Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Tagging for Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing Webinar and Action Learning Exercise I'm

Next week I'm teaching a two-part online workshop that includes a Webinar, Action Learning Exercise, and A Reflection Discussiona for Extension professionals and how they can begin to use tagging for collaboration and knowledge shraing. 

I decided to use the Ethan Zuckerman advice of point don't write -- and pointed to some excellent screencasts and videos about social bookmarking.   I'm thinking about doing a remix though because there is redundancy and also because I just discovered a way to download youtube videos and convert them so I can remix.

The presentation wiki and resources can be found here.

The reflection exercise can be found here.

Tagging Communities

User Generated Content
Originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

I found this visual from Bradley Horowitz via Rashimi Sinha's powerpoint from the IA Summit.  I've been following her work for a while.   This is an illustration of the next generation of the social web.  People watching objects and having conversations about the tags.  It looks like the participation rates are similar for other online communities.

NTEN Blog: NpTech Tagging Community by Marnie Webb and Beth Kanter

My NpTech Tagging Community Presentation Slides and Notes in Flickr

I had the opportunity to collaborate with Marnie Webb on an article about the NpTech Tagging Community over at the NTEN Blog.  You can read it here.

The Lurker to Contributor Ratio: Tagging Communities Compared To Other Online Communities

Chart from David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007 Survey,

Via Stephen Downes comes a pointer to a David White's JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007 Survey, a British-based, of 1400 respondents, on the use of Web 2.0 technologies.  The respondents are self-selected, so expect the numbers to skew high.  However, as Stephen notes, the data is very useful.

Indeed, I've been looking for some research that confirms that the lurker to participant ratio in online communities (see Nielsen) holds true for some web2.0 online communities, like tagging communities, digg communities, and others.   Ha, I found something on page 8 and illustrated by the above chart.

Respondents were asked if they contributed to each group of tool or simply viewed the material offered. This was an attempt to find out the ratio of contribution to ‘lurking’. The fact that this question was only asked after groups of services and not after individual services produced what seem to be unreliable results. Also, the concept of contribution is subjective. Recent research in this area distinguishes between ‘comments’ and ‘content creation’. 

“It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other
89 will just view it. It's a meme that emerges strongly in statistics from YouTube, which in just 18 months has gone from zero to 60% of all online video viewing.”
Guardian Online July 20, 2006.

The survey results show a much higher level of contribution than this, with 20% of those who use mySpace and youTube contributing in some form. This could be indicative of a general increase in this area but is probably an effect of this aspect of the survey being too simplistic.

This area requires more research especially into what motivates individuals to comment or create. The follow up email interviews to the survey were designed to gain an insight into this issue but are not very comprehensive.

I also think that in tagging communities we see some nuances of behavior based on frequency or at least based on an unsciencetific analysis of NPTech Tagging data.

Shoulder-to-Shoulder Instructional Media: My Tagging Screencast at NTEN!

Photo from my flickr stream
View the Tagging Screencast
Presented by NTEN

I'm pleased to announce that my screencast about tagging has been released and showcased by NTEN!  I created this screencast back in September/October of last year, so this release has provided a great opportunity to meta reflect on the whole screencast creation process as well as consider how my views about the use of tagging have evolved.

I've thought long and hard about how video editing amplifies my compulsive nature and how I need to  reduce my ratio of video minutes viewed per hours of editing time!  I hope to share some simple and fun ways to create "shoulder-to-shoulder" instructional media for the panel on Screencasting at NTC I'm doing.

While I'm still very much passionate about screencasting, I've come to dislike the term.  I personally want to move away from the metaphor of making movies of the computer screen to more shoulder-to-shoulder instructional media and perhaps something that is more participatory or for lack of a better word, social.  Maybe it is more like moment capture.  How do you create good instructional media in a reasonable amount of time and do a good enough job that helps people learn something by viewing it?      

That's enough meta for now.

If you're still with me, let me share some tidbits about that photo.   I created it for the screencast to illustrate the definition of tagging.  What is really interesting to me is that the photo - which I composed and uploaded into flickr is my most commented, favorited, and viewed photo!  (It was even favorited by this guy I don't know named Joshua)  I've also had many requests from folks to use in their tagging presentations.  Again, shows me the power of open content and open source thinking.

Here's the script from the screencast written back in October.  Some of my thinking has definitely evolved ....

Introduction

These program notes will help you implement some of the ideas presented in the screencast. If you have questions about tagging or want to share your organization’s experience (good and bad) with social bookmarking,  the NTEN Affinity Group, NpTagvocates, is a great place for discussion with your peers on these topics.

Act 1:  The Problem

Many nonprofits professionals have to manage a lot of information on the web and share it with their co-workers or clients. In many smaller organizations, where there are not enough resources for a high-end knowledge management system, people end up using their browser favorites or forward links to one another via email. Unfortunately, these methods make sharing and managing information resources difficult. 

