WonderWomanGang

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Yesterday I was missing my friend @rachelannyes – so I looked at her twitter feed to see what she has been up to and get a sense of how she is doing. I found a lovely post:

@rachelannyes: What the world needs now is a Wonder Woman gang.

Absolutely.

So I hereby nominate for the Wonder Woman Gang the following amazing women. Please feel free to nominate those who inspire you and seem to have super powers in transforming our world.

@rachelannyes @randomdeanna@CDEgger @juneHolley @HildyGottlieb @amoration@amyrsward @VenessaMiemis @kanter @caseorganic@p2173 @kitode @ruby @silona@samsweetwater @wseltzer @rmchase @nilofer@deborah909 @sgleason @kristinwolff @staceymonk @joguldi @christinasworld@identitywoman @mariadeathstar @lizstrauss@ruthannharnisch @ladyniasan @beandlive @sheriherndon @nancywhite@alizasherman @CreatvEmergence @slboval

Then I asked for other nominations.

@kg posted: @NurtureGirl I nominate @sloane@beautifulthangs @ericaogrady@ShaunaCausey @willotoons@emgollie @khartline @Rapetzel#WonderWomanGang 🙂

plus: @kg posted: @NurtureGirl Are so many! @coachsizzle @nspilger @avivamo@realize_ink @snesbitt @susangordo@suzboop @penguinasana too 🙂#wonderwomangang

Who do you nominate? And when you think of wonderwomangang, what comes to mind? What super powers do you think these women have?

Wagn Endorsn

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I wrote this silly little explanation of wagn as a fun way to learn about it. While I am no Dr. Seuss, I was inspired by it. You can learn more about wagn by reading what the ReadWriteWeb has to say about it.

In Eugene, a couple geeks started building tools for a thrivable world. As a starter,
they thought they were building tools to make shopping with your values smarter.
They built Alonovo and the protoype for Make Me Sustainable
while crafting away at their own tool, wagn, when they were able.
They needed a space that could be edited, like a wiki,
by a community of folks in a space that was sticky.
But something that could work like a spreadsheet,
organizing information so searching would be a treat.
(Templates came in handy too, however, it was no small feat.)

Oregon’s biggest family foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust,
cried, “We need a knowledge management tool, we must!
Our knowledge, it seems to flow right out the door,
and we touch so many who know so much more.”
Now, Connectipedia.org is the biggest wagn to soar!

I saw “cards within cards” (for cards are smaller units than pages).
“Oh my! This could be used in so many ways – for writing in stages”
The process of reshuffling information becomes so slick,
Rearrange the outline! Click! We can be done in a lick!
And those business docs that are modular, with a chunk
being re-used in different combinations, ker-plunk!

This tools handles it in a snap!
But there was MORE! (Clap)

For 3 years I wandered Omidyar.net, a platform based on Plone.
It had blogs, and wikis, and profiles too. (Did I hear you moan?)
Such wonderful energy and wisdom was there!
It was filled with people bursting with care.
But nobody hardly ever, I dare say never, (tho it wasn’t that tricky)
took the gems from the blogs and moved them to the wiki.
(the highest value of a wiki, I think, is how it refines)
but no, all these conversations floating in timelines,
And no output, no coherent product, just blog vines.

Wagn answered – make the wiki a blog, make the blog a wiki!
You just add a comment box at the end. It wasn’t all that tricky.
Add all the comments (only if you give them permissions)
Like a wiki, the history keeps track of all the revisions.
I know it can do it, if we just give it a try.
Wagn is super fly! Do you know why?
Because it is the little things that stop us in a rut:
the copy, click; paste, save with no tracking of who said what.

I know, it still isn’t pretty,
(and I am not that witty)
Rest assured, you can bet,
I haven’t touched the css yet!
And there are pieces in the works today
that will help with making it easier to play.
I have seen gizmos and gadgets,
even had my hand in the making of wadgets.
But this wagn’s got ’em beat,
because what it does is simply so neat.

