About a year ago, I did a lot of research on a screencast about widgets for nonprofits and put together two wikis - Nonprofit Widgets (for a session at 2007 NTC Conference) and Fundraising Widget. So, I was really interested in hearing what colleague Peter Deitz has to say in his recent NTEN Webinar on the Sprout Widget. Alas, travel schedule prevented me from hearing it live, but Peter posted his slides and examples.
Here's the links to examples he mentions
KaTREEna Plantometer
Every Human Has Rights
2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference
The Niapele Project
$40 for 40 Years of Fair Housing
I like Peter's analogy of a widget as a bumper sticker. I've heard some people describe widgets as suitcases. What's your metaphor for a widget and widget strategy?
Hi Beth, Thanks for posting my Sprout presentation. SproutBuilder doesn't include seamless integration for uploading multi-page PDFs as a slideshow -- so I used Slideshare.net to create this widget about creating widgets. I can't take credit for the "widgets are the bumper stickers of the internet." If you google the phrase, you'll find that a company called Snipperoon distributed bumper stickers at an e-marketing conference that contained the slogan. I came across the bumper sticker at CitizenSpace in SF.
Here's a prediction that I will take credit for: nonprofits and foundations will move away from 'create a video' contests to 'create a widget' contests.
I mentioned this possibility during the webinar and then Sprout announced their first widget creation contest, connected to the Hellboy ii movie. They didn't get the idea from me... but there's a lot of potential here for the nonprofit sector to get supporters to not just post widgets on their facebook profiles but actually create widgets about the cause.
Posted by: Peter Deitz | June 19, 2008 at 12:07 PM
The company is called Snipperoo, no Snipperoon :-)
Posted by: Peter Deitz | June 19, 2008 at 12:09 PM