SXSW Recap and Highlights

Throughout the conference, I posted notes from sessions and other highlights from the hallways – and you can get all of the posts from the Nonprofit Times!

Hot Button Issues at SXSW: Kony and Homeless Hotspots
We’ve all experienced videos, blogs, photos, or topics “going viral” online before our eyes – the number of views increases, our Facebook timeline fills with reposts of the story, or a hashtag rises up the trending charts. At SXSW, there…

Crowdfunding Social Ventures at SXSW
Start Some Good, a platform for social good groups – whether nonprofit organizations or not – to raise funds and build community, highlighted eight diverse projects working for social impact at an evening event hosted by Center61 at SXSW. Each…

Personal and Professional Identity: Social Media Policies for Nonprofits
I was joined today for a panel at SXSW to discuss the blurry or blurring lines of personal and professional identify online. With me on the panel was Debra Askanase, Jess Main, and Vanessa Rhinesmith. This topic was especially relevant…

Tendenci Released as Open Source by Schipul
Schipul, a web marketing agency based in Houston, Texas, announced yesterday during the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive festival that Tendenci, a content management system (CMS) will be released as an open source solution. Tendenci was developed by Schipul especially…

Tech Talk at SXSW
South by Southwest Interactive is a major hotspot for new tools to launch, applications and platforms to find early adopters, and those looking for ideas or suggestions to get recommendations from others already exploring the newest, shiny toys. I’ve been…

Stand with Planned Parenthood: Lessons from Crisis Response Campaigns
Just over one year ago, on February 18, 2011, Planned Parenthood Federation of America launched the largest integrated campaign in its history. The threat to defund Planned Parenthood was bundled in a larger packaged proposal of funding cuts to be…

Social Philanthropy: Raising Money on YouTube and Twitter
Money is always a hot topic of conversation at SXSW from new start-ups looking for venture funds to nonprofits looking for philanthropic support, all for innovative ways of changing and shaping our communities and the world. One panel, moderated by…

Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface: SXSW Keynote with real implications for Nonprofits 
“We are all cyborgs. The minute you look at a screen, you are in a symbiotic relationship with technology.” This is how Amber Case opened her 2012 South by Southwest Interactive keynote talk on Sunday, March 13th. Case, and her…

New Empire Builders Podcasts

Throughout SXSW, Brian Reich, ShiftCast host and information strategist, pulled together small groups of people for interesting conversations broadcast live and recorded as podcasts. I had the pleasure to participate in one of these recorded sessions, along with Uwe Hook, co-founder and CEO of Bates Hook, and Kevin Lloyd, founder and CEO of Momentum OS, Inc. We talked about the differences and the opportunities for convergence between big brands, start-ups, and nonprofits.

Listen to our Daily Roundtable conversation or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. You can also check out all of the recorded sessions from SXSW on the New Empire Builders’ website.

Location: Austin, TX

Topic: Social Media Boundaries: Personal/Personnel Policy

Description: As our networks expand, our profiles get more public, and our work requires a human face, where do we draw the line between personal and professional identities online? How do we maintain those boundaries for our community members? How do we respond to attacks, opportunities, and over-shares online? When does over-sharing hurt the community? When should you share your own personal stories as a manager, or personally reach out to community members? Growing and cultivating an active community also requires that the community manager walk the fine line of personal and professional sharing. Every community manager wonders when and how to professionally cultivate leaders and members to create a thriving community while still being personal. On the reverse side, sometimes community members share too much, which can hurt the health of the community. This panel will address these questions and more from experience in nonprofit and public media sectors.

Related Links:

• SXSW
• Debra Askanase blog
• Session recording
• Session notes and resources

Location: Austin, TX

Topic: Strong Connections: Linking Strategy, Goals and Metrics

Description: When it comes to social media, email marketing, or even online engagement in general, we often have a feeling when things are going well or when they aren’t. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or something else, you don’t have to be satisfied with a feeling: use your organization’s strategic plan to identify real goals and then track the data to show your impact.

Related Links:

• NTEN
• Community Series
• Session Materials

Connect with NTEN

Sarah and I, in typical NTEN fashion, will be sure to bring some NTEN swag and are hoping to connect with as many of you as possible! The Beacon Lounge will be our home-base, and here are some of the fun things they have planned to make it your home-base, too:

Daily Events in the Lounge include:

• Breakfast from 9-11: Get your morning buzz on with coffee and food sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation
• Lunch from 12-2: Refuel your stomach and mind with lunch brought to you by Convio.  Fork over your lunch money to a local Austin organization and Convio will match your donation!
• Happy Hour from 3-6: Get your afternoon buzz on with snacks, beer, and live music to benefit Sweet Relief Musicians Fundsponsored by Salsa

Daily Musings in the Lounge include:

• Photo Gallery from PhotoPhilanthropy – browse art that drives action for social change
• Sketchnotes by Mike Rhode
• Play Hard, Do Good T-Shirts from Goodthreads with art by Mike Rhode – snag yours with a donation to Sweet Relief Musicians Fund

In addition, they’ll have special events on a daily basis including a book reading from “Story Wars” by Jonah Sachs and meet-ups from the good folks at Salsa, the Colorado Health Foundation, PhotoPhilanthropy, Convio, Legacy, and us (NTEN).

