|
This is the second post in our series about the PICnet Team’s volunteer efforts. Jamie Ozimek contributed to this post. Who: Project Manager Katie Guernsey
At AFTA, Katie serves as a member on the Emerging Leaders Council, and the chair of the Technology and Communications Committee. As a Councilmember, she helps inform the direction that AFTA takes in supporting arts administrators who identify themselves to be “emerging” in their career on a national level. What exactly does that mean? According to Katie, AFTA’s definition of an “Emerging Leader” is someone under 35 years old, or in the field less than five years, but depending on the person, these guidelines can change a little. The Emerging Leaders Council devises programming, networking, and professional development opportunities for their peers under the guise of AFTA’s infrastructure. On a local level, Katie helps to coordinate professional networking opportunities such as the “Creative Conversations.” Some of Katie’s specific duties include maintaining AFTA’s Google Group and overseeing the strategy of how to best serve their constituency through online technologies. This year, she facilitated one of the Emerging Leader Networking Sessions at the Annual Convention. Our PICnet friend and partner Aspiration is hosting a “Social Media Sewing Circle” from 1-4pm, Sept. 15, as part of “Mozilla Service Week,” in San Francisco. They will be hosting a few free sessions such as: Social Media Tracking, Publishing strategies for social media channels, Facebook and Twitter Essentials, and Beginning and advanced blogging skills. The event is free, but space is limited, so RSVP now if you plan on attending! It is hosted at the San Francisco Nonprofit Technology Center. Check it out here. What is Mozilla Service Week? Starting tomorrow, techies will be donating their time (more than 9,000 hours pledged so far and counting) to help make a difference in their communities and the world – and doing it all online! You can sign up to volunteer here, or just to find out more about this exciting week of web service. I attended my first Community Technology and Digital Opportunity Meetup in San Francisco on July 20th and left feeling inspired about the potential of using digital media to express the realities, triumphs and work of my clients. The purpose of this meetup is to share the work of various nonprofits around the Bay Area who provide technology access and programming to the local community through either computer labs or innovative digital literacy curricula. The week’s topic “Bayview Hunter’s Point Center for Art and Technology and Digital Storytelling!” was hosted by the titled organization, BAYCAT, and also featured a presentation by Jen Nowicki from Creative Narrations. Jen first defined what digital storytelling is: it’s a vignette told in the first person and made up of personal images and text in a video format. Her organization helps nonprofits and education institutions empower their constituents’ voices by training them to develop their own digital story. From what I saw, their process is focused, impacting and cathartic for many of the individuals they serve. They teach the elements of how to tell a story and move their students through four stages of developing their work: Preparation, Production, Publishing and Promotion. The final stage is important to the recognition and ownership of the work, and helps ensure that the community hears the story. For resources on how to create your own digital story, you can go to Stories for Change. Here is one of the highlighted videos: BAYCAT is an organization that educates the underserved communities of Bayview and Hunter’s Point on various media production techniques, and then employs some of their graduates to fulfill corporate and other nonprofit media needs. This cycle from student to professional creates an incredible incentive for the students and their families to continue supporting their talents. Many of the production pieces serve as public service messages to the student’s community, so they become change agents against drugs and violence. Here is a very creative and funny one done by a teenager: I would love to see some of my clients start to utilize these resources. I know that the web development process is quite an undertaking in itself, but starting to incorporate video to tell stories would be a great 6 month follow up to keep web content fresh. It would also be a great case for strategic partnerships among nonprofits. MoveOn.org set precedence towards virtually mobilizing left-leaning activists around the nation. Friendster to MySpace to Facebook created the social networking phenomenon that allows users to find people that share similar interests, friends and institutions with a multimedia, personalized flair. There is something that finally combines the two: MyQuire. Working virtually is a reality for many these days. PICnet, for instance, at any given time, has employees in four different locations. My volunteer work for the Emerging Leaders Council of Americans for the Arts (AFTA), for whom we serve hundreds of young professionals, is completely virtual save two meetings per year. And now I’m finding myself in San Francisco, helping a friend in Oregon organize a fundraising event in our Southern California hometown for her younger sister who has been diagnosed with brain cancer. Being able to coordinate communications, documents and tasks in a central location is key to any project whose members are remote. The tools that we use at PICnet, while adequate for project management on a small enterprise scale, would not hold water in the non-techy environment of AFTA or among my friends where networking is at the root of collaboration. (I actually heard of MyQuire through the annals of AFTA as I have been pushing them to become more transparent and innovative with their Council and constituent organizing.) I decided to give MyQuire a test run with my fundraising event to see how easy it would be to replicate for AFTA’s purposes. Before I begin my review, I should state that MyQuire is in Beta right now, so I am hoping that some of these issues will be fixed by the formal launch in late Fall. Overall Communications Stokes: We are even given a specific email with the project name: laurensfundraiser@projects.myquire.com, that acts as a group email list. Another great feature is that I am able to chat live with my co-coordinators if they are online. If you are feeling like dropping a w00t! or some kudos, post a comment to my wall Bummers: MyQuire: Think guerilla marketing! Your domain would be in all the links. Documents Stokes: There is also an area called “My Hard Drive†that looks promising with a Window Explorer feel. It breaks down all your items- photos, projects, files, etc- into directories. Bummers: Tasks Stokes: Bummers: All in all, MyQuire has been a good resource to coordinate my fundraising event remotely. I think that after their launch, MyQuire should have the solid foundation which will make it recommendable to AFTA.
Even more ironic, we at PICnet use the open source SugarCRM to have heavy access to the CRM’s API. This is something we couldn’t do with Salesforce.com for less than, gulp, thousands of dollars a year. It’s funny being priced out of the chance to eat your own dog food, especially since we’re heavily focused on building bridges between the Joomla and Salesforce platforms. I’m not sure what the solution is, but if non-profits are being provided 10 donated seats to the Enterprise level of Salesforce.com, it’s difficult to see how those other than the largest consulting firms working with the large end of the non-profit marketplace will be able to afford the same level of Salesforce that they deploy to our sector. I’m not sure what could be done to help make these tools more affordable, I just needed to get this irony off my chest as I simultaneously continue to applaud the Salesforce Foundation for all its hard work. |
Take advantage of our free 30-day trial. No credit card required.Sign Up now!
With all the great discussions happening at the 
.png)
