UKriders

The ComcastCares Twitter account is an example of how businesses are using Twitter and other social web tools for customer support and service.  You can read more about what they are doing at Valerie Maltoni's Conversation Agentor Chris Brogan. It made me wonder if any nonprofits have started to use Twitter in this way. This lead to me Alex Steed's write up about Robin Parker, Red Cross Portland. He mentions that they do a lot of listening - and sure enough once I scanned her twitter stream, I was able to find the above example. 

Is anyone using Twitter to provide answers or customer service to their audiences via Twitter (or even via a blog)?  I know this idea is probably not the right fit for a lot of nonprofits, but on the other hand maybe it might be working for some.    Please do share if your organization is using Twitter in this way or if you think it is the dumbest idea you've ever heard.

LinkedIn is a professional network for business and (and nonprofit professionals.)  It is often described as an online social network for job seekers.  Perhaps because initially your profile was structured like an online version of your  resume.  Let me tell you, LinkedIn can be a terrific place to develop professional contacts, grow your business, and promote your work and opportunities. There are many good reasons why nonprofit professionals use online professional networking sites liked LinkedIn.

Earlier this week LinkedIn announced its applications platform that includes a small number of well-chosen apps that can enhance your professional networking profile. You can add your blog content, slide shows, reading lists, files, business travel, and more. (Chris Brogan calls the addition of adding your business travel schedule "dog clever."  Since LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking site that can help you find job prospects, works prospects, and

For my profile, I added BlogLink (it posts my blog posts to my profile automatically) and SlideShare's Application.  (In the video above SlideShare's CEO Rashmi Sinha demonstrates the application.)

Meet Sarah on LinkedInView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: app slideshare) After I installed my slideshare, I had this idea about doing a powerpoint to visually illustrate the text in my LinkedIn profile.  Then, I found this wonderful example.

What I like most about LinkedIn applications is that they are focused on professional use.  I also like that there aren't hundreds of them, and so far the two installed were not buggy.  Oh, did I mention that I like the way they look on my profile?   The best benefit of all is that installation process doesn't  suggest that I "invite my friends to install."   What that means is that I won't have to spend time on LinkedIn ignoring application invitations.

But applications alone don't make well designed and effective LinkedIn profile.   Here's some great advice from Chris Brogan who how make your LinkedIn profile support your professional goals. (more here)

Linked In How-Tos and Tips

Creating Conversations and Relationships Using LinkedIn SOBcon09 - Biz School For Bloggers
Guy Kawasaki's list of Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn and LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover.
Chris Brogan, Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future
Chris Brogan, LinkedIn Profile Tips

Linked In Applications

Michele Martin, LinkedIn Applications
Chris Brogan, Drop Everything - Run To LinkedIn Now
Read/Write Web - LinkedIn Applications:  Your Resume Just Got More Dynamic
TechCrunch, Linked In Means Business With New Application Platform

What do you think of LinkedIn adding apps? Do you any value of using LinkedIn as a nonprofit professional?

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a Social Media Club workshop in Hawaii as part of Podcamp and WordCamp in Hawaii.  I asked folks who was doing interesting social change work with Aloha spirit.   Several people pointed to Cynthia Derosier, author of The Surfer Spirit Book and recently published The Survivor Spirit : The Beauty, Passion, and Power of Breast Cancer Survivors.   I was to track her down for an interview.

Cynthia is convinced surfing can help Hawaii's at-risk youth.  In partnership with Girls Court and The Surfrider Foundation's O'ahu Chapter, Derosier started The Spirit Sessions, a six-week program aimed to help at-risk teens redirect their lives in a positive way through surfing and other ocean-related activities.

1.  How did you get interested in surfing?

I grew up in Hawaii and always loved to ocean. I've always loved swimming and body surfing and paddling a canoe. In high school my friends and I decided to learn how to surf, but back then the boys were pretty territorial and short boards were the "in" thing so it was difficult to learn (we never really ever got good enough to stand up) and a lot of the boys would hassle us about getting in their way etc...it wasn't worth the stress considering we had so many other options, so we just dropped it and went back to all our other sports.

