community

I’ve been a little preoccupied recently because of a one-day conference I’m presenting at in Hamilton next week. Engage your Community: Using Blogs, YouTube and other Cool Tools to achieve your group’s goals is for community groups, to help them connect with volunteers, staff, and other stakeholders .

In the last couple of years I’ve written materials for New Zealand community groups to help them set up a website: Connect your community, and more recently: Webguide 2.0, a starter kit wiki with information about current Internet tools that can help organisations. That wiki is a starting point — we want groups and other contributors to build on the information that’s there, adding details of more tools, more case studies. There’s plenty of scope.

Next week’s conference has grown out of the wiki, with a strong emphasis on hands-on, practical workshops.

I’m offering a workshop called Keeping up with the Joneses: the easy way to stay in-the-know.

Organisations need to keep up with news of current events and other flows of information that affect and relate to the work they do, both currently and in the future. This workshop will help you learn how to keep up with the flood of information, and get started on efficiently monitoring what’s going on in the world that you should know about. [Miraz will] talk specifically about using RSS feeds and a “technology scout”.

The “technology scout” was something I wrote about a few months back.

I haven’t quite finished my prep yet for the workshop, but as it’s hands-on I’m not too concerned. I’ll introduce the participants to RSS feeds, Google Reader, searches at places like Technorati, Google Alerts and the notion of creating their own RSS feeds.

My big concern though has been the keynote presentation I’m doing to open the Conference: The new Internet: friends, connections and community. It’s a 15 to 20 minute speech, with which I aim to inspire, not instruct. I want to fire up participants with the notion that Web 2.0 technologies can change lives. I’ve spent all week (and more) coming up with my script, locating movies, images and case studies to illustrate my points, figuring out just what my points are.

I finally have a bunch of stuff (Keynote slides) and some text, and my job now is to polish it up, refine it, and make sure it leaves the audience with a couple of clear messages to take away and remember. And I also need to add in the credits for all the images, movies and sounds I’ve included.

Along the way I’ve been using and learning about Apple’s Keynote application. It’s just wonderful! It keeps on giving me the “I rule” experience that Kathy Sierra has so often written about.

Next Tuesday’s the big day. Till then, I’m just a bit busy.

Popularity: 17% [?]

When you send newsletters to your whole address book you may be contributing to the spam problem. Are you sure you’re not an accidental spammer?

What is spam?

Spam is unwanted bulk email, unsolicited electronic messages. It has become an enormous problem on the Internet. It’s clogging email channels, annoying email users and administrators, and costing businesses lost time and money.

The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007

The (New Zealand) Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 aims to prohibit unsolicited commercial electronic messages and require senders of commercial electronic messages to include accurate sender information and a functional unsubscribe facility.

The act prohibits persons from using address-harvesting software or a harvested-address list in connection with the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages.

It applies to all emails, texts and instant messages that market or promote goods, services, and other schemes of a commercial or dishonest nature.

Does the new law apply to us?

As a community group you may feel that such a law doesn’t apply to you. That may or may not be true, and it would be a good idea to consult a lawyer for a definitive opinion. Or, you could save a lot of fees by making sure your email practices are conservative.

Tough in, easy out

Before adding anyone to a regular mailing, make sure that they are agreeing to receive information from you by email. Also make sure recipients can easily and quickly remove themselves from your mailings, no questions asked.

Opt-in not opt-out

When you set up a mailing list (a set of addresses to which you’ll send regular or irregular information), ask the intended recipient to confirm that they wish to join your mailing list. If they don’t confirm, then don’t add them.

“Would you like to join our mailing list?” is very clear. If they respond with a Yes, then they have opted-in.

This is especially important if you’ve simply added email addresses to your list when people have contacted you for information, or you’ve been chatting at a party or conference.

Don’t just send unrequested emails, with a sentence at the end that says “If you don’t want to stay on our list then let us know.” That’s a spammer technique.

A functional unsubscribe facility

With every mailing list message you send you must include a clear link or other method for recipients to unsubscribe. Remember, the people on your list will have deliberately subscribed in the first place, or have explicitly confirmed their willingness to receive your emails.

At the bottom of every email message you send to the list (or in some other prominent position), include clear information about how to be removed from the list. If you receive an unsubscribe request then act on it immediately.

More information

• Anti-spam law now in force.
• Anti-spam Legislation.
• Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 (Search under Acts if the link breaks).

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, April 2007. This article may have been modified from the original and applies specifically to New Zealand, though it also has wider application.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Let’s face it, developing a website is normally done over months behind closed doors, and most people would probably rank its entertainment value right next to “watching paint dry”. But some impassioned volunteers, Flickr, YouTube, blogs, RSS feeds and especially Twitter turned that around recently.

In August 2007 something special happened for two community groups: in an event akin to a ‘Geek Olympics’ two teams of web professionals competed to show off their skills in developing a free website — in 24 hours!

The websites they developed were for the Grampians disAbility Advocacy Association and The Ripple Effect, both non-profit organisations in Australia.

The event was called Full Code Press. It took place in Australia where one team from New Zealand (The Code Blacks) and one team from Australia took up the challenge. Read all about it at Full Code Press.

Non-profit organisations in both New Zealand and Australia applied to win a free website. The organisations had about 4 weeks to prepare after being selected. The web teams discovered who their clients were only minutes before they began work.

By the end of 24 hours each community organisation had a full, working website that met their needs and into which they had full input. Although developing a website (which normally takes months, not hours) is hardly a spectator sport, still the event brought an audience along with it.

At first glance Twitter looks like a totally trivial waste of time, but it has an interesting value. In the [slightly edited] words of the Full Code Press news release:

In the 24 hours of the event, dedicated volunteers took hundreds of photos — over 330 of which were quickly edited and pumped onto Flickr.

These volunteers also wrote and posted 122 blog posts, allowing us to give minute by minute descriptions of the unfolding events.

The volunteers also videoed, edited, top and tailed (adding intros and sponsor logos) and then uploaded 17 amazing videos to YouTube — while the event unfolded.

There were 175 official twitter posts (not counting the mass of twitter posts that were done by people from their own twitter accounts). Twitter turned out to be the hook that drew many people in to the event. The speed and frequency of posts as well as the immediacy and quickness of the comments allowed those away from the event to get a feeling for what was going on — in real time.

Have you investigated Twitter yet?

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, September 2007. This article may have been modified from the original.

Popularity: 15% [?]