Archive for May, 2008

Current and upcoming subcontracting opportunities/requests for proposal:

Virtual Assistant
Wordpress Blog Maintenance
Graphic Designer

Description: Virtual Assistant

• extremely well organized
• good attention to detail
• prompt and accountable on managing their own projects and reporting back when complete or when something comes up
• extremely experienced and comfortable handling social networking sites, managing my accounts and logins, doing light blog maintenance on Wordpress (I will have someone else run the site, but VA will at times pitch in)
• good at managing upwards (i can be highly disorganized, so i can’t invest a lot of time in organizing the admin projects)

Responsibilities

• travel planning
• manage calendar (gcal)
• maintain & update contacts database (plaxo & others)
• help track/record expenses
• complete administrative tasks and projects
• assist with marketing tasks (opportunity to earn frequent large bonuses by securing paid speaking gigs)
• assist with maintaining social media presence (researching, organizing, streamlining and suggesting features to use on various sites and content streams)
• revamp and maintain filing system (help with move from paper to electronic)
• bookkeeping

Software: MUST have experience with

• some kind of financial reporting/tracking software
• google suite: gmail, gtalk, gcal, greader, etc.
• office apps: excel, word and powerpoint
• using an RSS reader & keeping up with blogs
• productivity/time management/product management software
• fluent in web search
• social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, others

Should be willing to learn:

• Twitter
• specific finance apps like Mint, geezeo, freshbooks, xpensr, others
• WordPress blogging software
• specific project management software like Basecamp or other

If you have a recommendation or are interested, please contact Maria Thurrell via her site or via @mathurrell on Twitter.

This variant of my “2.0″ overview slide deck supported an interesting chat with some of Boston’s leading nonprofit executives at the Phillips Forum Non-Profit Cafe luncheon hosted by Colette Phillips Communications in Boston today.

I emphasized how important it is to listen and shared some anecdotes about how nonprofits can use social media. We did not go terribly in-depth on specific tools because even more important to organizations entering the space is understanding the principles and strategies that inform how to employ tactics effectively.

The last few resources and tools slides point to the real experts and resources (provided by NP2.0 guru Beth Kanter) in the “nonprofit 2.0″ space.

| View | Upload your own

Your comments and questions are most welcome, whether you were at the talk or not!

These have been rumbling around my head all morning:

1. Present your ideas, NOT your slides.
‘Nuff said.

2. Speak. To people.
Of presenting or speaking, always choose (in your own mind) to speak. Engage humans in your “audience” almost precisely the way you would engage them at a wonderful dinner party. Tell them your best stories. With love, and with interest in their interests.

3. “Which Means That.”
Live by this. Explain your concept/idea/plan/business/offering, and then append the words “which means that ___________,” and fill in the blank. Apply this repeatedly until you get to the core significance of the message and the reason that your ____ needs to exist. There is something meaningful and universally relevant at the core of anything worth doing. Tease it out and then lead with it.

(Though I forward this as a technique to make presentations better, it’s really a way to make whole organizations better. Find the significance. Share it. Always.)

View from the conference venue
in Ouchy: Image via WikipediaI gave a talk this morning in Lausanne at Stephanie Booth’s Going Solo conference for freelancers.

Stowe Boyd live-twittered the talk. Suw Charman-Anderson blogged amazingly complete notes, and Urs Gattiker wrote this post about the principles covered. Jaap Stronks is liveblogging the entire day using CoverItLive.

The slide deck is below:

| View | Upload your own

Big thank you to Stephanie and all of the attendees. We had a really enjoyable discussion (see Suw’s post for detailed notes on the Q & A also.)

(If you would like to follow these folks on Twitter: Stephanie is @stephtara, Stowe is @stoweboyd, Suw is @suw, Urs is @commetrics, Jaap is @Jaapstronks.)

UPDATE: Video of the presentation itself is already live. Wow, conference video guy! Thanks.

Adele McAlear (@adelemcalear) of McAlear Marketing contacted a friend with strong ties to and knowledge of the Myanmar/Burma situation, and he produced this guidance on where to direct aid donations. Another good place is the Nargis Action Group Myanmar.

