Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

So you want a career in the nonprofit sector?

Earlier this week, I attended SXSW in Austin, Texas and met many interesting people and connected with old friends, including BlogHer colleagues CE's Queen of Spain, Liz Perry, and Virginia DeBolt.  I met several women who told me they were considering entering the nonprofit sector and had questions about how to get started.  While I was reflecting on the question, searching my distant memory of how I began working for nonprofits almost 30 years ago, The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers popped up in my RSS feed.

The guide is an excellent primer for those who are to the nonprofit sector.   The first section explains what a nonprofit is and the second chapter introduces you to Nonprofit Speak, a good tutorial to the acronyms and words that are often spoke in nonprofit land and can help you get up to speed so you can communicate your career goals to potential employers. 

The next part of the guide is filled with practical information about how to conduct a "career search" in the nonprofit sector.   The advice is more than just how to network or prepare a network, but provides some great exercises that help you understand whether or not the organization is a good match for you. 

The Idealist also sponsors a series of Nonprofit Career Fairs with between 50 and 150 organizations participating in each city.  This is an efficient way to network and meet the nonprofit players in a particular geographic area.   

In addition, there are several awesome bloghers that write about careers and leadership issues in the nonprofit sector that you should follow.  These include:

Rosetta Thurman, In the PipeLine
Michelle Martin, The Bamboo Project
Heather Carpenter, Nonprofit Leadership 601
Marion Conway, Consultant to Nonprofits

What is your best advice for people who want to get started working for nonprofits?  What resources would you point them to?  Special bonus - if they're interested in technology, what advice would you offer them in getting started as the techie in a nonprofit organization?

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Nonprofit Taglines that Work

I admit. I need with my tagline.   My tagline was the result of discovering a lot of referrals from google on the word "beth" - but they those referrals were not staying long.   So, I decided to make my blog title more description - to be a tagline.  "How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media."  (Have to do some comparisons).  Today, when I saw that Nancy Schwartz's not about doing a survey as a prelude to writing a how-to piece for nonprofit taglines it got me thinking about best practices for taglines and how to improve my own.  Guess I'll have to wait for Nancy's piece.     

Reflections from Wow2 conversation: Nonprofit Due Dilligence and Micro Blogging in the developing world ...

Last night I had the pleasure of joining a conversation with WOW2 over at edtech.  I finally got the opportunity to speak with Sharon, Vicki,                   Cheryl, & Jennifer live and in real time!   I've been a fan of Vicki Davis's blog (CoolCat Teacher Blog) for sometime now.

We talked about Cambodia and one of the questions was (an excellent one), what do teachers need to think about if they are doing an over the web collaborative project with a classroom in the developing world.    One of my best sources is, of course, Andy Carvin's digital divide category on his blog. 

The question forced me to reflect on my experience last summer.  How do you optimize your media (like video and photographs) to upload quickly and take up less time (and money spent) at an Internet cafe?  It isn't all about technical issues like compression, but it is also covers aesthetics -- for example, with video blogging using the technique of moment capture.

WOW2 hosts immediately made the connection to micro blogging or micro media making.  How do you get students to write concisely, boil ideas down to their essence.    I had mentioned the NpTech Tag Summary - and how practicing that every week makes you better at it.    It made me curious about the art of mircoblogging - and how you develop the technique of saying it in 140 characters. 

We also discussed personal fundraising and another excellent question.  How do you know if a charity is legit? Is there a site where you can get vetted information about nonprofits you might be considering making a donation?  A couple of sources:

• Guidestar where you find information about 1.7 million nonprofits, including their IRS Form 990 information. 
• Allan Benamer at the Nonprofit Tech Blog recently wrote about GiveWell's reviews.
• Charity Navigator although some have pointed out some flaws in the rankings as noted by Nonprofit Online News

I just discovered a new site called "Great Nonprofits" another participatory philanthropy site.  Here's the description:

GreatNonprofits is a place to find, review, and talk about great -- and perhaps also not so great -- nonprofits. You already know that reviews by other people who have gone to a restaurant or tried out a doctor are the best way to find out about the quality of those services. If you have direct experience with a nonprofit, GreatNonprofits makes it easier for you to share your knowledge so that other people can discover the great nonprofits that are out there.

NP2020 Conference: Issues and Answers from the Next Generation

NP2020 is both a conference and a call to action to address a leadership deficit in the nonprofit sector.  According to a recent Bridgespan Group report, over the next decade nonprofits will need to attract and develop some 640,000 leaders -approximately 2.4 times the number currently working the field.  When one considers the impact of baby boomers preparing for retirement over the next two decades, there is a clear need for smooth leadership transition from one generation of leaders to the next.   

The conference will bring together individuals from around the country to begin a discussion about leadership in the nonprofit sector from July 26-28th at the Pew Campus of Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.   The conference will address questions such as:

• Who are the nonprofit leaders of the future?
• What skills, resources, or support will they need?
• How to address this growing need?
• What barriers exist to successful transition?
• What solutions lie within the nonprofit sector?

As one of those "baby boomers preparing for retirement over the next decades," at first I thought this conference was only for people between the ages of 21-40.  However, I misread the promotional material and Ashima Saigal, one of the conference organizers, assures me that is not the case. It will be a cross generational dialog, but they are specifically targeting younger leaders.  Hmm .. I wonder if they a facebook group for the event?

The conference is open space format, but the founder and executive director of Mixed Greens, Lisa Rose Starner, will give a keynote and representatives from Young Nonprofit Professionals Network will present findings from their research of member attitudes about the topic.

The registration deadline is coming up next week!   Here's the link for more information.

NpTech in China? Can you help?

A few weeks ago I received an email from Jerry Hu introducing me to the Fuping Development Institute in Beijing, China.  The organization works on poverty alleviation and sustainable development through activities in five main fields of work: establishment of civil society, corporate social responsibility and social investments, environment and sustainable development, education and employment, and integrated community development.

He writes:

The development level of NPOs in China is far behind with foreign countries, but we can keep up in IT area and Internet usage, Web2.0, blog, podcast are also popular words here.  So what I concerned is how technology can help NPOs and individual to make a difference in China.  I wanted to study the current situation in foreign countries and how can we start to follow.  I am looking for reports or articles about how technology help NPO to make social change. our non-profit world.  We need to  focus on some fundamental use of technology in NPOs.  Can you help?

What studies, reports, or articles would you recommend that Jerry read?

Geeks for Good: Technology Evangelism

Paul-Brian McInerney, PhD

February and March are busy months for me.  I should be answering my email or at least attempting to get my inbox down to zero.  Instead, I dip into the NpTech Tag Stream and notice this post from NTEN about a new book about nonprofits and technology.  A few days ago, I got a ping from Deborah Finn via a social bookmarking service with a pointer to the same book - "Nonprofits and Technology: Emerging Research for Usable Knowledge"

One of the chapters is called "Geeks for Good: Technology Evangelism and the Role of Circuit Riders in
IT Adoption among Nonprofits" by Paul-Brian McInerney (who is an editor for the forthcoming NTEN and Gilbert Center  "Journal for ICT in Social Change Organizations).  I met him in 2002 in Orlando at the NTC Conference when he was just beginning to do that research and had a great conversation with him a bar in downtown Orlando. 

You can find the chapter he wrote online here which has made me more determined to obtain a copy of that book!  (Authors will be at NTC) It strikes me that the circuit rider is somewhat similar to what Nancy White talks about in terms of technology stewards.  Here's the definition given the chapter:

Circuit riders travel throughout regions of the United States and parts of Europe providing technology assistance to nonprofit organizations. As one organization providing such services defines the group: “Circuit Riders are a community of people with technology skills who help nonprofit organizations be more effective through the use of technology. We share a spirit of generosity towards each other and a commitment to social justice, a healthy environment and human dignity. We hold a fundamental belief that technology and all of its benefits must be made available to everyone” (MediaJumpStart, 2002). 

