Monthly Archive for January, 2009

January Net2 Think Tank: Predictions for 2009

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Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

This month’s Net2 Think Tank question was, “What do you think will be the big changes, new technologies, hot applications, or successful campaigns of 2009?” We had a great collection of contributions this month.  Take a look at the posts below—many great conversation starters to get you thinking and buzzing about what 2009 will bring.

Check out the predictions for 2009 from NetSquared community members:

  • Channing’s predictions cover a wide range of areas from cell phones saving lives to our boards going online. There are even predictions for the hottest job skills in 2009. Read more.
  • Joe Edelman explains how mobile phones can fix the broken economy in his mobile manifesto.  Read more.
  • Britt Bravo thinks iPhone apps for nonprofits will be coming soon – and she even pulls together all kinds of examples of what’s out there now.  Read more.
  • Ethan says in 2009 people will begin to collaborate online to build things other than content, but that it’ll just be the beginning.  Read more.
  • John Dukovich predicts that 2009 will be the year of online collaboration for nonprofits, whether it’s with free tools or expensive ones, and warns that nonprofits will need to gauge their needs before choosing the tools.  Read more.

Thanks to everyone who contributed this month! You can share your ideas about technology in 2009 on the NetSquared blog or watch for next month’s Net2 Think Tank to be announced (Feb. 5th).

Published on January 27, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

My Social Actions – is it yours, too?

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Social Actions, the platform that makes it easy for individuals and organizations to share actions across the web, has just launched it’s Ning-powered social network:  My.SocialActions.

The social network side of Social Actions is an exciting venture – it’s a way to make actions more personal and track the actions your participate in or start.  It’s built on Ning, so it has some features you’re probably familiar with, too.

Check it out on My.SocialActions.com

Peter Deitz, the founder of SA, has shared his 10 Ways to Make a Difference on Social Actions – a guide to using SA to make a difference.  The 10 ways you can make a difference include:

  • Find actions
  • Share actions
  • Reflect on the actions you’re taking
  • Share your wisdom with others
  • Get advice
  • Customize your profile
  • Connect with like-minded people
  • Post events
  • Invite your friends
  • Keep it real

Check out Peter’s Guide to using Social Actions – or jump over to My.SocialActions and start making a difference!

Published on January 22, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Building Blocks of Social Media – Webinar slides and notes

Published in events, rss, socialmedia and storytelling. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Today was the first webinar in the Storytelling & Social Media series from NTEN and TechSoup Global.  I’m happy to say that I had the great honor of serving as the speaker for the webinar and had a ton of fun.  It’s always a little weird to talk over the phone and not be able to hear or see those you are presenting to, but everyone was really great with comments and questions and responding online so I knew I wasn’t talking to myself!

If you want to check out the recording of the session or register for webinars that are still to come, check out the full line up.

Today’s webinar focused on the building blocks of social meda; things like tagging, RSS and how to get started finding the conversations taking place online.  Here’s my slide deck:

Social Media Building Blocks

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: nonprofit nptech)

The questions folks asked at the end were terrific!  Some of them, along with my answers, include:

  • How much time a day do you spend reading (RSS feeds)? I used to be quite worried about reading everything that came into my reader.  Until I finally “got it.”  Even if you don’t read the post that comes in your RSS Reader, that content isn’t lost and the knowledge is still at your footsteps.  You can search within your reader and find content that came through that you might be looking for, even if you didn’t read it the first time.
  • How do you separate personal and professional contacts or content online? I share a lot of information online, but if it is something I really want to be personal, I take advantage of the settings in different applications and mark things as private or hidden.  Most all of the tools you’ll use online allow for you to show or hide different content for different users or groups.
  • What’s the difference between Netvibes and Google Reader? Netvibes is a lot like an iGoogle home page and is designed to have many different widgets or boxes that are customizable.  You may have a weather widget next to an RSS feed of your organization’s blog, a calendar widget and a feed of Google Alerts, and so on.  Google Reader is designed to organize your feeds and let you share them with your contacts/the world – without having boxes and widgets.  I like to use Google Reader most of the time, but keep my Netvibes up-to-date for times when I want to narrow in on certain topics because of the way you can view the feeds.  You can see screen shots of both of these in the slide show above.
  • How do you create a tag? If you are using Delicious, for example, you don’t need to create a list of tags or a taxonomy you have to stick to before you actually start saving bookmarks.  You can create a new tag every time you save something if you want to.  When you save the bookmark, you add the tags you want associated with it, and those can be new or ones you’ve used before.  That’s it; once you hit save that tag is created.

