Useful resources and tools picked up along the way... And a few thoughts, mainly around communications, technology, volunteering and Web 2.0 --- Intended for existing Third Sector clients in the UK, Brazil, South Africa etc. but others may find it useful too.
Nonprofits & NGOs Using Mobile Phones and SMS for Social Change
The recent Mobile World Congress (held every year in Barcelona) coincided with an interesting NetSquared ThinkTank question: "How Can Nonprofits and NGOs Use Mobile Phones and SMS for Social Change?" - I fully intended to throw my five pence worth in, especially as I was blogging for the 65K strong internal audience of a major mobile technology firm, but with so many other deadlines that week, this was one I missed. Lots of others did make it though, including at least one other delegates at the congress, and I highly recommend that you head over to Britt Bravo's excellent sum-up here.
Also, here are some links to people well worth knowing if this is an area of interest - first up is SwarmTeams, run by the indefatigable Ken Thompson. I first ran into him at an event held by the RSA in partnership with Policy Unplugged back in 2006 and got to try an early beta which I have to admit I wasn't too taken with. Then I ran into Ken again at the Digital Media Literacy Summit 2007 and he kindly gave me a second chance. Well, the concept has come a very long way ... Here's a tool for engaging people with SMS that really works. A couple of favourite features are notice-board posting from your phone and audience questions for conference Q&As, but there is much more functionality. Have a look at http://home.swarmteams.com/ - the site is commercially oriented, but I know Ken would like to work with the 3rd sector too.
Last but not least - whilst the Mobile World Congress is driven around new developments such as Femtocells, LTE and WiMAX, an award is also handed out for 'Best Use of Mobile for Social & Economic Development' - in conjunction with the GSMA Development Fund. Also, there was a panel on technology to reach the bottom of the pyramid which specifically dealt with some of the unique challenges of deploying mobile networks in emerging economies. An example of one opportunity that could help drive development in some areas is to bring banking to the unbanked - as covered here.
Earlier this week we squeezed a stack of Scotland's leading agents of social change into a conference room at the new centre for social innovation on Rose St. in Edinburgh and we spent a couple of intensive hours exploring some of the basics of blogging, wikis and whatnot. Special thanks to Claire and Adam at the Melting Pot for their help getting this off the ground.
It is clear there is a strong desire to improve skills for connecting and collaborating using the web amongst Scottish social innovators. I am working with the leadership team at the Melting Pot to nail down some dates for 2008.
Afterwards some of the more advanced participants including the bloggers Osbert Lancaster and Myshele Goldberg convened at the nearby Abbotsford to discuss what they'd really like to work on in 2008 and we agreed that there was a need for a number of sessions under the following headings:
Now for those who can't wait till the new year to learn more about some of these, check out the articles above, or have a play with the video selection below:
- It'll be at The Melting Pot, Edinburgh's superb new centre for social innovation which I have talked about briefly before. We have a great line-up of people attending who will help shape future delivery for maximum relevance and impact for a Scottish audience.
We've filled the seats but if you feel that you really could add something whilst rubbing shoulders with some of Scotland's leading lights on the social enterprise scene then we'll try and squeeze you in. Simply drop me a line - michael at ambjorn.com
- We kick off at 3pm on the 18th of December. Dates for workshops next year will be put here in due course so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed to stay posted - or if you are e-mail driven, use the Feedburner powered sign-up box in the right hand margin.
If you want to learn more about The Melting Pot, check out this PDF which has the full lowdown.
Call for Papers (and Photos) from Re-imagining Democracy - Towards a critique of web 2.0
Somewhat prompted by David Wilcox' interesting recent post on e-petitions (and interviews) where he talks about the (different) e-petition systems deployed by respectively the Scottish Parliament and Westminster I thought I'd share a call for papers that came through just as I was recently catching up with Osbert Lancaster at the superb new Melting Pot in Edinburgh (more about the latter in due course):
Call for papers - Towards a critique of web 2.0
Online journal Re-public invites contributions for its upcoming special issue entitled: "Towards a critique of the social web ". Launched with a debate between Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog, the issue aims to explore the larger political questions that are often neglected under the web 2.0 hype. The debate is organised along five axes: 1. production 2. exploitation 3. individuality/collectivity 4. cultural difference 5. activism
We invite practically all types of contributions:
- Essays that deal with any of these five political dimensions of the social web or that criticise the choice of these five. These essays should be approximately 1.500 words long.
