Amy’s here to get Netsquared up and running here in the UK

Amy Sample Ward who works with NetSquared helping non-profits get the most out of technology, is setting up Net Tuesdays in London, bringing together social changemakers of all kinds to discuss social media with the first one starting on November 4th. I hope that we can see lots of Net Tuesdays springing up across the UK soon! Head over to Amy’s blog to find out more.

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Information Overload? My name is Laura and I confess, I’m an addict.

Information overload is one area of my work that is a constant. In the past recent weeks, I took some time away from the desk and computer with a pencil and big sheet of paper in hand. I hadn’t intended on blogging about it, but a recent message on one of my social networks prompted me to share it.

Beth Kanter put out a call on Twitter earlier pointing us to her post on Information Coping Skills - How Information Overloaded Are You?
Very timely, I took the quiz and was quite pleased that with some of my new coping strategies I managed to score a reasonable 9. Of course my strategies aren’t perfect and am looking forward to reading the comments and suggestions raised on Beth’s Blog and the outcomes of her forthcoming session at BlogHer Boston this weekend.

But it had recently come to a point where I really needed to take stock of the impact of information overload had been having on my working practice. As many of you will know, until July I was managing a nonprofit which provides support services to other organisations as well as juggling a growing freelance business supporting a wide range of non-profits to small business with their websites, social media and technical support needs. Oh yes, and trying to be a mom too. Plus, keep up to date with information and participate with the outside world.

Like many of us working in the nonprofit sector and supporting nonprofits, it’s sometimes hard to say no, not only to others but especially to yourself. I like information, in fact I’m probably addicted to it. I like keeping abreast of new technologies, new innovations, seeing projects evolving with their aim of supporting social change and more. I mix in a wide range of circles, non-profits, enterprise, education, local government as well as the core of my work, with design and web development; and accessibility and inclusion to all on the web. I use a variety of tools that help me keep up to date including RSS, email groups, forums, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and other networks too. Living in a rural area means that I often am unable to attend many of the face-to-face meetings and get-togethers that take place in the major UK cities, so rely on using these tools to keep up to date with conversations and innovations that take place.

The speed and pace that social networking can function on is immense. I only began blogging in Spring of 2007, and often it’s my blog that suffers with my own time management. Like many of us, I have blog posts in draft constantly and by the time I get round to finishing a post off, the next issue or topic is already being discussed out there, so often don’t get round to posting as much as would like. I enjoy blogging but rarely make the time to share a post. This is one area, in time, I’m planning to make more for but do partake in lifestreaming and microblogging to keep connected in our interweb-connected world.

So other than managing the overloaded email inbox which overflows daily, what is my other biggest information overload ‘Vice?’

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Breaking down the barriers between disabled users and the social web - Scripting Enabled

“Nobody likes to think of themselves as disabled – lots of people ignore content aimed at disabled people because they want to use what everybody is using” - one of the quotes from the conference day at Scripting Enabled.

I recently attended Scripting Enabled, which was a two day event held in London on 19th and 20th September looking at ways to make social media software and the internet more accessible for all. The first day included a series of talks and presentations on the barriers to accessibility and what can be done to make a real difference, and the second day of the event was a hack-day with developers, designers, and advisors working together to find and build solutions. The event was the brainchild of Christian Heilmann who opened the event on the first day.

As well as meeting up with many new faces, it was also a great opportunity to finally meet up with others that I have either followed on on the interwebs such as Jon Gibbins, an accessible web developer who writes at the dotjay.co.uk blog (who on day 2 headed up keen web devs on making a more accessible version of Google Maps), the vibrant Ann Meekin who is PixelDiva on Twitter and many more.  I also met with Roger Wilson-Hinds who I wrote about last November.  Roger writes regularly on his blog, the Blind Blogger and involved with Thunder, which is an easy to use screenreader, software can be downloaded for free and installed and up and running in a matter of minutes from Screenreader.net.

I finally got to meet long time Twitter-buddy Dominic Campbell who works collaboratively with local governments effectively as FutureGov, and is also passionately involved with the Enabled by Design project which has been evolving steadily since winning the Social Innovation Camp back in April 2008 (By the way, there is another Social Innovation Camp organised for 5th - 7th December 2008; if you have an idea for a mashup for social change, get involved now!).  I also chatted lots with the bright and bubbly Denise Stephens lots over both the days of the events, the founder of Enabled by Design,which aims to grow an online community who help each other find assistive equipment and products; making independent living more accessible the use of clever modern design.

I’m not going to write in full detail about the event, as all of the full presentations and further information and inspiration is available over at the Scripting Enabled website.
But listed below is a very brief rundown of what we all listened to, experienced, shared and participated in with day one - (I’ve linked directly to the speakers’ presentations and post on the Scripting Enabled website below with the title of their presentation.  All of the presentations listed are also available on the site using Easy SlideShare ).

• First to talk and share her personal experiences of her symptoms of MSand how inclusive design can help make it easier for many people to use the web was Denise Stephens from Enabled by Design.
• Then the effervescant Kath Moonan, from Abilitynet presented ‘Why I hate the interweb!’ sharing outcomes of recent research done by Abilitynet showing examples from users of the difficulties that people can encounter when using the internet.
• Next was Antonia Hyde, from United Response who delivered a fascinating presentation entitled ‘Opening doors: online content for people with learning disabilities.’ giving an insight into the barriers to inclusion that many people with learning disabilities face with using the modern web, and showed how with thought to the user in design, the substantial difference it can make with user experience showing a case study of someone using the Easy YouTube.
• Artur Ortega and Leonie Watson spoke about ‘Screen readers and JavaScript’ and provided a fascinating overview of the range of technologies available to help assist those with visual impairments, the barriers that web design can cause and some of their wish list of features they’d like to see implemented in the future.
• Jonathan Hassle, Head of Accessibility with the BBC presented about Dyslexia Barriers and gave many pointers in helping to understand and make the web more accessible from the learning from the research and work of the BBC in acheiving better accessiblity with their own sites.  Phil Teare from Textic.com, shared his own personal difficulties with his dyslexia and using the web and how it can affect the users experience when accessing websites.

The day finished with Christian Heilmann (also dubbed by Kath Moonan as the ‘Flame Headed Geek Warrior!’) chairing a lively discussion panel with the audience.
All in all an inpsiring an realy great day.  The only trouble many of us ‘Usability Experts’ had at the end of it all was navigating our way successfully to the pub!

Day two consisted of a wide range of developers, users and other interested people joining in to look at what they could achieve working together and then setting about doing it.  Lots of innovation took place, and I’m sure that the work will continue. More of the outcomes of the day and further developments can be seen on the Scripting Enabled wiki.

As well as seeing the work of new mashups and accessibility in action, I was able to see some existing projects which aim to serve to help with inclusion and accessibility for all on the internet.  Gary Mc Farlane from Blue Badge Route demonstrated a highly affordable tool which they had built that provided accessible maps, but also work well with screenreaders and enabled users to also email details of the routes they wished to travel too, thus giving control and independence to a user.  The integrated map systems showed the accessibility of parking and routes within an area, and I see these as being a vital inclusion for many local government websites and also nonprofit organisations who work with and for people with additional needs.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the whole of the day, but hope that there will be many more events like this in the future for web developers and users to come together to enable positive change and benefit for all users of the web.

For follow ups on the outcomes of the innovations from the hack day, head over to the Scripting Enabled wiki, and to see photo’s from the event you can head across to the flickr page to see all pictures tagged with Scripting Enabled.

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What happens when an organisation chooses not to engage?

I’ve been following unfolding of the excellent We Are Media project which is a community of people from nonprofits coming together curated by NTEN who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organisations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world. Working together the network aims to help identify and point to the best how-to guides and useful resources that cover all aspects of creating, aggregating, and distributing social media. The resulting curriculum will be live on the We Are Media wiki and will also cover important organisational adoption issues, strategy, ROI analysis, as well as the tools.

In the latest module, they are looking at the Return of Investment (ROI) of social media. In Beth Kanter’s recent post exploring where are the best resources to guide our thinking about Social Media Metrics, ROI, and Nonprofits?; Beth rounds up some great examples and opens up a discussion on measuring the benefits and also, if and how you can quantify the return.

Beth Dunn, another of my favourite bloggers and a contributor for the project and she’s recently posted an article ROI: the null hypothesis, which explores what happens when an organisation chooses not to engage; when they decide to play it ’safe.’
In her article she raises a compelling argument looking at the risks to organisations that are not engaged in social media to reach out to their supporters, members and users.

Finally, over on this side of the pond, Steve Bridger has shared the presentation he recently delivered to staff at Action Aid, entitled “does it mean we have to change our jobs?”. The presentation summarises many of the issues that charities face in choosing whether to participate and how they can make the best use of social media and gives examples of ‘connected’ charities too.

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Stand up and be counted: The Survey, 2008

It’s that time of year again. Anyone who is involved with making, developing or editing websites should take this quick survey. Nearly 33,000 people took the first survey last year which provided a snapshot picture into the web profession.

Improvements have been made to this years survey to reflect the wider diversity of those involved in the web world including nonprofits and pro bono work.

Read the full accompanying article and participate at A List Apart, The Survey 2008.

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It’s a wrap!

Photo - Alexandra Samuel from Social Signal, in the Bringing Your Community to Life (with lots of fun chocolate to encourage participation!) session.

Last week over 300 people came together for the NetSquared Conference in Santa Clara, California. This years conference was all about the N2Y3 Netsquared Mashup Challenge where 21 projects competed for cash prizes to enable them to further their work in using the web to help with social change.

I’m finally back here in the UK, catching up after being away from my iMac for a couple of weeks, and finally stealing a rare moment to squeeze in a quick post about it all!

