Entries Tagged 'socialmedia' ↓

Moira Nordholt's Tweetuplift December 2008

Since the inaugural voyage of The Schwaggin Wagon, I’ve been more aware of examples of people using the power of new media to quickly organize and mobilize individuals for brief acts of philanthropy–what I’ve called Flash Philanthropy. Now that the microblogging site, Twitter, has a larger user base, there is a greater potential for ad hoc acts of charitable mobilization that take less and less time to set in motion. Simply put: Twitter gets the word out fast when it’s time to create ad hoc groups based on a shared idea.

Back in the Spring of 2008, six of us organized the wagon project in less than 10 days, and it played out in 72 hours. A few days ago, vegan consultant and cookbook author Moira Nordholt organized her Tweetuplift in less than 48 hours and it played out in two! We used Twitter in the service of our project, whereas Moria used Twitter to organize her project in the first place. How did she gather ten people to give up their time on Christmas day (in order to hand out food and supplies to those in need)? How did she gather them in the pouring rain, with no mandate or preconceived structure, giving less than two days of lead time for anyone to alter their plans? Answer: Twitter–but not just Twitter. Specifically the fact that well-known and well-followed people chose to take up her cause and “re-tweet” her call on Twitter, meaning they re-broadcasted the call for volunteers for which Moira had originally asked. This allowed a wider audience of people to hear about the ad hoc event, and choose to take part. Continue reading →

LinkedIn has expanded the capability of their social network by adding collaborative features in the form of nine applications, such as sharing power-point presentations and your blog with one’s colleagues. This is a fantastic expansion and will allow for a richer collaborative experience with business contacts and colleagues, but…

As users we will need tighter and more flexible privacy controls. LinkedIn cannot afford to follow Facebook’s path, which was to expand communicative and collaborative features before the necessary flexibility of privacy settings was in place. Since that time, Facebook has set industry standards with regard to detailed and useful privacy controls–they deserve credit for that.

As LinkedIn rolls out these new features, what will they do to expand controls for grouping one’s contacts, especially insofar as each contact can see one’s particular usage of an application? How will they create finer gradations of privacy within the applications? Continue reading →

The Obama Campaign has made voter registration easy

When I created a yahoo group in 2003 to encourage discussion on how to make voting and voter registration easier in the U.S., I would have stopped in my tracks if VoteForChange.com [could have] existed. Chris Hughes and the gang in the New Media team of the Obama campaign have hit this one out of the park, and there’s precious time left to get the word out about this site. Now it’s 2008 and we have all kinds of social media and online networking tools to make sure people who would vote for Obama actually do vote.

Obama needs registrations from the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina. Most of these states have an October 6th registration deadline, so if you are to write a blog post or tweet about this site, or perhaps send the link to the people you know in those states, now is the time to do so. Ask them to share this site with the younger people in their lives. Share it on the OSNs like Facebook and MySpace, and share it with those who are on university campuses. Above all, if you’re reading this and you’re one of those Web 2.0 folks who has a vast online network of connections or blog subscribers, please take the time to explain to them that their act of sharing can make a big difference in this election.

I don’t have to take up any more space writing on why this is important. You already know why. Now just please spread the link, and be persuasive:  VoteForChange.com

Thank you.

Haiti Before Hurricane Gustav

UPDATE: See Gustav Wiki for clearinghouse of info on Gustav.

The folks who post on Twitter have sprung into action over Hurricane Gustav and New Orleans. They’ve publicized that an ad hoc social network using the popular NING white-label software has been created to help those affected by the storm to connect and help one another. Perhaps Twitter, with it’s up-to-the-minute capabilities, will supercharge information flow about the online tools that worked back in 2005: A Wikipedia page, repurposing Craig’s List (with Craig Newmark’s blessing of course), and good old cell phone technology. All these were examples of social and collaborative technologies being used or re-used to assist with the humanitarian efforts of relief agencies, or simply to help one person assist another directly.

Right now, people like Tim Street, Nicole Jordan, Peter Shankman, and Craig Newmark are sending message bursts to their followers on Twitter to publicize the NING Gustav site. I’m not sure who set it up, but kudos to that person! 

UPDATE: Andy Carvin set up the NING site (@acarvin on Twitter) at the suggestion of Wayne Sutton, who is also active in these efforts. Thanks to @jazzychad on Twitter for compiling a Hurricane Gustav Twitter Tracker to help us follow the updates, which will, in turn, help the helpers to get the word out in other ways (many of those affected do not use Twitter). Andy Carvin has also lead the way for a wiki page of Gustav Twitter resources; read his blog post about all this for even more resources, like the Gustav Wiki, fashioned after the Katrina wiki.

Here’s what I wrote back in 2005 about the Tsunami & Wikipedia/online collaboration, as a guest blogger on the North Star Leadership Group website, at the request of Adam Carstens and John Beck:

(it can also be accessed via archives here)

October 25, 2005

Information Helps in Disaster Relief

By [Michael] Liskin 

The current U.S. citizenry is often called apathetic and cynical. Yet I suggest that we are witnessing a surge of ad-hoc opportunities for those in our nation—and the world—who have always wanted to get involved in direct social or political action but lacked the knowledge, the time or the proximity to do much good. Continue reading →

Schwaggin’ Wagon is back! We are donating completely to Operation Gratitude this time and we will be at both  Twiistup 4 and Mashable’s Summer Mash LA to collect unwanted schwag. It all gets sent to the troops overseas, rather than the back of your closet or a landfill.

