UKriders

Amy Sample Ward who works with NetSquared helping non-profits get the most out of technology, is setting up Net Tuesdays in London, bringing together social changemakers of all kinds to discuss social media with the first one starting on November 4th. I hope that we can see lots of Net Tuesdays springing up across the UK soon! Head over to Amy’s blog to find out more.

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Today is Blog Action Day - a day where thousands of bloggers across the world commit to write on the same topic with the aim of creating awareness around that issue. The topic this year is Poverty.

I work with a wide range of organisations on their communications, branding and websites. When working together on a new project I get them to take a look at what’s out there to look at what they do or don’t like with sites on the net so they can begin to formulate their own ideas. For my post today, instead of writing my views on poverty, I’ve decided to highlight a few nonprofit websites to give inspiration to other organisations with their own design ideas.

I’ve picked out a few of the well known organisations related to social change and the relief of poverty.  There are many more, but chose the following to help organisations who may be looking at their own designs and communications to see how some of the sites below use different ways to reach out to their readers, helping to raise awareness and motivate action in their work and campaigns.  Some use strong visual imagery, or bold usage of language and content wording, others have clear information architecture to enable the reader to easily find where they need to get to be to donate or take part or show innovative ways to become involved and share the message with others .

End Child Poverty - www.endchildpoverty.org.uk

Shelter - www.shelter.org.uk/about_us

Oxfam - www.oxfam.org

Global Call to Action Against Poverty - www.whiteband.org

Salvation Army (on Virb social network) - www.virb.com/salvationarmy/

and finally,

Not just focussing on poverty, but Change.org has recently undergone a makeover and created a vibrant modern online hub and media network for social issues and collective action.

Change Social Action Network - www.change.org.

If you have more examples of sites that you like, feel free to add a link to your favourites and also a sentance or two sharing why that site appeals to you in the comments form below.

And, if not involved already, head over to the Blog Action Day site to read what thousands of others are writing about on this one issue today and sign up to take part.

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Integration of social media reporting working alongside mainstream media, with Reuters hosting an event with the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown discussing the current economic crisis. Christian Payne and Mike Atherton were given unprecedented access to the event and asked to utilise social media apps in order to facilitate conversations around the day. Qik, Twitter, Phreadz, 12seconds and Seesmic are just some of the tools used. Read more at PM in the AM.

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Matthew Saunders has posted a useful introductory article outlining the media available to share your organisation’s stories along with tips on how to get started.  Head over to his blog and read the full article Story Telling, Web 2.0, and Non-profits.

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Information overload is one area of my work that is a constant. In the past recent weeks, I took some time away from the desk and computer with a pencil and big sheet of paper in hand. I hadn’t intended on blogging about it, but a recent message on one of my social networks prompted me to share it.

Beth Kanter put out a call on Twitter earlier pointing us to her post on Information Coping Skills - How Information Overloaded Are You?
Very timely, I took the quiz and was quite pleased that with some of my new coping strategies I managed to score a reasonable 9. Of course my strategies aren’t perfect and am looking forward to reading the comments and suggestions raised on Beth’s Blog and the outcomes of her forthcoming session at BlogHer Boston this weekend.

But it had recently come to a point where I really needed to take stock of the impact of information overload had been having on my working practice. As many of you will know, until July I was managing a nonprofit which provides support services to other organisations as well as juggling a growing freelance business supporting a wide range of non-profits to small business with their websites, social media and technical support needs. Oh yes, and trying to be a mom too. Plus, keep up to date with information and participate with the outside world.

Like many of us working in the nonprofit sector and supporting nonprofits, it’s sometimes hard to say no, not only to others but especially to yourself. I like information, in fact I’m probably addicted to it. I like keeping abreast of new technologies, new innovations, seeing projects evolving with their aim of supporting social change and more. I mix in a wide range of circles, non-profits, enterprise, education, local government as well as the core of my work, with design and web development; and accessibility and inclusion to all on the web. I use a variety of tools that help me keep up to date including RSS, email groups, forums, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and other networks too. Living in a rural area means that I often am unable to attend many of the face-to-face meetings and get-togethers that take place in the major UK cities, so rely on using these tools to keep up to date with conversations and innovations that take place.

The speed and pace that social networking can function on is immense. I only began blogging in Spring of 2007, and often it’s my blog that suffers with my own time management. Like many of us, I have blog posts in draft constantly and by the time I get round to finishing a post off, the next issue or topic is already being discussed out there, so often don’t get round to posting as much as would like. I enjoy blogging but rarely make the time to share a post. This is one area, in time, I’m planning to make more for but do partake in lifestreaming and microblogging to keep connected in our interweb-connected world.