When I moved back home after living in NYC for 12 years I decided it was something I wanted to learn.  I got a group of friends together and we went down to Waikiki beach and learned how to long board like the beach boys.  The first time I stood up my world changed and I was hooked. There is no better feeling than standing on a wave and living purely in the moment.. Something inside me woke up. In retrospect it was the first time I realized I had a surfer spirit.

2.  What is the connection between surfing and healing?

There is a saying "only a surfer knows the feeling" and it's true. It's hard to describe, but I can tell you, anyone who has ever caught a wave, whether they surf throughout their life or only once, everyone remembers that first wave. I taught some Buddhist monks to surf and they told me that it is very much in the spirit of being a Buddhist because you must live in the moment.

Surfing keeps you in balance, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The physical part is obvious. The rest, becomes obvious the more you surf. It's the only sport I can think of where you play with nature. not on it, not in it, but with it. You sit in the right spot then wait for a wave, then it does what it wants with you. And if you are skilled you know how to respond to it in a way that works for you. And no two waves are ever the same. And no surf spot is ever static.

I see a lot of self-esteem enhancement with the kids in our surf program (The Spirit Sessions). Most don't think they can surf and we get them up and riding on their first lesson!  They get a great workout, learn a whole new sport and positive activity (vs some of their other less positive habits.   They also develop a whole new social circle. In addition they start to see the ocean and the environment differently and they start to ask us marine biology questions, which lead to general environmental education. For many of our kids its a chance to practice and reconnect to their Hawaiian culture. So there is also cultural healing as well.

The Hawaiians believe that the ocean itself is healing. He`e Nalu is the Hawaiian word for "surf" it literally means "to slide on churning water"...but "nalu" also refers to the amniotic fluid and He`e Nalu also implies being born. In many ways, surfing was regarded as a way to celebrate life and be cleansed. 

3.  You also created a surfing program for breast cancer survivors.  Can you tell me about that?

As part of Make A Difference Day, the kids from our Spirit Sessions Program
helped us teach some of the women who were breast cancer survivors to how to surf. It was a rainy and cold day, but a few of the women came down anyway. They had a blast and I think at least two of them are going to keep surfing! In exchange They gave the girls some life advice about being positive and never giving up when faced with life challenges and most of all continuing to celebrate life and enjoy what good there
is in the world, surfing being one of them!

4.  What is your new book about?

It's a celebration of spirit. I believe that everyone has a gift to bring to the world, and everyone has  a unique spirit, and that it is our obligation to find our light and share it with the world.. While we all have certain physical needs, we also need to pay attention to our spirit's needs, and if we honor and feed our unique spirit, we will be stronger, and our light shine brighter and we will all benefit. In my case, surfing keeps me in balance and focused. For the women in the book, they each had something that helped them endure their battle with cancer and made them stronger, better, brighter. As a result, EVERY woman I interviewed noted that her life is better now because of their experience with cancer! They each discovered something inside them they hadn't realized before.  Pretty powerful stuff!

5.  Wow, this makes want to go surfing.  Any tips?

The most important tip is to just try it!

Cross posted at BlogHer.

For novices just starting to explore social media, I recommend google alerts as the first listening step because they didn't have learn another application (RSS Readers) to get started. I use google alerts, but always wished they had an RSS option. I get way too email that I can barely keep up. So, I was so happy dancing to hear that they have added this option.

On Friday,  I got an invitation to "donate my status" on Facebook for a Get Out The Vote Rally on Facebook, a causes application.  When you install, it will give Facebook permission to automatically change your status line to one of several get out the vote messages.   When I installed there were 28,849 users on Facebook that had installed.  I just checked and there are like 72,000.

This type of interaction design is perfect on facebook - doesn't require donation, easy to install and spread.  And, I think once you've installed it, you don't get a million invitations - or at least I haven't yet.

If you want to know more about social media and the election, there's a compilation of examples of how social media is being used in the elections by Lauren-Glenn Davitian, CCTV Center for Media and Democracy. (You can read it here).  Lucy Bernholz offers some brilliant reflection questions on what philanthropy can learn from politics.

Well off to turn Twittter avatar into the logo for VoteReport.

Marshall Kirkpatrick has a great post over at Read/Write Web about keeping momentum.  In that post, he describes one technique - make yourself a public case study.  So, in that spirit,  I'm sharing my presentation from last week which is a case study of my blogging ROI.  My main point is that you just think of ROI as math, then you're missing the a lot of the value of doing an ROI analysis.

