Technology Archives - Socialbrite

Using Virtual Reality for Social Change Work

Caroline Avakian — Mon, 16 May 2016 12:58:08 +0000

By Caroline Avakian

Virtual reality is a newer medium that has the potential to revolutionize the way many global development and human rights organizations communicate their work. It also presents an opportunity to virtually bring supporters, donors, and all others curious about the work being done on the ground, right to the communities and people they would otherwise not have access to.

The award-winning, “Clouds Over Sidra” a virtual reality film that was released in January of 2105, was one such film. It follows a twelve year-old girl named Sidra in the Za’atari camp in Jordan — currently home to an estimated 84,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war. The groundbreaking film shot for the United Nations using the Samsung Gear VR 360-degree platform, is the first ever film shot in virtual reality for the UN and is designed to support the UN’s campaign to highlight the plight of vulnerable communities, particularly refugees.

Since the success of “Clouds Over Sidra” there has been some buzz on how nonprofits and global development organizations might be able to leverage virtual reality to build awareness of their causes.

One such organization taking on virtual reality is Trickle Up. Trickle Up is a global poverty alleviation organization that works with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people to help them achieve financial independence and social connection. I spoke with Tyler McClelland, Trickle Up’s Communications Officer, to learn more about what the learnings, challenges, and best practices were for them as a smaller organization, taking on VR for the first time.

What made Trickle Up decide to try VR?

Trickle Up works in some of the poorest and most remote places on earth and for most of our supporters, making the journey to visit our participants and get a feel for their lives just isn’t possible. But when it is possible, the experience is overwhelmingly powerful. This past April, I had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala and visit a group of women living in small communities on the mountains outside of Tamahú. Being steps away while they engaged with customers in shops they’d built—some of which were the first markets in their communities, really imparts a great appreciation for what they’ve accomplished. Being in their space and experiencing their lives, even briefly, made me understand their circumstances in such a visceral way. I was able to form a human connection, and that’s difficult to translate when you’re stuck behind a screen.

When I returned from Guatemala, I was so inspired by the women I’d met and was thinking of ways I could bring what I’d experienced to our wider audience. At the same time, VR was starting to be embraced by humanitarian organizations and the media, like the UN and New York Times. I watched one now-famous example, Clouds Over Sidra, and was surprised by the amount of empathy I felt for Sidra just by being transported into her world through my smartphone and some cardboard. It was eerily similar to the feelings I had when visiting Olivia Chiquin in her shop outside Tamahú. If there was ever a ‘light bulb moment,’ that was it. I knew we had to find a way to transport people into Olivia’s world.

Walk me through Trickle Up’s VR planning process.

Trickle Up holds an annual fundraising gala where we feature videos from the field to showcase our work to some of our biggest supporters. For me, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try doing something like VR, since we’re always trying to think of new ways to bring our work to life for our guests. The first step, and it’s an important one, was to ensure internal buy-in from management and my team. It was critical to have everyone on the same page from the outset and have a clear idea of our objectives and a general outline for the content.

After that, it was a matter of identifying a creative and production team. We have the great privilege of being blown away every year by the talent and generosity of our friends at Bodega Studios, a production company here in New York, who donate their time and energy to create stunning videos for the event. The planning process for the project really started in a creative brainstorm with them. It was critical to have the support of creative and engaged thought partners at that early stage, to both rein us in and encourage us to let our minds wander a bit in terms of the possibilities. Since VR was a bit of an experiment for both of us, we decided to focus on the immersive qualities it offers and create a series of brief experiences where viewers could be dropped into the lives of Victoria and Selvin Tiul, a family in northern Guatemala, and join a savings group meeting with Las Azucenas, one of our longest-standing groups. In February, the crew from Bodega met up with our field team in Guatemala and literally climbed a mountain to capture these experiences on film.

The final piece of the puzzle was deployment: How were we going to distribute the VR pieces? We needed a couple of components to get our VR content out there: a hosting platform and a printer who could print Google Cardboard glasses. There are several companies who host VR content, including YouTube 360, and several companies who print cardboard glasses, which can be found on the Google Cardboard website. We found a company who could actually do both the printing and the hosting, which was ideal. Once we had the glasses printed and the content online, we were ready to deploy. At our gala, we set up a booth with trained staff and volunteers to demonstrate and help guests experience the videos. Having VR at the event generated a lot of curiosity and excitement.

How did you determine your logistical requirements and what vendors to use?