Twitter made me a better writer

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I have been writing professionally since college…over a decade ago. My best opportunities for honing my writing came from limiting word or character count – whether on grant applications, articles, or even forms. So it is not surprising to me that the character count on twitter helped improve my writing. If it hasn’t already done the same for you, here are some tips and tricks for getting your idea across in 140 characters or less.

1. Link out. Use blogs or other spaces where ideas and information are expressed fully. 🙂 When linking, provide enough keywords with the link that people know to follow the link and what they will get when there. Which keywords? Who, what, where, when, why – right? What audience(s) is it for? Is it location specific? Does it have a deadline? What folksonomy category is it in?

2. Get mathy. Use punctuation adjustments to trim down character counts. Works when you have a solid statement within 15 characters of 140. Turn and into + or & etc. Turn a series of item comma space item comma space and item comma space into item+item+item. Note, you can also quickly cut out articles: a, an, and the are often unnecessary.

3. Love action. As a poet, I was taught to put the power into verbs and nouns, not descriptors. Trim out superfluous words and put the energy and attention on the noun and verb. Who is it and what are they doing or being? What is the test for superfluous words? If you remove them, is it still clear what you mean? Can you combine or reword it more effectively? I often edit out the use of helper verbs. “I tried to tell Liz about shortening verb strings” can be more simply stated as “I told Liz about shortening verb strings.”

4. Crossword size. After a decade in academia, I tend to know more big words than small ones. It took me some time to figure out the short word equivalents. If you are good at crosswords, you have a strong short word vocabulary. Turn utilize back into use please. Shorten is better as trim, etc.

5. Abbreviate or contract. I hesitate to suggest it, as abbreviations can be misunderstood when speaking across different audiences. But IM and text messaging rang in the era of abbreviated dialog. If you find pronouns to be critical to include, shorten our to r and your to ur. Again, you can get mathy and say be4 or B4 instead of before. I suggest you look at the other options before falling back to abbreviation, but it really depends on your audience and their comfort with such practices. What are they doing?

Test to be sure, if read aloud, your tweet is understandable with the abbreviations.

What other methods do you use to trim your expressions into tweets?

Social Media Memory

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I “follow” abut 700 people on twitter, with about 1000 following me. At scale like this, the question I often am asked is, “How do you remember all those people?”

* about a hundred don’t tweet often, I would guess
* I already know about 250+, so I have hooks in my memory for them
* there is no social obligation on twitter for tracking all of it (unlike email)
* people @ or DM if they really want me to hear
* I use PeopleBrowsr to sort/group folks and the tags there help me remember
* as a network weaver, people fascinate me – how many sports stats and players does a sports fan track?
* whenever I don’t remember someone (and want to) PeopleBrowsr has lots of ways to dig for info

Part of this seems to be about building social media memory skills. In my years of Omidyar.net community, I seemed to develop strength in that memory muscle. While I was in college I could hardly remember which author wrote which books or held what beliefs, when it came to online community and my connections, I remember tons of details. It can be a fun game with folks – they ask me a question, and I remember who posted wedding photos to Omidyar or who lives in Boston. I think the ability to remember has a lot to do with how important something is to you. To me, my network made of hundreds of brilliant, interesting, inspiring, compassionate people is very important.

And I solidify this by meeting up with folks as I travel so I can really ground myself in their being. Then we when check-in online, I can imagine their posture, gestures, and warmth. I think the optimum number of connections for full rich relationship is much lower than the number I track via social media.
This works in something of a power law form. There are the edge folks – people I have encountered, but the connection has not deepened. Some of these folks are very good at putting enough into the initial connection that the looseness is sticky enough to hold.

How do you “hook” people into your memory?
– I prefer using sensory data, as I am a kinesthetic person – I experience others in my body. ooo, that sounds weird. Let’s just say that 3-d is better for me than voice or visuals.
– Like many others, my memory is often container-based/domain-specific – so meeting them in twitter doesn’t mean I will recognize them in email or at a conference.