I had the honor of presenting on a panel at the eMetrics Conference with Jonathon Coleman, Nature Conservancy and Laura Lee Dooley. World Resources Institute - two of the most savvy and smart nonprofit social media practitioners who are also metrics geeks.   What a combination!  

Our session is on the social media metrics track and one of a few that are geared for nonprofit folks.

Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community
If you aren't on facebook, twitter, friendfeed, technorati, and delicious, should you be? And once you jump into social media, how do you track and measure success? Tips, tools and stories from the trenches from three people who focus on online engagement and have more links, friends and followers than some small countries have citizens.

I also wanted to blog both Laura's excellent Twitter Digg deck and Jon's concise and smart case study of Digg.   They follow below.

In addition, WebMetrics Guru and Search Marketing Gurus took awesome notes! A bonus is Laura's Twitter links in Del.icio.us.    If you want follow web metrics bloggers, check out this list form All Top.  Laura has also compiled a list of live blog posts done at the emetrics conference - a very valuable resource.

Geoff Livingston live blogged the Network Solutions Solutions Stars Video Conference -- by a team of Internet marketing and social media rock stars.  The advice is geared for small businesses, not nonprofits, but a lot of it relevant and translatable.   The topics addressed include:

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

One of the messages that came through from this group of experts is that social media can give you a lot of return for your investment.  That investment is staff time as many of the tools are free.  Then again, time is one of the most valuable resources a nonprofit has ...   And, as Geoff points out social media does take time and it can take away from core operations - if you let it.   Geoff offers some time management techniques for social media strategists or what I'd like to call "Social Productivity" (I'm developing a workshop on that one ...)

So, if you incorporate social media - and allocate the time - and no matter how efficient you are - something will have to give.  Where does social media time/money fit within the overall web marketing budget?  What are the right proportions?

It just so happened that after reading Geoff's posts .. via my social network I stumbled upon colleague  Stephen Blyth musing about allocating money on a nonprofit web's strategy. Quoting some notes from a workshop presented at Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Bootcamp by Colin Delaney of ePolitics and Laura Quinn.  (Resource list and Powerpoint Here)

Here's a screen capture of one of the slides that illustrates the structure they used:

They divided the pie into equal thirds as follows:

• Website (as a home base)
• Email Communication (to talk to your friends)
• Online Outreach (to reach new friends) (They included social media/networking, search engine optimization, etc)

They recommend that you allocate time and budget equally 1/3 between each.

This sounds good, but I wish that the sections were as clear cut as the illustration.  Are those categories mutually really exclusive?  I kept wanting to blend them ...

Especially after viewing this slide show and especially this slide ..

What do I know, maybe I'm drinking too much Koolaid, so here goes ..

Homebase: Home base is your website and it could also be your blog or both. Not everyone needs a web site and a blog - that age old question - to blog or not to blog?  Some organizations consolidate.   A blog is a form of social media and I wouldn't necessarily classify as "outreach."  I might also add some of the costs of content creation for videos/podcasts/photos that live on your site (or blog) and on other social networking sites.   And, of course, the cost ensuring that you have set up RSS feeds or what Chris Brogan classifies as "passports."

Outbound Communication:  I'd put together all the one-way or "talking to you" tactics here. This is mostly email marketing -- crafting and putting out solid email communications - your email newsletter and CRM.   Perhaps search engine optimization and search engine advertising costs.   Email will probably not become extinct - so it is important to continue to track its effectiveness.

Online Outreach and Relationship Building:  This would include time spent on setting up social networking profiles, uploading content on places like flickr or Youtube, etc.    It would also include the time spent listening, participating, and joining the conversation.   To prioritize your time, you might concentrate your activity on 1-3 sites, but there are some good reasons to at least set up a presence on many sites.

I've probably muddied the waters here.   How are you thinking about the integration of social media into your overall Internet marketing budget?  How are you making decisions about how you allocate your time and money on social media and in the context of your internet marketing budget?   If you incorporate social media, what are you letting go of or cutting back on?  Why?

