stephen blyth’s blog

In the list of websites in the photo above you’ll find the curious saying ‘browse like a sheep’. Doug, a tutor at WelTech, didn’t share a favourite, interactive website during our round of introductions. Instead he described his appetite for websites in these omnivorous terms.

I was reassured to see that people still surf the net: that aimless, time-wasting wandering, leading from one site to another. One person honestly admitted he found himself delving into real estate in Findland, then was exploring visa rules for New Zealanders in Scandavia and elsewere. This all started at the Sanson Community Website.

Among the 20 or so participants at the “Virtual networks and digital forums” session - one of 12 in the ACE (Adult and Community Education) Winter Series - there was lots of enthusiasm for the Internet. David Barrow (NZFVWO communications manager) and I talked through the highs and lows of everything from venerable blogs to rapid fire twitter bon mots.

Conversation really fired up when we talked about some of the social changes brought about by the ubiquity of new technologies, including cellphones. Face-to-face exchanges are seen as becoming rarer for economic and environmental reasons so we’ll have less contact with people further afield. This has good and bad sides of course, but there was there was mention of a sadness at the idea that people may actual meet up less.

Leaving the best to last, David talked about how CommunityCentral is providing a friendly platform for people working in community groups to interact. It will mostly be about work and professional interests, but we’re trying to make it easy for people to bump into each other.

Some of the questions that came up included:

• How to add a photo to your Facebook profile?
• What steps can you take to make sure your children are safe online?
• Can you hide personal details, like your birthday, in Facebook?
• How do you set up a Group in Facebook?

I hope people swapped numbers as some individual tuition on Facebook was offered. I won’t attempt to answer these questions. To find resources on child safety online see New Zealand-based Netsafe, including the fabulous Hectors world cartoons.

For the full list of websites listed by participants and the slides see the “Winter Series presentation”.

Normally I don’t touch the insides of computers or other electronic gizmos. Maybe it’s because my fingers are too clumsy, or eyesight poor. Adding some RAM in a slot and changing batteries is just about my limit.

I was pretty alarmed when a sad face appeared on my ipod. The official Apple help pages shed little light. According to various experts on the Apple support forum the prognosis did not seem positive.

Advice to drop the offending ipod from hip level and other wacky suggestions seemed more of a joke than sensible advice. A dead battery seemed spot on.

It was a nerve-wracking process as my cumbersome fingers attempted the delicate battery replacement operation, and I resorted to using metal tools when the plastic ones supplied broke.

The scars of my operation are obvious, but all my audio files are intact and the new battery holds its charge.

Keeping any gadget going which took at lot of resources to produce and ship to NZ aligns with my green ethic. My DIY approach - admittedly a risky one - cost just $22.

After I replaced the battery I looked at Apple’s repair prices. My intuition was that these would be expensive. No NZ prices are quoted, but in Australia it’s $369 for repairs for ipods just four years old, $89 for a battery and $19.95 for shipping. Forced to revise my initial estimate, I’d describe them as ludicrously expensive.

This really epitomises the throw-away society - it’s cheaper to get a new ipod than repair one. Although I try not to be surprised, I still am. Apple’s much heralded talk about being environmentally friendly is really only a thin veneer.

Having bought into the consumer merry-go-round I will at least discharge my post-facto environmental responsibility to dispose of the dead lithium-ion battery. The Ministry for the Environment’s guidance on safe use and disposal of batteries suggests I recycle it at the council transfer station. I can drop this off at the landfill down the road for no charge.

A week down later my ipod is still working. I’ll provide an update on battery life in, say, 3 years.

ipod battery, apple

Get 40 communicators in a room and try and stop them talking. At the ideasshop social media barcamp yesterday things ran over time because the conversation did overfloweth.

The format was simple: 16 slots for people to run impromptu 20 minute sessions about something they’ve learnt about social media or to raise burning questions. After a slow start the board was full of a range of topics. Participants included communications people from government agencies, businesses and NGOs, a few Massey University students, plus freelancers like me. There was a firm rule that nobody use the afternoon for solicitation.

I talked about a dilemma that CommunityCentral faces - we want people to come to our platform, but there is heaps of competition (from things like Google Groups, Yahoo groups, etc) which is much slicker.

The response was very clear:  the uniqueness of CommunityCentral being a local platform, aimed at a very distinct audience is its real strength. People who sign up are not dealing with a huge multinational corporate who are completely disinterested in what each organisation is actually doing (unless of course it’s illicit or objectionable). Instead people are coming to a platform aimed at everyone involved in tangata whenua, community and voluntary organisations in Aotearoa. It’s localness could mean you’ll actually come across people you know.

