Internet Initiatives

IRF announces the contest on using new media tools for social change

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:33:14 +0000

Recently it became known that the International Renaissance Foundation announces a competition to support the development of new media in Ukraine. This is a good sign to all Ukrainian society that is going to make next step on its way to world’s community.

The Internet Initiatives NGO was created less than a year ago to encourage development of the Internet and new media in Ukraine and to help other NGOs to use these technologies. So we were pleased to hear that funds like this one are turning to pay attention to new media issues which beyond all doubt is the result of recent successes of a number of new media projects that use some of the potential of the Internet as a space for community revitalization initiatives. We are also pleased to realize that the Internet Initiatives NGO has managed to play a significant role in this process. Two conferences organized by us last fall, that are SocialCamp Ukraine 2008 and Educamp Kyiv 2008, illustrated the new media possibilities for public benefit projects.

Competition is realized in collaboration with the Information Program of Open Society Institute.

The main purpose of this activity is to popularize information about the possibilities Internet possesses and increase access to knowledge it contain, implementation of the idea of Internet as a tool for public campaigns, development of open society through the creation of online communities.

New Media, that are responsible for recent change in society structure, is media agent or data medium arising from the development of digital technologies (Internet publishing, CD presentations, computer games, mobile phones etc.) and social media, where information is generated by general audience (blogs, wikis, sites of civil journalism, social photos and video services, etc.). Ease of information transfer predefines high performance of new media for public purposes. New media as a mean of development and strengthening of civil society have become one of the key trends for western NGOs.

In order to be eligible for the «Revival» competition, participants should find themselves among NGOs and/or some kind of NGOs coalitions, networks, associations or communities.

Priorities for the contest:
- Dissemination of information on the use of Internet in society: education on the Internet, conferences and round tables holding, promotion of dialogue between the Ukrainian and global Internet communities, introduction of advanced international standards of Internet and mobile technology (open source promotion, translation of books and articles on the topic), appropriateness of legislative regulation of the Internet (as a mediator between online community and legislators).
- Internet technologies for NGOs and activists: NGOs education (training, barcamps, conferences, online manuals), support and development of Internet projects in this area (the online petition, sms-info); encouraging the communication between NGOs and Internet community (common events).
- Development of an open society through the creation of online communities: thematic conferencing and barcamping, creating specific online communities and promoting those that already exist.
- Online promotion of new books that are supported by Translation project (via acquaintance with reviews, information on publications and publishing house), publication of the debates on the problems of terminology and translation on specific blogs.

The average size of the expected funding from the IMF - 5 000 U.S. dollars.
Deadline for submission of draft May 15, 2009.
Announcement of Results 15 June 2009.

"Ukraine-NATO – what's next?", the round table. Watch live translation on our site

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:14:22 +0000

Ukrinform - Ukrainian information agency will held a round table on topic "Ukraine-NATO – what's next?" on 4th of December, 2.30-4.30 pm. (Kyiv, +2GMT). During this round table there will be a teleconference with Brussels, you can watch the live translation right here in the window below.

Free TV : Ustream

If you want to put a window with live translation of this teleconference into your blog just paste the following code:

Blogcamp CEE 2008 report

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:35:31 +0000

Sleepless nights are left behind and Blogcamp CEE 2008 is over! Was it successful, was it cool, are we satisfied? Yep, for sure!

That animated slideshow will show you the atmosphere and some cool statistics are below.

BlogCamp from torbjon on Vimeo.

After summing up all registrations and sessions it has turned out that:

Blogcamp has gathered 821 participants from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, USA, Russia, Uzbekistan and Estonia.
During three days 87 blogcamp sessions were hold and 3 sessions + 10 presentations of start-ups during Investor Day. In total - 100 sessions.

Last year there were around 350 participants and 60 sessions on the Blogcamp.

On the 19th of October, during Investor Day finalists of start-up contest presented their projects to the jury. In the evening of the same day the winners were selected in each of two nominations:

Seed Stage – the project is on the level of idea or early prototype, needed investments – from 50 to 150 thousand Euro.
Early Growth Stage – the company has already started selling products/services and has a stable growth, needed investments - from 500 thousand to1 million Euro.

The winners of the contest are projects Hippocrat (Seed Stage) and ClienteQ (Early Growth Stage). The first project is a social network for those who care about their health; the second is a CRM solution for joined work of companies and their clients. Both winners received invitation to attend Silicon Valley Open Doors 2008. However, the most important results for all winners and finalists were the opportunities to contact with investors, to present them their ideas and receive evaluation and feedback from venture business professionals.

