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

TechSoup Wins Financial Times 2010 Social Innovation Awards

NPC is happy to share that TechSoup Global won the open-vote portion of the Justmeans/Financial Times 2010 Social Innovation Awards . There were 88 other contenders for this Citizen’s Choice Award, but because your participation, we went from 116 to 1,545 votes . Great work everybody, and we deeply appreciate the help from the entire virtual community.

To win the vote, NPC/TechSoup employees and volunteers sent emails to personal contacts and deployed a grass-roots social media campaign to reach out to supporters around the world.

Volunteers rallied fans to take action through Second Life, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Avatars United, as well as through private email campaigns and on blogs.

NPC’s Layal Rabat wrote a powerful blog post which was tweeted to get folks psyched, and as voters left comments about TechSoup, we captured and tweet-shared these from Tweetphoto .

The response was phenomenal! The tweets went viral, Facebook and LinkedIn groups shared the message with other groups, and residents of Second Life reached out to their constituencies in the nonprofit, education and business communities.

What We Learned from Barack Obama’s Social Media Strategy

So how did we win when we were up against multi-million dollar companies with hundreds of thousands of employees and fancy PR firms?

First, we learned from Barack Obama’s social media strategy. For his presidential campaign his team used email, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and many other platforms to get his message out. He maintained a consistent message for his audience, centering around “Hope”. He connected with specific groups and encouraged supporters. Since his supporters believed that he could deliver on his promise, they actively helped him get his message out.

For TechSoup, the words “Social Innovation” fit naturally with its core mission. This was easily apparent to the members, constituents and partners that engage daily with us on many social media platforms. So when we reached out to our global network to help us get the votes, they were there to deliver and help us get the message out.

Thank you everyone. In both the real and virtual worlds, this was truly a Citizen’s Choice award.

Attachment Size
TechSoup Final Vote.png 289.89 KB

Written by: DustyArtaud

CNN, YouTube, and Tweets

What a curious thing the Democratic debate this afternoon ended up being. I was unable to watch them live, needing to be at work to earn a living, but found out via Len Edgerly on Twitter that baratunde was sending out live tweets covering the goings on. So, when I got home this evening, I followed the Twitter streams of baratunde and Len to get a sense of what happened.

Things have changed in the last three years. What tools do you think are going to pop up before the election that will continue to disrupt traditional media?

Written by: Creech