Category — Viewpoints
Non-profit gives itself a Google makeover
Great story from the US of a non-profit organisation (”CASA Washtenaw, an organization pairing volunteers with children in the local court system”) using Google to streamline their organisation and get their word out to potential donors and grant holders.
If you would like to emulate this organisation (and why wouldn’t you) I suggest you sign-up to the Engage Your Community event (Thursday 4th September at Massey University here in Wellington) and then come along to one of my workshops at which you will be able to get hands-on experience with the very Google tools they used.
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August 29, 2008 No Comments
5 easy ways to protect your online presence with Dr Miramar Mike
You’re on Facebook, you’ve got yourself a GMail account and your putting up photo’s to Flickr. Or maybe you’ve merely heard about this new web thingy called social networking* and are wondering why everyone’s inviting you to a “book of faces”. If you’re an old hand at the Interweb or new to the whole shooting match this post aims to give guidance to keeping your online presence (”persona”*) safe and snug within your own control.
1: Reserve your name in all the right places
The number of sites that claim to ‘be your homepage on the Web’ is growing each and every day with current estimates ranging from 110, 230+ and beyond. And the usage growth is phenomenal with the top twenty sites growing at 11% per month.
Research by Rachel Cunliffe states that the top 5 visited sites for the young uns of New Zealand are (social networking sites, incl. online gaming, bolded):
… for boys taking part:
… for girls taking part:
That’s a lot of places for you “to be”.
And the drag is that you really really should be there because if you don’t reserve your online presence someone less attractive and far more nasty may do it for you. You may discover that there is a MySpace account in your name saying all sorts of horrid and terrible things.
I would suggest that, at the very least, you:
- Review the list of social networking sites I am on
- Sign-up for those you can
- Edit your account with some basic information
- name, real or non-de-plume,
- picture, real or your cat - stick with one for all the sites
- something that is definably you - age, marital status, tattoo, school, whatever you’re comfortable with that differentiates you from all the others with your name
- Point the account back to your base information (see tip #4) - there’s always a “your website” or “your blog” field you can use
2: Have a plan for each persona
STOP! Don’t shoot off and sign-up to every darned thing without thinking about it first.
If you intend using some of these sites as more than ‘place holders’, and I suspect you will once you delve into the wonders that lie within, you’ll need to decide what persona you’ll want to portray.
Each of these websites has a different feel, a different reason for being and therefore attracts a different type of person. You will need to think about what person you will be projecting within each place.
For example, I write and connect to very different people at LinkedIn than I do at Facebook. I perceive LinkedIn to be a place of work and use it to generate a web of ICT Professionals that I use in a reserved, thought out and sober manner. Facebook is about me connecting with anyone and everyone that I know, chatting about the sun and keep a track of what people (both close and not so close, current and past) are up to.
The language I use, the links I promote and the connections I generate or accept are very different between these two social networks.
In essence, one is a “drinks and nibbles with clients at the office” (LinkedIn) and the other is akin to a “BBQ and beer with the lads” (Facebook). Of course, you are likely to meet clients at your BBQ and have friends that come to the ‘work nibbles and drinks’, that is the way of the world (especially here in Wellington, New Zealand). You will definitely act different in each circumstance as you display a different persona. The same applies online.
Ready now? STOP!
Read on before clicking that ‘Create account’ link …
3: Monitor who’s referencing you and why
And now you’re done … aren’t ya? Well yes, you are - you’ve reserved your spaces and they have the appropriate persona for each, you are done.
But what are people now doing with this very public information?
The beauty, power and room for abuse of Web 2.0/social networking is the ability to reconstitute the information using context. Who has you in their lists, who has added you to the latest weird-ass application, where are you now appearing?
Most social networking sites let you monitor the activity around your ‘persona’ using email and/or RSS - use it! Unless you’re Dan Carter or the latest soap opera lady you’re unlikely to get swamped.
On a side note, I would also set up a Google Blog Search alert (again email or RSS/Atom) just to keep a tag on what people might be saying about you - I wonder if Mr Richie Trezise has that set-up!
4: Maintain one core set of information
You’ve set-up your persons (don’t think of them as merely accounts or log-ins, they are so much more) which are either basic empty place holders or the full monty. You’ve got your email address in 3 or 4 places, your photo is smiling down upon the world and you’re sick to the back teeth of having to enter your “interests” over and over again.
Don’t try and maintain multiple copies of information about yourself. Stick one version on a publicly accessible site (a blog, a website, a non-login-required profile) and link the rest back to it. You now have one place to update when it comes to the birth of the extra child, the change of job or the squashing of those criminal records.
Talking of criminal records, do I need to remind everyone that what you publish on the web is around FOREVER! And whilst it might be difficult to link that blog rant you left 2 years ago to one particular persona of yours please believe that it is only a matter of time before Google and the gang work out how. My advice - if in doubt, do not put it on the Web or in email.
5: Don’t use the same email/password password for all
Raring to go and get your personas out there?
All you need is a computer, a browser and an Internet connection …. and an email address. I can’t think of one social networking site that will let you sign-up without a valid email address.
But your email address is another expression of a persona - you probably have two email addresses without moving passed Go, your work one and your ‘personal’ one. And that’s a grand start - if you’re signing up on behalf of work then use your work one, that’s the persona you want to use.