The paper traces the history of nonprofit technology circuit riding and includes lots of the history from Gavin Clabaugh. (In fact, I recently unearthed the documentary that was made in 2000 and you can see and hear Gavin talk about it)

The conclusion:

Circuit riders occupy space among several institutions: the nonprofit sector, the philanthropy, and the technology industry. As such, they protect nonprofit organizations from the cutthroat practices of for-profit consulting firms and the unnerving pace of technology change. In doing so however, they have also faced constraints and demands on their way of doing technology assistance. As the field has grown, it has had to tone down its some of its progressive ideology and adopt the language of capacity building, which is less threatening to foundations and potential corporate funders. They have also had to adopt more professional practices, such as developing a trade association, a move that signals the legitimacy of their field and attracts external funding (Abbott, 1988; Greenwood et al., 2002).

The circuit rider model was created to solve the three problems outlined above: nonprofits’ uneasiness about IT; a lack of foundation support; and a lack of resources and expertise. It grew and survived through the institutional entrepreneurship of people like Gavin Clabaugh, who 19 connected the model to foundation programs, and Rob Stuart, who organized the circuit ridersinto a bounded field.

Following changes in the nonprofit sector, the future of circuit riding is unclear. For now, circuit riders continue to service the technology needs of nonprofits in lowresource environments. Their ability to continue doing so is threatened by competition for resources and legitimacy from other models of technology assistance to the nonprofit sector, like commercial NTAPs and for-profit consulting firms. Recently, smaller movements within the circuit rider community have been advocating for free/open source software as a strategy of fending off the influx of corporate firms and proprietary technology solutions into the sector.  Though the move appears to have great promise, it is too early to tell if this strategy will be successful and circuit riding will thrive once again.

New Organizing Institute: Training on March 9th

I just "met" via email Roz Lemieux from the New Organizing Institute.  It is a unique grassroots program that trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations. The Institute is being created by experienced online organizers in conjunction with MoveOn.org to fill an urgent need in progressive politics. 

Roz is organizing a training/skill share event next week and I'm passing this along for any readers in the DC area who would like to help out.

If you'll be in DC Friday, March 9 and can offer a few hours to help 3 organizations transform their use of technology for organizing, please sign up to be an NOI "guest consultant":

http://flingk.com/ofde8md

This opportunity is part of NOI's next online organizing and tech training, coming up March 7-9 ( agenda). The training is shaping up to be amazing -- with over 50 organizations including NAACP, Sierra Club, ONE Wisconsin Now, and the League of Young Voters participating. A critical piece is supporting the implementation of the training in participants' day-to-day work. As a leader (or specialist) in this field, you can help.

When you sign up as a guest consultant, we ask for a short bio and your areas of expertise. Trainees will choose the consultants that best match their needs. On Thursday, March 8, you'll receive implementation plans from 3-5 trainees. Friday, March 9 from 11:30AM-1:30PM, you'll meet with those trainees to offer assistance in refining (or revamping) the plans. Lunch is included and it's fun :^)

I know you're not all in the DC area, so please share this widely with other experts and leaders in the field. Thanks for helping build a stronger progressive movement.

Technorati Tags: nptech

The NpTech Mashup Meme

Click through to see larger diagram

I've had this post about a mashup between Idealware, TechSoup, and Social Source Commons  in draft and was going over to Deborah Finn's Blog to grab the URL for her excellent post last week about Social Source Commons.  I also stumbled across her more recent post about NpTech Mashups.  So, let's unleash the NpTech Mashup Meme.
 

This post was in draft because I was starting to devour all the great content on the NTEN Blog, including Marshall's post called "Ten Cool Tools for Working on the Web" and I strongly resisted the urge take Thinkature out for a test drive. It is a visual collaboration tool that you can use online and it is something that I have been dreaming about for ten years.  I resisted the urge because I wasn't collaborating with anyone on this post and I just needed to do some quick solo visual thinking so I used my snagit program.  I'm so glad I was able to guide myself to the best tool for my needs, but more often I need help from peers.

Usually, I panic and start brainstorming a list of smarter people and browsing my networks for people I am sure can give me the answers.  This happens all the time on listservs where people who work on integrating technology into their work participate -- whether it be teachers, librarians, community of practice, online facilitators, nonprofit techies, etc.  The discussion thread goes something like this...

"I need a tool that does xyz for abc purpose.  What are you using or what would you recommend?"

The responses come in, ranging from specific tools to directories or resources that have lists and evaluations of tools.  Sometimes clarifying questions.   In the NpTech space,  Idealware, NTEN, and Techsoup are always mentioned, with pointers to specific articles or reports.  And occassionally, there might be a post where some good soul has summarized the learning from the last time that particular question was asked on the listserv.

A question was asked recently on the NTEN Consultants affinity group.  Someone mentioned Deborah Finn's great post about Social Source Commons.  I went to revisit the site having explored in depth a few months ago, but experiencing some Web2.0 or Beth5.0 memory lapses, had forgotten it.   

Allen Gunn from Aspiration, the site's developer, called me on the phone (how retro!)  to talk about the site (it is in beta) and asked for feedback.  He talked about some future visions as well as some shorter-term upgrades to the site.  One thing he spoke about was mashups with content from other sources, the ability to make "playlists" of tools, and some collaborative filtering or "digg like" features.

I'd love to see some workflows shared too.   For example, recently on the UK Riders list there was a thread about tech support knowledge base software.  In it was was pointer to James Davis's Blog post about testing a tool called RTFM (Request Tracker FAQ Manager).   (I remember that term!)  James shares his reflections on testing the tool: 

I’ve installed and successfully used RTFM but what difference has it made to my work? It’s to early to tell but I think the most testing part will be the discipline required to create and use articles rather than respond anew to each request. Thankfully there’s been little to alter in my existing work flow, with much of work done through the e-mail interface. For end users, nothing has changed apart from the e-mail address used to contact us for support.

This is the type of experiential knowledge that is so valuable.  It's the wisdom of a Technology Steward.  So what I think Allen Gunn was describing was to also pull in various blog posts related to tools via RSS in the social source site.

What I'm saying is and something that I think Allen described - was to not only see peoples' tool boxes and the tools with links to content about the tools, but in some way to flip the lens and look at it from the viewpoint of outcomes or uses.  The key in choosing a tool is the right fit to purpose and practices.

What are your most useful synchronous online facilitation practices?

Photo by/NC from Matthew Saunders' Flickr Stream

TechSoup holds regular meetings for nonprofits in Second Life and I have been attending regularly and sometimes facilitate like this I did this past week.  So, I've been reflecting about effective facilitation of virtual meetings in Second Life  Right now the primary method of group interaction is via  unmoderated chat interface. 

Sometimes it doesn't support the process of collaboration effectively for all the reasons we already know.  But there is also a trust issue too -- particularly if you don't know all the avatars in real life.  Given that you are starting a virtual representation of people - you may be proned to projection.

I've thought using the moderated chat protocol that is interface independent.  I learned one from Nancy White when I took her online facilitation workshop.  It goes something like this:

-If you want ask a question type ? into the chat line
-If you have a comment or observation type ! into the chat line
-When finished typing, type GA
-If you need multiple lines, use  .... at the end of your phrase to indicate you're not finished.

This protocol might make some aspects of inworld chat only meetings smoother and less multiple threads, but introducing it into an established group's meeting practices might be a little like herding cats. 

