Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Next Year's NTC in New Orleans is Here! I'm a session designer!

At the closing party of last year's NTC Conference in Washington, DC, after too many glasses of wine, I made this video "Next Year In New Orleans."    I can't believe NTC is two months away.  I'm presenting on a few panels, coordinating the Day of Service (have done this since 2002 as a paid consultant), and designing a panel on Social Media and ROI. 

I've been blogging and tracking conversations about social media measurement and ROI over the last few months.  While there has been some excellent conversations in the past fews months, particularly the Netsquared ThinkTank, I haven't seen a lot of nonprofit case studies that share real life experience with measuring results from social media strategies.  A few bloggers like Tim Davies and Beth Dunn has shared their learnings in action and I would love to more of those visible.

So for my panel, I thought why not a case study slam, a play on the poetry slam format. (Minus the audience ratings or competitive aspect)   Maybe use the  "Ask Later" 5-minute format, popularized by Ignite Seattle.  (10 powerpoint slides (visuals only) with each slide on the screen for 30 seconds.  The presenter will not have control of their computer. That’s part of the fun.)  After each case study, the audience will get to ask questions.   

Each case study will showcase a different outcome, metric, and tool and share some words of wisdom.  We're in the process of teasing the case studies out.  The session presenters will include nonprofits using social networks or other web2.0 tools -- Eve Smith, Danielle Brigida, Carie Lewis, and Wendy Harmon.  I will kick off the session with a brief overview and Justin Perkins will share specific techniques and tools like the Social Media ROI Calculator.

Since there is lots of time before this panel, I would love hear your thoughts.   If your organization is implementing a social media strategy and using a method or have a story about ROI or methods or learnings, please do share.  What information would be most useful to you?   Any specific examples, case studies, or useful resources to share?  (I'll include on a handout or wiki).   Also,  I'd appreciate any feedback on process.  I've only seen videos of the "Ask Later" format, if anyone has participated or have some thoughts about that or the design for the panel - please do offer them up.

Penguin Day Reflections: OS as FairTrade, OS Feminism, and OS - the Next Generation

Open Source Feminism - Click to Play

Penguin Day is a day-long workshop for nonprofit organizations to explore the range of issues and options inovlved in using Free and Open Source Software.  Penguin Days happen in different locations several times a year and for the past three years, these meetings have taken place after the annual NTC: Nonprofit Technology Conference.  Last Saturday, I attended my first one.  Although I was pretty exhausted by Saturday,  I learned a great deal.

I was curious to observe the gender balance at Penguin Day and while I'm not as meticulous as Christine in counting and calculating the number of women and men in the room, I took a quick video to get a reading. Very roughly, the percentages for Penguin Day look better than industry standards for both OS and commercial software.  The video incorporates some slides from Angela Byron's excellent presentation, "Women in Floss" which also speaks to the dark side of gender issues in FOSS communities.  The presentation offers some good pointers to women in how to get involved in FOSS communities.

Click To Play

The morning started off with a Spectrogram Session.  A line was drawn with duct tape from one side of the room to the other.  Aspiration's Executive Director, Allen Gunn, read a series of opinion statements and asked if we disagreed or agreed or were neutral.   Everyone in the room found a place on the line relative to their opinion.  A group dialogue followed allowing people to articulate why they felt one way or other.

I'm sort of foggy on all the questions - due to my tired state, but the first set of opinion statements was "Nonprofits should adopt open source software for practical reasons" and "Nonprofits should adopt open source software for philosophical reasons."    The discussion reminded of the one I heard in the UK and read later on the Circuit Riders list "Is Open Source Fair Trade for Nonprofits?" (Interesting that KhmerOS had a table at the Cambodia Fair Trade Expo)

The video captures those on the philsophical side.  I was standing on the "adopt for practical reasons" side of the line.  I was somewhat persuaded to come closer to the middle in listening to David's and Jamie's arguments.   I think that of advocates need to have open source technology stewards behind them to be successful -- there is a need for stewards to guide the choices, training, translators -- to help nonprofits adopt open source software.

Might I dare suggest that future spectrograms include a question about gender balance in OS? Or, has this issue already been discussed in this context?

I attended a session about OS Online Communities facilitated by the Joomla! guy (whose name I can't remember due to my exhausted state and I apologize for that). UPDATE:  His name is Johan Janssens.  He told the story about the growth and challenges facing the Joomla! community.  (These stories need to be written down and it sparked a memory of a conversation I had with Zittrain at iLaw in 2005 who pointed me to a researcher at HBS who was looking at Open Source Software Communities.)

