To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Co-operate App | Co-operatives UK – Co-operate is the first mobile application I've seen focused on enabling people to find co-operatives for all their needs, wherever they are (based in the UK). "We are encouraging everyone with a passion for co-operative and ethical business across the country to download the app and push it up the listings. Together we can bring the co-operative economy, during the International Year of Co-operatives, to a wider audience." I'll be keeping my eye on it to see how people use it and how it evolves over time. Great idea!
• The Feast Presents : The World’s Fare – "For four years, The Feast has gathered remarkable people bringing their talents to the table to make the world work better. In addition to rethinking our annual conference, we’re opening up the dialogue this year to move people to action like never before. Join in on The World's Fare and host a dinner for six or more friends at 7pm local time on October 5, 2012 (last day of the Conference). Break bread and by the end of your Feast, collectively decide on one thing to collaborate on that’ll improve the world. We’ll compile all of the ideas online, and akin to the original World’s Fair, it'll all be capped off with a giant celebration of innovation at a public pavilion in NYC the next day."
• A Meet & Greet with Your Favorite Social Archetypes [Infographic] | NetWitsThinkTank.com – "The question today is not whether you should use social media (the 901 million Facebook users answered that for us), but how you should use social media to engage with your supporters, advance your mission and make your fundraising efforts more successful. The answer to the question lies in understanding your  nonprofit social media supporters and identifying which ones are the most well-connected, influential, and, in a word, social. It’s a tricky task, but someone has to do it!"
• The Internet has become a spontaneous, grassroots fundraising tool – Small Act – "Philanthropy has turned on its ear. Where previously people mainly donated to reputable charities who sent them donation requests, or in response to a disaster, now people are spontaneously giving to ad-hoc fundraisers online. Why is this happening? People give because they have an emotional response to a story, and because they’re asked to give."
• Facebook Reporting Guide Shows How Site Is Policed (INFOGRAPHIC) – "Facebook Inc offered a rare peek on Tuesday at one facet of the elaborate system it uses to police its 900 million-user social network, as it attempts to keep it free of content it deems offensive, illegal or just plain inappropriate. The company said it employs "hundreds" of staffers in several offices around the world to handle the millions of user reports it receives every week about everything from spam to threats of violence. A detailed, and somewhat confusing, chart published by Facebook on its website on Tuesday depicts how reports of various infractions are routed through the company and lays out all the potential outcomes, which can range from an account being disabled to Facebook alerting law enforcement."

Location: San Francisco, CA

Topic: Designing Online Engagement to Collaborate with Your Community

Description: You can design online engagement to unleash your evangelists. In this workshop, we’ll focus on all aspects of designing high-value, engaging, and participatory content that creates a partnership with your fans. A true evangelist is moved to create, is a seamless co-creator with your organization, and motivated spreader of content. Successful organizations intentionally design and construct multiple online channels that enable access for all fans and develop paths for relationship reciprocity and trust, fostering true evangelists.

In this session, we will discuss how co-creation unleashes online evangelists and strengthens cause centric communities, and help you to do that as well. Specifically, we will reveal the latest research about designing online engagement, highlight the connection between the theory of relationship ties and online evangelism, and offer examples of organizations with successful co-creation strategies. Towards the end of this workshop, we’ll work together to design a co-creation strategy to engage and motivate your online community and evangelists.

Related Links:

• 2012 NTC
• Session information
• Presentation slides

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Vivanista Hosts Question Session « Vivanista | Living Well. Doing Good. – "Have you ever wanted to ask a fundraising expert a question you just can’t get your arms around? Like ‘how many times can I invite my Facebook friends to a fundraising event before it’s considered spam?’ Or ‘do I really need spend the money for a back-up venue if my outdoor event falls on a date that it rarely rains?’ Well, now’s your chance! Starting  August 5th Layne Gray, Vivanista Founder, is going to answer 3 questions per week – submitted by you, and reply directly via video response. Ask her anything (it should probably relate in some way to fundraising or Vivanista, although she’ll most likely answer any questions about pugs whether you ask her or not). If she can’t answer it she’ll find an expert who can!"
• Facebook gets into texting game with Facebook Messenger — Tech News and Analysis – "Facebook has already started to supplant traditional email providers as a dominant way that people communicate online. And now the social networking giant is poised to delve even deeper into users’ messaging activity with a new mobile app with SMS-like functionality."
• KnowHow’s impact — Knowhow Nonprofit – Here's a great example of how you can reinvent the way your organization reports it's impact! And it doesn't have to cost a ton: this video is made with basic tools that are free to use. Have you made a video like this? Would love to see your other examples of annual reports that break the mold!
• Wikipedia Rolling Out Article Rating System – What Do You Think? – "Love it or hate it, you can't say Wikipedia is slow to innovate. The giant encyclopedia site announced this weekend that it will now roll-out site-wide an article rating system that allows page visitors to rate an entry on a scale of 1 to 5 on trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and quality of writing. Article raters have the option of self-identifying as a subject matter expert for whatever article they rate."
• The Social Website: Integrating Social Media into Website Design and Function | NTEN – "If you're considering revamping your website to include social elements like the Facebook Like button, streaming from YouTube, or adding information from a social site through its API, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. There are many ways to “get social,” and so many reasons for doing so. Primarily, it's about creating a fundamentally engaging experience for the website visitor that brings them closer to your organization."