I also find that I reach cognitive overload with the SL chat client pretty fast because:  1.) chat history flys by and I'm scrolling back to catch up   2.) The chat window I'm reading covers up the screen if I want to reach the history without scrolling,  so I have to move it around to watch what is happening in world  3) I have to translate the avatar name to real person name and relate to agenda or summary notes that I'm taking elsewhere. 4) There isn't a place inside of the virtual world where you can easily post the agenda and I haven't found a virtual flip chart yet.  It kinds of gets in the way of effective facilitation.

I also don't like using chat alone because it sometimes can get chaotic, leads to miscommunication, and feels so slow.  That slowness is great if you want to immerse in a conversation where you reflect and explore, but it can be really annoying if you're trying to come to agreement, determine actions, and make decisions.  I've always had chat as a back channel to a conference call and used it to summarize key points as a sort of electronic flip chart.   There I go again, wanting a virtual flipchart.

At Friday's meeting in-world, someone brought along their roundtable with expandable seats.  It worked for me because of the clock technique we often use to facilitate conference calls.   Now, if I could just find a flip chart in SL that let's you type in the summary of key points - I'd be a happy.

That's why Nancy White's post on most useful synchronous online facilitation practices really caught my eye.  So, I read it with this question in mind:  What techniques can be applied or adapted to Second Life facilitation or virtual world interface facilitation?   How does SL compare to these other tools and where does it fit on the gradient?  And, how does a virtual world tool help or hinder effective online collaboration or a synchronuous online communication?

Nancy takes us through a gradient of modalities and technologies for synchronous meetings.   Nancy observes:

For one shot interactions where you cannot expect a lot of investment in learning tools or processes, the conference call (land line and/or VOIP) is still the dominant choice, but I try to include SOMETHING visual in the mix

This is interesting to me because Second Life is quite the opposite - there is a huge investment in learning the tools, there is no audio (although that is changing) and it is all visual.  How much does this help or hinder effective collaboration?  How might it influence your choice of using Second Life for a project?

Nancy goes on to describe why multiple modalities are important:

The reason to have something beyond the is two fold: one is to increase our engagement and participation, particularly for those of us who are not great in an aural-only mode. With a visual, I'm less apt to start doing my email or staring out the window. For the same reason, I love my cordless phone because I find I listen to long phone meetings better when I can walk around and move away from my computer. It does something to my thinking. I'm still hard wired for VOIP calls and, despite the price, I am tempted to get a bluetooth headset for the computer.

I'm very similar to Nancy in that I have attention issues with aural-only mode.   But, I'm also finding when I don't any aural mode for group collaboration meetings - chat only - I start to have similar attention issues.   So, that's why I like having both the visual and the aural.

There is a new tool called SecondTalk that lets you integrate skype with Second Life.  While not yet perfect as some colleagues have noted here.  Problem, of course, is that I'm not sure exactly how it might support a group call on Skype.  (There is also the problem that Second Life sucks up a lot of memory, and some folks might not be able to run both apps at once.  I know that running both together on my computer slows things to a crawl.)

Nancy's next point is about how the visual and aural support the process of collaboration:

The second reason is other tools can support the process of the meeting or gathering. Using a chat room to collectively take notes, or a wiki to evolve the agenda and take notes during a meeting. Co-editing WHILE discussing a document. Queing up questions in a larger phone meeting via chat so that a) you know you are on deck to speak and b) people have a chance to be heard, especially if they are less inclined to jump in to a conversation.

This gets me back to wanting that virtual flip chart.   Another thing that happens and I know there is probably a way to prevent this - is that our meeting are taking place in a busy place where visitors often come by who are not involved in the group.  The other day, we had someone come by with their virtual dog who fetching a ball.  It's cute, but it flooded our chat transcript with "woof woof."  Now, I'm a huge dog lover, but it disrupted the meeting.

Nancy goes on to talk about the type of tool you might consider for ongoing meetings with larger groups:

When you get to the place where you are doing larger meetings (over 8 or so), or are doing ongoing live meeting practices, it starts making sense to consider more sophisticated tools and pratices. This is where things like web meeting tools, co-browsing, and such can be useful.

What I notice about web meeting tools is that most of us don't know how to make the most of them. We may learn how to use all the tools and features, but we haven't had exposure to good facilitation practices. We try and duplicate offline experiences (be they useful or not) and not really take advantage of the medium.

Of course, the meetings I'm attending in Second Life are related to planning and implementing projects in Second Life.  So,  while some aspects of the interface are annoying - as I've outline above -- it comes back to a question of "What makes for a good facilitation practice in Second Life?"  Given that it is a virtual word, do online facilitation techniques used in RL or other types of online applications make sense?  How can we take advantage of the medium of Second Life? 

I keep coming back to damn virtual flip chart.  I posted a question on the educator listserv and there doesn't seem to be one. yet.

Nancy's post continues with some observations about synchronous online facilitation techniques gleaned from reading "Learning in Real Time" by Jennifer Hoffman and Jonathan Finkelstein.   

When we facilitate synchronously we not only have to manage the software, the domain of the conversation, but we also are working to legitimately request and get the attention of participants who, for the most part, we cannot see. We have to do this across a diversity of styles and skills. It is truly a "ringmaster" job ....

What I notice is that Jonathan writes about something I learned from my colleague, Fernanda Ibarra. It is the masterful use of a shared white board to move people from being consumers of a meeting to being active participants. Fernanda showed me how she prepared a whiteboard screen with clipart of a circle of chairs. As people entered the web meeting space, she invited them to write their names under a chair. This helped orient them to and practice with the tool, created a sense of "group" and gave a visual focus as people entered the "room." It was brilliant. I've riffed on that idea and found it very useful. We've done After Action Reviews with the white board taking the place of a flip chart used F2F. We've even had virtual parties. This brings together , text, and images.

This starts to get really excited about the possibilities of Second Life and really using the medium.  Now what if our shared table (see above) could also be a shared white board -- our collaborative virtual flip chart.  Of course, you'd need the aural channel for it to work.

Nancy points to a few good resources on the topic of synchronous online facilitation techniques that I need to explore ..

"Learning in Real Time" by Jennifer Hoffman and Jonathan Finkelstein
Top Synchronous Training Myths and Their Realities - By Nanette Miner
InSynch Training and their Synchronous Training Blog
LearningTimes training

 

Technorati Tags: VECoP

Judi Sohn of the Colorectal Cancer Coalition: Blogging for Cancer Advocacy

Judi Sohn, Director of Operations and Communications, for the Colorectal Cancer Coalition.   

I had the pleasure of interviewing Judi Sohn for Blogher and have finally published it.   I really enjoy reading her personal blog, A View from Home and if you work with nonprofits and technology - you'll find it very valuable.

She made some really important observations about using a blog for professional development that resonated with me.

Like me she is a self-taught techie, "Everything I know now I taught myself by experimenting and learning from others online."

She uses her personal blog, A View From Home, to help her keep informed of technology.  "I’m a geek wannabe. I understand this stuff enough to be dangerously chatty at cocktail parties but I’m no programmer. I use my blog to help work things out for myself. If I have a “eureka” moment about something, I’ll blog it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to remember when something happened or what the circumstances were that led me to a given point, and I’ll search my own blog to get that reference. It’s always fun when I’m Googling for something and my own site pops up in the results."

Her advice for those that work for nonprofits and do not blog anonymously.

"Before I hit the “publish” button on any post, I always ask myself, 'if the New York Times linked to this would I be okay? Is this something I would be comfortable posting on a bulletin board?' Since I’m the type of person who likes expressing her opinion, the answer is usually “yes.”

Her personal blog drives traffic to her organization's web site.