The best advice is to do your research, and be clear about your objectives, needs, and resources. We knew we wanted to deploy our VR at an event, offer it as an incentive for donors, and to promote an upcoming Americas campaign. Like most small nonprofits we don’t have a large communications or marketing staff or budget, and knew we would need to find vendors to tackle various parts of the project including the production of the VR videos, hardware, web hosting, and a distribution platform. And, there were additional considerations because we were launching at an event. We needed staff and volunteers to be trained on the technology so they could show guests how to use it, drum up enthusiasm, and troubleshoot during the night. We decided to rent a number of iPads and iPhones for staff to use to demonstrate during the cocktail hour, and we needed to work with the venue to ensure we could access enough bandwidth to stream the content.

Logistically, our pro bono team at Bodega Studios handled all the creative, shooting, editing and sound, and the VR content can be viewed on a phone, tablet or computer. One of our main objectives was to create an immersive experience, so we decided to print cardboard VR headsets so that viewers would have the feeling of being in Guatemala with Trickle Up participants. The headsets were also a fun take-away and allowed viewers to use their smartphones to view the content anytime, anywhere after the event. Google hosts a website for Google Cardboard which features a number of certified vendors who can print branded headsets. We chose a company to print our cardboard glasses who also offered to host the VR content and provided a direct link to a Trickle Up branded page on their website, which eliminated the need to download an app for viewing. For me, this was the perfect solution because it eliminated a barrier to participation—having to download another app to your smartphone—and solved all of our distribution needs. But there are companies that offer all these services separately, so it’s easy to build a solution that suits your objectives. And one final thing: When you’re on a tight budget, don’t be afraid to negotiate.

In an emerging medium like VR, how did you approach storytelling?

VR is still such a nascent medium, I think most storytellers are still figuring out how to put its unique evocative qualities to use.

Our objective from the beginning was to create immersive experiences as companion pieces to the videos we usually feature at our annual gala

Through the traditional videos, we’re introduced to Victoria and Selvin Tiul, and women from the Las Azucenas savings group, and hear them tell their stories. Then we offered the VR pieces as a way to immerse you in their world. You can visit Victoria in her home, watch Selvin doing chores in their yard, and sit in the middle of a savings group meeting with Las Azucenas. The VR pieces are like little time capsules where you can drop in and experience that moment in time with the women in our program. But as the technology becomes more ubiquitous, storytelling will necessarily become much more central to VR. The possibilities of telling a story to someone in a 360-degree environment is fascinating and challenging. I love it because unlike traditional storytelling, which often relies on a passive audience, it empowers the audience to be actively engaged. That’s something that’s very much in line with Trickle Up’s values.

You launched your VR experience live at an event. What challenges did you face?

Deploying the technology was a big challenge because many people are still unfamiliar with VR. We had to ask ourselves plenty of questions: How can we make the videos as easy to view and accessible as possible? How do we account for the varying levels of comfort with technology of our guests? How can we ensure the experience is safe? How do we build enthusiasm for the content without jeopardizing the other objectives of the evening?

Ultimately, we had to make a few choices: Since the VR content was a companion to the video pieces and because we wanted to give our guests the chance to “opt-out”, we decided not to have a shared moment during the program, which was something we had considered. Instead, we set up a booth at the cocktail hour to generate excitement for the rest of the evening. The cardboard glasses were available to take from the booth, and a few pairs were distributed at each table for guests to use during dinner. We also decided to rent iPhones and iPads for staff and volunteers to demonstrate with, and for guests to use at the booth instead of their own devices. In addition to staff and volunteers being trained to assist guests, a portion of the printed program at every table setting was devoted to instructions for use. We also decided to purchase extra wifi at the venue to support streaming the content. And the greatest challenge was the display and streaming. VR videos are extremely heavy and require advanced graphics cards (think iPad 3s and above—iPad 2s just won’t work, trust me), and a colossal amount of wireless bandwidth to stream simultaneously. So, of course there were a few questions I wish we’d asked ourselves: What technical specifications are necessary to run the content on an iPad or iPhone? How much bandwidth will be necessary to stream VR content? But we didn’t, and had to make a few last minute decisions and call in a few favors to get iPads that could handle the VR and add a little extra to our budget line for wifi. It was certainly a learning moment.

Producing VR can be a significant commitment, how did you ensure it was worth the investment?

