So what’s a way to address all of those needs without spending tens of thousands of dollars and hiring a team of iPhone wielding, Twitter buzzing social media peeps? If I were in charge of defining a solution, I would include these in my toolkit:

• SCHED
• Posterous
• Scribblelive
• TwitterFountain

Note: I’m not covering Twitter, YouTube and Facebook here, though you definitely need them. I will discuss how to use these social media juggernauts together with the tools below in the next post.

Event Social Gymnastics: SCHED

SCHED is an interactive event calendar, personal agenda builder and social networking tool. This tool is simply awesome, and I know of no other tool in its category that comes close to its feature/price point. SCHED was originally developed for the king of conferences, SXSW. Look what you get for a mere $800:

• Event calendar with colour-based categorization, live search, and detailed session pages. Filter events by category, date, venue, company, subject, audience, geographic area and most popular events. Highlight most popular events to help attendees figure out what to attend.
• Attendees can create and save a personal schedule and share it with others. Export schedule to use in Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar or just print it out. Share via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks.
• Attendees can better connect socially by seeing a list of who else is attending, including their network of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn friends. A group schedule of current friends is also automatically generated showing you the events your friends are planning to attend.
• Arrange meet ups by viewing attendee’s schedules and contacting them through their personal profiles.
• Attendees and presenters can discuss sessions by adding comments to each session’s page.

Sustainable bonus: instead of printing out schedules, attendees can print their own, customized to their liking, or just refer to it on their mobile device.

Administration bonus: manage list of published events using a familiar spreadsheet format

Toss in another $300 and your event gets its own iPhone app with a full schedule preloaded for offline use, with search and filtering capabilities.

View full list of SCHED features.

Agile 2010, the giant gorilla you are, please put this tool on your list to help nearly 2000 attendees feel less overwhelmed connecting with each other and choosing between 200+ sessions.

Online content hub: Posterous

I had my big a-ha moment with Posterous using it as a community blog for the 2010 Orlando Scrum Gathering. I needed a blogging tool that makes it super easy for several contributors to publish and distribute content, with a minimum of effort. Posterous is the answer.

The process is simple. Email a post, attaching any type of document, image, audio or video, or just link to the file online. Posterous handles media smartly, embedding videos, audio and documents, creating photo albums, posting PDFs. Hook up sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and have your content automatically posted to them. All with the effort of creating one email. Makes a one person social media team look mighty smart.

Live publishing: ScribbleLive

ScribbleLive is a free tool that a conference can use to capture the conversations, sights, sounds (hopefully smells coming in a future release) in real-time. Conferences like Mesh have used ScribbleLive to create live blogs per session. ScribbleLive will also (for a fee) create a custom portal listing all the live blogs related to an event.

Key features:

• Super simple to use. I’ve shown people who have never live blogged before how to get started in less than 5 minutes. It’s like Twitter or Facebook – type in a box and update.
• Pull in all tweets using a hash tag. People are already tweeting about your conference, this puts them all in one place, in real time, archived online. Any photos linked in tweets are displayed. Post ScribbleLive postings back to Twitter.
• Self-organization. Set up the live blog links, and invite anyone logged in to participate as a live blog writer.
• The iPhone app works really well for posting and watching content.
• Upload audio / video for viewers to watch / listen to instantly.

Bring the online conversation offline: Twitter Fountain

I tried Twitter Fountain for the first time at the 2010 Orlando Scrum Gathering and it was a big success. People enjoyed conversing while watching the constantly updated series of Twitter posts and images. Like a big visible chart, it shows what people are saying and sharing without having to go online and check.

For consideration: timely, shared feedback: SpeakerRate

In my search for a decent feedback tool I recently discovered SpeakerRate. SpeakerRate is the one tool I’ve listed that I haven’t actually used, other than to check it out. I first discovered PodCamp Toronto using SpeakerRate to provide more details about topics and to obtain feedback for presenters. It’s simple enough to use, though registration is required (please integrate Facebook/Twitter logins guys). Reviewers rate content and delivery and can provide constructive feedback via comments. Presenters build up a rating over time if they use this tool for multiple presentations. Worth considering, though I’d like to see SpeakerRate integrated with another tool like SCHED for a more seamless experience.

Those are my tool selections that I believe a small operation can use effectively without a ton of effort to greatly enhance the conference experience. What would you add/remove as part of your essential toolkit?

Last year I attended Mesh 09. That was the first conference I’d been to where I think *everyone* had a Twitter account. Sessions were filled with people tweeting and live blogging. I followed the conference hash tag to keep up with what was happening, sometimes switching rooms because of what others were posting. Events that use social media like Twitter and live blogging amplify the value of the “hallway conversations” that are often the best part of conferences. The conference felt more alive, and in turn I got more value from going.

Over the past few years I’ve volunteered to help a number of events use social media to amplify their value and impact on participants. From experience I can say that with a little effort and knowledge, integrating social media into the conference experience does not have to be onerous or expensive. All the tools I use are free, and there are ways to automate part of the effort. Remember, too, once there is an environment in which everyone can participate and share, you don’t have to generate all the content – grab your paddle and jump in the content stream with others.

If I were in charge of social media for a conference, I would start first by identifying the needs people have around information and connecting. For this round of research I sat down with myself for an in-depth interview. Well, I was available and close by.

I see four stages participants go through related to a conference. For each stage I’ve identified needs. While some needs span across stages, I refer to them once to avoid unnecessary duplication. I know you’re busy.

Should I go to the party?

AKA deciding whether to attend the conference or not

• Sessions: where can I find more detailed information about them? What do others think of them?
• About presenters: where can I find more detailed information about them? What do others think of them? How can I contact presenters with my questions?
• Network: who else is going that I might want to meet?

Dress up: getting ready for the party

Getting closer to the event

• Network: contact people in advance, organize meet ups, discuss what is coming up
• Sessions: decide which sessions to attend. What sessions are other people going to, especially people I know?
• Accommodations: find someone to share a room, airport taxi. What lower cost alternatives are there to the conference hotel?

Party time

Ok, we’re there.

• Network: find people to connect with in real-time, organize meet ups
• Sessions: decide which sessions to attend. What sessions are other people going to, especially people I know?
  • last minute changes to schedule, sessions
• Feedback: timely, useful session feedback to presenters and conference organizers
• Conversation: what are the hot topics? What are people thinking/doing/sharing? What stories are being told by the people at the conference?

The morning after

• Feedback / telling the story: what are people saying and sharing about their experience of the conference?
• Network: find for those people you met but don’t have contact details for to continue discussions, follow up on opportunities, request copies of incriminating photos.

My experience is conferences not social media savvy don’t address these needs well, and miss some entirely, especially when it comes to connecting people with each other. Fortunately, all it takes is a reasonable effort and cost to bridge the gap. In the next blog post I’ll list the tools you’ll want to use to become a conference social media superstar.

How does this list compare to what you need? Have I missed anything important? Add your comment below.

Last week I attended my first ever Scrum Gathering in Orlando. A big part of my voluntary duties was to enhance the experience through use of social media.

Just for fun, I tabulated some numbers on social media throughput by myself and conference goers:

• 1500+ Twitter posts with #sgus hash tag
• 100+ Flickr photos (and likely more to come as people tag and upload their pics)
• 17 Youtube videos
• 78 event blog posts and counting. Close to 2,000 site views.
• All Twitter posts and about 35 Twitter pics with #sgus tag (here and here) posted to the live blog.

The Twitter fountain was a big hit. We set it up in the conference hallway one day and inside the open space ballroom the next. People enjoyed seeing tweets and photos appear live on screen.

In a follow-up post, I’ll explain more about the why and how of social media at the conference, what worked in my mind and what didn’t, and what I would do next time.

I’ll be helping with live blogging the Innovation Centre’s 10 year anniversary. All the action is taking place at the Grand Theatre, 1 pm, Tuesday December 8. Can’t make it? Come back here to see live coverage, including photos. Rumor has it there will be a big cake and unveiling of SSMIC’s new logo.