So other than managing the overloaded email inbox which overflows daily, what is my other biggest information overload ‘Vice?’

The affair

Well, it has to be Twitter. Twitter and I have a long-standing love/hate relationship. As I mentioned earlier, the speed which conversations and innovations can take place using web 2.0 is immense. Especially so with Twitter. I’m seeing it more and more being used to float ideas, even jobs and involve people in new ideas and projects. If you aren’t there at the time, you could potentially feel left out of the conversation. New social applications are appearing daily, and temptation to test them all out after hearing about them on Twitter to see if they could help the groups I work with is always tempting. Twitter also has another wonderful (and sometimes nagging function) with it being sociable, very sociable. Sometimes one little innocent tweet message can get lots of replies. Often conversations can be more akin to using Yahoo or MSN messenger.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my Twitter and without it I would not have the connections to such a wonderful diverse array of people across the globe. I use Twitter as a lifestream, mixing the professional side of me as well as the personal side too. I’m sat in front of a screen most of the day, and as a freelancer working alone, it’s like having an office of people working next to you. One of the best parts of Twitter is not only the people that make up the micro-world in your following list, but the news they share, especially when it’s good news or a success. There have been many times (and still are) where I’d like to give up Twitter but when weighing up the value it brings (for instance, I have the local and national news headlines delivered as tweets) I don’t want to let it go.

With the above and all the rest, oh yes and work to get done, how does it all fit together?

A few months ago, before switching on the kettle in the morning to make a cup of tea, I’d start up the computer, open the email inbox and RSS. Then, Twitter would be there as well as a myriad of other applications. I really like FriendFeed also and would dip into that often too.  For the work I do, I need lots of screen estate, especially when designing or coding.  My day would become ‘noisy’ and often disjointed. As well as managing work, the noise of everything else would be there, the inbox showing more mail had arrived and on it all went. When settling into my new freelance routine, as well as juggling lots of exciting new projects, with the added noise it all ended up with me entering the procrastination loop at times, kindly brought to my attention by Nick Booth of Podnosh in his post, the Flow chart of Faff.

So as mentioned at the beginning of the post, a few weeks ago I moved away from the computer, and brainstormed about my own information management.

I asked myself the following questions -

• Why do I need all of this?
• What do I need these tools for? Name each of them and the value they bring to what I do?
• What else do I need to achieve each and every day?
• Which areas do I fear most? (seriously, that inbox can create fear when you open it to find lots of new unexpected mail!)

The next part was to map out a perfect day, including the work and personal/family routine.
Then, add how my favourite applications/tools can assist me in that day and when best to use them.

Not rocket science, but simple plotting and asking myself has shaped a better routine.

I use web 2.0 for listening, learning and sharing.

My simple steps that are working so far for me -
(please add your tips to this list!)
Firstly, I no longer turn on my computer until I’m really ready to settle into working mode. (cup of tea and the dog walk comes first now!)

Email - In my previous role working for a nonprofit, and also my freelance role, email has always been an issue. I receive many requests each day, many are for signposting (”ask Laura, she always knows the answer”) as well as helping organisations with their technical/web support, and updates from all the email groups and much more.

I’ve admired how Luis Suarez has continued his work on giving up email at work, and had instilled many of the practices when in my old working role and slowly integrating them into my new role.
First part of the day, I check my inbox, prioritise which mail needs attending to first or not. Emails then get tagged for read later or respond later. The ones that aren’t urgent or for signposting I will often deal with later in the day. I only check my mail morning and afternoon and shut it down the rest of the time.

RSS feeds - I subscribe to far too many. I use Netvibes and have created seperate pages for themes of blog/news but don’t always look every day, in fact it’s often only once or twice a week. I’ve also unsubscribed from many feeds, as I’m feeling more so that I’m following people, not their blogs; and if they are on Twitter (or identi.ca or Jaiku) and if it’s a good post, and I follow that person, they’ll shout out or tweet a message about it.

Social Applications - Facebook, Friendfeed and more. I had nearly given up on Facebook as I personally don’t like it that much. But many of the people I communicate with use it regularly so, I made the effort to use it more and dip in once a day to quickly view and deal with what arises there.