- Shorther commentaries on the Hartzog-Scholz debate. Both, authors will respond to criticisms, closing provisionally the special issue.
- Photos, audio, videos, or links to projects or key texts that illuminate, criticise, put in context the special issue.
- Anything else that we haven't thought about.
Please submit contributions in any electronic format to:
phatzopoulos AT re-public.gr
Deadline for articles: There is practically no deadline. The special issue will be an ongoing project, with a provisional first ending on January 15, 2008.
Nobody in their right mind will pay for something if an equivalent can be had for free right? Well, that depends on how you define free. Open Source software can be had at no cost - but that doesn't mean it is free to run. You still need hardware and support and it is especially the latter that has kept many people from giving Open Source a go. Hardware-wise it just might get more juice out of what you've already got than XP, Vista or Mac OSX.
In this article, perhaps a bit more technical than usual, we'll look at a couple of recent developments on the Open Source Operating System front and also a bit about alternatives to application suites like Microsoft Office.
If you're completely new to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) or you're simply looking for a good primer for reference then I recommend the recently updated 'Choosing and Using Free and Open Source Software: A primer for nonprofits' published by NOSI and incidentally sponsored by my alma mater. It is a PDF ... and some 72 pages. If that's a bit too much detail then maybe just read on instead in the first instance.
Let's start with Operating Systems and specifically Ubuntu - I last wrote about this free Linux distribution further to Jayne Cravens asking on the UKVPM group if the São Paulo e-Intelligence Programme doesn't promote (not to say propagate) non-Windows software - and I've been meaning to talk a little bit more about this superb open source operating system since (and a further hat tip Jayne for writing about the primer above).
Now, I was an on-and-off Linux user back in my IBM days but had written it off for deployment to small charities as I felt it’d need to much training and support. In those days one distributor (Red Hat) set out to make money just from supporting their free distribution, not the development work that went into it. Meaning: If corporates with vast IT departments couldn't deploy without huge support contracts, how would a small not-for-profit? Now their share price is sliding but I am not sure it is because of a reduced need for Linux support. Or is it?
Ubuntu version 7.10, which has recently come out of beta, is quite something else compared to my encounters with Debian, Suse, Red Hat etc.
It positively rocks. Installs like a dream and runs faster than XP (and my guess Vista) by far as it is simply much less bloated both when it comes to footprint and resource utilisation. It frees up a significant amount of extra space on the harddisk as the file system is more efficient - around 10gb in my case on a comparative disk with similar file load.
Really looking forward to seeing this develop in the coming months...
In the meantime, if you're not already signed up to attend Policy Unplugged's Digital Media Literacy Summit at Channel 4 on the 8th of November then, if you're lucky, there might still be a ticket to had if you go here. There's also a Facebook group here.
Hat tip to Steve Moore for bringing me along yesterday.
Jayne Cravens, of Coyote Communications and also one of the all-time most active contributors to the UKVPM list, raised a number of issues - the answers to which I thought might be of interest to people who do not subscribe to the list.
It should be said that the handbook is normally given to people in conjunction with a workshop. In other words, it is a distillation of a much more detailed effort. But I can see that for non-workshop readers it makes sense entirely, in some cases, to expand it to take a broader view that would include some of the context otherwise delivered in our workshops. Issues specifically raised by Jayne (in bold/italics/both) leading to the clarifications below:
Why VoIP:
First of all, not everybody can use Skype. I’ll include www.ivisit.com in the next edition.
Now why use VoIP in the first place?
Well, let’s start with what VoIP is: It stands for Voice over Internet Protocol but put more simply, it is a ‘phone line’ for your internet connection. The organisations I work with have first and foremost used it to cut cost – calling another user user of the same service, whether it is iVisit, Skype, GoogleTalk or a fourth one, is free. (There's a little powertip for getting definitions illustrated on the right - click and you'll see how handy it is).
