It only works when it’s connected to the real world

At the National Conference on Volunteering and Service — which some folks call “the Super Bowl of nonprofit conferences” — George Weiner and I teamed up on one of the most successful Social Media for Social Good Bootcamps that Socialbrite has put on to date. (Socialbrite has put on camps in New York, San Francisco, Miami, London and elsewhere.)

For those of us who live and breathe tech and social media — me in Silicon Valley and George, CTO of DoSomething.org, in New York and Washington, DC — it’s always a good reality check to come to gatherings like this and see how the non-early adopters are faring.

The three-hour session we led yesterday offered a range of tips on how to use social media strategically for campaigns, for collaboration, for building community, and I invite you to browse through the presentation above, since the attendees found it useful: “AMAZING session” (thanks, Volunteer Centre) … “awesome, fantastic session” (thanks, NCVS) … “Great session!” (thanks, Groupon).

But there were more beginners in the crowd than I expected. For instance, only about five out of 50 particpants were using Google Analytics (the free tool every website and blog ought to have). None had heard of the Grassrootsmapping.org effort to document the Gulf oil spill, even though we’re right here in New Orleans. And only one out of 80 people (not counting me) at today’s session on data had ever used Tumblr, an easy way to post blog entries and photos.

These are good, smart, motivated people — we need to break through the barriers and connect the tools and strategies with the organizations and causes that need them, starting with the basics.

So let’s take a deep breath and remember: We still have a lot of work before us, and there’s a lot of education yet to be done.

The post A reality check on social media appeared first on Socialbrite.

At the conclusion of Socialbrite’s 3-hour Move the Needle bootcamp at Sustainatopia in Miami to help organizations — social enterprises and nonprofits — use social media for social good, I chatted with my partner Sloane Berrent about some of the tips we discussed with participants, including how to find the influencers in your sector and Sloane’s suggestion to create real-world meet-ups from your organization’s online connections.

Couldn’t be in Miami? Today I’m giving a 90-minute version of the Move the Needle presentation at 1 pm ET in my first CharityHowTo webinar. (It’s not too late to sign up!)

“You can’t be everywhere all the time,” she says in our talk — especially when social media demands conversation and interaction. So organizations should identify evangelists, influencers and brand ambassadors and seek to enlist them in your cause or organization’s mission.

Make sure you identify metrics and tie them into goals so that you can tie it into larger programs or ongoing campaigns, Sloane adds in this 6-minute interview. You have to do the homework — the hard stuff — but it gets you to the great outcomes.

There isn’t one tool out there as the complete solution to identifying influencers, but Social Mention, Klout and other tools should be part of the mix. Sloane and I suggested setting up a shared Google doc where you track influencers and your interactions with them.

Real-world meetups are important as well. “People really want to be offline” and meet up in person, she said. “Create a program online but have an event offline that brings people together to talk about your organization.”

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

Since our last chat, Sloane has joined Lippe Taylor, an agency in New York, to head up digital marketing and she’s launched Help a Woman Out, helping women and girls around the world.

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Shelbyville project kicks off with a series of ‘Welcoming’ videos

Chances are you haven’t yet heard of Shelbyville, a small rural community in Tennessee, much less than the upcoming “Welcome to Shelbyville” documentary or the online project that is forging a pilot, or prototype, for communities to tell and share their own stories. So let me share my initial impressions of this remarkable, ambitious, exciting effort.

On Monday I was lucky enough to be a part of a “digital braintrust” of 20 progressive media and nonprofit representatives at the Bay Area Video Coalition headquarters convened by Active Voice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that uses film, television and multimedia to spark social change.

We spent two hours reviewing the Shelbyville Multimedia project and offering ideas about how to finish it out and what to do differently next time. First, a quick overview:

Active Voice conceived the vision of building a story-driven Web platform and brought together a team consisting of Free Range Studios, a creative services firm, and documentary filmmaker Kelly Whalen.

Over much of the past year, the parties combined efforts to create the ShelbyvilleMultimedia.org website while Kim A. Snyder directed and produced “Welcome to Shelbyville” (executive produced by the BeCause Foundation, in association with Active Voice) which has grown into an hourlong documentary that will air on ITVS’ “Independent Lens” series on PBS on May 24.