• A N I M O T O creates animated videos from your images. very neat (tags: video tools slideshow cool)
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Platform Monetization is a Two Way Street: Lessons from Facebook and Sun Microsystems facebook's platform is turning out to be a revolution that didn't last (tags: strategy social-networking business facebook)

I was taking a trip down memory lane through my flickr stream and a search on the word "Halloween" and realized that 30 years ago today I had my first date with my husband! 

I also found this photo from 1964.  When I was kid, our folks let us collect candy, but I also remember those orange boxes and collecting money for Unicef.

So, here's the social media version of collecting money for charity on Halloween from FutureNow.

There are 2 goals for Trick or Tweet:

1. Connect lots of interesting people with other interesting people they didn’t know before.

2. Do some good with our Tricks (there is enough tricky things going on in our worlds).

Here are the rules:

1. Send a Tweet to someone and ask Trick or Tweet.

2. If they say Tweet then you must provide them with a couple of interesting people they should follow (these people should have less than 1000 followers currently). At the end of your tweet add #TrickorTweet. If you don’t provide them with someone new, then you owe a Trick.

3. If they say Trick then send them a link to this page { http://tinyurl.com/trick-o-tweet } where they will have to contribute using the Chipin widget below to charity. The maximum we ask anyone to donate is $20 for the day. Every cent we collect will be sent to charity. We’ll split the proceeds among three charities; Reading is Fundamental, The Center for Autism and the charity that is mentioned the most in the comments below from your suggestions. UPDATE: Chris and I will give our donations to our respective preferred charities, the money collected will go to the top 3 companies voted for in the comments below.

Let’s have fun, connect people and do good. Have a happy and safe Halloween.

And, hope you'll consider mentioning my favorite charity in the comments - The Sharing Foundation - helps Cambodian children.  Go leave a comment now!

And here's another social media halloween campaign to help kids with Cancer.

Photo by Spike 55151

I read recently that the reason for "senior moments" - you know when you can't quite recall someone's name in an instant - is because the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information.   And, while some research indicates this slowing down is often to the brain's long-term benefit, one wonders what the impact is of too much Internet information that comes through our RSS readers.  Or rather, too much uncategorized, random, noisy information that comes from working on the social web.

About ten days ago, shortly after I finished presenting at the Share Our Strength Conference my mobile phone started to vibrate wildly because it was getting many incoming text messages.   What's going on, I wondered.  

As it turned out, it was direct messages from scores of Twitter followers thanking me for the follow.  Due to some technical glitch, my Twitter account started to automatically follow the 4, 393 people following me.   All of a sudden my Twitter stream exploded with a sea of tweets from people who were new to me.

The human mind craves order and categories, so while it fun to discover new people through a John Cage like exercise in randomness, I wondered how I might be more efficient at following a large number of people.   

A couple of weeks ago at the New Marketing Summit, Chris Brogan did a 10 minute demo of his work flow  to answer the question, "How do you keep up with all this?" (I captured it on Qik)  He mentioned Tweet Deck.

It lets you have replies, all tweets, and twitter profiles in different panels on the screen.  You can also create groups of followers.    A few reasons why I'm finding this an efficient way to use Twitter:

• Replies:   The replies panel not only picks up people who have used the @reply convention at the beginning of the tweet, but anyplace in the tweet.   The Twitter web interface doesn't - so if you want to know who is talking about you, you had to do separate search on twitter search.

• Retweets:  It does this automatically - rather than cuting and pasting.   Also gives a choice of different URL shorterners.

• Profile View:  You can click on the person's avatar/profile and it shows up in another screen.  (See above).  This is useful if the number of followers you have surpasses the dunbar number because I don't always remember people by name - and the visual helps.   Another reason to make sure your profile is filled out too.

• Groups:  This feature is awesome.  I can group together people I'm following by topic or association.  For example, I can group all the nptechers I know, and easy scan their tweets.  This helps make pattern analysis easier.  More here

When you first set up TweetDeck, it only imports 100 of your friends and then it takes time for the rest to be imported.  Here's why.  The founder of TweetDeck is on Twitter and he is listening and answering questions.   If you want some good introductory instructions, do this. The interface cues were new to me, so if you all of sudden loose your three column view and can't find the icons, make sure Tweetdeck is full screen.

The software is still in beta - so it may crash on your or you may encounter some bugs.  I've had some performance issues.   Also, it meters your use of the Twitter API, so if you go over a limit, you'll have to wait a bit.

