NpTech Tag Roundup: Election Day, NPTech Blog Chatter, and Tool Talk

Photo from  Politalk_Tim Flickr Stream via the Voter s project
Cross-posted at Netsquared

Election Day, Organizing, Campaigns, Nonprofits and Web 2.0

Allison Fine writes an Op-Ed piece on the SF Chronicle entitled "A New Bargain: YouTube Politics."  She points to an interesting web widget from SunLight Labs which adds mini-profiles with links to Member of Congress to your blog or web page when you mouseover the link.

Testing SMS outreach for women's rights  from the Development Seed Blog about next week's battle over women's reproductive rights in South Dakota and Planned Parenthood's SMS Campaign

Think Like a Rockband: Organizing on Social Networking Sites on Care2's Frogloop blog gives a free chapter from the book Person-to-Person-to-Person: Harnessing the Political Power of the Online Social Networks and User Generated Content. (executive summary here)

ContinuousProgress: Better Advocacy Through Evaluation is an online guide to more effective foreign policy advocacy and evaluation.  It includes case studies, tools, and how-tos.

The NPTech Blog Chatter

Confessions of a non-profit IT director blog rasied ruckus with his proposal for creating a closed forum and new NTEN Affinity Group: nptechhelp.  Deborah Finn's thoughts about limiting the membership  to nonprofit tech workers whose e-mail addresses are originating from a .org and whose organization is a 501c3.

Robb Cottingham tells us about a brew-haha brewing in the nonprofit social change space in Canada.

Today I Cried blog announces that he will quit his job! 

Steve Bridger from NFP 2.0 blog shares an interview with entitled "Camera Rwanda: Storytelling using Flickr."

Britt Bravo posts her contribution to the most recent Nonprofit Blog Exchange.  It is called "The Art of Social Web"

Coolcat Teacher blog gives a wonderful post about how blogging is a work in progress
- she concludes blogging is more like football than a once in a lifetime performance at Carnegie Hall. 

To see another work in progress, go over to MIchael Gilbert's The Authentic Organization blog where he has turned the comments feature on and is writing his next book in a fishbowl!  It will interesting to if there is reciprocity.

Finally, this comes from a library techie, but I'm sure that nonprofit techies might agree with the advice, "How To Keep Techies Happy"

Marketing, Knowledge Management, and Evaluation

Somehow there is a connection between these areas and David Wilcox puts his finger on it with his posts (here, here, and here).

Yet another great example of using Web2.0 tools to capture and share knowledge from nonprofit gatherings.  This one is from the UK and from a conference called "Take Back the Web."  Here's the wiki, blog, and flickr compilations.

Looking for a way to integrate all these Web2.0 tools into your PR messaging?  Head right over to the Social Media Press Release Template from Shift Communications and reviewed by the Getting Attention Blog.

Randal Moss at fispace shares an example of the blog's role in word of mouth marketing on the Internet.

Dave Pollard's Principles of Knowledge Management (for organizations with no KM resources) includes 16 principles to think about when designing a system.   Something to read before jumping
into using the tools.  The Knowledge-at-Work blog writes about when learning and knowledge collide -- and the importance of collaborative learning networks.

Tool Talk

Wikis

TechSoup's Online Event about Wikis  has inspired a lot of wiki links showing up in the NPtech Tag stream (here, here, and here) TechSoup has switched to a wiki for its glossary and set up a wiki sandbox for the event which includes lots of other excellent wiki resources and examples.

Blogging,  Social Bookmarking, Expertise Matching, and MySpace

Looks like Marnie Webb is using Ma.gnolia.com for her linkblog

Britt Bravo launched the "Basic Blogging for Women" blog filled with pointers and summaries of advice to get started. 

A new service called Qunu that uses IM to match people who have software or tech-related questions with experts who are passionate and willing to help. 

Zaadz: MySpace for the Do-Gooder Set.

Second Life and Other Games

Nedra Weinreich shares her experience attending the CDC's Second Life experience with an interview the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's John Anderton, who is working in the Office of CDC Director with the charge of exploring how social media can be used to promote public health, and will continue as the CDC's virtual face in Second Life.

Social Edge concludes its online discussion about Second Life - no summary but lots of pointers to nonprofit and social change activities including a few here, here, here, here, and here.

And overheard at the TechSoup Second Life meeting this week ... Ruby Sinreich mentions that a RootsCamp will take place in Seoncd Life.  More information here.

There is a fairly large educator community on Second Life and the lessons learned are starting to appear in the blogosphere.  Here's an interview about How NOT to teach in Second Life with the founder of the Second Life ICT Library Ross Perkins from Kevin Lim.  If you still think online games are entertainment only, than read this article about how video games will reshape education policy. (Full report here)

Comments

[Tim Erickson]

Hey, that's my photo you put at the top of this post. I'm flattered! :-)

Great blog, with lots of really good information. Keep up the good work.

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org