There’s more to it though – especially smaller organisations who realise that their hard raised cash is best spent on frontline services, instead of an expensive office. They can easily set up a SkypeIn number that’ll not only allow them to have different people in different locations covering the same number - not at the same time of course – but nevertheless I am sure you can imagine the usefulness for an organisation where the office is covered on rotation.
One even simpler implementation of this is my own use of Skype – I live in São Paulo but most of my clients are in the UK – now I wouldn’t want them to worry about the cost when picking up the phone (I’d much rather that they remember the four hour time difference). So, I have a London number - which, if I am online goes to Skype (costing the caller the cost of a UK 020 call, and if I am not, reroutes to my mobile, again same cost for the caller and 12p a minute for me … and if that doesn’t catch me either, a voicebox).
If you have just one volunteer manning ‘the office’ then, at least in the case of Skype, you don’t even need to your PC on if you’re using broadband – simply plug in a Skype Handset, which works like a normal phone, and you can call other Skype users whether next door or around the world – for free: http://accessories.skype.com/ - OK, the handset is not free but compare that with just a few months BT line rental… And yes, with that handset you can also ‘dial out’ – SkypeOut rates start at just over a pence a minute to landlines.
If the organisation is a bit bigger then it might be worth looking at the Skype Small Business Pack: “Skype Business Edition software, Business Control Panel, 10 Skype Pro subscriptions and voucher for €50 of Skype Control Panel Credit” – again, http://accessories.skype.com/ and then select Small Business from the menu.
One more handy use is SMS – Lots of people ignore their e-mails … but it is more difficult to ignore an SMS. Now I am not suggesting anybody should start SMS-spamming their volunteers let alone service users – it is however fantastically useful for scheduling and reminders. Say you’re working at a branch of the Samaritans and you need to know if anybody can take a shift at short notice – instead of calling twenty people, one by one (and thus taking one if not several volunteers away from inbound calls) you can send an SMS to the whole, or half if you like, of the branch to see if there are any takers. Those who can’t just ask to just ignore it, those who can you ask call in and get put on the list. Cost? 5p per message. That’s less than the individual call – not to mention a lot quicker.
Why use RSS? Why the photo tip? Why use Google?
RSS – Really Simple Syndication
It is a bit like rain and rivers … it is all water, but the fish only tend to be found in rivers. How so?
When you have a diverse user base let alone a spread out volunteer force it can be difficult to keep everybody abreast of what is happening – taking a leaf from the Samaritans again – I believe most branches, well, at least the branch I was once in, have a ‘clip’ – every Sam coming in for a shift was obliged to flick through this folder which would carry announcements, upcoming events, ongoing issues etc. A nice low-tech system that worked really well…
But what about a volunteer force that doesn’t regularly check in at one location? Well, you can e-mail them … but e-mails are so plentiful these days that the lack of actual reach is beginning to be troublesome. What has worked well in my experience is to shift the constant feed of information to a format where people can check in at their leisure rather than feeling obliged to read something right when it hits the top of their in-box. Once an e-mail is off the main screen it is, for most users, rarely returned to. Or you can post the stories to a nice news section on your website … but experience shows that only the most determined check in regularly to see what is indeed news.
So, by encouraging people to get to the organisational newsfeed through a feed reader, say Google Reader, they can approach it a bit like a newspaper. Today’s issue of the Guardian, Independent, Times or whatever your preference doesn’t ask for you to write back … sure, you can send to a letter to the editor, but the core premise is mostly that you’ll take what you want and then move on. Also, the newspaper carries many different stories: domestic issues, the weather forecast, the lottery numbers. Why not fit into a similar paradigm where people come with their cuppa to get updated.
In my experience, people take a different approach when tackling information presented like this than they do their e-mail. Because of the keyboard shortcuts in Google Reader (N for next, P for previous) people can flick through things as quick as a newspaper. But just like you might cut out an article from the paper and pin it on the notice board, or fold it and send it in the post to somebody, the same can be achieved with Google Reader using the option to forward a story via e-mail or to share it. (To see an example of the latter in action, check out the right hand margin of this blog).