There were other questions and some good conversations.  If you were on the call and had a question that didn’t get answered feel free to ask it here in the comments or you can check out the Emerging Technologies forum in TechSoup to join the conversation.

Upcoming events in the series include podcasting, video creation, creating social buzz, and social media ROI.  Check them out and register here!

Download the recording of today’s webinar on Social Media Building Blocks.

Thanks to all those on the webinar today! It was a lot of fun talking with you and I’m happy to keep answering questions and discuss how we can all use social media better to more effectively and efficiently change the world for the better!

Published on January 21, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 7 Comments

MLK Day: Social Media + Social Change

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I’m really excited, every day, by the new and successful stories I hear about nonprofit organizations reaching out to the global community via the Internet and social media tools to help spread their messages, more effectively and efficiently provide their services, find new supporters and donors while empowering others to help support and fundraise on their behalf.  The web is an incredible place to work and a fascinating thing to watch grow.

But, what’s more exciting than that?  Watching individuals leverage the same tools as corporate giants and make a positive change on the world.

That’s the best part of social media: it is an equalizer of sorts.  It provides much the same opportunities to everyone, whether you are that corporate giant or a teenage with an idea.  No matter who you are or where you live (obviously, granted you have Internet access), you can use the same tools as anyone else to harness the collective energy of others around the world who hear your call, believe in your missing, and think you’ve got a pretty great idea about helping out.

Why Social Media for Social Change?

Social change projects may take the shape of a traditional or recognized nonprofit organization or an individual with an idea, a venture capitalist or a marketer, a team of developers or a college kid who wants to make an impact.  These social change projects rely on communities coming together to succeed (whether they are identified by a shared geography, issue, cause, or personal characteristic) in making a real difference in our world. Social media tools allow people to come together online in new ways and across barriers.  The tools are only useful, engaging, and successful when used as part of a community (how fun is it to use Facebook without any friends?). Thus, tools that create community are great for communities making change.

What’s the Next Step?

Many organizations are already taking the next step to collaborate with individuals online.  Now that we all have the power to get engaged, create communities, collaborate on projects, participate in challenges and all the other opportunities for igniting innovation online, organizations are also able to tap some of those individuals in new ways.  Namely, providing individuals who are actively promoting similar services or issues (or have already started championing the organization on their own) with what they need (be it logos and messages, or just feedback and encouragement) to keep doing what they are already doing.

More and more opportunities appear every day for individuals to really become champions for organizations and causes in a dynamic way.  As organizations become more open to using and then actually create social media strategies, it’s important that they highlight these individuals, support them, and thank them(!) for their passions and contributions.

A volunteer who comes to the office every Friday to help with general operating support is something most organizaitons can understand and have probably experienced.  It’s a new world to imagine a volunteer who, usually without even contacting the organization, spends time every week telling people about your work, why they should care, and how they can help.  Tapping that passion and energy is important and providing those volunteers with the simple supports they need to more effectively support the organization is invaluable.

So…What’s this have to do with MLK Day?

I joined the cause to Answer Obama’s Call to Renew America Together.  I know there are lots of excellent things taking place back in Portland today, but it’s not a holiday over here in London.  It was a Monday like any other, really: conference calls, emails, deadlines, etc.  So, I felt like I was disconnected. Today was not day I wanted to be disconnected.

So, I started thinking about how much power all of us have individually, as well as nonprofits and social enterprises, thanks to the social web.  We are making a difference in the world.  We even saw the man who will be signed in tomorrow as President of the United States harness the passion and power of individuals online to win his office.  With social media, we can work together on the social change we seek.

Yes We Can.

Published on January 19, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from January 14th through January 15th

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These are my links for January 14th through January 15th:

  • Justgiving now accepts PayPal – "As of today, anyone visiting the Justgiving website can now use PayPal, to make a donation. Adding PayPal, the most popular online payment service, has been a frequent request from our users for some time, so we’re really pleased to have integrated it into our donation process and become the only online fundraising platform in the UK to do so."
  • Forrester Wave Report: The Leaders in Community Platforms for Marketer – Community Platforms reviewed on the Forrester Research blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals.
  • New Marketing Summit 2008 – Events in San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, USA & Milan, Italy.
  • Care2 Adds Two Experts to Nonprofit Services Team – Taking the reins as blogger-in-chief of Care2’s "Frogloop" website (www.frogloop.com) for nonprofit professionals is Allyson Kapin, founder and principal of consulting firm Rad Campaign and a blog columnist for Fast Company Magazine. Allyson will continue to lead her firm, while devoting her blogging energy and savvy to building Frogloop into an even more powerful resource for nonprofit marketing and fundraising professionals to advance their causes.
  • Could This Be Your All-in-One Social Network? – DiSO is the idea that a dashboard could serve as your all-in-one social media management space. Do what you do in different networks/platforms but all from one centralized space. "What do you think? Would you like a dashboard like this? What else would you like in it? Speak up now, these services could be a big part of your experience on the web soon and they are being planned and built as we speak."
Published on January 15, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Convio puts the money where their mouth is for 09NTC