From the beginning we knew the content would need to be evergreen, serving multiple purposes for our external communications and fundraising. We deployed the VR experience at our annual gala, which injected the night with energy and enthusiasm that was well worth the investment—we were able to bring key supporters on one of our most important nights closer to our work than we’ve ever been able to before. Introducing them to Victoria and Selvin Tiul and the women of Las Azucenas in this way was a first for us, and such a memorable experience. In coming months, we will also be offering the Trickle Up Google Cardboard headsets, along with the video and VR content, as a special reward for donors who sign up to make automatic monthly gifts, and to promote a new campaign to grow our impact across the Americas to reach hundreds of thousands of more families like Victoria and Selvin’s.

Last words of advice on what a nonprofit should know before venturing out into the brave new world of VR?

The most important thing you need to start venturing into the world of VR is to do your research. There’s an ever-growing amount of VR content in the world—watch it, get a grasp of the possibilities, and think about how it can best serve your organization’s objectives. And be clear about your objectives. Spend some time researching vendors so you can make an informed decision about who and what combination is right for your objectives and your budget. (And as I mentioned, don’t be afraid to negotiate.) Get internal buy-in from management and your team because having clear expectations from the start is essential to a smooth production process and especially important when taking on a new media form like VR. There will be lots of questions, and thanks to your research, you’ll have (most of) the answers.

To view Trickle Up’s virtual reality films, click here.

To learn more about Trickle Up, visit their website at TrickleUp.org

*This piece was originally published on The Huffington Post.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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Free-to-use mobile and technology images

kiwanja — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:33:19 +0000

They say a picture paints a thousand words, and that may be the case. But if they cost the earth or you don’t have permission to use them, they end up painting nothing much at all.

When my mobile “career” kicked off in 2003 with multiple research trips to South Africa and Mozambique, I took the opportunity to start taking and collecting mobile- and technology-related photos. Back then people were beginning to take an interest in the impact of mobile phones on the African continent, and NGOs were looking to use photos on websites or in project proposals, newsletters and presentations. On top of that, people were just generally curious about what was going on.

That collection now stands at over 150 photos, and covers everything from people around the world texting or making calls to pictures of shops, signs, mobiles themselves and other interesting examples of mobile entrepreneurship in action.

The images are free to use – with attribution – by nonprofits or any other organization seeking to profile the social impact of mobile technology. Visit the kiwanja Mobile Gallery for the full gallery of images, and for details on how to credit their use.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported.

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Want to take action on a cause? The road ahead just got easier

Guest — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:11:50 +0000

Peter Deitz, the whirlwind behind Social Actions. (Photo by JD Lasica)

Social Actions moves the open source ball forward for the cause community

Guest post by Amy Sample Ward
amysampleward.org

I’ve followed and supported the work of Peter Deitz and Social Actions ever since hearing about his passion and ideas a few years ago. There’s a lot happening with Social Actions right now, but one bit of news is really exciting and needs to be highlighted: some incredibly important technical enhancements have recently been made to the Social Actions API. (Here’s what an API is.) Earlier this week, I got ahold of Peter to get the full scoop! Here’s our exchange:

Let’s start at the beginning: What is Social Actions and where does the API come in?

I describe Social Actions as an aggregation of actions people can take on any issue that’s built to be highly distributable across the social web. We pull in donation opportunities, volunteer positions, petitions, event, and other actions from 60-plus different sources. That’s today. A few years ago, microphilanthropy had just a handful of pioneering platforms.

The Social Actions project began in 2006. I wanted to make some kind of contribution to the world of microphilanthropy. My intent was to inventory every interesting action I came across to make it easier for people to engage in the causes they cared about. There wasn’t much scalability in the way I was pursuing the project.

In 2007, I realized that a much more effective way to aggregate interesting actions would be to subscribe to RSS feeds from trusted sources. I wrote about the potential for aggregating RSS feeds of giving opportunities in a blog post called, Why We Need Group Fundraising RSS Feeds. Three months later I had a prototype platform aggregating actions from RSS feeds, with a search element around that content.

Around the time of the Nonprofit Technology Network’s 2008 NTC conference, an even brighter lightbulb went on. I remember sitting in a session by Kurt Voelker of ForumOne Communications, Tompkins Spann of Convio, and Jeremy Carbaugh of The Sunlight Foundation. They were talking about APIs. (API stands for Application Programming Interface, and refers broadly to the way one piece of software or dataset communicates with another.) In fact, the name of the session was “APIs for Beginners.”

I knew I wanted to be in the session even without really knowing why. It was there that I realized my RSS-based process for aggregating actions could be so much more with a robust distribution component. I wrote a blog post called, Mashups, Open APIs, and the Future of Collaboration in the Nonprofit Tech Sector. I left that session knowing exactly the direction I wanted to take Social Actions.

And what would you describe as the purpose of Social Actions’ API?