This perspective from communications people entirely removed from the project underlines a key promotional angle. We’re local, we’re friendly, we’re just like you. It’s good timing to hear this. We’re on the final stretch preparing two additional features for public release, namely private workspaces and discussion networks. The countdown is on.

I picked up on efforts by a few ngos to use social media:

• two Massey University students helped create a video for Parkinsons NZ and upload it to YouTube
• Wellington SPCA have included a blog on their visually attractive website - just for news at this stage, but turning on comments is being considered
• Living Every Moment is an online campaign run by Hospice NZ to encourage people to create and send a “moment” to a special person.

The willingness to share between communicators was neat. I’m hoping Emma will organise another camp out.

On a parting note, I’ll rise to Emma’s challenge that we embody being good communicators and unashamedly plug the companies that gave away some promotional stuff for a ‘goody bag’ each participant received. Hat’s off to teza juiced teas, wagamama, service printers, trilogy and dusted and delicious catering.

I’d like to bestow my inaugural Award for excellence in community directories today. This is a personal award and doesn’t attract a cash or even in-kind prize. Just my gratitude.

As part of a website writing project I’ve been working on I’ve scoured the country for online community directories. The aim is to provide a way for people to find lists of local  organisations. A few print publications sneaked in as our goal was to help people make connections, rather sticking to a web only rule.

My final count was 41 with one or two others under development. We’ve got the country almost covered - yes from Kaitaia to Gore (but not Invercargill or Riversdale, unless someone knows of directories for these parts).

Regardless of the ease of search, reliability of contact details, scope and visual design they’re almost all being listed.

Ahem, that’s the preamble, I will now open the envelope to find out which directory deserves a round of applause…. ta-daaa: Found Directory.

This directory proudly demonstrates the health of the community in the Nelson/ Tasman region, with clubs and groups listed from across the spectrum including culture, art, sport, recreation or welfare.

What’s so good about the Found Directory:

• Attractive design and usable navigation
• Multiple search options: list by subject and geography plus search
• Large number of listings
• User friendly for organisations signing up
• Events calendar is actually active
• Discrete hosts who are not shouting you down.

Found Directory sets a standard for other directories to rise to. I’ll be passing on my feedback to Volunteer Nelson, who manage the website, and all those involved. I’m hoping by the time the next awards are granted there will be more excellent directories in the running.

Most of the activist and grassroots community organising I’ve been part of has struggled with some of the basics. It was something that took up a surprising amount of effort. Where are going to meet? Are there enough chairs? Can we make a cuppa after the meeting?

I don’t remember a time we ever had chardonnay served as we neared the end of a session.

So it was slightly to my disbelief when 4 o’clock chimed at a gathering of keen social innovators on Saturday that drinks appeared. The panoramic view over Wellington harbour, with yachts bobbling, was made even more alluring.

This gathering kick started a process for “anyone in NZ with a great idea to use the web for social good [to] find the support they need to make it a reality”.  The basic premise is to match people with ideas and knowledge of social needs and opportunities, with doers (in this case the room was dominated by people from the web industry) and investors.

A few more meet-ups are being organised in preparation for a weekend camp in November. In the months  leading up to the camp, the main focus is on generating and selecting ideas (based on pressing needs) which are then rapidly developed by teams. A support package is then offered to a few projects to help them get off their feet. The NZ process is modelled on highly successful camps run in UK.

It’s one of the initiatives of the new NZ Centre for Social Innovation which is bringing together business, community, academia, government and anyone else interested in social entrepreneurism.

The top ideas from Saturday were:

• “10,000 Micro Exporters” – Leveraging the overseas market knowledge of Kiwis returning home and migrants to create new niche opportunities for micro-exporting (and importing)
• “Community Gardens” - Hyper-local communities, based around community gardens, connecting and sharing food, skills and assistance assisted by a web tool
• “Alternative Energy” – An idea for the development of a community grid.

(See “SI Camp Meet-Up, Saturday 6 June, Wellington – Off to A Great Start!”)

Of all the ideas that came up during a well facilitated afternoon, community gardening is the one which holds some promise of fundamental change. It contains within it a seed of many things, such as:

• a shift away from dependence on a globalised market economy
• a way of creating and sustaining relationships between neighbours
• emphasing a quality of life based on what we do not what we consume.

And so much more.

As the idea of promoting self-organising neighbourhoods itself is not new (and in particular I recall Ted Trainor’s concept of a radical conserver society) there is a lot of prior knowledge and experience to inject into a social innovation context. Learning from the past and also what is already being done has got to be the place to start.

