Once we get started they are all over the computers. For most of them it’s the first time they’ve ever used one. They’re tickled when they get the hang of it. Double clicking, notepad, saving documents, drag and drop, folders- they take turns learning the basics. One student, Edmund, pulls me aside to ask if the copmuters have games. I’m not sure so I tell him I’ll find out and show him when class is over. 10 minutes later I come back and see him and Gideon happily playing pinball Later on we do a lesson for the teachers. They pick it up quick and realize how much time excel can save them in compiling semester grades.

It’s 6 am in Arusha and the birds are waking up too. It took a whole day to get here. I left at 10am Monday from Washington DC and finally made it to Tanzania at 2pm Tuesday.

Getting off the plane was a trip- right onto the tarmac the way it used to be in Tel-Aviv. Then I’d forgotten the address of our apartment here while I was filling out the entrance form. The agent waved me through to go get the address from Sanjay waiting outside -”just come back here once you have it.”

The 45 minute ride from the airport to Arusha is eye opening. The road is bumpy and superdusty. A few wispy dust cyclones actually emerged in the road in front of us!

Cars drive on the left side of the road. You can see Mt. Meru in the distance looming over the whole landscape. We passed a bunch of small villages on the way- lots of storefronts plastered with advertising. Signs for Coke, Pepsi, Kilimanjaro beer, Tigo and other cell phone carriers, are everywhere! Big run down, almost airport-shuttle looking vans called dalla dallas are everywhere, each one crammed with 30-40 people.

In spite of all the dust and how dry it is, there are areas that are incredibly lush. There is some serious greenery here too- banana trees, Eucaluptus and Jacarandas which are my favorite here. Jacaranda trees are in bloom now with huge tufts of bright purple all along main avenues. The center of town is much more developed – lots of hotels, restaurants, shops, and a visiting circus (really). The gap between rich and poor is apparent everywhere here. Walking into a tourist hotel is like stepping into another world.

Kilimanjaro beer is amazing. Do we have this in the US? Why not? Also the coke is better since it’s made with sugar cane instead of corn syrup.

Wednesday morning we made it out to the lower school at Shepherd’s Junior which is around Mama Lucy’s house -the classroom we taught in used to be her front poorch. We took a ride in one of the school’s vans and Mama Lucy met us there.

A note on Mama Lucy

This woman is incredible. She’s packing some serious kindness and has this huge infectious smile. We greet her with Shikamoo which is what people say out of respect when greeting their elders here. It translates literally to “I touch your feet”.

It was a holiday in honor of the country’s first president, Nyerere, but class five showed up to meet with us anyways for their computer class. These kids are awesome. They are so respectful. When anyone walks in they all stand – that reminded me of yeshivah. They address their teachers as teacher instead of Mr. or Ms. “Good morning teacher Stacey!”

Once we get started they are all over the computers. For most of them it’s the first time they’ve ever used one. They’re tickled when they get the hang of it. Double clicking, notepad, saving documents, drag and drop, folders- they take turns learning the basics. One student, Edmund, pulls me aside to ask if the copmuters have games. I’m not sure so I tell him I’ll find out and show him when class is over. 10 minutes later I come back and see him and Gideon happily playing pinball Later on we do a lesson for the teachers. They pick it up quick and realize how much time excel can save them in compiling semester grades.

In the afternoon we pick up AJ and Melissa Leon who’ve joined us here for the next weeks. Melissa has taught ESL by using twitter before and she’s got a whole curriculum for teaching the kids at Shepherd’s Junior ready.

In town in the evening I exchange some dollars so I’ll have some spending money. The exchange rate is $1 = 1300 shillings. The wad of shillings I get back from my hundred dollar bill feels like monopoly money.

Everything is new here. I’m enjoying learning a bit of Swahili, meeting new ppl, and the kids most of all. More soon.

Tutaonana! (See you soon, or lehitraot)

I wrote this from 30,000 feet on my way to The NTC, The Nonprofit Technology Network’s (NTEN) annual conference, though now I’m finally posting it from the conference hotel. I’m excited. I’ve been looking forward to this for over a year since Beth Kanter told me I ought to go last spring.

If it had worked out for me to attend last year I would have been overwhelmed and a bit lost. I’m sure I’ll still be overwhelmed this week (there are 1,400 folks coming to this shindig!), but this year I have the advantage of going with the anticipation of meeting up with friends and many people I’ve spoken and collaborated with via phone, email, and twitter.

This year 09NTC for me is a reunion. I feel like I belong and that I have ideas to contribute to the discussions. If you’d like to get a taste of the conference, but won’t be attending, you can be there virtually with me since I’ll be liveblogging! I’m flattered that Holly Ross asked me to help in this way and excited to be joining such a great team of bloggers in this effort. There are apparently some neat features in the liveblogging tool that I’ll get to play with like polling the audience, twitter integration that will pull my tweets while sessions are going. You can visit my ntc liveblog directly from here.

My session picks

There are so many great sessions, and I’m still undecided about some time slots so these may change, but here are my picks for now.

On Monday

10:30 I’ll be at “Online Outreach – The Seven Things Everyone Wants”
1:30 I’m at “You Made a Video, Now What?” with See3′s Michael Hoffman
3:30 at “Email Segmentation – Targeting works”.

Tuesday

10:30 I’m at “Old School Best Practices Applied to Social Media – Is social media for me?”
1:30 at “Community Management – Evolution of Online Communities”
3:30 at either “No Country for Old Media – SM Flash Causes, Twestival, etc.” or “Learning From the Presidential Campaigns”.

