Using Social Media to Meet Nonprofit Goals: Idealware’s New Report

Idealware just released a report on their survey of nearly 500 nonprofit professionals regarding their use of social media and their perceptions of the efficacy of various social media channels. I think that the conclusions on page 13 are really the most important part of the report, I’m not sure any are earth shattering, but they are good reminders. Here are the headlines, with my thoughts, download the report for more detail: Facebook was most used, but not necessarily most effective. Interestingly, a lower proportion of nonprofits using Facebook regularly update it than with Twitter which suggests to me that it is harder to keep a Facebook profile updated than a Twitter account. In my personal experience I find it very easy to ignore Facebook in general, and information from organizations I’ve “liked” on Facebook specifically. But I am not an average Facebook user. Nonprofits found Twitter quite effective. The study reinforces my conclusion above that Twitter is easy to keep up to date, and the number bare that out, even though fewer respondents were using Twitter than Facebook, more of those that were using Twitter were updating regularly.  I know that personally I learn alot about organizations I am interested in based on what they tweet, and have learned about many organizations from people I follow retweeting them. Blogs were also effective. Particularly at connecting with existing audiences. I’d be interested to know how those audiences are driven to the blogs, via Twitter and Facebook?  I know that is how I get to the blog posts of the organizations I am interested in.  I rarely think, “I wonder...

MEanderthal: Morph Your Face Into That of an Early Human Ancestor

Last week I wrote about some recent press coverage for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s new website for the Human Origins Program and the related new exhibit in Washington, DC. Well also last week, the museum released an iPhone and Android App called MEandertal which allows you to take a photo of yourself and then choose an early human ancestor to morph into. The App has received some press coverage in and of itself. Wired Magazine says the app is so easy to use, an eight-year-old can do it. NPR’s Joe Palca blogged about it, now not only do I have a face to put to the voice when I hear it on the radio, I also have a Neanderthan Version of his visage. LiveScience.com has the most extensive write up. The App is an extension of a kiosk application at the exhibit and was released on the heals of the announcement that non-African humans have perhaps 1%-4% Neanderthal...

HumanOrigins.si.edu Featured on Voice Of America As Website Of The Week

The Smithsonian Institution’s new website for the Human Origins Program is featured on the Voice Of America website as Website Of The Week.  The site, which launched in March to coincide with opening of the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the National Museum of Natural History, is built with the open source Drupal content management system. CivicActions worked with a team from Chedd-Angier-Lewis and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to develop the interactive website that features 3-D images of fossils and artifacts along with other multimedia resources related to the science of human evolution. In other news, Science Magazine listed the website as a web resource related to the recent news about decoding the neandertal genome and Scientific American reviewied the new Human Origins...

We’ve Met The Enemy And He Is Powerpoint

So read the headline of a New York Time’s article a few weeks back, you probably saw some coverage of the dizzying slide showing linkages between various constituencies in Afganistan.  Without going any further into that slide, or the article about it and the relationship of PowerPoint and military strategy, I’d like to highlight some ideas about slides and presentations. Nearly a year ago I attended a training on information design by Edward Tufte (if you have the opportunity, GO TO HIS TRAINING). One of the most impactful things Tufte said that has stuck with me over this last year was, “Powerpoint is a projector operating system.” What he meant was that all the bells and wistles of PowerPoint (or Keynote, or OpenOffice for that matter) can seduce you into making terrible slide decks.  These applications should be used for nothing more than controlling which slides show up when, ie drive the projector. In the last year I have given 3 Ignite Talks, and prepared a handful of presentation slide decks in addition to assisting others here at CivicActions with similar presentations. While I will admit to using OpenOffice to create and present my slides, I have tried to shy away from the use of its slide templates and bulleted lists. Opting for more engaging visual content that complements what I am saying, rather than functions as a useful artifact or record of the presentation. Starting perhaps with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation, followed by the rise of Ignite, and the increasing popularity of TED talks and TEDx events, we are seeing a renaissance in presentation design. There...

Seattle CiviCRM User Group Meeting, May 27th

There seems to be growing interest in CiviCRM in Seattle. People want to know more about what it is, how it works and how they can harness the power for their clients or their own organizations. Recently at DrupalCon in San Francisco I ran a training on CiviCRM that was attended by a fellow Seattlite, and in the weeks just before that I was introduced to a few other folks in Seattle using CiviCRM. And before that I helped out a locally based organization, Voices Education Project, with their migration to CiviCRM. So it seems like it is time to starting bringing people together.  It was nearly 4 years ago that I started the Seattle Drupal User Group with the June 2006 Seattle Drupal Camp and some subsequent small group meetings.  I can only hope for similar success with the Seattle CiviCRM User Group (SEACUG) In this first Seattle CiviCRM User Group meeting we will share introductions, experiences and talk about growing the community of CiviCRM users and implementers in Seattle. Not formal experience with CiviCRM is necessary, just a curiosity and a willingness to learn. Where: Office Nomads1617 Boylston Ave, Second Floor, Seattle, WA 98122 – (north of Pine) on Capitol Hill When: Thursday, May 27th 5pm until 7pm, at which time we may adjourn to a local establishment for food and beverage. Please RSVP over on...