Se more photos and the linkdump.

10 hours before the Blogcamp

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:36:38 +0000

In 10 hours the Blogcamp will begin, and here are some announced presentations connected with social change and using of social media by NGOs I'd like to attend:

I will try to get some slides and reports on these sessions to share with those unlucky enough to come to the Blogcamp, so stay tuned!

Blogcamp CEE 2008 will start in two weeks

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:37:53 +0000

Last weeks were so hot that I almost forgot to write about Blogcamp Central and Eastern Europe - conference on new media and Internet startups organized by Internet Initiatives. Blogcamp will start in two weeks so if you want to come - it's time to think about tickets and accommodation in Kyiv. You can find more detailed info below.

On October 17-19th, 2008 - Blogcamp CEE 2008 will take place in Kyiv. Blogcamp is an international conference on new media: blogs, social networks, podcasting, online video, citizen journalism, start-ups and venture investments.

Blogcamp is organized for the second year in a row and this time it will gather participants not only from the post Soviet countries, but also from Central and Eastern Europe. More than 900 participants have already registered on the site; over 500 are expected to attend.

Blogcamp CEE 2008 will also host Investor Day on 19th of October. Investor Day is the key event for venture capital investments industry of CEE region. It will unite business owners and investors of TMT (Telecom, Media, Technologies). Investor Day agenda consists of panel discussions with investors and entrepreneurs, and Startup Contest with two nominations:

Seed Stage – the project is just an idea or on the stage of a prototype, the amount to be invested is €50,000-150,000.
Early Growth Stage – the company has started to sell products/services and is steadily growing, with small sales revenues; the amount to be invested is €500,000-1,000,000.

The projects will be evaluated by a group of experts and jury members - representatives of such investment funds as DFJ, which is one of the Top Ten of the largest world’s funds; Mangrove – the most successful European fund; Russian fund ABRT and others.

Denys Dovgopoly, Director of BayView Innovations Inc and a member of Blogcamp initiative group, states: “Participation in the Startup Contest is a great opportunity for authors and managers of Internet projects to present their ideas to investors and receive evaluation from professionals of the venture capital investments industry.” You can find more details about the contest on the web-site. Over 80 projects have been already submitted for the competition. Investor Day is organized in partnership with BayView Innovations Inc.

Blogcamp CEE 2008 will be organized in barcamp format, which means that participants are proactively involved in organization of the event. They create agenda themselves – anyone can write the topic of their session, presentation or discussion on the blank table in the beginning of the first day of the conference. Each participant is the co-organizer of the conference - holding sessions, helping out with the technical organization, promoting Blogcamp in his/her blog. The conference is organized in informal atmosphere which stimulates discussions and sharing ideas. You have to register on the site to participate in Blogcamp.

Picnic 2008 in Amsterdam

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:28:55 +0000

Yesterday I came from Amsterdam, where I participated in PICNIC08 conference. Picnic is probably the world's largest conference on creativity and innovations. Besides main program there were a lot of 'hosted events' — thematical sections of presentations. I was invited as a speaker to one of the hosted events — European Bloggers Conference provided by the European Journalism Centre.

My presentation was about the problem of e-literacy, the avarage users' low usage of tools provided by the Internet. I was speaking about the barcamps and minicamps, New technologies in the Internet project and the Educamp.

Education2.0 Picnic

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: picnic08 e-literacy)

Ethan Zuckerman, one of the founders of GlobalVoices, talked about the danger of homophily (love of the same) in closed societies and online communities. The idea is that living in the society of like-minders leads to stupidity and radicalism, but the social networking sites are exactly closed societies so we should be aware and we should strive for diversity (see wider report abou this presentation here). His presentation was quite inspiring but I have already heard similiar thoghts from Evgeny Morozov, on his presentation at OCI YOUTH Barcamp in Istanbul two months ago. After that, Evgeny even launched his own project Polymeme - news agregator helping to get the most important news on diverse topics.

Francesco Federico made rather interesting overview of new media in Italy, Emin Huseynzade from TOL told about the new media in Azerbaijan and Jure Cuhalev, the founder of Zemanta presented his beautiful service for blogers. Zemanta was one of the Seedcamp winners in 2007 and now is rapidly developing so I invited Jure to tell about their expirience on Blogcamp, which will take place in Kyiv on October 17-19.

If there were two of me, I would have seen more. Unfortunately I missed the Clay Shrinky's keynote speach which was definetly worth to hear.

