Blogging
KPFA's War Comes Home Project: Radio Journalism Goes 2.0 - warcomeshome.org
More than 1.6 million Americans have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As of August 1, 2007, 67,000 of them had been killed or wounded. In addition, more than 250,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans had been treated at Veterans Administrations hospitals since their return home from combat.
KPFA launched this website in an effort to put a human face on the conflict. Only by truly listening to the stories of soldiers who've come home, can we appreciate the realities of war and what we can do to help.
Board Collaboration for PAPIE
Palo Alto Partners in Education (PAPIE) is a primarily board-driven organization with only 2 staff and a budget around $2+ million. We raise private funds to supplement public funds for all the public schools in our school district.
Challenge:
We needed a tool to ensure communication and collaboration amongst the board members, staff and volunteers. We also wanted to keep a history of documents, activities, decisions, etc. to ensure continuity due to volunteer turnover year-to-year. The tool had to be easy to use and very accessible. It had to be flexibly private, meaning that it needed to allow proper permissions for each person - ensuring that only the proper person(s) could see or do what was appropriate. It needed to combine a website and email communications to reduce duplication of effort.
Solution:
Nexo allows us to create a free group for PAPIE. We have a highly customized, private website that any authorized person can add to, change, or read. We also get an email group integrated with the website so that updates, alerts, news, etc. are easy to distribute (even automatic if desired) to the group. We also can have live chats on the site if desired. We have multiple pages and multiple sub-groups (board, marketing committee, development committee, etc). The site essentially defines our own social network.
The website allows us to share blogs, files, pictures, videos, calendars, events, to do lists, budgets, plans, press releases, contact information, RSS feeds, etc.
Impact:
Not only has nexo improved communication, collaboration and participation, but a by-product is that we have a back-up for our most important files such as board minutes, budgets, etc. These used to just be stored on one computer which is scary for many reasons. The site also makes is much easier to transfer knowledge from year to year since new leaders/volunteers have the roadmap from the year before.
The Cedar Cultural Center
The Cedar Cultural Center is a nonprofit music venue in Minneapolis, MN. August 23, 2006 The Cedar launched a new web site. The site was built in collaboration with Cruiskeen Consulting LLC
The new site has many features. It is very rich in audio and video material, and features information about upcoming performances.
One of the most exciting upcoming events at The Cedar is the annual Nordic Roots Festival, which features music from the Nordic countries.
More information about The Cedar:
The Cedar (also known as the Cedar Cultural Center) is a highly eclectic music venue located in the vibrant West Bank district of Minneapolis. Renowned for hosting some of the best acts in folk, blues, jazz, indie rock and world music in an intimate space, the Cedar is a 501(c)3 non-profit, largely volunteer-driven organization and welcomes your support!
The Cedar's mission is to promote inter-cultural appreciation and understanding through the presentation of global music and dance. The Cedar is committed to artistic excellence and integrity, diversity of programming, support for emerging artists, and community outreach.
The Cedar is located in the historic Cedar Theater building, which opened in 1948 and operated as a movie theater until the 1970’s before falling into disuse. The Cedar Cultural Center was established in 1989 when local real estate magnate Keith Heller donated the theater to a non-profit started by Deb Martin and Mary Ann Dotsen, Minnesota STAR (Society for Traditional Arts and Resources). Their mission was “to support the preservation of cultural diversity by promoting and presenting traditional music and dance of many cultures.” Bill Kubeczko has been the artistic and executive director since 1993, and with the help of a small, dedicated staff and a legion of energetic volunteers, the Cedar has been presenting 150 or more high-quality shows every year since.
how about turning something good into something extraordinary
NABUUR.COM has created something special and probably unique: the possibility for Local Communities around the world to bring specific problems to the attention of concerned 'Neighbours' around the world, who then jointly solve that problem via the Internet.
The basic tools, procedures and systems are in place. 79 local communities now take part. 200 local communities will be served by the end of 2006, 1000 by the end of 2007, many more after that. Given the number of people that would like to engage directly with a meaningful cause, this will become an enormous force for the good. But we need your help to get there.
The flow on the site needs to become much more fluent, fun, transparent, effective. Wiki's, maps, video's, stories, rss feeds, etc probably need to be added. What needs to be done first? Who can do it? Who is willing to make this happen in the next two years?
Learning curve...
One of my big challenges is learning how to use these tools.
The legistics
I have been interested in the internet for a few years now, a newbie compared to many. I started to become excited about the possibilities of the Internet as I learned more and more what it was capable of accomplishing. I currently work for a non-profit gallery performance space as the Associate Director in charge of maintaining the website (which I designed http://www.puffinfoundation.org/forum/forum_new/index.html) and public relations. In the beginning I new very little about the revolutionary things happening on the web and how they could help my organization, but I had a sense of it and often tried to explain it to my boss. With the little understanding I had, it didn't come across as exciting as I felt it was, but my boss was keen on learning how to use webcasting and podcasting to record and broadcast our performances, anything more than that he wasn't to open to.
I've tried to introduce the idea of blogging with this in mind...our organization has personality, we have potential content that I can see being valuable to consumers. The craziest people come through here, with great ideas and talents, I can see us having a great blog. My problem now is to write a proposal that would be convincing enough.
The problems are these: My boss sees this endeavor as a drain on his resources, there would have to be writing and updating and researching, which I can understand. Also, the benefits are vague and hard to get a handle on...what would reaching out to people all around the world do if we are just trying to get butts in the seats here in Teaneck NJ? And finally, who is the audience? how do we reach them and ofcoarse how do we have a successful blog when the chances are we would be throwing effort into the abyss, or so people may think.
These are the things I'm looking to discover!!
Uppity Wisconsin
Uppity Wisconsin is an attempt at building a collaborative on-line web presence to promote progressive ideas in Wisconsin Politics. This is a new site (based on the Drupal CMS). It uses a combination of incoming and outgoing RSS, Blogs, Video, and email for communications.
Uppity Wisconsin is currently looking for authors and contributors of all kinds. The current challenge is to find enough contributors to build a vibrant community.
Video software for dummies
We already have this, but I think it could be invaluable for other non-profits in communicating their mission and results. It's a program call "Visual Communicator Studio 2" which allows me to video blog, post streaming video ALREADY imbedded in a web page (No html knowledge necessary), as well as VERY high-quality video. It's GREAT!!!! Of special note, I want to assure folks that it's not only for the web, but we're producing a :30 program on our ministry using this software. Thanks!
People's Grocery
People's Grocery's mission is to:
[D]evelop a self-reliant, socially just and sustainable food system in West Oakland through community-based, youth-focused and innovative social enterprises, urban agricultural projects, educational programs and public policy initiatives that foster healthy, equitable and ecological community development.
They just started WordPress blog on their site.
Blog This Chat! button
It'd be neat to have a button in your IM client that allowed you to easily blog an interesting conversation. Posts could show up formatted similar to chat windows. Great for print interviews... but some interesting privacy problems arise that would have to be worked out.