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As Jordan Viator explains on the Connection Café blog:

It’s no surprise that every other blog post you read these days talks about how to raise money, stretch funds and build supporters in the current economic climate. In the nonprofit technology community, I’ve heard stories of cut backs on “nice to have” items and expenses such as travel and training so that organizations can focus on their most critical goals first and cut back on what they deem not to be completely necessary.

Rather than list off the top things you can do to raise money and spread your money right now, we decided to instead put our money where our mouth is – quite literally – and make a concerted effort to help the entire nptech community by raising money online for scholarships to none other than the 2009 NTC Conference in San Francisco. That’s right. We’re raising money, and matching funds up to $10,000, to help make sure we get as many great, deserving people to this year’s conference as possible. (An event, I might add, that might be seen as one of those “nice to haves” in your budget meetings but is, of course, completely important to anyone working in nonprofit technology! Just take a glimpse at the excitement Beth Kanter and Amy Sample Ward are already buzzing about around this year’s NTC…)

But like Holly mentioned on the NTEN blog, we’re going to need your help to do it and have a few ways you might be able to lend a helping hand:

1. Give to the Scholarship Fund.  NTEN will be able to waive registration fees for up to 57 attendees with scholarships this year.  Every dollar of your gift will be matched by Convio, up to $10,000.
2. Donate Airline Miles.  Airfare can be one of the pricier parts of getting to the NTC.  If you have airline miles you’re willing to share, NTEN will help you find a scholarship recipient who needs them.
3. Spread the Word.   Put this great little widget made by NTEN to good use!  Just click the “Share” button to add it to your site, blog, Facebook or MySpace profile (most of our readers work in nptech so put your creative social media knowledge to use and share it throughout your many networks).

If you would like to receive a scholarship or airline miles, simply contact the folks at NTEN, and they’ll get back to you sometime after February 28.

A major hat tip to Beth for the fabulous and creative idea of coming together as a community and helping one another. I’m excited to see everyone pay it forward to help the overall community, and I hope to see you ALL at NTC this year!

Check out the widget! You can add this to your posts or site as well:

I am really looking forward to the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference, as I’ve explained before, and this is a perfect example of why:  the community.  The nonprofit tech community is one that supports itself, its members, and the sector.  Check out the Day of Service for more information about how you can support the community as part of the conference.

See you in San Francisco in May!

Published on January 15, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Great reads from January 12th through January 14th

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These are my links for January 12th through January 14th:

  • Network For Good – The audience for this 45-page guide is small nonprofits who need help launching a great online fundraising or marketing campaign in quick order. The guide features 12 real-life strategies organizations are using right now to succeed during the downturn, in addition to tons of great tactical advice, creative samples and other resources.
  • IssueLab: CloseUp – IssueLab's End of the Year Lists, including the most popular research titles on IssueLab, are based on more than 96,000 downloads in just the past 11 months. Check it out at http://www.issuelab.org/closeup
  • WorldChanging – the Book! – Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century is a groundbreaking compendium of the most innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future.
  • The Power of Us: Re-Imagine Media | Changemakers – We Media and Ashoka have teamed up to present the We Media Changemakers $50,000 Challenge, “The Power of Us,” which aims to find and help launch the best new ideas for inspiring a better world through media and technology. Nominations and entries can be received until January 21, 2009, so act fast!
  • Add Ask Your Lawmaker to Your Site | Ask Your Lawmaker – Check out the Ask Your Lawmaker widget from Capital News Connection, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC. As <a href="http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2009/1/8/4050172.html" target="_blank">Deborah Elizabeth Finn</a> explains, "constituents from any district in the U.S. can pose questions to their senators and representatives by posting them to the web site, and then anyone who is interested in legislation and policy can go to the site and vote for the questions that he or she deems most critical." I'm really excited to see how this widget gets used by nonprofits across the US, or replicated elsewhere.
Published on January 14, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

New SSIR Post: Will 2009 Bring Social Learning Spaces to Life?