Twitter - I think I’ve tried nearly every desktop application for Twitter. I often use the website itself, although that can be a big time eater. I like using Twhirl as it can sit politely on the side of my screen and I can get on with my design work. More recently though, I’ve discovered the wonderful FireStatus which is an extension for the FireFox Browser. You can send updates to Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed easily. I’ve found that it has become a great listening tool for my own needs. It displays updates from these services in notification popups that fade in and out at the top of your screen. To me it’s gentle and without noise. I can focus on working intently and listen to the conversations and updates from friends and followers. It doesn’t work for everyone, but has helped my own personal workflow a tremendous amount. I can listen and easily jump into a conversation too if I want to.
I also now try to save my ’social’ messaging for when I’m having a tea or coffee break rather than respond continuously. I have two ears and only one mouth, so consciously do try to listen more than talk.

One valuable asset of using Twitter isn’t just the conversation, it’s the sharing of links. I make use of my Tumblr for many of the links that appear that I like or want to come back to later as well as my Ma.gnolia for managing my bookmarks. For managing FriendFeed, there is a little script for Firefox that I use which enables you to Read Later. Another useful tool to help manage time!

The blog - I have been on a journey and a half with the blog in the past few months, questioning it’s need and purpose, but I do enjoy it when I make the space to write. I have a healthy number of subscribers and enjoy the conversation and comments that often appear. I’m still unsure of it’s future role, whether to focus on nonprofits and social media, or web design and accessibility as often it’s different audiences. I don’t blog about the everyday occurrences of my life and the universe that surrounds me, which is sometimes what I’d like to do too. Time will tell with how the blog evolves but I do feel personal satisfaction when blogging. I tend to keep my life-streaming out of my blog, but would like to integrate my bookmarking in a useful manner. Using ScribeFire has helped with creating quick posts on the go, although as mentioned earlier, most never get to being published. Something still to be work on.

Finally, even though there are days in every week where I want to participate and join in the conversation and the inbox is overflowing, I’m learning to step back, just a little. I tell myself it’s all okay and information will keep moving and evolving with or without me reading or taking part in all of it.

Please do leave your tips and suggestions here so that I won’t need to start a new non-profit organisation “Information-a-holics Anonymous”, or head over to Beth’s Blog, take the survey yourself, see how you are doing and leave some suggestions there too.

(and just to note, turned off my Twitter, email and more whilst writing this post!)

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Regular readers will have noted a drastic colour change today on my blog.
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From politicians, to the public, to the press, it is a time when focus on breast cancer is at its very highest across the world.

Pink is the colour during Breast Cancer Awareness Month hence the new look to my blog during October. You can find out more by searching on the internet for breast cancer awareness charities and nonprofits to learn how you can help to raise funds, spread the word and take part.

Bloggers and website designers like myself are joining in with awareness raising across the globe by turning their sites pink for the month. You can find out more at Pink For October.
(Image above designed by I Design Studio Blog)

Freebie: - I’m sharing my pink Twitter background.

For Twitter friends and users - I’ve changed my general ‘woody’ brown Twitter page background, to a pink background for the month ahead, If you would like to use it on your Twitter page, you can download it here. Enjoy! (design updated)
[To use on your own Twitter page: download the file, Login to your Twitter, go to 'Settings', then to 'Design' tab, then "Change Background Image' button lower down the page' and upload the file.]

For other Twitter Pink for October backgrounds, head over to the wonderful Twitterpatterns.com.

Let me know if you join the pink brigade too!

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Glenda Watson Hyatt, who lives with cerebral palsy, shares a video on how blogging with WordPress has enabled her to be heard by the world, increase her circle of friends and more. View it on her blog at Do It By Myself, or you can use the Easy YouTube viewer to watch the video.

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“Nobody likes to think of themselves as disabled – lots of people ignore content aimed at disabled people because they want to use what everybody is using” - one of the quotes from the conference day at Scripting Enabled.

I recently attended Scripting Enabled, which was a two day event held in London on 19th and 20th September looking at ways to make social media software and the internet more accessible for all. The first day included a series of talks and presentations on the barriers to accessibility and what can be done to make a real difference, and the second day of the event was a hack-day with developers, designers, and advisors working together to find and build solutions. The event was the brainchild of Christian Heilmann who opened the event on the first day.

As well as meeting up with many new faces, it was also a great opportunity to finally meet up with others that I have either followed on on the interwebs such as Jon Gibbins, an accessible web developer who writes at the dotjay.co.uk blog (who on day 2 headed up keen web devs on making a more accessible version of Google Maps), the vibrant Ann Meekin who is PixelDiva on Twitter and many more.  I also met with Roger Wilson-Hinds who I wrote about last November.  Roger writes regularly on his blog, the Blind Blogger and involved with Thunder, which is an easy to use screenreader, software can be downloaded for free and installed and up and running in a matter of minutes from Screenreader.net.

