Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

More Cute Dog Theory Evidence: Meet Teddy, Brooklyn Museum Staffer Shelley Bernstein's Dog

Photo by Aur2899

Last week I taught a social media workshop for artists and arts nonprofits and did some research on different arts organizations using social media effectively.  The Brooklyn Museum kept coming up as a stellar example, particularly its Click Exhibition (Nina Simon wrote an analysis of the project here)

Shelley Bernstein, staff members at the Museum responsible for social media projects, left a comment on my blog.  We got into a quick email conversation and it gave me an opportunity to test the Cute Dog Theory a bit further.  Hmm .. did Shelley have a dog.  Turns out she has not one, but two pit bulls.  That's Teddy above.

I also asked her advice about getting a social media strategy started in a museum.  She responded:

I would say start simply, check often and don't stress too much.  The community will guide you if you listen.  Remember it's not marketing - it's community.

IMA Staffer Facebook Profile

While hunting through Facebook for examples, I connected with the Rob Stein from Indianapolis Art Museum - another arts organization using social media effectively.   He has dogbook on his profile featuring his yellow lab, Tana.

Finally, Beth Finke, a staffer at Easter Seals, writes the Safe and Sound Blog (Congrats on your award!) (Hat Tip Jordan V at Convio)

Rupert Mourns the Death of His N93 ...oh no ..

Click to play

More here from Amy. I'm bummed.

Twitter Is 2nd After Google in Referrals To My Blog, But They Stay Longer ...

Referrals - percentage of visitors by top ten sources for past 30 days (April, 2008)

Twitter for me is mostly a listening tool.  A place to quickly get a range of responses to questions, rapid research for blog posts, and social presence.   A side benefit is that brings people over to my blog.  I do share URLs to my posts, but try to link to a conversation.

Is Twitter A Traffic Tool, Not

In Google Analytics I'm closing looking at referrals.  This past month, for the first time, Twitter is now the #2 referral of visits to my blog, but only 1/3 of those referrals are from my own tweets.   The rest are coming from other twitter users.   That's why I think setting up a Twitter account with a TwitterFeed that just promotes your blog posts probably may not be as effective as engaging with your network on Twitter.  It takes time for Twitter to be a golden referral -- a year ago, Twitter did not make my top ten referrers.

So, do visitors from Twitter simply click and then flit away?   I did a comparison of time on-site with top referrals and Twitter referrals stay longer than Google.   I wanted to see if Avinash Kaushik had written in depth about analyzing Twitter in Google Analytics - I found his reference in his blogging tips that Twitter was golden in terms of referral.  Maybe he'll get on Twitter.

Does Twitter Work Better As A Listening Tool

Last week inspired by this blog post written by an artist named Tina, I asked my Twitter network, "How would you use Twitter as a listening tool?"  Alan Benamer mentioned that he thinks listening is so important. "Most of my friends on Twitter all only interested in themselves. It's become all too spammy."

• Complaints and Celebrations: Holly Ross at NTEN described what she listens for when she puts her listening ears on for Twitter - this includes listening to people's complaints and celebrations.  Generally, she uses Twitter to take the community's temperature and get rapid feedback on questions.   She later wrote more about this in a expanded post on the NTEN blog. 
• Inspiration and Ideas: Paul Sanchez, like Holly, uses Twitter for quick polls, but also uses it as a source for inspiration.  Paul notes, "I find a lot of ideas in the streams of conversation."  Social Butterfly views Twitter as a great brainstorming tool.
• Twitter Focus Group: Jordan V from Convio calls Twitter an unofficial focus group! "If you listen closely, you can pick up on trends and ideas that can really help your outreach and communication efforts."  Beth Dunn is using TwitterLocal with local artists -- a way to listen to a specific group of people who might be served by her organization's programs. 
• Automating Listening: You can automate your listening by using a tool like Tweetscan and search for particular terms - like nonprofit.  (What's cool is that you grab an RSS of the search).

Twitter As A Conversation Tool

This post from Cometrics -- Developing Metrics for Conversation for Twitter -- has lots to ponder.  It lead me to this post by Louis Gray called "What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?"   He goes on to describe how the noise ratio is constructed. 

I feel there are different categories of Twitter users, from those who have a listening audience, measured by a high "followers" to "updates" ratio, those who are engaging, seen with near equal "followers" and "updates", and those who are more noisy, with a lot more "updates" than actual "followers".

He goes on to do an analysis of specific users and categorizes them into different and more polite profiles than twerps and twits.

Listeners (Ratio of Updates to Followers of Less than 1)
Middle Ground (Ratio of Updates to Followers 1-2)
Conversationalists (Ratio of Updates to Followers 2-5)
Megaphones (Over 5)

My ratio is 2.4, so I'm in the low end of conversationalist.  I wonder if there are gender differences?  Most of Mr. Gray's data set was male as far as I could tell.

What does all this mean anyway?

This is, of course, a simplistic analysis of a select number of Twitter users. An argument could be made that those with thousands of updates are flat-out noisy, regardless of how many followers they have, but I also believe that being selective in one's tweeting habits can lead to an increasing audience for further conversations. If there's an imbalance between how often somebody is tweeting and how many people are choosing to follow them, it could be the noise has grown too loud.

I asked my Twitter network today when Twitter would reach the trough of disillusionment - when the honeymoon is over and people start complaining.  It always happens even if as Twitter follower Microveldt
says "the strength of twitter is the character limit. It's in the sweet spot of low barrier to participate, high volume usage."  I think when that high volume usage kicks in is when  we will hear more and more  complaints about noise and information overload.  Some have started already, as BarbaraKB notes and with Twitter being covered in the mainstream news watch out..

Gary Vaynerchuk puts a different spin on the "noise."

Twitter As A Barrier to GTD?

Last week when I was leading a workshop for arts organizations and artists on social media and demonstrating for those who had seen or heard about it before.  When people on Twitter responded to my questions, the reaction from people in the room was, "Isn't anyone getting any work done?"  I put this question out to my Twitter network:

• Twitter is integrated into workflow (Angela Stockman)
• There's a learning curve in the beginning but then you get into routine of quick scan (Edengee)
• Some people use Twitter while multi-tasking (Alison Brynes)
• It helps when you're doing boring work, gets in the way when you need to concentrate (SueBob)
• Can stimulate creative thinking or offer energy like a walk in the part (Csamuels)
• Need to use the boxing, ignore it, quick skim/read, ignore a lot (suggested by many)

I think some of the best advice for being effective using Twitter comes from Howard Greenstein via Chris Brogan.

