Mmm, RSS.
.28.10 | No Comments »
October 28th, 2005 by Alex
All I want for tagsgiving is a del.icio.us turkey.
Make your nonprofit more effective with RSS aggregation
.28.10 | 2 Comments »
October 28th, 2005 by Alex
TechSoup invited me to be part of their online event on Web 2.0 this week. Since I was on call for a discussion about social bookmarking and aggregation, I put together a short overview of how aggregation can help nonprofits, and another on how social bookmarking can help nonprofits.
Here’s my quick take on three crucial ways that nonprofits can use RSS and aggregation to work more effectively:
- Automatically populate websites with up-to-date content: It’s very expensive to create original content on a regular basis. If you set up a series of RSS feeds on a particular topic that can pump useful content onto your organization’s web site; you’re adding value to that content by selecting a particular combination of topics and sources. For example, an organization that advocates for women with HIV might create an RSS-driven news section on its web site that pulls relevant web resources from del.icio.us, photos from Flickr, and blog posts from Technorati (a bit tricky to set up as a RSS feed, but doable; the trick is to set up the search as a “watchlist”, and then subscribe to the RSS feed for the watchlist.)
- Create a media monitoring site: You can create a media monitoring tool for internal use only. Something as simple as a Bloglines account can become a clearinghouse for information that helps with your work. That can include RSS feeds for Google or Yahoo news searches on particular search terms; del.icio.us feeds for resources related to your work; or news feeds for major publications in your field.
I’d figure that most nonprofits would benefit from setting up a media monitoring site with RSS feeds that cover the following:
- Search of major news feeds (try Google News or Yahoo News) for the name of your organization, acronym (if any), major sub-brands/projects, and/or name of your organization’s President/E.D.
- Search of major news feeds for keywords on the issues you need to track. Play with the search terms until you get the right volume of news; if you’re an organization that works on a major policy area (e.g. healthcare) you may need to narrow down your search until it gives you a manageable amount of news [e.g. “healthcare policy (Congress or President)”].
- Search of blogs (using Technorati or Feedster) for your organization and name of your organization’s President/E.D.
- Search of blogs for your issue keywords.
- del.icio.us, Furl & Flickr tag pages for your organization’s name and key issue areas. Don’t forget that del.icio.us lets you set up feeds that are narrowed down by using multiple tags (e.g. http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/healthcare+policy)
- del.icio.us, Furl & blog (Technorati/Feedster) search on your chosen team tag (see below)
- For a local organization, search feeds that search your issue keywords within the news feeds for all your major local papers and broadcast outlets (you can set up a Bloglines account that includes all your local media, then set up a keyword search that searches all the feeds in your account; then set up a second Bloglines account as your main media monitoring site, and subscribe to the keyword search from the first account).
- Choose a team tag: Choose a tag that your staff, board and volunteers can use to share information and resources. Encourage your team to use del.icio.us, furl or another social bookmarking service to save web resources they find personally useful or want to share with the team. Encourage bloggers to use that tag on any post they want team members to read. And then make sure your team monitors the tag regularly by visiting your media monitoring site, or adding the RSS feed for the tag (from del.icio.us, Furl and Technorati) to their personal home pages in Google.
I hope this is helpful. Tips on how nonprofits can use social bookmarking will follow shortly.
Make your nonprofit more effective with RSS aggregation
.27.10 | No Comments »
October 27th, 2005 by Alex
TechSoup invited me to be part of their online event on Web 2.0 this week. Since I was on call for a discussion about social bookmarking and aggregation, I put together a short overview of how aggregation can help nonprofits, and another on how social bookmarking can help nonprofits.
Here’s my quick take on three crucial ways that nonprofits can use RSS and aggregation to work more effectively:
- Automatically populate websites with up-to-date content: It’s very expensive to create original content on a regular basis. If you set up a series of RSS feeds on a particular topic that can pump useful content onto your organization’s web site; you’re adding value to that content by selecting a particular combination of topics and sources. For example, an organization that advocates for women with HIV might create an RSS-driven news section on its web site that pulls relevant web resources from del.icio.us, photos from Flickr, and blog posts from Technorati (a bit tricky to set up as a RSS feed, but doable; the trick is to set up the search as a “watchlist”, and then subscribe to the RSS feed for the watchlist.)