Now of course, I enjoy discovering new people and new ideas - so I do keep the ten minutes a day of dipping in the full unflitered stream to discover something - but I also now have the option to be focused.

TweetDeck was one of the 7 filtering tools mentioned in this post by Mashable.  Given my interest in information coping skills, this will come in handy for those who have mastered the basics.

So, if you love Twitter, Tweedeck will help you love it more and more efficiently.

Are you using Tweetdeck?  How has it saved you time in your Twitter work flow?   What other Twitter apps have helped you save time or be more effective using Twitter?

• Stefano’s Linotype » Blog Archive » Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design good tips for novice CSS designers. (tags: css webdesign)

Ballard (and our neighbors in Fremont) get the in-depth treatment from the New York Times travel section.  Very cool to see a photo of Ballard farmer’s market on the homepage of the Gray Lady!

• Hostile takeover of Open Source Project TWiki Very sad. A good object lesson in what can happen to open-source projects that don't have their trademarks and intellectual property secured in a community-governed foundation. (tags: open-source legal)

The We Are Media Festival of Tools continues this week, but we wanted to make sure you're not only prepared with the right Social Media tools, but that you're wearing e-media!  That's why we're sending a fabulous T-shirt to the following contributors as a small token of thanks:

• Danielle Brigida
• Wendy Harman
• Dave Cormier
• Laura Lee Dooley

You can still win a t-shirt - just contribute something to the WeAreMedia Nonprofit Social Media Tool Box - this week we're working on social networks and fundraising widgets.

Allison Fine just twittered me that Twitter Vote Report is now live.   They need everyone's help to get the word out on Twitter and the effort will only work if a lots of people are using the system.

If you currently use Twitter, send a message after you vote that begins with #votereport (this is critically important for ensuring that your message gets to the right place.)  Then write some or all of the following:

#[zip code] to indicate where you’re voting; ex., “#12345″
#machine for machine problems; ex., “#machine broken, using prov. ballot”
#reg for registration troubles; ex., “#reg I wasn’t on the rolls”
#wait:minutes for long lines; ex., “#wait:120 and I’m coming back later”
#good or #bad to give a quick sense of your overall experience
#EP+your state if you have a serious problem and need help from the Election Protection coalition; ex., #EPOH
If you don’t use Twitter and want to go to www.twitter.com, sign up then follow the directions above.

If you want to participate by cellphone but don’t want to use Twitter, you can:

Send a text message to 66937 that begins with “#votereport”
Key in a report by calling (567) 258-VOTE/8683
Download and use the iPhone app (coming soon)
Please participate — we need lots and lots of voices heard on Election Day!

Here's the background information from the press release.

A volunteer network of software developers, designers, and other collaborators have teamed up with the award-winning blog techPresident to launch Twitter Vote Report.  Individual voters will use their cell phones to report on their individual experiences – the good, bad and ugly. How long is the wait in Cleveland, Ohio? Are the new optical scan machines staying up and running in Palm Beach County, Florida? Is failure to bring ID to the polls thwarting first-time voters in Indianapolis? With Twitter Vote Report, we’ll know the answers to those questions straight from voters from all over the country.  

Twitter Vote Report was inspired by a techPresident blog post on October 6th proposing the use of Twitter for election monitoring. In less than a month, volunteers across the country, with no other resources than their know-how and volunteer time, built www.twittervotereport.com to stream individual messages from Twitter and that will aggregate messages into maps and graphs.

Voters will use Twitter and the code, or hashtag, #votereport on Election Day to report whether they had a long wait, or voting machines were faulty or if there were registration problems – or if everything went well.

Voters can also send a message to Twitter Vote Report by:   
•    Sending a text message to 66937 beginning with #votereport
•    Calling to (567) 258-8683 (258-VOTE) to leave a message by touch tone keypad
•    Downloading the Twitter Vote Report iPhone application

Participating in the Twitter Vote Report project are an impressive range of organizations including the Election Protection Coalition, Rock the Vote, Credo Mobile, Common Cause, Plodt, YouTube, Twittervision, NPR’s Social Media Desk, Independence Year Foundation, The Center for Community Change, Student PIRGs, PBS, Video the Vote, Election Suppression Wiki, Women Donors Network, and Demos.  In addition, Current TV will be using the #votereport information as part of their special election coverage throughout the day.