What are ways of being “sticky” in other people’s memory?
– At nearly 6 feet with starkly contrasting hair/skin, I am visually pretty easily memorable (not much I can do or did do about that). Now, don’t go get a tattoo or piercing just to be memorable, but do dress in your own fashion and highlight your uniqueness (rather than worrying about whether your uniqueness is attractive or not).
– ask an unusual question – rather than asking “what do you do?” which is soooo typically American, ask “What are you passionate about?” or “Tell me a short story about your greatest adventure.”
– be yourself. If you consume all your brain cycles trying to remember what people know about you or who you were trying to be last time you met them, you won’t remember them and they won’t feel connected to you.
– be curious. The more you bring someone else alive, the more they will remember you.
– be clear about who you are, and get enough info from others that you are clear about at least one dimension of who they are.

What other ways can we be memorable (and positively so)?
How do you keep your social media memory?
What tools do you use to assist you?

Social Media Fundraising Success

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Epic Change ran a fundraising campaign over twitter this thanksgiving – #tweetsgiving!
They raised over their target of $10,000 in 48 hours. The money is intended for building a classroom in Tanzania. While the lure of social media promise for fundraising continues to elude many, there are a few hopeful and stellar examples of success.

I believe this campaign was successful for the following reasons (there may be more, but this is my sense of it right now).

1.Tangible concrete goal – raising this amount for a project is more compelling for most small donors than contributing to a general effort of an organization. A classroom in Tanzania. Every $10 is a brick, and we need 1000 bricks. Thus the donor may ask themselves how many bricks do they want to invest.

2.Trusted organization/people – Epic Change has been on twitter with a sustaining present for a long enough time to be recognizable to many – and draw in visibility through a network of trusted connections. One has to have the inner network trusting you before you can scale to second tier networks of scale. I could do a whole post just on how to establish trust in these networks. For now, I will just say that Epic Change has been following the rule of give to get by joining conversations and engaging their network in non-monetary sharing consistently.

3.Pass It On dynamic – the rules of tweetsgiving were clearly stated in the website put together just for this effort. They clearly encourage passing on the tweetsgiving to others. Furthermore, passing it on was facilitated by the core with ample thank yous and other acknowledgments. Additionally, donors are listed on the site as people to follow on twitter. There were also individual outreach efforts to get advocates for Epic Change to evangelize the the effort.

4.Tapping into Gratitude – the effort was tied into a holiday of gratitude. People give more when they are reminded of their own abundance – that they have enough. Thanksgiving is a good holiday for that reminder. And tweetsgiving reinforced this connection by asking people to post what they are grateful for along with the tag #tweetsgiving.

5.Event Bigger than Project Focus – sharing gratitude is a general activity around this holiday, so #tweetsgiving gave people a chance to share what they wanted to share in a way that really works on twitter. Tweeple like tagging for the aggregation of many voices about one topic.

6.Well-networked Core Team – this campaign was created and implemented by a team of folks rallying around the cause who are avid twitter users with networks of their own, including many vital influencers. This means the reach of the project was sufficient for success.

7.Clear timeline – the project was not open-ended or even long term. It was 48 hours. While there is probably not any clear urgency on the school being built necessitating a quick campaign, the campaign itself had a focused energy by being short-term. Attention to the cause did not require ongoing commitment of participants or even ongoing attention. Go in, twitter, make a gift, forward the action with a gratitude, and within 48 hours it is over. Meaning made, finances collected, and forward to the next activity for all involved. (note this is also cost effective for the fundraising team)

What do you think made it successful? How can you adopt these strategies in your fundraising and resource development?

Savoring People in San Fran

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Wow, what an incredible trip.

Friday night I arrived in San Francisco. Michael Maranda and I drove to the San Fran University area to meet with the Appropedia folks organizing the Open Sustainability Network camp. Discovering that they didn’t have a clear plan for facilitation, I stepped in. I knew if I didn’t that it would not be where I wanted to be. Do-acracy, right. 🙂 The amazing and delightful Evonne Heyning along with her handsome, Brent, joined us. (Despite her living in LA, we do manage to make our paths cross several times a year.) I have a tagging project in mind based on an idea I came up with during the Omidyar.net days. It will be perfect for collaborating with Amoration and Evonne’s circles of love. I will tell you about it when we are ready. (Too bad I missed Tony Deifell, because he is such a whiz at spreading mind-opening ideas.)

Saturday the conference began. An amazing woman, Amber Word, arrived to act as our greeter and artist. I wrote up the four principles of Open Space and the two laws, then Amber drew a splendid butterfly and bumblebee. Collectively we created our marketplace, and I was pleased to see a rich collection of ideas being explored next to projects being shared. We, of course, had a session to discuss what sustainability means. I am thrilled to share that people really loved the thrivability framing. Let the thrivability meme propagate!

I left a bit early (Michael Maranda took over running the evening news). Kaliya had arrived, and we talked until it was time to head to the East Bay. (Kaliya missed the Sunday session where her knowledge of open standards would have been incredibly useful. Perhaps her energy helped create that space/conversation.) Kaliya and I jumped on public transit and talked on the ride to Rockridge. I always enjoy her discerning insight into process and identity. We parted with promises to hang out at the Bioneers after-party on Sunday.

Next, Tom Portante met me at the train stop. We have been talking about going out to Tilden for a carousel ride for a couple months. We made it just in time for two twirls around the merry-go-round. As we walked up to it, I realized that it might be sort of silly for two adults to be riding, but I let that inner voice fade into silence as the horses went up and down, and the spin nearly pulled me off the saddle. What a thrill. How alive! We had time for dinner and espresso in Berkeley before arriving at Wisteria Ways for a house concert. (I did their web design years ago.) After hugging my old friend Lisa Tracy, we reveled in the amazing voice of Amy X Neuberg. WOW. Fantastic experience, and Tom is just the person to share it with. He really knows how to savor experiences.

Sunday at the conference found new friends easily discussing projects, actions, and possibilities at the Open Sustainability Network conference (#osn). I enjoyed conversations on geo-mashups, messaging the network, and building a coalition for Open Sustainability. I think we came away with a group committed to sharing data and creating data-standards–yeah!!! Post-conference de-brief dinner was lovely ending with goodbyes to several of our amazing circle. But I managed to steal away Lonny, Amber, Chris, and Scott for the Bioneers afterparty.

We arrived miraculously (without clear directions) at the Sacred Grove. I managed to find both Kaliya and Kachina Katrina. We thought we might stay an hour, but we wandered, danced, and played until 3am. (I believe the band we danced to was Dogon Lights.) I might have mingled more, but it was gret to focus on playing with the people I brought.

Monday started late. 🙂 I met Lisa Parker on Haight at The People’s Cafe. (I met Lisa at our Inspired Legacies event in late June.) We have much in common and a shared vision, so our time together went fast. I am eager to see what Lisa does next with YouthGive as well as her own efforts to help democratize philanthropy.

Monday evening was our dinner party! Rather than run around the Bay Area having one on one meetings this time, I had decided to have a dinner where people could meet each other. Jerry was one of the people I invited, and he had plans with some friends that night. So he brought them with. (Jerry and I are working together with some amazing people on guildsmiths.) Tracy Gary made it! (And my dear co-founder showed me our Inspired Legacies bi-annual report which consumed my life since early August along with our trade show booth banners – so terrific!). So the crew who turned up for dinner at Chow included: Jerry Michalski, April Rinne, Tracy Gary, Eric Utne, Leif Utne, Leif’s friend JP, Amber Word, Kaliya Hamlin, and later in the evening David Harris and his partner. Topics on the table included TheUptake (Leif is on the board), Zanby, EarthCouncils.org (Eric’s project), Global Lives (David’s work), Inspired Legacies (showing off the report), microfinance, and more. As the party broke up hours later, Leif invited those remaining to karaoke. Eric, Leif, JP, Amber and I wandered down the street, with all our bags in tow, to a fabulous little bar and some fun. I have never been to a karaoke night, so I had to turn off the little inner voice arguing not to do anything to look silly, and be open to whatever might happen. It was fabulous!