Some other aspects of the conversation on Saturday didn’t work for me. The framing of social problems was one. Rather than focusing on individuals who are excluded by structural inequalities (ie people who experience the consequences of an unfair society), I’d describe things in terms of our collective responsibility to ensure even one has fair life chances and how systemic barriers fail many people. To avoid the very real danger of paternalism, I’d ask people experiencing the worst in an unjust and unfair society to speak for themselves.

The SICAMP meet-up was a stimulating place for creating ideas in a cossetted environment. If we’re able to turn our minds to productively fine-tuning ideas, without scrabbling around for basic facilities, this could gain some real traction. The past being a poor predictor of the future I can’t hazard a guess where this will go. Instead, I’ll draw on the wisdom of our elders: watch this space.

I couldn’t resist sharing this clip of Julia Donaldson and her husband singing Happy Birthday to the Gruffalo. A bright spot on a dull winter’s day.

The fearsome but loveable Gruffalo turned 10 years old in March. There are monster celebrations at the official website, as well as loads of other fun.

Don’t get tempted to search for Gruffalo on YouTube - there are 94 results: moms and pops reading to their children, live performances, interviews with the author, and an Iron Maiden song - huh!

On a more grown-up note, I first discovered the anniversary by chance through a video on the Guardian website from the Hay literary festival: “Julia Donaldson talks about her monster creation The Gruffalo” (26 May 2009). On an adjacent page, Robert McCrum takes a more rarified tack reaching back to the 17th century, see “The giant of modern literature? It has to be The Gruffalo”.

Any excuse to finish up early, I’m off to read a book to my daughter. Perhaps another of Donaldson’s picture books - which I don’t find burdensome to read over and over and over - like “Sharing a shell” or “Room on the Broom”.

The most common question that came up yesterday at a presentation I gave to the Comms2Comms network in Wellington was about how to set up a Facebook presence for a community organisation.

There was barely a mention of any other social networks. For good reason. Facebook is nearly always in the top five most visited websites in New Zealand. In the week ending 23 May, Facebook trailed third behind Google and TradeMe in the Hitwise statistics. 3.37% of all NZ internet traffic headed to Facebook. The next mostly highly visited social network is Bebo, at 15th most popular.

To find out how to get started I went straight to the horses mouth. Facebook itself produces useful resources:

• Non-Profits on Facebook
• FacebookPages - guides to public profiles

Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Marketing Director recently gave some tips and insights from the inside. On 13 May 2009 he presented a 45 minute NTEN webinar on “Using Facebook Pages for Social Good”. He and a colleague covered the basics, with lots of time devoted to answering questions from the audience. I listened to a recording so I didn’t get to ask one myself.

Randi concluded by saying they can’t give any universal answers. With 250 million people signed up, things tend to ebb and flow. “The the only way for you to find out what works is to get on there.”

Beth Kanter posted notes summarising the webinar and lists about 20 useful guides and articles about using Facebook. Plus many readers chipped in their own thoughts. See her blog post “So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop!”

On CommunityNet Aotearoa, the Social Networking Guide has straight forward guides to setting up Bebo, Facebook and MySpace pages. There’s lots of other news, links and guides.

A search for Facebook on the groupings blog brings up many posts about Facebook and other social networks, including some New Zealand examples. It’s a great place to share your own experiences.

This is just the tip of the Facebook iceberg in terms of guidance, opinions, etc. If pressed, I’d say the best way to learn is by doing.

BTW: The notes and presentation from my talk are now online: “A toe in the water… {revisited}: Comms2Comms presentation”.

Apologies to anyone who turned up at 1pm on Saturday expecting to find a treasure trove. I cancelled the garage give-away I wrote about last week (see “Garage give-away - 1pm 16 May 2009″). Sorry I didn’t have time to put up a notice.

My decision hinged on the difficulty of advertising a real world event without the time or money to make it a success. Also, as I was giving stuff away I didn’t really want to pay to find people to give stuff to.

Nonetheless I’ve almost given away everything on my list (see the garage give-away page). Almost everything found a home through one online means or another.

This is how things unfolded….

A regular blog reader David Cross, whose work I’ve written about before (see “Downtown Community Ministry now on Facebook”), suggested I drop stuff off at the Island Bay Presbyterian Church (IBPC) which ran a garage sale on 16 May. I did just that. Salving my agnostic conscience and hopefully helping out the IBPC’s appeal for funds to support the work of the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar.

I’ve used Wellington Freecycle within the rules, ie advertising a series of single items. It’s been amazingly successful… a box of paint pots was grabbed seven minutes after the offer went up, and about six people wanted the juicer.

An early vintage Phil & Teds mountain buggy, which I thought would be consigned to the scrap heap, was also taken. It had a bent clasp which meant it was rejected by the recycling shed at the southern landfill - they only accept things that work.  I hope the new owners can truly wear it out.

