Archive - November, 2008

Happy #TweetsGiving! Day 1 Perspective

November 26, 2008 in community, social media with 13 Comments

First of all, if you haven’t yet been to http://tweetsgiving.org, go now, I’ll wait.

The Scoop

So, Stacey called me on Wednesday night, with the name and twitter account for TweetsGiving, asking for ideas.  We settled on the idea of getting people to tweet their gratitude, and immediately began thinking about who we could bring on board to help make it happen. Today, after a lot of brainstorming and hard work by many amazing people, #TweetsGiving was a top trending term in twitter and our campaign is well underway to building a new classroom in Tanzania for Gideon and his classmates.

So many twitterers tweeted gratitude throughout the Twitterverse, demonstrating that social media can mobilize an outpouring of Thanksgiving. If you’re not on twitter you can still participate and donate to a worthy cause. Also consider sharing your gratitude in your Facebook status instead.

Here’s the graph of our presence throughout the day on twitter.

Wow. I’m feeling wow.

Yesterday I was pumped and today I am so inspired and happy that this project came together from a mere inkling of an idea six days ago. It has grown into such an amazing campaign.

I’ve been overwhelmed all day by the willingness of the twitter community to step up and get involved in this project. A search for the #TweetsGiving tag really demonstrates how deeply we’ve threaded twitter with gratitude. So far, we have raised over $4,000 (and counting!) towards our goal of $10,000. In just 12 of 48 hours!

This screenshot from this afternoon shows #TweetsGiving as the third most popular term (And there are over 4 million twitter users!).

Thanks!

Since TweetsGiving is about gratitude, I will say that I am so grateful to all those working on the project, especially my partner in crime Stacey and countless others who have reached out to me throughout the day. You rock! I am also grateful to the gazillions of tweeters and the 150+ people who have so far generously donated to TweetsGiving.

On a personal note, I am so grateful to have my mom and sister and so thankful to have all four of my grandparents active in my life. Since the election, I’ve been thinking a lot about all of the blessings that come with being an American. I will have more to say on that and about what I’ve learned from this project after Thanksgiving. I will definitely have more to say once the frenzy winds down. (But not yet! Keep it coming!)

Pumped: Gary Vaynerchuk On Killing It

November 21, 2008 in heart, social media with 4 Comments

I found this video in a post on Todd Defren’s site PR-Squared where he shared Gary Vaynerchuk‘s Web2.0 keynote.

Gary’s tone and energy match the way I’m feeling now. I’m working on something big and I am pumped. Every conversation about this project has me energized and I’ve taken to saying “Kill It!” as the pieces fall into place. Hopefully I’ll have more to report early next week. In the meantime enjoy Gary.

Note: There’s some not so office friendly language in there.

There are so many gems here including the quote Todd shared that I also liked.

“If you’re pumping out good shit, people will follow. But if you for a second – for a 1/2 second – don’t believe in what you are doing … you need to get out, now.”

Some of my other favorites -

“Hustle is the most important word. Ever.”
“Your great great great grandchildren are going to watch and see everything you’ve ever done.”
“There is never a bad time when you believe, when you work hard, and when you know what you’re doing.”
“The only way to succeed now is to be completely transparent.”

How does this resonate with you?

Trick Out Your Inbox: Make Gmail Awesome

November 19, 2008 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments

Speaking with Joe Solomon (@EngageJoe on twitter) yesterday about an awesome project, he reflected on the difficulty of keeping up with email and we realized that we both use Gmail as our default email client.

If you’re anything like me, getting to inbox zero is a pipe-dream. Joe, this post I won’t stop the email from coming in, but it will trick your inbox out and maybe make it prettier as well.

Google settings

Gmail’s normal settings already allows a surpring number of options for tricking out your Gmail. I like that you can cull together your other email accounts in one inbox and respond from whatever address you prefer. You can also compose a signature to go out with all your sent messages and include html if you want to.

The next source of Gmail customization comes from the google labs section of Gmail settings. Here are some of my favorites.

Superstars – If the default yellow stars don’t seem like enough for you, enable superstars and you can have even more icon options that starring an item will let you rotate through. If that’s still not enough you can add the Superstars Turbo script.
Keyboard Shortcuts – If you hate using a mouse in your inbox, or miss the old days when you used to se pine, enable shortcuts in labs and you can set a ton of actions to simple keystrokes.