Chris likened Twitter to a Chinese proverb about “Seeing flowers from horseback.” You see a different image as the landscape goes by on horseback, but stopping to look at a flower or group of flowers gives you a totally different image.

We discussed this and agreed that in that sense, watching Twitter is watching like flowers going by on horseback. Stop and get off the horse and look - see what people are talking about - and then get back on. You can look at any time. Tools like Tweetscan can help you monitor conversations, and like FriendFeed can help you catch up with what your friends are really saying. But trying to participate all day can be like a full-time job, and you might fall off your (work) horse.

Shara Karasic has written one of the absolute best primers for Twitter.  It's an excellent how to get started guide that while geared for the business community is a great step-by-step advice for thinking through your Twitter presence.  It includes advice for both a twitter presence for traffic or for listening or conversation.

What's your Twitter noise ratio (divide total updates by number of followers - and see categories). Did it surprise?   Do you think we'll see disillusionment with Twitter?   What's next?

NpTech Tag Summary: 10 x 10 Ten NpTech Tagged Items About Social Media and Nonprofits That You Can Check Out in Ten Minutes

Want to listen on Twitter?  Use Tweetscan and type in key words.  Don't forget to add the search tool.

1.  Win $10,000 DonateNow Mashup Challenge at NetSquared.  Okay, building the mashup will probably take you longer than ten minutes, but $10,000.   Hurry the deadline is May 19th to submit your idea.

2. Ben Rigby of Mobile Voter, and the folks from Rock the Vote have just written a new book, Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage
Youth. On a related note, see Allison Fine's Social Citizen's Report commissioned by the Case Foundation.

3. What's the nonprofit chatter that is happening right now on Twitter?  Go do a search on Tweetscan and find out.  (I found this link via the 501 (c) Files here is Oprah's hopelessly misguided take on giving.)  And, be sure to add the search toolbar to your browser.

4.  Two items grabbed from the NTEN Blog .. Lauren-Glenn Davitian's "Be the Media -- Free Speech Unfurled" guest post on NTEN blog. Chris Brogan is doing an expert session over at NTEN.  The session itself is longer than ten minutes, but well worth it.

5.  Could a local social change site knock off Facebook for the social networking webby?  Found out why you should give Change Everything your vote and how to vote.

6. If you already have a presence on MySpace, check this out - causes has just launched an application at MySpace.   Who has installed it?  What are the results?

7. Despite a DOS attack this week on SlideShare, a couple of nonprofit techies managed to upload slide shows.  Check out Joe Solomon's slides about how to use social media to build relationships.

8. Nonprofit Tech Blog points to a new report from United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation, "Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use."

9.  Circleup is a social messaging application that allows nonprofits to communicate and collaborate with groups.  It's promotional literature says it fills the gap between one-on-one messaging and large e-mail marketing newsletters and it works on IM networks and Facebook. My visceral reaction is - oh great - more incoming messaging to ignore.

10.  Ever wanted to be a curator?  The Brooklyn Museum is seeking a more diverse group of people to evaluate the photographs submitted for a crowd curated exhibition called Click.

Bonus!

11.  Who is the nonprofit techie dancing around in the raccoon costume?

Now if this only took ten minutes to scan, write, and compile!  :-)

The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology.  Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider subscribing for free

Book Giveaway: Mobilizing Generation 2.0

Ben Rigby of Mobile Voter, and the folks from Rock the Vote have just written a new book, Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth.   I haven't received my copy yet, so no review (yet), but Ben has kindly offered to give me a book for a book giveaway.   Here's the table of contents if you want to learn more about what's inside.    (I contributed a big picture essay in one of the chapters)

(On a related note, I also got word from Allison Fine that she has released a new paper commissioned by The Case Foundation  about the emergence of Millennials, 15-29 year olds, as activists.  It is about how these young people are using all of their widgets and gadgets for causes.  Here's more about what's in the paper and what isn't.  You can grab the paper from this cool Sprout Widget.)

Anyway, I'm giving away a copy of Ben's book.  Here's how it will work.

1.)  Leave a comment in this post about why you want the book and how you might use it
2.)  Leave your comment before May 9th, 2008 at midnight EST
3.)  We'll pick a winner by random and announce the following week

Win $10,000: Netsquared/Network for Good Donate Now Mashup Challenge

How would you mashup the Network for Good donation processing service with other services to make it easier for nonprofits to raise money online? Submit your ideas to the DonateNow Mashup Challenge sponsored by the Case Foundation by May 19.

Winners in each category will be awarded a $10,000 prize by a panel of judges present at the NetSquared Conference (N2Y3). In addition, each winner will be granted a one-year license for the
Network for Good API to be donated to an organization of their choice (if the winner is an organization, it can choose to donate the API to itself).

For more information.

Whats Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile: I'm A Creator

Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile Your Result: Creator   With all the blogging and video making you do, I'm surprised you had time to take this quiz.  Whether podcasting or maintaining a website, the amount of content you create makes your Groundswell Social Technographic group a valuable target for social media marketers.  As a creator, you join an elite 18% of the US online population. Now turn off the computer, your family misses you.
Inactive
Joiner
Critic
Collector
Spectator
Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile See All Our Quizzes

For the past year or so, I've included this visual  based on Forester Research Social Technographics profile information.   It is a valuable way to think how your nonprofit's target audience fits into the social media landscape.   The Social Technographics concept is discussed in depth in Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff's new book "Groundswell" that I have been reading over the past two weeks since it arrived from Amazon.

The idea is that you start with your target audience and their social media habits.   They've built a profile tool over at the blog that lets you plug in some very general demographic information and get a summary of the percentage of profile types that fit that demographic.  I plugged in my demographics and I'm most likely to be an inactive!

I found a post on the Groundswell blog that lead me to Chris Lynn from SocialTNT, who had created a quiz called "Discover your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile."  After answering the Myers-Briggs like questions about my actual activity, ta da, I'm a creator!

