Apparently my gnashing of teeth a few days ago was unwarranted. We've now seen a nice up-tick in registration for our usability seminar at the National Press Club on Thursday.
It's an interesting group. Registrants include fine folks from the U.N. Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, USDA, World Resources Institute, Department of State, Defenders of Wildlife, the World Bank, and many others. Here's the full list.
I got a peak at the speakers slides, and it's looking like a terrific three hours. Our panel will present a variety of useful tips including tips on how to conduct user testing in multiple languages and conduct audience research for an intranet. Once again, the speakers are:
Claudette Archambault, Principal IT Specialist at U.S. Senate
Steven Fuchs, Information Architect/Designer at Broadcasting Board of Governors
Sanjay Koyani, Director, FDA Web Communications
Kira Marchenese, Director, Internet Communications at Environmental Defense Fund
Next week, we're hosting a usability seminar at the National Press Club titled "Putting Audiences First, Again and Again." Registration has been steady, but it's at half the clip of our previous session "Social Sites for Social Good."
This is a shame, because this session's topic is equally important.
Certainly Facebook, MySpace, digg.com and all of the other new social sites possess huge potential to build prominence, recruit supporters, and drive traffic. Orgs need to be actively incorporating social approaches into their online strategy -- as Tim has pointed out previously.
But it can't be at the expense of fundamentals.
Usability gets to the essence of why some sites succeed more than others. It's what separates the iPod from the Zune. Those of us who build web sites spend a lot of time hypothesizing about how our visitors experience our sites. Rarely do we actually sit back and watch them in action.
For this reason, next week we're dedicating a significant portion of our session to useful examples of straightforward usability testing. Many of us know we should be testing our designs and sites, but we think its too complicated, too expensive, or too time-consuming. Or we think we can't convince the boss that it's worthwhile.
Next week, our presenters are going put these myths to rest. Speakers from FDA, Voice of America, senate.gov, and the Environmental Defense Fund will explain how they approached usability testing. They'll explain its benefits, and how the results satisfied their visitors, and propelled their mission.
So while social media help connect people with your organization and bring them to your site, good user experience is what keeps them coming back.
The ENOUGH Project, a dynamic new anti-genocide project from the Center for American Progress is looking for talented people to fill two important Internet-related roles:
I hosted a live online interview with Heather Mansfield earlier today. During a live interview, we take questions from whomever wishes to submit them. Heather is an expert on how nonprofit organizations can use MySpace to spread their message and recruit supporters. Here is the transcript of the interview.
Also, here are the slides from her recent presentation at our Web Executive Seminar at the National Press Club:
Kurt Voelker and I (Andrew Cohen), traveled to New Orleans to participate in the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my fourth conference and the most useful and fulfilling. In addition our volunteering and presenting, we learned quite a bit. Here are our key take-aways:
Kurt's Observations:
Great to see the growing numbers! More interesting people doing more innovative work than ever before. It's clear to me that the nonprofit community sees technology, and the web specifically as a critical component to creating social good.
Despite no singular massive success with the Social Web, it's clear that organizations are recognizing that their constituencies and target audiences are more sophisticated than ever, and nonprofits are working hard to align their communications with the next generation of donors, activists, thinkers, and doers that have already bought into the social web.
Open interoperability breeds innovation - and software providers are starting to get it. Most software vendors I spoke with saw open access to data and services as a must have feature to remain competitive - this is good news!
Andrew's Observations:
I noticed a positive continued commitment from software vendors to open the door to NTEN members and smaller organizations. I sat in on a session led by Google's Frederick Vallaey who promised to expedite Google Grant approvals for NTEN members. This provides any registered 501(c)(3) three months of free Adwords) I also participated in a session titled "SalesForce for Good Not Evil" in which some smaller organizations showed how a central commercial platform using SalesForce's offer of 10 free licenses for charitable orgs. Other attendees including Mozy, ReadyTalk and (ahem) Forum One's own ProjectSpaces also offer discounts. Lesson learned: Always ask product vendors whether there is a nonprofit discount.
Mobile technologies are growing slowly but steadily in the United States. They are still the big exception to the open interoperability Kurt mentions above. At the Mobile Advocacy session I heard compelling case studies, but each was unusual and still rather fledgling. Once again, the closed systems of the greedy wireless carriers -- AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. -- are the main constraint to real innovation here. For instance, it still costs an organization $1,000/month to have a vanity mobile short code or "mobile URL."
The conference continues to be one model for how to extend an event through friendly, open (and sometime frenzied) sharing of conference notes and artifacts. During the conference, over 300 attendees were Twittering -- about one out of five. In some sessions, the panels took questions from people in other breakout sessions. At one point, I "tweeted" a key finding from one session, and, within a few minutes, I received (and posed to the panel) a follow-up question submitted by an attendee at a different session in another room. And I'm still working through all of the blog posts, presentations, videos, and photos tagged with "08NTC."
CGAP, a leading consortium of organizations working to expand global microfinance, is looking for a Web Editor. Sounds like an interesting position:
Web
2.0, social networking, Kiva, Microplace, and other online lending platforms are revolutionizing microfinance. We’re looking for someone to lead CGAP’s Web strategy, develop a CGAP blog, and take us into the new media era.