Pictures in Chat – see your friends’ pictures when you chat with them in gchat – makes it that much closer to a normal chat client.

Forgotten Attachment Detector -With this activated, Gmail will prompt you if you fail to attach a file while your message contains phrases like “check out the attached Godzilla cartoon,” or my favorite, “my resume is attached.”

Custom Label Colors – Now we’re getting to the money stuff. I’ve actually had people make me show them on the spot why my inbox was so colorful when they noticed the effects of this feature. Not for everyone, but if you label often it can help things stand out.

Gadgets – These can really move your Gmail window towards being a one stop shop. Gadgets appear in your Gmail sidebar ad Google calendar and google docs are built in options, but you can add any gadget you enjoy on your iGoogle homepage to your Gmail sidebar, like the weather, a calculator, your favorite news site or the remember the milk task manager.

Greasemonkey

The key to a lot of the deeper Gmail customizations is the GreaseMonkey Firefox Addon. If you don’t have that installed yet, now’s the time. That said, the remainder of the customizations will only work in FireFox because they depend on Greasemonkey.

Better Gmail 2

The Better Gmail 2 add on is a collection of a ton of Gmail Greasemonkey scripts into one FireFox addon. Here are my favorite features from the options menu.

Force encrypted connection – You can force Gmail to engage the google server using the more secure https protocol. Nice added security for working at coffee shops and in public.

Macros ? shortcuts – Enables a ton of shortcuts and you can always hit ? to bring them up if you forget.

Show CC Automatically – You can have the BCC box display as well if you like, but I find I use that one less frequently. There are other composition defaults you can change as well.

Collapsible Calendar and Reader – With this option these applications will appear in panes just below your inbox within the main Gmail window. Useful so you don’t have to open another tab each time you want to add an event to your calendar or find something quickly in your feed reader.

Attachment Icons – pretty!

Skins! – I use the Gmail blue skin. Skins are essentially custom theming for your Gmail display – It’s really like night and day when you first see your inbox using a skin. I use the Gmail Blue skin, but check out Gmail Redesigned if you want something more radical.

update: gmail has just released a themes tab within settings that will be rolling out to all users in the next weeks.

Those are all the changes I have made using Better Gmail 2 though there are more options to explore. After you’re done configuring the addon just refresh the page to see the changes.

Phew! That’s a lot of customization. Which of these do you use and find helpful and what have I left out? Also feel free to share general email management tips and link

Thank You Stacey Monk of Epic Change

November 17, 2008 in Uncategorized with 10 Comments

I want to introduce and thank Stacey Monk who has been a real inspiration and mentor to me.

Stacey runs an organization called Epic Change that seeks to support community change by helping people to use the power of their stories to obtain the resources they need to improve their communities. In its first project, Epic Change is partnering with Mama Lucy Kamptoni expand Shepherds Junior a school in Arusha, Tanzania that now has over 200 students.

I first met Stacey this past May on twitter. She had just posted about a Miracle on her birthday when she guest posted on Sam Lawrence’s blog. As I have gotten more involved with Epic Change, I have learned so much from Stacey and I am thankful to have her as a mentor. Her passion is an inspiration and she works tirelessly to help the people she works with. Stacey is deeply connected to the world around her and acutely aware that distance doesn’t make problems any less significant.

This week Epic Change is issuing holiday cards with the proceeds going to support Shepherds Junior. She’s posted about her excitement about the holiday cards on her blog. They’ll hopefully be available on her site this week.

Stacey is very good at saying thank you. Back in August she entered a competition to win funding for her cause by creating a video of Shepherds Junior students using post it notes to thank Epic Change’s supporters. The video didn’t win the money, but I felt like a million bucks. (See if you can spot my name in there)

Stacey, you’ve taught me so much about gratitude, having a can do spirit, and leading by example. Thank you!

What about you folks? What, or who are you thankful for as Thanksgiving approaches?

This post is a submission to the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, be sure to check out the other submissions this week on SocialButterfly.

Update: The holiday cards are now live and smokin’ on the Epic Change site.

All About RSS and How You Can Subscribe To This Blog

November 14, 2008 in blogging, community, social media with Comments Off

Thanks for reading my blog. I’ve enjoyed my my new posting schedule (more of an aspiration really). If you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe in the sidebar. You can subscribe using an RSS reader, or you can receive the posts in your inbox by putting your email into the box in the blog side bar, or type it into this box here and click subscribe.