You can see the webisodes, produced by Active Voice in association with the BeCause Foundation, on the Shelbyville Multimedia channel on Vimeo. If you’re an educator, activist or community organization that wants to engage on a deeper level and host some of the webisodes on your own site or blog and invite conversations about the stories, head to the webisode discussion questions page.

What are your impressions? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

‘Shelbyville’: Stories about immigrant integration

The Shelbyville project is a series of stories about immigrant integration. One of Active Voice’s objectives was to introduce people to Welcoming America, an umbrella organization that works to promote mutual respect and cooperation between foreign-born and U.S.-born residents. It is overseeing “welcoming” initiatives in 14 states, including Welcoming Tennessee.

“They opened doors for us in Shelbyville and introduced us to other affiliates, who hosted community ‘sneak previews’ in October,” said Active Voice operations director Daniel Moretti.

Active Voice approached Irina Lee, the creator of First Person American, about working on a pilot based on the Welcoming Stories theme. The idea, Moretti said, was “to combine FPA’s aesthetic and authenticity with Active Voice’s need to attract user-contributed stories. We’re hoping to raise funds to keep going, to both send Irina to other cities, and to commission other artists to create new Welcoming Stories formats.”

You can see some of the Welcoming Stories on the Tumblr site created by Active Voice and Free Range.

The tone of the two sites is positive and uplifting. As Moretti told us: “We didn’t want to build an advocacy site but a site to help people take the next step by providing options for different levels of engagement.”

While the project took a lens to the issue of immigration in rural Shelbyville, Tenn., Moretti pointed out: “We’re media strategists, not immigrant integration specialists. We had a feeling that what was going on in Shelbyville would resonate with people in small towns and large cities across the country, and we’re eager to help them connect to these issues in a human and nuanced way. But Welcoming America is doing this important work for the long haul, and we hope the website will be a great vehicle for them.”

The story-driven Web platform that Active Voice and Free Range developed, then, is not just to showcase webisodes, parts of a documentary or even the story of Shelbyville. Active Voice sees it as an early pilot of how other communities can tell their stories in a deep, meaningful but easy and lightweight way, with the focus on individuals’ stories rather than forcing users to wade through a complex backstory.

The initiative’s promise as a prototype

The Active Voice gathering at BAVC on Monday.

My impressions:

It’s a superb initiative — one that I think will attract considerable interest across a number of sectors: educators looking for meaningful materials to incorporate into curricula, community activists and cause organization folks interested in a promising new social change platform, and others.

The producers were wise to tap into an outside braintrust for a reality check at a critical juncture in the project — two months before the documentary airs on national television.

Some reactions and ideas I tossed out (and am adding to here) — some of which others echoed or built on:

• I love the nonlinear aspect of the site and the stories that are built through each resident. Every “character” gets her own page, containing a profile, her webisodes, a brief quote and short bio. Nice. John Bruce of ForwardMapworks called it “transmedia,” allowing the user to enter the story at multiple points.

• Also love the focus on character arcs and interesting personalities rather than loading visitors down with too many facts.

• I suggested holding a live online town hall in Shelbyville on the evening of May 24 to coincide with the national broadcast — and to live stream it with LiveStream (another participant suggested CoverItLive) to enable both viewing and comments.

• I also suggested offering the webisodes as an ongoing weekly series on a national site or in a local publication to gain added visibility and traction — maybe in Nashvillest, my favorite hyperlocal Web publication.

• And I suggested creating a strong call to action on the front page of Shelbyville Multimedia and to create a Welcoming Toolkit that offers tools and resources to community activists and reformers.

• I would toss out the Shelbyville Multimedia logo and create a new one with the state of Tennessee as the backdrop while incorporating a dot to designate where, exactly Shelbyville is located — the very first question everyone asks when they come to the site. And use it across all online properties.

• I think the project took a slightly wrong turn with its initial branding. “Shelbyville Multimedia” doesn’t convey the idea of community residents sharing their personal stories. (I notice that some good urls, like ShelbyvilleVoices.com, are still available.)

• As a result, it’s difficult to tie the disparate elements of the project together. The team used WordPress as its still-in-progress Web platform and a separate Tumblr site, with completely different branding, as a way for people to contribute their own stories. In the end, a Tumblr site seems to detract from the main site.