- Create a media monitoring site: You can create a media monitoring tool for internal use only. Something as simple as a Bloglines account can become a clearinghouse for information that helps with your work. That can include RSS feeds for Google or Yahoo news searches on particular search terms; del.icio.us feeds for resources related to your work; or news feeds for major publications in your field.
I’d figure that most nonprofits would benefit from setting up a media monitoring site with RSS feeds that cover the following:
- Search of major news feeds (try Google News or Yahoo News) for the name of your organization, acronym (if any), major sub-brands/projects, and/or name of your organization’s President/E.D.
- Search of major news feeds for keywords on the issues you need to track. Play with the search terms until you get the right volume of news; if you’re an organization that works on a major policy area (e.g. healthcare) you may need to narrow down your search until it gives you a manageable amount of news [e.g. “healthcare policy (Congress or President)”].
- Search of blogs (using Technorati or Feedster) for your organization and name of your organization’s President/E.D.
- Search of blogs for your issue keywords.
- del.icio.us, Furl & Flickr tag pages for your organization’s name and key issue areas. Don’t forget that del.icio.us lets you set up feeds that are narrowed down by using multiple tags (e.g. http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/healthcare+policy)
- del.icio.us, Furl & blog (Technorati/Feedster) search on your chosen team tag (see below)
- For a local organization, search feeds that search your issue keywords within the news feeds for all your major local papers and broadcast outlets (you can set up a Bloglines account that includes all your local media, then set up a keyword search that searches all the feeds in your account; then set up a second Bloglines account as your main media monitoring site, and subscribe to the keyword search from the first account).
- Choose a team tag: Choose a tag that your staff, board and volunteers can use to share information and resources. Encourage your team to use del.icio.us, furl or another social bookmarking service to save web resources they find personally useful or want to share with the team. Encourage bloggers to use that tag on any post they want team members to read. And then make sure your team monitors the tag regularly by visiting your media monitoring site, or adding the RSS feed for the tag (from del.icio.us, Furl and Technorati) to their personal home pages in Google.
I hope this is helpful. Tips on how nonprofits can use social bookmarking will follow shortly.
Hats off to the BCTF
.21.10 | 5 Comments »
October 21st, 2005 by Alex
The BC Teachers’ strike hit home today, with CUPE picketing in support of the teachers even as some prospect for reconciliation has emerged. Our daughter’s daycare was closed so that staff could respect CUPE’s picket lines.
But I have to admit that despite the challenge of arranging for childcare today, I’m really deeply proud and touched that my daughter is being looked after by people who have collective bargaining rights that allow them to ensure that they have the working conditions to do a good job looking after her. And when she gets to school, I want to have the same knowledge — that teachers have a way to actually have a voice in how they work and look after our kids, and that no government can just take away that voice overnight. But of course I’ve spent a long time in and around union culture, hearing about the struggle and sacrifices people have made to get or keep bargaining rights, so for me, those bargaining rights are right up there with free speech, abortion rights etc as really fundamental and precious.
In fact, I’ve been caught a bit off-guard by the depth of my outrage over the government’s position on this strike. After all, I’ve been relatively disenchanted by the labour movement for years. What do unions have to say to the world of high-skill information workers who typically own their own means of production? Sure, unions mean something when you’re slaving away on a loom or an assembly line owned by some guy in a top hat (am I the only person whose mental picture of labour politics is stuck in the 19th century?), but what if the “means of production” is that shiny laptop sitting on your desk? Who needs a union to stick up for you?
Well, maybe I don’t need a union — myself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need unions. This strike reminds me that we all DESPERATELY need unions. We need construction workers’ unions to make sure that building conditions — and buildings — are safe for all of us. We need hospital workers’ unions to stand up for patients’ living conditions. (Our last brush with labour action was when I gave birth in a hospital the very week they privatized all their custodial services. Not pretty.) And we need teachers’ unions to stand up for our kids.