There’s a groundswell of interest, on the part of “non-nonprofit professionals,” to engage with social movements and causes. It’s well-documented at this point that people are hungry to engage with causes they care about in various forms.

The premise behind Social Actions is that there are enough actions floating around on the Web that nonprofits produce, but that they’re not linked up properly or adequately syndicated. There are a million opportunities to take action on a cause you care about, but it’s not easy to find them. The Social Actions API attempts to address the distribution and syndication challenge while also encouraging nonprofits to make their actions more readily available.

What were the limitations that Social Actions and its API were hitting up against before the recent updates?

We have encountered a number of challenges over the years. Originally, adding actions manually was difficult. That challenge was resolved by creating a platform that used RSS feeds to pull in opportunities, which in turn evolved into the Social Actions API, allowing people to access the full dataset from any application that connected to it.

The vast majority of applications that have been built since 2008 match actions with related content: for example, by reading a blog post and searching the Social Actions dataset for related actions. The quality of the search results were limited by our querying capabilities and relevancy ranking. The results we were able to produce didn’t reflect the full contents of our database. They tended to reflect only the most recently added actions, not the most relevant. As a result, we weren’t equipping developers with a platform that allowed for more accurate location- and issue-based searches. Until the recent enhancements, producing the best possible search results for a given phrase or keyword was the biggest challenge.

What did the recent updates accomplish, and how did the opportunity to make them come about?

The updates introduce Semantic Analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to the Social Actions API and begin to connect Social Actions to the wider Linked Open Data community.

If today’s Web is a collection of links between pages, the Web envisioned for tomorrow will be a collection of links between discrete bits of knowledge or datasets.

The enhancements effectively put Social Actions back on the cutting edge of social technology. These were changes that we had wanted to make for a long time. In spring 2009, we were approached by a group that was building an advanced video + action platform and that wanted to draw on the Social Actions API. Link TV, in prototyping their ViewChange platform, noticed that the Social Actions API wasn’t producing the best possible results. They invited us to explore with them what would be involved in updating our platform so that ViewChange could feature more relevant results.

Link TV, along with Doug Puchanski and Rob DiCiuccio of Definition, helped us articulate the changes that would need to occur and then connected us with a funder who could underwrite what amounted to a very significant enhancement to our code base. In one month, we had approximately as large an investment in the technology as we’d had in total up until that point. It has been incredibly exciting to see how open source projects like Social Actions tend to grow in fits and bursts, depending on the demands and resources made available by users.

What do “Semantic Analysis” and “Natural Language Processing” mean, and how do they make the Social Actions API better?

Semantic Analysis and Natural Language Processing both have to do with the process of identifying the meaning of a collection of words together. Semantic analysis, for example, can help to identify the meaning of a phrase like “poverty relief” as distinct from what “poverty” and “relief” mean independently. The Social Actions API now uses a tool called Zemanta to apply these processes when searching the actions contained in the dataset. As a result, we can say with more confidence what an action is about and where it is taking place. When searching for the phrase “poverty relief,” for example, not only are the search results more accurate, but Zemanta helps us to identify other actions that might not in fact use that phrase but are nonetheless linked in meaning to it. It’s a difficult concept to explain, but hopefully this makes sense.

And what does “Linked Open Data” refer to?

Just like in 2008 when I had an “aha moment” about APIs, in June 2009 I had an “aha moment” about Linked Open Data. I was presenting Social Actions at the Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech), describing how Social Actions was an open database and how we encouraged developers to build open source applications that distributed this data widely. Ivan Herman from W3C listened to the presentation asked, “Why are you building something that’s so closed? Why aren’t you publishing this data in RDF?”

I was surprised, to the say least. Defeated, in fact. I had spent close to three years trying to build this open platform only to have someone more tech-savvy than me explain that what we had built was in fact still a closed platform. It turns out I was at the epicenter of the Linked Open Data community. Their mission is to link the world’s knowledge in the same way that all of the world’s web pages have been linked to one another.

If you can imagine that today the web is a collection of links between pages, the web of tomorrow (proposed by these folks and Tim Berners-Lee) will be a collection of links between discrete bits of knowledge or datasets. Anyone will be able to follow the connection that’s been made between one repository of data and another the same way people can now hyperlink between one web page and another.

Linked Open Data essentially refers to building connections between these repositories in a standard format not unlike HTML and hypertext.

What role do APIs, and the people who build them, play in Linked Open Data?

The stewards of databases are no longer just asked to open up their datasets but to make them available in such a way that they link with other data repositories by design. In the case of Social Actions, Ivan from the Wc3 was effectively saying, “It’s great you have all of this data on actions people can take, but what are you doing to link that data with other datasets? What are you doing to help people make the connection between ‘poverty relief’ as an issue, for example, and existing data sets on the prevalence of poverty in a specific location?”

The Social Actions API now cross-references issues and locations with universal identifiers that have been assigned to them. Just like you might cross-reference the subject of a book with a Dewey Decimal number, we are now cross-referencing each action with a universal identifier that helps to link it to related data. Using Zemanta, we are able to provide URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier) from Freebase and DBPedia that make the connection between actions in our system and other material on the web that relates to the same topic.

You can see examples of this at http://search.socialactions.com. Search for any phrase. Below each result you’ll see a link to “Entities.”

Can you tell me more about what ViewChange has done?

ViewChange is an example of an application that queries our actions using Freebase and DBPedia URIs as well as traditional keywords and phrases. The application says to Social Actions, “Show me everything that matches this URI.” The same query is submitted to the Social Actions API as is submitted to any data repository – news articles, videos, blog posts, etc. It’s truly commendable that Link TV, through the ViewChange project, has driven these enhancements on our platform.

A lot is also owed to Doug Puchalski, a programmer with Definition who helped lead the development of ViewChange.

To you, what might the future look like for people who want to take action on the causes they care about?

The technology exists for us to do really amazing things when it comes to matching people with actions they can take to make a difference. The technology itself is advancing, opening up more possibilities for even smarter applications.

“The technology exists for us to do really amazing things when it comes to matching people with actions they can take to make a difference.”

The future of social technology, specifically creative implementations of the Social Actions API and similar open source platforms, is very exciting provided nonprofits and foundations continue to make rich data available and link it up with other repositories in the way I’ve attempted to describe. The future is also very bright if we continue to experiment with how these linked data repositories can be deployed for forms of community engagement that we would not have thought possible a few years ago.

If everything goes incredibly well in the coming years, what might emerge is ubiquitous infrastructure of enabling technology and complementary applications that continuously present individuals with meaningful and relevant opportunities to enact change.

The Social Actions API – a pioneering open source project since 2008 – continues its boundary-pushing agenda by embracing the semantic Web and contributing to the Linked Open Data cloud, encouraging the sector as a whole to leverage open source software and linked data for greater impact.

Visit socialactions.com today to learn more!

Cross-posted from Amy Sample Ward’s blog.

• Social actions toolset (Socialbrite)

• Social Actions: Toward a philanthropic Web (Socialbrite)

• How open standards can benefit nonprofit tech (Socialbrite)

• A new open database about social entrepreneurs (Socialbrite)

• All for Good: A Craigslist for service (Socialbrite)

• Making social causes actionable (JD Lasica’s 2008 interview with Peter — Archive.org)

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eduFire expands its tech curriculum

Guest — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:30:22 +0000

Learn about social media, PHP & WordPress on the Web

Guest post by Katrina Heppler
envisionGood.tv

We met up with Jon Bischke, founder of eduFire, in San Francisco to learn about the launch of eduFire’s new Tech Channel, an online video learning platform that provides live, interactive video classes in social media, PHP, WordPress and other tech areas.

In this video interview, Jon describes the new Tech Channel’s offerings and tells us how eduFire is using social media throughout the company’s platform. Continue after the jump for a full transcript of the conversation.

Full transcript

Katrina: So here we are in San Francisco. I’m with Jon, the founder of eduFire.

First of all, what is eduFire?

Jon: Sure, eduFire is a platform for people to teach and take live classes over the internet. So we’ve got thousands of teachers and thousands of students who are conducting live classes online using video, text chat, and audio, and other types of technologies.

Can you tell us about the new classes you’re launching now?

Jon: Sure. We feel one of the biggest things that are in demand right now are technology skills. And it’s an opportunity for people to learn something and find a new job or directly apply it to their existing job. So, we’re launching a tech channel where we’ve got dozens of teachers who are teaching classes in things like PHP, how to effectively use social media, how to implement WordPress, skills that a lot of employers are looking for right now.

We think that learning online is great for people because they can do it in their own time, they can do it from home, it’s very flexible. And we’re really excited for the potential for the Tech Channel, and are looking forward to bringing onboard lots of good teachers and people interested in learning those skills.

How are the teachers vetted? How do these teachers qualify to be teachers?