• The team also decided not to allow comments or conversations on the main site, chiefly because of issues regarding limited resources for moderation. I wouldn’t have gone that way — I think you need to build in those capabilities as a fundamental part of any site that calls itself a community platform. Certainly conversations should be encouraged to bloom across independent sites and blogs, but the lack of a central “conversation hub” seems to swim against the tide in this era of interactivity, even if many of the conversations are happening elsewhere.

• As it is, that shortcoming can be ameliorated by adding a series of conversation widgets — pulling from Twitter or outside blogs — on the main site.

• Similarly, the idea that supporters who want to embed Shelbyville webisodes on their own sites cannot do so without obtaining permission in advance seems like a business decision forced on the team by traditional filmmakers concerned about control over all digital rights. Certainly, there are tradeoffs and difficult choices that face project leaders when choosing nationally acclaimed filmmakers over untested documentarians who lean toward openness. But I sense that, for the next project, there are plenty of talented filmmakers and digital storytellers who prize sharing and creativity and are adept with producing high-quality visual stories.

• The team said they settled on Vimeo to host the videos because it monitors where the videos are being hosted, while YouTube does not. But another participant pointed out that YouTube allows for greater visibility, serendipity and discovery and offers options to view related videos at the end of each viewing. And I’ll add another: I believe YouTube allows nonprofits to embed an “ask,” or call to action, at the end of its videos, while Vimeo does not. (Having said that, I tend to use Vimeo more than YouTube for my own video hosting.)

Those reservations aside, Shelbyville Mutlimedia deserves kudos and congratulations for pulling together an accomplished site in just a few months. It’s an inspiring, rare and possibly groundbreaking project that’s worth your attention — and perhaps a welcoming initiative in your own community.

Related

• How Shelbyville Multimedia came about

• Welcome to Shelbyville

• Welcoming America

• First Person American

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SocialVest, MicroPlace, Vittana can help you make a difference

Target audience: Social change organizations, nonprofits, NGOs, students, educators, individuals.

Guest post by Shira Lazar

While there might be more noise in the social good space, there are also more tools to make giving easier and more accessible than ever. Many are also calling this a trend toward “democratizing social good.” The fact is, you don’t have to be a billionaire philanthropist to contribute to positive change in the world.

Whether you want to start a movement, do something to give back or just share your story, here are some great platforms that are enabling different ways for people to participate and make a difference.

SocialVest: Support causes through shopping

1Founded by Adam Ross, Socialvest marries shopping and giving together to make it easy for people to support their favorite causes by creating a fundraising channel out of everyday shopping. Then you can choose to donate the money you’ve accumulated to the charities or causes you care about and give the money you’ve earned through your SocialVest “Giving Account.” SocialVest also allows users to promote your cause via social networking and set up give groups and fundraising projects through social tools.

Causes: Mobilize your Facebook friends

2Co-founded by Joe Green and Facebook’s Sean Parker, Causes is the app inside Facebook that lets people choose specific causes to mobilize their friends for collective action, spread the word and/or raise money. Since 2007, the app has been used by a community of 125 million people and has had more than $22 million donated through the application.

DonorsChoose: Help students in public schools

3DonorsChoose is a platform that connects donors with classrooms in need. Go on the site, choose the project that interests you and donate to a worthy project. The site delivers the materials to the class and in turn the students will send you thank you notes and photos of the impact made.

MicroPlace: Invest wisely to alleviate poverty

4With MicroPlace, for as little as $20, you can open an investment account, use their search tools to find an investment on their site, pay with PayPal or your bank account and then receive interest payments to make your money back. These socially responsible investments in microfinance can help alleviate global poverty, helping the billion people who live on less than $1 per day.

Kiva: Micro-loans to entrepreneurs

5Kiva has been a prime of example of online microfinancing, enabling people to give “loans that change lives.” As of Sept. 19, Kiva has distributed $160,822,200 in loans from 757,183 lenders. A total of 220,977 loans have been funded. Make a loan for as little as $25 to one of their deserving entrepreneurs, follow their progress and get your money back over time.

Vittana: Send someone to college for $25

6Vittana co-founder Vishal Cakrabarti was named one of The Huffington Post’s 2009 Gamechangers. With its motto “Students in school, one loan at a time,” Vittana uses person-to-person micro-lending of $1,000 or less to enable students to pay for their college education, highlighting “high-achieving, deserving” students in developing countries on its website in the hope that visitors might be inspired to help out.

Kickstarter: Fund creative ideas

7Description KickStarter is a platform for funding creative ideas and ambitious endeavors, ranging from musical artists to indie films to expeditions. Powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method, people can kickstart their project and goal by raising money through donations on the site. Projects must be fully funded or no money changes hands.

CrowdRise: Using social networks to raise funds

8Co-founded by actor Ed Norton, CrowdRise lets you raise money online for more than 1.5 million charities with its personal fundraising pages, charity fundraisers and Internet tools.

Splashlife: Rack up deals by taking action

9Launched just last month, Splashlife calls itself as an AARP for millenninals. Members can accumulate Splashlife points for doing social good — online and offline in-person volunteerism — which can then be used to get discounts off all sorts of things.

Related

• 12 awesome platforms for good (Socialbrite)

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• Kiva: micro-loans to entrepreneurs abroad (Socialbrite)

• Interview with DonorsChoose founder Charles Best (Socialbrite)

• 12 Social Action Hubs (PDF, Socialbrite)

The post 9 Web platforms to help you change the world appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Allyson Kapin
Partner, Rad Campaign

The tools for taking action and effecting social change are getting more robust all the time. Here are five of my current favorites:

Frogloop

1I think Care2’s Frogloop is one of the most trusted sources among nonprofit campaigners for having the latest resources and best practices to engage activists and donors using multiple channels including email, texting and social media. Full disclosure: I’m the Blogger-In-Chief but I don’t think that clouds my judgment. :~)

OpenStreetMap

2OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the nation and the world created by regular people, Wikipedia-style. It’s a fantastic tool that nonprofits should be using more. It contains a lot more open data than Google Maps.

Threadsy

3If you’re the type of nonprofit campaigner who thrives off of multitasking, Threadsy could be a life saver. In a nutshell, it’s a dashboard that allows you to manage email, Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging – all in one place! It was in beta but now it has just been released to the public.

Idealware

4Idealware provides some of the best research and data to help nonprofits make smart software decisions – anything from choosing open source content management systems and the differences between them to low-cost data visualization tools.

The Petition Site

5Care2’s The Petition Site enables anyone — not just nonprofits — to start a petition around social action issues, from stopping the Sable Island seal slaughter to protecting against new drilling.

In this series

• Change-makers share 10 of their favorite tools

• An educator’s 5 top tools for social change

• 12 open source tools you should be using

• 6 productivity tools for social change

• A developer’s 5 favorite social tools

• Top 5 tools for the entrepreneurial journalist

• Top cause organizations

The post A change agent’s top 5 tools for social change appeared first on Socialbrite.

Launching our summer series on making media for social good

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, NGOs, citizen journalists, media makers

We’re kicking off a summer series on making media for nonprofits and social change organizations. And, to highlight the wealth of tools on Socialbrite as we just marked our first birthday, we’ve rolled out a complete redesign of our Sharing Center.

Regular readers know that Socialbrite is all about showcasing social tools for social change. Every week we bring you a new batch of articles from our team to help you take advantage of the astonishing new ways to connect, collaborate and communicate and mobilize your cause online.

We’ve been saying for some time that every organization, every nonprofit, is turning into a media outlet, at least in part. It’s the same meme my Traveling Geeks colleague, journalist Tom Foremski, has been using with his new site, Every Company Is a Media Company.

So we decided to tap our friends’ expertise to highlight the tools and platforms that have been making the biggest difference in their own efforts — people like Allyson Kapin of Rad Campaign and Frogloop, Claire Sale of NetSquared, Andrew Rasiej of Personal Democracy Forum, Peter Deitz of SocialActions, Beth Kanter of Zoetica, Julie Crabill of Inner Circle Labs, Katrina Heppler of envisionGood.tv, Nathan Freitas, the mobile developer for the New York State Senate, and others.

Our original idea was to do one big roundup of indispensable tools — with the caveat, as always, that you should begin your efforts with a social media strategy, conversation strategy and social media strategy, and not just a set of tools. It turned out, though, that our colleagues provided so many suggestions that such an approach proved unwieldy. So instead we’ve decided to run a series of “top tools” lists by these experts in the field, kicking things off with this initial roundup of tools and resources for social good.

We suspect some tools and sites in the list below will be familiar while others may be new to you. Please add your own tips and suggestions in the comments below! And if you’d like to contribute your own short article, let us know.

Social action tools & platforms

Mobilize.org: Empowering & energizing the millennial generation

1Mobilize.org promotes greater civic participation and political engagement among young people. The site’s organizers believe the millennial generation offers hope for social justice regardless of race, class, religion or partisan identification. Mobilize.org has hosted eight Democracy 2.0 Summits on financial literacy, money and politics, millennial veterans, the environment and unemployment — with an eye toward developing sustainable solutions to these challenges. Follow mob_org on Twitter.

Amazee: Powering social collaboration

2Amazee is a global, Zurich-based platform that enables social collaboration for individuals, nonprofits, organizations and businesses. You can start a group to promote a cause or idea, to find like-minded people and to raise funds. Follow Amazee on Twitter.

Wiser Earth: Connecting you to communities of action

3WiserEarth is a free online community space connecting people, nonprofits and businesses working toward a just and sustainable world. Communities include the Culture of Peace Initiaitve, the Story of Stuff Project and the Radical Inclusion group. Now that Ning will be charging for hosted communities, Wiser Earth is a good choice for nonprofits and cause organizations looking to create an instant social network. Follow Wiser Earth on Twitter. Also see: Zanby: Roll your own community.

Charity How To: Step-by-step tutorials

4Next to Socialbrite, we think Charity How To does one of the best jobs of teaching nonprofits how to take advantage of digital tools. It offers step by step video tutorials, webinars and lots more. Follow CharityHowTo on Twitter.

WeAreMedia: A wiki of resources for social good

5WeAreMedia, spearheaded by Beth Kanter, is a wiki that came out of a hands-on workshop sponsored by the Nonprofit Technology Network. The site provides pointers to slideshows, resources and how-tos, like these tips and tutorials about Twitter.

Also, don’t forget Social Actions, which connects you to the issues and causes you care about.

Media creation tools

WordPress: Enabling citizen publishing

6WordPress.org, a self-hosted open source blogging platform, has become the software of choice for hundreds of thousands of blog publishers like Socialbrite or Syracuse’s University Lectures, while sites like Social Media Social Good use WordPress.com. You’ll want to take advantage of some of the thousands of free plug-ins that its global community of developers have created. Here’s our list of 10 WordPress plug-ins that rock, and here’s why we think WordPress is slicker than TypePad. Follow WordPress on Twitter.

OpenStreetMap: An open alternative to Google Maps

7OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the nation and the world created by people like you. The service provides an open alternative to Google Maps by letting organizations embed maps and use geographical data in a collaborative way. Follow openstreetmap on Twitter.

BlogTalkRadio: Extend the reach of your nonprofit

8Want a keyturn solution for your nonprofit’s podcasting needs? BlogTalkRadio, the world’s largest social radio network, enables anyone to host an interactive audio broadcast and syndicate it with one click to Facebook, Twitter, iTunes and across the Web. See our full writeup. Follow BlogTalkRadio on Twitter.

Kodak Zi8: Capture life on the fly

9We do like Cisco System’s Flip hand recorders, but think the Kodak Zi8 is a bit better: Hi-def 1080i video recordings in a slick, easy-to-use gadget, now on sale for $130. So amazing it’s sick. Carry these around, interview interesting people you meet, capture authentic moments or newsworthy events, then upload the MPEG-4 or .MOV files to your favorite video hosting site. Follow Kodak on Twitter.

Spot.us & DocumentCloud: Collaborative journalism

10You want a powerful media creation tool? Head over to Spot.us, suggests Julie Crabill, founder of Inner Circle Labs. It’s an open source project designed to pioneer “community-powered reporting,” starting in the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles. Through Spot.us, nonprofits, NGOs and individuals can commission stories on important, often overlooked topics. Couple that with DocumentCloud, a site that will enhance investigative reporting by making source documents easy to find, share and read. DocumentCloud provides an online database of documents contributed by a consortium of news organizations, watchdog groups and bloggers, and shared with the public at large. Users will soon be able to search by topic, agency or location. Follow Spot.us or documentcloud on Twitter.

In this series

Here are the initial articles we’ll be adding to this series in the coming days and weeks:

• 12 awesome platforms for social good (Katrina Heppler)
• An educator’s 5 top tools for social change (Barbara K. Iverson)
• A quick guide to multimedia software (Idealware)
• Top 5 tools for the entrepreneurial journalist (Dan Pacheco)
• Facebook 101 for Nonprofits: Getting Started in Five Easy Steps (Azin Mehrnoosh)
• A change agent’s top 5 tools for social change (Allyson Kapin)
• 12 open source tools you should be using (Kim Bale)
• A developer’s 5 favorite social tools (Nathan Freitas)
• 6 productivity tools for social change (Katrina Heppler)
• Complete guide to creating a video project (Tim Davies)

Related

• Making media: Tools & resources for nonprofits and social change organizations (Socialbrite)

• The Socialbrite Sharing Center

The post Change-makers share 10 of their favorite tools appeared first on Socialbrite.

CauseLab, Good Guide, Ushahidi lead impressive array of social change efforts

I‘ve learned long ago the challenge of covering South by Southwest Interactive, which hums along at its own idiosyncratic pace compared to more linear conferences. Thus, I spent last year and this year doing less blogging, conducting more interviews (which I’ll roll out in the coming weeks), taking more photos and doing much more networking.

I returned home from my fourth SXSW last night — here are 54 photos from the event I just uploaded to Flickr. Here are a few takeaways that may be of interest to nonprofits and social change organizations — but I didn’t cover this as a nonprofit correspondent, so be sure to check out other coverage and look at SXSW’sarray of Greater Good panels and follow the hashtags.

• Loved Friday’s TechSoup-led display of “world-changing mobile apps,” including:

• The Good Guide, with info about 70,000-plus health, food, toy and beauty products — including an API that lets you create a custom product directory that pulls from its database.

• Ushahidi — the Swahili word for witness — allows anyone with a mobile device to tell stories in an organized way that enables action. Major relief organizations and agencies, including the Red Cross, US State Department and US AID — relied on Ushahidi to assess the situation on the ground in Haiti and deploy resources in a more strategic way.

• Check out ushahidi.com/work for an amazing backstory.

• I popped into the third-floor Cause Lab a few times and was thrilled to see all the energy devoted to bringing real-life solutions to combat hunger. See the #endhunger hashtag on Twitter for inspiration and see WeCanEndThis.com/sxsw for “three ways you can help us innovate”:

No matter where you are, you can be a part of the CauseLab thanks to the Secret Beta Test. Even better, the best idea created will win $1,000 and the person who collaborates the best will win $500, when the CauseLab ends on April 15.

• I was too busy taking photos to take any notes during the Crowdsourcing Innovative Social Change panel featuring Socialbrite’s own Amy Sample Ward, Beth Kanter, Holly Ross, Kari Dunn Saratovsky and David Neff. But WiserEarth has a great summary, you can see the re #crowdx and #sourcinginnovativechange hashtag streams or read Beth’s take on it.

• Also got to meet Pete Cashmore, founder/editor of Mashable, who’s even classier and more personable than his online persona. (Pete said he was a longtime fan of my writings, and the feeling is mutual.)

• At Saturday night’s Digg party, I made my first contribution using Square, the Jack Dorsey startup and app that attaches to an iPhone so you can swipe a credit card. Charity:water got my $25.

• “Every time a talented young producer goes off to work for Google, another startup dies,” said Matt Ewing of Democracy Alliance quoting a Silicon Valley aphorism and making an allusion to how social change innovators should consider launching their own projects rather than getting absorbed into nonprofits or socially responsible outfits. “A lot of little ideas that can change the world aren’t being funded right now.” Democracy Alliance is looking to help change that.

• Exchange between Guy Kawasaki and Laura Fitton at the last panel I caught on top Twitter tools. Kawasaki: “There are two types of Twitter users: Those who want as many followers as possible, and those who are lying.” (I’ve heard Guy repeatedly trot out this chestnut.)