So, (top) hats off to the BCTF. Thanks to their stubbornness, commitment and courage, my daughter may yet be educated in a school with small enough classes and large enough budgets to meet her needs. And just as important, educated by people who can offer first-hand lessons in the value of putting your ass on the line to fight for what you believe in.
Everything I needed to know about community engagement I learned from Flying Meat
.14.10 | 1 Comment »
October 14th, 2005 by Alex
Flying Meat is the software company behind VooDooPad, my latest favorite application ever. VooDooPad is one of those transformational technologies that do one small but crucial thing so incredibly way that they change the whole way you work.
In this case, what VooDooPad does is to give you one place to put all your notes — all those random files that are currently scatterred across your computer as Word files, stickies, Outlook/Entourage notes, text files, draft emails, draft blog posts, etc. That’s if you’re like me — the old me, I mean, pre-VDP.
Now all my notes are in one place: a single VooDooPad document that lets me create a new page for every random thought, to-do list, set of questions, document in progress, telephone call, chunk of code I need to hold onto, idea for an article, etc etc. I have categories for all my projects so I can assign each page to the right category or categories, and find it again easily. Wiki-style hyperlinks mean my pages can link to related pages, and that I can find those related pages using the “backlinks” feature. Awesome search means anything that doesn’t jump out at me from backlinks or categories is still easy to find.
But as much as I love VooDooPad, I think I may love Flying Meat even more. As far as I can tell, Flying Meat consists of August “Gus” Mueller, a software developer who could teach public participation types a thing or two about community engagement. Here’s what I’ve learned from Gus:
Ask for input. VooDooPad has a “report a bug/feature request” option built into its help menu, and on its website. That means that whenever you think to look for more information, you’ll be prompted to give feedback at the same time.
Let the public set the agenda. VooDooPad’s bug reporting interface doesn’t force you into a box that corresponds to their work process instead of yours. It’s just a message box that lets you type in an email, and (optionally) note whether it’s a bug or suggestion.
Responsiveness encourages communication. When I filed my first feature request, I got an e-mail from Gus just a few hours later. That personal and informative response made me feel like my input was heard and valued, and has encouraged t has encouraged me to provide further input, and created what I hope is a virtuous circle (or from Gus’s perspective, spam.)
Information fuels commitment. When Gus responded to my e-mail, he didn’t just thank me for my ideas — he actually provided some more information about the software to help it work better for me. By providing me with some value (in the form of a use tip) in return for my input, Gus has motivated me to continue participating in his user community by providing further feedback.
Transparency counts. As incisive and useful as my input may be, Gus hasn’t just taken it all with a thank you and you’ll see it in the next upgrade. By sharing his reservations about some of my suggestions he’s increased his credibility, and my interest in further communication.
Names count. Would I have sent an e-mail to PersonalNoteWiki or McWiki or YourNotesInc? Who knows. But there’s something about a company called “Flying Meat” that screams open doors and open minds. And of course, flying meat.
Wanted: Office & Web Manager for community-minded web company
.11.10 | No Comments »
October 11th, 2005 by Alex
For more details visit http://www.socialsignal.com/hiring
If you’re organized, enjoy working with technology, and want your work to have social value, you could be the newest member of Social Signal (http://www.socialsignal.com). We’re a Vancouver web company that supports innovative online communities. We work with leading social entrepreneurs in the non-profit, government and business sectors who share our excitement about using technology to help people work together, connect communities, and create lasting change.
The best part of working with Social Signal is the close contact with organizational leaders who are breaking new ground in the innovative use of technology for social change. No, wait — the best part is fiddling with blog software until you turn a tool for one-way publication into a platform for community conversation. Or maybe it’s finding out that a network we set up actually helped somebody to get a piece of information or establish a relationship that changed her life. Or maybe it’s spending a day playing with a nifty new web service — just because you have a gut feeling that it could be exactly the tool you’ll need on a project six months from now.
Now Social Signal wants to hire an Office & Web Manager, an entry-level position with room for growth. This person will be responsible for finding, creating and organizing the wide range of information needed to keep our business — and our clients’ online communities — buzzing along. If you’re community-oriented, tech-friendly, and already living in Vancouver, this could be you.