Dear Adele,

Here is also some other information that might provide helpful for your friend:

For those wishing to respond to the terrible devastation in Myanmar/Burma caused by the recent cyclone, it is recommended that you contribute to organizations that already have staff in place inside the country and so are not dependent on foreign aid workers. Some of these organizations are:

ADRA International
Myanmar Cyclone Fund
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(800) 424-ADRA ext. 2372

CARE
151 Ellis Street N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303
(800) 521-2273

INTERNATIONAL BURMESE MONKS ORGANIZATION (in cooperation with Avaaz.org) Avaaz is raising funds for
the International Burmese Monks Organization and related groups, which will transmit funds directly to
monasteries in affected areas.The monasteries are the only source of shelter and food for Burma’s poorest people. They have been on the front lines of the aid effort since the storm struck. Go here for more information.

Project HOPE
255 Carter Hall Lane
Millwood, VA 22646
(800) 544-4673

Save the Children
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
(800) 728-3843

U.S. Fund for UNICEF
125 Maiden Lane, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10038
(800) 4UNICEF

World Concern
19303 Fremont Ave. North
Seattle, WA 98133
(800) 755-5022, ext.7706

World Vision
P.O. Box 9716
Federal Way, WA 98063
(888) 56-CHILD

(Compiled by M.L.)

This blog is link in the previous post, but their page on the cyclone is worth its own post, particularly for the map detail (which originated from Mizzima)

Cyclone Nargis « Rule of Lords

So the provocative question that Christopher Penn asked is this, can a boat from India get into any of the ports near the hardest hit areas? Were shipping facilities there also destroyed? How creative can we get?

Image via WikipediaOn Twitter, Friday, I admitted: I’ve been shamefully, intentionally, avoiding news about the cyclone in *Burma/Myanmar. It’s much worse than I’d imagined.

• @digitalmaverick yeah. pop 53 million. 1.5 million affected/endangered. 60,000 “officially” dead. Junta seizing supplies/barring aid workers
  
• Wall Street Journal article about the hope that at least this disaster could begin the end of the oppressive Junta regime.
• Will there be calls for an invasion?
• some social media context: Myanmar crackdown on bloggers

THE best idea I heard in 2007 was from Hans Rosling: approach international strife by connecting, one-to-one, with individual people outside our own cultures. Seek to better understand complexities behind the problems.

So I asked: Has anyone been able to find bloggers or other individuals in Myanmar who are getting word out from the ground?

Please subscribe to at least one of the information sources below and share them widely. (Twitter replies, Google and comments on this draft post turned up the following:)

FEEDS/TWITTER:
• @mmblogs is twittering links to Myanmar bloggers’ posts. (thanks @admore)
• @marshallk scraped this feed of Myanmar bloggers’ voices and also posted a widget (and code) in this post

BLOGGERS & DIRECTORIES:
• Rule of Law (tip: @stales)
• Rule of Law on Cyclone Nargis (LOTS of resources and a detailed map here)
• Global Voices Online
• Read this blogger who will be headed into the region shortly. She blogs on the Our World Community Ning group (tip: @jefdee)
• Myanmar Blog Directory
• Sharbar: Myanmar Blog Directory

NEWS SITES:
• Mizzima
• Irrawady
• Democratic Voice of Burma
• Here is an update from the Doctors without Borders Website

What can be done?
Not much. The junta government is seizing aid supplies and turning back relief workers at the borders. That government is itself extremely wealthy from Natural Gas sales to Thailand.

Who’d have thought this blog would ever concern itself with “breaking news?” Certainly not me. But BusinessWeek Senior Writer Stephen Baker is currently using Twitter to write an article about Twitter.

Using the #hashtags convention, you can follow @stevebaker’s Tweets and the ensuing pan-Twitter conversation in any number of ways. You can also follow the discussion at Twemes or Hashtags.org or using a plain old Twitter search tool like Summize, Terraminds or Tweetscan. My client NewsGator built the widget that is below.

Social media tools can help you rock out the next event you attend. Some general ideas to get you started (add your tips in the comments)…

Know the Territory
See if anyone has set up an RSS compilation (such as Grazr) app. to compile event related news, participant blog posts, into a single stream. Spend some time with the event’s website itself, to review schedule, tips, attendees, etc. extra handy if the site has any RSS feeds.

Take a look at who else is going, per Facebook page, event website, etc. You might actually send some polite notes/connection requests (describe similarities, relevance or something to do with their interests) to those you hope to see at the event. Events are a flurry of activity and attention. If you have specific questions, contact the individual/s in advance so that you’re not surprising them. Try to see meeting someone from their side and keep it respectful, engaging and mutually beneficial. You’re at your best when connecting to and sharing with humans, not pitching.