Now this latter action taps into word of mouth – the most powerful way of reaching anybody. I’ve covered the implications of this in a recent article entitled Walled Gardens vs. Village Greens - For a practical example, check out how The Wilderness Foundation is calling for readers of their blog to leverage their message (thus, temporarily at least, turning them into volunteers):
- Action they can take, thanks to RSS, straight from Google Reader without having to go to the actual blog.
…and just like on a newsgroup like UKVPM, people can still comment, adding to the discussion.
So, by feeding into a river instead of hoping people will catch your raindrop, you give it more uses and get more reach.
NB: The handbook is end-user oriented so it doesn’t cover how to set up an organisational blog. We do have a workshop for this … but not a handbook to go with it so far.
Why the photo tip?
People love photos and they are best shared, especially when it comes to recognising volunteer effort – but as Jayne pointed out, not everybody has a fast connection let alone lots of hard disk space. So the tip is in the handbook as an aspirin for a common headache. We’ll talk a bit more about giving people simple skills that make a real difference further down.
Why use Google?
Using a search engine is a cornerstone ability for modern living. I compare it with the basic skill of knowing how to look something up in printed a dictionary or encyclopaedia. It facilitates help-for-selfhelp.
Not to mention a couple of specialised uses if you’re:
The key first learning point is just a basic search – the simplest but most important being the difference it makes to put inverted commas around a term, thus narrowing the results considerably (as most people never get past the first results page anyway you might as well improve the chance of what you want to find turning up there in the first place). In the workshops we normally encourage people to try this using their own name – first without inverted commas, and then with.
Working in the City of Walls gives a unique perspective on how fragmented a community can become - not so much because of trespassing - but just as much, if not more, because of the fear of it.
Still, walled gardens can, at least for me, make one think of serene - perhaps slightly overgrown green spaces, flanked by vine-covered ancient brick or bollard walls. Safe and secure. But that harks back to an era before barbed wire and whatnot. Also, even under the shade of an old fig tree, as pleasant as it might be - if those walls are up, you're not likely to get much interaction let alone collaboration done.
This article sets out to deal with some of the implications of the above as applied to the virtual world.
We'll start with the walled gardens:Count your username/password collection. Each set is, when combined, a key to a walled garden somewhere. My expectation is that you have tens if not more than a hundred username/password sets. It took time to set each one up. It takes time to maintain each one.
Now, you don't want to share your banking or tax return with anybody I expect - these are examples of a barbed wire, barking dog type of walled gardens that should always stay that way.
Some walled gardens have their virtues in other words.
But what about e-mail and other types of electronic messaging? Well, again, you probably wouldn't want anybody to read everything in your inbox - yet, what if you could pick bits of information and share it with trusted colleagues and collaborators? Bit like sharing news on the village green.
You're probably already doing that if you're using LinkedIn (making it easier for people to find you, reconnect and recommend you) - You might even have taken the extra step of using one of the flurry of social networks out there such as Facebook or Orkut - and maybe even one of the new highly specialised networks like Reuters' new Carbon Market Community.
Facebook and Orkut are Horizontals - in the sense that they cover a large and broad community with a diverse set of interests - yet they both allow Vertical activity in the form of open and closed groups for specialised collaboration.
Put in a more everyday language - they're village greens with big and small tents and in this mini case study we'll specifically look at Facebook. Depending on who you encounter, which tent you enter, different levels of information is shared (depending on your privacy settings and those of the group).
The advantage of this model is that it helps create active and passive word of mouth:
Active as in the example of a forthcoming Edge Foundation event with a superb theme (Ideas that can change the world...) that my past collaborator Steve Moore of Policy Unplugged fame is running in London - Well, I can't be there myself, but thanks to the infrastructure I could easily directly invite a number of relevant leaders who I know will be able to both add something to, and benefit from, the event.
Passive as in the example of last night's Nordic Business Cross Country initiative which we've just kicked off: The friends of the people attending saw that there's something going on = We doubled our modest membership in one go and expect to see that reflected in turnout for the next event.