I was there as one of the live-bloggers, recording the sessions live as they took place enabling those who couldn’t attend to still be able to participate and see and read all about it.
It was an excellent experience seeing how innovation is taking place across the other side of the pond, and also hearing that many of the nonprofits face similar barriers to moving forward as many groups over here in the UK do too. I was really inspired by the drive, passion and innovation of all people who came from the chosen projects and the interactivity of everyone participating too.

The conference was recorded with live bloggers (My main live blogging buddy there was Brenda Hough who works with the MaintainIT project), video-bloggers and also others at the conference submitted blog posts too. Twitter was used lots (when it worked…Twitter was having a bumpy ride!) throughout too.
If you missed the conference, I’d highly recommend that you head over to the Netsquared Conference News pages to read more about the projects that were there, innovating for social change, but also about the other sessions too which included open source CMS such as Plone and Drupal for building online communities, and other sessions on how to encourage participation and build your communities and connect with your users. To see what took place in the sessions and more from the bloggers and vloggers at Britt Bravo’s round up post on the sessions at N2Y3 here.

Another of the high points was meeting so many people that I’d connected with on social networks, especially the effervscent Deborah Elizabeth Finn, Allan Benamer, of course great to catch up with Beth Kanter, meeting finally with Marnie Webb, Britt Bravo and many many more. (I could name drop forever on all the people I met there!) I also made lots of new buddies too including Katie Laird who made me smile and laugh lots (yup - Katie is definately a Happy Katie!), and it was great to see two others from the UK there, with Terry and Aba from LASA at the conference on their way back from events in Australia. It’s great to connect online with people who have shared interests and visions with nonprofit organisations and their use of technologies, but even more fun to meet up face to face and talk for real!

Thank you all at Netsquared and Techsoup for organising a great event! Hope to come again next year! You all rock!.

Is now wondering how we can get things moving here more in the UK with our own UK non profit tecchies, or something stemming from the Social Media Camp which took place back in April (and so sadly had to miss…but hear rumblings of another one coming…?)

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I’ll be live blogging at N2Y3!

On May 27th and 28th, Netsquared is holding it’s third annual conference in San Jose, California. I’m excited to be joining the conference as one of the guest live-bloggers.

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Google for Non-Profits

Google for Non-profits provides a round up of Google’s relevant and useful free tools, all in one handy place to help organisations get started easily.

The site lists everything from docs, calendars, web analytics, groups to YouTube. They’ve categorised the free tools list into two areas, ‘Save time and money’; and ‘Find and engage supporters’.

Excerpt from the Google for Non-profits webpage:

You want to change the world. We want to help.
Learn how to use free Google tools to promote your work, raise money, and operate more efficiently.

How will this help organisations?

Each application tool link takes you to a section which shows you what the tool is and how to use it with easy to understand tutorials. As well as the guides on how to use the tools there are useful innovative examples of how the applications can be used in a nonprofit organisation with real case studies in the ‘Get inspired’ sections. There is also a ‘Quick ideas’ section too, which can give groups some instant ideas in ways these applications could be used, as well as a handy ‘Question and Answers’ page for each tool, which covers many of the common questions that organisations raise when investigating new ways of using technology to acheive their aims and way they work.

An excellent one-stop-shop resource to help organisations to learn more and gain the knowledge and confidence that is sometimes needed to have a go with using these tools for the first time.
See more at Google for Non-profits.

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Effective technology advising with John Kenyon

The day after the Circuit Rider Conference in Birmingham, Lasa organised a learning event with John Kenyon who had also facilitated a session at the Circuit Rider Conference. John is a nonprofit technology consultant based in San Fransisco and has an abundance of infectious vibrant enthusiasm and is always a delight to meet. He delivered an inspiring workshop on ‘Effective Advising - improving your effectiveness as a technology advisor’.

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Circuit Rider 4.0 Conference Round Up

Around 70 nonprofit techies and ICT development workers from across the UK came together in Birmingham for the Circuit Rider 4.0 conference organised by Lasa on 28th and 29th February. As well as those who innovate with technology for voluntary sector organisations here in the UK, some of my favourite inspiring nonprofit technology consultants from across the pond were also facilitating at the event.

I co-ran a session along with David Wilcox from Designing a Civil Society and Nick Booth from Podnosh and with the input too from Paul Henderson from Ruralnet.

Our session was entitled ‘Naked in a Goldfish Bowl - Web 2.0 and the non-profit world’. Beth Kanter from Boston joined us in the session using Skype (we hoped to have tested out the fab Oovoo but wasn’t to be, with wireless bandwidth issues on the day!). Beth shared her experiences and enthusiasm of her recent fundraising successes and the factors which helped to make it happen by using social media. A big thank you to Beth for joining us, especially with the first time we ran our session being just after midday here in the UK, and only 7.30 am there with Beth in Boston. You can read Beths reflections on her involvement in our session here.

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