"I will sometimes use my blog to help drive visitors to C3 in the first place since my site is more established and gets better search engine traffic. C3’s referrer logs show that this tactic is often successful."

Judi recommends the following nonprofit technology blogs:

Emily's World

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Studio 501c


Here are a few nonprofit technology posts from Judi's blog

Nonprofit blogging: keep your eyes on the road

9Charities 

Nonprofit technology: The next frontier

Logic Puzzles and Democracy

Photo Credit Used with Permission from Flickr User c3colorectal

The second thing she did after hiring an attorney to get the organization's tax-exempt status was to hire a well-known cancer blogger for her organization.   "My only requirement to her was not to let more than 3 days go by without an entry. Some folks in the organization looked at me like I was nuts, but they trusted me and it was the best thing we could have done. Our website is a top search result for many keywords, all originating from Kate’s blog entries. Kate is also now our Director of Research Communication. She has an incredible ability to take the most complex science and turn it around into language anyone can understand. It’s a lot harder than it looks."

The organization also has an Advocacy blog. "We need to draw attention to colon cancer.  This only happens through patients and their famliies. So we are working hard to connect with as many people who are affected by colorectal cancer as we can.  A blog can do this."

Are you a flickr contact pack rat or connoisseur?

Linktribution is given to Alan for designing the flickr contact acquisition behavior scale.

Let's start with the differences between these two types of collectors.

The term pack rat is also used in English as slang to refer to a person who collects miscellaneous items and has trouble getting rid of them and in severe cases can be a compulsive hoarder.  On the other hand, a connoisseur, is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts, or an expert judge in matters of taste.  The term is from the french term connaître meaning "to be acquainted with something."    A connoisseur may be a collector, but makes particular choices about what they add to their collection.  Think museum curator versus pawn shop.

My virtual colleague, Alan Levine, posted a reflection about educational technologists flickr contact acquisition behavior.  So, I decided to use his scale and create a widget poll.    Alan shared this about his own flickr contact acquisition behavior:

When someone makes me a contact, the reflex is usually one of “Ahh, that makes my ego feel niiiiice, ooooh, more please”, and to take action right away. If I cannot tell who it is (which is hard form flickr user names), I do check them out, but nearly always I reciprocate.

Yup, I might be a Contact _____  (BK added rhymes with score and begins with W). 

But this FOAF (Friend of a Friend) concept is an underlying thread to tools I’ve gotten addicted to– not just the ego stroking, but the power that comes from making connections with people you both know and don’t know, and more so, using their network as a farther reach of your own.

And you really do not find anything like this in typical “educational” software, eh?

This prompted me to wonder about nonprofit flickr contact behavior and create the above poll.  Some more questions too ..

• How do you communicate with your contacts in flickr?
• How of you used your contact list as a channel for your org message?
• Tips for being effcient managing your contacts if you're a contact packrat?
• Is this FOAF concept totally foreign to nonprofit software?
• And, out of curiosity, how many contacts do you have and how have you been a flickr member?

Answer the poll and drop a comment about the other questions.

I have 250 contacts in flickr and have been a member for almost two years.  If I know the person, I make them a contact.  I look at their photos, contact lists, and group membership to see if we have anything in common before making them a contact.   I have my flickr email filtered to an outlook folder so I tend to do this contact maintenance in batches.   

I use the distinctions/viewing rights in "contacts," "friends," and "family" to manage contact communication but it isn't efficient or elegant.   I communicate with others in flickr by leaving comments on their photos and some of us have ongoing conversations in flickr.  That's also because I tend to upload photos related to my blog posts.  I have a sense that the my blog readers who visual learners like me tend appreciate it.

I also join groups and send photos to groups and use the discussion boards.  I haven't fully explored the group feature and have way fewer group members than contacts.   I'm sure I want to jump down that rabbit hole yet.

Linktrition is given to Alan for designing the flickr contact acquisition behavior scale and some day I will create the DSS Manual for Web2.0 behaviors ...

The Pros/Cons of Social Web for NGOs from Kabissa

Kabissa, an organization that supports African civil society organizations so they can put information and communication technologies to work for the benefit of the people they serve, has recently published a terrific overview of the promises and and pitfalls of Web2.0 for African Civil Society.

I think some of the points are universal, others not.  Take for example this pitfall to watch out for:

What to do when you’re away from the Internet?

People that spend alot of time online begin to take it for granted - this was already the case before Web 2.0, but now new Web 2.0 services are encouraging you to do more online than ever. What do you do when you’re not near your Yahoo mailbox, your blog, your flickr account? Please be very strategic and don’t fall into the trap of being in a life threatening situation without critical information that is only available on Yahoo and you are 200 miles from the nearest cybercafe.

Those of us large metro areas in the US are never far away from a coffee shop with wi-fi or high speed Internet access.  But that isn't the case for an ngo working a developing country or extremely rural area.  I remember this from my time in Cambodia where I was an hour's drive from the nearest Internet cafe while teaching ESL in the Roteang Village School english program.  I usually left my laptop back in the hotel and packed all my paper resources.  But, when I go on an assignment here in the US, I can always pull down what I've forgotten from the Web.

Anyway, this brief summary is well worth a read if you're thinking about Web2.0, Social Media, and Nonprofits.

Seth Mazow from Interplast is live blogging from Ecuador

Dr. Jorge Palacios And A Resident Setting The Schedule
Originally uploaded by interplast.

Read his first post here.  Seth is doing this so Interplast supporters can learn first-hand how the organization spends its money.    Stop by, read the post, ask questions, etc.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants: Using Social Networking Tools - Advice, Brief Case Study, and Resources

Nancy Schwartz invited me to submit a piece for next week's Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants theme on "Using Social Networking Tools."  So, I'm sharing a little getting started advice, a mini-case study, and a list of resources.

I've been experimenting quite a bit over the last 18 months way too many social networking tools.  I realize that finding the time to experiment for many of us can be difficult, especially if those experiments do not lead to direct outcomes. 

And, there is so much to experiment that one person or organization can't do it alone.  Nancy White has mentioned the need for a network of experimentors, and perhaps that could be a future Carnival.   

This particular Carnival raises the question of how to decide which online social media tools to use and ramp up your skills using it.   

I don't think there is a cookie cutter approach yet -- a fish to toss at you.  Sorry.  It takes some action learning, small focused experiments where you track, evaluate, and learn from before investing more time and effort.  Or even to convince someone else of the proof of concept.   Choosing which of these tools to adopt starts with outcomes, strategy, message, and knowing your audience - and nothing to do with the tools.  So the issue is more how to best match your strategy, outcomes, and audience with the right tool and what type of simple experiment can you set up and what will you learn?

While there are some obvious easy tools to get started with first, like Flickr, for example, you have to be ready to invest a little bit of time in some thoughtful experimentation. 

1.  Ignore the tools:  Figure out your outcomes, strategy, and message and determine whether your audience or the audience you want to reach can be assess via one of these social networking tools.  There is enough secondary research published either via blog posts or research hubs about who uses these tools.  Take advantage of that information. (I've pointed to a lot of resources in my blog ...)   

2.  The rule of threes: Identify and explore a tool and commit to learning three things about it in three weeks with at least three other people in your organization or your peers.  Make it fun.  Most of these tools are not difficult to learn how to use, but it does take some "play time" or "getting to know you time."   What you are looking for how best to interact with the community as well as the techniques.  Katya Andresen has written a fantastic five minute guide to social networking tools. Read it. 

3. Set up a small experiment:  It doesn't have to an exhaustive experiment.   Define something small and tangible - whether it be a flickr photo contest or exploring the content related to your organization's issue and identifying 10 friends or contacts.  Identify 2-3 questions you want to answer from your experiment.   There's lots of examples in this blog.