Combining the two you get real impact - Steve rounded up 470+ people in no time this way - who are now collaborating like never before, without the cost of a print let alone e-mail campaign to get it off the ground. Just a few well connected people to start with and the wildfire was off. This, by the way, is also how Facebook Apps work - Like the ever successful TripAdvisor-developed Cities I've Visited app.
Even old institutions like the RSA, which harks back to 1754, are at it - Through the OpenRSA group I'm collaborating with people in the way that was intended by the RSA's expensively developed proprietary forum system - but because of it being a walled garden instead of a tent on a village green ... it never really managed to attract a consistently active user base for collaboration. Let's see though - through feedback from this group of fellows, improvements might be made that'll drive more people directly to the RSA site (for more than just the excellent podcasts, super library, the extensive archive and lecture listings).
It is not just horizontal social networks that can have vertical applications - it even applies to the traditional PC apps: Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. Google, Zoho and a raft of others are rapidly entering this space making the days of big attachments let alone the headache of copy/paste consolidation of input from six different collaborators a thing of the past. Even my alma mater, which had otherwise admitted defeat in the desktop arena, has now entered the on-line office space with a new offering called Lotus Symphony (the name is actually a recycle from '92 but that's another story).
Does this mean that you can convert whole swathes to this way of getting things done in no time? Maybe not quite. Beth Kanter created a wordplay on it recently when she talked about Fear 2.0 (which in turn was sparked by the recent Fear of Web 2.0 article on Read/WriteWeb) - Here are two key paragraphs from Beth's article on what threatens uptake:
With the "I'm sticking with DOS" button analogy, I'm probably showing my age, but new technology emerges that has the potential to replace or improve upon an existing technology, people resist. There are people or even organizational cultures comfortable with using the existing tools and are slow to change, while early adopters and agile cultures keep learning and moving. In many cases, the slow to change eventually adopt or they no longer remain relevant to their constituents, donors, or lose their edge." - Full article
And this is an apt time to return to the city analogy - Merchants have since time immemorial realised that it doesn't help much to pitch up shop if there isn't anybody around. In fact, the best place to be is often in a tight cluster - surrounded by both collaborators, competitors and hopefully a client or two. That way you get economies of scale, passing trade and you can stay in tune with what's going on. You don't lose your edge in other words.
The key is to undestand that a City of Walls, whether virtual or real - cuts us off from interaction. Now I am by no means suggesting you don't lock your front door at night nor that you should switch off the firewall on your laptop. What I am advocating is that you sensibly think about the horizontals - the village greens - where you can collaborate for the benefit of others and of course yourself. The virtual village green comes with many tents - and you can choose and pick between them and create your own walls on the fly. Just like you can choose whether to engage in conversation with somebody sitting next to you on a bench or a bus - in both cases though, I would suggest you need to be open to the opportunity. Or, to quote the anthropologist Teresa P. Caldeira in the introduction to her book City of Walls: "...spatial segregation undermines the values of openess, accessibility, freedom of circulation, and equality..."
In conclusion - If you're:
A traditional PC app user - give Google Docs or Zoho a try (see video below) and save time consolidating docs and sorting through five versions and accidentally deleting the wrong one
A Facebooker, Orkut or maybe even a Reuters' Carbon Market Community user - Adjust your privacy settings so they match your needs and think about how best to use the community infrastructure for both active and passive word of mouth.
A network organizer/community builder - think twice about growing your own. Go where people already are... that'll vastly improve your chances of success.
Net2ThinkTank: What is needed to facilitate more nonprofits' adoption of the social web?
Britt Bravo - who writes the most prolific of the blogs on Netsquared.org - has kicked off a new initiative, a collaborative blog series called Net2ThinkTank.
"My hope is that your collective wisdom will spark new ideas for how the social web can be used for social change, as well as produce solutions to challenges that web-based changemakers face."
Those who've worked with small NGOs, whether human rights oriented or not, won't be surprised that the report concludes, amongst other things, that:
• Overall, the grantees are firmly entrenched in the Web 1.0 world, meaning that they use the web largely as a source of information rather than a tool for interactivity.
• Most grantees are not taking advantage of easy-to-use social media tools effectively. For instance, only half of them have blogs, and only half of these groups allow comments on their blogs.