Here’s why:

(1)  The folder structure of your favorites list is not always flexible enough to allow for easy cross referencing
(2)  Bookmarks can’t be accessed from different locations or computers
(3)  Links can get lost in email
(4)  Knowledge management is a solitary endeavor, not a social one.

Act 2:   Definitions

Tagging and social bookmarking can be useful techniques for smaller nonprofits to easily share their information resources. But first, some definitions.
 
Tags

Users add tags to describe online items, such as images, videos, bookmarks or text. These tags are then shared and sometimes refined. For a more detailed definition of tags, see the Wikipedia entry here.

Here are the examples I showed you in the screencast, using the tag “sharpie.”

Photos
Web Pages
Event
Videos
People

For an excellent primer on tagging, see Andy Carvin’s PBS LearningNow essay.
 
Social Bookmarking
 
Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public web site and describing them with tags. You simply register with a social bookmarking site, typically a free service, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of your choice, and designate your individual bookmarks as public or private. You can search for resources by keyword, person, or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classification schemes that users have created and saved.
 
7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking published by Educause is an excellent introduction to social bookmarking for non-technical folks.

There are many social bookmarking services available on the web. The ones most often mentioned by members of the nonprofit technology community include this short list:

Del.icio.us

Ma.gnolia

Furl

Diigo

If you want a detailed comparison of these and other social bookmarking services, you can read one at Consultant Commons.  If you want to find out who else uses what social bookmarking service in the nonprofit tech sector, check out Social Source Commons.

As mentioned in the screencast, Del.icio.us, which was purchased by Yahoo, is a good place to start. It has a critical mass of users, is fairly easy to use, and it is free. You’ll want to read the Del.icio.us Getting Started Guide as a first step and review other help documents as needed.

Act 3:  The Benefits

  Findability
  People use words that they themselves like to use to categorize things.
  It is more straightforward than choosing a folder.
  The information is one place
 
  Social Aspect

The social aspect is a very important benefit. If you are skeptical, think about having 24/7 access to your co-workers, bosses or a subject matter expert’s bookmarks. Wouldn’t that be useful?

With many people tagging, the social aspect exposes us to the intelligence of the group, which may add other tags, making the resource even more findable. You can read more about how tagging makes knowledge management a more social experience in this paper by Rahmi Sinha, researcher. I like the article and diagram so much, I included it in the screencast.

Marnie Webb’s bookmarks are here. She has also written quite a bit about tagging over at her blog.
 
Easily Share What You Know With Others

Tagging and social bookmarking make it easy to share what you know with others or a community by simply exposing your delicious url. As a trainer, I let people know my del.icio.us url when they ask for additional resources. For example, I’ve tagged lots of nonprofit tagging examples with “nptag” and you can find them here: http://del.icio.us/kanter/nptag

Many organizations use social bookmarking services to share resources more informally with clients than through a web site. A few nonprofits are using socialbookmarking to track resources or follow particular topics for trend analysis for strategic planning. 

Sometimes you may not want to expose all of your bookmarks. Most services offer a “tag as private” feature. (Look in the “settings” to enable this feature in del.icio.us)

As I mentioned in the screencast, you can use RSS and javascript to publish your del.icio.us links on your blog. The Craft Emergency resource list that I showed you in the screencast is done just that way. There is a write-up of the project here.

This article will give you a more detailed description of the benefits:Tagging Gives Web Human Meaning
 
Act 4: Getting Started

I presented a very easy template for using tags and social bookmarking services to share internal information with a team, committee, or a few staff members. There are different ways you can design this project, but this is a very simple approach that you can build on later.
 
Step 1: Discuss Tagging Policy

Tagging can get sloppy – spelling errors, verbs v.s. nouns, etc. You probably noticed that about my tag stream. This can make trouble down the road if you want to publish your resources to a web site using an RSS. So, come up with a few standard tags. But don’t get bogged down – you’re not creating a formal taxonomy, rather it’s a folksonomy. Also, people can add whatever additional tags they want so they can remember the item as well as a description.

If you want to understand more about tag strengths and weaknesses, I recommend the following articles:   

  Tags Strengths, Weaknesses And How To Make Them Work by Robin Good

  Tips for Effective Tagging from TechSoup

  Tips for Tidying Tags by Alexandra Samuel

 
Step 2: Set up an organizational account and get everyone set up

If you are using tagging to manage internal information sharing, it is probably best to set up one account and let everyone have the userid/password. Set up everyone with a bookmarklet tool and show them how to use it.

You can find the FireFox bookmarklet here and the Explorer bookmarklet here.
 
Step 3: Teach people how to start bookmarking!

It is very easy to get started bookmarking as I showed you in the screencast. The most difficult part will be to switch from your habit of using the browser favorites list to the bookmarklet tool. 

 

Step 4: Share the bookmarks

The simplest way to share your bookmarks is to publish or share your del.icio.us url which your username. For example, my username is kanter and my url is:
http://del.icio.us/kanter

You can also share a particular tag such as “tagging” as follows:
http://del.icio.us/kanter/tagging

And, you can share any combination of tags as follows:
http://del.icio.us/kanter/tagging+nonprofit

If you want to share a resource with a single individual outside your organization and who also uses del.icio.us, you can use the “for:username” tag to direct the resource into that user’s in-box.)
 

Publishing an RSS Feed of Your Bookmarks onto Your Web Site

If you want to publish on your blog or web site, it is a two step process. First you have navigate to the RSS feed scrolling down the to bottom of the page and clicking on the orange RSS icon. For my account, my RSS feed is located at:
 
http://del.icio.us/rss/kanter

You can also navigate to a particular tag, and then find the RSS feed if you want to just publish resources that have been tagged with a particular tag. For example, if I wanted to publish the resources that I’ve tagged with tagging. The URL would look like this:

http://del.icio.us/kanter/tagging

Then you need to sign up a for an account with feedburner. Next cut and paste the URL into the Feedburner tool and follow the instructions. When you get to the options for refining your feed, select “Publicize and Monetize” and then “buzz boost” and follow the instructions. At the end, feedburner spits out some javascript code that you cut and paste into your web page or blog.

For additional project designs and ideas, see the following case studies:

  Craft Emergency Resources

  Nonprofits and Tagging: Two Case Studies

  Dutch Nonprofits Collaborate With Del.icio.us

  Sharing Interesting Web Sites: Development Nonprofits

  Tagging in Art Museums

  Tagging Nonprofit Missions

  Examining Tagging in the Nonprofit World

  If you want to see more, you can find them in my del.icio.us account:
  http://del.icio.us/kanter/nptag+casestudy
 

 

: The Tips

 

  It’s much better to watch these than for me to write about them, but for a quick reminder, here are they:

  1. Edit and clean up your bookmarks
  2. Review your collection by navigating by tag
  3. Browse the bookmarks of colleagues and subject matter experts
  4. If you don’t know their account URL, ask them
  5. Browse by tag and other users when beginning to research a topic
  6. Use in combination with search
  7. Browse the NpTech tag

  Here are some more advanced tips and tricks:
  Seven Habits of Wildly Successful Del.icio.us Users

  Consultant Commons: Blogging and Tagging How-Tos

  Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection

  Complete List of Tools for Del.icio.us

Photo Credits:

Act 1:

Office: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyfoo/103060741/
Dogs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42857758@N00/74905059/in/set-684524
Solitary Office: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moriza/

Act 2:
DefinitionsComputer café users: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maebmij/123180774/

Act 3: Benefits

Chocolate Lab: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbgb/42499133/
Dogs Sniffing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethan_wuds/
Poco: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessiesan/51310260/

 

Act 4: Getting Started

Meeting: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/85332783/

NpTechTag MetaFeed: 2007 Version 1 - Feed Fixed, Tag Still Broken?

Allan Benamer gave a shout that the NpTech Meta Feed was broken.   

The NpTech Meta Feed has been revised and move to here: 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Nptech_Tag_MetaFeed_07

I've asked Marshall to put a forward on the old feed.

But is it fixed?

Gavin's Digital Diner gave us a thoughtful post about the pros/cons of taxonomy versus folksonomy, and the quality (or lack of) in user-generated content.  A brilliant reflection, if only presenting one point of view, but still worth reading! It's here.

Gavin raises some good questions:.

1. What the hell is the "NPTech" tag  and how would one use it anyway?
2. What purpose do folksonomies serve? How are they different from taxonomies?
3. What's good or useful about user-generated content and what's just entertaining or cute. 

Some links that might give some context:

Gavin points us to the "Beneath the Metadata – Some philosophical problems with Folksonomy." article published in D-Lib in November by Elaine Peterson.  While Gavin doesn't point to it, I think it is worth reading David Weinberger's response.

Laura Quinn wrote a rant a while back on this topic back in October.

The NpTech tag early discussions can be found here: http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/59925

About a year ago, Jilliane Smith wrote a great post about the Tagging and the usefulness of the nptech tag over at netsquared:  http://www.netsquared.org/blog/jillaine/tagging-for-nonprofits

 

More recently, Allan Benamer made some good points about how the use of a Google CSE might be the best approach:

http://www.netsquared.org/blog/kanter/nptech-google-cse-versus-socialbookmarking-rss-feeds-what-do-you-think

Do you have an opinion? How do you use the NpTech Tag?  Is it useful?