Check out the detailed schedule of events and follow @thebeaconsxsw for updates.

NTEN Meetup in the Beacon Lounge

Mark your calendars for Monday, March 12th, at 11 am for the NTEN meetup in the Lounge. We will share more details before SXSW, but for now we will give you a hint: anyone who loves Twitter so much they’ve thought of writing a sonet, or so wowed by Google+ they want to write an ode may be at an advantage! And, yes, there will be prizes.

NTEN Community Series: Austin

If you’re going to be in Austin for SXSW or are a local nonprofit organization, we hope you’ll also participate in the first of our Community Series events for 2012, taking place in Austin on March 9th. Get the full details and reserve your spot today!

1. Sign Up / Sign In

“First, create a PanelPicker account. If you have set up a PanelPicker account in previous years, feel free to go ahead and sign in. After you have signed up for an account, you will receive a verification email. Click on the link inside this email and you will be ready to go. Also, please be assured that we will NOT use your account data for mailing lists and we will not give this data to any third party vendors.”

2. Browse Sessions

Explore the Proposals for SXSW Interactive »

Jump straight to the Greater Good section »

3. Thumbs Up + Comments

Voting is with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on the proposals. You can pick a up or down vote from the browsing view or from a specific proposal’s page. Every vote helps, but so do comments! If you are interested, have a question, or want to add something, please leave a comment.

And, if you’d be so kind, you can even vote for the session proposal I submitted along with colleagues Debra Askanase, Manny Hernandez, Jess Main, and Vanessa Rhinesmith, Social Media Boundaries: Personal/Personnel Policy. Would appreciate your votes and comments!

I caught up with Rob Wu, co-founder of CauseVox, the platform used to support this fundraising effort, to learn more about the process and campaign.

How did you co-created the campaign?

That morning, I saw the jaw-dropping photos and videos from the Japan tsunami disaster. The news agencies were reporting that hundreds of people have died and tens-of-thousands were missing.

Within 30 minutes, I registered a domain name, launched a fundraising site on CauseVox, and seeded it with key influencers on Twitter to help build momentum. Meanwhile, bloggers Leigh Duncan and Deb Ng were starting a grassroots effort to raise awareness and support for the Japan disaster too.

A few hours later, we quickly found each other through Jessica Lin and unified our efforts as SXSWcares. The original goal was to raise $10,000 within 5-days. SXSWcares began truly as a grassroots campaign with a handful of SXSW attendees.

What were successful techniques or elements of SXSWcares?

There were a lot of factors that made SXSWcares successful. Many of them were really driven by the community. Here are some of the biggest ones:

• Community Branded – We used a co-branded (with the Red Cross) site to maintain credibility with our 1500+ donors. The site was hosted on http://www.sxswcares.org, which used a URL and design that supported a strong sense of community around the campaign. We also used branded Twitter accounts (@sxswcares and @sxsw4japan) to promote the campaign.
• Personal Fundraising – In order to extend our reach and to leverage personal networks, we encouraged people to create fundraising pages. Businesses gave away products for donations, attendees held competitive fundraisers, and hundreds of others used other creative means to make fundraising personal.
• Influencers – We grabbed session leaders, keynote speakers, bloggers, and social media influencers to extend our message across to their audiences.
• Media – The campaign featured compelling video footage of the disaster and testimonies from Japanese attendees. We also leverage media opportunities to drive traffic to the campaign site.
• Partnerships – We partnered with as many groups and sponsors as we could. This included SXSW organizers, the Red Cross, Hurricane Party, the Hanson Brothers, and many more to promote the campaign. Hanson led a 12-hour telethon that featured over 40+ artists.

What you will change the next time?

Hindsight is always 20-20. There are two things we’d do a bit differently.

First, we would tell a more compelling personal story. We should have created more videos of personal testimonies of Japanese SXSW attendees to add more of a human aspect to the campaign.

Second, we would focus on taking the campaign to off-line events as much as possible to facilitate meaningful connections between the online and offline world. We would tie fundraising to real-world events, people, discussions, meetings to foster stronger bonds in the community.

What factors contributed to the success?

At inception, seeding the half-baked campaign with key influencers helped determine if the campaign had traction. Hustling around the conference to get session speakers, key note presenters, and others with audiences helped us reach a social media critical mass near the beginning. Personal fundraising helped carry the campaign after the initial interest in disaster giving started to wean. Lastly, partnering with groups such as Hanson helped us carry forward the campaign to broader communities — audiences that we would not have been able to reach on our own.

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Were you at SXSW this year? Did you participate in SXSWCares from Austin or around the world? What did you learn, what would you have changed, how did you find the campaign?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the fundraising effort, whether you participated or not – questions, feedback, and ideas. I’ll be sure that Rob sees your comments as well!

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).