• Survey respondents and group discussion participants often felt a “common struggle” in understanding which tools are critically important to their work and were at a loss as to where and how to get help for selecting and using new social media tools.
Which leads to the Net2ThinkTank question - What is needed to facilitate more nonprofits' adoption of the social web?
The answer in my experience is to ensure that cornerstone skills are in place - a term I incidentally first came across in an article on Poynter.org by Amy Gahran. I think the term is a good visual for the challenge ahead and solves my longstanding conundrum of what exactly to call basic skillset,
What has worked well is to start off with some PC 101 skills that simply speed up the inevitably slow laggard-laptops/desktops … and then gently moving over into Web 2.0 without making the transition too obvious … you'd be surprised how this improves retention. My colleague, Cesar Volpe at Tactical Communications, and I have thrown together a handbook for this purpose which can be found here: http://e-intelligence.weebly.com/beginnersiniciantes.html (English and Portuguese).
It takes time and determination. But once a few board members let alone staff have become Google Reader and Google Alert addicts the road ahead is just that little bit easier.
One of the great pieces of functionality in Google Reader is the ability to easily share articles you read. Mine can be found in the right hand column of this blog more or less half-way down.
"Google Reader allows you to easily keep track of your favorite websites and see all the updates in one convenient location."
The social enterprise, Tactical Communications, I have created with a colleague here in São Paulo for local delivery in Portuguese, now has a blog.
We have also launched a site for our dual-language São Paulo e-Intelligence Programme - our flagship initiative. The site has the latest version of The Getting Stuff Done Handbook as well as other useful materials. If you find the handbook useful (and we think you will) please do feel free to share it with friends wherever they are.
Last but not least, check out how we've used similar thinking to help drive change through the users of the Wilderness Foundation blog: What you can do to make a difference today
Maps are nothing new, yet new things are happening to them - both in the traditional flat paper based format and of course also in the context of social media and web 2.0.
As the good people over at Idealist.org commented in a recent blog entry on maps:
"...It can also be a medium for changing the world. One organization that embraces this philosophy is Green Map System, a network of 400 cities, villages, and neighborhoods in 50 countries that create their own maps related to environmental sustainability. Focusing on bicycle paths, wind energy generation sites, farmers' markets, environmentally-friendly businesses, and a variety of other data that they deem important, local volunteer Green Mapmakers give environmental sustainability efforts more visibility, by literally putting them on the map." - Full article here
This is great news - when doing the selection for a Clouddog scholarship round in South Africa last year, we found that many of the emerging leaders who applied wanted to do something like this - and now they have the tool set to go and get it done: http://www.greenmap.org/greenhouse/
- As they say, 'Think Global, Map Local'.
Whilst Green Map above have the resources for creating traditional paper maps (and also tips for interactive ones) and getting them noticed you may want to plunge straight into Google Earth - Back in May when I was in South Africa working with The Bateleurs we started looking at how their thousands of archive pictures of environmental degradation across southern Africa might be used in a mapping context. This is still undergoing - and in the meantime, Google has announced a new Outreach programme that should help not only Bateleurs but also many other organisations make use of the superb Google Earth tool. Here's the launch video:
How would this work in practice? Well, there is of course a bit of a learning curve, but here's just one tip to get just about anybody started: In Picasa there is an option under Tools --> Geotag --> Geotag with Google Earth...
Organised Information = Being Able to Get Stuff Done
We're all knowledge workers these days yet a significant amount of the people attending workshops I run have a remarkably unstructured approach when it comes to the information flow they face daily.
"One of the most prevalent, but least remarked upon, problems of our information-rich age. Today’s technology and management cultures allow anyone to work away busily with every appearance of being productive—even creative—when all they are really doing is treading water."
You can read the full article here - but you'll probably realize that whilst you'd like to let go of your in-box, it would be very difficult indeed. So, rather than drown in information, it is worthwhile to think a little about how you handle the barrage of data coming your way.So what to do? Well, here are some resources and a recommendation:
"...there seems to be little information that really helps us understand how we can take control of our personal learning more effectively. There is some stuff coming out around "Personal Learning Environments" for example, take a look at: ePortfolio Model and the Concept Diagram for Personal Learning Landscape."