More details on the event on SSMIC’s site.

On Wednesday, June 9 at 6:00 pm we’ll begin live coverage of the Sault Ste. Marie and Region Awards for Science and Technology. Come back here to see live photos and blogging of the event.

Michael Purvis (@MichaelPurvisOK), report with the Sault Star wrote a piece on the growing local use of Twitter. I was the lucky one to get my photo snapped. He shares the stories of:

• an elementary teacher connecting with experts in education
• a naturopath sharing tips and suggestions on health topics as a way to promote her business
• a professor who dialogues with students and connects with other parents of autistic children
• the Sault Star which now posts links to a selected list of stories and events (Michael manages this, too)

I discover new people from the Sault on Twitter every week, and the rate of adoption is increasing. I’m following about 60 people from the area at the moment. Some of these people have become good friends, even though we’ve never met.

The reality though is that only about 5% of Twitter users really understand how to use and benefit from the tool. Many give up before getting to that point.

One way I’m trying to give back to the community is by sharing knowledge of how businesses and individuals can benefit from social media. I’ve given one course on Twitter as well as a session on social media for small businesses. I’m considering offering the course again, so please contact me if you are interested.

There is also an upcoming Tweetup for people using or are interested in Twitter to connect. Register now as seating is limited.

Read the full article: Sault’s Twittering class grows (via Sault Star)

Having too much fun with Twitter to look at the camera.

Twitter is an amazing networking tool, but for many people, it’s hard to “get” Twitter at the start. My experience is people (including me) struggle with the benefits of Twitter and the value in using the tool for 3-6 months, sometimes more. Many just give up before reaching the “a-ha” moment. Last night I had a great time introducing Twitter to 8 eager students in my first ever public class. The goal of the course is to reduce the time to get value from Twitter, and to get productive right away by bootstrapping people with tools and know-how.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the experiment. We covered everything I had hoped to in the allotted two hours. People had lots of great questions. By the end, everyone was active on Twitter and had learned the basics of posting links, replies, re-tweets and direct messages. We used PeopleBrowsr so everything they did in class would be available to them at home or work.

A few lessons learned:

• Double-check that you’ve packed the power chord (battery expired with few min left).
• Class of 8 worked well for assisting people. Beyond 12 or so, have an assistant.
• Use high contrast colours on slides when you can’t turn off all the lights.

The slides from the course are at the bottom of the post. I’ve posted references to items mentioned during the course:

Twitter examples mentioned:

• @cnnbrk – CNN breaking news, over 1 million followers.
• @DellHomeOffers – deals on Dell products for the home
• @conceptshare – Uses Twitter to post product news, and get feedback for ConceptShare product. Based in Sudbury, ON
• #flood09 – Hash tag to gather news on Red River Valley flooding. Star Tribune newspaper has a page on their site dedicated to #flood09.
• News of Hudson River plane crash posted on Twitter by guy traveling to crash site by barge, well in advance of any coverage by media.
• @Pistachio‘s charitable campaign to raise money to build clean water wells, by inviting her 10k+ followers to donate $2 each through Twitter.
• @Freshbooks is very active in engaging, supporting and nurturing it’s community through Twitter.
• Post content to Twitter automatically using Twitterfeed.

Tools for building your Twitter community:

• Twittgroups has all kinds of groups by topic or location. I set up a Sault Ste. Marie group a few months ago. Find new people to follow and add your own Twitter profile to the page so others can follow you.
• Use Twitter advanced search to do specific searches by location, keyword, person, time line. I find people in the Sault area on a regular basis
• Mr. Tweet looks at who you follow, what you tweet about to come up with a relevant list of new people to follow.
• We Follow is a user-generated Twitter directory. Find people to follow by topic. Add yourself to the directory under three topics using hashtags. You can find me under Agile, Sault, coach.
• Twubble is a simpler version of Mr. Tweet that looks at who your followers are following and recommends people.