• Advertising Lab: Farmers Insurance Insures Farmville Farms – The “real world” and the virtual world are coming ever-more integrated! Do you have insurance? “Saw this blimp on Farmville’s spash screen today. It turns out that “The Farmers [Insurance] in-game integration will use the likeness of its Farmers Insurance Airship, a 246-foot long Zeppelin. When players place the Farmers Airship on their farm, they receive free “wither protection” for the crops on their virtual farm. In a nod to the security that Farmers Insurance offer its customers, this protection means players crops won’t wither for the 10 days of the promotion.””
• Photographs, Digital Rights & Social Media Events | Geoff Livingston’s Blog – Geoff shares a recent example of his attendance at an event where he was photographed and his images shared. Do you have examples on this topic, has this happened to you? And where you stand on the discussion of copyright, digital rights, online content sharing and intellectual property? Really looking forward to hearing your responses!
• Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information – WSJ.com – “Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.”
• Lasa launches Big Society online survey – “The charity Lasa is conducting an online survey, called Big Society, Big Deal? Lasa’s research will explore what third sector organisations in the UK think about the coalition government’s Big Society policy, how they think it will affect their funding and change the way they work with other charities. Charities wishing to take part in the survey have until 5pm on Wednesday 27 October to complete the questionnaire, which aims to discover whether the Big Society policy represents an opportunity or a threat to the third sector.”
• Social Media –– Revolutionary Movement or Enabler of “Slacktivism”? : Center for Social Innovation (CSI) – “Many of us enjoy a good debate, and there’s an important one playing out on our doorstep. Some people say we’re in the midst of a revolution where the new tools of social media are reinventing social activism in vital ways. Others say that social media is a fad that does little more than enable “slacktivism”—that is, engaging in activities (mostly mouse-clicking) that make you feel like you’re doing good but actually amount to very little real change. Where do you stand?”
• SXSW Interactive Festival Non Profit Scholarship Program | SXSW.com – “The SXSW Interactive Festival brings together an eclectic mix of technologists, new media industry professionals, creative thinkers and marketing experts to launch new ideas and solutions into the marketplace. Attendees find inspiration, new business partners, and learn new concepts to take their work to the next level. For 2011, SXSW is proud to add a new scholarship program to make it easier for non profits to be part of the excitement of March in Austin.” – I am so happy to see this scholarship and hope that it ensures more nonprofits are on stage, in the hallway, and part of the vibrant conversations that SXSW is so known for!

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).

• Social Media’s Changing Landscape to Make A Profit – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – I'm really looking forward to this conversation – what do you think? "Admit it – you don’t like when things that you are quite comfortable with suddenly change. As social networks try and become profitable they are experimenting with new ad models and trying to drive more traffic to increase ad revenue. Twitter’s beta advertising model via "Promoted Tweets" and Facebook’s new Fan Page “Like” button (which is replacing the “Become a Fan” button) is buzzing with critics’ opinions. Are these changes good for nonprofits bottom line too? The jury is out."
• From Social Entrepreneurship to Social Interpreneurship — Social Edge – There's a great post and conversation starter from Peter Deitz up on the Social Edge blog talking from social interpreneurship. "What is social interpreneurship you ask? I’m not entirely sure, in light of its classified nature, but I would hazard a guess that it’s two parts Internet, five parts Interaction, and ten parts Interdependence. Flipping through the Skoll World Forum program and rerunning the highlights in my head, I see evidence of social interpreneurship at every turn." Join the converstaion!
• Chris Brogan Talks Nonprofits and Trust Agents – netwitsthinktank.com – One of the basic best practices I am always talking about with organizations starting out with social media is to be a real person – not an "organization" online. Have real pictures and have real conversations. Here's a great video with Chris Brogan and next steps for being "real" online.
• Advice & Resources for Your Online Organizing Career – Check out this great round up from the presenters at the "Online Organizing – Career Night event that includes lessons, insights, and even job opportunities!
• Grizzard Communications Group – Free social media tools & the ‘experts’ who can’t answer “How?” – Eric has a great list of free social media tools to help you find content, monitor trends and much more! "In the last week, I attended both the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference and the AFP 2010 Conference. One problem that I saw in many social media sessions at both – and a problem that I see far too often at social media conferences, seminars, and How To sessions – is that speakers and panelists rarely provide tangible How To advice to people struggling to get started. They tell you you should do something, “Start up a Facebook Fan Page and start posting content interesting to your fans,” but regardless of how hard they are pushed, they rarely can say how to go about figuring out what content your fans find interesting or maybe even how to gain new fans."
• 10 Take-Aways from SXSW for Nonprofits — Nonprofit Geekery – Happy that I came across Matt Koltermann's wrap up from SXSW. It was a few weeks late but better than never! My favorite take away from this list: 4. Make sure your website behaves like an approachable and likable person. "The annual SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX—which brings together tech geeks, social media peeps, and other online folk—wrapped-up yesterday after five intense and inspirational days. I attended a bunch of sessions focused on how nonprofits, in particular, can take advantage of technology to meet their mission—here’s a short-list of ten things that really stuck."

Using the hashtag #crowdx, we had an enormous conversation via Twitter during the session – you can see the recap captured from that time here: http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/crowdx

You can listen to the audio recording of the session or watch the video, thanks both to David Wells at Socialize Your Cause:

Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change from Socialize Your Cause on Vimeo.