As Dave B. points out, us creators get accused of wasting lots of time in our basements making content when we could be doing something productive.  Well, I could be wasting time sitting on the couch only watching TV - but sometimes I sit and watch and blog.   And, a lot of my content is for social purposes ...

The Pew Internet and American Life project released a meaty report last year about Internet use profiles and types.  They didn't have a sexy label like technographics, but their categories are interesting. Here are the profiles and similar to Chris's idea, they have a quiz that will tell you what profile you fit into.

The post on Forrester also shares some of the control issues and concerns that a social media strategy will bring up and it looks like they are eating their own dog food.  Do you embrace your fans who re-inventing your intellectual property or do you send them a cease and desist order?

The other day, Chris Brogan left a comment about how conversations online were becoming more distributed and fragmented. I've noticed this in the nptech stream, we have conversations scattered in listservs, forums, blogs, twitter, facebook, myspace, and other social media nooks and crannies.

So, if you look at the scattering in light of the profile tool - perhaps that can also be a good guide as to where to start listening.

If you were just getting started in social media or advising those just getting started,  how and where would you advise them to start listening?  What's your profile?

World Comment Day: What did I comment about? Twitter Conversation Metrics

Chris Brogan reminded us that he declared today as World Comment Day.

Ironically, I read a post from a month ago by Stowe Boyd called "Beyond Blogs: The Conversation Has Moved Into Flow" where he stats that conversation is moving from blog comments thread which is slow and static to a more fast form of conversation - the flow in Twitter, Friendfeed, and other places.

Boyd goes on to describe how Twitter and other similar apps are based on the web of flow - where information of interest comes to you, not the other way around.  He describes this as a move away from hunting and gathering and into "relationship agriculture" - information grows in our flow applications instead of us spending hours hunting it down.

Does this mean blogging or reading blogs is not longer relevant or useful?   I think people will continue to use blogs as Boyd mentions as a place to archive or organize their content so other people can still find it when they need to search. Having a format for longer thoughtful expression will not go away and I know personally, having a central archive (or personal learning space) for thinking around a particular subject matter topic works well for blogs.

I'm thinking, for example, of the roundup of Arts 2.0 examples.  Almost all this information came to me via Twitter (or Facebook).  I had to do very little hunting and gathering.   For me to analyze it and see any useful patterns, I had to summarize the fragmented information in one place.

There more and more posts (and comments) on blogs about the new form of fast conversation taking place on Twitter.   I love Boyd's Twitpitch -not an elevator, but escalator.  And a post from Commetrics about Developing Metrics for Conversation for Twitter

So, is conversation dead in blogs?  Has it and will move to Twitter and other places?  Conversations are fragmenting .. what gets lost with this fragmentation and faster form of conversation?   What are the gains?

Well, off to comment on some blogs ...

Social Media Infused Discussion Triggers and Ice Breakers and Connected Futures Workshop Opening Day

That's a screenshot of my desktop.  I had to do it for Connected Futures: New Social Strategies and Tools for Communities of Practice workshop.   It starts today! 

The screen capture is a visual conversation trigger to answer the question, "How does your working environment affect your work?" "How does it differ from others?"  We have uploaded the screenshots into our wiki profile pages.

I'm remembering some tagging ice breakers I've used both online and offline that incorporate the concept of social bookmarking and tagging that I've used.

Last week, I took along my N95 and used as a documentation tool - and a way to bring others from outside the class into the discussion.

Burning Questions
Playing the Social Media Game
Reflection at the End

I also used Twitter to post questions that the group had out to my network for some answers and I created a wiki with all the links and posts that I refered to and used it to take notes during the report.

Pistachio (Laura Fitton) recently asked for suggestions about assignments that could be given to a college class to help students "get twitter."

What are some ways that you have incorporated the use of social media into your face-to-face instruction?

Is that a Movie Studio in Your Pocket? Or are you just happy to see me?

I couldn't resist a remix of that old Mae West quip

Well, I was very happy to see Rupert captured on video by David Wilcox offering up some great tips on using the N95.  David and Rupert are lucky of course to be in the UK and didn't have the brick experience that Amy Gahran had  .. so she is still sans n95.  She's encouraging those of us in the US to join the conversation by commenting at Nokia’s blog and in their support forum.  Amy wants us to let them know how they can make their US service good enough to warrant trust from would-be N95 and N82 users!

What is a Museum without YouTube?

What is a Museum without YouTube? sounds like a riddle.  I couldn't think of a punch line can, you?   This was a response from a Twitter follower, Hans de Kraker who pointed me to this blog post (in Dutch). Looks like reviewed the YouTube channels for museums. I like Moma's Channel. The videos include short promotions, almost like movie trailers promoting an exhibit.  The one above is Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art in preparation for Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (June 3 - September 10, 2007).   

The videos that give a peek behind the scenes at the museum have the most views, like this one of another sculpture installation.  Interesting commentary by viewers too.   The IMA has a YouTube Channel too that uses a slightly different approach.

Update:  From MCN List and J Trant

Beyond launch: Museum videos on YouTube
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/hart/hart.html

David Hart, The Museum of Modern Art, USA
Allegra Burnette, The Museum of Modern Art, USA
Chris Alexander, San Jose Museum of Art, USA
Dan Dark, Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA
Jennifer Rossi, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, USA
Nicole Minor, Exploratorium, USA

I wonder how effective placing videos like these on YouTube is as a strategy to get people to visit the museum?  I wonder what the crossover is between YouTube viewers and museum attendance?    Have you come across a museum channel that you think is really good. Why? 

How would you use Twitter for listening?

Photo by Simon Crowly

Tina, an artist, has a terrific post about why twitter is a great for artists.(Thanks Beth Dunn for the pointer)

Some ways that she uses Twitter:

• Promoting my blog
• Announcing new ideas, new products, new projects
• Sharing technical information - helping other artists who need tips for photos, Flickr, blogging, Etsy, html, etc.
• Asking your own technical questions - I've had a lot of direct tips for my podcasting, for example.
• Networking with colleagues you know but who are distant

Most important, for me at least, is LISTENING. I contribute what I can of course but while I build my presence I'm trying to absorb. So I throw out info I know but have few followers who are picking it up yet. There are a lot of interesting if not expert people on Twitter who are discussing in real time issues about all this Web 2.0 malarky, specific websites like Etsy, marketing and promotion topics, politics and the economy, etc. I feel that keeping up with the business and technical world is important to me too. I'm an artist and a business, while the first is more important it doesn't mean the second can be ignored.

