Frozen Pea Friday is a demonstration of how Twitter can be used by nonprofits. People on Twitter change their avatar each Friday to be something about peas ("peavatars") to draw attention to the Frozen Pea Fund, a fundraiser for breast cancer research inspired by the cancer experience of Susan Reynolds. The Frozen Pea Fund clicks through to the American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer donation site.

For more about how this came about check:

Frozen Pea Fiday, Twitter, and the American Cancer Society

and

I just want to bring to everyone's attention the article in today's Washington Post about Steve Cases' new online giving experiment, America's Giving Challenge. They're evidently launching a similar project on Facebook and getting big play in Parade Magazine this coming weekend.

Excerpts:

I just want to say thanks again to the CumpuMentor people who made the NetSquared Conference a big success. Thanks to my special buddies: Marnie, Britt, Laura, Gina, Michelle, Billy, and, uh...everybody else. Something good with great potential was started there, and I'm confident you'll keep in moving forward.

 And thanks to the sponsors.  Cisco, HP, the American Cancer Society (heh, heh) and the rest.

So now I'm having a table topic about Skypecasting. It's led
by an "expert" who's done four Skypecasts. That qualifies him as an
expert. Skypecasting has only been around a couple of months.

So what is a Skypecast? Skype is a voice over internet protocol (VoIP)
service.  It enables you to make voice calls over your broadband hookup.
Make those computer-to-computer calls for free. That's pretty standard for VoIP
services, but Skype is now beta-testing a service to enable you to hold
conversations with up to 100 people anywhere in Skype's worldwide network--also
for free--for now.  So it's a lot like a broadcast.

Things I learned: No way to restrict it at this time. It's open to the
world.  Skypecasts are listed in an open directory. But you can mute or
eject callers you don't want in. (Seems kind of rude.) So if you want to
convene your group you can email to the people you wanted. You could mute or
eject other people. Has used it to put together a group to talk about higher
education on Fridays with a specific set of friends. subject. But another idea
discussed at the table is to put the conference public address directly into a
laptop and then out to Skypecast. For nothing you could have another 100 people
in on the event.

When you see this emerging technology your wheels begin to turn about
possible uses. But this is definitely early-adopter technology. Lots of issues
to deal with. But in a couple of years...

Tools for moving a message are evolving a huge pace. The limited access of the past is giving way to participation. Different expectations happening with communication and with advocacy base, according to Micah Sifry. The base of advocates is expecting more transparency and participation about where things go. So the topic is about how to amplify messages by involving more people with traditional media strategies. The recommendation is that a solid communication strategy should involve about any medium you can think of.

Tools for moving a message are evolving a huge pace. The limited access of the past is giving way to participation. Different expectations happening with communication and with advocacy base, according to Micah Sifry. The base of advocates is expecting more transparency and participation about where things go. So the topic is about how to amplify messages by involving more people with traditional media strategies. The recommendation is that a solid communication strategy should involve about any medium you can think of.

This project has been talked about a lot. Interesting presentation was from Michail Bletasas, a MIT engineer working on the project. Besides the technical challenges, there are the social issues. The idea is to put a simple laptop into the hands of children in many developing countries. The capabilities of children is important to the idea. Children explore and learn without manuals; they learn from each other; the point is not just to receive information but to develop a core of kids that are part of the future of the cultures involved. Key is a using a wireless mesh networking system so the users are not dependent entirely on massive server systems. They expect software to be open source. There are soures of information out there for cultures if the the channels to get them to people can be developed.

I'd like to add to Britt's post: 7 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Podcasts with a few that have cropped up at the ACS.

In Texas a  friend is focusing on traditional training with two recordings: "Training Volunteers" and "Recruiting Leadership Volunteers." It's meat and potatoes, but I'll bet that's two topics that NPOs always need. The training topics will be a series.

A friend in NY has started a monthly series called "In the  Hotseat with Don and Jim," the CEO and COO respectively. To quote my friend:

Speaking of Howard Rheingold, he'll be "speaking"--make that text chatting--at the Second Life Future Salon Thursday, 4 pm Pacific Time. Second Life is a massive, elaborate virtual world created by Linden Labs of San Francisco. Membership in Second Life is free. So if you're a fan of Rheingold or want to experience the growing world of virtual spaces, check-out this event. If you see Chester Carnot, that's me.

I want to recommend reading Greg Olsen's post on his Charter Street blog titled "Going Bedouin." It's about keeping enterprises nimble by organizing with agile teams, agile information systems, and an agile work environment. Minimalist but effective.

It seems to me a lot of the message NetSquared is communicating is around similar principles of the social web. Read the post and think about applications for activist teams.