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: [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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After I submitted my article for publication on social media to “Fundraising in NZ” there were a couple of areas I would have liked to cover in a lot of depth:
1. How much time does it take ?
2. Where do social networks fit beside more traditional online communication using websites and email?
I’ve since come across [...]

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In preparation for my presentation on “Spreading the word” at the Engage your community conference, I’m demonstrating how you can embed YouTube into a blog or a webpage.
I get pretty enthusiastic about sharing knowledge and trying to rouse people up by sharing stuff online. Using YouTube dramatically lowers the cost and technical complexity for [...]

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I’ve just received an email from Svetlana who’s helping to set up the UK arm of charity giving website Global Giving. The website concept is simple: visitors “browse ways to help others around the world, pick the ones you are most passionate about, and give to the solution.”
To spread the word about the UK [...]

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Bringing up dags around the dinner table is, if not frowned upon, is really rather crass. Especially if you really start exploring the meaning.
But when dags came up during a conversation with Nancy White, an online facilitation specialist from Seattle, they were a bridge to cross Pacific understanding. And utter hilarity.
It didn’t take much [...]

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When I met Beth Kanter after having read her blog for several years she made a real impression on me. It wasn’t just her committed personal activism, wide ranging knowledge and willingness to share, so much as her phenomenal connectedness that struck me. Set loose on the keyboard and she connects with people, for just [...]

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When I was studying for my politics degree I doubtlessly would have taken a course on the intersection of politics and the internet. Had something like this been on offer, of course.
Skip forward to 2008 this might have involved enrolling in a course by the farsighted Howard Rheingold (author of The Virtual Community in the [...]

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Setting out to build a new website or set of online tools can be pretty nerve wracking. No matter what research and insights have been captured, how many people have been surveyed, and advisors consulted it’s hard to know if anyone will actually find what you’ve done as useful and exciting.
The syndrome of “build [...]

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