Matt Cooperrider, a key architect of the effort, called Twitter Vote Report “the best aspects of grassroots activism and digital technology combined with an open source ethos to really change the way we participate in elections.”

"The goal of Twitter Vote Report is to expand the ways in which Americans participate in the electoral process this Election Day," said Nancy Scola, associate editor at  techPresident.  Andrew Rasiej, founder of techPresident, added, "This Twitter campaign is an ideal example of the combined power of social media and impassioned citizens to participate in our democracy. Power and control is shifting from politicians and campaigns to people and we'll be able to see that in real-time on Election Day."

Please visit www.twittervotereport.com to learn more about how Twitter and other technology tools will be used on November 4th to track voters Election Day voting experiences.

Message in-a-box: Tools and tactics for communicating your cause is a new web resources that includes tactical guides to using a wide range communications tools for social change, packaged with some open source tools for creating media.  This resource is for small to midsized nonprofit organizations.

This guide is a one-stop place to find checklists, strategy tips, and how-to guides for creating everything in you need to implement a communications strategy - from quick guide for a print strategy to selecting a content management system.  It also includes tips and resources for developing an Internet Strategy
sharing content on mobile phones, and an email strategy.  

The guide incorporates some tutorials and how-to information social media strategy, most notably a Blogging guide for activists and campaigners for using blogs for grassroots organizing and citizen journalism written by Sokari Ekine who blogs at www.blacklooks.org.  There is also a rich section about how to incorporate the use of video -- from creating your own to using works created by others.

The tools section is an annotated directory of open source tools that describe the tool and include links to downloads, manuals, and tutorials.  

The content incorporates and points to materials created by others in the citizen journalism and activism fields and is packaged as self-paced tutorials and checklists.   There are a few content areas that I do not normally included in the other many similar guides available.  These include:

•  Quick Guide to Images:  Advice about how to incorporate images effectively in your campaign materials.
• A Simple Guide to Animation Creating short animations can be an effective way to communicate about your cause.  This short tutorial steps you through some easy ways to create animation.
• Primer on Search Engine Optimization A good primer for those just beginning to think through a search engine optimization strategy.
• A Guide To Open Content  This section explains creative commons licensing and open content in easy to understand terms.

Well, I'm off to add links in the appropriate places in WeAreMedia.

Jasmin Tragasa, who lives in Australia, is managing consultant and social media advocate at IBM with a background in new media and design.  She's asking women around the world to contribute a sentence, just one sentence, on the theme of "A Women's Investment."    She invited me to contribute one sentence for a social media fundraising project she's leading to support female entrepreneurs in the Philippines.

Some of the contributors so far:

Anita Pahor, Women’s Opportunity Director, Australia
Kieran Cannistra, Innovation Editor IBM, USA
Cindy Lenferna de la Motte, Director at Fashion Collaborative, Australia
Amy Palko, Less Ordinary, Scotland
Suzanne Male, Publisher, Smink Works Books, Australia
Silvia Guccione, Director, Pomodoro Italian Cooking School, Australia
Michelle Zamora, AP SOA Marketing Leader, IBM, Australia
Nina Simosko, Global Chief Operating Officer, SAP Education USA
Lindy McKeown, eLearning Consultant, Australia
Renee Wolforth, Attorney, Washington, USA
Bonnie McEwan Owner, Make Waves: Impact Marketing for Nonprofits USA
Debbe Kennedy, Founder, President, and CEO Global Dialogue Center and Leadership Solutions Companies, USA http://www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com http://www.globaldialoguecenter.com

Joanna Young, Confident Writing, writing coach, Scotland
Janette Toral, digitalfilipino.com Australia/Philippines
Linda Griffin Founder ClearWind LLC, USA
Sacha Chua, Philippines and Canada

She is going to create slide show featuring all the sentences that people have contributed and use that to support her fundraising campaign.  (You can see an example of a slideshare (and some early contributions) here.)  She is hoping to raise $10,000 for a group of female entrepreneurs in the Philippines.