But what is RSS?

RSS or Really Simple Syndication enables you to subscribe to the content of many websites or blogs so that you can more easily keep track of them without visiting the sites directly. Basically you can receive the posts of many different blogs in an interface called an RSS reader that feels a lot more like email.

Huh? Well maybe the good folks at Common Craft explain it better than I can. They make a living clarifying Web concepts like RSS in fantastic videos like this one on RSS in plain English.

Nifty. It turns out only about 11% of internet users make use of RSS (LINK) so now you are in the know :)

My RSS reader of choice is google reader because I enjoy a lot of the extra features Google has baked in and some of the customizations I have found from various developers and Google itself.

Shortcuts. Shortcuts make the world go round and google reader has a lot of shortcuts many of which are similar to google’s own gmail shortcuts which I also use.

Sharing. One of the most useful features of google reader is the ability to easily share something you enjoyed with everyone connected to you in the reader. You can even include comments that will be included with the post itself when your friends go to see what you’ve shared with them. The feature automatically culls from your list of gmail contacts to determine who is also sharing on the system, though you can customize sharing as well. Even cooler is the fact that you can literally share anything via google reader even things you aren’t subscribed to by using the sharing notes bookmarklet.

Search and sorting. Like most google products, reader is powered by search so I can find articles easily even if I only a few phrases from the content stick out in my memory. You can also and view the reading list in alphabetical order or view only new items. There is also and All Items view that gives you the option to see things in one river of news the way Robert Scoble describes.

So please subscribe to the RSS feed (by RSS reader or email if you prefer), keep sharing your feedback, and if you enjoy something you see here please do share it with a friend.

Three Lessons In Social Media Adoption From Parkour

November 12, 2008 in social media with 6 Comments

For those not in the know, according to its Wikipedia page:

“Parkour … is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.[2] It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment—from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls—and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas.”

Still confused? Check out this video of Parkour at the Fermi Institute. (Thank you google reader and thanks Judy for sharing!)

So what can Parkour teach us about Social Media Adoption?

For those now thinking,  “Avi that was pretty cool, but I don’t need my organization or business to bounce off walls”, let me explain why I think Parkour works as an analogy for social media adoption.

1. Social Media can be very exciting

These days it seems everyone is talking about social tools. A lot of people are talking about the role it played in this year’s historic presidential election both in terms of communicating with supporters and tracking the election results. CNN anchors are reading Twitter on air. It’s definitely gotten some more attention lately.

When organizations first start to see a return on their investment into social media it can be a rush. Once you really start to listen and engage customers, donors, constituents, whoever it can be really exciting. Look! They’re talking about us!

2. You can get hurt

Of course, fast adoption of social media without careful planning and an adequate investment of time and attention can land your organization in hot water. You could make the mistake of throwing your social efforts on one person or department, cordoning off the responsibility and ultimately wind up with burned out and frustrated staff people. Equally dangerous is falling into the trap of being distracted by all the shiny tools, instead of focusing on where you’re going. There is a time to fondle the hammer, but as in Parkour if you’d better know where you are and where you’re going, or you’re likely to run into obstacles, maybe even have some nasty spills.

3. Transparency

With Social Media, as in Parkour, all the action is in public. If your not prepared to tighten your grip on your message and release the conversation to the wild than you ought to think twice before diving in. Of course, deciding that Social Media efforts aren’t the right approach for your organization or business is perfectly valid, but once you’re playing you’d better be prepared. It’s a complex question and there is a lot to consider before you do.

Does my Parkour analogy work? In any case these are some good things to keep in mind. What else should organizations keep in mind about Social Media?

I can’t leave it at that can I? No, did you really think I’d deny you these awesome Parkour links and videos? First off if you have an Xbox you may want to check out the new Mirror’s Edge game which let’s you lay it down on screen.

And another similar phenomenon of people chucking cans.