4.  Set a Time Frame, Track it and Talk about it:   Make sure you activate the tracking system or install an external tracking system like site meter, bloglog, or Google Analytics.   Look at your data for answers.  In addition, have a conversation with the three people who joined you - what did you learn?  What should you bring forward?  Should you trash this tool and go onto a different one?

The Case Study

I interviewed Tuesday Gutierrez from SaveGuimaras over at blogher.   What I didn't include was the indepth conversation we had about how she has explored and used social networking tools. SaveGuimaras is a group of individuals who are dedicated to raising awareness on the recent oil-spill tragedy in Guimaras, Philippines.  Because the international community and media have failed to respond to this environmental disaster, they are bringing the campaign to the Social Web.  Their goal is to mobilize grassroots participation by using online networking tools and their blog.

If you check out their blog, you will notice that the group has a presence on myspace, friendster, YouTube, and few other communities. Tuesday shared some of her learnings with me about using these tools.  She has been the most successful when the tool matched her audience and outcomes.  And, she had to go through a bit of experimentation to learn that!

1.  How have social networking tools helped spread the word about  your cause?   

Friendster is a very popular social network in the Philippines.  Almost  everyone I know has a Friendster account and its very easy to find people, influential or otherwise in Friendster. When I opened a saveguimaras account, in less than two weeks, we had 200 people who signed up. What´s good about Friendster is that everytime a "member" of your group posts a new entry on your blog, you receive it on your email/ and you see it right away on your Friendster page. This led me to stumble upon Roy Alberto/Joseph Alberto who was a co-founder of 1 fish entertainment who was promoting a rock gig for Guimaras and that was how our relationship started.

MySpace hasn´t taken off like Friendster because the Filipinos I am targeting  there are based in the US. To invite people in Myspace is also painstakingly difficult unlike Friendster that you just click a button and invite.  Myspace avoids spamming so the members usually blocks people from adding them directly unless you know them personally or their email. So what I have been doing is sending out mails one by one!

YouTube is also good in finding videos about Guimaras. Its pure luck too.  Project sunrise, the provincial government led organization (supported by Canadian Urban institute) happened to post their videos and I was given permission to post them in the blog. The IFCP (Independent Filmmakers Coop) in the Philippines just had their Guimaras Short Film project which was shown on television and some moviehouses in Manila.

Unfortunately, there were some short films that were censored by the Movie Television Board (which I want to say is one of the most conservative board of censors in the world! and is really stifling Pinoy creativity) and some directors uploaded some movies on Guimaras (some will upload more videos soon.)

YouTube would have been more helpful for my cause if people in the Philippines have home videocameras and if they have a fast broadbandwidth.  Unfortunately, the journalists on the field are still using pen and paper technology which explains why there are not a lot of videos about Guimaras.  Because regional flights are more expensive,  people from Manila who are supposed to be more technologically equipped do not come to Guimaras to shoot videos/photos which also explains why there is a lack of photos uploaded in Guimaras at Flickr.  I rely on photos sent to me by the filmmakers and some journalists on the field.

Mobile technology is more popular in the Philippines and we are looking  into how we could use this platform. The only difficulty I find here is that SaveGuimaras is not a non-profit org and is simply running as a webblog therefore, mobile networks might not trust us enough to collaborate with us.

Care2.com has been helpful  in a way that other social networks have not been.  Although it is difficult to find people or connect with care2.com members, whats good about their system is that you can send out letters to ten members each and for me its much better to send out ten letters once than sending out letters one by one. And yes, I've painstakingly sent out letters to care2.members ten at a time.

I'm only discoveriing about Flickr. Personally I think Flickr is useful if you are two or three in a group but if you're only one person like me running a blog for a social cause, you need something faster.

2.  How has your blog connected you with people to help with your cause? 

Through this blog we´ve met so many wonderful people who all have the passion and the drive to help the victims of Guimaras.  Some have their  own projects already in place before they´ve contacted us  but we´ve also managed to link people with  the same agenda and get them to collaborate with each other. Some organizations have also written expressing their willingness to collaborate with SaveGuimaras and its partners.

For example, Chromatic Experiment, a Filipino band contacted us thru our blog. They are willing to play for free for future rock gigs planned by the team of Joseph, Sazi and Laura (There are more people involved behind this team, but for the sake of brevity we will only mention these three).   

3.  This is the bonus question and please do not take offense.  I've noticed  that a lot of folks from Phillipines are really into social networking   apps  and lots of wonderful communities in places like  YouTube, Flickr, etc.  Why do you think that is?

Filipinos are very warm people and like to belong always in a group. Thats why these social networks are working for us. Add to this the fact that Filipinos are the no. 1 labor export of the country and there is a diaspora phenomena happening with us so we really need these networks to make us keep in touch with our families. We hate being alone and despise isolation which usually happens when youre living outside the country. A lot of Filipinos wouldn't want to leave if only the government is doing its job but the future
of the Philippines is very bleak.

BTW, we are the  no. 1 text messaging capital aside from the fact that sending out text messages is always cheaper than making an actual call.

The Short Resource List

I've been collecting good resources on social networking tools in my del.icio.us account and point to a few good ones I find every week for my NpTechTag Roundup over at Netsquared.  So, I've attempted to pull out a few introductory articles, books, research, and blogs that might help inform your experiments!

Read Allison Fine's Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age (I reviewed here)

This article on idealware, Using Social Networks to Stop Genocide by Ivan Booth is an excellent and detailed case study.

Danah Boyd writes about Social Networking Tools and Media.  You should subscribe to her blog to keep up.   She has organized some of the "best of" content here and her research papers here, which is a good place to get grounded and context.

Marc Sirkin writes the NPmarketing Blog and Katya Andresen writes the Non-Profit Marketing Blog - both of them write about nonprofits and social networking tools.   Too other must-read blogs are Getting Attention by Nancy Schwartz and Spare Change by Nedra Weinrich.  ( Note, Nedra writes about "social marketing" which is different from 'social networking," but her blog has valuable information for both topics.)   In addition, several UK bloggers are focusing on nonprofits and social networking tools are also must reads - Steve Bridger, David Wilcox, and Nick Booth.

Several NTEN Affinity Groups have formed around social networking tools, including one called Social Networking Tools.  In addition, I set up a Flickr for NonProfits - we are sharing information and also have a little sandbox over at flickr for experiments

For tactical suggestions, I'd recommend the Influential Interactive Marketing's Blogs, Social Media Optimization Tips.

That's about it from for now.  I'm working on a scaffolded list of resources for about dozen or so social networking tools that I've experimented with ..

Katya's Five Minute Guide to Social Networking

The above powerpoint is from 1999 and excerpted from day-long workshops I used to lead when I worked at NYFA and design and ran a program called "KIT: Knowledge in Technology - Technology Planning for Arts Organizations."   

Before we jumped into the technology tools, I always covered technostress.  It is really about how  individuals within the organization could be more comfortable with adopting technology tools.   It got at the human barriers around technology adoption in the early days:  stress, fear, anxiety, frustration.  What happens when you don't have the time to experiment or play so you feel comfortable?   

Since the participants were from arts organizations, we made them draw pictures of what techno stress look like.  I would scan the pictures and embed into my presentations to do the debriefing - and overtime would have user-generated content in the curriculum!   One of my favorite drawings was the metaphor of being in a foreign country and not being able to speak the language.

I went searching my harddrive for that visual after reading Katya Andresen's Five Minute Social Network Guide where she used the analogy of travel in a foreign country to explore social networking tools.

"to most of us (including me), social networking—using the web’s latest and greatest ways of connecting to people—feels akin to being a stranger in a strange land.  People have their own customs online, they act differently, and it can be hard to find your way around.  It seems so foreign and intimidating.  At least it did to me, until I figured out I should simply apply the same skills of assimilation I’d apply anywhere else outside my experience."

She goes on to introduce her travel analogy and link it to exploring social networking tools.

I've been reading Henry Jenkin's book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide" - I ordered after I heard him speak at the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning briefing (Nancy Schwartz recently wrote about it here) and read his white paper on participatory culture.   He defines participatory culture as a culture:

1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is
passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they
care what other people think about what they have created)

Our conversations here in the blogosphere are participatory, although it would be nice to have multimedia conversations.   After listening to both Katya's and Michael's comments about fundraising widgets, it made me realize that they enable a participatory culture ...

Somehow that's connected to what Nancy is talking about in Second Wave Adoption and what Michelle from the Bamboo Project refers to do in her recent post about technology adoption and nonprofits.

Steve Bridger Interviews Camera Rwanda about NGOS and Flickr

Pearl Children Care Center

I discovered Camera Rwanda's beautiful photo stream when I wrote about it on blogher last January.   Steve Bridger from NFP 2.0 just posted an interview with her entitled "Camera Rwands: Storytelling using Flickr."   She talks about how flickr has impacted her, building communities around the images, and the benefits of using flickr for storyelling, communicating with stakeholders about a project.

Go right over there and read it! 

Alison Lowndes: Helping to care for children in Kenya

I "met" Ali while lurking on the UK Riders list, a peer group of ICT circuit riders.  She caught my attention because she founded an organization that works with orphaned and disabled children in Kenya.  She also asked some really good questions about blogging for ngos on the listserv.      

Ali is the Founder of AVIF (ABLe Volunteers International Fund). In  2002, she established a 65-teacher international summer school in NE Asia.  She lived in China for 8 months with her 2 young children.  On returning to the UK in 2003 she spent some time working in internet security before deciding to go back to school.  She was studying Astrophysics but unfortunately, as a single parent, she found it difficult to continue with the financial burden.  Having friends in Kenya, she came up with the idea to provide summer schools in Kenya.  In March 2006 AVIF was born, the first volunteer placement ran over a 5 week period this summer.  (She chronicles the program's start up on her personal blog)

She shares why she started her NGO, "The economic situation is far worse in Kenya than China so volunteer teachers were the only option.   I decided to make AVIF a charity rather than a company as people are always more willing to offer time to a non-profit organisation. That said we are hoping to launch a trading company allowing all the orphanages and communities we reach in Kenya to sell their hand-made local crafts; bags, sandals, pumice, soapstone, plates, jewellery etc, to further their own futures. Trade not Aid !"

AVIF is a virtual organization that uses free and low-cost Internet technologies like VOIP to manage its programs and development work from the UK.  Notes Ali, "It is me in my living room and a friend named Sharn Argwings-Kodhek networking in Nairobi.  We access all orphanages via the internet. We have a substantial network of people we speak to by SKPE or SMS.  Kenya has a poor bandwidth at best and this limits internet access to email only in most areas, except large corporations in large towns. Mobile communications are extremely accessible however, with very few dead zones."

The organization works directly with local ngos and volunteers matching them by interest, need, and skills.   Organizations in Kenya are carefully vetted.  Notes Ali, "Unfortunately there is a lot of corruption and greed in Kenya.  Assigning volunteers to work with vetted organisations allows us to fully verify the organization's commitment to the children. "

AVIF plans to open an online shop to sell items to raise money for its program.  "We have a large number of really beautifully-made items, hand made by the communities the volunteers lived with this summer. They have sent me photographs, weights and full descriptions of all the items. These items will be listed and hopefully sold on our online shop and the items packaged by the Kenyans and dropped with DHL for global delivery."

AVIF uses the Internet to recruit volunteers.  Notes Ali, "We advertise for free on the very many ESL /TEFL websites for teachers and also recruit many primary education student-teachers in 2/3rd year of university degrees via the UK government's Teaching Development Agency (TDA). We also advertise the Volunteer Centres in the UK web sites."

The organization has just started to use a blog to engage volunteers and others interested in their work in a conversation.  Volunteers are able to post about their experience in country.   Notes Ali, "Blogs also allow much more "real" info as well as progress reports.  It is so much more alive than a static web site.  We've just begun blogging and thankfully I've been helped by my peers on the UK riders group."

Photo from Ali Lowndes on flickr
 

E-Tuk Tuk Project: Other Building Peace through ICT projects

photo from the E-Tuk Tuk project

I just had to blog it.  Would love to see something like this in Cambodia and perhaps is a step towards comprehensive connectivity?

The eTUKTUK is a community building initiative that aims to converge the technological benefits of digital communications and new media with community radio. The eTUKTUK is a self-contained mobile telecentre and radio broadcasting unit housed within a three wheeled motorcycle.

One of the golden rules of blogging is to acknowledge your sources - something I've always practiced.  Now, Alan Levine has come up with a term for it, LinkTrition (Hmm .. a meta linktrition?)
I learned about this project via a well-written and researched blog post called "Building Peace through ICT - Ideas for practical ICT4Peace Projects."   This is a great list of practical, down to earth ICT projects.

Technology in the Arts Conference:Funding Technology Projects

The session was called "Funding Technology Projects" and was moderated by Jeff Forster.  It includes two funders, Doreen E. Boyce from the Buhl Foundation and Christopher J.  Mackie from The Andrew Mellon Foundation.   I interviewed Christopher J. Mackie following the session.  Here's the first segment about how to keep up with learning about technology.

Some key points that resonated:

• Mackie spoke about the issue of nonprofits keeping up to speed in technology and how difficult it was.  He notes, "It isn't possible for one person to keep up. You need your peers.  You need a network.  Find your peers who are in a similar situation and it doesn't have to be another arts organization.  Find your peers and share knowledge."
• Be aware of vendor-driven solutions.  Get the vendors out of the picture and start with your strategic goals.
• We never bought you typewriters, so don't ask for computers.   What are you going to do with the technology?  The outcomes are important.
• Documentation of your project is important and get it disseminated so other people can benefit from your knowledge.
• What comes first, technology or change?  Chicken and egg.  Change for change sake is not good. You need educate people on your board/staff - there will be resistence. 
• Technology literacy is important --- and in order gain literacy you need get people to put fingers to keyboard.  They don't have to be experts, but comfortable.  It helps if there is a technology savvy person who can help in the crisis, but they must be someone who can speak to people in a engaging way about technology.
• Don't get captured by vendors. It is important that your needs don't get overlooked in the relationship.   That's why Open Source is a good way to go - you don't get locked in.
• Vendors are not evil.  Some of them are the best people we know - but it is about the relationship and your interests and needs first.
• Social costs of technology are vastly higher than the box.  The costs of training, replacement, keeping, staffing, etc.
• Business for Open source a.) Heiress or Patron  2.) Consortium.  Farmers Coop is the analogy

Jeff Forster mentioned that his survey of nonprofit technology benchmarks - comparable data from the last six years - the next segment comes out next week!

A Blog for Robin Hood Marketing

Robin Hood Marketing
Originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com/

What is your 15SecondPitch? An Interview with Laura Allen

Photo courtesy of Laura Allen

Laura Allen is the co-founder 15SecondPitch, a company that help people to market themselves in 15 seconds on the phone, email, face-to-face, and on business cards.  I met Laura at Boston Podcamp very briefly and grabbed her card so I could catch up with her for an interview for Blogher.

