London Region ICT Champion

There’s nothing like a story-telling to get one’s message across, and video is one of the most accessible medium’s for getting the message across quickly and effectively to stakeholders and funders.

Why video?
With the advent of Youtube and other internet video sites, organisations can now get their message out relatively inexpensively, not just to their stakeholders, but also to a global audience of potential supporters, activists and donors.

• can be inexpensive way of publicising your organisation and its cause - digital cameras are becoming cheaper and easier to use
• Youtube and others will host video for you - most services are free
• Talk about your success stories - how does your organisation or cause make a difference to the people it works with? Video can help you get the impact of your services across quickly and effectively
• No more burning your video onto CD or DVD - just send people the web link to your video

Getting started
In the UK, we don’t talk about voluntary and community success stories enough - we rely on word of mouth or low level photocopied publicity to get the message out. Getting started with capturing your organisation’s success stories needn’t be expensive or intimidating. Nick Booth gives an excellent primer on how to video an interview. You can also check out the resources on the ICT Hub Knowledgebase here and here.

Youtube may be ubiquitous, but it isn’t the only video sharing service, there’s also Daily Motion and vSocial.

As always, the key thing here is to watch these videos and think how you might apply their example (or not) to your own organisation or community group.

If your organisation is using video to get it’s message across, let me know - we want to showcase the best examples from around the UK’s voluntary and community sector.

1. “Talk” - Disability Rights Commission (DRC) (02.40)
Great clip from the DRC on raising disability awareness.

2. Abilitynet (01.20)
Abilitynet is the UK’s leading charity concerned with all aspects of ICT and Disability. Student Caroline Barr talks about her experience of using a computer.

3. More blots on our landscape (04.21):
A husband and wife duo from East Yorkshire campaign against political indifference from shoulder shrugging local councilors to stop a new gas works despoiling the countryside.

4. Age Concern London - Getting from A-Z Part 1 (04.37)
Age Concern’s Information & Advice services offer a life line for many older Londoners and helps transform older people’s lives every day. ‘Getting from A to Z’ portrays the experiences of a few individuals who have been helped.

5. Give a Toss (01.40):
Thanks to Youthnet’s Tom Green for flagging this one up.

6. The Great Communicator talks about the Great Enabler (04.08)
From the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, 2005.

7. Tower Hamlets Community Empowerment Network (10.37)
It’s also good to show how it shouldn’t be done. I was going to make a parallell with London’s Elephant & Castle shopping centre, another example of ‘how not to do it’, but I won’t. With this videoI gave up after less than 2 minutes, dispirited at this flashy corporate speak promo video for Tower Hamlets CEN. Does anyone know how much this cost THCEN?

Twitter starts with a deceptively simple concept “What are you doing now?” Answer on your phone, IM or right here on the web!”

According to Twitter’s own blurb, “Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool.”

Twitter considers itself “the medium between your friends and yourself; we just relay the information.” All you have to do to tap into this viral social network is send a text message from your mobile phone, type a message from the Twitter site, or send an instant message from AIM, Jabber or Google Talk.

In a world of information overload - see Moore’s Law and decreasing attention spans, we’ve now moved from newspaper articles, to blogs, SMS text messages, ICQ and IM (Instant Messaging is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text) to 154 character chunks of boiled down Twitter headlines. Supporters like Steve Rubel, describe Twitter’s value to an information overloaded life as:

“Despite it’s lack of management/search features, Twitter is downright addicting. I love it. It’s brevity lets me blog more actively and at the same time engage in real-time conversations with my “followers” (as they call it).”

Also on the upside, I can see how Twitter might be used to quickly mobilise support for a campaign, which is how US Presidential hopeful, Senator John Edwards, uses Twitter to communicate with his legions of supporters.

A typical entry from Senator Edwards:
“Three cities today and back home in Chapel Hill tonight. 10:44 AM March 16, 2007 from web”

It was Tony Blair who coined the “Big Conversation” , a self-validating bubble of focus groups during the run-up to the 2004 general election, and it can only be a short time before Prime Ministerial wannabe, David “Dave” Cameron gets in on the act with Twitter, if he hasn’t already.

A sprinkling of breaking headlines from Twitter-world this morning:

Jochiewajij: I don’t have a twat, therefore i twit. less than 20 seconds ago from web

KenV: Rise and shine! Drinking coffee and checking email…then hitting the Merritt for the drive to work. less than 10 seconds ago from web

Or more usefully:
bbcengland A debt-hit hospital trust says it still needs to cut 220 posts in order to meet its £16m saving target. http://tinyurl.com/273xg8 half a minute ago from web

From NMK’s Ian Delaney via Steve Bridger, what we’re looking at here is the fragmentation of social media.

So, you’re now asking “How might a voluntary sector organisation use Twitter?” Possible uses might be to micro-blog news headlines as per the BBC England story above. Or you might use Twitter to let service users know via their mobile phone that tomorrow’s coach trip to the beach has been cancelled.

Kathy Sierra has a take I identify with:

“Twitter scares me. For all its popularity, I see at least three issues: 1) it’s a near-perfect example of the psychological principle of intermittent variable reward, the key addictive element of slot machines. 2) The strong “feeling of connectedness” Twitterers get can trick the brain into thinking its having a meaningful social interaction, while another (ancient) part of the brain “knows” something crucial to human survival is missing. 3) Twitter is yet another–potentially more dramatic–contribution to the problems of always-on multi-tasking… you can’t be Twittering (or emailing or chatting, of course) and simultaneously be in deep thought and/or a flow state.”

How did it come to this and whatever happened to face to face? My own personal take is that Twitter hooks users with a surface level feeling of connectivity, fostering an always on, always connected, 24/7 mentality - what Linda Stone calls Continuous Partial Attention. Is this healthy?

“….in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we’re inaccessible. The latest, greatest powerful technologies have contributed to our feeling increasingly powerless.“

One wag described Twitter as “like the Seinfeld of the internet — a website about nothing.” Seinfeld was better than that, it was about pre-Internet, pre-millnnial narcissism and self-absorption.

Does any of this really matter and is Twitter the user interface for narcissism? As usual, Nick Carr says it better:

“The great paradox of “social networking” is that it uses narcissism as the glue for “community.” Being online means being alone, and being in an online community means being alone together. “

In other words, our virtual friends in our virtual world give us real life validation.

Shakespeare would’ve been rubbish at Twitter. Let’s close with the Twitterisation of Hamlet’s third soliloquy (3.1.64-98):

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Be all my sins remember’d.

(114 characters)

Last week I finished off an expanded version of the ‘Great Web Office Experiment’ article for the ICT Hub Knowledgebase - which talks about practical reasons for using web tools to collaborate with colleagues and the tools you could use to do this, even replacing desktop applications.

To recap, some of the benefits of using online tools for collaborative writing we found were:

• All you need is a computer with a broadband Internet connection and a web browser;
• Extremely easy document sharing and collaboration - just think about how often you’ve worked on a shared document and struggled to figure out the changes made by another author;
• Familiar, intuitive word processor and spreadsheet interfaces;
• Versioning by saving a history of changes (who and when) that can be viewed and compared;
• Ability to save local copies if desired;
• Ability to import and export documents in various file formats (doc, csv, rtf, txt, html, opd, sxw, pdf)

The tools I mentioned for collaborative writing - ThinkFree, Zoho, and Google Docs - are not the only players out there, and you can read more about them at Kolabora and Robin Good.

Coventi Pages looks to be the most interesting of the emerging players in the collaborative writing space with its stripped down set of writing features (like Google Docs) and strong focus on promoting discussion, highlighting text and notes to the fore. You can read a discussion about Coventi’s approach here.

The other key difference between Coventi Pages and other collaborative writing tools is the emphasis it places on a single author’s ownership of a document, with others permitted to comment on rather than being allowed to edit text. This is a completely different approach to the more popular ‘wiki’ in which all contributors are considered co-authors with equal rights to change a document.

Even the venerable PC Pro Magazine is getting in on the discussion about the value of online tools when deputy editor David Fearon says that:

“Google now carries all my personal notes and random ideas, various household budgeting spreadsheets, my cycling log (anally retentive, me?) and basically any new document that’s less than about 500 words long. The piles of paper notebooks sitting in shoeboxes under my bed will, henceforth, not grow any larger.”

Google Docs was also used to plan, organise and marshall a geographically dispersed team of freelance writers, editorial staff and magazine layout designers for a recent PC Pro article on Windows Vista - a great example for the practical value of using collaborative writing tools.

However, as we touched on the ‘Great Web Office Experiment’, the downside of organising one’s digital life like this is data persistance - the idea that your documents are always available, always backed up and and always readable. Now, how many of us have old data from legacy software no longer available, locked away on floppy dics or other media? Plenty, I bet.

