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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."

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.

Bookmarks for October 22nd

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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!

Net2ThinkTank: Key Questions about Social Media Training

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 21, 2008
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Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

This month’s Net2ThinkTank Question was: What are the key questions nonprofit organizations should ask to help them determine how to prioritize social media training and experimentation as they do their technology and organization-strengthening planning?

Below is a roundup of your answers!

Beth Kanter reminds us to choose a social media strategy before selecting or committing to specific training. She also explains

If your technology plan will have long-term sustainability, you must include many strategies for technology professional development.

  • What is the best way to deliver this social media training so that we build our organizational capacity?
  • Does the delivery match our organization’s culture for learning?
  • Who will be hands-on?  Who needs the overview?
  • How will you take into account different learning styles for individuals and generational differences?
  • How will staff make the time to put what they’ve learned into practice?  Time to experiment?

Beth also includes some tips for social media training.  Read more…

Britt Bravo provides 9 great questions nonprofits can ask to help identify organizational goals, internal resources, level of interest, and measurement mechanisms.  Read more…

d1st4nc3 posted four key questions for nonprofits, including “What are the key factors that determine whether someone will become involved in our cause?  Do they vary according to the social networking site/group page/amount of advertising and promotion/etc.”  Read more…

Emily’s World provide three areas of questions: those nonprofits should ask before adopting social media tools, when putting social media into action, and when evaluating social media usage.  Read more…

Gregory Heller of the CivicActions blog focuses on the main questions nonprofits can ask to identify if social media tools are a good fit.  He reminds us: “It is important to remember that the social media landscape is continually evolving. When developing a social media strategy or deciding whether to train staff on the use of social media remember that the tools are different than the techniques.  Training should focus far more on the techniques of using social media, not the specific tools (websites and services) because they will always be changing.”  Read more…

lnorvig lays out a couple questions for nonprofits, the first of which asks to identify staff already using social media tools.  “Getting involved in social media as an organization should not feel like a chore. Let staff who already have a passion for this take the leadership in ways that work for them.”  Read more…

JYStewart emphasizes the importance of identifying staff members already using social media tools, as well as the inherent opportunity with social media to let your staff ‘play’ and engage in the game of it all.  Read more…

Nancy White brings up a great point to consider:

Why are you doing social media training? I rarely recommend that organizations do pure social media training, but instead weave it into preparation and execution of real work. If you are planning a social action, ask how social media can contribute and build the training into the campaign training. In isolation, this stuff takes up time and attention without the crucial element of context and purpose.

As to experimentation, this is a very different and important activity. Again, it can be woven into existing activities (15 minutes play with Twitter at a staff meeting) and/or it can be something a smaller group takes on. This “scanning the social media” landscape can be informal — the key is the communication of what is learned back to the other members of the team and the organization.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Net2ThinkTank! If you want to participate in the next round, stayed tuned to the Net2 blog for the next Net2ThinkTank question, or join the Facebook group.

What do you think?  Has your organization included social media in technology training?  What worked best?

Flickr photo: Siebuhr

Bookmarks for October 20th from 10:50 to 10:58

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Amy Sample Ward
on October 20, 2008
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These are my links for October 20th from 10:50 to 10:58:

Recommended reading

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Amy Sample Ward
on May 21, 2008
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book stacksI have a very quickly growing list (list = delicious tag) of recommended reading for myself. This is mostly blog posts that came through my RSS reader but I didn’t have time to read fully and then blog about myself. Well, it seems the list keeps growing and I’m not reading and blogging quick enough! So, here are some of them in a condensed version of what I would have liked. :)

  • Organizational blogging case study
    Check out Priscilla Brice-Weller’s blog post from her presentation that offers a great, first-hand description and comparison of two organizations’ approaches to blogging.
  • Online activism
    The Net2 ThinkTank question this month was “Is online activism good for social change?” but I was not back in time from the trip to participate with an answer. Check out the answers that other bloggers contributed by reading Britt’s summary here.
  • Measuring social media effectiveness
    ROI has been a subject of conversation throughout the blogosphere for quite some time now and has even sprouted up as a popular conference session topic. Beth has a great post that includes questions to keep in mind when thinking about ROI for your own projects or for participation in these conversations.
  • Twitter for news
    No, that isn’t supposed to say ‘Twitter in the news.’ Andy Carvin discusses how the NPR member station in Boston is exploring Twitter in their news organization.
  • More Twitter, listening
    On the subject of Twitter, Beth Kanter and Beth Dunn point to an artist who is using Twitter to listen. Just like I have said before, Twitter (and other social media tools) are not one way megaphones, but talking and listening devices.

Phew! Glad I got some of those off my chest! So much reading still to do thanks to all that time without internet access. It may mean more lists and not long posts but I’ll do what I can!

Photo from zimpenfish

Catching up

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Amy Sample Ward
on May 19, 2008
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After over two weeks of wonderful vacation without internet access, it seems there is much I missed!  Here is a quick list of some things to check out.  Let me know what I left off!