I recommend reading both the well structured article and checking out the two diagrams suggested in the quote above (the first one is relatively high level, the second much more detailed and specific). Still, both are probably a bit complex if you're used to simply fighting through your in-box without much thought about how to make it an efficient and effective exercise.
So what to do? Well, Harold Jarche, a consultant in Canada, has a much more accessible flow chart showing how he copes with information day-to-day.
Now, I would probably swap out Bloglines for Google Reader but that's beside the point... Read his full post here - and credit where credit is due - this is where I first learnt about the eLearning blog.
Recommendation:
Spend some time today working out your own very basic model of how information flows to you and what you want to do with it. The back of an envelope works well.
Maybe there are some bits missing that you've seen above? Then check out Good Stuff from Google to fill the gaps.
This envelope-diagram might very well turn out to be your lifeboat in a steadily rising sea of information.
Ran a new version of my Web 2.0 workshop - this time specifically for a number of academics @ Universidade de São Paulo. It was a veritable rollercoaster - talking of the evolution of academic engagement: from Socrates to Plato through to Web 2.0.
One observation from the PhD closest to me was how many academics have forgotten that dense research papers were painstakingly typed and the corrected with Tipp-Ex until relatively recently (especially if you use a sliding scale that goes back to Plato and bear in mind that for the bulk of history everything was handwritten).
Yet, all academics now know manage to get on with the basic functions of a word processing package, whether Word or something else.
Still, despite this there is a clear resistance to the tsunami of change that is afoot due to Web 2.0 amongst many of the academics I speak to. - And this is interesting as the communityset to benefit the most from these new technologies (and in many respects rightfully is at the very forefront of this) is the academic community who is able to collaborate to an extent never previously thought possible.
The Strength of Weak Ties - all 3 versions » MS Granovetter - The American Journal of Sociology, 1973 - JSTOR The Strength of WeakTies. Mark S. Granovetter. ... 1362. The Strength of WeakTies Rapoport 1963 ). This evidence is less comprehensive than one might hope. ... Cited by 4666 - Related Articles - Web Search
4666 citations! Guess Mr. Granovetter finds himself in the right end of the Pareto curve of citation distributions.
The core point here was that whilst Google Scholar is a great way of finding finished articles (and realising how well cited or not so well cited articles are) there is so much else happening that affects the way academics operate.
Open and closed Wikis is just one example - Most academics I speak to agree that they have a professional responsibility when it comes to accuracy about things in their field. Hence my absolute encouragement on getting to know Wikis and how they work.
To get an understanding of the impact of the biggest Wiki of them all, we watched part of the TED Talks session with Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia Foundation talking about how it all works. Here's the full clip (highly recommended):
The founders of Google aren't known for their modesty - but then again, neither are their results so maybe we shouldn't scoff too much when Sergey Brin & Larry Page ambitiously say this about the Google Foundation:
We hope that someday this institution will eclipse Google itself in overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems.
Now, how are they going to achieve that? Well, in the short term it seems that whilst they have supported a few organisations, there's still a lot to be worked out. In the meantime it is worthwhile looking at their "In-kind advertising for non-profit organizations" - which is currently in beta. As of writing it is available in: in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK – select your country link for details and to apply. Here's the blurb for the UK programme for your convenience:
"The Google Grants UK beta programme supports organisations sharing Google’s philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts. Designed for registered charities, Google Grants provides free advertising on Google AdWords, to charities seeking to inform and engage their constituents online. Google Grants has given free AdWords advertising to hundreds of charitable groups whose missions range from animal welfare to literacy, from supporting homeless children to promoting HIV education. As a result of this free advertising many charities have experienced an increase in the recruitment of volunteers and sponsorship. Applications to the programme can be made at any time". - http://www.google.com/grants
Now, that's not all - Google also has a stack of useful resources that you won't have to fill out a grant application to use... Yet, they can yield cost savings and increased collaboration.