What advice would you give a nonprofit organization - new to social media - about how to start listening with Twitter?

The Struggle To Measure Social Media Effectiveness

Rachel Happe has a good post about how to look at the value part of social media ROI equation.  She identifies some good questions to get at defining the value:

- What is the value of having a better conversation?
- What is the value of meeting someone?
- What is the value of getting more accurate information faster?
- What is the value of being able to drive consensus around an idea faster?
- What is the value of building trust?
- What is the opportunity cost of not innovating?

I would have liked to have added these questions to the Social Media ROI Case Study Slam panel, maybe for future reiterations.   I'd like to see variations on the Justin Perkin's Social Media ROI Calculator to incorporate some of those.

Rachel goes on to say, that "The things he can measure easily (activity) are not the things that provide insight into the real value to the organization."  Ah, yes, was going to ask about the intangibles.  She points to EMC blogger talking about the difficulty of measurement.  Doesn't sound too much different from nonprofit or not?

At some point, our free ride will come to an end.  The company will realize they're spending a big chunk of change on this stuff, and there will be a clear need to formalize metrics around the paybacks we're getting from a multi-headed investment.

But, I'm not quite sure what we'll measure, or how we'll measure it.  Some real work will need to be done around an "E2.0" balanced scorecard, and how well we're doing against it.  And, I don't think anyone has really done this yet, as far as I know.

Sure, we're poking around with "buzz measurement" tools, and anyone can capture page views, but I keep thinking we're missing the real value of having people meaningfully engage with each other. 

Sometimes, I think we're trying to measure a great conversation, or a wonderful party.  The qualitiative aspects seem to outweigh the quantitative ones.   Sure, we could construct a quantitative case, but that'd miss the point of what's turning out to really matter.

 

Rachel has a page listing social media metrics.

Social Media Time Investment = You put in is what you get out? The Time Scale

From Museum2.0 Blog, Nina Simon

Nina Simon has an excellent post looking at time investment and types of projects.  There are three approaches:

• Participant:  1-5 Hours per week (See 10 Web2.0 things you can do in ten minutes to be a better nonprofit - suggested by nptechers)
• Content Creator:  5-10 Hours per week
• Community Organizer: 10-20 hours per week

But as Alison K notes in an article she wrote about social media and nonprofits, you get out what you put in.

Nokia Conversation Responds to Amy Gahran's Firmware Issue and My Performance Issues

I was pleased to see this post over at the Nokia Conversations blog discussing the problems with the firmware upgrades.  I'm glad to see that they are willing to have an open conversation about glitches.   As they mention on the post:

Still, as exemplified by Amy, there is always a chance that something will go wrong. In those instances, the Support Discussion Boards are a good place for info. People who've had issues with the firmware update have solutions for resetting the phone and some have tips on things to avoid.

I got some tips on how to fix my performance issues with the N95 that I hope to futz with this weekend.  I'll let you know if it works.

First Reaction to Facebook Chat: Oh no, another distraction

Facebook has added chat.  My reaction was similar to CogDog Blog who unearthed this Facebook YouTube spoof.   Thank god for ignoreall

One thing I hate about Facebook chat is that it screws up Snagit's scrolling screencapture and makes it impossible to get a facebook screencapture in one pass.   

Arts 2.0: Examples of Arts Organizations Social Media Strategies

| View | Upload your own

The above slide show was created based on all the information I gathered from my network below.

 

I'm prepping for a workshop on Social Media and wanted do a round up of recent compelling examples of arts organizations using social media strategies and tools.   I've covered arts organizations and social media here and there over the past three years and last winter co-wrote a cover story article with Rebecca Krause-Hardie for ArtsReach.   So, thought I'd take an opportunity to query my network via Twitter and Facebook and see what's new.   

I was particularly interested in examples using blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and Facebook.

Everyone is a Curator

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. They're now running a compelling experiment in crowd-sourced exhibition creation and curation via the photography exhibition Click.

Here's how Nina Simon described it on her insightful post analyzing the tactics used.

1. The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

2. On the web, anyone can evaluate the photographs in terms of aesthetic quality and relevance to the exhibition theme. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. It's very easy to sign up and judge... and you can do so now by registering here.

3. The photographs will be installed in a physical exhibition running for six weeks this summer. The art will be displayed in order of the average juried scores. Visitors will be able to see how different subgroups (including art experts) ranked and responded to the art. The exhibition will coincide with programs about art theory, online communities, and crowd theory, providing a forum for public evaluation and discussion about the process.

Nina observes that the following makes this project really special:

• It is 100% community-based
• The internal team is led by a non-curator.
• They kept the interface simple
• They make it easy to evangelize
• They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged.
• They ask judges to self-define their art knowledge.

But as Nina notes, they are doing research from this experiment about the role of independence and influence in a participatory experience.  Note that this is a research/learning approach that is key to success of Web2.0 projects.

More at TechCrunch and Technology in the Arts Blog.

Another theme of web2.o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.

Blogs

Elizabeth Perry, an artist in Pittsburgh and pioneer of "sketch blogging" reported that local arts organizations have been good at integrating social media without having to create or maintain anything new.  "They have begun inviting local bloggers as press to openings and events - usually they get in touch with Mike Woycheck or Cynthia Closkey, two of the co-founders of Pittsburgh Bloggers, who then re-blog the invitation and spread it via Facebook or their own Twitter streams. Lindsay Patross runs the blog, and people get hold of her, too.

Similar strategy to what the San Francisco Symphony did with its blogger outreach event.   ASOL gives a write up and some pointers for holding your own blogger outreach event.

What Should Artists and Arts Organization’s Blog about?  An excellent question posed by Beth Dunn of Small Dots.