I was pleased to have a dinner with Wilfried Rütten - director of EJC, Bernd Kapeller - Associate Producer in EJC and Prof. Heike Sperling from Institute of Music and Media in Duesseldorf. We talked about our countries, technologies, the last day presentations and talks with such people always inspire me more than anything else.

Among main program speakers there were such persons as Charles Leadbeater - the author of We Think, a groundbreaking analysis of a changing world; Aaron Koblin - contemporary artist, the author of the latest Radiohead music video; Philip Rosedale - the founder of the Secon Life; Clay Shirky - an Internet thinker and the author of Here Comes Everybody, Gisele Hiscock - Google's European Director; Ethan Zuckerman, whom I've already mentioned; Bill Moggridge - a founder of IDEO, one of the most successful design firms in the world; Werner Vogels - CTO of Amazon and many other world-known thinkers and entrepreneurs.

I was lucky enought to be present at Zuckerman's Suprising Africa speach and Bill Mogridge's presentation about design as a collaborative process.

There were two big competitions on the PICNIC. PICNIC Green Challenge - a 500,000 Euro award best green initiative in the field of lifestyle, design, mobility and communications technology - the winner is Igor Kluim with Qurrent project. The second contest was Vodafone Mobile Clicks - a competition for the best Dutch mobile start up.

Everywhere you go - you see and hear incredible, incpiring, shocking and amazing stuff. A lot of buzz and networking at the event and that incredible atmosphere of creativity is one more thing that makes PICNIC so special. Thanks to guys from EJC - Bernd, Bianka, Anniek, Ivan, Rina, Kathlyn and others, for that unforgetable two days on Picnic and thanks to Wilfried Rütten for inviting.

Drupalcamp - outdated report

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:53:53 +0000

The first Drupalcamp in Kyiv was more than successful, gathering some 40 drupalers from Kyiv, Mykolajiv, L'viv and Lutsk in the comfortable G-Club venue. Four speakers were telling about the essentials of Drupal, productivity, best modules, search engines optimization the problems of localization and giving the examples of use. The venue was full of techy buzz, jokes and fun.


Some representatives of NGOs and citizen activists proposed their help with Internet Initiatives' projects, and (I can't believe it!) one of the projects has been already done! Now, thanks to Andriy Podanenko, Ukrainians have one, well checked, translation of Drupal 5.x, Drupal 6.x and Drupal 7.x (first official translation of Drupal 7.x). I've dreamed of this over last year and now finnaly all parts of Ukrainian translations are gathered from the Internet, checked and officially published. Good work!

Two presentations from the event are available:

DrupalCamp Kyiv

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:20:24 +0000

DrupalCamp Kyiv, initiated by our organization, will take place in the G-club on 31th of August in Kyiv. It is the first ever conference on Drupal in the CIS region

For more information see this page. (in Ukrainian)

77 percent of the US fastest-growing companies use social media

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:40:07 +0000

Looks like the social media is coming to the US business world sooner than many had originally anticipated and it is the valuable sign for the European entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations. The “masternewmedia.org” reports about the staggering results of a study of social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US. The use of blogs, podcasting, wikis, online video and social networking grew in 2008 to nearly double what it was in 2007 – 77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.

In early 2007 the results of a groundbreaking study into the adoption of social media within the Inc. 500, an elite group of the fastest-growing companies within the United States, were released.

Now, approximately one year later, that same group was studied again in an effort to look at longitudinal change in the adoption of these digital communication tools.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research performed the study for Inc. Magazine and their findings confirm what previous studies have argued as well: social media use is now a major, mainstream activity.

Research Respondents

The respondents in this study, as in the first study, are diverse in industry, size and location. They include three of the top 10, 11 of the top 25, and 44 of the top 100 companies from the Inc. 500 list.

The 209 companies who responded were asked the same detailed questions concerning their usage and measurement of social media that were asked of the Inc. 500 approximately one year earlier.

Forty-two percent (209) of the Inc. 500 participated, making the new research statistically valid at +/- 5%. The original study was also statistically valid.

Study Questions Used

Questions probed the familiarity of respondents with six prominent social media (blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking and wikis).

In order to maintain the integrity of all comparisons, only those tools studied in the first study were included in this follow-up research.

Social Media Familiarity in the Business World

To begin, respondents were asked to rank their familiarity with each technology from "very familiar" to "very unfamiliar."

The social media that was most familiar to the Inc. 500 in both studies is social networking with 42% of respondents claiming to be "very familiar with it" in 2007 and 57% in 2008.