Of all the interaction on Freecycle, only one exchange has gone awry. Maybe Monica didn’t get my message - whatever, the table is still sitting where I said it would be. Uncollected. Forlorn.

A chat with my neighbour, one of the few methods of passing on surpluses used since time immemorial, solved the puzzle of what to do with six rusty painter’s brackets and a couple of open bags of instancrete. Gone.

Being grandiloquent about freecycle is so tempting and I’m restraining an urge to rave on about Robert Puttman’s theories of social capital, or again raising Clay Shirky’s theories of how the Internet is lowering the barrier to people self-organising. I won’t. Instead I’ll simply say - cheers to the folk who helped us give stuff to each other.

PS We’ve still got a student study table; small, folding side table in green; and a bookcase to find homes for. Any takers?

I’m finding lots of distractions as I try to finish a write-up about the presentation I gave at the Connecting Up 09 conference yesterday. Straight in front of me is this green void - “a digital design drived from nature realized in lightweight frabric using the latest digital fabrication and engineering techniques, creating more with less”.

The installation is housed in the atrium at the Customs House public library. The library itself is a mixture of traditional dark wooded reading rooms created within the old, stone Customs House and contemporary fittings in brilliant red. Then there are the books - I’m seated next to books such as the “Atlas of Western Art History” and “America in Space”.

And don’t mention coffee or Circular Quay ferries tempting me. Okay, back on track. I better make use of the free wifi Internet access.

I talked yesterday about the process we used to bring CommunityCentral to life. The main focus was on how we went from free-form idea generation to a tangible set of features our developers could build. On the recommendation of egressive - the company we’ve been working with for the last year - we wrote up user stories which were then translated into technical specifications.

On reflection the process was a good one. The user stories helped bridge the communication divide between the regular folk on the project and the developers. A by-product was buy-in by the governance group without them having to get involved in every little detail of the web development process. Recently, our new website coordinator Catherine read through them to get an idea of what CommunityCentral is trying to achieve.

The process isn’t foolproof and I was embarrased to admit we’ve consistently missed deadlines when someone asked if we had a project plan. I think that’s the nature of website development, especially when interactivity is involved, and scarce human resources.

Talking afterwards with a couple of people I recommended an excellent summary of methods for obtaining user input to help set priorities for building websites: The unusually useful web book by June Cohen. Although written in 2003 (an eternity ago in webland) it still has some of the most concise and useful advice on website development I’ve seen.

In my presentation you’ll see a picture of a canoe about to capsize. As I said yesterday, the image really captures some of the sense of dread verging on excitement of the whole project. There is some fear, the whole thing could topple over, things could go wrong, we could end up capsizing.

The way I see it, the worst that could happen is a drenching - but can we learn from that? Would we try again?  The project is marked by a boldness - lets try. If the governance group were too timid to try - hmmm, that wouldn’t actually help people working in community groups get online and begin building new connections.

The chance to reflect back on CommunityCentral’s life so far has been refreshing. Too often I don’t find the time to stop and reflect, so cheers to Connecting Up for running another excellent event.

Resources:
“So many ways to skin a cat” presentation on SlideShare
Links to blog posts, pictures and other conference materials

Technorati Tags: cua09

After a heated discussion about privacy at the Connecting Up conference, I headed off to the Apple Store to get a replacement power adapter. I’d left my one behind on the kitchen bench.

When I handed over my credit card to the young salesman he blithely asked if I’d like the receipt emailed to my commonknowledge account, or would I like a printed version. Or both.

What! I was astounded someone I didn’t know, in a shop I’d never been to had this sort of information. It transpires somewhere along the lines when I’d signed up to Apple’s iTunes store I must have agreed to this. And iTunes is linked into Apple’s corporate computer system, and someone somewhere is datamining all my (very small number of) purchases.

Obviously, I didn’t read the fine-print. And do I trust Apple with this confidential information? Must go and read their privacy policy.

The session on privacy, led by Californian resident Allen Gunner from Aspiration, showed that people working in community and voluntary sector organisations have strong views on privacy. And high ideals. Gunner used a participatory ‘crowdsourcing’ exercise to draw out opinions. It was great to see 200 odd people placing themselves on a continuum of agreement/ disagreement with his provocative statements.

I need more time to reflect on the substance of conference and have conversations with other participants, which I’ll write about later. You can get a sense of what’s happening by looking at the collectively written twitter feed, or the live video feed on the conference website.

On a lighter note, here are some pics of my trip to Sydney. I’ll be adding more during the next day or two.

Technorati Tags: cua09