The money Jasmin will raised will be used to help 15 to 30 entrepreneurial poor (mainly women) to form a Trust Bank. They will co-guarantee each other’s loans to start small businesses and support their families, working together so that all may succeed in their individual businesses.  The Trust Bank is established in a community where over half the residents are living below the national poverty line (typically $1-2 a day.)

In addition to the loan, the money raised will also provide enterprise development services, including training in business and management skills, social and community issues such as health, sanitation and community participation - and personal development. The members will meet each week to make their repayments, discuss issues relevant to their businesses and personal lives, and receive business training and mentoring.

Photo by Beth Kanter

"When a woman invests, the effort will bear fruit and sustain others." 

Now, like other contributors, all I need is a sentence and a visual. So, simple a request, yet difficult.  I flipped through my flickr images and settled on this basket of apples from last year.   It symbolizes the harvest, the fruit of hard work.   So, here is my sentence:"When a woman invests, the effort will bear fruit and sustain others." 

If you'd like to contribute, write a post with a sentence linking back to this post and leave a comment for Jasmin.  You have until October 31st to participate.

Beth Kanter, BlogHer Editor for Social Change and Nonprofits, writes Beth's Blog.

You're looking at widget created by Lend4Health as part their participation in the Ideablob contest to win $10,000 for new small business ideas. They have enough votes to become a finalist, and they're one of eight content entrants in the "final showdown." If Lend4Health can accumulate the most votes between now and midnight Central time on October 31 (see countdown), they will win $10,000 for Lend4Health!

Here's what they plan to do with the money:

I was all set to vote for them and went over to the site. You need to register and go through a verification process.  Then I looked at the other projects and noticed Nate Ritter  - whose used Twitter during the San Diego fires also had an idea.  

So, I guess I have 48 hours to make up my mind ....

Update:  You can vote for more than one project!

Chris “cbcunc” Calloway has put together two great video visualizations of Plone’s community activity over the past eight (!) years.

Check out:

Plone core code swarm — a visual representation of the evolution of the Plone core from 2001 to 2008.

Plone collective code swarm — same idea, only this time it analyzes the universe of Plone add-on products

It’s really amazing to see the fireworks that surround major code checkins, and to see the moment in time when legendary Plone contributors like Martin “optilude” Aspeli and Hanno “hannosch” Schlichting (just to name two) first appeared on the scene. 

(Eagle-eyed viewers will spot my name flicker around the edges of the Collective from 2006 onward.)

Plone Code Swarm from Chris Calloway on Vimeo.

Source: Nielsen Online

The We Are Media Festival of Tools is starts the last week of work on the Nonprofit Social Media Toolbox with a focus on social networking tools and widgets and apps.

So for today, our focus is on social networking sites.  According to this recent Nielsen study there has been explosive social networking growth over the past year.  The top social networking sites include some familiar names - Myspace and Facebook.   What is interesting is that nearly half of the biggest social networking sites are also among the fastest growing - and they are all most popular among age groups over 25.

Gartner VP recently published a report from analyst Andrea Di Maio, who says citizen social networks will complement, and may replace, some government functions. "Today, the primary role of social networks for governments is to facilitate the exchange of information and to establish novel collaboration patterns, often across organizational boundaries," Gartner's report says.  It argues that blurring departmental boundaries, increasing horizontal exchange among departments, shrinking budgets, and a growing trend in which control over storing information is relinquished to third parties are all fueling the adoption of social media within government organizations.(And perhaps nonprofits?)

For the social networking section the WeAreMedia tool box, we have included the definitive list of every social network in the world, but what would be really helpful to have the short list of where nonprofits have had some results.   So far that list includes the big ones like Facebook, Myspace, Ning, and LinkedIn.  And, it should include some of the focused social networking sites for nonprofits, like Change.Org, so the quesiton is what others to include on the social networking part of the tool kit?

Office Life:How To Befriend The Boss On Facebook

In addition to links to the various site, we would like you recommend the best of the best how-to posts or videos for the specific social network.   The example of above comes a collection of screencasts about Facebook. (Hat tip to Kari Dunn Saratovsky of the Social Citizen's Blog for find the one above).  We have lots of resources with tips and examples related to strategy in other sections of the WeAreMedia project, what we're looking for here are the pure how-tos related to the specific social networking sites referenced.

So, go over to the wiki and add your best how-to resource and you could win a t-shirt.