If, however, you intend to do this outside of the work context then don’t fall into simply using the one email address for all the sites. As I said, your email address is a tool of expression for your personas and they may not be mutually compatible. For example, I use a few email addresses and use GMail to bring them all together meaning I don’t have to worry about the mechanics of email management. My most common email ‘persona’ is miramar.mike@gmail.com but I do use others depending on the level of closeness I will allow the contacts to me.
And finally. Don’t use the same password for all the sites.
Devise your own system of maintaining a few passwords depending upon the level of “oh fvck!” you’ll experience if someone steals it and uses your persona. I have a hierarchy of passwords (not too onerous but enough to make me feel comfortable) that range from “I couldn’t give a monkeys” all the way to “Wholly crap they could use my credit card!”
I hope that’s been of use to you, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment and let me know how it goes and remember - let’s be careful out there!
Further reading
- Google: Does your password pass the test?
- USA FDC - Social Networking Sites: Safety Tips for Tweens and Teens
- US FDC - Social Networking Sites: A Parent’s Guide
- Telegraph: Treat it like the village pub and you’ll be fine…, honest
- Google search: ’social networking safety’
* Appendix
social networking
You link people to you with a relationship (friend, colleague, fellow party goer …) and from that a ’spider web’ of connections is generated. This is also being called the ’social graph’. Social networking is the most popular way of generating online personas but not the only one, your email address is also one. More at Wikipedia: social networking
Online persona
A side of the whole you that you generate online. You have, as in real life, many personas - you have your “go to work” persona, the “chairman of the school committee” persona, your “drinking down the pub with mate”s persona and many many others. Whilst online personas are the same be aware that they operate in a much more fluid, traceable and aggregated world that is not always (if ever) in your control.
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This is cross-posted at MiramarMike.co.nz - Connecting people with people via information
June 5, 2008 1 Comment
Workshop notes: Keeping up with the Joneses
- Keeping up with the Joneses: the easy way to stay in-the-know — Miraz Jordan
- Organisations need to keep up with news of current events and other flows of information that affect and relate to the work they do, both currently and in the future. This workshop, presented by Miraz, will help you learn how to keep up with the flood of information, and get started on efficiently monitoring what’s going on in the world that you should know about. She’ll talk specifically about using RSS feeds and a “technology scout”.
Resources
For this workshop there is an example RSS feed address: http://radionz.co.nz/rss/news.xml.
There is also a starter OPML file. Download either the raw XML file (12Kb), or the zipped XML file (4Kb). If you download the zipped file you need to uncompress it before trying to use it.
April 22, 2008 No Comments
With so much information - who do you trust?
With the Internet fast moving away from being the “the world’s library” and towards “the world’s information store” there is a new question to be answered - who do you trust?
The question should be asked from two, interconnected points of view - trust, what is it from the :
- readers point of view
- authors point of view
This post looks at the first, trust from the readers point of view, with the second being discussed next week.
Let’s start with a situation we all have been in - getting a book out of the local library.
With a library you implicitly trust the content (books) you read. And by “trust” I do not mean “agree with” - I certainly don’t agree with everything on the shelves in my local library :-)
But why do we trust that the books are what they claim they are?
Probably because the time and effort taken to get the ideas from the authors head and into a book in your local library is quite considerable. The effort, therefore, to actively engage in some sort of nasty business (e.g., writing a version of Harry Potter with a different ending) is prohibitive to most. We wander into our library implicitly trusting that the book we take out was indeed written by the stated author, published by the stated publisher at the stated time and is close enough to authors intent.
If we happen to pick up a laser printed pamphlet on the way out, we generally have a different emotional response to it and don’t trust it quite as much.
However, with the Internet the time and effort to produce content is minimal and we have to devise other ways that gain our trust.
For instance, it’s taken me 30 seconds to get started with this blog posting (log on etc) and, when I push the big ‘Publish’ button, it will take milli-seconds for the system to publish it to the whole world. If Harry Potter had existed solely in an on-line environment it may have been a lot easier for me to to “fake that ending”.
The question for us on-line is - Who do we trust when it’s so hard to judge? It might be even as basic as, “What do we use to judge?”
Some options are:
- Recommendations from the real world:
- Friends, colleagues, family …
- Organisations that have a real world presence
- Sites from authors you’ve read over time
- Sites from authors you can connect with (email, leave comments, talk to …)
It’s hard and I don’t have all the answers - how can we trust information that seemingly springs up from new on-line services and websites, generates a buzz and then fades away just as quickly. And, of course, this is the WORLD Wide Web - how do I know that the Swedish research paper Google has thrown up is by someone with a valid and current reputation?
What do you use to judge if a website should be trusted - leave your comments …
That, my trusting readers, is ‘trust’ from the readers point of view (or “information consumer” as we’re becoming known because content on the Internet isn’t just words but sound and video as well). With the next posting I will look at ‘trust’ from the the author’s point of view - who do you trust with your ideas, business IP and memories?
Further reading about trust:
- Criminal IT: Should you trust the internet?
- Who can you trust on the Internet?
- What can you trust on the Internet?
- Google search ‘internet trust’ …
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This is cross-posted at MiramarMike:
Enterprise 2.0 New Zealand style - helping Kiwi organisations navigate the tricky Web 2.0 path to free information and more efficient use of the Internet
April 14, 2008 1 Comment
Please evaluate the Webguide
We’re really interested to know what you think of the Webguide.
Please take a few moments to complete a short survey. Since the Webguide was written for New Zealand community organisations, those are the opinions we’re seeking.
If you’ve never used the Webguide, we need to know that too.
Please pass the word to NZ community organisations.
March 30, 2008 No Comments