How this works:

This week, there will be 3 (yes, 3!) blog posts asking for your feedback, each with a specific topic and options. Hopefully that means it’s really easy to weigh in and you’ll give lots of feedback After all, this process is designed to make it easy for you to get even more of what you want from me!

Redesign topic #1: The Content You Want

For today’s topic, I want to talk about the kind of content that is interesting to you and keeps you coming back for more. Figuring that piece out means that Matt and I will be able to highlight content for you, design the site to feature what you’re after, and even help me write more of the interesting stuff! There are two focus areas below and some options for answers – please note there’s an “other” listed for both as I’m sure there are things I haven’t thought to include and hope you’ll feel open to listing them!

Focus: What is the content you come here for most?

• blog posts and conversations
• presentations or speaker slides/notes
• case studies or examples
• other resources (please describe)

Focus: What elements would make content easiest to find?

• search for tags or categories
• search for titles or conferences
• search for organization names or case study topics
• other (please describe)

Please share your responses in the comments – that way others can respond/reply to your feedback as well as leave their own. Matt and I will be both be responding, asking questions, and participating as well! Please share your ideas and feedback!

Why

This website has been a great place for me to post ideas and share lessons learned, store content from presentations, and share resources. But, it was always something I had as the last bullet on the to-do list to update the CSS, to change the theme, generally “make it better.” As much as I have enjoyed all that we have been able to do together in this space, I’m much more excited about what we could do together in a more organized, easy to use space.

Right now, this blog could really be categorized as a blog. But I’d like it to be seen for what it is: there are tons of presentation resources (slides, notes, videos, etc.), books/publications, and other resources. But what’s really important to me, is that there are A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT of conversations here: there are around 500 posts and over 6,700 comments! I want to ensure that what you all are saying gets a lot more visibility.

Who

As I’ve been meaning to revamp the site for a couple years now, I knew that getting to done on this project would take more than myself! I put out on Twitter that I was looking for someone to help me redesign the site and connected with Matt Chevy:

I’m excited to be working with Amy and it’s clear that she’s established an outstanding community here. When she initially mentioned to me that she wanted to involve all of YOU in this process, I immediately bought in. In the world of online marketing and Social Media we talk about engagement and community involvement, and we hope to really emphasize this by encouraging and requesting your thoughts, suggestions and feedback from beginning to end. I couldn’t be more excited to get started; I’m thrilled to have connected with Amy, and I look forward to interacting with all of you!

Matt’s going to be doing the heavy lifting on the back end. But I can’t do a redesign without you, the readers!

How

So, how’s this open process going to work? Well, first of all, I’d love to hear what is most useful or valuable to you, why you keep reading and commenting, what you wish there was more of (or less of!) and any other feedback you have about doing a redesign of this site.

Next week, I’m going to be asking for lots of feedback and ideas in a series of posts. Today’s post is mostly an announcement and a heads up; next week there will be three posts asking for your ideas and preferences. That information will help Matt and I ensure that the redesign delivers on just what you want, need, and already like!

I’m really excited to update and upgrade this space and so thrilled to be working with a designer willing to work with me in this collaborative approach, keeping all of you in the process! Really hope you’ll join me next week to share your ideas.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment here or email me any time.

—–

More about Matt:

Matt Cheuvront is the founder of MATTCHEVY – a Chicago-based online marketing consultancy and web design firm. With a background in advertising, marketing, e-commerce, and PR, Matt has a passion for the online medium and works with small businesses, non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs, and bloggers in improving and establishing their overall web presence.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• YouTube Goes Fully Social And Challenges Facebook | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging."
• Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project – "Last week a reporter from the New York Times read our recent Government Online report and emailed me with a question—how did I explain the disparity between African-Americans' and Hispanics' views of the importance of government social media versus whites? Did I think it had anything to do with minorities being more trusting of the government during the Obama era? Since my reply got pared down due to space constraints, I’m reproducing my response to his query in full below."
• The new JustGiving Facebook app is here « JustGiving blog – JustGiving has a new facebook application out! It launches alongside the current JustGiving application for Facebook which was launched in 2007, which has seen over a half million users – and over 139,000 active in the past month – and over 9500 fans. The JustGiving team is always great about sharing stories, lessons, and insights – so I'll be watching to see how this new tool goes!
• Wild Apricot Blog : Make Your Own Infographic – "Infographics are to data what storytelling is to an annual report: a more engaging way to help bring attention and understanding to your nonprofit’s cause. Yesterday we looked at an interesting infographic that suggested a new way to view your volunteers. Today, let’s look at infographics in general – and resources to help your nonprofit get started on making your own."
• Minnesota Open Idea: Crowdsourcing Contest For Social Change Done Right | Beth’s Blog – "The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works. It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem. In this interview, Jennifer Ford Reedy, VP for Strategy and Knowledge Management, at the Minnesota Community Foundation shares the how they designed this online social good contest for success."

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.

Jeff’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

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.