I finally got to meet long time Twitter-buddy Dominic Campbell who works collaboratively with local governments effectively as FutureGov, and is also passionately involved with the Enabled by Design project which has been evolving steadily since winning the Social Innovation Camp back in April 2008 (By the way, there is another Social Innovation Camp organised for 5th - 7th December 2008; if you have an idea for a mashup for social change, get involved now!).  I also chatted lots with the bright and bubbly Denise Stephens lots over both the days of the events, the founder of Enabled by Design,which aims to grow an online community who help each other find assistive equipment and products; making independent living more accessible the use of clever modern design.

I’m not going to write in full detail about the event, as all of the full presentations and further information and inspiration is available over at the Scripting Enabled website.
But listed below is a very brief rundown of what we all listened to, experienced, shared and participated in with day one - (I’ve linked directly to the speakers’ presentations and post on the Scripting Enabled website below with the title of their presentation.  All of the presentations listed are also available on the site using Easy SlideShare ).

• First to talk and share her personal experiences of her symptoms of MSand how inclusive design can help make it easier for many people to use the web was Denise Stephens from Enabled by Design.
• Then the effervescant Kath Moonan, from Abilitynet presented ‘Why I hate the interweb!’ sharing outcomes of recent research done by Abilitynet showing examples from users of the difficulties that people can encounter when using the internet.
• Next was Antonia Hyde, from United Response who delivered a fascinating presentation entitled ‘Opening doors: online content for people with learning disabilities.’ giving an insight into the barriers to inclusion that many people with learning disabilities face with using the modern web, and showed how with thought to the user in design, the substantial difference it can make with user experience showing a case study of someone using the Easy YouTube.
• Artur Ortega and Leonie Watson spoke about ‘Screen readers and JavaScript’ and provided a fascinating overview of the range of technologies available to help assist those with visual impairments, the barriers that web design can cause and some of their wish list of features they’d like to see implemented in the future.
• Jonathan Hassle, Head of Accessibility with the BBC presented about Dyslexia Barriers and gave many pointers in helping to understand and make the web more accessible from the learning from the research and work of the BBC in acheiving better accessiblity with their own sites.  Phil Teare from Textic.com, shared his own personal difficulties with his dyslexia and using the web and how it can affect the users experience when accessing websites.

The day finished with Christian Heilmann (also dubbed by Kath Moonan as the ‘Flame Headed Geek Warrior!’) chairing a lively discussion panel with the audience.
All in all an inpsiring an realy great day.  The only trouble many of us ‘Usability Experts’ had at the end of it all was navigating our way successfully to the pub!

Day two consisted of a wide range of developers, users and other interested people joining in to look at what they could achieve working together and then setting about doing it.  Lots of innovation took place, and I’m sure that the work will continue. More of the outcomes of the day and further developments can be seen on the Scripting Enabled wiki.

As well as seeing the work of new mashups and accessibility in action, I was able to see some existing projects which aim to serve to help with inclusion and accessibility for all on the internet.  Gary Mc Farlane from Blue Badge Route demonstrated a highly affordable tool which they had built that provided accessible maps, but also work well with screenreaders and enabled users to also email details of the routes they wished to travel too, thus giving control and independence to a user.  The integrated map systems showed the accessibility of parking and routes within an area, and I see these as being a vital inclusion for many local government websites and also nonprofit organisations who work with and for people with additional needs.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the whole of the day, but hope that there will be many more events like this in the future for web developers and users to come together to enable positive change and benefit for all users of the web.

For follow ups on the outcomes of the innovations from the hack day, head over to the Scripting Enabled wiki, and to see photo’s from the event you can head across to the flickr page to see all pictures tagged with Scripting Enabled.

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On the YouTube blog you can read about the new captioning feature for videos which can help people who would not otherwise understand the audio track to follow along, especially those who speak other languages or who are deaf and hard of hearing. Read the article and how to use this feature at New Captions Feature For Videos to make your videos more accessible to all.

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Accessibility 2.0 was a practical conference focussing on web accessibility in a Web 2.0 world, organised by Abilitynet held back in April. Podcasts, transcripts and presentations from the event are now available for download at Podcasts and transcripts : Accessibility 2.0.