1. Why did you launch your company?

After 9/11/01 in New York, the economy was truly dismal. For the first time in a long time, I was concerned about finding work. What’s worse, everyone I knew was calling me and asking me to connect them to a job. I did not know of any jobs or anyone hiring. I started to get scared. I was so grateful just to be alive, but also fearful of the future. Jim and I decided that we needed to come up with an easy way to market ourselves and that we needed to share that idea with others because we knew the economy was going to be very rough for an extended period of time. Luckily, people immediately loved the idea of the 15SecondPitch and people started to buy our business cards with their pitches printed on them right away.

What we did not know at the time was that people would have a lot of trouble writing their 15SecondPitch, so that became an opportunity for me to offer my marketing/writing/shameless self-promotion expertise to help them decide what they wanted to pitch and how to say it in a way that was authentic for them.

2. What is this 15 second pitch anyway?

The 15SecondPitch is a concise, clever and compelling introduction of who you are, what you do, why you are the best at it and your call to action. The best part of the 15SecondPitch is that it can be delivered in just 15 seconds. The idea of the 15SecondPitch is also a nod to Andy Warhol. Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 Minutes” and I thought that was a very profound idea. Now, we live in an A.D.D. society, so my quote is, “Everyone can be famous for 15Seconds—everyday.” I think that our current technology (cell phones, ipods, blogs, podcasts, blackberries, etc.) is absolutely amazing and beyond anything I could have imagined growing up. The only downside is that people don’t have a lot of time to hear about who you are and what you are doing. You need to cut through everything else that’s vying for their attention at that moment and deliver a VERY memorable pitch!

3. Why do I need one? Is there research that backs it up?

15SecondPitch just completed an informal survey of over 2,000 professionals. We found that nearly 70% of professionals have trouble pitching themselves. We also found that 1/3 of the respondents hated going to networking events and also did not have business cards that reflect their unique talents. Here’s a link to the survey findings.
 

Guy Kawasaki makes a BIG point about how people should learn how to pitch in his blog entry called “Ten Things to Learn This School Year.” Even if you are not in school, I feel learning to pitch is one of the most important things to know if you want to promote yourself.

4. Why would a nonprofit organization need one?

Non-profit organizations are in desperate need of a great 15SecondPitch! There are so many amazing  non-profits out there. How do you as a progressive, compassionate person decide which causes to donate money to? How do you decide which organizations to volunteer your time with?

Whenever I donate my time or money to an organization, it is usually because a someone I meet is PASSIONATE about this organization. How do I know they are passionate? They talk my ear off about all of the great programs and initiatives the non-profit has going on! And this all starts with a conversation. Usually they grab my attention by talking about the mission of the non-profit and then I get excited and want to be a part of it too! If everyone who was very passionate about a given cause took the time to create a simple 15SecondPitch, I’d bet that they’d all raise a lot more awareness and donations. It’s fast, easy and free to create a 15SecondPitch and display it on our website for our 1500+ members to see, so I can’t see why anyone would NOT want to do it.

I’ve presented my 15SecondPitch workshop at: Streetwise Partners  and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.  This year I’ll also be presenting for: StepUpWomen’s Network and New York Opportunity Network

One of the reasons why I like to work with people is because there have been times when I could not find work and it was a very scary time for me. I like to work with organizations who help people get the training they need that they might not be able to get elsewhere. The 15SecondPitch helps people feel more confident about who they are and the skills they have to offer to the world.

5.  Tell me a story about how the 15second pitch has transformed one
of your clients.

This is the best part of my “job”. I love working with people and helping them come up with a great pitch that can really transform their lives! One of my clients is a singer/songwriter who emailed me a few days before she had to go to a major music conference. She knew that she did not have a good pitch and that she was not promoting herself as well as she could be. We sat down at a local Starbuck’s and we spent 90 minutes working on her pitch. I could tell you the whole story, but I feel that the pitch speaks for itself!

Here’s Mara’s pitch:

My name is Mara Sanchez and I am a Singer/Songwriter specializing in creating songs in 3 different languages. I write 'slammin' music and lyrics in the Pop, Latin, Brazilian and Jazz genres. I am great at what I do because I have toured and performed in Europe and Japan and have shared the spotlight with Stevie Wonder. I also sing in three different languages (Spanish, English and Portuguese) Right now I am recording a new CD of original Latin Pop songs and looking to tour internationally.

You can see her picture and her pitch on our website here

Mara had a limited budget, so she could not just go out and hire the people that she needed to help her make a name for herself. As a result of her new pitch, she found a music producer and a lawyer who was willing to work pro-bono. This is all because they believed in her talant because she was confident and knew how to marketing herself using her new pitch. Hopefully, Mara will become a household name in the next few years.

6. Aside from having a 15 second pitch up my sleeve, what other networking
advice would you suggest? Blogs to read?

I would suggest that women focus on creating their own networking groups. Start with one person that you like, add two more, then another and so on. I think that networking events are good, however, to grow your own circle of friends organically over time will always yield better and more consistent results.

I go to many networking events here in NYC every week and my goal is always to meet one or two interesting people that I’d like to get to know better. And if I focus on that, I’m never disappointed. I’d also recommend that everyone learn a concept that I created called the “Third Party Pitch.” What this means is that I will invite a friend whom I respect and admire to go to a networking event with me. I know what this person does and I believe in their work. Instead of just focusing on pitching myself all evening, I spend a lot of time promoting my friend. For example, if I meet someone who works at an entertainment company, I might talk about Leslie and her new film. If I meet someone in the music industry, I’ll mention Mara. It’s much easier for me and for most people I know to promote their friends and the vendors they work with. In fact, 90% of my business comes from word of mouth. People work with me and then they recommend me to their friends. This is the most effective type of marketing there is.

However, I make it easier for them to market me, by teaching them my 15SecondPitch and giving them a big stack of my business cards to give out when they have the opportunity to do so. Of course I do the same for them, whenever I can.

Some of my current blog favorites are:

Elana Centor
Wonder Branding
Learned on Women
Lifehack.org
Chris Brogan

My YouTube Interview with Steve Cliff: Part 1 - Six Tips for Community Tagging Projects

I did a post about the Steve Cliff and the Voterss Project and it reminded be that for over a year I've been attempting to do multimedia conversation and I have only been able to talk to myself!

So, I posted the video below as a response to Steve's introductory video, asking him for some tips for success in a community tagging project:

Here's the response I got:

 

Here's a transcript of the answers:

Hey there Beth. I was excited to get your video question.  Almost as excited as I was when I got the call from YouTube founders about a $1million grant!

Interrupted by a call from his wife.  Steve’s buying an Ipod Shuffle!

Actually, we didn’t get a million dollar grant.  We’re out there in the wilderness doing our grassroots thing, using tools like Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, etc.

I have six tips on how to start a community tagging project:

1 Pick a compelling theme

Don’t make it so narrow and obscure that only one or two people are interested in the topic. 

2. Connect with natural behavior

There are people who are already bookmarking particular resources.  Seek out those people first.   Don’t make tagging extra work or add on.  Find the people who are already tagging information in your topic area and work with them.

3. Pick your tags carefully

We had a problem with mno06 as tag, because it brought up all the YouTube users with mn in their name.   If you use a tag that has a date in it, like mno06 – it becomes dead.  We became more generic and used mnpolitics.

4. Display the results

Make sure people can see the results of what they are doing.   Our aggregation page allows people to see what we’ve collected.

5.Go beyond your known community

You are going to go to those already tagging or doing videos in your content as a first step..  Use the contact and social networking tools built into the tools to find them and connect with them.  Ask them to add your tag to the items they are already connecting.  That’s how we seeded our project.  For example, we found someone who was tagging photos of election themes.

There are people now beginning to contact us and are interested.  There are people creating new flickr accounts to join our efforts and we're teaching them how to tag.   Then shift to the new people who aren’t tagging or creating video.