Tools for improving your Twitter profile:

• Create a custom cartoon avatar at Face Your Manga.
• Create a custom Twitter background.

Gerry recommends PeopleBrowsr Twitter app for managing your tweets. To get the most out of PeopleBrowsr, click on the Tutorial link at the bottom of the screen after you log in.

Come meet other Saultbies on Twitter at the next Sault Tweetup event, May 19 @ Cafe Natura.

Last night I had the privilege of presenting a session on social media, the final installment in the Economic Development Corporation’s 3 part series on online marketing strategies. The audience was small but engaged, making for a fun evening. I spent about 1/3 of my time just answering questions. The group was diverse, including an Alpaca farmer, a manager at a local bank, a newcomer to the Sault, and someone from Sault Tourism.

Reasons people came to the event:

• Expand network
• Connect more with people
• Create awareness about business
• Promote in a new market
• Learn how to present product
• Learn social media tools
• Engage people, and how to manage the effort
• How to use social media tools efficiently
• How to reach a young audience

The group finished up the evening by coming up with a top 10 list of tips for a small business using social media, based on what was presented. Here is there must-do list, in no particular order, with some additional comments from me:

1. Update content constantly. You are only as good as your last post / tweet / comment.
2. Be honest. You can’t hide deception online.
3. Start small. Pick something, try, learn, assess.
4. Find a sustainable pace. Don’t burn yourself out.
5. Stay focused. Have a clear message.
6. Know your audience.
7. Use tools to (your) fullest potential. Keep learning, experimenting. Read about what others are doing.
8. Be open and transparent in your communication. Let people get to know both about you and your business.
9. Work hard to keep customers happy. Address negative comments and turn frustrated patrons into your evangelists through over-the-top service.
10. Choose the right digital channels. There are lots to choose from, and you can’t do everything.

Here are 5 additional resource links for small businesses trying to use social media:

• Twitter for the small businesses owner. Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of the page as well.
• Tips for choosing the right digital channels
• A social media glossary and a great video explaining RSS, or site feed syndication.
• Podcasting in plain English
  
• What is blogging?

Social media isn’t what I do for a day job. I don’t consider myself a social media expert. I like to use the term ‘social media swimmer’. I’m a fish navigating the rivers of online connectedness, and have been splashing in the waters heavily for some time. My desire is to help people and organizations in Sault Ste. Marie benefit from using social media, which is why I do these presentations.

Next month people can learn about Twitter in an interactive, hands-on session I’ve put together at Algoma University. Course is limited to first 20 registrants. Cost covers my costs plus some of my time taken away from my regular work to prepare for it. If you’ve wondered what Twitter is about and how to make the best use of it, you won’t be disappointed. You can register and pay online. How easy is that?

The slides from the presentation are below. Huge dose of gratitude to Fred Roed of WorldWideCreative for giving me permission to use some of his slides from a similar presentation. Sharing ideas FTW!

Update: course date is April 21. Only first 20 registrants accepted.

“Facebook is for people you used to know. Twitter is for people you want to know.” – Tim O’Reilly

“Twitter is the water cooler for connected free agents.” – Mark K

• Coaching & training a web development team based in TO in Agile
• Volunteering for Changecamp.ca and Thmvmnt.info, both which may turn into longer term paid gigs. Attended inaugural ChangeCamp in TO, got involved in organizing, expanded network of TO contacts
• Recruited a passionate volunteer for Pairvote.ca, who wrote on his blog, gave media interviews and poured in countless hours in final week of campaign
• Many useful links and tips on Agile, helped many others with Agile questions
• Organized all-star panel for Agile 2009 conference from people who responded on Twitter.
• Made many new friends, both locally and around the world.
• Learned about the Hudson plane crash moments after it happened. Saw first photo of plane crash on Twitter before reaching mainstream media.

Twitter, at first glance is a simple tool to master, but without guidance it can take months to start getting real value for time invested. The purpose of this course is to avoid the time suck to ramp up on how best to use your time on Twitter. Participants will learn by doing:

• How Twitter differs from other social networking tools
• How Twitter is being used by citizens, business people, government officials, media and others
• How to create a suitable presence on Twitter
• How to use a Twitter client to better manage conversations and relationships
• How to find people they want to converse with
• Proper Twitter etiquette
• Examples of Twitter postings
• Discover 3rd party tools to enhance their Twitter experience

When: April 21, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Where: Course will take place at Algoma University, using a computer lab where everyone will have their own workstation.

Size limited to 20 participants. Course fee is $50. Register and pay online.

Course Outline

2 hrs total, though may stretch to as much as 2.5 hours

15 min    Intro: What is Twitter?

At the start of last fall’s federal election, I wanted to bring attention to the non-sexy electoral reform issue. Thanks to Google, I discovered pair voting had been used in the U.S. but not in Canada. Seemed like a novel idea that might interest and inspire people. After a few hours of effort, http://www.pairvote.ca was launched and then I went away for the weekend. Upon returning, over 50 people had registered to swap votes and national media was asking for interviews.

Social networking and free tools are game changers. Who would have thought one person could use free, online tools to launch a vote swapping service and thrust voting reform back into the spotlight? In the presentation below, you will see how one person using Facebook, blogging, Twitter, Skype, Google maps and a mailing list garnered thousands of registrants, dozens of media interviews and most of all the growth of a grassroots movement for electoral reform.

You’ll learn about people like Kris, a person discovered through Twitter who became a key contributor by writing online, giving interviews and devoting countless hours in the final days.

If you are relatively new to engaging people online, you will discover ideas and tips you can use in your own work and volunteer efforts.

Watch presentation in full screen.

Original presentation delivered to TAG audience at Sault College, January 28, 2009. OT: the multimedia centre has cameras that follow the speaker, very cool indeed.

Following agile talk on Twitter using Tweetdeck (click image for larger view)

I like Twitter. A lot. Twitter has helped me connect with a diverse group of people, particularly in the Agile community. I consider myself fortunate to chat and learn from people like Lisa Crispin (@lisacrispin), Brian Marick (@marick), Esther Derby (@estherderby), as well as lesser knowns like myself. For instance, I learned about Lisa’s upcoming book on Agile Testing (pre-ordered), Esther’s love of gardening and good food and have a ring-side seat between the always colourful Ron Jeffries (@RonJeffries) and Bob Martin (@unclebobmartin). I also discovered some great articles, including Cory Ladas’ Scrumban.

There is a lot of Agile-related chatter on Twitter, and it isn’t always easy to find. To help myself and others join in, I created the Agile Twitter group as an experiment, using  TwitGroups.com.

How to join the conversation

1. Sign up to the Agile Twitter group.
2. The Agile Twitter group official tag is the highly original #agile. Just type #agile somewhere in your post, likeLooking for an #agile pm tool, anyone have suggestions?and your tweet will end up in the Agile group’s Twitter stream (or is that tweet stream?).

How to follow the conversation

Unfortunately, Twitter has no built-in mechanism for following keywords so that those tweets appear in your Twitter stream. Here, then are the options I know of:

1. Use a desktop tool like TweetDeck which has built-in support for Twitter searches. I have a search for everything with the word agile, which captures both Agile group tweets and anything else Agile on Twitter, including agile kids hiding behind couches to avoid their parents.
2. Monitter is a real-time web-based keyword tracking tool, with support for RSS feeds if you prefer to receive updates that way.
3. Add twitterspy@jabber.org to your list of IM contacts, then send twitterspy the message “track agile” (without quotes). You’ll get IM replies with linked Twitter ids.
   

   Track #agile conversation using IM via twitterspy@jabber.org (click image for larger view)

4. Visit the Agile Twitter group page occasionally and see what activity is happening by clicking on the Agile group’s Twitter stream.

Quick reference of Agilistas on Twitter

At the bottom of the group page is a list of all the members, with links to their Twitter page and personal web site. This is another easy way to follow people who have an interest in Agile like you. In less than a day, almost 100 people have registered. Now we just have to get people joining and following #agile, or this whole experiment is a bust.

What else do Groups offer?

These groups allow members to share links to related blogs, articles, forums, events, photos and wikis. You have to go to the group page to post and see them. I doubt this will get much use, but hey now you can’t say I didn’t tell you.

If you are a member of the group, let me know what you think, either as a comment here or on Twitter. Just don’t forget your #agile.

Catch all the action as World Plone Day travels across the globe!

• Live video streams – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/world-plone-day
• IRC – #worldploneday at irc.freenode.net
• Follow http://www.twitter.com/worldploneday

Twitter

Older Twitter posts

Photos on Flickr

What the blogs are saying about WPD

Let's make some noise

World Plone Day is almost here. This is one day of the year we celebrate and promote Plone worldwide as a community. Are you ready to make some noise for your favourite CMS? Come on everyone, gimme a P, L, O, N, E!

Before Friday, Easy Ways to Promote Plone

1. If you are on Twitter, follow twitter.com/worldploneday and encourage others to do so.
2. Post a link to worldploneday.org on Facebook, Twitter so people can see if there are events happening in their area.
3. There is a Facebook event. Join and invite people you think might be interested. Show your pride by becoming an official fan on Facebook.

On World Plone Day, Ways to Promote Plone

I noticed that a few Plone bloggers registered their blog at Technorati, having read Mr. Topf’s recommendation to do so. I agree wholeheartedly. Technorati is the largest directory of blogs, and offers increased exposure to your blog through its directory, tag and search features. And hey, it’s free, so why not take 10 minutes to claim your blog?

In addition, here are 5 free things worth doing to promote your blog that I’ve done:

1. Provide a site feed on your blog. Ok, so you’ve done that, but do you know how many subscribers you have, and whether that is going up or down? Register your feed at Feedburner and take advantage of the free feed stats and ways to publicize your feed. We really need a way to integrate Feedburner feeds into Plone easily, and something I commented on this PLIP. Add your voice if you think this is a good (or not) idea.
2. Offer email subscription to your blog for people who aren’t comfortable with site feeds (yet). Feedburner has such a feature that takes minutes to set up. Just copy / paste the html form code, or use a subscription link instead.
3. Gather statistics using Google Analytics. If you aren’t monitoring and measuring traffic, how will you know what interests people the most? Discover most popular posts and what external links people are clicking on.
4. Promote your online presence by adding a link to your LinkedIn and / or Facebook profile (you do have one, don’t you?). Give people a chance to find and learn more about you via other social networks. Conversely, you can promote your blog through your profiles. Add your site address to your profiles. In Facebook, auto-import your blog feed via the Notes application.
5. Point to your blog by building a Squidoo lens. A lens is an organized directory that makes it easy for people to find your good stuff. It’s free and you should have one… it will bring you credibility and traffic. You could list your top postings, as well as a bio of yourself and your blog feed. I don’t have one on my blog (yet), but you can learn from me about all about ultimate frisbee!

There are lots more ways to promote your blog, but those are 5 you can do easily and costs you only your time.

Feedburner, LinkedIn, Technorati, blog promotion, facebook, google analytics, marketing, plone, squidoo

Now that I have a number of people in my Twitter circle, the social utility is improving. It’s interesting to find out what other people are working on and learning about. Here are some tips and entertaining bits that have been shared in the past couple of weeks via Twitter (what is Twitter and why should I care?):

• Install multiple versions of Internet Explorer easily on Windows
• Encyclopedia of business cliches
• Install tinyurl service on your Mac to preshrink urls
• Jazkarta makes front page of Boston Globe
• Why plastic and food should never meet
• Generating human readable ids in Python

And most important of all, Rob Porter got engaged! How it all happened is an entertaining story in itself.

Want to join the circle? Sign up at twitter and then choose to follow some of the Plone people using Twitter.

Technorati Tags: community, plone, twitter

What is Twitter and why should I care?

From Wikipedia: “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific.” Anyone who has signed up to follow your account gets your updates as part of their Twitter feed.

Twitter is a lot more fun once you have a group of people you know twittering as well. You can also sign up to feeds from high profile politicians, news services and metropolitan fire departments.

How to get started

Create an account on twitter.com, it’s free. For Mac buffs, download Twitterific. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Find some people to follow, including some of the plonistas mentioned in my earlier post, friends who are already using Twitter or search Twitter for other people who have similar interests. You can invite others to join as well.

Most twitter posts, I’ve noticed are about what people are doing as they go through their day. While some of that can be entertaining, I’m mostly interested in Twitter as a shared learning tool, so I try to post one entry a day about something I have learned or done.

Use tinyurl.com to include links, since you are limited to 140 characters.

Twitter as a Plone marketing tool

Mr. Topf provided some excellent suggestions as a comment to my earlier posting about Plone and Twitter. I’ve added a few of my own as well:

• Post interesting stuff about what you learn about Plone to your twitter feed (like “reading nice howto on X: http://…“) and the like. Just look at what sort of posts your friends do
• Talk about projects you are using Plone for
• Provide tidbits on Plone, including new releases, how much fun the community is, when the next Plone event is, interesting Plone screencasts (or do them yourself) and so on.
• Point people to http://twitter.com/plone naturally

Over time, you’ll reach more and more people who don’t know about Plone. Imagine that, people who have never heard about Plone before!

Technorati Tags: plone, marketing, twitter

Mr. Topf just finished creating a Plone twitter feed so now you can get tasty bits of Plone news and information throughout your day. Head to http://twitter.com/plone, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

There are also a number of people active in the Plone community who are twittering as well. Here are their twitter coordinates:

• Gerry Kirk (gkirk) – http://twitter.com/gerrykirk
• Alex Clark (aclark) – http://twitter.com/aclark4life
• JoAnna Springsteen (jluvsu2) – http://twitter.com/jluvsu2
• Nate Aune (natea) – http://twitter.com/natea
• Christian Scholtz (mrtopf) – http://twitter.com/mrtopf
• Rob Porter (robzonenet) – http://twitter.com/robzonenet
• Eric Steele – http://twitter.com/esteele
• Christian Vinten-Johansen – http://twitter.com/cjohansen
• Erik Rose – http://twitter.com/ErikRose
• Mike Halm – http://twitter.com/mikehalm
• Scott Paley – http://twitter.com/spaley
• Dave Wave – http://twitter.com/davewave
• Jean-Sébastien Mansart – (en français) http://twitter.com/jihaisse
• Farida – http://twitter.com/farida
• Tom Lazar (tomster) – http://twitter.com/tomlazar
• Kai Diefenbach – http://twitter.com/diefenbach
• Frank Cohen – http://twitter.com/fcohen

Are there any other twitter plonistas out there? Please raise your hand by posting your twitter url as a comment.

Updated July 30, 2007: added other Plone people who are using Twitter to the list above.
Updated August 2, 2007: added two more people to the list.
Updated August 7, 2007: Germany has two more representatives
Updated August 16, 2007: one more twit, er twitterer

Technorati Tags: plone, twitter

The following is a posting I made on the DeoWeb discussion group, which reflects my thoughts on where online communications in the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie needs to shift (and DeoWeb‘s focus as a communications solution).

Have you been enjoying the discuss taking place? Have you been pleased to meet new people through this group, other people of faith who are interested in the same topic as you?

For myself, I give an enthusiastic “Yes!” to both of those questions.

You’ve now had a (small) taste, perhaps for the first time, of how online communications can help to draw people together, either to form new relationships or to strengthen existing ones.

We are so busy and so isolated nowadays that we don’t know who our neighbours are or the people next to us in the pew. Yet, we also have a need for meaningful and fun relationships.

Because of DeoWeb, I was able to find two people to help my busy wife with our two newborn twins and toddler. I did not know these people, and they did not know me. In a parish of 1100 parishioners, with 3 masses, the odds of us finding each other at church are slim at best. For Rowena and I, they are now a special part of our parish family.

Paul Falcioni, we really need to share the story of how DeoWeb is helping to revitalize your parish by re-connecting with schools. Perhaps I can get someone to write a story for you. I’ll get back to you.

This is just the tip of the ice berg. There are many more opportunities to build community using online tools.

Fact: More than 50% of time spent on the Internet is for social reasons, and not for research or buying another book at Amazon. My pastor spends more time counseling youth using instant messaging than in person. He has a profile on facebook.com.

Hence the proliferation of social networking sites like facebook.com, myspace.com, linkedin.com, mychurch.org.

Getting volunteers to input content for their ministry work has largely failed, and I am more convinced now that this won’t change, unless there is internal motivation to do so.

I think people are much more motivated to share about their personal lives, their hopes, questions and interests. Facilitating that kind of dialogue will bear much more fruit than say trying to get every CWL parish group to maintain a workspace. In fact, sharing the *personal* may spur the desire to promote the *pastoral*. When a lady shares what the CWL means to her personally, spiritually, others will connect with that and want to know more about the CWL.

I envision a revamped DeoWeb, where the focus is more on connecting people, where the information published is more personal and from the grassroots, and less from the established Church (parish and diocesan offices). A system that connects people who want to know each other, that builds meaningful relationships.

Paul Labelle, I hear your concerns about the people out there with extremist views that tear down rather than build community. There are very effective ways to avoid and mitigate a lot of that. We’ve just never invested much time on the people side of content… yet.

I also see a system that makes it easy to find quality faith-based content on the web, to nourish people on their spiritual journey. Some of this is being done already, but on a small scale. This would require the help of volunteers, to find those resources.

Who would like to see a Q & A section, where people could ask a hand-picked group of religious people from the Diocese questions about faith? There are already examples of this on the web.

We received last week a letter from the Ontario Catholic Bishops. What if there was a way to discuss it, and together come up with ways to live out the spirit of the letter, and then enable people to share what they are doing about it?

Jesus’ ministry was carried out through relationships, those intimate encounters that left people touched and loved. The woman at the well. The apostles in the boat. Martha and Lazarus.

If Jesus were physically present on this earth today, I think he’d be on facebook and in the chat rooms, while blogging about the challenges of following God’s path. Wait a minute. He is present now, through you and me. We’ve got work to do.

Peace,
- Gerry

On Friday of last week, I got Fr. Tony’s podcast up on iTunes. The process is fairly straightforward. There is a large icon on the main podcast page in iTunes for adding your own podcast. You then have to type in the url of the podcast feed. The url is then grabbed and all the associated info (title, image, description, url) is displayed for you to verify. If there is anything wrong, it has to be fixed in the originating feed.
We’re using SermonCloud to host the homilies and it has some built-in iTunes support which is now much better after I reported a few glitches. Justin, the one guy who seems to be doing all the support is pretty quick to patch anything up.
You do need your own iTunes account and a credit card, even though you’ll never be billed for your podcast. I wish Apple didn’t treat podcasters the same as consumers who purchase music / games / videos / TV Shows through their site.
That aside, it’s pretty cool to see the podcast up there. There aren’t many other Catholic podcasts on iTunes yet, and I honestly think that Tony has the best homilies out of the handful of offerings, not to mention the best mug shot of them all.
Go have a look at Tony’s podcast under the iTunes bright lights. Oh, and I should mention Fr. Tony is calling his podcast “This Foreign Land.” I’ll have him explain the meaning in a guest post.

Technorati Tags: podcast, homily, sermon

The next step is to create an iTunes subscription, and to start getting the word out. This is an exciting development, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more priests climb on board. There are some gifted homilists in our diocese, including Fr. George LaPierre at my parish, St. Gerard-Majella. It seems every week someone is asking him for a copy of his homily (which he doesn’t have because they aren’t written) or wishing so-and-so had been at mass to hear him preach. Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: homily, podcast, deoweb, sermon