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Not from a nonprofit as such, but this interesting article gives an insight on how Ning was used as a project management tool and how it was used in such as way, that the CEO became the facilitator, rather than the more usual barrier for speed and safety. Read the upbeat article at Using social media (Ning) to manage a social project.

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Social Actions has launched a widget that recommends to readers of your blog or website related ways to take action.

The widget automatically identifies the keywords on any page and lists social change campaigns related to the stuff you’re writing about. These campaigns are gathered from social action platforms like Kiva, DonorsChoose, Change.org, GlobalGiving, Care2, Idealist.org, and fourteen others. You can read more about the widget and see examples on the launch article on the Social Actions blog.

See the widget in action - find out what actions would be listed for your blog (or any website).

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I’ve been following unfolding of the excellent We Are Media project which is a community of people from nonprofits coming together curated by NTEN who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organisations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world. Working together the network aims to help identify and point to the best how-to guides and useful resources that cover all aspects of creating, aggregating, and distributing social media. The resulting curriculum will be live on the We Are Media wiki and will also cover important organisational adoption issues, strategy, ROI analysis, as well as the tools.

In the latest module, they are looking at the Return of Investment (ROI) of social media. In Beth Kanter’s recent post exploring where are the best resources to guide our thinking about Social Media Metrics, ROI, and Nonprofits?; Beth rounds up some great examples and opens up a discussion on measuring the benefits and also, if and how you can quantify the return.

Beth Dunn, another of my favourite bloggers and a contributor for the project and she’s recently posted an article ROI: the null hypothesis, which explores what happens when an organisation chooses not to engage; when they decide to play it ’safe.’
In her article she raises a compelling argument looking at the risks to organisations that are not engaged in social media to reach out to their supporters, members and users.

Finally, over on this side of the pond, Steve Bridger has shared the presentation he recently delivered to staff at Action Aid, entitled “does it mean we have to change our jobs?”. The presentation summarises many of the issues that charities face in choosing whether to participate and how they can make the best use of social media and gives examples of ‘connected’ charities too.

Charities & The Social Web View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: groundswell agile)

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Jon Gibbons on his dotjay.co.uk site has collated an impressive list of videos that demonstrate accessibility in order to help others gain insight into how assistive technology is used, particularly with regards to the Web, and its value to those who use it. Visit the site and read the article - Assistive Technology: a video tour of accessibility.

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Designing the Online Newsroom is an article from PebbleRoad which delivers a thoughtful roadmap to integrating an online news area for your website, and how to manage it and make it work. Well worth a read, and relevant to all sectors and organisations, read the full article at Designing the Online Newsroom.

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Deafness and the User Experience is a recent article at A List Apart that helps you to a better understanding of deafness, highlighting the need to stop thinking of deafness as simply the inverse of hearing, but to understand deafness from both a cultural and linguistic perspective. A great overview with lots of suggestions on how to ensure your site is more usable and accessible for all.

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Last year, over twenty thousand bloggers participated in the first annual Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Last year the theme was the Environment and this years theme is Poverty.

Register your blog and take part in the forthcoming event on October 15th on the Blog Action Day site.

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A new add-on tool to work with the Firefox browser will soon be launched which aims to help those with vision loss.

Excerpt from the Lighthouse International website:

While existing programs enable blind people to access the web effectively, LowBrowse™ is the first program to enable people with moderate or severe low vision to both view web pages as the original web author intended and read the text on those pages tailored to their own visual needs. The highly anticipated program, which runs in conjunction with the Mozilla Firefox browser, will be offered at no charge and is expected to be available to the public for download via the Firefox add-on site in late summer or early fall of 2008.

Using open source technology, this browser add-on will be free to users through the Firefox Add-on site. It works with Windows, Mac and Linux. Lighthouse International is a non-profit organisation which enables people with low vision and blindness to enjoy safe, independent and productive lives.

Read the full article and find out more about the wide range of features and opportunities that this add-on will deliver at Lighthouse International Develops Free, Innovative Web Browser Software For People Who Are Visually Impaired.

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Scripting Enabled is a conference and hack day taking place in London, England in September 2008.
The aim of the conference is to break down the barriers between disabled users and the social web as much as giving ethical hackers real world issues to solve. Find out more at the Scripting Enabled website.

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It’s that time of year again. Anyone who is involved with making, developing or editing websites should take this quick survey. Nearly 33,000 people took the first survey last year which provided a snapshot picture into the web profession.

Improvements have been made to this years survey to reflect the wider diversity of those involved in the web world including nonprofits and pro bono work.

Read the full accompanying article and participate at A List Apart, The Survey 2008.

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