Most people are fascinated by the interior life of artists. Many people are turned on by the chance to peek backstage at a theater. Almost everyone I know thinks they can curate an art exhibit. Are they right?

Artists: Write about your favorite kind of paintbrushes. Write about where you go shopping for paintbrushes. Write about how hard it is to find decent studio space. Write about why you ditched that banker job to see if you could make it selling art. Write about your crippling self-doubt and fears of failure. Write the truth. Not the press release.

Arts Organizations: Write about your insides — what goes on inside a theater, a museum, a historical home? Not the tedious soap opera that will get you fired if you share - the cool stuff we’re all dying to know! Where do your staff come from? What brought them here? How much fun did you have striking the set over the weekend? Can I help next time?

Artist Blogs

For individual artists, a blog can also help sell or promote their work.  Here's some artists personal blogs that support their gallery sites where they sell their work -- A Planet Named Janet,  Self VS Self, PaMdora's Box and Jen Lemen

Arts Organizations

Let's look at individual blogs.  Here was have the professional development or career blog like Museum2.0, and Im in Ur Museum Blogz that is written by an individual, not as part of the organization.  The content is focused on the professional area of expertise.   Blog helps deepened expertise.   Many early adopters in nonprofits got started this way - outside of the firewall.

Fresh + new(er) is an institutional blog from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia written by staff member Seb Chan.   Interesting that this blog has evolved into one that serves the sector of museum professionals.  (see for example the post about blogging policy).

The Academy of Vocal Arts has a blog written by Daniel Pantano.  According to Maryanne Devine, the staff member to go to for all the AVA gossip. "The writing is in his own voice, personal and authentic, and he's giving the patrons exactly what they crave: who won which competition, who just got engaged, where alums are singing, backstage snapshots. He doesn't get much in the way of comments, but when he misses a few days, he gets lots of complaints.   

Musematic is a group blog of museum technology professionals.  The description: "Rants and raves on the latest trends in the world of museum informatics and technology. An intrepid cast of experts from the Museum Computer Network and AAM's Media & Technology Committee share their insights, observations and tricks of the trade."

The Walker Blog was one of the first arts institution blogs.  The idea was to give an inside view of the inner workings of the Walker.  Different departments or individuals came on gradually.  (I wrote about this blog back in 2005)

The Brooklyn Museum's blog is another one that takes a group approach, also focuses a peak behind the scenes. As does Indianapolis Museum of Art blog.

Tate's Mobile Blog is collecting audience input on the new building design at the Tate - via mobile phones to blog - or mob blogging.   

Over the next six months we’ll be inviting all kinds of people, including designers, artists, young people, families, students and Tate staff, to share their ideas. Why not send us your own photos and join the discussion here at The Great Tate Mod Blog?

Finally, Rebecca Krause Hardie has some notes from a blogging workshop given at the Museums and the Web Conference earlier this month

Flickr

The Academy of Vocal Arts uses a flickr account to document organizational events/galas/benefits - good way to get started. Arts Northfield has well organized collections and sets of all organizational activities.

Brooklyn Museum of Art has a very active and successful group  - notice the  lively discussion board.  MOMA has a group for its graffiti project.

This example of using Flickr for exhibitions - both in Flickr and on the web site. The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. online exhibit developed by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and Ideum.

Here's the description of how they used flickr for the exhibition.

In designing and developing The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. website with The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology we’ve found ourselves spending a lot of time in Flickr. The Collection of photographs found on the site are pulled in from Flickr using a Flash-base mashup. The Shooting ScriptColonizing Social Spaces, looked more broadly at the benefits and drawbacks of museums utilzing social networking sites. In this post, I’m going to look exclusively at Flickr and our experience with the American Image site. activity works in similar way: pulling out John Collier Jr’s images as well as those of other Flickr members. An earlier post, Colonizing Social Spaces, looked more broadly at the benefits and drawbacks of museums utilzing social networking sites. In this post, I’m going to look exclusively at Flickr and our experience with the American Image site.

I interviewed Jim Spadaccini and he told me that initially more people had viewed the photos in flickr versus the exhibition web site.   He also mentioned that the commenting on the photos was fascinating and that they even got an email from someone who knew the Gagnon's family that the name was not correct! Read more of Jim Spadaccini's reflections

Finally the Library of Congress community tagging pilot project on flickr. (Launched in Jan. (follow up here)

A pilot project the Library of Congress is undertaking with Flickr, the enormously popular photo-sharing site that has been a Web 2.0 innovator. If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. In many senses, we are looking to enhance our metadata (one of those Web 2.0 buzzwords that 90 percent of our readers could probably explain better than me).

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

 

Nina Simon has a good piece on why museums should use flickr.

Facebook

Individual profiles, groups, fan pages and applications.  There are many museum professionals active on Facebook - step one is to create an individual profile and then go find your colleagues. The group Museum Professionals Unite Across Facebook has about 2,000 members and 89 discussion threads, so there's definitely lots of places to talk shop on Facebook with peer professionals.    There are a number of museums with official group and fan pages, like this one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As Nina Simon points out, Brooklyn Museum of Art is the gold standard of Art Museums using social media and its projects on Facebook are no exception. (Be sure to check out Nina's Museum2.0 Blog for lots of great posts.

Brooklyn Museum of Art developed a Facebook application called Art Share.  It lets Facebook users share works art from Museums around the world on their profile.  Artists can upload and share their own work using this application.  Participating institutions include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Brooklyn Museum, Canada Agriculture Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Powerhouse Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, V&A, Walker Art Center, Walters Art Museum.

The application launched in November according to this progress report the usage stats as of February were:

• 1000 people using ArtShare on Facebook.
• 174 artists are using ArtShare to share their own works.
• Institutions have uploaded 438 works from their collections and artists have uploaded 754.

Some more on the metrics from the progress report:

On Facebook,  the highest traffic comes from browsing profiles, so exposure to the images may be significantly higher. For instance, if each ArtShare user has 20 friends, a lot more people could be seeing the images from ArtShare being shuffled on that profile. In a nut shell, 1000 people may have installed it, but a lot more may be seeing it and while this is not the kind of traffic we can measure, it is interesting to think about.

I wanted to take a quick look at what the performing arts scene was like on Facebook. 

Doing a quick search on the word "symphony" on Facebook turned up more than 500 individuals.  A few of these are Symphony orchestras using their individual profiles (incorrectly and a violation of the TOS) for an organizational presence.   (There are quite a few individuals with the last or first name symphony.)

There were about 70 Fan Pages that turned up including a number of youth and college symphonies.   A couple of major symphony orchestras, like the Chicago Symphony with 1336 fans and the Boston Symphony. The fan pages are like mini-web pages with the ability to add applications.   The features on their Fan Pages include music player (filled with symphony selections), albums, photos, events, and videos.  There is also a discussion board and the ability to post notes.  The Boston Symphony has been doing ticket giveaway promotions.

While I focused on Facebook for social networking examples, there are examples on MySpace.  Even found an artist social network that is called Dripbook.

Twitter

Twittours has a list of museums using Twitter.  Looks like most are just learning how to use twitter and mostly tweeting about content on their sites.  Using it like a newswire similar to New York Times Arts Section

Brooklyn Museum of Art is using twitter - mostly to point to blog content or web site content.   Tate is also twitter, but hasn't really engaged yet  - probably in the Twitter is the dumbest thing I've ever seen stage?    But as the Field Museum notes on its MySpace page status - still trying to figure it out. 

Heard on Twitter a mobile poetry project on Twitter is in the works.  (Poets.Org is already mobile)

Still more arts organizations on twitter found at TwitTours - this post about  Alliance for Historic Hillsborough - tweeting about bites of information about its programs.

Beth Dunn has a great post on artists and twitter.  It points over the Cycling Artist's post about the benefit and value of Twitter for artists.

YouTube

Anaheim Ballet has a YouTube Channel with over 130,000 channel views.   Perhaps due to their MySpace presence? Another good example is Youth Speaks.

Thanks everyone for the leads .. any other comments or suggestions - leave them in the comments.  Now, off to finish the workshop curriculum ...

Thinking About Getting A Nokia N95 USA? Think Again ...

Click To Play

 

As you know, about three weeks ago, I took the Nokia N95 plunge and was as excited as my colleague, Amy Gahran, was.  I feel in love with it - but the honeymoon is over ...

Amy Gahran, had a bad experience updating the firmware for her n95 purchased from Amazon.  So, I took her advice to update the firmware.   Well, Nokia's user support isn't the most intuitive.  I felt like I was back in 1995.   Amy was great and helped me by pointing me to the right resources.   That was two weeks ago.  My firmware was up to date, life was good.

Not so fast.  I found another way to get the firmware version - and oh no, holy firmware versions batman, I had the same older version as Amy.  Oh no, did that mean if I updated the firmware like Amy did that my beloved Nokia N95 would turn into an expensive, unresponsive brick?

I was tempted to simply pack up the phone and send it right back to Amazon.   Instead, I registered the phone warranty and found the support phone numbers.  I took a deep breath, dialed, and braced myself for an unpleasant technical and customer support experience.   I actually called three times - the third time I decided to live broadcast it.

Bottom line - they claim that it won't brick if install the US version of the firmware and that phone is covered under warranty.   I'm still afraid to update the firmware and wasn't going to - but now I'm getting some really strange performance issues that might well force me to update.

 

Amy Gahran wrote about my experience here, listened to the video, and offered some great advice if you are thinking about a N95 so you don't get screwed.   Charlie Shick, from Nokia, left a constructive comment in that post.

Amy points to what Mobile Jones wrote about Charlie Shick and described him a  “social media expert.” He runs the company’s blogger outreach program.  Another blogger, N95 user, and commenter on Amy's posts -  Jenifer Hanen referred to him in her comments.

Nokia has recently launched a new blog, Nokia Conversations. Amy points out that Mobile Jones reported that this blog will “highlight the developments inside the world’s largest device manufacturer, and new entrant into mobile content and services that the 60,000 employee company represents. Some of those 60K employees are also introduced along with their accomplishments and new products. Comments are welcomed.”

So, Amy was pretty pleased that maybe, maybe, Nokia was listening.   She goes on to offer Nokia some excellent advice about how to improve their customer service and technical support.  She left a comment on their blog letting them know about the conversation (hmm . don't they have a listening system in place?).  No comments yet.   I will look forward to watching this conversation develop - maybe I'll get some answers about my own technical issues with my N95.

NpTech Tag Summary: Nonprofits and Digg, Happy EarthDay, and a few other nptech tidbits

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NpTech resource sharing and conversations are getting more and more distributed.   Here's a roundup of NpTech articles, resources, upcoming conferences, and more -- plucked from the NpTech Tag stream, Twitter, listservs, and other digital nooks and crannies ...

Danielle Brigida put together this excellent slide show on how to use tools like Digg and StumbleUpon (not humans) to drive traffic.   Love the dogs!

Speaking of Digg and dogs .. watch Kevin Rose's dog do some tricks.

Speaking of dogs, gotta love this new campaign site launched by Pets for the Environment.   The site features "Eddie" a dog who is inspired to educate humans about toxic chemicals found in pet products and that can be harmful.  The site uses story, a call to action, and multi-channels.   The story on the top page is very, very engaging.

Happy Earth Day!

TechSoup has just launched a nonprofit environmental impact reduction resource.

NTEN blog points to the Google Checkout Earth Day campaign.

Google's Earth Day Logo is cool, but did you see Twittearth?

Mashable has a list of ten tools to celebrate Earth Day, including this WikiHow to guide.

A Few Items Worth Noting

Metro Mapper Blog offers some reflections about how they used Twitter to get the word out about the voting for their Netsquared project.

RAD Campaign "Leveraging the Real Power of Social Media" In a nutshell what you put in is what you get out.

Flickr now has video. Despite the not in my backyard reaction from the community, some new video groups like this one - tell you story in 90 seconds are cropping up.

good2gether is not another social network for nonprofits.  While it describes itself as a social media Web service, it is more a buzz service for nonprofits that intends to connect people to causes through a network of media outlets, corporate intranets, college/university websites, social networks, and others.   On the site, you can see a list of nonprofits that have signed up and a series of videos by the founder giving the elevator speech.  Announcements of media outlets and business partners are forthcoming. 