6.  Tools, particularly video, need to be become easier

The biggest challenge is that I have to record in video and then upload.  YouTube needs a flashbased video recorder built into the interface.  It has to be one click and easy to do it.  Also, with flickr, people need to realize that they you need more than 5 photos to be live.  Also, YouTube has a delay.

I posted a video with a follow up question and Steve says he will answer it next week.  So, stay tuned!

This Young Woman Keeps Her Gloves On: Maria Estela Godinez

story and photo via Ricardo's Blog

The young woman in the pink shirt and gloves is Maria Estela Godinez.  She recently shared the stage with Intel Chairman, Craig R. Barrett, during his keynote at the Digital Leaders Forum as part of his Latin America trip.

Maria Estela Godinez is currently studying high school in her hometown San Francisco del Rincón, México.  She lives with her mother, a single parent, and five other siblings.  Her passion is electronics.  Ricardo tells her story on his blog:

Maria Estela built a glove that allows speech-challenged people to move their fingers in a similar fashion to Braille language and have those signals recognized by software that converts them into speech. She did it all by herself  (hardware and software) with the help of teachers and mentors. She did such a great job that she went on to win three awards this spring at ISEF, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair that Intel sponsors every year. Maria Estela won two awards for Computer Science (one in the individual category and another one in the overall category beating the winner in the group category) and won the IEEE award as well.

Maria Estela recalls how when they announced the winner in the first category, the announcer couldn’t quite pronounce the name of her town well. The person presenting the award said “San Francisco…” and hesitated to say “del Rincón”. In the mean time the San Francisco, California team began to scream and celebrate… only to hear her name as the winner.

She went on stage when Craig invited her up. The only truly familiar face in the crowd was her mother. She went on stage confidently and started to tell her story.  She told Craig about her project and demonstrated how the electronic glove works. As she made every move everybody was fascinated with her story. Colombia’s Minister of Communications began to cry in her front row seat; deeply touched, as most of us were. We were all listening to every word she said. When she was done, we all cheered her with a warm ovation.

BTW, Ricardo Carreon is a blogger living in South America and works for Intel.  He is interested in NGO activities, including youth leadership and education.  I follow his delicious tag stream and enjoy his flickr photos, particularly those depicting South American landscape and culture.

Official Intel Press Release here

You Can Hear Teresa's Too

Last week while I busy trying to shoot a scene for an upcoming screencast, I forgot to turn off my SKYPE. And, of course, I got pinged while I was taping (darn, I had to reshoot the whole thing).  But the person on the other end was Teresa Crawford and I hadn't talked to her in over a year.  She wasn't interested in catching up, rather she was testing a Skype set up for a co-worker.   She also offered to help me test my video camera hook-up to Skype.

Anyway, now you don't have to wait for Teresa to Skype you to hear her .  Listen to her podcast over at InterAction.

Teresa speaks to InterAction about demystifying Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and social networking tools or "social web," and offers examples of how advocacy organizations are effectively using these technologies in the field.

BTW, we never did get to test the video connection.  If anyone uses one of the logitech cameras with Skype and can help me, you'd make my day!

Joitske Hulsebosch: Blogs, NGOs, and Developing Countries

Joitske Hulsebosch, who lives and works in Netherlands, writes a blog called "Communities of practice for development" where she writes about topics related to her work of facilitating processes at different levels; teams, groups, organizations, networks, and communities of practice.  After studying irrigation and soil and water conservation, which pays attention to the interface between social systems and irrigation technology in developing countries, she worked for ten years in Africa.   

Notes Joitske, "I lost the irrigation technology part long ago when I started to specialize on the human systems, first farmers around irrigation, later farmers federations, NGOs and networks.  My interest in online interaction is very recent; last year I asked what a blog and a wiki was. I didn’t have a clue."

She has worked in Africa as a trainer and later as an organisational advisor.  She notes, "I started in Kenya working with a water users association, living in a thatched hut!"  Later, her work brought her to Mali, where she advised on participatory methods. In Ethiopia, she did organizational capacity building work for a local network of NGOs.   

1.  What is your sense of how these social networking tools, tagging, blogs and the like – are they relevant to the people you work with in developing countries? 

PersonallyI see a huge potential for web2.0 tools for development, because everyone can now use the web as a space to express themselves, interact and co-create. Through my blog I see what’s possible with free tools. The tools can be useful for in-country connections, in local languages, or north-south connections.

In Ghana people are interested in knowing about new tools, because they need to stay in touch with what’s possible in order to decide what may be useful or not. On the other hand, the tools match a mindset of openness, co-creation, ease of writing and expression, etc. and that’s does not always match the way people communicate.

My question is whether you need to work on the mindset first, or whether the tools can help shift the mindset as well. I think it needs both, but starting too early to push is not helpful. An offline newsletter or meeting is very important in Ghana for instance for reaching people as they don’t have a habit of reading on the web.

I blogged a discussion on web2.0 in Ghana here and a  story about the use of a wiki in Zambia by my colleague Saskia here.

2.    Your blog is almost a year old!  I know because I encouraged you to start blogging!   Looking back over the past year, what has your blog done for you?  What benefits?  What’s the downside?

My blog has really stimulated me to read and gain insights. Blogging an article or a book helps me to go one step further because I push myself to formulate what I really learned from it. And it’s a wonderful archive for myself, I use the ‘search this blog’ button a lot on my own blog.  And I’m delighted with the positive feedback, the growing readership and the contacts I made. I've also been inspired to experiment with video blog posts and podcasts.  But that really takes up time. It’s a creative part of the blog I really love.  Lastly, now that I'm blogging, I’m reading other blogs through bloglines (I try to stick to around 50), it's a different way and fast way of learning too, which is very inspiring to me. 

 

The only downside is the additive nature of blogging, and it does consume a lot of time. And another disadvantage is that sometimes the best insights are unbloggable, because it is private or sensitive information you don't want to be public.

3. If you were to introduce yourself to someone online via your blog, what 3-5 posts would you have someone read and in what order?

Here's what I recommend by topic.  I would be interested to know if this is what readers think. Sometimes I think I have an important post, but it does not get comments, so I don't know what people think (and if they even read it :)). I'm too shy to do an online poll.

• Communities of practice theory
• Practical examples
• Culture
• Technology
• The art of advising communities of practice

4. What advice would you give to someone about starting a blog?

Start when you have enough time to get a good regular schedule going, think about the topics you want to blog about. Try and get some people interested beforehand to read it, so that you are sure some people will read your blog. It is good to have some experienced bloggers around who can help you out with simple questions you may have. And do it because you like the topic and write about it, don’t do it for an audience. The audience may come, but to keep going regardless of readership, it’s good to have a solid reason why you want write and keep a blog for yourself.

5. What do you think are the best blogs to read in your field?

Depends how you define my field!  My bloglines profile is public so you can see what I'm reading.   

For Communities of Practice, it is very nice to subscribe to the CPsquare member’s blogs feed (if you can deal with an overflow of posts that is.)   For technology I follow Techcrunch  though it’s most of the time too much for me and I just scroll through very rapidly. And Netsquared.  For development, there are blogs from agencies like bellanet  or global s for a selection of blogposts from any country you are interested in.

6. You work, you travel for work, you’re online, you blog and you have young children.  How do you balance all that?

I feel I need quite some free, unplanned time to think of new ideas, stimulate creativity, so I try to safeguard my own creative space by planning well ahead by what I take on.  I do say no at times.  I found a new balance since the children go to school and want to play with friends rather than with me.  I try to avoid taking on too much.  But my children still complain at times and tell me to close down the computer!