*** SPECIAL NEWS BULLETIN ***

#Tech10 has been cancelled because of the #snowmageddon.  This was my original post… which I like so I’m keeping it here…  But #UnTech10 is on!  Details below.

[ORIGINAL POST:

ASAE's Technology Conference is a special event for us.  I hope you'll forgive me as I indulge myself in a little wander down memory lane .

• It's where YAP was born .
• It's where we've been able to indulge our inner geek .
• It's where we've listened to and been inspired by some awesome keynote speakers
• It's where we've met some of the truly awesome tech vendors we work with.
• It's where we've felt free to begin experimenting with all kinds of blogging tactics .

And my, how times have changed ...

Here's Lindy's preview for this year again as a reminder of what we'll be up to today and tomorrow.   If you're here with us, we're so happy to see you.  If we're meeting you here for the first time, we can't wait!  If you're not here but here in spirit, enjoy the Twitter stream...]

UPDATED POST!!

*** ALERT *** ALERT *** ALERT ***

So #Tech10 had to be cancelled because of the snow… but within minutes of the announcement (and actually a couple of hours before it) our fantastic community rallied together to put on an “unconference” plan B.  Here’s the scoop!

Thanks so much to everyone who’s offered support for what we’re now calling
“UnTech10″. This event will be heavily virtual, and we are working on the logistics of supporting that. If you are a snowbound Tech10 speaker, and you’d like to present virtually (today, Thursday or tomorrow, Friday), ping Lindy (@lindydreyer or lindy[at]socialfish.org).  The in-person part of the unconference will be all day Thursday Feb 11 at the Renaissance Hotel, 999 9th St NW, Washington DC.

We’ve set up a community site for people participating in real life and virtually. We hope to make this the learning hub for UnTech10 — basically a place where we can aggregate everything that is being planned. Please sign up.

http://untech10.conferencespot.org/

We’re also asking presenters (and that can be anyone at UnTech10) to add their session/webcast/webinar to the Unconference Schedule Wiki.

http://bit.ly/8YLV9f

If you’ll be at the Renaissance Hotel in person (see details in the link), please register here.

http://untech10.eventbrite.com/

If you’re on Twitter, we’re still using the #Tech10 hashtag, but #unTech10 is the official tag of this unofficial event. Please follow along here!

Twitter Stream for #UnTech10
or via Tweetchat

(Conv Center photo credit – asaecenter.  Ren Hotel photo credit)

Lindy and I have been invited to post regularly on K Street Cafe,  a cool multi-authored blog about public affairs/public relations/advocacy and social media.  Here’s the blurb:

“K Street Café is a blog where experts from a variety of backgrounds share new and novel ways technology, the Internet and social media are being used to shape public policies.

As new media tactics are introduced, K Street Café will examine how advocacy organizations are continually changing the way they execute public affairs campaigns.

Contributors to the blog will highlight and analyze the shift from one-directional communications to multi-layered conversations as the method of choice for individuals engaged in issue advocacy.”

We plan to write some good stuff over there on a variety of topics (leaving the real public affairs experts to write about public affairs, and injecting a little bit of our natural irreverence)…

So here’s my first post for K Street, PR and Social Media: Across the Blogosphere – hope you will check it out and subscribe if you’re interested in these kinds of topics.

(photo credit)

This is kind of a big deal. In a perfect world, we’d have clean email lists that include location data for each address. But my world is not perfect, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one.  So when Mailchimp announced that they’ve enabled geo tracking in their latest release, I pretty much did the happy dance right on the spot.

How do they do it? Basically, they are able to track IP addresses for people who interact with you during the double opt-in process, by opening your email and displaying images, or by clicking on a link in your email. Is it perfect? No. But it’s a huge step better than nothing. And overtime, it might even be more accurate for non-members than the information we collect at opt-in–afterall, people move, but they probably aren’t going to update their subscriptions if they haven’t changed their email address.

Another cool perk of the geo tracking is something Mailchimp is calling “Time Warp.” Basically, the system will automagically deliver your message at the time you choose, regardless of time zone. Whoa. Can I get an w00t w00t!

We want to write a post about the best iPhone apps from nonprofits and associations.   Help us out.  Do you have one already?  Tell us about it in the comments.  If not… are you ready to think about going mobile?

We were!  … and we thought we’d test out the process of making an app.   We searched around and decided to go with AppMakr – simple and inexpensive (two prerequisites for experimenting, right?).  The process was easy.  This app works by pulling in feeds – from your blog, from your Twitter feeds, even from YouTube.  You set it up in minutes, and they check it for you and send it off to Apple to be approved.  A couple of weeks  later, voila!!  Your very own iPhone app.