SquarePeg is for activists and integrates different web2.0 tools into one dashboard. (I think)

Do you hate scheduling meetings in email?   I do.   Here's two useful tools that help you schedule without generating a million emails.   Doodle and When is good.

A Few Conferences

Conference registration for n2y3 is opened, with a limited number of public registrations available.

Hastac II Conference on May 22-24 - details here.

Games for Change to offer a free one-day workshop for non-profits interested in social issue video games on June 2nd in NYC,  It's called:  Let The Games Begin: A 101 Workshop for Making Social Issue Games

Personal Democracy Forum takes place June 23-24 in NYC.

Web of Change and MaRS is hosting Social Tech Training (STT) – a hands-on Web 2.0 oriented learning intensive for people working in the social change sector. This 3-day training session will be held June 22-24, 008, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.   The agenda is really broad covering a wide range of topics.

YPulse National Mashup is on July 14-15th.

New (to me) Nonprofit Tech Blogs

Conor's Fundraising Blog by a nonprofit staff person for a charity in the UK

Crazy Dog Lady is written by a nonprofit marketing staff person.

Moses Sena Kpetigo is an ngo professional in Ghana, Africa.

The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology.  Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider subscribing for free

Congrats to Browyn Stuckey, Winner of Jesse Stay's Facebook Book!

About a month ago, I presented at O'Reilly's Graphing Social Patterns West where I met Jesse Stay co-author of the excellent guide about Facebook. He graciously offered to give me a copy of his book about to be published book, "I'm on Facebook, Now What?" as a book away for the blog.

So I announced it on my blog and on Facebook.   Twenty-two people left comments.   I used a random selection process (detailed here).  The lucky winner was Browyn Stuckey

For those of you who have entered these giveaways and haven't won anything, please hang in there.  I have some other books that I will be giving away and if you really want a copy of the Jesse's Book - click through to amazon and order it. 

 

Is Video On Flickr A Good Thing? Not in my backyard or way cool reaction?

Photo by Leo 980

Flickr has announced a new feature - that you can post 90 second videos on flickr.  You can check out some of the videos in this group.  The FAQ is here.  What really fascinating is that there is a "No Video on Flickr Group" that has over 12, 000 members.

So, I wondered about the "Not in my Backyard Reaction!"

Here's my backyard shot with my camera phone and posted by email.   Having video on Flickr feels strange.  I'm not sure about.  The embed is sort of cool - it will automatically resize the video for you.

The good folks at See3 have a round up of coverage

 

What do you think?  Is video on Flickr a good thing?

Attention Nonprofit Wiki Users: Let's Desconstruct Your Wiki!

Photo by Mushon

I put a question on Twitter, "What are your best Wiki adoption tips?"  Got some great tips from   Eduardo Jezierski, Watford Gap, Csuspect, Peter Campbell, EricaG, davidLeeking,  Seth Schneider,  Ericskiff, Kalabird, bethdunn, and Greg

But, I'd love to see a range of examples that de-construct the development of a wiki in a nonprofit setting.

If you've been following social media closely over the past 3-5 years, you know that this isn't an original idea.  Perhaps you most likely remember this amazing deconstruction by John Udell of the Wikipedia entry on “Heavy Metal Umlaut“. It really helped you understand the inner workings of the collaborative construction of content on Wikipedia. 

Fast forward three years later.  The use of wikis for communities of practice, behind the firewall, to support project teams, to reduce email, or whatever is becoming more common.  We're seeing more nonprofits using wikis and more nonprofits wondering about how to use wikis.   

One question I'm wondering myself - what does effective wiki facilitation really look like - literally ... I know there are many wiki patterns - how they evolve, are they are facilitated, what works, what doesn't -- just read Stewart Mader's book.   But I'd like to see nonprofits and hear nonprofit technology practitioners take on this.

I'd like to see some wiki screenshots -- the first iteration, the second (when people added content) and the last or later when the wiki facilitator did some editing or weeding or organizing.   

The screenshots below are grabbed from the podcamp.org wiki.  I didn't facilitate it, but I participated.  Keep in mind this is a community wiki space.  I don't know exactly how large the community - but they are wiki savvy.  You can see a simple example that I tried to extract myself from looking at the history.

Screenshot of podcamp Wiki.  This is a page for a call for sessions.  This is the first version of the page.    There are two requests - a call for sessions to present and a call for sessions wanted.  There is one or two examples.

A call for sessions goes out from conference organizers through many different channels - blogs, etc.   The community responds by adding their proposed session name and link to them. 

The Wiki moderators takes the list of sessions and starts to put it in a schedule.   The event organizers did some email contact with folks to tweak scheduling and aggregate sessions, etc.

Got a wiki development/facilitation nonprofit story you'd like to share with a couple of annotated screenshots? Leave a comment and point to them.   Add them to flickr with this tags: npwiki and nptech.  I'll round them up and do a pattern analysis.

Parlez Vous Twitter? Evangelizing Social Media In Your Nonprofit Organization and Paving the Way for Adoption

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This slide show from Stephen Collins make me think about teaching  Internet Skills Workshops for Nonprofits that I used teach over dozen or so years ago.  During a discussion about the merits of email versus the fax machine (I'm not kidding), someone shared this insight, "I feel like a stranger in a foreign country and I don't understand the language."  It has stuck with me.

The slide show is from a session he did at BarCamp Sydney called "All You Do Is Talk Talk Talk."  He talking about building shared language and understanding in order to successfully introduce a change (adoption of social media principles and tools) in an organization.  He suggests that resistance will remain because people don't understand, feel stupid, don't speak the language, don't have a compelling reason for change, or feel insecure.   The advice is don't speak social media geek, speak in simple English, be a bridge, establish trust, and become the understanding guru. 

There aren't detailed notes accompanying the slide show, so I'm not sure which theoretical change models may rest beneath.   I am thinking about the Concerns-Based Adoption Model which is based on extensive research on why science teachers didn’t universally adopt new curricula.   

Awareness   
What is Twitter?

Value
Is it worth it?

Information
How does it work?

Personal
How does this impact my job? 

Management
How can I master it? How can I fit it into my job? 

Re-Focusing
Is there a better way to do this?