Day of Service

Sunday morning I got to participate in NTC’s Day of Service. Britt Bravo and I met with Albert Bricker from the St. James’ School which is a Bay Area Catholic school. We talked about blogging strategy, focus, and tools. It was a lot of fun and Albert’s actually already up.

One of the most repeated pieces of blogging advice I have read is that it’s important not to hold back on your good content. I am having a hard time with that lately because on the one hand I am sitting on 3+ weeks of great posts in not-so-rough-draft form, but on the other hand I have said I would be posting Monday-Thursday. If I stick to that posting schedule, some of the thoughts I have in the moment won’t be relevant if I wait for the right or perfect day to share them.

Chris Brogan and others have stressed the importance of having a blog editorial calendar. I’m finding it hard to plan ahead in that structure so that things are still relevant when I share them and so I also don’t feel stifled. When I’m having thoughts like, “no you already have X number of posts ready for next week. Publish that thought later!” it’s time to cut loose.

If this blog is really going to be about me exploring and sharing as opposed to being about me obsessing and responding to traffic data then I need to be more liberal with the publish button. I generally reflect in a working notepad file, but I’m going to experiment with doing that thinking right inside the blog text area. It may get bumpy, or less polished here while I play, but I expect that this freedom I’m granting myself will have me sharing more which I’ll enjoy! I hope you’ll keep questioning, posing ideas in different ways, sharing your experience, and reflecting right along with me in the comments or elsewhere.

I have been amazed at the response of the twitter community to the TweetsGiving campaign. The firehose of gratitude shared through the #tweetsgiving tag during those 48 hours was overwhelming. Now that TweetsGiving 2008 is over (and we’ve met our goal!!) I wanted to share some data about our efforts. This year during TweetsGiving…

• ~3,000 gratitude tweets were posted including the tweetsgiving tag. search.twitter.com only lets you go back 100 pages so that’s an estimate, but check out the awesome wordle visualization of these gratitude tweets below.

• TweetsGiving was one of the top trending terms over the 48 hours of the campaign. The screenshot below from twitscoop gives a sense of the campaign as it spread in real time. Note the rise in activity in the first and last hours as word initially got out and as urgency built to help us reach the goal by the deadline.

• $11,021 were raised in 364 donations

• The TweetsGiving site had 15,830 Total Pageviews from 7,563 Unique Visitors in 101 different countries.

• TweetsGiving received over 100 press and blogger mentions (currently 107).

I had an amazing time putting together the TweetsGiving campaign with Stacey and the rest of our team. Thank you Stacey, Dave and Carrie, Matt, Vince, and Sarah. Thanks to Tori, Brian, and Mari for tweeting up a storm with us and feeling empowered to make this event their own. I can’t express my appreciation enough for everyone who tweeted thanks, donated, blogged, shared, or reflected with us to help make this Thanksgiving truly amazing.

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!)

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.

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.

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?

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?

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!

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

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!

Just in: My apartment rocks the hizzhouse! That’s right folks- I’ve got my own place and a great roommate to boot. I feel like I’ve joined some secret club. It’s great. Here’s one of many photos Judy took of Josh and me signing our lease. Look mom – no hands!

Our Place is Awesome

Here’s why I love my apartment.

• We have a pool! A POOL! It’s on the roof and there’s water and everything. I’ve started swimming most days and I’m enjoying the chance to cool my head in the water at the end of the day.
• Location. We are a block from the subway at Dupont Circle, 20 minutes walk from Kesher Israel Synagogue, 10 minutes from the DCJCC, and six blocks from Trader Joe’s and Safeway. A ton of our friends are nearby. Hurray!
• We love Mulu! Mulu is the woman who staffs the front desk during the day. She is spunky as anything and looks out for us.
• All the free stuff. Our place came mostly furnished and today we scored a ton of things from a woman moving out of another unit- linens, pillows, a stereo, paper goods, plastic drawers, and booze.
• Josh lives here too. I know, “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww…”

On the Way

Today the final construction on our partition wall are being completed and Josh’s new bedroom will soon be carved out of the living room (no worries, we still have plenty of common space left). We still need Comcast to come out here and do their magic so we can use the internet, and this afternoon we’re heading to Target to buy cooking and dishware, but it’s shaping up fast.

You can find a sweet apartment in DC too.

Before we started looking we knew the general area we wanted to live in and we heard from lots of people that in a solid 2-3 days you can be pretty sure you’ll find a place. We found ours in a day and half. Here’s how you can do it too.

1) Craigslist DC is home base. Check here every morning and search for the neighborhoods you’re considering. For us that meant Dupont, Foggy Bottom, and Adams Morgan. Places go like lightning so try to make appointments for same day. If you are told the place has already been taken ask if the person is knows of or is renting other places in your price range.

2) Walk into apartment buildings and ask if there are vacancies. This is how we found our place. It may help to start by mapping out the locations of likely buildings on a google map. For starters try the Kesher Building List and the SAIS Building List. Pop into buildings on the list and any others that look promising along the way.

3) Call management companies in the area to ask about vacancies.

4) Have people you know in the area check on vacancies in their buildings for you in advance of your search. Friends may also know of people moving out whose leases you can take over.

5) Consider looking at one bedroom places even if you mean to have two people living in the place. If you find something big enough and the landlord and building consent, you can construct a partition wall to create a second bedroom. Plus, there’s always bunk beds

Come Visit

It is really nice to be settling into this apartment. Friends, let me know when you’re in town – There’s a futon and a place at my Shabbos table waiting for you.