One important point: there are plenty of other developers who can create all kinds of really fabulous, really robust, really feature-rich apps.  But how do you know if your community is interested at all?  We say start small and good, build up to big and good.  If you start big and no-one uses it, you’ll have problems convincing people again later.  We thought, we’re geeky and techy, we’d love to create something that really blows people away… but then we thought, what do people really need from us?  They just need our content and content curation.  That’s it.  If they want more, they will tell us and we’ll upgrade later.

So… drumroll please…  we are SO EXCITED and would love you to please check out and download our SocialFish iphone app! Our app is FREE and means you can get great stuff from us straight to your iPhone.  Simply search for “socialfish” in the App Store.  (By the way – the excitement of seeing your own little app in there for the first time – indescribable.  I know there are a million apps in there – but who cares.  It’s AWESOME.)  Help us test our market.  Tell us what you think of it.  Review it and rate it in the App Store.  Tell us if you want more from it, or if it’s just right!

So what about one for your organization?  Are you wondering what other nonprofits or associations are doing?  Here’s a good list from the Extraordinaries blog with examples explained.  Here’s more:

• Three iPhone Apps that Every Nonprofit Needs to Know About (Nonprofit Tech)
• iPhone apps for Nonprofits (Britt Bravo)
• Associations/nonprofits turn to iPhone apps as latest viral tool (Acronym)
• Social Media and Expo! Expo! – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly . . . and The Weird (Christina Stallings)
• There’s an App for That (Avectra Blog – and they have a netForum app! kewl!)

Check out the AppMakr case studies on their home page too.  Really good stuff!

Ready to try it? AppMakr gave us a “SOCIALFISH” discount code just for you – it’s good for $100 off through Feb 28, 2010. If you’re snowed in today, and tired of shoveling snow, you know what to do…

1. Go to AppMakr.

2. Set up an account and start playing.  You don’t pay for the app until you’re ready to publish!  Take as long as you need.  Preview what it will look like!

3. Get approved by Apple.  Jump for joy.

4. Tell all your peeps.

5. Come back here and tell us all about it!  Then we’ll write a *real* post about Best iPhone Apps from Nonprofits and Associations.  W00t!

Please join us for our Water Cooler chats, hosted in conjunction with Engage365, on FRIDAYS at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST. That’s today!! We’ll be talking a lot about all the various interesting issues around using social media at events… but as usual, we’ll also talk about anything else that’s on your mind. So come armed with serious questions / topics / issues / problems or just drop in to shoot the breeze on Friday afternoons. Can’t wait to chat with you!

Last week we talked about a whole bunch of stuff, including Apple’s big iPad announcement and some stuff we want to experiment with at ASAE’s #Tech10 conference.   Check out the replay of last week’s chat (under “completed events” below) for the scoop on that!

Join us today!

***NOTE:  There will be NO CHAT NEXT FRIDAY, 2/12, as we will be at ASAE’s Technology Conference.*** ]]> http://www.socialfish.org/2010/02/water-cooler-chat-25.html/feed 1 http://www.socialfish.org/2010/02/gearing-up-for-tech10.html http://www.socialfish.org/2010/02/gearing-up-for-tech10.html#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:33:13 +0000 Lindy Dreyer http://www.socialfish.org/?p=2867

Maddie and I are getting ready for #tech10–the ASAE Technology Conference happening next week. Or, at least, we’re getting ready to get ready for #tech10. How did February sneak up on me? So…here’s what the SocialFish will be getting into while we’re at the conference next week.

Our Session(s)
RUTI Volunteer Town Hall: Building, Launching and Nurturing an Online Community–Thursday at 2:45pm. We’re gonna be talking about the process of launching an online community, using the ASAE Collaborate site as the case study. You’ll hear from people who were involved–members as well as ASAE staff–in an informal discussion format. I’ll be driving the interwebs while Maddie facilitates the discussion. Peggy Hoffman from Mariner Management and Marketing, Jen Miller from SusQTech and Wanda Little-Coffey from ASAE will do most of the talking. Reggie Henry of ASAE fame might just show up to put his 2 cents in as well.

TinyChat Video Streaming Extravaganza-Stay tuned. Rumored to be happening with @cardcat and @kikilitalien.

Connecting with the ASAE Community
#Tech10 group in the ASAE Collaborate site. Join it. We did. You need to be an ASAE member…and if’ you’re attending you’re a member now anyway. This site is still in a kind of beta phase…working out the kinks. But if you read this blog, and you’re an ASAE fan, you’re gonna want to be in there.

Going Mobile
Twitter and the HUB–We’ll be following and contributing on the #tech10 Twitter hashtag, of course. I think the easiest way to follow along with the #tech10 banter is TweetChat. The Tech10 hub is also a good option, especially if you don’t plan to tweet and just want to have a good view of what people are saying. It also has a schedule and expo hall map that are handy on-site.

Foursquare (GoWalla for me)–And here’s the real awesomesauce. I’m pretty sure this is going to be the event where geolocation makes a splash. I plan to find and connect with all my ASAE peeps who are using Foursquare (and then subtly try to convince them to switch to Gowalla, cuz I like it better but I’m lonely over there.)

Gatherings
YAP 80’s Dance Party–This is the third YAP party at an ASAE Technology Conference. There will be a DJ playing 80’s music…and yes, we will be dancing, so you’ll want to come just for the spectacle. We’ll have some real A-Ha moments. Teehee. Starts at 8:30 at RFD (map) in the back room.

Higher Logic–We’ll also be making an appearance at Bar Louie for the Higher Logic Party. That’s earlier in the evening.

NFI Studios–Then we’ll head up to the NFI Studios party at Ping Pong. That’s right near the YAP party, so we’ll be there until we need to go set up.

ThePort Network–If you can’t deal with 80’s music (huh? really?) then the other cool option is ThePort party that starts at 9pm at Zengo.

Tradeshow
I really am psyched about the tradeshow this year, too. There are so many vendors there that we want to meet. And there’s going to be a booth that features mobile apps, so we can’t miss that. I heard there might be a Tweetup for Omnipress (our Engage365 pals) and I’m willing to bet there will be more hijinx that I hope to be in the middle of.

What did I miss gang? This is your chance to tell me where I should be (and when).  I’d also love to hear about any sessions you’re excited about, because I really haven’t even gotten that far yet.

Just a quick follow up to this post about Beth Kanter’s recent webinar, The Trainer’s Social Media ToolBox, which she did for us at Engage365 last week.

I just wanted to be sure that everyone saw Beth’s post-webinar blog post, How To Make A Back Channel Light Up Like Clark Griswald’s House, which includes links to the various resources she mentioned in the webinar as well as answers to the questions posed which she didn’t have time to get to during the webinar itself.

Check out these resources in particular, from the wiki she set up for the webinar, and here are the webinar notes if you prefer to read them than listen to the audio recording [click the "register" button to go straight to the recording], and here is the twitter backchannel transcript.

Beth’s work is really really fantastic, and we can all learn a lot from how she practices what she preaches and provides just a TON of great information for us all across the social web.  Thank you again Beth for a great webinar!

We’ve got two awesome slide decks to share with you, which look at data, marketing, engagement in two different yet complementary ways. See what you think!

1 – Love this slide deck by chief marketing technologist (and uber cool dude) Scott Brinker. Check it out! This post of his has full notes to accompany the slides too. *love*!

2 – This one is from Charlene Li, and explains the updated social technographics ladder.

Given the awesome response we’ve had so far, we’re assuming you’ve already downloaded our free white paper, Social Media, Risk, and Policies for Associations (If not, please do!  It’s a PDF, 378KB, 14 pages.)

Social Media, Risk, and Policies for Associations

If you’d like more direct help, contact us about our  Social Media Policies Assessment.

All organizations should have a complete set of social media policies and guidelines in place before they start experimenting with social media. Organizational communication via social media encourages more staff, members and volunteers to engage in conversations about your association – which can be daunting, because of the perceived relinquishing of control over brand messaging. In order to participate effectively and strategically in social media spaces, organizations need to have distinct, clear social media policies to provide a “safe space” in which all stakeholders can interact. Employees, in particular, need clarity on how to operate in these spaces in a professional role.

Often, this just means tweaking your existing policies, but sometimes you’ll need to establish your own Social Media Guidelines. We work with Leslie White, an experienced risk manager and consultant. For a flat fee, we will assess your existing policies that are affected by your social media activities. We will consider the particular needs of your specific organization and industry, and:

• Provide a checklist of social media policies and guidelines to help you decide which policies you might need;
• Offer recommendations for social media elements that need to be added or edited;
• Provide a template for social media guidelines if you need one; and
• Provide some examples of good policies to emulate, relevant to your association’s particular concerns.

We’re here to help.  Please share this with other colleagues who might be interested.  Thanks!

Here’s my monthly selection of links to some of the most interesting posts that I’ve read and shared over the last 30 days – about social media in general, of course, but also about associations, systems thinking, community building, good case studies, tool tips, social media in other industries, whatever. These kinds of posts are what inform our own writing here at SocialFishing; hope you’ll dip in an out at your leisure!

This month, I’m going to try and list these in some kind of tag order.  See what you think. I’m using tag keywords that we already do or will regularly use here, so later on if you want more in any particular category, do a search in the search box on this blog and you should get some more good stuff.   I’m also thinking of trying to tag posts while they are still in my Google Reader, then setting up a feed widget I can use for this monthly post… hmmm… percolating…  Let me know if you have ideas for how I can make this super cool and useful.

Anyway, here goes!  As usual, a ton of great stuff this month.

Cool Tools

• How to Let Twitter be Your Brand’s Resume with Widgets (Louis Gray)
• 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock (ReadWriteWeb)
• Essential Social Media Connections For Your Blog (John Haydon)
• How I Came to Love Google Wave (Chris Brogan)
• Some Tips on Streaming an Event Live (Bruce Hammond)
• How is your Non Profit using Mobile? (501derful.org)

Datalicious

• Facebook Post Insights Go Live (All Facebook)
• What Social Media Can Do For Your Business (Jason Falls)
• Eleven Simple Stats That Must Be Measured On Your Facebook Page
• How To Fail Your Way To Social Media Success (Beth Kanter on Conversation Agent)
• 9 Critical Stats To Measure On Your Blog (Day 3) (John Haydon)
• The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers (Brian Solis)
• How to measure word of mouth (Andy Sernovitz)
• Breaking A Goal Into Metrics (Altitude Branding)
• The 8 Elements of Contagious Ideas (Dan Zarrella)

Tech/Analysis

[This one's a new tag, since we don't write about tech news, but if I keep doing it like this every month they will come up in search. Obviously].

• Gmail Points To Possibilities Of The Data Decade (Steve Rubel)
• How Google collects data about you and the Internet (Pingdom)
• Left Out (Steve Gillmor on TechCrunch)
• Technorati, Once Near Death, Focuses On Quality (Louis Gray)
• Ratings in Google search ads address trust (Chief Marketing Technologist)

Art of Social

[Not a tag until now either, but I like it and plan to use it a lot.]

• Top 5 Reasons Your Social Media Strategy Can Fail in 2010 (Find and Convert)
• How to Develop a Content Strategy Process (for your blog) (Conversation Agent)
• There’s no Money in Content Creation (Conversation Agent)
• Why Dunbar’s Number is Irrelevant (Jacob Morgan)
• The Myth of Control in New Media (Brian Solis)
• It’s time for advertising and social media to work together (Creativity_Unbound)
• Retweet this post: Why The New Retweet Function Is An Improvement (TwiTip)
• Will the world’s best Social Media case studies please stand up? (The BrandBuilder Blog)
• What Do Twitter Lists Say About YOU? (Twittercism)
• Simple Tactics To Encourage Your Members To Talk More (FeverBee)
• 4 Ways Bloggers Differ From Reporters (Jay Baer)
• How To Dramatically Improve Twitter In Five Minutes (Or Less) (Twittercism)
• Four Styles Of Marketing On Twitter (Social Media Explorer)
• Free as in puppies: One way or another, organizations have to pay for their social media presence (Social Signal)

Event 2.0

• Screw Your Ole Event Resolutions. Do You Conference Social? (MidCourse Corrections)
• Social Conference Strategy Without Human Engagement = Fail or Why Conference Organizers Need To Think Like Community Managers (Midcourse Corrections)
• Event Camp: A Social Media Jam Session for Events People (Event Coup)

Systems

• How Will You Make a Difference in 2010? (Harvard Business Review)
• Social Capital – HR’s Secret Weapon (Talent Anarchy)
• Four Social Media Trends for Business in 2010 (Jeremiah Owyang)
• Innovation and Associations (Drake & Co.)
• Exposing the Silo Effect (Aaron Wolowiec)
• Thanks, Gen X, for the Conversation (Tammy Erickson on HBR)
• You Should Lead From the Middle (Brazen Careerist)
• 7 Social Media Roles You Haven’t Considered (Altitude Branding)
• Because I said so just isn’t going to cut it. (Traci Browne)
• Is micropricing the answer to your revenue woes? (Acronym)

Authenticity

[Includes stuff on policies/privacy/truth/risk.]

• Tweeting under false circumstances: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas (PR Squared)
• A Tale of Two HIPAA Violations (The Buzz Bin)
• Is Social Media the “Road to Nowhere” for Hospitals? (The Buzz Bin)
• Facebook’s move ain’t about changes in privacy norms (apophenia)
• Association Subculture Word for 2010 – Authenticity (Association Subculture)
• Authenticity in Association Governance – Building Empire (Association Subculture)
• Social Media & The Axe Murderer: How Privacy Is Evolving Online (Rohit Bhargava)
• Gird Your Loins – The Lawyers Are Coming (The Buzz Bin)

Awesomesauce

• The End of the World as We Know It (in Associations) (Association Subculture)
• The Blah Blah Blah Blogging Rules. F It. (Problogger)
• 30 Bloggers To Watch in 2010 (ProBlogger)
• HARO Gets Serious About Crowd Sourced Journalism (Convince and Convert)
• ASAE Tech (Thanks For Playing)
• A Poetic Take on Social Objects – The Third Thing (Museum 2.0)
• Twitter – A Villanelle (Phil Baumann)
• Kill the ugly baby. Feed the beautiful one. (Indexed)

(image credit Jessica Hagy)