I'm sure there are other change theories that lie beneath and can be used help get people on board about social media. 

Almost two weeks ago,  I put out a query for blogging and social media policies.   Many people shared examples, but nothing much about change management.   Do you simply need some social media policy boilerplate that you can cut and paste or is there value to the discussion?   Blue Avocado has a post describing the content of a blogging policy and some of the legal issues.   Beth Dunn responded with some of change issues pinpointing some of the concerns:

1. Employees will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, vendors, customers, etc.);
2. Customers/constituents will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, staff, vendors, etc.);
3. Employees will tell secrets.

Stewart Mader points out that these concerns have one theme in common - control.  He goes onto say:

Companies need to realize that they can’t control what people say about them. If a product sucks, customers already tell each other - if not in public then in private. If the work environment sucks, employees will talk about it with each other, and with family and friends.

What companies can control is the quality of their products, services, work environments, and cultures. And if those are all good, they’ll have nothing to worry about when it comes to social media.

If you've ever tried to encourage your nonprofit to adopt a social media strategy, you well know that a change in organizational culture needs to take place.   Sometimes this change happens very very very slowly - like watching paint dry.   Sometimes the organization's culture and leadership will accelerate this change.  Some practice stealth adoption - launching an under the radar pilot and showing the success.

What method did you use to convince your ED/organization to adopt social media strategy?  What were the problems?  How did you solve them?  What advice would you offer others?
 

Reader Appreciation Day: Beth's Big Give - Congrats to Epic Change

Epic Change is the lucky winner of my Reader Appreciation Day Charity Giveaway (Beth's Big Give!).  Epic Change uses their donations to provide interest-free loans to local partners to finance their community improvement efforts.  Here is more about their approach.

I just donated $20 via Network for Good.  (In the spirit of Earth Day and transparency,  this is a recycled Good Card that I received as a gift during the holidays.)

Thanks so much to Robin Reagler coming up with the idea for Michele Martin for passing along the information to me.

There were 11 wonderful organizations suggested by my readers.  It would have been really hard for me to pick so I used random number generator to pick the winner and the process of selecting the winner is documented here - in case you want to borrow the idea for creating a "Big Give" of your own.   

Here's the nominated organizations:

1. Not For Sale Campaign: 27 million people in slavery worldwide today, over 50% of them children. Not For Sale works to educate about, expose and eradicate modern day slavery, because no one should be for sale. suggested by Dave Web

2.  Blandford Nature Center:  Maria is raising funds for the organization in a very innovate (and tough) way. She has challenged herself to eat on a dollar a day for 30 days. Her journal/blog is here.  Suggested by Ann, Ashima, and Maria.

3.  Angel Covers: Through our programs that help create self-sufficient programs, $20 would provide food for a child for about half the year indefinitely. You can see some of the recent successes of these programs in their blog. Suggested by Lynn Fillmore.

4. Education And More:  Has a mission to help educate the children and reduce poverty in Guatemala. They
are an all volunteer organization and making a big difference in the lives of the students and their families and the schools of the indigenous of western Guatemala.  Suggested by Kare.

5. Transitions Cambodia:  Helps many girls being trafficked throughout the southeast Asia area. TCI was
founded by James and Athena Pond of Hillsboro, Oregon. They do more than just get the girls off of the street. They teach them life skills and educate them to be self-sufficient. They use a transitional home
model, as described on their website.  Suggested by Bob Uva.

6.  Arthritis Foundation:  Arthritis affects 1 in 5 people, is the #1 cause of disability in the US, and is not limited to adults. Suggested by Roger Carr.

7.  Epic Change. Because Mama Lucy, the local woman who founded the school we're now partnered with in Tanzania, turned income from chickens into a school that now serves 200+. With your $20, she can work magic. Like giving hope to children like Glory Suggested by Stacey Monk.

8. Center for Victims of Torture  Works with individuals, families and communities to heal the impact of torture. They also work worldwide with human rights practitioners to develop new strategies for ending torture.  Suggested by Barry Madore.

9. Bridge Communities 88.6%* of every $1 goes directly to work on 6 levels to help transition families from homelessness to complete self-sufficiency in about two years. $25 covers 24 hours for one family, 20 year track record.  Suggested by Barbara Rozgnoyi

10. SIGN, the Surgical Implant Generation Network. We go where patients with broken bones have no treatment options, other than to be confined to bed for months. We train local surgeons and equip them with surgical instruments and implants so that they can heal needy patients in a matter of days, not months. Your $20 would provide surgeons at a hospital overseas with a SIGN technique manual - a way to make sure that these surgeons use the correct methods to give their patients the best treatment. Suggested by Matt.

11. Partners for Violence Prevention (PVP).  A community organization in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Our mission is to promote peace, reduce the incidence and impact of violence, and build capacity for violence prevention in the community. PVP has shown that it is possible to identify, prevent and break the cycle of violence. Our strategies, applied to a coordinated continuum of schools, health care and social service providers and other local networks have helped over 11,000 people. PVP works in four areas: (1) Youth Development and School Support, (2) Educational Trainings, (3) Community Education and Awareness, and (4) Facilitation/Coordination.  Suggested by Anita Berg.

Peter Campbell: Can you Detail Your Deep Twitter Thoughts on Future of Social Networks?

Flickr Photo

That's this Peter Campbell.  Having a deep and reflective conversation in 140 character bursts where you can examine different points of view, think out loud, share insights, and learn something - can be difficult on Twitter.   Yes, twitter can start the sparks flying, but if you want the fire to burn - I think you need to blog it or write about or have a conversation.   I think this some of what Marnie was getting at ...

I thought Peter was saying Twitter will replace Facebook/Myspace or social networks.   He probably wasn't - but hard to get that when you're telegraphing ideas.

But as Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff point out in their new book it is important to think behind the new tool - and to ask the larger question - how do you evaluate new technologies as they enter the landscape?  Which ones deserve attention, which ones to ignore?  They talked about ease of use, relationship enabling, shifts of power, community content, and open platform.

I pinged Peter and asked him to unpack his thoughts. I don't think you can take a deep dive with 140 characters -- and you don't want to take a deep dive with everything - but eventually you need to think more deeply than grazing micro-media.