Tuesday again started late. I met with David Harris for more conversation (I have done some limited pro-bono consulting for Global Lives since I met David at Omidyar.net in 06.) He is consulting for Institute for the Future, so he gave me a tour and a handful of introductions. IFTF maps on the wall made me feel right at home. The experience was highly encouraging. We caught up a bit – David has been doing a lot of traveling for his project; then he kindly coached me some on the services Nurture offers. Since I passed Redwood City on the way to see David, I messaged Thomas Kriese. We met at Peets around 4pm for a fast-paced exchange and update. Next, I went back into San Fran to meet with Jodee Rich of Peoplebrowsr for a demo and discussion over dinner.

What a phenomenal trip. Thanks to everyone I met with! And apologies to many I missed this time through.

MacArthur announces Digital Media and Learning awardees

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Great to see the list of winners. I helped several friends with their application. Unfortunately they are not on the list. However, the projects listed appear to be strong and valuable.

Projects like Fractor are both innovative and potentially powerful. Fractor links news stories to opportunities to take action. Don’t just read the news, do something about it. 🙂 Hypercities would be wise to connect to Global Lives (who applied but didn’t win). Global Lives has the digital storytelling that Hypercities needs to be successful.

Networking Grassroots Knowledge Globally would do well to connect up with the existing Catalytic Communities (of which I am a board member) to get a headstart on collecting successful community-led initiatives.

Social Media Virtual Classroom. Go Howard! I continue to be pleased with the initiatives and ideas he puts out there.

And YouthActionNet Marketplace looks interesting, especially for all my friends interested in empowering young people to get into social entrepreneurship. I do wonder how something like this can connect with the new expanding Catalytic Communities community solutions database.

Yeah! Great to see all these projects full of good intention. I look forward to seeing the progress of each.

Gratitude and Net Neutrality

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How appropriate for One Web Day! Gratitude for the internet we have and concern for the freedom we enjoy.

Lucy posted a terrific post on why net neutrality matters, with help from one of my favorite mags (which is so good at visuals) GOOD. Copied below. Keep an eye on Savetheinternet for ways to help!

And yes, foundations and philanthropists better care or their other causes will suffer dramatically! We all need to care or we will give up our freedom and ability to make social change and profit from good capitalism!

Friday, September 21, 2007
Why foundations should care about an open internet

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve easily posted 1000 words about internet access, the media, and patents as philanthropic issues. So here is the photo that better states the case:

If those in philanthropy care about job creation, education, health, children’s rights, elderly involvement, civic engagement, environmental awareness, sustainable communities, economic development, or anything else that involves issues of equity and access to information then “Net Neutrality” matters. Take action here.

Shout out to GOOD Magazine for the photo.

One Web Day!

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I love a good celebration, especially for things we so easily take for granted because they surround our life so completely.

One Web Day!

What will you do to celebrate?

I plan to email and blog my gratitude for the internet. And then spend the following day fasting from the internet to remind me how lucky I am to have it. (And I will then, finally, get my place clean too!)

OneWebDay

The Web is worth celebrating.

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all – everyone around the physical globe – can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

As with Earth Day – an inspiration and model for OneWebDay – it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.

By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.

OneWebDay is September 22 every year, starting in 2006.

She’s Geeky!

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She’s Geeky
A Women’s Tech (un)conference
October 22-23 in Mountain View, CA.

This event is designed to bring together women from a range of technology-focused disciplines who self identify as geeky. Our goal is to support skill exchange and learning between women working in diverse fields and to create a space for networking and to talk about issues faced by women in technology.
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See Kaliya’s hopes and motivations!

Please pass on information about the (un)conference to any other women who would enjoy attending, and contributing to, the event.

If you are planning on attending now is a great time to register before prices go up at the end of September; there is a two step process registering on the wiki & paying via paypal.

We are still looking for sponsors. If you or your company would like to contributor if you have ideas about who we might invite to contribute, please contact us at shesgeeky@gmail.com