I have been meaning to write something about the importance of understanding users - even for the smallest charity/not-for-profit or social enterprise. And then in came an entry from a chap called Tom Smith who writes on what he calls 'the OTHER blog'. Whilst I'm not entirely sure what the first one is, this is a useful one nevertheless... Here's the item in question (so short so I have taken the liberty of quoting it in entirety):
"Apart from Google Analytics and any number of log reporting tools, there seems to be more online services offering ways to help you understand your users…
…whilst I’m a fan of using data analysis at times, other approaches to producing great sites and services might include being fab or listening to your customers." - More useful stuff on Tom Smith's the OTHER blog.
Now, the bold text is on the original post but I think I'd have highlighted them if they hadn't already been... Still, they key to understanding your users is to use good tools to get reliable data that you can in turn analyse and finally make conclusions and act to improve.
The one most presribed from here [just a few resulting implentations: Wilderness Foundation UK, Reducing Re-Offending, The Environmentalist At Large etc. etc.] and referenced in the post-quote above, is Google Analytics. It is easy to implement (you just add a few lines of code to the web pages you want to be included in the on-going analysis). The key value is that unlike many other analysis tools, Google has managed to keep things very simple - Working clockwise from the top left (OK, the graphic is a bit small but I'm sure you get the idea):
-Visits and Page Views: Visits on the left column and page views on the right. The page view average is … P/V – the higher number of page views, the better.
-Visits by New and Returning: Good to have a consistent mix to see that you’re serving regulars and also being found by new people. This will change as the volume of data for analysis increases over time.
-Visits by Source: Often Google is the main route in, then direct typing of the address (brand recognition and recall – good stuff) - more interestingly is who else brings you traffic. Time to send a thankyou note perhaps?
-Geo Map Overlay: The bigger the dot, the more visitors from the area.
All in one screen - of course, start exploring the many options available in the left-hand column you'll probably lose at least one afternoon without noticing but you'll learn a lot about your users in return. But for day-to-day facts on performance and reach, the main 'snapshot' page has it all.
This short movie - made by the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State Universiy explains superbly - in less than five minutes - why none of us can ignore Web 2.0, whether commercial enterprise, not-for-profit, charity, academia or individual:
This blog is a collection of useful resources picked up along the way - primarily for existing third sector clients in the UK but it may also be of use to others.
The recent Mobile World Congress (held every year in Barcelona) coincided with an interesting NetSquared ThinkTank question: "How Can Nonprofits and NGOs Use Mobile Phones and SMS for Social Change?" - I fully intended to throw my five pence worth in, especially as I was blogging for the 65K strong internal audience of a major mobile technology firm, but with so many other deadlines that week, this was one I missed. Lots of others did make it though, including at least one other delegates at the congress, and I highly recommend that you head over to Britt Bravo's excellent sum-up here.
Earlier this week we squeezed a stack of Scotland's leading agents of social change into a conference room at the new centre for social innovation on Rose St. in Edinburgh and we spent a couple of intensive hours exploring some of the basics of blogging, wikis and whatnot. Special thanks to Claire and Adam at the 
Later this month I'll be running a pilot for a new workshop specificially for 
One of the great pieces of functionality in Google Reader is the ability to easily share articles you read. Mine can be found in the right hand column of this blog more or less half-way down.
One observation from the PhD closest to me was how many academics have forgotten that dense research papers were painstakingly typed and the corrected with Tipp-Ex until relatively recently (especially if you use a sliding scale that goes back to Plato and bear in mind that for the bulk of history everything was handwritten). 
The founders of Google aren't known for their modesty - but then again, neither are their results so maybe we shouldn't scoff too much when Sergey Brin & Larry Page ambitiously say this about the Google Foundation: 
"The Google Grants UK beta programme supports organisations sharing Google’s philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts. Designed for registered charities, Google Grants provides free advertising on Google AdWords, to charities seeking to inform and engage their constituents online. Google Grants has given free AdWords advertising to hundreds of charitable groups whose missions range from animal welfare to literacy, from supporting homeless children to promoting HIV education. As a result of this free advertising many charities have experienced an increase in the recruitment of volunteers and sponsorship. Applications to the programme can be made at any time". - 