We are dedicated to highlighting Green and Eco-Conscious products and services for the LA area and around the U.S., in addition to our usual goal of raising awareness of Schwag-wastefulness. Here’s an excerpt from my post on The Schwaggin’ Wagon blog (consider this a cross-posting of sorts):

***

Did you ever think you’d hear us say we are The Schwaggin’ SUV? For this Tech-Event-Week in Los Angeles, we are proud to team up with Eco-Limo to create the Schwaggin’ Eco-Wagon! We will be ridin’ around Los Angeles in a Bio-Diesel Ford Excursion SUV, compliments of our sponsor, Eco-Limo.

Why are we so pleased at this sponsorship/partnership? It’s not because they were chosen to service the Academy Awards for the last four years. It’s that Eco-Limo is one of only 6 companies in California featured on Google’s Google Green site, and last year they received the Grand Prize in Sustainability by the City of Santa Monica, recognized as well by the California State Senate and Assembly! In short, they rock the eco-world. They are exactly what we were looking for in terms of transportation.

Continue reading →

****Click here for the video: Livestream of the event

Thank you to my panelists, attendees, and Ustream participants for a successful and informative panel!

[Here's the eMarketer chart we discussed showing advertising spending for online video and projections until 2011. I asked my panelists about these projections, and if they thought they'd remain accurate. Considering that advertisers still spend around $65 Billion a year for television ads, $4 Billion in 2011 is a comparatively small piece of the pie, however they thought this was a low estimate. Much of the sentiment from the panel puts these numbers in context--much needed after you've read Paul La Monica's pithy blog post on these numbers. We discussed what was possible for online video despite the comparatively low spending thus far.]

I’m moderating I’ve moderated a panel on the future of online video content, from the perspective of those who are actually creating online content in a professional manner. I created this panel for the premier of a television show I co-created for Tru TV. Rather than go on about my experiences with network television, I thought it more appropriate to look to the future, especially because my primary profession is that of emerging media specialist, not a creator-producer in the entertainment industry.

Thank you to Robert Richman! Rob summed this up quite well in his guest post on Andrew Warner’s Mixergy.com blog. Here are Rob’s conclusions: Continue reading →

Recently I started working at Blankspaces. This is a coworking office environment designed for freelancers and independent professionals who work solo, but who want to do so with others in an office environment. This can be a temporary, or somewhat more permanent solution to the isolation of working from one’s home. It’s a fantastic idea that embodies the best aspects of collaborative work and the potential for cross-pollination of ideas.  The proximity encourages conversations that might only arise seldomly at a cafe or cocktail party, thereby increasing chances of serendipity in one’s business and life.

Blankspaces is the paradigmatic example of the intersection between physical and online space–they have an online community that compliments and augments the offline community. Some of my graduate school work looked at examples of synchronous and asynchronous online/offline collaboration; I’ve been looking for more examples ever since. Continue reading →

It is not often that I tell people they “must read” something. Bill McKibben eloquently tells us in this article why it is necessary for us to act now to make sure our governments collaborate on climate change agreements in the next 3 years.

I will say this at the outset– I believe him. I believe the scientist Rajendra Pachauri who McKibben quotes as giving humanity a hard deadline of 2012 — if we do not begin actions to lower emissions before that date, we will set off irrecoverable chain reactions in the environment.

The goal is to roll back our CO2 emissions from 385 to 350ppm (parts per million).

A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next 18 months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.

If ever there were a time for me to proclaim “this is the paradigmatic example of why social and collaborative media are crucial,” now would be it. If you’ve ever asked, “what’s the point of Web 2.0?”, here is Continue reading →

When we first created this show, we had visions of promoting it by tapping into the natural fanbase of hackers, geeks, and enthusiasts found all over the Internet. The uber-talented cast–Chris Nickerson, Luke McOmie (Pyr0), and Ryan Jones–have friends far and wide both within the hacker community and beyond. That alone, with almost no effort, was enough to gain fan interest and much press when the show premiered last year. Within a few days we had a wikipedia entry, we were rising up on Digg, and other kinds of social and collaborative media were used to embrace the show, primarily because it struck a nerve with actual security professionals. They are so used to inauthentic portrayals of hacking, that when they find something real, they love it. Continue reading →

My latest post on the Schwaggin’ Wagon site is about Flash Philanthropy. In this post an attempt was made to provide perspective on what we engaged in during the conference and in the days leading up to it. Beyond our obvious intentions–reclaiming items that would be wasted or unused, as well as drawing attention to the practices of the promotional and marketing industry–my team was a living, breathing example of social media outreach, social media collaboration, small group collaboration, and even some ad-hoc practices. We embodied the practices and attitudes we ask our clients to exude, and we did it rather non self-consciously. I am so proud of what this team accomplished that I will probably use this example for years to come. The question now is: What’s next? The team is in discussion on this, and we are open to listening to the needs of conference attendees everywhere.