Net Tuesday July 7: Activist Communities in the Midst of Social Media

As warm weather settles in, nothing’s more refreshing than a flight of Net Tuesday Summer Ales.

First up, on Tuesday, July 7 starting at 6 PM at Buffalo Billiards, 118 Chestnut Street: Communi-Lager! Chris Bartlett will present Activist Communities in the Midst of Social Media. He’ll share how he has used the tools of the trade — social networks Twitter, Facebook, Stickam, and Ning — to create a series of communities that support his community organizing. He’ll engage Net Tuesday participants in an inquiry about how we can use these tools to build community, strengthen social networks, and bring about powerful change in our communities. Key ideas for the night:

•  The importance of connecting others — and not only yourself to others — as a strategy for social network organizing.
• The timeline for face-to-face — how to bring about in-person connections that strengthen online ones.
• Pitfalls of online organizing– fitting your strategies into your overall plan for getting things done.
  Most importantly, Bartlett will facilitate a conversation among participants to hear what is working for all of us. If Twitter (and other social media tools) are in fact transformative, we’ll hope to hear some stories of those transformations.

Chris Bartlett is a gay men’s health community organizer from Philadelphia. He directed the SafeGuards Gay Men’s Health Project in Philadelphia for ten years, and has acted as lead consultant to the LGBT Community Assessment in Philadelphia, a project that gathers data about LGBT communities in order to make recommendations regarding community organizing, health, housing, and economic development. He co-facilitates the Gay Men’s Health Leadership Academy, a national meeting of leaders in the field of gay men’s health and wellness, and has helped to convene the Gay Men’s Health and LGBTI Summits. Most recently, he has received support from the Arcus Foundation to develop a strategic plan for LGBT leadership development in the United States. Community organizing through social media is his greatest current passion and commitment.

RSVP’s are optional via the Meetup page. Or, just c’mon down, and bring a friend.

 

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Looking forward to what’s on tap for the rest of the Net Tuesday Summer Ale Series…

August 4: Homebrewed Rumination. We’ll be using a modified version of our Extreme Makeover: Web Strategy Edition format with Philly NetSquared’s own website: phillynetsquared.org. Together, we’ll identify specific steps we can take to enable the growing Philly NetSquared community to use our website as a place to connect with, learn from and inspire one another to realize each person’s dreams and each organization’s objectives.

September 1: Portal Pilsner. Change.org. Network for Good. Razoo. And many other sites are out there, committed to using social tools help nonprofits achieve their mission. How do you sort through the clutter and use these sites to advance your own cause?
Join us at our Net Tuesday Summer Ales, where we’ll sit back, relax and explore ways social technology can help organizations and individuals advance social change in Philadelphia.

UPDATED info on Net Tuesday, June 2: Mobile Technology for Social Change

You are probably already aware that our next Net Tuesday (June 2, starting at 6:00 PM at Buffalo Billiards, 118 Chestnut Street) is going to be about Mobile Technology and Social Change. This was the theme of the fourth annual NetSquared conference (N2Y4) that Ivan and Seth just attended in San Jose. The centerpiece of the conference was a “challenge”, in which 14 new, innovative projects competed for prize money up to $25,000.

We were blown away by some of the projects we saw, and want to share on Tuesday evening. Some highlights:

• First prize winner FrontlineSMS:Medic is saving lives in Africa with cell phones that rural health workers can use to access medical records and expertise, and (this is amazing) re-purposing the cell phone’s camera to perform breakthrough in-field diagnoses for malaria and other diseases. We’re planning to have the Clinical Programs Director participate in our meeting via videoconference to discuss it.
• Second prize winners, the Extraordinaries, are developing a way for people to use their cell phones during “spare minutes” (like, on the bus) for a growing array of “micro-volunteer” projects, like tagging photos for the Library of Congress or translating subtitles for short videos.
• Third place winner VoxMob – Mobile Voices / Voces Moviles is testing its project with immigrant workers in L.A. It empowers these people to express themselves in words, sounds and pictures to tell their stories and document abuses.
• SeeClickFix is working on a project to enable regular people to take and upload a picture of a non-emergency problem they see (e.g., a pothole or drug deal), and then automatically map it and generate notices to pressure local agencies, politicians and others to address the problem. The mapping aspect of SeeClickFix is being prototyped on Philly.com.
• The Mobile Giving Foundation enables non-profits to set up campaigns in which people can contribute small donations (e.g., $5 or $10) via their cell phones and charged on their phone bills (in which 100% of the contribution is passed through to the non-profit).

We also want to hear about your experiences or ideas about mobile tech and social change. In addition to illustrating these various initiatives, we’ll have a chance for folks to delve into the technology and/or how we can apply these capabilities to our causes here in Philly.

We’re at the very early stages of what promises to be a profoundly powerful movement to use these small and ubiquitous devices to advance social causes. Come discover and discuss what’s happening now, and get a glimpse into the future.

We’ll start gathering at 6:00 PM and begin the program at 6:30 (and we have the room until as late as 9:00). RSVP’s via the Meetup page are appreciated, but not necessary. Feel free to come and bring a friend.

Net Tuesday June 2: Mobile Technology for Social Change

Mobile technology is one of the fastest growing areas of digital technology. And developing applications for social change is following apace.