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I have a new post up on the Standford Social Innovation Review Opinion blog and hope you’ll check it out!

When I talk with organizations about how they are using social media tools to engage online, whether they’ve already started or not, I find that the most common approach is to set up that Facebook group, add a blog to the website, or even set up a wiki for an event.  But that’s it.  The work, the thinking, the strategy building, and even the engaging stops mostly after the set-up.

Obviously, that’s not the best route to take, but I think groups know that, even if they make the mistake.  We all know from offline life experience that you don’t just schedule a meeting, but you have to show up and contribute for the meeting to be successful; you probably also have action items that come out of the meeting that people work on individually and that also draw them back together for another meeting.  Why is this our pattern?  Because we’ve learned that by creating these kinds of spaces, we can get our work done together.  Which leads me back to the online communities.

We don’t want to just create a blog and ‘walk away,’ so to speak (schedule a meeting and not show up, or have nothing to say).  We want to create a social learning space or a social media space.  This means that we have established a space online where we want to learn, exchange, collaborate, and really engage with our community.  Organizations need to bring their social media tools together so that the interweaving of conversations and extended networks can develop a space where the organization is able to effectively and efficiently collaborate with the community while members of the community can collaborate with each other.  It’s about using our social media tools in a way that goes beyond listening, goes beyond conversation.

Social media spaces can be supported and grown on and offline.  If your organization has an offline, real world event for volunteers, be sure to have digital cameras and video cameras available if possible for people to capture ideas and take-aways from conversations.  David Wilcox, the Social Reporter, discusses how groups can integrate social media tools in offline learning events to successfully reinforce this idea of creating a space.  I think it’s critical that we begin letting go of our construct that social media tools are and should remain separate, and that the work stops after we’ve set up the account or created a loudspeaker.  This mind-shift is crucial: creating social media spaces is the only way for organizations to connect their work online, connect their communities online, and the next step forward in actively collaborating within with community.

2009 will, undoubtedly, bring us more to fill the social media bucket, new places to explore, tools to try, and things to consider.  In 2009, I’d like to see groups recognizing the power of social media tools to create sustainable social learning spaces.  Instead of using social media to send out messages to their audience, organizations will recognize and harness the power of social media to collaborate with their communities.

For the full post, visit the SSIR blog here.

Published on January 12, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Women in Technology: 2 Ways you CAN get Involved!

Published in events and issues. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I’m a woman, and I work in technology.  I LOVE helping other women feel empowered to learn, share, and succeed in the technology sector, too.  Here are two terrific ways that you can get involved (even if you aren’t lucky enough to be a woman!).  Please do share these with your friends and colleagues because your invitation to participate can really make a difference in the lives of women all around you.

Women Who Tech TeleSummit: April 2009

The second annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit (which will take place in April 2009) is looking for panel suggestions. Have an idea for a fabulous virtual workshop that every woman working in online communications or technology must participate in? Think you or one of your colleagues would be a great panelist or moderator? We want to hear about it. Submit your panel ideas at here.
Panel submissions are due Feb. 7th.

While the 2008 Women Who Tech TeleSummit was a smashing success with over 650 women including Arianna Huffington and Joan Blades defying the stereotype that the tech world belongs to pocket-protector toting guys hooked on sci-fi and video games, 2009 will be even better. Women Who Tech brings together talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. We provide a supportive network for the vibrant and thriving community of women in technology professions by giving women an open platform to share their talents, experiences, and insights.

For more info check out http://www.womenwhotech.com. You can also follow WWT on Twitter and join the Women Who Tech Facebook group.

Sign up on the website, or join the Facebook group to be sure you get details about the event in April.

Ada Lovelace Day: March 24, 2009

I signed the Ada Lovelace Day pledge on Pledgebank, will you?

Who’s Ada Lovelace and what’s this day all about?

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.

We will gather as many of the posts together on the day as we can, and we’ll let you know exactly how we’re going to do that nearer the time. For ongoing updates about Ada Lovelace day, please follow us on Twitter, join our mailing list or see our blog.

http://findingada.com/
http://twitter.com/FindingAda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada

Who was Ada?
Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

You can learn about Ada Lovelace Day, how it got started, and sign on to the pledge here.

Published on January 9, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments

Great reads from January 8th

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These are some links I wanted to share from January 8th. Find me on Delicious for more!

Published on January 8, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments