Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

These notes are a best effort.

Blog your corrections and commentary.

Attendees:

• BK: Beth Kanter, blogs about nonprofits, Cambodia, has worked in nonprofits for over 25 years
• K: Kiran – works in a nonprofit that has a cybercafe, blog (featured in Beth’s presentation)
• MM: Marilyn Morgan (formerly Costanzo) – is archivist
• IM: Ingo Muschenets
• j: j Baumgart
• LG: Louis Godena
• JK: Janet Kolodzy, journalism prof at Emerson
• NF: Nava Frank (DF: she *gets* nonprofit tech)
• RM: Rebecca MacKinnon, Berkman fellow, Global Voices
• As: Aaron Swartz
• BR: Brian Reich, consultant, blogger on internet & politics. Has spiffy sheep on his tie.
• EG: Erica George
• BD: Brian Del Vecchio, will be recording meeting, http://hybernaut.com/
• AH: Ann House
• DF: Deborah Elizabeth Finn, nonprofit cyber-yenta extraordinaire
• DW: David Weinberger, Berkman fellow
• PS: Pito Salas, building BlogBridge reader
• MW: Mal Watlington
• LW: Lisa Williams
• someone new @ door
• RC: Rich Cowan, Organizers’ Collaborative & fantastic nonprofit tech guy
• LB: Lynne Baer
• MW: Marnie Webb, via IRC and Skype
• SR: Shimon Rura

Proposed Agenda:

• Special Guests: Boston Area Nonprofit Bloggers, with Beth Kanter, Brian Reich & Deborah Elizabeth Finn
  • 503land: it’s foreign territory to many of us. But a large number of people in the Boston area and throughout the world are spending their lives trying to change the world for the better. And they’re starting to blog about it. As a lightweight, inexpensive, and simple way to get the message out and engage a community around a movement, blogs may end up being more important to nonprofits than for-profits.
  • Beth’s notes pre-meeting, with links to nonprofit blog examples
  • Deborah’s notes pre-meeting
  • DF: My website: http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/
  • DF: I put things like RSS, the email lists I run, at the very top.
  • DF: at iLaw, one thing discussed: networked economy. I wondered, what’ll it be like for nonprofits. Friend said: micropayments, so I am experimenting. I’ve accrued 37 cents so far since July 1. One of the ads that appears is one of my clients!
  • DF: I have a delicious feed for the nptech tag. Look, here’s Beth’s blog post about tonight on the delicious feed!
  • DF: I use Blogware. Would never have gotten into blogging, possibly, w/out their free trial
  • DF: http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2005/7/7/1005407.html
  • DF: blogosphere to come: well designed blogs by groups of people clustered around specific topics. Sites that aggregate blogs as part of their rich content. Ex: Digital Divide Network. Combines blogging with lots of other stuff. People cna post headlines, events, blog posts on the DDN blog, etc. I can make a blog entry & choose what communities it goes into.
  • MW: (on IRC) one of the nice things about the DDN blogs, though, is that you can import to your ddn blog via a web feed.
  • DF: Global Voices http://www.globalvoicesonline.org
  • BK: Marnie Webb rocks
  • BK: http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2005/07/notes_for_berkm.html
  • BK: Omidyar Network wiki-like inteface to add your blog to category (links on psot linked above)
  • BK: Npoblogs.net: aggregation site.
  • BK: despite some nonprofit blogs, np bloggers still feel like rare species. Robert Moffit was inspiration for an in terviewing project i did across blogs.
  • BK: some nonprofits scared of blogging cos people may go off-message, sense of lack of control
  • LW: nonprofits fear trolling in comments. On dean for america, everytime a troll spoke in comments, folks donated by paypal. so the trolls knew they were just helping dean.
  • BK: when person x started blogging, he didn’t have a plan, but got exec director excited. he shares # of hits, etc. This blog never had comments up. preemptive maintenance of control of message.
  • DW: so they’re nuking something that could be great without knowing if they’d ahve problems. they could try moderated comments
  • DF: mission based orgs can get really scared of legal liabilities
  • DF: social worker code of ethics, confidentiality etc. so complicated. even ppl not doing direct service feel they can’t protect stakeholders if they don’t maintain tight control
  • BK: Michael gilbert, poss oldest nonprofit blog, one of oldest blogs. I interviewed. Quote:
    • I still find that nearly every nonprofit organization is rather afraid of the idea of blogging. It’s threatening to them to have their staff blogging, it’s too much work to have their leaders blogging, and it seems irrelevant to have their stakeholders blogging.
  • BK: museum in LA blogged about Buddhist art exhibit. Now blog is dead. Blogs are much easier to start than to sustain.
  • LW: Mass Democrats started a blog on blogspot, shut it down after 2 weeks. Maybe they got scared off.
  • BK: Who’s blogging in NP blogosphere? NP techies, political activists. Also soem NP staffers personal blogging on off hours. And a few others. (much more on this on my blog post)
  • BK: Kiran’s blog intiially started for knowledge sharing w/in org, and now it’s expanding to more.
  • Kiran: http://maldensquare.blogspot.com
  • K: work w homeless population. we don’t want them to have to search for resources through tons of google hits etc. So i find the resources for them. I go through a website, say Mass Legal Services as recent ex., and pull out the most relevant bits to highlight. Work training, housing resources, etc.
  • BK: Kiran’s blog is not only resource to staff, but way to introduce clients to computer skills. Staff can help clients use net to find resources.
  • K: site also for nonprofits, sharing / locating of resources. helping clients get jobs.
  • MW: (via IRC) my notes: http://ext337.org/index.php?id=93
  • BK: Marnie was talking about taxonomy…
  • BK: I did an H2O playlist: http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/59925 with lots of info. TONS of links
  • EG: H2O Playlists is a Berkman project – I can explain a bit on our mailing list, we can definitely get H2O folks to talk to us here.
  • DF: folksonomy is really working for np tech. our knowledge management is getting so much better thru tagging
  • BR: As a consultant, I sell blogs to nps among others
  • BR: things that hold nps back from blogging. fear re process. lack of knowledge. sometimes reinforced by people like us, who know too much. it’s hard for them to believe it’s easy. we say, just write, and it’s not that simple. nonprofit workers have limited time. how prioritize blogging? we need to break concept of blogging down into simpler opportunities. 4:
    • launch your own blog. you have complete control. we teach them how to use tool, they have lots to talk about. works well for orgs with lots of constituents & things to talk about. but drawback: responsibility to maintain/update blog. np organizers feel guilty if they fail at a goal. don’t want to fail at blogging. but it’s less realistic when it just can’t be your main responsibility.
    • visit other blogs. comments are just as important as the original post. in many political blogs, the comments are where the real discussion is. we urge nps to do a critique tour, of blogs on their issues and topics. we tell them to comment on other blogs first. amazon.com with its reviews is like the world’s biggest blog. political example: newt gingrich repositioning himself. when he did this he commented on hundreds of books on amazon. was a calculated strategy to get his perspective into the discussion. he could have launched a blog. but he went to where there is an existing structure & audience, and did a critique tour.
