works!
  • two way conversation empowers your constituents and the larger community to:
    - give you feedback when things are bad
    - give you praise when they are happy
    - ask questions
    - get involved
  • two way conversations also turn your staff into real people.
  • if a conversation is taking place online and you aren’t there to hear it, does it still happen?  YES!
  • by putting yourself and your organization online, you can be part of the conversation that is already taking place.

Management = Messages

  • people are all different, even if they are all interested in your organization.  what they want to do for you, how they want to hear from you, what they plan to say about you and even how they want to support you.
  • comprehensive donor/volunteer/constituent management software will let you track, trace, separate
    and sort your members.
  • better messages means more messages, but not drastically different.  just enough so that your online
    activists have something they can do when they get an email from you, your donors can donate, your
    supporters can spread the word, and your lurkers can keep hanging on.

Testing

  • testing can be small scale to large scale - really just depends on your budget, your time, and your staff capacity.
  • start small and in-house and see how much you can learn right away
  • try changing simple things with small groups: subject lines, images, calls to action, etc.

If you were at the session today, what questions did you leave with?  What conversations helped you the most?

NetSquared & Sun Microsystems in Brazil!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on September 22, 2008
in events
. 0 Comments

Do you have friends at nonprofits in Brazil who might benefit from having hands-on techies help them address technology needs?

The short story:
NetSquared.org and Sun Microsystems are organizing developers to kick-off a project designed to help NGO’s harness the power of open source and web-based technologies to address the social issues they’re working on.

We need help from people with experience at the intersection of tech and civil society beyond the U.S. in order to mobilize Brazilian NGO’s, University Computing Clubs, and others to participate at this October 1, 2008 event, Collaborating for Change.

Next steps:
Know of organizations, friends, or colleagues who would be interested in participating?  Here is a quick message you can send to them:

My friends at NetSquared.org (a technology nonprofit based in SF, CA) are working on a project that leverages the technical expertise of University developers on behalf of Sao Paolo-area NGO’s working on social-benefit Projects.

I’m writing today to invite your participation. Find all of the details below!

Here’s the easy next steps:
1. Register at https://events-at-sun.com/collaborate/register.php
2. Please let NetSquared know how it goes! (http://netsquared.org or net2@netsquared.org)

Questions about this event?
https://events-at-sun.com/collaborate/english/index.php

You can contact collaborate_saopaulo@sun.com with additional questions.

Thanks!

I appreciate your help and outreach - we are so excited to offer such great, on the ground expertise and assistance for nonprofits in Sao Paulo.  Check out where we are headed next!

News and updates from Net2 and London

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on September 18, 2008
in community, events and workblog
. 1 Comment

I’ve made it!  We are safely in London, UK, now and staying with friends of friends who we had never met before and are much too hospitable.  The pieces of life for finding housing, food, friends, and fun are all falling into place so far, and we’ve been here less than a week!  Now, to find reliable and consistent internet!

Here are some great news bites I wanted to let everyone know about, straight from my blog on the NetSquared site:

Blog Action Day 08: Focusing on poverty

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on August 28, 2008
in community and events
. 2 Comments

I plan to participate on October 15th in the Blog Action Day 2008 and hope that you will, too!

"Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion."

Blogging, as I have talked about many times in the past, is really about conversations and I think the idea behind Blog Action Day is the perfect example of that.  By encouraging as many people to focus on the same issue for one day we can ignite ideas, conversations, and even actions to help fight poverty and the issues related to it.

I’m excited to participate and hope to blog about some great examples of social media use by poverty-focused organizations as well as the missions and work of those groups.  So, join me for Blog Action Day this year and help further the reach of the conversation!

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?

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!

Twebinar, twhat?

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on June 26, 2008
in events and socialmedia
. 2 Comments

This morning I participated in the first Twebinar from Radian6.  A Twebinar is a webinar as you may have experienced before with a shared screen for slide show or video, a common question box, a video feed for the presenter, etc. + a live back channel on Twitter.  It was the first in a series from the social media team; this one focusing on game changing uses of social media by companies.

The speakers focused on large for-profit companies’ examples but that doesn’t mean the lessons aren’t applicable to nonprofits as well.  Here are some take-aways and thoughts I jotted down while listening in to both the videos and Twitter chatter.

  • Social media has an equalizing effect:  It can make large organizations seem small (personal) while making small organizations seem big (participating in the conversation).
  • Often, with certain social media tools like podcasts especially, you are able to put your information and messages in front of those who are looking for it/want it, without having to know where they are—opposed to a bulk mailing, for instance, where much of the cost is wasted in sending to many people who aren’t interested.
  • Simply adopting a social media tool or a social media strategy isn’t game changing, but the community around your organization or service can be.  If the constituency is already talking, interested, or its desires for connectivity are met with your tools then it can more easily be a successful switch.
  • Many organizations hear talk about using social media tools and think, “why?” The reason is simple: The conversation about your organization, your geographic area, your issue or project arena or policy effecting any of those things IS taking place, and it would only benefit you and your community to be part of that conversation.
  • It’s okay to give away your knowledge—actually, the more knowledge, lessons learned, and ideas you give away to your community, the more you establish your organization as a leader and an expert in the field (thus gaining more supporters, more donors, and more people engaged around your issue).

(You can read the responses from participants using the hashtag (#tweb) or title by look at this summmize.com page.)

I hope to expand on some of my thoughts from the Twebinar soon as well.  If you want to check it out and register for an upcoming Twebinar, check out the Radian6 Twebinar website.

What kind of questions arise for your organization when considering social media options?

Networking for Success: Beth’s turn!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on June 23, 2008
in community and events
. 1 Comment

A couple weeks ago, I had a chance to mentor for the Networking for Success project which helps teach African women about web 2.0 tools and how they can utilize the Internet in their work.  It is a great opportunity to facilitate learning using the very tools they are learning about!

This week is Beth Kanter’s turn as mentor with the topic of Effective Networking Online.  You can check out her post and follow along during her week.

Beth is a terrific mentor for the topic and the project.  Her first post on the Networking for Success blog for this week is a great online networking primer for anyone to refer to.  I recommend you check it out and stay tuned this week as the participating women learn more and engage via the blog with their own thoughts, questions, and ideas.

Have you ever participated in a learning process which required you to utilize the very skills you were learning?