Posts from — January 2008

Twitter is one of those things that seems just inherently trivial and silly. It’s known as a micro-blogging tool — people write extremely brief ‘updates’ on what’s going on. Updates span a scale from ‘eating Weetbix for breakfast’ to ‘a huge earthquake just took down my house’.

It’s a bit like the early days of the telephone really: people didn’t know yet what it would be able to do, and were concerned about how it might be used:

… [in] the period between 1880 and 1920 … speculation about the telephone was that it would speed up life, eliminate regional accents, create a greater democracy and have people working out of their homes. … The people who developed the telephone had a clear sense of what the device would be used for. “It was emphasized as a practical device for practical use in business,” Fischer explained. “People, particularly women, were discouraged from using the telephone for ‘mere idle gossip.”

[Via: How the Telephone Brought Societal Change.]

Now we know that sometimes that ‘idle gossip’ is the lifeline that can help those who are housebound and isolated, and that the phone is an invaluable business tool.

Similarly with Twitter, which is another, increasingly popular, communications tool.

It can fulfil that role of simply connecting people, as Maria Langer explains:

Twitter is my virtual water cooler, where I keep track of the lives of other geeks like me. I might work alone in a home-based office, but my Twitter friends are always just a mouse click away with links, jokes, and comments to share.

And it can be much more meaningful, as Josh Catone describes in The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse:

Twitter … is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for immediate discussion surrounding that news. …

Why Twitter Works for News

It’s fast. Increasingly mainstream news reporters and bloggers are utilizing Twitter to put up news tid bits as they happen, and commentary as it pops into their heads. …

It’s two-way. Unlike TV or newspaper, Twitter allows for a conversation. …

It fills a void. As Ruffini points out, Twitter is built for the new news cycle. “Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds,” …

Twitter is being used more and more for mainstream news coverage. KPBS News San Diego uses Twitter to put out updates about stories, for example, and during the California wildfires last fall it was a must read. The potential for Twitter to be used for news dissemination is something the site’s founders realized early on during an earthquake.

[Via Read/WriteWeb: The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse.]

It was very hard to abbreviate what Josh wrote — you really should read his whole article as there’s excellent content in there.

I’m not convinced that ‘news’ in itself is such an important thing, but I see two differences from traditional TV, radio or newspaper news headlines:

1. Anyone who can access the Internet can use Twitter. That means that real people who are experiencing events can give an immediate and direct account of what’s going on. We don’t need to rely on journalists deciding whether or not we’re important, mangling the names, the events, the activities, filtering our words. We the public have direct access to the rest of the world. We can also directly receive immediate feedback and commentary.
2. The ‘news’ is generally about someone else somewhere else. Twitter gives a real voice to real people, to our friends, family and acquaintance. It’s very specific.

Have you explored Twitter yet? If not, sign up and make a start with the ‘eating breakfast’ style of tweet. Get a feel for it. Then you can start to use it for ’serious’ purposes.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Share this post

Hide Sites

The Wild Apricot Blog mentions an interesting US research finding:

… In 2007, the Internet adoption rate for American adults aged 50 and over, with a post-secondary education and household income of $75,000 or more, was up by 20% over 2006, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

…Further, online donors appear to be more generous in the size of their gifts than donors who contribute through other methods — in 2006, for example, the median revenue per donor was $114 for online donors and $82 for non-online donors. Online donors tend to be well-educated and well-heeled, and although all age groups are represented, those who give through online appeals are generally younger than the 65+ age group that responds most strongly to direct mail.

While I haven’t seen statistics for New Zealand, I would think they’d at least be similar. Community groups need to keep ‘online’ in mind for more and more of their activities — raising funds, recruiting volunteers and supporters, reaching out to potential clients and members. As Simon Hendery says in If it’s not on the web then it’s out of the loop:

If it’s not on the web then it’s out of the loop … New Zealand businesses spent around $2 billion last year advertising in print and over the TV and radio airwaves.

When the precise ad-spend figures for 2007 are totted up, however, they are certain to show the traditional heavyweight mediums’ share of advertisers’ budgets slipped while an upstart alternative - online advertising - grew rapidly.

There is a clear and distinct move online in countries such as New Zealand and the US.

Katya Andresen continues with the importance of capturing useful information:

… Noble and Weiner address the How of online fundraising, with a discussion of best practices for building a mailing list and reaching out to prospective donors by email. “Collect email addresses constantly,” the authors advise. “Ask for email addresses in all communications — direct mail, surveys, at events, on website,” making it easy to register and offering incentives to do so. It is vital to make it equally easy for people to opt out of email communications, however — and a clearly-stated privacy policy is essential.

Meanwhile Hendery offers six ways local businesses can get the most out of online advertising and marketing. Community groups should take note too:

1. Don’t ignore the shift online
2. Search engine optimisation
3. Search engine marketing
4. Business blogging
5. The power of YouTube
6. Public relations 2.0

While I don’t think that search engine optimisation and marketing are the be-all and end-all of an online ‘presence’, it’s certainly worth noting this particular point:

Media releases are now often written in language aimed at achieving a prominent placement on news aggregation websites and search result listings. At the same time, the PR industry is grappling with how best to get messages out to not just the traditional mainstream media outlets, but also the myriad of less accessible bloggers who can now also influence the public’s perception of their clients.

At the very absolute least every single community organisation should have a web page with contact details, a few words explaining what the group is about and a contact email address inviting interested parties to contact them and perhaps join a mailing list.

Even the tiniest and least-funded group can easily achieve this with a free website.

Online is where things are going.

[Via : Wild Apricot Blog : Online Fundraising 101, and If it's not on the web then it's out of the loop - 30 Jan 2008 - NZ Herald: Technology News and reviews from New Zealand and the World.]

Share this post

Hide Sites

Beth Kanter’s post about her process for raising funds as part of the America’s Giving Challenge tells the story of Pharoth, an orphan in Cambodia. The story reinforces the all-important point that Beth makes:

…all nonprofits need to use stories as part of their communications and fundraising.  Research and studies have shown that donors are more likely to give if they are hear a story about one person who has been helped by the charity versus numbers and statistics. I now have a collection of stories about the Sharing Foundation.

[Via BlogHer - Social change, Non-profits & NGOs: Stories, Conversations, and Supportive Network are Key for Social Fundraising.]

It’s easy to think of charities who use the story technique, who ask for a dollar a day for a named person, for example. But there are also still many organisations who would benefit from working a little harder on putting stories to statistics.

Stories engage our human hearts and allow us to feel that the ‘problem’ is manageable. We can’t help hundreds, or thousands or millions who need a particular service, but we do feel able to improve the life of Josephine or Johnny.

What are the stories in your organisation?

Share this post

Hide Sites

Last Thursday we ran a briefing for some web development companies interested in working on a project building a collaboration, information-sharing platform for New Zealand community groups. I’m working as project manager for the five national organisations behind the initiative.

I was presented with something of a dilemma as I sat down to organise the briefing. It was easy enough to make a presentation to the people attending the briefing in Wellington, but I wasn’t sure about the best way to involve a company from down south.

My head went all fuzzy when I thought through what it would take to set up a web conference using Skype, a webcam, and all that. I’m sure it’s not that hard, but I didn’t have hours to spare. Somewhat by happy accident I looked into what Zoho had to offer.

Using Zoho productivity tools you can just about run a whole organisation without buying and installing software on your office computers. All the Zoho tools are accessed using a standard web browser on a broadband connected computer. On offer are office tools including a word processor (like Google Docs), spreadsheet and database. They’re also offering less common tools including a business package a akin to an instant intranet (Beta only), a CRM, a wiki, a project planner and more. Most of this is free, though they do charge for some stuff.

I thought ZohoShow would be useful for our briefing. It looks a lot like Powerpoint with a few differences in the way you edit and share, and thankfully, far less options. As soon as I started my first presentation, I saw a button with Remote on it. I found out I could simultaneously share a presentation with anyone who is sitting in front of an internet connected computer while showing the same thing to a face-to-face meeting.

A quick trial over the internet with a colleague sitting just two metres away proved it could work. There is a little chat box so written comments could be exchanged with remote users.

On the day of the presentation we linked by phone with the ZohoShow running in the background. Below is a screen shot of what the screen looked like at both ends. During the meeting somebody asked for a copy of the presentation, something I was easily able to do using a sharing function. The presentation is not publicly available as I shared it with a private list of people.

So how did it go?

Admittedly it wasn’t all plain sailing. A few glitches occurred when I was creating the presentation. I hadn’t allowed a lot of time to seek help from the support discussion forum, nor did I actually read the manual. By using the support available I might have gotten around the (minor) glitches.

Frustratingly, I wasn’t able to add the final two slides. I gave up trying as the system refused to accept these slides. It wasn’t critical information, but I can imagine a situation when it might be. I also had problems getting consistent fonts, and 24 slides were listed but I could only see 20. What happened to those four missing slides?

The system seemed fast and responsive for the actual presentation and setting up a presentation to share was quick and easy. I liked the chat box, even if we didn’t use it this time.

Overall, we achieved what we wanted, and people participating seemed happy. I will probably use ZohoShow again, though with more time I would like to try a web conference using a webcam so each party can actually see each other.

If you’re thinking about using free online tools, you might like to read Miles Maier’s article “The Great Web Office Experiment”. Miles supports community groups using ICTs in London and he wanted to to find out just how easy or hard it is to apply online tools to my everyday tasks. He concludes the “ ‘nirvana’ is still some way off and issues around the sustainability and security of using online services for organisational use remain to be resolved.”

I harbour similar reservations, but that’s not going to stop me from trying some of the tools on offer.

Update (29 January 2008): Quite unexpectedly and without prompting Ahmed at Zoho has just dropped me a line:

First of all please accept our humble apologies for the issue you had in saving your presentation.

Believe you would have got this issue 3-4 days back. Actually a bug had crept in our previous update which resulted in the save feature showing inconsistent behavior. We have managed to locate the nasty bug and fixed the problem in our update which was out on 25th January. Now you will be able to save your subsequent presentations in Zoho Show without any issues.

Share this post

Hide Sites

A US study discovered large numbers of their local nonprofit groups were struggling with outdated technology, if they even had computer equipment.

This puts the nonprofits at a real disadvantage.

… NPower Indiana has released a study of local nonprofits that found that 85 percent were working with outdated computers or operating systems, and that many lacked even basic technology equipment and standards:

On an average day, most Indiana businesses take for granted that they have a working computer with IT support. Yet 85 percent of local nonprofits participating in a recent technology study are constrained by outdated PCs or operating systems, which can seriously affect their system’s stability, efficiency and ability to run current software. And more than half of these organizations are vulnerable to email viruses and phishing attacks.

… “most nonprofits have an opportunity to improve their productivity and service impact by addressing technology issues,” said Mike Harmon, NPower Indiana CEO. “Many nonprofits tell us ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ when it comes to technology, so this helps them understand where they may be at risk.”

[Via : Study: Nonprofits and Outdated Technology | TechSoup Blog.]

Share this post

Hide Sites