Ask your friends if there is anyone in particular that you “really should meet” at the event. (note: this should be meet for a reason: something in common, etc., not meet because they’re famous or you want to extract something from them etc.). Tune in to who else is going and see if you can be helpful. Not sycophantic, just helpful. Just before Leweb3 I learned on Twitter that a friend of a friend needed an iPhone brought to France. I live near an Apple store. I was more than happy to help.

Listen!
Keep an eye on streams of commentary/community such as Twitter. Try to follow/connect mutually with folks who will be attending that you might like to meet. Subscribe (follow them or use RSS from their profile pages) to the feeds of others who will be there, so you can see at a glance what is going on as the event unfolds. You can go to www.summize.com or www.terraminds.com, search for a term or keyword (like the conference name) and then subscribe to an RSS feed of those search results. Often the event will also have a twitter feed or keyword tags (like hash tags) to use in compiling event-related tweets. Most of this advice also applies to blog search, general search and more.

UPDATE: Very easy and efficient way to listen: go to @eventtrack, find your event, click and/or subscribe to follow along.

Speak up!
Blog about it: post that you are going and a little bit about your interests in the conference. You may get the opportunity to meet blog readers, followers, friends of friends, etc. You can also use Twitter or your blog (or social networks. or all of the above.) to ask: Who else is going? What is going on? Who wants to connect?

Go With the Flow
The best advice came from @shelisrael: go with the flow. Your plans will change. Synchronicity and serendipity will send opportunities your way. Don’t be so tied to plans that you can’t experience them fully. Don’t be afraid to invoke the “law of two feet,” that is, to move on if you are not deriving value. Try another session or hallway conversation or social group instead.

Populate your Village
Don’t just grab (and foist) business cards, find ways to loosely connect with the people you meet going forward. Leave doors open or ajar. Use a presence application or a social network to allow the contact to gradually become more known to you and to get to know you better. Read each other’s blogs, share ideas, allow the relationship to emerge organically instead of confining it to a contact management dead-end. This practice of gradually getting to know people and preserving an open line of communication is what inspired Twitter is my Village. Find a metaphor and platform that works for you.

I’ll post later this week with a follow-up on better meeting and connecting with people at events.

I don’t usually play at meme tag games. In fact, this one took me months to comply to. In the meanwhile Jane Quigley also tagged me, so this is really overdue.

Because, and only because it was Maggie Fox what did it, and because she tagged me in Such. Good. Company. I’m making an exception this one time. So here’re some weird things about me that you might not know. Whether you actually care is a different story altogether, but it can’t hurt to have a little fun.

1. Favorite adventure: hitchhiking around Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland in the summer of 1995. No offense, England, but I was having too much fun in Ireland and skipped visiting you altogether.

2. Most flawed climate research: living (the wrong) 7 months of one year (Sept. 94 - March 95) in Moscow.

3. Weirdest honor: nominated for President of a Sinn Fein group in County Clare.

4. Dumbest move: sleeping one night on the streets of Paris. (tho not at LeWeb3 when I stayed at the lovely Hotel Du Cadran courtesy of www.hotelsaparis.com

5. Jack-of-these-trades: Jobs I’ve held for pay for at least one week: first-grade teacher, waitress, prep cook, chef, caterer, purchasing agent, project manager, PR wonk, marketing exec., interactive television strategist, developing show ideas for cable TV, freelance journalist, and in retail selling specialty foods, equestrian gear and plants.

6. Best use of a state park: living in Hueco Tanks State Park, Hueco Tanks, TX for 2 1/2 months in 1993 in order to rockclimb full time.

7. Strangest home: I’ve logged 12+ months of sea time living in teensy bunks aboard the SSVs Westward, Corwith Cramer, and Robert C. Seamans with the Sea Education Association. I’m madly in love with the islands of Bequia and Saba as a result.

8. What’s my major? I studied Environmental Science and Public Policy, wrote my undergrad thesis on Social Analysis of Soil Erosion and published on soil erosion (in Science) and environmental racism. So naturally, I’m now in communications.

In turn, I tag YOU. (Call it self-service meme tag. If you want to play along, play along and link back to it here.)