In a web office context this means:

• choosing a sustainable provider likely to be around for a few years;
• choosing a provider with support for open document file formats (Google, Zoho);
• regularly downloading and backing up your work.

My own personal favourite web office tool at the time was ThinkFree because it did all the things I needed to produce a complex business document with tables and charts and share it with colleagues. Whilst there will still be a need for high-powered applications like ThinkFree, we will now see more web office tools continue the collaboration trend set by Google Docs and Coventi Pages - basic word processing, open file standards and a strong emphasis on group collaboration and discussion.

In part 2 of the series, we look at getting started with online documents, spreadsheets and presentation tools. The tools reviewed here offer users great potential for cost savings, collaborating and sharing work with colleagues.

What are these tools and why use them?
The online document writers and sheetsheets reviewed here - Google, ThinkFree and Zoho - are internet services that function as online word processors and spreadsheets. All three feature intuitive user interfaces and commands for formatting text and tables that will be familiar to anyone who has used Word.

The real advantage in using these tools for your work is how well they facilitate working in situations where you need to collaborate on documents - such as a funding bid or strategy document. For example, the tools can notify you when changes are made to a document, maintain a document revision history, and even allow multiple authors to work on the same document simultaneously, and allow authors to annotate the document with comments – all in a single, completely Web-based package.

How do I get started?
As always, the best way to get started is to try the tools out yourself. Since the tools are all free, you need only create an account, log in, and start writing, editing, and sharing. Once you’ve completed these simple steps, how you choose to use the services will vary based on your needs.

I also recommend that when you’re trying out the web office tools, try and think about their potential applications for your own work - particularly if you’re working in partnership with colleagues on a funding bid, strategy document, meeting minutes, etc. Once you are comfortable with how they work, you will likely start to see potential everywhere or how they could be applied for teaching and learning situations.

Why do this?
There some very good reasons to start exploring web office tools:

• Total Cost of Ownership - is very low as it removes the cost of buying Microsoft Office licences. All you need is a computer with a broadband Internet connection and a web browser.
• Extremely easy document sharing and collaboration - just think about how often you’ve worked on a shared document and struggled to figure out the changes made by another author…
• Familiar, intuitive word processor and spreadsheet interfaces
• Availability from any computer with an Internet connection (i.e., no need for local copies, CDs, flash drives, etc.)
• Versioning by saving a history of changes (who and when) that can be
• viewed and compared
• Ability to save local copies if desired
• Ability to import and export documents in various file formats (doc, csv, rtf, txt, html, opd, sxw, pdf)

Disadvantages
Again, looking generally at the range of services overall, you should consider their specific situation or need in light of several features including:

• potential privacy or data security issues due to the fact that documents are
• data stored on the host’s server
• users must be connected to the Internet in order to edit documents
• typical issues with a service that is hosted outside of your organisation - varying levels of technical support, separate accounts
• need to manually invite collaborators to share your documents and spreadhsheets
• file size limitations
• data storage limitations

Comparing web office products
Three online office tools are reviewed here. You can also click the view button for a comparison of ThinkFree, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho Writer and Sheet. Web Office Comparison Chart

ThinkFree Online Edition:
During testing, ThinkFree Online Edition emerged as my choice of word processor and spreadsheet because of its focus on delivering a tightly integrated set of word processing and spreadhseet tools. This results in ThinkFree Online edition delivering faster editing speeds, handling large and complex documents and being able to work offline - important if you need to work in areas without an Internet connection. It also has a familar user interface that borrows heavily from Word and Excel.

ThinkFree also offers full document tagging, sharing and collaboration through its Doc Exchange (see left), an online area where documents can either be shared publically (like templates) or privately with only other people you’ve invited to share your document with.

I also prefer ThinkFree’s Webtop, which makes it easier to browse uploaded files and perform actions like sharing and tagging.

For power users (see image) needing access to more advanced editing features and quick editing speeds, ThinkFree offers a Power Edit mode which opens up a Java applet on your computer.

Disadvantages: On the downsideThinkFree appears to be the only one not to currently support Open Office file formats (opd, ops, sxw).

Future developments: Another slight downside is ThinkFree’s lack of integration with email, calendar and address book services to form a complete office suite under one banner. However, ThinkFree does seem to be looking at this and we could well see these missing services emerge in ThinkFree during the near future.

Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet:
Zoho Writer and Sheet is a well supported free online word processor and spreadhseet service . It has a clean, simple interface familiar to users of Word and Excel. Zoho also offers the ability to share and publish documents, and can import and export to a wide range of file formats, including Open Office. Zoho also offers offline working via it plug-in for Microsoft Office.

As with ThinkFree, you can also post directly from Zoho to your blog of choice. Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet also gives you extra storage capacity by integrating with online storage company Box.net , which offers 1GB of free storage.

Disadvantages: On the downside, many users have noted that whilst it accurately displays simple Word documents imported into Zoho Writer, it tends to slow down and struggle with more complex documents, such as the 47 page ICT Strategy I’m currently writing. In fairness to Zoho, the company acknowledges this and is working on improving its speed.

Future developments: Interestingly, Zoho also has a rapidly expanding suite of free and paid for online office tools such as a web notebook, wiki, project manager, customer relationship management (CRM), and database tools. As a sign of things to come, Zoho will also be partnering with EchoSign - which will allow users to send digitally signed invoices and receipts, a small step towards integrating online commerce with your office documents.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets:
If it’s integration with email, calendar and contacts you’re after - Google Docs & Spreadsheets is the one. Whilst this service has rather basic document formatting options, it makes collaboration and sharing easy through integration with GMail. This probably the choice to make if you want to collborate on rough drafts or outlines without worrying about a polished final look. Google Docs & Spreadheets also supports a wide range of file formats, including Word and Open Office.

Disadvantages: However, Google Docs and Spreadheets has the most basic word processing and spreadhseets functions and the lowest file size capacity of the ‘free’ services reviewed - and is probably not the choice to make if you want to collaborate on large, complex business documents.

What’s next for the web office?
One thing that’s clearly missing from all three services is that staple of office life - the mail-merge of text documents and address book contacts to create letters and labels. This may well change in th near future as all three services look to offer an integrated package of calendar, email, and contacts along with document and spreadsheet editors.

I’ve just been posting about video-blogging, and as if by magic the BBC has confirmed a deal with YouTube to make programming available via 3 BBC branded channels, including supplying an ad-funded BBC News clips service.

You can read Beth Kanter’s take on it and also check out the YouTube Educational Group.

According to the Beeb, it breaks down like this:

BBC - ad free channel popularising current programming

BBC Worldwide - ad free channel featuring self-contained clips - about three to six minutes long - mining popular programmes in the BBC’s archive.

BBC News - ad funded channel showing about 30 news clips per day. Because of the advertising, these clips can be seen outside the UK only (where the BBC is still ad free).

Interestingly, there was an ultimately unsuccessful campaign by BBC staff and MPs to fight off the dilution of ‘BBC values’ and move to a model of web advertising.

Unlike other broadcasters, the Beeb also seems to be viewing copyright infringement on Youtube as a promotional opportunity:

Mr Highfield said the BBC would not be hunting down all BBC-copyrighted clips already uploaded by YouTube members - although it would reserve the right to swap poor quality clips with the real thing, or to have content removed that infringed other people’s copyright, like sport, or that had been edited or altered in a way that would damage the BBC’s brand.

“We don’t want to be overzealous, a lot of the material on YouTube is good promotional content for us,” he said.

In previous posts I’ve been talking about video can help voluntary and community sector organisations get their message over - not just to their traditional stakeholders (service users and funders) - but also to a much wider audience who may be inspired to contribute in some small way, either through volunteering their time or donating funds.

As I’ve said before, it’s organisations that grasp the opportunities of new technology to get their stories about how they make a difference seen by stakeholders that will prosper.

Getting started:
Nick Booth of Podnosh has some great tips on interviewing for video-blogs. Also, check out the excellent community and social media reporting of David Wilcox.

What about you?
I’d love to hear about how you use video-blogging to report on your local community. How did you get started? Does it make a difference? Do decision-makers and funders get to see your work?

Regular round-up:
The selection presented here is the first in a regular round-up how the voluntary sector is using video to tell the story of what they do and how it makes a difference and covers stories from the deeply personal, to open source, to campaigning adverts to the political.

Social Cohesion: Extreme Measures or Simple Steps (8.14 mins)

Age Concern Southwark, London (3.46 mins)

Open Source in the Community and Voluntary Sector (25 mins)

NSPCC (1.23 mins)

David Cameron speaks about the role of the Voluntary Sector (2.59 mins)