Fitton: “Bullshit, Guy, you have to find the right followers.”

I’m with Laura on this one. I could have hit 50,000 followers long ago through manipulation rather than attracting the 10,000 high-signal followers I have now. Twitter is about connecting with the right people, not creating another broadcast station, though I see how Guy has made good use of his large following.

• If there was ever a doubt that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is a tech rock star, his keynote chat made that clear. The main exhibit hall and two ballrooms were packed to capacity. I like the modest new Twitter program @anywhere, which lets users follow a writer straight from her byline or tagline on a blog or news story without having to go to the Twitter site. As Ev says, “It reduces friction.”

• Williams: “Openness is a survival technique, because some of your core assumptions are probably wrong.”

• More Ev Williams: “it’s been important to us for Twitter to reach the weakest signals in the world. SMS can reach all these people. It’s actually profound in the right situations.” Those of us who rely each day on the Internet forget that billions of people still don’t have Internet access, though many of them do have cell phones. Twitter has agreements with 65 carriers in world, and people in the developing world are discovering the benefits of using Twitter via mobile carrier. “We take that [Internet connectivity] for granted, that anyone can communicate with each other,” Williams said. “For Chilean farmers who hear there’ll be a downpour in a few days, it can be a life-changing event.”

• Williams says media corporations are adapting to the new landscape. “Ecosystems get richer if there are new species. The old species die off if they’re not adding enough value. Pretending the new species don’t exist or saying I’m at war with that — that doesn’t work.”

The post Nonprofit highlights and photos of SXSW appeared first on Socialbrite.

Moving movie audiences to take action from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I‘ll confess: I was excited to see The Cove take home the Academy Award for best feature documentary last night. While all the entrants were worthy, “The Cove” is among the handful of movies pushing the idea of Hollywood productions as the fulcrum for social change.

A few weeks ago I caught up with Christopher Gebhardt, general manager and executive vice president of TakePart, the Beverly Hills-based digital arm of Participant Media, which marketed and helped bring “The Cove” to theaters nationwide. Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions) — Jeff Skoll’s social entrepreneurial film production company — has an incredible track record in bringing socially relevant films to screens nationwide, including “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Kite Runner,” “The Soloist,” “Syriana,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Visitor,” “Food, Inc.,” “North Country” and now “The Cove.”

A breath-taking string of success.

“The Cove” is remarkable for its guerrilla filmmaking tactics in chronicling the grisly business of dolphin hunting in rural fishing villages in Japan, where as many as 20,000 dolphins are slaughtered annually. It won the Audience Award at Sundance last year. Participant didn’t fund the film but funded its marketing.

“We’ve spent the last five years at Participant figuring out how to take the film and really use it to … really get people involved with an issue,” said Gebhardt, speaking after a conversation on stage at Social Capital Markets 2009.

You may have noticed one fellow on stage at the Oscars — film subject and animal activist Ric O’Barry — holding up a sign that said, “Text DOLPHIN to 44144.” (The camera cut away after only one second — the academy has a long tradition of not acknowledging or encouraging overly activist sentiments.)

What’s cool about “The Cove” is that, just as the movie ends, theatergoers are met with the same message: Text DOLPHIN to 44144. When you text the short code, Gebhardt explains, you’re given ways to connect, including the option to sign online petitions to protest the brutal practice, send letters to President Obama, the US ambassador to Japan or Japan’s ambassador to the United States, or you can take other actions.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo. (I’ve started producing these in a higher resolution 3800 kbps bitrate at 720 pixels wide.)

I should mention that I was in the first group of bloggers in 2005 who signed on to guest-post on Participant’s first such effort: the “Good Night and Good Luck” site to discuss press reform and how changes in corporate ownership of the media have affected our democracy since the days of Edward R. Murrow.

Actions you can take

I’ve been a fan of TakePart for months now — it’s the mechanism that connects Participant Media films with taking action. “Every film [we produce or market] has a social action campaign wrapped around it,” Gebhardt says. One aspect of “The Cove’s” marketing campagn was to reach out to NGOs to see what kind of campaign makes most sense with the topic that the film addresses. My own view is that Participant Media could use a bit more guidance in running social cause campaigns.