The questions that emerged from this group were not different from those that are asked when we talk about online facilitation and online communities.   These folks would be perfect participants for Nancy White's Online Facilitation Workhop. 

• How to bring new people up to speed.  How to get the good pieces to rise to the top.
• What are the tactics for supporting online open source communities?
• What makes online forums work or not work?  What are the best practices?
• How to get into the forums without being labeled as a stupid newbie
• How to engage people in valuable conversation?
• How to prepare the next generation of moderators in OS communities?
• What is the best tool for very large communities?
• How well does the tool support the organic growth of the community?
• What are the techniques for conversational weaving?
• What is the gensis of an open source community? 
• Since OS communities generally begin with a small group of developers or a scratch your own itch approach and some developers tend to be egomanics - how do you build community within this culture?

I participated in the speed geek session where about ten people get to pitch a project or idea to a rotating group of four or five people.  I pitched my Open Content game for Nonprofits.  In retrospect, I designed the game more for a range people who work in a nonprofits - technical and mangerial - and this audience a mix of more technical and technology providers.    Still, I got a lot of great feedback for the next remix of this game.  (Sorry Janet, no videos too tired to multi-task.)

After a lunch of pizza (which accelerated my tiredness), I lead a very small group informal discussion on Open Content.  We didn't play the game, but we had a great discussion about the creative commons licensing and the issues the notion of open content surfaces.

While she was busy facilitating a linux session, Michele Murrain had managed to blog a very thoughtful post shining a light on the Open Content issues (pay for it or set it free).  I agree with Michele's viewpoint, although I understand why Michael Gilbert and Laura Quinn respectfully disagree:

But ultimately, yes, I do think that all content that we provide to the nonprofit sector should be freely available, and under Creative Commons (or similar) licensing. That's the only way to provide important information to nonprofits that need it - some have a hard time affording even nominal fees for that sort of thing.

Click to Play - Adam Thompson Interview

At the end of the day, I met Adam Thompson who teaches at UofC Santa Cruz and I discovered that he distributes some of my blog content to his 25-40 students each semester.   He notes that the field is changing fast and that the blogosphere moves faster than textbooks and the "by" license makes this sharing easier. 

So, if my content was locked up and available on a fee basis, I might make some money but then again I might have less exposure.  I guess the key whether your main source of income is from the sales of your actual content or whether your content is line extension and you make your income via consulting or teaching.  Lots to think about here.

Click to Play - Are Mediated Experiences Bad?

I went out for a group dinner after Penguin Day.   I got a ride from Simon Rowland who was using his blackberry and GPS to help navigate to the restaurant to meet up with the rest of the group. In the front seat, Simon was talking about mediated experience with Zac Mutrux and how our engagement with gagets gets in the way of us being in the moment and interacting with people face-to-face.   This reminded of a post I wrote called "Shall we put away the cameras and have a conversation?"

This calls to mind a debate in the educator community about some years ago about computer-mediated experiences - and how it is a (mostly) bad thing.  Has this view changed by the pervasive Internet access? What struck me is that Simon is probably a Gen Y and Zac a Gen X and I'm a babyboomer.  My perception was that younger people do not feel mediated experience is a bad thing.  I was wrong -- this attitude isn't necessarily generational.

Click to Play - OS Next Generation
Music - Voyage Black

And, since I mentioned generations, my kids are "We Gen" and I wonder if they think mediated experience is a bad thing?   I must also mention that the blow up penguins were huge hit in our house - they are still being flung down the stairs.   Even more importantly, it gave me a chance to introduce the kids to the concept of Open Source software -- Harry's observations about penguins were interesting.

Next Year in New Orleans!

 

For those of you who say "Next Year In Jerusalem" at your sedars -- that was the initial inspiration for "Next Year in New Orleans."  It was fun to see creative thinking in action - from English to French to Hebrew to Japanese.   I created the video for selfish reasons - I needed sto learn how to use a new PC editing software - Pinnacle.  More on that later.

More importantly,  I wasn't able to identify everyone I interviewed for this and provide a link.  So, if you see yourself or can identify someone, can you add their name and link a comment?  I'll add it back here.