In the 2007 study wikis were the least familiar to the Inc. 500, but in 2008 wikis jumped ahead of podcasting in familiarity.

Social Media in the US Corporate World: From Familiarity to Adoption

From familiarity, the survey moved into the companies' actual usage of social media.

The companies were asked in 2007 and again in 2008 if they were using the six social media discussed above and, if yes, for how long they had been using them.

Social Media in the US Corporate World: Acknowledgment of Strategic Role

Not only is this widespread adoption being driven by strong familiarity but also from the recognized critical role of social media to a company's future success in today’s online world.

When queried on the importance of social media, 26% of respondents in 2007 felt that social media is "very important" to their business and marketing strategy. That figure rose to 44% in approximately one year. It is clear that this group of fast-growing companies considers the use of social media as a central part of its strategic plan.

Related recent studies include Universal McCann's findings that half of adults in the US now use some form of social media online.

What does this mean? It means that when you tell people you write, read or listen to blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks and online video - if they give you a funny look, it is now officially them that's a freak, not you.

Are these tools really as useful as so many people appear to believe they are? That's another question, but at least we're getting a healthy number of people and businesses trying them out.

Major portion of this article was compiled from the two following articles:

Education 2.0 - the new trend arising

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:00:04 +0000

A few days ago a came back from the iCamp – informal meeting of the internet activists, which took place in Russia. The event was made in the barcamp format, which is a kind of trend in the CEE region, since Blogcamp CIS and Baltics was held in Kyiv on Oct’07. Agenda was divided on a number of sections: Educamp, StartupCamp, LawCamp, BlogCamp, CodeCamp, etc. (more detailed review of iCamp is available on the Oleksandr’s Demchenko Eastern European Blog)

As far as I’m driving away Educamp Kyiv`08, Russian Educamp was one of the most interesting events on the iCamp for me. I had a lot of exciting conversations with folks who are working on the so-called “Education 2.0” in Russia. As they understand this term – it’s a conceptually brand new way of education which will use the multimedia technologies and the internet intensively.

The significant part of sessions was dedicated to the ambitious plan to build the “University of the Future” – the Metaver. In the Metaver modern technologies and ideas of the distance learning should be harmonically united with the strong educational traditions. It looks like the initiators have a strong conception and a lot of ideas for their project. Metaver is the commercial project, aiming to create a kind of “elite” system of education.

Very interesting was Paul Miller’s presentation, who told about his UK-based startup School of everything. This service provides a platform for the distance learning. The teachers can create their accounts and the pupils (or their parents) are able to find the appropriate one. All teachers have a rating, which should be a kind of measure of their professionalism. This project tries to monetize by taking the percent of money paid for the lessons.

In my own presentation about the “Education 2.0” I said about the things a bit different from the mainstream discussion. Russian professors, who learned how to use the technologies of the new web and propose to follow the last trends in the Education, talking about the distance learning and new media technologies just forgot that the absolute majority of their potential pupils don’t know how to use even those instruments available at hand. I told in my presentation about the tools that everybody should know how to use in the Internet; about who should be taught in the first place and about how can we provide such education.

Education2

View SlideShare presentation (tags: education 2.0 learning e-learning)

The Educamp section turned out maybe the most attended section on the iCamp and it has the most popular group on the icamp.ru. A lot a of people are going to make a business on the education and a lot of people realize that the strong understanding of the Internet will help them develop their business. Two links I managed to find in my Reader last evening were an interesting addition to the foregoing facts.

The first one is Educamp Berlin (Oct 10-12). The topics they are going to discuss seem to me more practical than the theoretical visions of the Metaver. Among their topics are: “Corporate Learning 2.0”, “E-learning in universities”, „Digital games and virtual worlds“ and others. This Educamp is the second German educational barcamp, the first one was held in the Ilmenau (April 18-20, 2008)

The second link is an article “ Can New Media Be Taught in Schools?” by Marshall Kirkpatrick on the popular English blog ReadWriteWeb. The author points at the rapid growth of interest in the education in the social media particularly on the YouTube and Del.icio.us.

Marshall indicates one important thing, which is often omitted by those ones, thinking about the “Education 2.0”:

“It's one thing to figure out how to use social media tools, another to learn how to use them powerfully in a professional context.”

That is the phrase from which we should begin the conversation when we talk about the internet literacy.

Answering the Marshall’s question I say that yes, new media should be taught in schools. The question is how should we do that, and I doubt whether most teachers from the post-soviet space who are not younger than 40 years old know the answer.

Ideas about the education of the future are just flying around, but why they are not embodied? I think, that not only in Eastern Europe but also all over the world, the main problem lies in the orthodox nature of the educational system, which was unable to handle that amount of tools given by the Internet.

The changes will be, but they will be mainly initiated rather not by armies of the awkward officials but by ingenious entrepreneurs, who will study how to sell brand new shiny “Education 2.0”

11 Tips for Using Online Video to Raise Money

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:15:39 +0000

via blog.see3.net
1. Tell a story.
If you want your audience to identify with your mission, you need a compelling story that connects your work to real people. If a story moves you, it will likely move others as well—and become the foundation for deeper involvement.

2. Be relevant.
People respond to what’s going on around them, so try to relate to the news or the calendar as much as possible. You’ll also have a better chance at success if you’re pitching your video to bloggers or other websites—they’re always looking for something current and fresh.

3. Tell them what you want.
You have their attention, now tell your viewers how you want them to engage, whether it’s donating money, visiting a website, or volunteering. They won’t know to give unless you ask for it.

4. Be brief.
Few people are watching your 7-minute online video—that only works when you have them locked in a room. Try to get everything out in 2 minutes or less.

5. Videos don’t raise money by themselves.
Your organization should think of online video as one of many tools to fit into your fundraising program. Adopting video into your organization is critical, but it has to be a means instead of an end.

6. Embed video on your donations page.
The distance between the “play” button and the “donate” button should be short. Also, give your viewer the right web tools. Can the viewer forward the video to a friend, subscribe to your RSS feed, get involved, and sign up for your newsletter right there on the spot? If not, they should.

7. Put video at the center of a campaign.
Video is often best used in the context of a campaign. A campaign can be raising money for a particular village, trying to reach a specific goal, or giving limited to a specific timeframe.

8. Empower your viewers.
Ever heard of peer-to-peer fundraising? Encourage your audience to pass your videos along. Make the embed code easily accessible within your page so your video can reach a broader audience.

9. Create a media library.
Start gathering your footage now—you might have all the ingredients already! Building a media library is a valuable long-term asset for your organization. Have a camera ready for every important event. Ask volunteers to document their work and make it available for future events, trainings, and online use. Using existing footage you get more bang for the buck.

10. Test.
You don’t know if something works unless you test it. Send out emails with email and some without, and measure the results. Each nonprofit will have different nuances, and you’ll want to know when using video is most effective.

11. Know when not to use video.
Truth is, your strongest donors will likely donate with or without online video. They have been already, right? They don’t need any extra convincing. Use online video for attracting new audiences, for driving specific campaigns, for empowering your membership to spread your story or for deepening or expanding existing relationships.

New Social Portal for Blood Donation: Thank Your Donor

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:14:23 +0000

via www.netsquared.org
Canadians have developed a new social portal that allows blood recipients to say thanks to their unknown donors. Thank Your Donor gives a chance for people to hear all the positive effects that their blood donations are having.

Project creators are hoping this will encourage more people to donate.

Check out one of the videos that a recipient made to say thanks: Youtube Channel

Polymeme: Memetracker With Editors

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:04:15 +0000

Polymeme is a new memetracker that bills itself as "a polymath's guide to news." Polymeme is the brainchild of Evgeny Morozov who started the project because of his frustration with most current memetrackers and the echo chamber effect often associated with them. Polymeme is based on Drupal and uses Reuter's OpenCalais to tag and index the 25,000 blogs it tracks.

Polymeme is an ambitious project and it goes up against more established meme trackers like Tailrank, Megite, Techmeme and Memeorandum, as well as the broad range of social news sites like Digg, Newsvine, and Yahoo! Buzz.

"Fields like economics, design, law, environment, or literature didn't seem to have their own Digg, Techmeme or Technorati; thus, navigating through the growing non-tech blogospheres has become very difficult. As the amount of information on the Web has kept growing rapidly, it has proved quite challenging to remain a true polymath." - says Evgeny Morozov.

The First Socialcamp in Germany

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:51:24 +0000

First socialcamp in Germany took place in Berlin in June 14-15. One of participants writes about the socialcamp in a blog:
"There were activists, campaigners, NGOs and many others who shared their work, experiences and visions with an open spirit. Particularly, the mixture of participants from the traditional German nonprofit sector (social welfare), newer NGOs and activists were quite inspiring. " full article >>

As you can see, a lot of sessions are dedicated to the internet and web2.0 ("Web 2.0 für NPOs", "Fundraising 2.0", "Organisation 2.0"). Looks like NGOs in Germany are going to use the full power of new media and all of them have clear understanding they can't ignore this influential tool anymore.