Interview with Nitesh Banta – Summer Workation

November 11, 2008 in community, social media with Comments Off

My friend and college roommate Nitesh Banta has been working on an awesome project called Summer Workation for over a year now. The project is centered around the idea of connecting teachers with working vacation growth opportunities so they can make the most of their summers and use the time for real development. I’m impressed with the plans and the project aspires to begin addressing some of the bigger challenges facing education.
The project is currently participating in an online entrepreneurship contest on Ideablob, a site where ideas compete for $10,000 in funding on a monthly basis. Banta’s project is doing pretty well so far, but the first round doesn’t end until Friday so there is still a long way to go. You can read about how Summer Workation plans to spend the money and vote as well on projects Ideablob page. (hit the vote button on the right). You do have to confirm your email and register to vote, but it’s fast and painless.

When I saw Summer Workation had entered the contest I took the opportunity to ask Nitesh to answer some questions about his work so far and he happily agreed.

Tell me about yourself.

My name is Nitesh and I currently work as an education/business consultant in Boston. I graduated from Harvard last June. These days I try to balance my time between working and workationing.

What’s the idea behind Summer Workation?

Summer workation is an education social entrepreneurship project that helps teachers make the most of their summers. By doing this, we hope to address some of the challenges currently facing education. Right now teachers generally have a limited set of summer opportunities, most of which don’t focus on their own growth. By helping teachers find the best workations, we hope teachers can spend their summers developing and return to the classroom as stronger teachers.

What’s your founding story?

I came up with the idea while interning at Google. I saw college interns with no experience adding a lot of value to the company. I began to think about what the teachers I knew did over the summer. They had tangible and useful experience, yet they generally do not have the same opportunities as students. This conundrum continued to plague me. I started to think about it and mapped out an idea called Summer Workation. That’s where I am today!

You’ve been talking about this project nonstop. Is there an elevator pitch and what have you learned about communicating your social entrepreneurship through this process?

Conventional wisdom calls for individuals to provide a 60 second pitch that will convince others that their idea is great. While I think it is useful to have an elevator pitch, I think it is the wrong way to approach the problem. Instead of having an elevator pitch, I think we should aspire to have elevator conversation. I always mention my idea as briefly as possible and then listen to see what others have to say (even if it is only 60 seconds.) I have learned so much this way! I think it is crucial to engage others and this happens through a conversation not a pitch.

Do you have any thoughts on being a young person advocating for social change?

Stick with it! Starting up any project is difficult and I think everything can be that much harder when you are young. There aren’t necessarily a lot of avenues for young people to become entrepreneurs, but their are a lot of great mentors. Reach out to your friends, you will be surprised how many have started (or are thinking about starting) a business/nonprofit/project. Connect with them and you can learn together!

How have you been spreading the word?

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to share my idea. I have been using my own network and asked friends/family to spread the word. The more you talk about an idea the better – it is crazy how quickly an idea can grow!

OK, so I voted for the project on Ideablob, now what? How else can people get involved?

Stay updated on the site and let us know what you think (particularly if you have workation ideas.) If you are really interested, shoot me an e-mail (nbanta@summerworkation.org) and we can figure out a way for you to get involved!

Finally, if you could go anywhere in the world for Summer Workation where would you go?

I would go to Alaska to learn about climate change and hang out with polar bears/my friend Faon.

Thank you Nitesh for sharing your experience with us!

What advice would you offer Nitesh? Personally, I’m interested to hear what further steps people think he should consider taking to spread the word and get more people invested in his idea, but something else might jump out at you. Brainstorm in the comments and Nitesh feel free to respond to people’s ideas. Remember to vote!

Announcing a New Blog Posting Schedule and Comment Policy – Kicking Myself in the Pants

November 10, 2008 in blogging, community, social media with 23 Comments

I feel like I need a big jumpstarting kick in the pants. Here goes.

Almost a year ago in January, in my first blog post I said I was throwing my hat over the wall.

The sentiment is that sometimes the only way to achieve a goal is to commit yourself entirely. Within the analogy the desire to retrieve the briefcase motivates you to overcome whatever obstacle the wall presents… My hope in starting this blog has been to throw my hat and briefcase as far into the void as I can, setting my aspirations high, so hopefully I’ll learn something retrieving them.

Going after those aspirations has been so gratifying and I have learned so much in the process. Since January I’ve taken two great classes in Computer Science, read and processed a ridiculous amount of new information about social media and its potential to foster social change, built accounts and poked around on virtually every social networking site developing a presence for myself in different online communities (follow me on twitter if you’d like), and had the opportunity to contribute and grow in the online division of a dynamic philanthropy services consulting firm.