Job responsibilities include:
- office management including filing, invoicing and correspondence
- administrative support such as booking travel, managing schedules and finding suppliers
- configuring and troubleshooting web sites for socially-oriented online communities (you don’t need to be a programmer or web designer, but you do need to enjoy learning new software programs or web tools)
- researching, writing and/or copy editing blog posts and case studies
- writing how-to guides to help community members use advanced online tools with ease and confidence
- identifying and exploring new web sites, tools and strategies
You’re not in the office anymore, Dorothy: a day at Social Signal could include a phone call from our living room with an international NGO; a brisk dog walk while we talk about the latest dialogue techniques; a meeting in our favourite caf to hammer out a new web site; or curling up on your sofa at home while searching for the best airfares to San Jose. And since our professional partnership is also a personal partnership, a typical day may include playing some of our favourite games: “Have you checked out this web site?” “What’s a good synonym for ‘empower’?” and of course the eternal, “Do you know where my iPod went?”
Working closely with two of Canada’s leading online community strategists, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to extend your writing, problem-solving, research and technical skills. We have extensive experience in the non-profit, public and private sectors, and a large network of local, national and international colleagues and clients that you’ll be working with on a regular basis. While you expand your professional network and skills, we also hope you’ll enjoy being part of our personal network of technology leaders and community advocates in Vancouver and abroad.
Social Signal is offering an unusual opportunity to come in on the ground floor of a business with the experience, reputation and credentials to go sky-high. If your enthusiasm for technology is matched only by your passion for social change, you’ll find that the joy of working with kindred spirits can be matched by the thrill of helping communities use the Internet in ways they never imagined.
For more details on job qualifications and responsibilities or on how to apply, please visit http://www.socialsignal.com/hiring
Aggregation as an endless loop
.10.10 | 1 Comment »
October 10th, 2005 by Alex
Here’s a challenge for wiser RSS-wranglers than I: as aggregation becomes a more widely used tool for populating web sites, how do we prevent RSS feeds from being cluttered with multiple identical posts?
I was just looking at the Technorati tag page for net2, where a couple of my Net2-related posts have each appeared twice. That’s because my blog is being aggregated in full at Web of Blogs, an aggregation set up for the Web of Change conference. Once I get my Social Signal aggregator up and running, that may provide another duplicate of many of my blog posts.
It would be great if Technorati, Feedster & other searches could recognize true duplicate posts, and only show them once — or if there were a way to strip duplicate posts out of a feed when aggregating onto another site (for example, NetSquared’s aggregator page.)
Community goes corporate
.7.10 | No Comments »
October 7th, 2005 by Alex
Boyd Neil of Hill & Knowlton has written a very kind and thought-provoking post in response to the launch of Social Signal. Boyd’s observation is that corporate communicators have a lot to learn from social movements and community activists about how to use the Internet as a tool for bottom-up community engagement and marketing campaigns.
It’s an interesting twist because I’m used to coporate communications being held up as a model and example for nonprofit people — particularly online, since corporate web sites often seem to be a few steps ahead of their nonprofit counterparts (at least aesthetically). While I’ve grown increasingly convinced of the potential of decentralized online collaboration as an engine of social change, it hadn’t occurred to me that part of its impact lies in shifting the balance of power between the private and nonprofit worlds.
For all sorts of historical, cultural, and perhaps even structural reasons, civil society organizations may be just that much ahead of private (and I suspect also government) organizations in their ability to adopt, adapt and exploit participatory, collaborative models. If that’s the model that is most effective — and most available — in the era of online communications, then the shift towards online community may actually put community organizations in a newly powerful position.
Of course the other possible — and equally hopeful — scenario is that private sector organizations will learn to adopt and adapt participatory models for their own benefit. I say, bring it on! All my experience and observation of community collaboration suggests that the structures and processes of collaborative work and decision-making have a transformative impact on organizational culture and mission. Democratizing corporations — by giving employees, customers and the broader community a greater role and stake in their decisions — could have an even larger social impact than democratizing government and civil society groups.