German NGO's were inspired by experience of their colleagues from England, who held Social Innovation Camp in April. Both events were sponsored by OneAim and looks like they are going to support SocialCamp EU and SocialCamp Asia as well.

That socialcamps look very likely to the BridgeCamp in Riga as for me. And, obviously, we'll see something alike in this September in Kyiv - it will be the BridgeCamp Kyiv'08 supported by Internet Initiatives.

Online networking, mobiles VS Tuberculosis and other stuf. Weekly cases overeview.

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:28:43 +0000

a great new video introduction to digital activism, “The New Change-Makers: an Introduction to Digital Activism” from the digiActive.org

Beth Kanter gives some thoughts about effective networking online in her blog, here.

MobileActive writes about how to use cellphones for combating Tuberculosis

52weeks - the blog about how to create your organisation's strong presence in the social media in a 52 weeks.

Ukrainian LiveJournal cycle-community VS drunk drivers

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:50:59 +0000

Ukrainian LiveJournal community initiates the march against the lawlessness on Kyiv roads. One of the most popular Ukrainian bloggers, Bohdan Lohvynenko, started the discussion in his blog, after four accidents with the cyclists happened in ten days in Kyiv.

The march will start in Saturday, 21th, 10:30 am, on the Sophiyivs'ka square, Kyiv.

See full announcement (in Ukrainian) for more details.

NGO-in-a-box

Yaroslav Azhnyuk — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:27:02 +0000

via www.tacticaltech.org
What is NGO-in-a-box?

Tactical Tech's NGO-in-a-box project is a series of innovative toolkits designed to meet the specialised technology needs of non-profit organisations such as NGOs, activists, independent journalists and community groups.

As the name suggests, each toolkit is a box containing:

CDs containing specifically selected Free and Open Source Software
easy-to-use tutorials
hands-on guides
informative case studies

Each toolkit covers a specific theme, providing comprehensive solutions to the very real technological issues faced by today's NGOs – and produced specifically to address the realities of their work.

Four toolkits are currently available:

Base-box: a collection of essential tools for setting up and running a small-to-medium sized NGO.
Digital security and privacy: crucial security resources for human rights defenders and independent journalists handling sensitive information.
Audio and video: the basics for producing and distributing audio video material.
Open publishing: for producing and disseminating text and images.

Two more forthcoming toolkits – covering citizen journalism and mobile advocacy - are also currently under development.

All toolkits are put together by a team of international experts in each field and rigorously peer-reviewed by an editorial team – with the needs of non-profit organisations to the fore at all times.

All toolkits are provided to the non-profit community free or at low-cost.

How does it help?

NGO-in-a-box demystifies the use of technology for non-profit organisations.

It does this in five very important ways:

Finding the right software: each toolkit selects the most relevant tools, making specific recommendations and choices, so that non-profit organisations don't need to trawl through the overwhelming amount of software available.
Helping with implementation: all software is accompanied by guides, documentation and, where possible, training material – making it easy-to-use even for those with limited technological expertise.
Improving access: distributed in CD and USB format, software is immediately available and easier to share.
Providing legal solutions: by providing FOSS and fully licensed materials, we ensure that organisations have access to legal tools that can be freely shared and often improved upon and localised by their users.
Diversifying access: toolkits can be easily localised and many have been translated into local languages. For example, the Security toolkit is currently being localised into Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian.

In practice, NGO-in-a-box frees busy advocates and organisations from the troublesome difficulties of finding, selecting and implementing the right software – freeing them to use their time addressing more urgent and immediate concerns, supporting people and communities in need.

It also provides a solution for those with limited and sporadic internet access, providing the tools and materials in-hand and in a form that is easy to copy and pass on.

Moreover, by putting the tools of production and distribution and the means of collaboration and mobilisation into the hands of the non-profit community, NGO-in-a-box helps to make that community – and all of its vital work – more effective and powerful.

How is it distributed?

Since 2003, Tactical Tech has distributed 4,000 hard copies of NGO-in-a-box ( boxes containing CDs and booklets) to organisations and communities worldwide. These are often distributed at training events and conferences or by post.

All the information contained in the toolkits can also be accessed online and downloaded. Tactical Tech currently provides 2,000 downloads of materials and software from its website every single month.