  • Yahoo! Green Award
    Yahoo! is looking for innovative “green mashups” that will inspire people to use social technology to help the environment. Yahoo! will review the project submissions included in the “Environment” Cause Area of the Project Gallery on the NetSquared web site. Following the NetSquared Conference (N2Y3), Yahoo! will make their final selection.  For more information go to:  http://www.netsquared.org/mashup/yahoogreenaward
  • More talk about Twitter
    Here is a BusinessWeek article about Why Twitter Matters - Be sure to check out the slide show (link at end of article) for more great commentary.
  • Get with open source
    The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative has a great webinar coming up about choosing and using FOSS (free, open source software).  More information is available on their site; you can register with NTEN.
  • Collaboration gets rewarded
    The $250,000 Collaboration Prize from the Lodestar Foundation will reward collaboration between two or more nonprofit organizations working together on the same issue/project.  “The Prize also seeks to build an information base of effective practice models that can be studied and used by academics, nonprofit leaders and grantmakers to inspire and advance their work.”  You can find out more from their site.
  • Myanmar and GIS
    I love seeing Google Earth and mapping technologies at work, and thanks to Brett for pointing me (in my backlog/overwhelming state of emails and RSS) to Direct Relief International’s layer in Google Earth.  Check it out.

I’m sure there is so much else to add to this list.  Leave a comment with everything I missed!

Link round up

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amysampleward
on April 1, 2008
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Here is a quick list of a few things on my radar, that I think should also be on yours! :)
Mapping - The Wild Apricot blog has a great post featuring three ways nonprofits are using maps.

Marketing - The Nonprofit Communications blog tells you about a five-step strategy to market your nonprofit online.

ROI - Have you checked out Care2’s Frogloop blog’s Social Network ROI calculator before? If you haven’t, you should!

Case Studies - Beth keeps a great wiki and shares case studies of nonprofits using social media.

Fundraising - Peter Deitz has picked up on a disparaging mood about peer-to-peer fundraising, what are your thoughts?

Contests and more

Published
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amysampleward
on March 5, 2008
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Here is a quick run down of things on my radar that I wanted to share with you all:

Today is also the March 501 Tech Club brown bag lunch event here in Portland. I’ll be Twittering and blogging about our discussion with Jeanette Russell of Democracy in Action, as she talks about nonprofits in online activism. Tune in or come in person!

My daily toolbox

Published
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amysampleward
on February 25, 2008
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It’s Monday and it seems there is always a mountain to prepare for at this point in the week. I thought I would take a minute to write out what is in my daily technology toolbox - is it anything like yours?

(photo credit to: Zak Hubbard)
1. Email: I feel like this goes without saying, but, oh well. Email has become a pretty integral part of my daily life, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I have a work account and a gmail account and check both, like, constantly. Despite what some say about not doing so, I use my email inbox as a to-do list or a reminder list. It’s just easier for me to have everything in one place, especially if the “to do” item requires connecting with others or sending out an email.

2. Google apps: I use Google Reader for my RSS feeds. There are so many different options out there to use, I prefer the simplicity of Google Reader and the sharing functionality. I have many more feeds than some and many fewer than others (I think of myself as falling in the median range for feed count) but still have to do a dump sometimes and just say “mark all as read” to get a large folder out of the way. I think managing and reading feeds can really help people more efficiently digest news and information, and stay on top of developments and conversations in their field. I have good days, and not-as-good days :)
I also use Google Calendar and Documents. What can I say, I like to share! I can share my calendar with my husband, I can share documents with coworkers, friends, co-organizers of events, or colleagues. Sharing is nice; it helps make us all better.

3. Blogging: I maintain two blogs (this one, and one at work). This is Wordpress and at work we run Moveable Type. Both open source organizations. Both are very widely used, supported, and have great development communities. I like sharing, as I said above, so blogging is a great way to share information and ideas in another way.

4. Flickr: I use Flickr to search for Creative Commons licensed photos to use for projects and blog posts. I don’t upload photos there much right now, but I’m on there very often searching through everyone else’s!

5. Facebook: Some organizations/groups/events that I participate in use Facebook instead of or before email. Also, conversations take place on group or event pages instead of in email chains. And, still fresh in many of our memories, the Causes challenge that ended last month had me driving many of my contacts to the cause page and to the donation widget. I have used Facebook since 2004 and have enjoyed the evolution of users and purposes it has gone through as a tool and I have gone through as a user and as part of the community. Are you my friend?

6. Twitter: Last, but not least, is Twitter. I use this mini-blogging tool to listen and learn, ask and answer questions, and contribute to a community that is made up of issues including: Portland, News (local and around the world), Nonprofits, NPTech, Technology, Social Media, Start Ups, and just plain interesting. I have touted Twitter before, so you can Portland Net Tuesday.

So, that’s my top 6 list for must-use every day. I do, though, use YouTube (as well as other video sites specifically for nonprofits; check out DoGooderTV and YouTube’s Nonprofit Channel), watch screencasts, listen to podcasts, and much more. Other communities online, like LinkedIn, TakingItGlobal, and It’sGettingHotInHere also quite often find their way into my life. I’m not limited to the 6 areas above, but do go through withdrawals from those and not so much others :)
What’s your list look like?