And there are more opportunities than ever for corporations to immerse themselves in the experiences and innovations of web-savvy, collaboration-driven community organizations. Dare I suggest that participating in Net2 could be a great place to start?
Introducing Social Signal: collaboration for communities
.6.10 | 3 Comments »
October 6th, 2005 by Alex
I’m delighted to announce the launch of Social Signal. Social Signal’s goal is to support online communities and distributed collaboration networks — networks of communities that share content and relationships by using the latest generation of web tools. This practice builds on my consulting, research and writing in the fields of online community, public participation, and social software, but extends its value and capacity with the strengths of a new partner: Rob Cottingham, a communications consultant with long experience in online advocacy and web development.
Appropriately enough, the Social Signal web site launched on the same day as our latest project, TechSoup’s Net2. Net2 is an online community and conference that will celebate the achievements of the nonprofit web, while asking the ever-fascinating “what’s next?”
What’s next is a crop of technologies that work the way healthy communities work: decentralized, bottom-up, and participatory. Tech memes like blogging, tagging and RSS — sometimes described as “Web 2.0″ technologies — allow individual non-profits, community organizations and campaigns to work together effectively, while still maintaining their individual identities. Each organization has its own web site and/or blog, but shares content with other like-minded organizations by using RSS to move news, stories and information from one site to the other; tagging provides a way of structuring this information into particular topics.
This kind of decentralized collaboration parallels the best practices that have emerged out of research and experience in the fields of social capital, public engagement, planning, public consultation, and public participation. For the past twenty or thirty years — and gaining ground dramatically in the past decade — public servants and community service organizations have been exploring ways of bringing the public into organizational decision-making. They’ve discovered that decisions that have been meaningfully shaped by public input not only enjoy broader public support, but are more effective and more sustainable. It turns out that the most successful public decision-making processes are — you guessed it! — decentralized, bottom-up, and participatory.
Social movements and community activists have found a similar path. You can’t get people to support a cause by offering a laundry list of ideological justifications. You get people to participate in a political movement by listening to them, letting them set the agenda, and providing ways for them to participate wherever, whenever and however it works for them. It turns out that the most successful social movements and political campaigns are decentralized, bottom-up, and participatory.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Web is finally offering tools that match the best practices in public decision-making and community organizing. The Internet grew from the same cultural wellspring that inspired many civic engagement practitioners and many social movement organizers. The 1960s counterculture has been cited as a parent of hacker culture, which gave birth to the open source movement. Open source software development takes a participatory approach to the creation of computer code, allowing many people to collaboratively contribute to one or more related programs. It turns out that the fastest and most secure way of writing code is decentralized, bottom-up, and participatory.
Software developers, public planners, collaboration consultants, community organizers — they’ve all ended up on the same page, working from something like the same play book. They all see the power and joy of a decentralized, bottom-up, participatory model of collaboration. And they’re all trying to build the structures — technological, organizational, and social — that will make this form of collaboration the new standard for how to do business, make policy, create art, or communicate.
What’s exciting about Web 2.0 — yes, we really need another name for it! — is that it offers the technological infrastructure for decentralized, bottom-up, participatory collaboration. Instead of creating another community group to compete for foundation funding, like-minded members of existing community organizations can use a wiki to develop a joint proposal. Instead of distributing government surveys, public servants can access spontaneous, focused feedback by aggregating blog-based policy discussions. Instead of focusing on fundraising in order to pay campaign staff, activist groups can create far-reaching information campaigns that are powered by their members’ RSS feeds.
We’re still in the early days of discovering how the collaborative toolkit of blogging, tagging and RSS — not to mention other tools that are just emerging — can transform our organizational, social and economic structures. Net2 is part of this process of discovery. So are the other “Web 2.0″ projects I’m working on, like telecentre.org.
Community-based projects like these — projects that engage with the decentralized, bottom-up, and participatory potential of Web 2.0 tools — are crucial to unleashing the transformative power of the next-generation Internet. We hope Social Signal will help to enable that transformation.