The TakePart site has a section on The Cove where users can take the following actions:

• Write to our leaders and help get the word out in Japan
• Learn more about dolphins in captivity
• Calculate your mercury exposure
• Help Save Japan Dolphins’ efforts on the frontlines
• Support the filmmakers with your donation

I’ll post an interview with TakePart editor Adriana Dunn soon.

The post ‘The Cove’: Will movies usher in a new era of social change? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Ihad the opportunity to meet Matthew Bishop, business editor for The Economist and author of Philanthrocapitalism, at a dinner about the “Future of Philanthropy.” It was fascinating to hear Matt talk about the role of the wealthy and the future of giving.

“People who give are much more likely to come up with the answer … to all the problems the word is facing” than governmnets and politicians are,” he says in this 2 1/2-minute video interview conducted at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

An overview of his book:

“An examination of how today’s leading philanthropists are revolutionizing the field, using new methods to have a vastly greater impact on the world.

“For philanthropists of the past, charity was often a matter of simply giving money away. For the philanthrocapitalists – the new generation of billionaires who are reshaping the way they give – it’s like business. Largely trained in the corporate world, these “social investors” are using big-business-style strategies and expecting results and accountability to match. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, is leading the way: He has promised his entire fortune to finding a cure for the diseases that kill millions of children in the poorest countries in the world.

“In Philanthrocapitalism, Matthew Bishop and Michael Green examine this new movement and its implications. Proceeding from interviews with some of the most powerful people on the planet—including Gates, Bill Clinton, George Soros, Angelina Jolie, and Bono, among others—they show how a web of wealthy, motivated donors has set out to change the world. Their results will have huge implications: In a climate resistant to government spending on social causes, their focused donations may be the greatest force for societal change in our world, and a source of political controversy.

Combining on-the-ground anecdotes, expert analysis, and up-close profiles of the wealthy and powerful, this is a fascinating look at a small group of people who will change an enormous number of lives.”

More than that, we talked about how young people could explore and get into giving and nonprofits and Matt’s highlights from Davos. It was a real honor to meet him and connect over the next-generation of philanthropy.

This post originally appeared on the MySpace Journal.

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We’ve been big fans of NetSquared and its global series of Net Tuesday meetups for years — check out this map showing the dozens of cities with Net Tuesdays around the world. And our own Amy Sample Ward is NetSquared’s Global Community Builder and organizes the London Net Tuesday group (see her Socialbrite profile).

So we were honored when Sarah Kennon — whom Amy profiled here (pictured at right) — invited Socialbrite to be the featured guest on Sept. 8, 2009, at Net Tuesday San Francisco, and even more jazzed when PariSoMa — “a coworking space that provides desks, wi-fi, coffee, community and stellar events for independent professionals” — agreed to provide the venue.

We’re still planning the event, but here are the details so far:

What: Net Tuesday, spotlighting Socialbrite.org: Social tools for social change
When: Sept. 8 (a Tuesday, natch)
Time: 6-8 pm
Where: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St., SF between 10th and 11th streets
Refreshments: Light snacks and beer, wine and sodas will be served
Price: Free

Agenda: Spotlighting tools and causes

We’re still mapping out how the evening will go, but Sarah and I have been talking about an almost full-circle setup (leaving room for a short presentation on a projector and giving participants the chance to call up noteworthy sites).

I’ll kick things off by showing off some of the things we’re doing at Socialbrite, including our Sharing Center and community widgets. For the second half of the evening we’d like to showcase some other community-focused organizations with a strong social media component, most likely a 5-minute talk followed by 5 to 10 minutes of questions from the audience. Some possibilities (we’ll send out invitations after this post goes up):

• Your organization. If you have a community-spirited effort that involves social media or uses social tools for social change, drop me a note and let’s discuss.

• Public Media Collaborative, which brings together bloggers, journalists, technologists, media & environmental justice folks, community organizers and activists from around the Bay area to explore and discuss social justice and emerging technology issues in a way that links theory and practice.

• The Extraordinaries, a way to volunteer for worthy efforts by using your mobile phone during your free time (my video interview with co-founder Ben Rigby will go up here soon).

Or, if you have a suggestion about showcasing a group or cause that you’re not leading but think they deserve a Net Tuesday appearance, let us know that, too.

Looking forward to connecting!

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