1.   Katrin Verclas
2.   ?
3.   Phil Klein and Jeff Forster
4.   Gavin Claburgh
5.   Katrin Verclas
6.   John Kenyon
7.   Bill Lester
8.   Richard Turner
9.   ?
10.  Peter Crosby
11.  David Barnard
12.  Rich Cowen
13.  ?
14.  Rob Stuart
15.  ?
16.  Martha Rodgers
17.  ?
18.  ?
19.  Zac Mutrux
20.  Mary Gross
21.  Zac Mutrux
22.  Suzi is in the middle!
23.  ?
24.  Jesse C. Wiley
25.  Jill Foster
26.  ?
27.  Christine Herron
28.  ?
29.  Michael Gilbert
30.  Adam Bernstein
31. ?
32. ?
33. ?
34. Usha Venkatachallam
35. ?
36. ?
37. Bill Lester
38. Deborah Finn
39. Peter Crosby
40. Suzi is in the middle
41. Katrin Verclas

Flight of the NTEN Business Card Holders

Flight of the NTEN Business Card Holders - Click to Play

When I saw Phil Klein and Jeff Forster at the NTC Friday night reception gathering up balloons and the business card holders, I knew exactly what they were up to.    Anyone who attended the Chicago NTC in 2005 can't forget the flight of the hedgehogs ....

My Slides from the Screencasting Session and Please Vote ...

These are my powerpoint slides from the Screencasting Session at NTC.   If you didn't write down the wiki, it's here and if you didn't get a hard copy of the Idealware article, it's here.

My favorite quote about the session was from Jason Zannon at Democracy in Action:

Beth Kanter delivers herself of a tour de force on screencasting.  Naturally, everything from and about it is immediately available online.  It is quite possible that Beth is some manner of prototypical superhuman android sent from the future to bring nonprofit tech.

Actually, as I mentioned during the session, the reason I put everything online (it was all done a few weeks in advance as part of my preparation) it is because of my evil plan.  If more of us are screencasting, then all I have to do is remix other people's work, provided they've licensed their material using creative commons licensing.

I've heard that there will be more screencasting or at least one as this blogger notes.

I ended up attending "Screencasting: The latest in technology training," lead by Beth Kanter. It was another full room, but I could see most of the presentation. Since we will use screencasting for much of the training materials and the "rollout" of the new Commons, the suggestions offered in this workshop--e.g. no more than 3.5 minute videos, map out the screencast before you actually film it, create a storyboard, write a script, use music.

I've put the presentation (and almost all my other presentations) into Slide Share. I hope to see more nonprofit technology presentations in there.  There's some execellent content there.

And, if you are so inclined, you can vote a thumbs up as I entered it into the contest.  I only did so because one of the prizes was a laptop and my current one is on its last legs.

NTC Day of Service: Reflections

Program Evaluation By Magic Eightball - Click to Play
Music by Stablom, "Something Dark" from ccmixter

I'm slowly blogging the posts, videos, and photos that I captured last week along with some reflections. 

For the past five years, I've coordinated the NTEN/NTC Day of Service and before that participated as a volunteer.   This year, conference attendees hooked up with local volunteers to help out 34 local nonprofits, including the Center for Community Change, the Genocide Intervention Network, National Student Partnerships, and Wilderness Technology Alliance.  Volunteers had the option to do a strategy consult and stay at the hotel or leave the building and go on-site. 

The Day Before the Day of Service is always a crazy blur for me because I'm generally in the office our local partner, along with Cheryl Hanback, generating the last version of the check-in list, name tags, and materials.  I'm even more of zoombie after the event because managing events takes a lot of adrelin.  I could barely utter two words let alone blog about it.  That's why I'm so happy to see the well-written article that Ali posted on the NTEN blog.

Although it was a little chaotic at the start of the event, it went off well.  We had a few no-shows, but we were able to match up folks on spot to fill in the missing gaps.   I heard good reviews from the volunteers and I'm hoping that we'll get some good feedback (both things that worked and didn't work) in the evaluation survey  I'm working on right now.  If you participated and are reading, you are also welcome to drop a comment to this post.

The strategy consult option was new this year, partly in response to people who wanted to participate, but didn't want to miss out on the afternoon affinity group sessions on Wednesday.   

Here's some thoughts of improvement for next year:

• Must do a better job with data management.  No more excel spreadsheets and cut and pasting from email.  I'm feeling a case study coming on ...
• I think it might help to do some more vetting for the strategy consults and match the pairs in advance.   Also, phone calls to local organizations prior to the event might help with no-show rate.  A few strategy experts told me they would have liked to prepare or look at the organization's site.
• I'd like to see the software skills coaching include a broader array of software applications, although limiting it to very common software in use in nonprofits helps with making the event more streamlined.  It might be nice to have some Penguin end-user skills coaching or blog coaching ...

Eric's magic eightball evaluation video was fun to make, but there was a point.   I've been thinking a lot about the use of video as an evaluation or documentation tool.    I was only able to  interview volunteers.  Ideally, I would have captured some video from the organizations as well.

Peter Deitz of First of Its Kind Network - Click to Play

Peter did a strategy consult with a local organization.

Susan Tenby and Karen Thomas of TechSoup - Click to Play

Susan and Karen were on a twenty-person team, led by John Nuno of Cisco, that worked with homeless clients in a community technology lab at the Wilderness Alliance.   

Deborah Finn's thoughts here.

GiGi Congratulations Video! Plus congrats from Blogher and Cool Cat Teacher Blog

I just saw this and had to post it.   I've been a member of the "GiGis" - the girl geeks of the WorldCafe since last summer.   The GiGis were meeting in California last Thursday and I was hoping to SKYPE in but spotty wifi in my hotel room ... I just discovered this congrats video!  I love it!

Update:  Lisa Stone over at BlogHer just wrote the most beautiful post about the NTEN award!  Thank you! I'm so proud to be part of the BlogHer community and to work with the amazing founders of blogher - who were just featured in the NY Times regarding the Cyberbullying issue.  Further, the kind words from one of my favorite bloghers Vicky Davis have made me cry.  Thank you.

How To Display Flickr Photos With A Tag

Click to Flickr Photos Tagged with 07ntc in A Slide Show Presentation

I got asked this question several times during various presentations/panels at I was on at the NTC, including the Flickr Affnity Group session on Wednesday.  The question, "How can I display photos in flickr on my web site?" 

I pointed folks to Splashr after telling the story of how I learned about it during my Beth5.0 Flickr Remix Photo Birthday Card Contest.   Alan Levine (cogdog blog) who submitted the winning entry left a comment in a post where I asked that same question.  He pointed me to his blog entry about it.

There are many flickr tools or rather toys that use the API to extract flickr photos and publish them elsewhere in different ways.   The above slide show was created with Splashr, billed simply as “a tool for presenting Flickr photos.”  It gives you a bunch of different templates with different styling.  What's nice,  it generates cut and paste code. 

If you don't have software programmer at your disposal, this is an easy way to accomplish the task - you don't have to touch code.  Of course, you can't precisely display the photos in a customized color scheme, size, or format  -- but then again you don't need to know how to code.   And, did I mention this little tool was free?

There's one limitation, of course, is that slide show is a big size, too big for most blog formats.  It would work okay on a web site though, but it isn't embedded.  And, to be fair, I didn't test all 30 templates (I'm little tired).

There is another way to create an embedded slide show, although it is a little more geeky and (I didn't write up the steps yet - so it may be hard to figure out if you're not a code geek type.)  You can use the flickr slide show option as shown here (Thanks Elliot)  That reminded me that I did a screencast on how to do a flickr slide show!  So, you'd just loose the step of translating powerpoint slides into jpegs and not include the user name in the code line.  I know that sounds like greek.

Thank you NTEN for the Fantasticness Award!

 

Yesterday morning, Andy Carvin, Jonny Goldstein, and I presented a videoblogging panel at the NTC.  Here's the video we made on the spot as a demo.  The afternoon sessions were going to be informal coaching - so I thought it would be nice to have a quiet lunch with Andy and Jonny to prepare.

However,  Friday at lunch, NTEN gave out some awards.    Apparently, I was awarded the award for "Fantasticness" and when my name was announced they waited and waited.   A few folks called out -- "She's video blogging!"   So they videotaped the ballroom standing ovation. I had not idea was I wandered back into the hotel.  People came up to me -- I was shocked.

Afterwards, I got a photo of Katrin handing me the award!  Thank you so much for the recognition - it is really appreciated!   One of the questions that has been asked at the NTC - what inspires you to do this work?   Or what inspires me to blog so much ... the fantastic work that all of you in the nptech space do!

And,  I also got a life time subscription to Typepad and Flickr!   For more on the awards, Christine has great coverage here and a nice shout out from Nedra.

Here's the announcement from NTEN ....

March of the Penguins!

Click To Play Flash Version
Click To Play Quicktime Version
Music: Voyage Black

I made that yesterday after I scored two blow-up Penguins for Harry and Sara.  The Penguins made their appearance outside my hotel room and I was instructed to bring them to the morning breakfast at the NTC.  It was a creative promotion of Penguin Day at the NTC!  I'm sitting here in the circle, drinking great coffee and have good wifi!  I hope to live blog some of this ..

Christine.net has great coverage of the actual March of the Penguins on Friday.  And, PicNet has some hilarious photos of the inflation party here -- unfortunately the photos are not licensed with Creative Commons license, they are all rights reserved.  So, can't blog them until I get permission.

David Weinberger at NTC on Transparency

Click To Play

David Weinberger, despite being really sick with the flu, gave an inspiring keynote at the NTC Conference on Thursday morning.  It was a great opportunity to immerse in thinking about how David's ideas translate to the nonprofit sector.   

One of the themes I've heard from nonprofits thinking about Web 2.0 is "How do we maintain control of our branding, message, etc"   This translates to the comfort level with transparency.  So, I asked David "Why is transparency important for nonprofits?"  Transparency helps with learning is the gist of the sound byte.

Sonny Cloward has an excellent summary and reflection over at the NTEN Blog and looks like we're also puzzling over the same issue:

 

I’m trying to figure out how to help nonprofits understand that mission-driven online strategy is not about driving traffic to your site- the digital equivalent of having to go to a library in order to get information – but about how to distribute content as widely as possible to have the broadest impact on our causes. We are a sector of content producers with extraordinary expertise. But for most of us, our websites are not destination points; our content is static and siloed away for only our most dedicated supporters. While I admit that metrics and branding are challenging, but not impossible, I believe it’s necessary for us as a sector to start seeing ourselves as not niche web portals, but content distributors that put our content in front of as many people as possible – through tagging, widetizing, engaging in established online social networks (yes…for better or for worse, think MySpace) and content exchanges between partnered organizations.

I follow David's work closely and was glad to hear him bring up the all the bit about information,meaning, and understanding. I got to ask during the q/a to unpack that a bit more because I didn't understand what he meant.

NTENie Award: Blogger Most Likely To Receive A Pulitzer Prize

I shared the award with Gavin Clabaugh who writes Gavin's Digital Diner Blog and Jason Zanon who writes the Democracy in Action Blog 

Creative Commons Affnity Group at NTC

 

I am sitting in an affinity group session for nonprofits and creative commons.  The facilitator is Amit Asaravala from Techsoup.   He gave an informative overview of the creative commons licensing and how TechSoup is using the licensing.    Some good points about why nonprofits should use creative commons licensing:

• Reducing time and cost of granting permission
• Enlist constituents and other organizations in hleping to spread your message
• Reach constituents outside your immediate circle
• Access free content

And, my article was published over at icommons -Open content for nonprofits: developing a learning card game

N-TEN Conference 2007 - Flickr Session!

N-TEN Conference 2007 - Flick Session!
Originally uploaded by christuttledotcom.

Just finished the flickr session.  I am having lots of computer/Internet access issues and am now able to find this photo via Chris - who was a able to post to flickr!  Most of the people in the room are folks who aren't participating in the NTEN Flickr Affinity Group and were new to flickr.   Lots of questions -- a question that seems to asked of every single social media tool:

• How do deal with the lack of control?   Giving up branding, not have the photos on our web site ..
• What happens if a photograph that we don't like is put in our flickr group?  How can we moderate or filter photos?
• Fear of being sued - what if we stream photos with a tag and it publishes a photo that is all rights reserved in flickr?
• How do we measure the results?  If want people to resue our photos, how do we measure?  What is the conversion rate from sharing photos in flickr to donations or advocacy?
• What type of activity or strategy can I set on flickr that isn't going to require to much of my time to maintain?
• The amount of time it takes to search and participate in the community on flickr - is it worth it?

There was one person in my small group was interested in getting started in flickr, he is the IT person in a small organization.    He said his major challenge now is to design something that doesn't a huge amount of time to maintain.   So, I'm thinking of what the first small steps to using flickr looks like for a nonprofit.

In DC getting ready for the Day of Service - hats off to Cheryl and Matthew!

I'm in DC and haven't been blogging! That's Matthew Coffman from NPower Greater DC Region who has been working with Cheryl Hanback and I to pull together the event materials. We're done! Now to get ready for tonight's dinner!