Jon: Yeah, so what we do is we have the community basically vet who’s a good teacher and who’s not using some crowdsourced techniques. So, teachers come on eduFire they post a profile, it’s kind of similar to a LinkedIn profile where they state their credentials and other things they’ve done in their past. And as students take classes from those teachers they rate those teachers. And what we do is we use an algorithm to have the top teachers rise to the top teachers rise to the top of our list and the not-so-good teachers kind of fall off. So over time you’re only seeing the best teachers on eduFire.

What classes will you be offering related to technology?

Jon: You know we’re really excited by a wide range of things. So we have programming classes, things like PHP and Ruby on Rails, classes around things like social media marketing have been popular -– some things like Facebook and Twitter and how you can effectively use those in your business. Other skills, like implementation of things like WordPress. And then other things too –- more casual learning, Photoshop, how to optimize your Macintosh, or whatever. So it’s a really wide range of things, but all related to technology.

How are you getting the word out using social media?

Jon: That’s a great question. We get a lot of our visitors who come from Facebook, who come from Twitter. A lot of our teachers will post messages when they’re teaching a class. Our students will often post messages to Twitter as well that they’re taking a class on eduFire. So we feel that social media is kind of a key component of next-generation education because people want to learn with their friends, they want to see what their friends are doing. If people are following a certain person and they find that that person is teaching a class that would be very interesting to them… So, social media has been very effective for us and we feel it’s only going to grow over time.

How much do these classes cost?

Jon: It’s all over the board. We have a lot of classes which are free, which is a great way if you want to dip your toe in the water and experience what eduFire has to offer. We also have classes that range anywhere from five dollars to anywhere up to fifty dollars. We also have a subscription service too, so you can pay thirty dollars a month and for that price you can really get access to almost all of the classes on our site. And that’s unlimited access. So if you really want to ramp up your tech skills in a quick amount of time, that’s probably your best value.

Do you find that the teachers are coming from all over the world or are they mostly here in the Bay Area or in the U.S.?

Jon:We have over 200 countries represented on the site. So it definitely is a global audience. The majority of our audience is in the U.S., certainly with technology, a lot of people in the Bay Area [as well]. But yeah, we get people from all over and that’s really interesting because you can learn how to program PHP from a guy in Germany. And when have you had a chance to do that before in the past?

Where can everyone find you on the Web?

Jon: It’s eduFire.com.

And on Twitter?

Jon: Twitter is twitter.com/eduFire.

Reposted from the envisionGood.tv site.

• eduFire: Real-time Web learning (Socialbrite)

• MindBites: The how-to video marketplace (Socialmedia.biz)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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Using nonprofit tech to benefit society

JD Lasica — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:15:38 +0000

Amy Sample Ward on nonprofit technology from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Just before we launched Socialbrite.org, I met Amy Sample Ward in person for the first time. Amy’s a whirlwind of energy and passion about all things np tech (nonprofit technology), and I was so impressed that I immediately asked her to join the Socialbrite team.

But not before I got her to sit still for a few minutes to talk about nonprofit tech, Net Tuesdays — Amy is the global community builder for NetSquared — and being a catalyst for social change.

NP tech is social change work, whether you’re a nonprofit or an individual who wants to change her community or you’re a corporation that’s working on social benefit through a corporate social responsibility campaign, she says.

More than 36 cities around the world now hold monthly events as part of Net Tuesday, the offline component of NetSquared, and if you’re within driving distance, you should stop by and meet other change agents in your community. (Sarah Kennon does an outstanding job of organizing the Net Tuesdays in San Francisco.)

You don’t need to be a nonprofit org to get value out of Net Tuesdays, Amy says. Being able to convene offline shouldn’t be underestimated as a motivational force.

“Just to see how excited people get when they come together, it’s so rewarding,” she says.

She also discusses the nonprofit sector’s penchant for sharing knowledge. “I think people realize that we’re all going to get better if we share our knowledge instead of locking it down,” she says.

Amy offers tips for people who want to get involved in the social change movement. “Just start reading blogs and newsletters. … It’s such an infectious sharing community.”

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

The 9-minute video interview was conducted at NetSquared 2009 in San Jose, Calif. We’re so glad to have Amy on board as a partner in Socialbrite.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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GoingGreen: Innovations in green tech

Guest — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:38:35 +0000

Photo by Salem Kimble

By Salem Kimble
East Bay Green Tours

Earlier this month, amid the picturesque backdrop of the Cavallo Lodge in Sausalito, Calif., a flurry of venture capitalists and industry innovators came together at the GoingGreen Conference from AlwaysOn. There were all manner of industries represented, from cement that absorbs carbon (Novacem) to low frequency wireless technology for long range monitoring (On-Ramp Wireless) to completely architected materials (Nanosys) and everything in between.