CGAP seeks a Communications Officer with high energy and fresh thinking who can generate innovative ideas for communicating CGAP’s work to a wide range of audiences through electronic tools. The ideal candidate will be an experienced Web editor with knowledge of Web marketing techniques, the ability to write well, and a track record in effective Web campaigns. The Web Editor will work with colleagues to effectively communicate CGAP’s work online, developing and operationalizing our strategy for Web, new media, and social networking.
We’ve already taken some baby steps in this direction, the fruits of which will be evident with the relaunch of cgap.org in a couple of months. cgap.org is CGAP’s most important external communications tool. And yet over the past few years it has been neglected, and become outdated. With the relaunch and redesign of the site, we are looking for the right person to lead CGAP’s Web strategy and online marketing and take the organization forward, capitalizing on new media opportunities to reach out to new audiences, and to established audiences in new ways.
Resumes with cover letter should be sent to: webeditor@collab.cgap.org by March 31. CGAP requests no phone calls, please.
Each spring, the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) holds its Nonprofit Technology Conference showcasing leading nonprofit projects and organizations. It's a useful and inspiring three-day opportunity to network, collaborate, and have fun.
This year's conference is March 19-21 in New Orleans and me-- Andrew Cohen -- and my co-worker Kurt Voelker are participating. If you are attending, here's where you can find us:
Wednesday, March 19: Kurt and Andrew will be participating in the Day of Service. We'll be helping to set up a wireless network in New Orlean's Lower 9th Ward.
Wednesday, March 19, 3-8 p.m.: Come say hello at our Science Fair booth and enter a drawing for a free iPod or a free year of ProjectSpaces.
Thursday, March 20: Andrew will be facilitating a lunch discussion: "Measuring Online Community Success."
Friday, March 2, 6:45 p.m.: Andrew is leading a small group dinner on "Online Communities for Super Activists." Please RSVP so that we can get a count for the dinner reservation. Meet up in the Sheraton Hotel Lobby between 6:45 and 7 or just come on over to the restaurant. We have reservations for 7:30.
And if you want to see the full agenda on the device of your choice, NTEN has helpfully published feeds that enable you to add all of the conference events to your calendar. They also produced a nifty widget -- see below:
We all recognize a successful community in our neighborhood: Good schools, affordable housing, plentiful jobs, thriving businesses, clean parks, and modern roads. Bowling alleys and bike trails help too. But when an organization seeks to set up a successful online community, the vision can be more blurry.
Lately, I've been attempting to illustrate a view for successful online communities, as part of an article I prepared for Idealware. It's titled Characteristics of Successful Online Communities.
I use a neighborhood metaphor because I think it's helpful to paint a vision that's divorced from traditional success measures such as member counts, user postings and the like. Although I'm always happy to talk about web metrics, during community conception, success should be envisaged from the member's perspective first because if they don't like your community, they won't return. Metrics don't always clarify exactly why people will be drawn to your online community. And unlike a physical community, there's no lease or mortgage payment tying them down once they move in.
Recognizing this, I attempt to catalog the features and management practices that are often associated with healthy and thriving online communities. Modeling your community on these attributes doesn't guarantee success, of course. After all "success" is achieving the goals you set for yourself. But I hope that your community planning and solution selection will be aided by the user-centric vision described in my article. I hope you like it, and enthusiastically welcome your comments.
Tomorrow, Feb. 12 is the "Potomac Primary" for the majority of Washington-area Forum One staff and our clients. But with two states (Maryland and Virginia), an aspiring state, and multiple overlapping jurisdictions in the mix, it can be confusing to know where and when to vote. For example, my address is Alexandria, but I reside and vote in Fairfax County.
Thankfully, the League of Women Voters has put up a useful site that makes it easy to find out everything you need to know. Worth referencing today and bookmarking for the general election:
Lately, there's been no shortage of hype about Facebook and other community-oriented sites. But true success stories are few and far between. So we're assembling some of the most compelling stories we've heard into a single, morning seminar at the National Press Club later this month. Here's the session's full description.
We've now finalized our panel, and it's dynamic line up:
Ivan Boothe, Internet strategy coordinator of the Genocide Intervention Network.
Jonathon D. Colman, Associate Director, Digital Marketing at the Nature Conservancy
Qui Diaz, Digital Strategist, 360° Digital Influence practice of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.
Heather Mansfield, Owner of DIOSA Communications and online community manager for Change.org.
Stephanie Marshall, Director of Pandemic Communications at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Janice R. Nall, Director, Division of eHealth Marketing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Don't forget that you register by Feb. 11, the cost is $80 instead of $95. The event registration page also offers a discount for folks who want to send three or more folks.
Also, if you review the entire 2008 schedule and decide that you wish to more than events, you may want to consider getting a WES Pass where you pay $50/event to attend 3 or more events in 2008.
Next week, we're hosting a usability seminar at the National Press Club titled "Putting Audiences First, Again and Again." Registration has been steady, but it's at half the clip of our previous session "Social Sites for Social Good."
Kurt Voelker and I (Andrew Cohen), traveled to New Orleans to participate in the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my fourth conference and the most useful and fulfilling. In addition our volunteering and presenting, we learned quite a bit. Here are our key take-aways:
