Updates from July, 2009

• 

  Our new look

  Natasha 1:04 pm on July 26, 2009 | View Comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Brand, Logo (2)

  You may notice that the #4Change blog looks somewhat different to it did last week.  Suddenly there are many more shades of purple and fuschia than there used to be.  The reason for this change is our shiny new #4Change logo, courtesy of the fantastic  Saatchi & Saatchi Design team here in London.

  Sometime back in June, we put together a design brief and started to tweet it out there.  Sometime on the 30th of June, I received a direct message on my phone:  

  SaatchiDesign 4change logo – we’ll do it if you would like… just let us know

  After asking us some challenging questions about the design brief and a discussion which encompassed representatives from at least three continents, the Saatchi team went away and came back with the logo which you see on the blog today. 

  We’re loving the modern look to it all.  It’s already inspired me to both push my CSS knowledge to the limits in tweaking the style sheets for this blog* and to create a #4Change Twibbon which uses our new icon.  Try it on and show your support for the way social media is helping to create change.

  * Future tidy-ups may be necessary.

  On Saatchi & Saatchi Design’s blog, they recently wrote:

  Like it or not users are beginning to drive brand agendas in social media. Brand positioning and responses therefore ought to be robust enough to accommodate digital turbulence. If you are prepared to let the outside in, be generous, virtuous and interesting and willing to interact with people on their terms, you’ll get the benefit.

  On behalf of all of us involved in #4Change, I’d like to offer many thanks to the team at SSD for their generosity and their creativity in the creation of our new logo, which both captures and is testament to the spirit of the #4Change concept.    It looks fantastic and we’ll wear it across the web with pride.

   

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• 

  Revolutionary social media

  Natasha 8:57 am on July 26, 2009 | View Comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: #4change (6), Social Change (7), Social Media (14)

  “The revolution will not be televised – it will be emailed, texted, blogged, wikied…”

  So says the blurb of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: How change happens when people come together.   But, earlier this month, the #4change crew discovered first hand the limitations of social media.  At the first of our ‘Revolutionary Social Media’ chats, the Twitter search was experiencing major delays and people disappeared from altogether, and as a result, we decided to end the conversation early.  Amy’s fantastic post covers the ‘lessons learned in using twitter for a global conversation’.  Here, I’m going to pick up the baton and provide an overview of the discussion which resumed on July 23.

  Looking back through the twitter stream, some of the issues raised included:

  • Lessons learned from the Iran election, from the icon changing, the State Department and Twitter maintenance, whether awareness-raising should been seen as a success only if it motivates action or whether it’s an end-goal in itself.

  1: Create unrealistic expectations for Twtr hashtag 2: Declare #iranelection revolution 3: Democracy unrealized, proclaim social change dead

  @rootwork 4:46 AM Jul 9th http://twitter.com/rootwork/status/2548985606

  • The changing role of television and other traditional media sources from breaking the news to explaining it.
  • Social media may not be the way to coordinate protests or revolutionary activity, due to the public nature of posting.  Social networks, email, mobile, etc are a more private way to coordinate activity.
  • Different situations require different levels of anonymity.

  Anonymity depends on who you are. If you are a protester in China – anonymity is important.

  If you are trying to be a thought leader in the western world, I don’t think anonymity is the right way to go.

  @Sue_Anne Jul 23, 2009 10:06 PM GMT

  • How social media and Web 2.0 tools can be used to keep governments accountable.  mySociety’s They Work For You cited as an example.  Benefits in governments – like any brand – keeping an eye on what’s been said about them in social media.
  • Whether social media tools, such as Twitter, are inherently politically neutral and as such, whether they should bend to a particular government’s needs.

  I’ve gone through the stream and saved all the links which were referenced in the discussions, on delicious as well.

  It was a really interesting chat, and for me personally, a huge learning opportunity.  Many thanks to everyone who took part.  Feel free to add things I’ve missed, your own take-aways or thoughts on the topic below.  Let’s keep the conversation going.

   
• 

  Lessons Learned: Using Twitter for a Global Conversation

  amysampleward 3:09 am on July 16, 2009 | View Comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Conversation (2), Global Community, Hashtags, Lessons Learned, Online Communities (5), Twitter (15)

  Over the last few months, we have seen Twitter serve the global community by playing an important role in communications – whether it’s finding new friends (#FollowFriday), or telling the world about your government/election/political state (#IranElection), whether it’s having a conversation together (#4Change), or non-linearly replacing your RSS feed.  What do those # mean? That’s part of the key to success when using Twitter for a Global conversation. Using hashtags lets you mark your message as pertaining to a certain topic, then automatically include that message in a stream with everyone else’s that include the same hashtag.  Using Twitter search or other tools, you can watch news and updates about the election in Iran by using #IranElection; or, find interesting people to follow and connect with using #FollowFriday to peruse the recommendations that pile up on Fridays.

  There are many opportunities to see hashtags in action!  There are also more and more opportunities emerging for people to coordinate global conversations that happen at the same time, instead of disconnected over time (still tied together via hashtag).  I am part of the planning team working on the monthly chat series behind #4Change.  There is also a Twitter-based chat starting up for consultants who work with social benefit organizations.

  I wanted to share some of the lessons I’ve learned from my involvement with organizing Twitter chats.  I’m looking forward to your ideas, too!

  1. Build a landing pad

  It is helpful to have some place where you can send people interested in your topic or chat that haven’t participated before – whether it’s a website, a blog, or just a separate Twitter account.  If you have a landing pad somewhere online where you can refer people and provide information about your chats, your group, or your purpose in more than 140 characters, it will save you a lot of extra tweeting!  Plus, it will provide a natural and obviously place to aggregate your content, thoughts, updates, and promotion of the chats.

  2. Brainstorm lots of questions but pick a few

  It seems obvious that people using a communication tool like Twitter, and then electing to participate in a large-scale public chat would not require much prodding to keep conversation going.  But, it is actually just this reason that it’s more important to pre-select your questions.  Twitter chats are slower moving than you’d expect because everyone is waiting on the Twitter search to refresh with new posts.  It works best to have 3-5 questions selected ahead of time and shared with a core group of chat leaders or guides.  This way, there is a group of people helping keep the conversation on track, focused on one question at a time.  Otherwise, the group can quickly and easily splinter off to other topics using other hashtags, after all, that’s what Twitter enables all day, every day.

  3. Consider your time

  If you really want to pull in participants from all over the world, it’s important to consider what time you are holding the chat.  It’s also important to consider how long you want the chat to be.  Knowing that Twitter based chats are slower in development and pace than something like a live web chat, you don’t want it to be too narrow of a window, but you can only hold people’s attention for so long as well.

  4. Narrow your focus

  #4Change or #NPCons (nonprofit consultants) seem like pretty obvious topics. But coordinating a conversation would be far too difficult without a specific topic for that chat because the possibilities for questions or specific ideas within those two general topics are endless.  For example, recent 4Change topics have included using competitions for social change and Twitter as a political/revolutionary tool.  This also means people can identify ahead of time any resources they want to share during the chat and if they are interested in the specific topic of the month or not.

  5. Invite your audience

  If you have your topic for the month picked out, you may have some experts, prominent thinkers, or maybe organizations/companies/ groups that are known for working in or with that topic that you want to explicitly invite to participate.  Ensuring that fresh voices participate is important – we could all talk to the same group of people without organizing a public conversation.  Promoting the chat widely via Twitter and other social networks is a great way to find more participants, too.

  6. Never underestimate the technology

  I already mentioned that Twitter-based chats aren’t as fast-paced as live web chats or some other technologies.  But, you also have to remember that Twitter isn’t in your control!  If the server has a glitch, if there’s scheduled maintenance, or if search tools lag, then your Twitter chat will dramatically suffer.  This happened during the July #4Change chat and caused us to call the chat off half-way through as search was 15 minutes behind and many participants’ messages weren’t showing up at all.

  7. Participate!

  #4Change:
  If you want to learn more about the #4Change monthly chat series, visit http://4change.memeshift.com  The next chat topic will be announced there and on Twitter using #4Change.

  #NPCons:
  Join the first #NPCons chat this coming Tuesday, 21 July, at 1pm US Pacific time.  These chats will be monthly, on the 3rd Tuesdays, at 1 pm Pacific.

  
   
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  4Change Chat: Revolutionary social media - social tools for revolts, protests

  amysampleward 2:56 pm on July 7, 2009 | View Comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Campaigning (5), Organizing, Revolt, Revolution, Social Change (7), Social Media (14), Twitter (15)

  The next #4change chat has been announced and I hope you can join in!
  

  Details:

  • Date: Thursday, July 9 (moved to July, 23rd – today! – same time)
  • Where: Twitter (search for #4Change)
  • When: 5 – 7 pm US Eastern Time
  • Topic: Revolutionary social media: Exploring social tools for revolts, upheavals & protests

  Why are we doing this and why would you want to join? Great questions:

  Social media is becoming a key driver of social change, allowing for the dissemination of new ideas, the formation of new communities and coalitions and the realization of new efficiencies and reach by existing social change groups. Throughout the world activists, organizers and non-profit professionals are exploring how best to use these tools, and sharing the results using the tools themselves. However these conversations are less international and therefore less effective than they could be.

  We have so much to learn from each other. From new forms of political campaigning in the United States, experiments in e-government and civic participation in England, from the fight against internet censorship in Australia and New Zealand and from start-ups in Canada and France. And beyond.

  We need a platform for light-weight, easily-organized and openly accessible conversations involving people from numerous countries. Twitter, I believe, provides us with such a platform.

  When do the chats take place?

  Chats are on the second Thursday of each month between 5-7pm US Eastern Time (GMT-4).

  Who is leading and participating in these chats?

  #4Change was initially proposed by Tom Dawkins (@tomjd) in Washington DC who is joined by Todd Pitt (@zerostrategist – Washington DC), Morgan Sully (@memeshfit – Oakland, California), Natasha Judd (@tashjudd – London, England), Edward Harran (@edwardharran – Brisbane, Australia) and Vibewire (@vibewire – Sydney, Australia).

  But the #4Change chats are open to everyone interested in discussing social media’s role in social change! Don’t be shy about joining—that’s one great thing about an open, public chat like this, you can follow along silently until you have something you want to say and no one will know

  How can you follow along or join the conversation?

  1. If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a twitter account (it’s free).
  2. To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use http://search.twitter.com or another application to search on Twitter for “#4Change”
  3. Jump in to the conversation by adding “#4Change” (without the “”) to one of your Twitter messages

  Are there any rules for #Change Chats?

  1. #4Change will be structured around a series of questions which all participants can respond to. Send your questions to @tomjd without the hash tag (to keep them out of the stream) to have them considered.
  2. Introduce yourself in 1 tweet at the start or when you join.
  3. Stay on topic!
  4. Stay cool.

  Join me for the chat this Thursday – looking forward to discussing the role competitions play in social change!

   
• 

  Competitions for Change Compendium

  amysampleward 6:55 pm on July 1, 2009 | View Comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Impacts and Indicators

  The June #4Change chat topic focused on Challenges/Competitions for Social Change. Early on in that online chat, the request emerged for a compendium or other list of “all” the Challenges and Competitions focused on social benefit. Such an overview would let those interested in participating or facilitating a competition review the full landscape of options, characteristics of each, and so on.

  So, to answer that call, the #4Change crew has started building the compendium and now it’s your turn to chip in! Here’s the link to see what we have so far.

  Below is a form you can use to easily contribute to the Competitions for Change Compendium.

  
   
• 

  Reflections on the #moonwalk

  Natasha 2:29 pm on July 1, 2009 | View Comments Permalink | Reply
  

   First published on the YouthNet blog.

   

  Last Friday, after work, a group of us from YouthNet walked down to Liverpool Street station for a twitter-organised moonwalk in memory of Michael Jackson.  Given the instantaneous nature of the Internet, I’m almost too late to blog about the event itself.  All over the web, you can read about how a tweeted idea became an exercise in mass participation, involving the police and Network Rail, announcements over the loud speakers at the station, and thousands of people bobbing up and down to Jackson classics.  There are plenty of photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and a twitter stream using the #moonwalk hashtag where you can see how it all came together.

  However, what’s more interesting, from my point of view, is the questions it raises for charity marketers, campaigners, press people and others who spread the word about a cause.  It’s too easy for social media campaigns to fail – despite the best planning and the most inspiring causes – because they just don’t catch on.  For all that we may believe that re-tweeting a message about one of our causes doesn’t take much effort, I’m beginning to wonder if it actually does.  People have to be logged into Twitter to see the message in the first place, they have to pick it out of all the other tweets they’re receiving, they have to understand it, engage with it, and choose to pass it on.  And that’s only one social networking tool.

  It’s also easy to be impressed that the event went from concept to implementation in one day.  And while the moonwalk wasn’t actually held in Liverpool Street Station in the end, and while there wasn’t actually room for much moonwalking in such a large crowd, the fact that it happened at all is testament to the power of social media to turn buzz into action.  As charities, do we have the ability to be this spontaneous?  If the mood of the public was to turn in the direction of our cause on a particular day, would we be able and ready to react?  And, would it be appropriate for us to do so?

  Finally, when you’re pressed up against people, it’s easy to overhear their conversations.  A woman behind me was asked why she was there.  “I’m actually more a fan of Twitter than Michael Jackson”, she said.  And while, like many children of the 80s, I did bop around my room to Billie Jean, the same applied to me.  What we had then was a crowd of people who used Twitter or who know people who used Twitter or read reports of people who used Twitter.  While there were some real fans, I’d guess that a significant amount of people had come along to see what was happening and be part of it.  If we were going to organise a charity event via social media, would that matter?  Raising awareness is a goal in itself sometimes, but if some people are ‘there for the sake of being there’, is that enough?

  Would be great to hear your thoughts.