Why the Kick?

I felt I had to highlight my successes to put things in perspective, but looking back I think I’ve fallen a bit short in terms of launching myself over that wall. My aspirations were too broad and my goals for this blog so indefinite that posting got scary and I got lazy.

I’m not sure that announcing a regular posting schedule makes posting any less scary, but it definitely injects some accountability into my thinking, since the schedule is public and hopefully people will be visiting with the expectation of seeing my new minty fresh posts and ideas. I’m also going to be emailing contacts this week to let them know about my blog and new regular posting plans so that’s even more accountability.

Posting Schedule

As of now I will be posting to Meshugavi Blog 4 times a week, Monday-Thursday.

I’m not writing this in stone, of course, and I expect to sometimes post on other days, post more than once some days, change things up occasionally, and fall off the wagon too. Despite all that, I’m setting this goal and you can hold me accountable (avi[AT]avisamkaplan[DOT]com for complaints).

Commenting Policy

I really appreciate your attention and time. There are many sites where I participate by being a lurker and rarely commenting, but I want to encourage folks and give a plug for commenting here. While I’m happy you find my thoughts worth reading, I want to hear your thoughts too, so please share that reflection, questions, thought, or idea that pops into your head. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader log Google Blog reader remember that your missing any conversation going on in the comments unless you visit the site itself occasionally and if you’d like to comment you can easily click the post title to get to the comment box.

Aside from that invitation, it goes without saying that you should be civil to other commenters and myself,  refrain from spamming, and I reserve the right to moderate or suspend comments if I feel the need.

See you back here tomorrow!

photo by by Bill in Ash Vegas

Blogging at onPhilanthropy at Changing Our World: CW not COW

November 6, 2008 in blogging, social media with Comments Off

Since moving to Washington DC I have been working at Changing Our World, Inc. a philanthropy consulting company. Part of my work in the Interactive Services department has enabled me to contribute to onPhilanthropy, a content network of news, jobs, and thought leadership in the philanthropic sector.

Aside from helping to administer the site I have also participated in the Future Leaders in Philanthropy group (FLiP), helping to administer the group’s blog and the FLiP Facebook Page. I actually owe this job to my attendance at a FLiP on Tap networking event in New York when Mike Hoffman, the company CEO, singled me out in his speech for having introduced myself to him. Just goes to show that it pays to put yourself out there with a dose of confidence.

I highly recommend onPhilanthropy to anyone looking for interesting articles or blogs relevant to the philanthropic sector. Most of the content is syndicated with RSS as well if you want to subscribe. Also, feel free to check out my posts to the onLine blog there in which I get the scoop on the Digital Media and Learning Competition in an interview with Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg, and another exploring the ways twitter is being used to drive social action.

Election Day Stories, Tracking, and Schwag. Enjoy the Evening!

November 4, 2008 in community, social media with Comments Off

Friends, election day has finally arrived and I love it. For one thing the threshold for talking to strangers has dropped out of the floor. “Nice sticker man!” to the guy passing you in the crosswalk will win you a big smile from just about anyone today. The elevator ride down from my office, normally a silent affair had everyone chatting about where they were heading out to, or what their experience was like in the morning. I got cheers when I shared that I had sent my absentee ballot off to Florida last week.

An Election of WE

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Seth Godin’s lessons from the election. He write about the centrality of stories. Here’s the section that resonates with me down at the bottom.

“So why didn’t the ads work this time?

The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user.”

Over over again this election season people speak about how “we’ve have to win” and how “we’re going to pull through”. My grandfather has been using the same WE with me since June and I enjoyed reading about Seth and Jackie’s voting stories from across the pond too.

Track Results

There are a ton of places to track election results tonight. I was also happy to find that MSNBC is streaming their coverage live- the quality is pretty good, so if you find yourself without a tv – never fear! You can get a nice bird’s eye view of coverage at Alltop too and Read Write Web has a nifty Election Day Web Tool Kit.

Also, if you’re into the wisdom of crowds you can check out Daily Kos’ predictions contest though that I’d bet that demographic is skewed enough to negate the theory in this case.

Election Day Schwag

There’s a ton of free stuff around town this election day.
(I’m writing this post from Starbucks across from my office as I enjoy my free coffee.)

Happy Election day everyone!

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