I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of March 23rd). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.
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).
- New Report: 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study | NTEN – "A high unsubscribe rate is bad, right? Not necessarily, according to the 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, just released at the 2011 NTC by M+R and NTEN. As it turns out, a high unsubscribe rate correlates directly with high fundraising results. People unsubscribe because they read your message and decide your cause isn't interesting to them; people donate because they read your message and decide that it is. That's just one of the fascinating drops of knowledge in the "2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study"."
- Twitter Blog: #numbers – "Five years ago this week, a small team of people started working on a prototype of the service that we now know as Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet. Today, on every measure of growth and engagement, Twitter is growing at a record pace. Here are some numbers…" Some very interesting numbers from Twitter – what are you most surprised about? When did you join Twitter, or what has kept you from joining? Would love to hear your thoughts!
- A Global Conversation: Free Agents and Nonprofits in a Networked World | Community Organizer 2.0 – "I am attending the South By Southwest Interactive panel discussion entitled “A Global Conversation: Free Agents and Nonprofits in a Networked World.” Beth Kanter of Zoetica Media is the moderator, along with fellow panelists Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Mark Horvath of Invisible People and Jessica Dheere, of Social Media Exchange Beirut in Lebanon. During the session, I captured the presentations and audience Q & A. This blog post is merely a recording of the session, with highlights of the key points. On an editorial note – the session surfaced some incredible pearls of wisdom from both panelists and audience members about how to work with free agents and nonprofits, and those are underlined."
- Amazing use of QR Codes by NYC’s Central Park – "I’ve been writing about and using QR codes quite a bit of late. I think the potential of this technology is staggering and we’ve only begun to imagine what is possible. Take a look at what New York City’s Central Park did last Arbor Day and begin to ask yourself… how could QR codes serve my customers, my employees and my business’ growth. I suspect you’ll find some pretty fascinating answers."
- Checkins (CI) Experimental Functionality – The Ushahidi Blog – "As we announced in January, we are working on a new checkins feature. We are really excited about simplifying the reporting process for those situations where you don’t need a full blown report. The checkins functionality in the Ushahidi Platform is one of the first open source checkin products that crosses multiple mobile platforms. We’ve been hard at work laying out the basic functionality ahead of SXSW and it’s now available for your deployment in the Ushahidi Repository on GitHub and is already active on Crowdmap."