    • communtiy generated content. like what deborah suggested. create a blog with a whole bunch of other people ready to talk all together. get them before you start, or they may be intimidated. much less burden on each individual.
    • promotion. very few orgs get this, we as blog advocates should talk about it more. once a blog is launched, you must promote it. thousands of new blogs, thousands of conversations, more and more big media slipping into the blog space with money, professionals. we need to think about promotion. virtual media tour. authors without big publishers are doing virtual book tours. guest blog on other sites, ask for links, get interviews w other bloggers, maybe do blog ads, etc.
  • BR: today i talked to university professors who aren’t going to blog, too busy, but want to use the blog space. to a PR firm, which was afraid of the idea but then loved the virtual blog tour idea. just a matter of different presentation to people not used to blogging.
  • BR: we do a disservice by allowing the blogosphere to grow, without the individuals being fully invested or undertstanding what it takes to be a “good blogger.” maybe not everyone should start a blog. I’m almost about to stop linking to my blog, cos I don’t update a lot. Maybe I don’t need a blog. I do other stuff in the blog world.
  • DF: I did an online tools for constituent engagement workshop. Linked on my blog. matrix of all the tools – wikis, social networks, email lists, etc, in addition for blogs. not all are recommended for mission based orgs, orgs with control issues, orgs wiothout staff time.
  • BK: blogging readiness
  • BR: coordinated communication strategy. podcasting. wikis as internal KM tool. web development, etc. relevancy of tools for organizational needs.
  • RM: Q: difference between level of blog readiness needed for an org vs an individual
  • BR: definitely. standards for yourself for what you need to be comfortable as a blogger. if once a month is good by you, once a week, then no worries. we tell orgs to take a few weeks before going public to get into the rhythm, make sure they know what they’re getting into
  • BR: we need to redefine the standards of good blogging. all the a listers are professional bloggers now. that’s not the rest of us. most of us just don’t have the time to blog 10 times a day, and that’s the expectation of what it means to be a good blogger. We need to redefine that. If you blog once every 6 months you’re still a blogger. We have anb obliogation to the future of the blogging community to welcome all these kinds of bloggers.
  • LW: love idea of critique tour. i hate when ppl who star blogs clearly ahven’t read other blogs, don’t link to others, etc. people should read blogs before blogging themselves. teaches you how to relate to your own blog healthily. how do you get people to talk to you? leave your house, go into world, talk to others. same for getting people to link to you. it took me a long time to get idea of blogging community. now we have tools like technorati that make discovering that community easier. the community more improtant than your own blog.
  • MW: Don’t let medium trump strategic intent. gingrich. capitalize on existing infrastructrue. focus on the task, the goal. blgging is just one tool.
  • BR: metrics are great, but be sure you measure what you want. if goal is traffic, measuring traffic is great. if goal is changing world and your blog isn’t getting peoplke to take action, then it’s not succeeding
  • DF: sometimes the stated goal isn’t really the one that people want on a deeper level. what ppl think will make them happy not always what actually will. getting ppl to articulate what success would actually be is critical.
  • DF: outcomes. your business isn;’t to maintain a blog. how does your blog help create action, as part of an overall strategy.
  • BR: like brochures. brochures don’t save wales. but they’re about communication. pick whatever tools are best at communicating to the consitutency you want to reach, for the kinds of things you want to communicate. a blog not a good investment if it moves you away from your mission.
  • MW: (via IRC) to keep things on people’s radar and that’s what a blog can help do. awareness raising and engagement over time rather than waiting for a critical action. it’s about maintaining a network.
  • Kiran: What’s the best way to go public and try deliberately tro attract new readers?
  • BR: general publci understanding of what their role is in reading a blog. if i tell you to organize a houseparty, you may be unsure, what is a house party. if i tell you to invite 10 friends for cookies and lemonade to talk about these 3 topics, not scary. so when you invite someone to your blog, tell them, hey, what i’d love is for you to post a comment. give them permission to participate even if they have nothing expert to say. Be open, inviting.
  • DF: I often post my comments on my blog, crosslink to someone else’s blog, tell them that I’ve done it, send them link, invite them to comment, etc.
  • DF: blogexplosion.com
  • DF: it has exposed me to a lot of the exciting parts of blogosphere that i wouldn’t be directly connected to otherwise.
  • BK: and you can get stalkers…
  • BR: a candidate who blogs in MD has had ppl post blog comments re things he’s done in his everyday personal life
  • LW: many women are afraid of that, could eb a reason for more anonymity among women, etc.
  • RM: email links to your posts to people you want to read them. also, reciprocate. talk about what other bloggers are saying, they will come to you.
  • BR: no blogger can catch everything. invite people to be your eyes and ears.
  • all: thanks, guests! yay! it’s been great!
• Dave Winer on July 14?
• Well wishes for Gregory
• ~15 min: j picks the blog group’s collective brain.
• What else?
  • RC: OC is sponsoring series of workshops for web developers. tutorial for beginners on CSS, etc. 1033 Mass Ave, 7pm, Mon July 18. http://oc-tech.org
• Eat:
  • Where? Smile Thai with Sooz and author and blogger Kevin Smokler? How about Wang’s?
  • Last week: Smile Thai