In fact, there was so much going on, let’s break down a few of the more intriguing elements.

Smart designs for buildings

Project Frog, a slick and friendly outfit from San Francisco, showed off their super quick building construction from partially pre-fabricated buildings that minimize waste during construction, save 50 percent in energy once built, and go up in an incredible six weeks’ time. Their smart designs take into consideration the building process and include things like designing doors and walls to fit the size that the wall material is when sold. Their flagship installation is at Crissy Field in San Francisco.

Buildings are important, but perhaps more intriguing are the people who are re-engineering the building blocks themselves, as Novacem has done. They have an alternative to Portland cement (standard material used in the majority of construction) that has a lighter carbon footprint at the outset and over the long term. Says Novacem’s Stewart Evans, “The big win is that Novacem has the potential to not only remove the 5 percent [of carbon] from creation [of the cement] but to take out 4 percent of carbon [from the atmosphere] over time.”

Electric cars: From sports cars to ‘bicycles’

Tesla Roadster

The state of electric cars is surprisingly advanced, with enterprising companies Coda, Aptera and Tesla on the scene. Coda is a company jointly working in China and the US on both the battery development and the electric car. According to CEO Kevin Czinger, they will have electric cars available to the public as early as fall 2010 with a 100-mile distance battery life and competitive price point of $30,000.

Aptera is a company with an entirely different strategy that currently has them legally classified as a bicycle — a car designed with only three wheels. Aptera’s strategy has been to tackle aerodynamics first and foremost in design so that less energy is needed for transport in the first place.

Tesla, the most widely known and covered in the press, strikes one as the equivalent of an Apple — emphasizing value beyond price and design focused development in which they build all their own software. Their most recent project, the upcoming roadster, is being created from scratch, which will allow a clean slate for the chassis and battery to have greater efficiency.

The less sexy but very economically savvy Bright Automotive, Inc. is tackling the commercial fleet market of delivery vans. They might seem ho-hum, but as an investment at scale they provide the highest economics savings, says Bright Chairman Rueben Munger. As investments, electric fleet vehicles “are price positive on day one,” he said.

Energy: Biofuels and geothermal

There were quite a few biofuels folks. It appears we’re more than fine when it comes to the availability of fuels as there is no shortage of biofuels solutions. Jatropha, the miracle plant of SG Biofuels that is easy to grow, doesn’t compete with food crops. They say they could produce cost-competitive biofuels at a price point equivalent to oil’s $42 a barrel. Similarly miraculous, Rentech offers “synthetic fuels for jet and diesel engines [made from] trash, sewage sludge, forestry and agricultural waste, energy crops and fossil resources.”

Then there’s the perennial grass feedstock Miscanthus from Mendel Biotechnology. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were engineered so effectively as to walk off the field and pump our gas for us.

Geothermal is something I haven’t heard much about lately as a feasible option, but Potter Drilling, backed by Google.org, is working on a patented technology that would allow much deeper drilling than is currently possible, which suddenly makes geothermal a viable option in many more regions. They are beyond the first stages of research and are working with a physical prototype.

There were also a few gasifer companies, including Sierra Energy and Zeropoint Clean Tech. Sierra Energy has an added bonus of focusing on tying in existing steel mills into their business design to revitalize old steel towns where many jobs have been lost.

As far as efficiency solutions and carbon tracking, the contenders in the field at this conference included Joule Labs, Greenbox Technology and FirstCarbon Solutions.

Technology: data collection applications

One of the striking presentations came from San Diego-based On-Ramp Wireless, a company with technology that harnesses uses and prices for wireless that don’t currently exist on the market. In simple terms, their technology harnesses low-frequency (non-regulated) wireless and allows for data collection within a range of up to 10 or 12 miles. That data collection application can be used on everything from finding a leak in a tube under city cement to automatically sensing that a farmer’s field needs watering.
Another technology leader was Nanosys, a San Francisco company with a vision for architected materials to become the modern equivalent invention of assembly lines.

Some applications of their work have shown up in reduced data center power consumption from (using higher density Nano Flash drives) and improved battery performance (re-engineered battery anode material) and remote phosphor for blue LED backlights. One of their intriguing materials is an engineered substance that when separated into various sizes in tubes causes the tubes to reflect light from an LED pointer in the colors of the rainbow. Unlike others in their nano-tech field, Nanosys has been working on technology development that is designed with the eventual large-scale production in mind from the beginning.