Our next Net Tuesday on June 2 will be about mobile applications for social change. Again, we’ll be meeting at Buffalo Billiards, 118 Chestnut Street. We’ll start gathering at 6:00 PM, and the program itself will begin between 6:30 and 6:45. RSVP on Meetup.

What does mobile technology for social change mean?

Ivan and Seth will discover part of the answer attending the 4th annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y4) in San Jose May 25–26, which is featuring a number of mobile projects, competing for $50,000 in prize money to further their development. (This page provides ways to follow along with the conference.) Ivan and Seth will report back on what we thought were the most interesting projects.

And, we also want to hear your thoughts and experiences (and hopes) about using mobile technology for social change. If you know of any local projects in this arena, please let us know. If you think it’s interesting, please come and share your perspectives.

The featured projects at N2Y4 include:

• Agricultural Market Information Service (AMIS) Project
• DatAgro: Increasing the Yield of Latin American Farming Cooperatives
• Digital Democracy’s Handheld Human Rights
• Equobility
• FrontlineSMS + Cell Alert = FrontlineSMS Alerts
• FrontlineSMS:Medic – SMS for Medical Records and Mobile Lab Diagnostics
• IJCentral: A Movement to Support Global Rule of Law
• IPeace
• Local SMS Community Newsletter for Promotion of Self-Employment
• PublicStuff–The Craigslist for Local Government Interaction!
• SeeClickFix: Report Non-emergency Local Problems and Collaborate to Solve Them
• Slave-Free
• The Extraordinaries — On-demand crowdsourcing volunteerism via smartphones
• VozMob: Mobile Voices/Voces Moviles

So come, bring your mobile device, and discover and talk about how these little machines are starting to play their part in improving the world.

Net Tuesday May 5: Nonprofits and Twitter

The next Net Tuesday will be next Tuesday, May 5 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM at Buffalo Billiards at 118 Chestnut Street.

Come learn about how nonprofit and social change organizations are using the micro-blogging service Twitter.

The popularity and creative use of Twitter by organizations has been growing exponentially.

• How are nonprofit and social change organizations using Twitter to engage with their audiences?
• What strategies are useful, and what pitfalls should you avoid?
• Can you really say anything in 140 characters?
• And how can you tell if your efforts in the “Twittersphere” are effective?

Join an interactive discussion about lessons learned and future plans of local nonprofit and social change organizations for using Twitter. The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance will be discussing its recent use of Twitter to engage its members in online advocacy efforts and “live reporting” from events like Philadelphia City Council meetings. Take a look at their Twitter stream.

We’re also inviting other local groups — if you work with or know of a local organization using Twitter, let us know!

Philadelphia Net Tuesday organizers will be Tweeting in advance of our gathering as well as at the event. We encourage you to Tweet about it as well — just use the hashtag #phlnet2 — and if you’re not on Twitter, you can follow along here.

We have a special sponsor this week: bg Theory, an Internet marketing training company. In support of Net Tuesday, bg Theory is offering a discount off of their upcoming Google Adwords seminars in Philly May 20 and 21.  To get the discount, go to the registration page, and enter meetnet as the discount code.

RSVPs via the Meetup page are helpful, but not required. Feel free to show up, and bring a friend. See you next Tuesday!

—Seth (Twitter: @sethhorwitz) and Ivan (Twitter: @rootwork)

Net Tuesday April 7: Mapping for Nonprofits — An introduction to GIS

For our next Net Tuesday on April 7, we are privileged to have Robert Cheetham present on mapping and geographic information systems for nonprofits.

From Google Earth to GeoRSS, maps and geography services are changing the way we interpret our world and engage with communities. The presentation will explore how geographic information systems (GIS) technology is being used to enhance the missions, meet the challenges, and answer the questions faced by non-profit organizations.

Applications cover a broad range of disciplines, including:

• political advocacy
• education
• neighborhood redevelopment
• social services
• public health
• constituency building
• public safety
• and disaster response

Almost any activity you conduct has a geographic component to it. Consequently, technology that leverages that geography can help improve communities, support better decisions, and demonstrate needs, progress, and program impact to boards of directors, stakeholders, and funders.

Robert will present some case studies of applications in nonprofit organizations and will progress from relatively simple processes to more complex analysis. Topics will include:

• the process of assigning locations to lists of addresses (geocoding)
• using geography to organize and search community assets
• incorporating map-based reports into grant applications
• visualizing the geographic and demographic patterns in donor and audience groups
• demonstrating electoral support for political reform
• prioritizing resources (real estate, natural resources and the like)
• software tools and local data resources for getting started

Bio: Robert Cheetham has been applying GIS technology to help nonprofits and government agencies for more than 12 years. He is the founder and president of Avencia, a software design and development firm based in Philadelphia. Avencia develops geographic analysis tools and services for government, nonprofit, commercial and research organizations. Previously, Robert served as the Senior GIS Developer for the City of Philadelphia and as Crime Analyst for the Philadelphia Police Department. Robert also serves as an occasional lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Design; collaborates with the Cartographic Modeling Lab at Penn; serves on the advisory committee for the Masters in GIS program at Penn State University and is Director of the Japanese Garden Research Network, a nonprofit, online database of information on Japanese gardens.

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We want to thank our sponsor for this month, NPower Pennsylvania, whose mission is “to ensure all nonprofits can use technology to better serve our community”.