Tag: google

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Google Tools Tour for the May 15th Nonprofit Commons Meeting

This Friday, May 15th, TechSoup’s Nonprofit Commons in Second Life meeting will feature a tour of the many Google tools available for nonprofits, libraries and educators. You probably are familiar with YouTube and Gmail, but what about the many other apps and tools that Google offers. Come learn and share tools useful for storytelling, learning, and furthering your mission.  

Join us in Second Life!

 

Nonprofit Commons Weekly Meeting

Friday, May 15th, 8:30 AM PT / SLT

Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheater

http://bit.ly/NPCinSL  

 

AGENDA (all times below PT)

    •    8:30 am Introductions

    •    8:40 am TechSoup Announcements

    •    8:45 am Mentors Central 

    •    9:00 am Featured Presentation – Google Tools Tour

    •    9:40 am Open Mic / Announcements

 

http://nonprofitcommons.org 

The mission of the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life is to create a community for nonprofits to explore and learn about virtual worlds, foster connections, and discover the many ways in which nonprofits might utilize the unique environment of Second Life to achieve their missions. 

Written by: Rhiannon Chatnoir

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Google Helps Nonprofits

Google has recently launched particular package of discounted and free apps, tools and services which are aimed at the nonprofit community, while for-profit companies, including the providers of no credit check loans, will have to buy them.

Some apps are really offered by Google at no cost for nonprofits, while others are provided with reduced price. Besides, these groups are allowed to use Google Earth in order to tell their story with the help of mapping technologies performed by Google and to visualize their cause.

Meanwhile, the Google’s YouTube unit raises the upload limits and gives a ‘donate’ button to the nonprofits that can place it on their videos.

Written by: SusanM

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Nonprofit Commons Weekly Update for September 13, 2010

Weekly Update from the Nonprofit Commons

Events this week:
The new and improved TechSoup.org site is live!
Check it out and let us know any feedback you have. http://ow.ly/2Dy2n

8:30AM Friday meeting at Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheatre
Join us this FRIDAY AM http://bit.ly/nonprofitcommons

Weekly Networking Event:
Wharf Ratz, Aloft every Tues., 8PM SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/162/236/2

The next Online Community Managers Meetup in San Francisco will also be available in Second Life!
Don’t miss guest speaker, Randy Farmer, creator of the first virtual world, speaking on reputation systems.
Join us live September 22 at 7PM http://www.meetup.com/octribe/calendar/14233243/

Last week at the NPC:
Ellie Brewster came to share the Women’s Virtual Community Project:
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/collingwood7/minerva/events.html
Events for 2010-2011 will be announced on 9/15 for inworld classes and events.

In the meeting we discussed Heat Maps, metrics and visits to NPC, how we can look at engagement on our sims and where people flow through and stay involved.

NPC Heat Map

This is one example of a heat map at NPC from the Summer of 2010. We can get a good glimpse of the walkways and main traffic patterns (typically walking along designated paths around event/common areas) and see what offices are most popular for visits.

We discussed where people leave from and arrive to (typically advertised spaces and event spaces) and also looked at the demographics of our visitors by country – 22 countries involved in NPC this summer.

We have a handful of tenants and guests who have been to the commons hundreds of times, most come for a visit every 1-7 days. We will contact tenants who have not been back in the last few months to encourage return visits and online organizing at NPC. Evonne (In Kenzo) will work with Parhelion Parou, Buffy Beale, Brena Benoir, Ninlil, Kali & YOU to make sure that pathways and public spaces are easy to navigate as we find interesting ways to spotlight NPC. Ideas are welcome.

Ninlil Xentiltat followed up brainstorming about how to better provide services in this community. Do you have a suggestion to add? Email nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org or start a conversation online. If you want to volunteer or find a volunteer to help you with a specific endeavor, visit our wiki page: http://npsl.wiki.techsoup.org/volunteers and find Ninlil inworld.

More on Statistics, Insights & Engagement

We are processing the insights on our primary social media sites: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life & Google. We are finding that there are over 300 of you who are active here with 339 “likes” on Facebook. On average 50+ of you are actively engaging with us on Facebook. On Twitter we have 780 followers! In 2010 the TechSoupVideo YouTube pages are getting the highest traffic on our Second Life-related videos and machinima.

Here’s our Facebook page demographics for age and country/languages:

Facebook page demographics

Reminder: Submit your Projects to the FACT Social Justice Challenge at NetSquared
The French American Charitable Trust (FACT) and NetSquared are pleased to announce the second annual FACT Social Justice Awards. Submissions are now open for your innovative Projects that leverage web and/or mobile technologies to foster collaboration around social justice issues. Learn more about the Challenge and how to participate here: http://netsquared.org/challenges/fact-social-justice-2010

TechSoup Talks! Webinars take place on September 21 and 30.

Inworld we share these links to our community sites:
Nonprofit Commons blog
http://www.nonprofitcommons.org/
LinkedIn:
http://linkd.in/NonprofitCommons

Thank you for your contributions to the Nonprofit Commons! Stay in touch: nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org

~In Kenzo, Nonprofit Commons Scribe~

Written by: InKenzo

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Webinar: Online Collaboration Tools

I just attended TechSoup’s latest free Webinar: Online Collaboration Tools, steamed live at the Plush amphitheater. Speakers were Jon Warnow from 350.org, Jay Boren & Ronald Ho from Google.

First, 350.org: Jon talked about some of the tools his org relied upon to pull off large scale offline events. Last year they held 352 events in a sing day of action. Main points:

  • Event organization must be done “in the cloud” to allow collaboration & productivity when traveling.
  • Skype for communication, planning.
  • Dropbox filesharing. Stores files in the cloud and on your computer…all team members can access from any location. Also uses democracy.org, Salsa platform (browser-based organizing/constituent tools), and Flickr, of course, to organize their thousands of photos.

Next up – Google Apps: free communication, collaboration and publishing tools. (Free for orgs with up to 50 staff). Their goal is to make collaboration easy and run “in the clouds” so anyone can access. (Wow, ‘in the clouds’ is certainly the phrase du jour!)

Note: Jay Boren authors monthly newsletter for nonprofits on Google resources; sign up info is here: http://www.google.com/nonprofits/

  • Google Docs: free, secure file creation and storage! Can edit files anywhere there is internet access. Can select who can access/edit. Can bulk upload to your computer/server.
  • Google Calendars: share calendars, access remotely
  • Google Mail (Gmail): can have custom .org email for all staff
  • Google Sites: Can use for secure company Intranets and easily create rich websites. Easy form creation. Ideas for form use: Silent Auction, Constituent registration, question/feedback

All apps are mobile as well, so you can access your stuff while on the go. Comprehensive tutorials and training are provided for all google apps.

Links to webinar recording and presentation will be posted here: https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=6lm4z63b0iwm

Written by: emellsmere