Altogether, it was enough new technologies to leave one’s head spinning, but in a hopeful direction. The overlap of sustainability and profitability is undeniable, especially when it comes to natural resources and large industries. I was surprised by the impression at this event that the greatest challenge lies not in innovation and creation of new technology, but in how those inventions and improvements can create a pathway to market and eventual widespread use.

Salem Kimble is operations manager of East Bay Green Tours. This is her first article for Socialbrite.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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Toward a Web of open video

JD Lasica — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:59:46 +0000

Toward open video on the Web from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, before and after the Open Video conference at NYU, I sketched out the proposition that open video is a requirement for an open Web in two posts: The promise of open source video and Boxee and the promise of open media.

By some estimates, 90 percent of the traffic on the Internet will be video by 2013, so this affects free and open discourse online. Above is a 7-minute interview I conducted with Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, who talks about how video is really separate from the rest of the Web in that it’s a much more closed system. “We need to look at how to make video a first-class citizen on the Web,” he said.

Surman said he hopes a concerted push toward open standards will “shift the market away from a black box video plug-in, where the video is separate from the rest of the page, to something where video can interact with Javascript” or other elements on a Web page.

Video today is locked up (technologically) and locked down (legally). In order for video to become part of the Web’s innovation ecosystem, Surman said, we need to be able to play, manipulate, transform and remix video in the same way we can with photos and data.

In the past two years, the vast majority of video hosting sites have settled on Adobe’s Flash as the format of choice because more than 95 percent of desktop computers and laptops can play them. But Flash isn’t an open source system, and video producers have been limited in how they can make video interact with other Web page elements.

“That may not sounds interesting to those who just watch videos, but it’ll be interesting first to video producers who can do all kinds of innovative things that we can’t even imagine now,” he said.

Firefox 3.5 may be a game-changer

With the recent release of Firefox 3.5, Web developers can now program video within the browser, bypassing Flash, QuickTime, DivX and other codecs altogether. “That means 300 million people will [eventually] have access to native video in their browser,” Surman said. Other browsers, including Safari, Chrome and Opera, are also on board the open video bandwagon.

Where firefox 3.0 was an upgrade for users, “we say Firefox 3.5 is an upgrade for the Web,” he added. That doesn’t mean we’ll see a shift away from Flash .flv video in the next few years, but now the door is open to innovation and experimentation.

Online video “will always be a contested space, but enough people love the Web that they’ll make it happen,” Surman said.

Watch, embed or download video in Flash on Vimeo
Watch or download video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Download the original video from Archive.org or watch it in Ogg

• Mark Surman’s tak at the Open Video conference in Ogg Theora

• Breaking: Firefox 3.5 is Released — A Historic Day for Web Video? (beet.tv)

• RiP: A Remix Manifesto: A movie by Brett Taylor

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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Helping nonprofits grapple with technology

JD Lasica — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:06:19 +0000

Nonprofits + technology = NTEN from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), talks about the organization’s mission in helping nonprofits learning how to effectively use technology and social media.

She talks about three new reports that should be of interest to nonprofits — including the just-released 2009 Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report and Small is the New Big: 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study — as well as We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits, a workshop/training series led by Beth Kanter.

All of the conference’s sessions are available as free audio downloads (plus PowerPoint presentations). In addition, several webinars are available as well, such as Using Facebook Pages for Social Good, $30 for members, $60 for nonmembers.

The interview was conducted at the conclusion of NTEN’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco on April 28, 2009. (Holly’s a friend, so we got a little silly at the end.) We had to find a makeshift “set” on a staircase at the San Francisco Hilton because there was no place anywhere to shoot with decent lighting and that wasn’t crazy-loud.

Next year’s NTC will be held in Atlanta in early April, and I hope to be back.

Coming up before that: ForeSee Results’ Nonprofit Website Study: Building Donations and Loyalty through the Web Channel, a free webinar on May 27.

Watch or embed the video on Vimeo
Download the video in H.264 at Archive.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

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Technology Archives - Socialbrite

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Full transcript

First of all, what is eduFire?

Can you tell us about the new classes you’re launching now?

How are the teachers vetted? How do these teachers qualify to be teachers?

What classes will you be offering related to technology?

How are you getting the word out using social media?

How much do these classes cost?

Do you find that the teachers are coming from all over the world or are they mostly here in the Bay Area or in the U.S.?

Where can everyone find you on the Web?

And on Twitter?

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Electric cars: From sports cars to ‘bicycles’

Energy: Biofuels and geothermal

Technology: data collection applications

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Firefox 3.5 may be a game-changer

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Helping nonprofits grapple with technology