Communicable

It’s hard to keep track of them all, but these PR and social media events – many of them are free, by the way, – present a great learning opportunity. If social media interests you, stay on top of all the newest developments by going to at least some of these events in July.
http://toprsocialmediaevents.pbworks.com/
Check back to find more August and fall events added. Great resource!

Mesh conference starts tomorrow! If you go, I hope to see you there, and I hope to meet more people whose work I follow through the *interwebs*, and see some new faces. If you can’t make it this year, the least you can do is keep an eye on the twitter stream for #Mesh10, already in full swing. I bet you’ll find great info there during the next couple of days.

Make MyCharityConnects on June 7 & 8 your Event of the Year. This is a two-day conference that “aims to build the capacity of the Canadian charitable sector by connecting charities to the technology they need to succeed.” Bring it on! Does your charity want to succeed?

Just take a look at MyCharityConnects conference agenda – if those names you see don’t convince you, there is a chance you might need this conference more than you know. It’s going to be amazing two days filled with conversations, connections, questions, and first-hand accounts from passionate people whose work combines the best of both worlds, nonprofit and tech.

I hope to see you there! Register now before it’s sold out, there’s only about 60 tickets left as of today. Meanwhile, here’s the new CanadaHelps “Did You Know?” video with great info on how online technology and social media are changing the ways charities fundraise and gather support.

Watch this! Haiti Earthquake Aftermath Montage from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.

It’s hard to count all the fundraisers, donations, and silent auctions that went on and are still going on to help Haiti in its earthquake aftermath. As we analyze our collective response, I suggest we also take some time to reflect on the future of fundraising. Haiti gave us a glimpse of what it takes: open heart, creativity, skills, social networks, and desire to do more, do something.

In troubled times, our true colours are shining through, and they are beautiful. Here are just some of the ways I have seen people step up and offer a helping hand; there are no doubt many other efforts worth mentioning.

I put together a subjective list of activities that made my eyes sparkle, and think of the changes in the ways we donate and fundraise. Please feel free to add to the list!

• People still love to get together: I call it the Events rule. HaiHaiTO: Toronto for Haiti has to be a number one event in my list, because I helped organize it and it’s so close to my heart. This was a social media fundraiser for Haiti, organized on twitter by a bunch of rogue grass-roots social misfits that never met, but still “wanted to do more”, and with help of hundreds of people who cared. HaiHaiTO raised just over $11,000, which was matched by the Federal government, totaling more than $22,000 for the Canadian Red Cross’s Haiti relief efforts. HaiHaiTO was just one of many events that took over the city; there were events-fundraisers every single night.

• Professional services in exchange for donations make us stronger and more responsible. Toronto Works for Haiti blew my mind. The concept is simple: a multi-talented group of volunteers offered their professional services in exchange for donations to Haiti. I like the creativity of this approach, and the total win-win situation it created. People need photographers, translators, social media help and tutoring anyway, and now they had a chance of getting the services they needed and making a charitable donation all at the same time. And it gets better: the organizers ended up auctioning 30 artworks and 20 service packages offered by their network of businesses and volunteers, with the proceeds going toward Haitian rebuilding efforts. They raised over $5,000. I have also seen the idea of “professional services in exchange for donations” in action with Hairdressers for Haiti, a network of great hair salons in Toronto offering free haircuts in exchange for donations. Yoga and fitness studios followed suit by offering free classes and 2-3 hour “marathons” – Toronto Fitness for Haiti (a simple Facebook page) quickly became the centre of action for the Toronto’s fitness community, raising many thousands of dollars. Crisis Camp came to the rescue by bringing together IT professionals, software developers, and computer programmers to Haiti’s aid. There were more examples of this, and, honestly, for a while it seemed you could literally live your life for Haiti by just going on with your life, paying with donations for every shopping trip, workout, night out, and haircut, or working for Haiti with whatever skill you happened to have. Except you had an extra incentive to be smart and responsible, making the choices that hopefully foster a positive change. I just love the true involvement, commitment, and community networks this kind of action creates. We are all better for it.

• Donations via text messaging went mainstream. I have never seen so many ways to text and donate, here’s just a few that come to mind. You could text “Haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 donation to the Red Cross; text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 or $10 to Yéle Haiti; text ”Haiti” to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army, or text “Haiti” to 25383 to donate $5 to the International Rescue Committee; text “Give” to 20222 and donate $10 or more to World Vision. I’m sure there’s more. Text messaging as means of giving and raising funds has officially come of age and went mainstream.

• Images still worth a thousand words. However grim and controversial was the media coverage of the disaster, and especially visual coverage, I would argue it helped to convey the magnitude of what happened, and  inspired people to act. You just couldn’t sit there, see it all, and do nothing. Seeing is believing.

• Social networks are useful for disseminating information. I have heard many arguments whether Facebook, twitter, and other social networks can be used for fundraising, and even wrote about some of the successful examples of this. Primarily, I think it’s more and more important to view social networks as information disseminators. Yes you can establish real relationships and create or formalize your following in some way, but the ultimate value of belonging and being active on social networks, from fundraising point of view, is in sharing information. And, in doing so, facilitating action.

• Arts for Haiti. In difficult times,we turn to the arts for help. I have seen numerous artists step up and do what they do best – transform our collective feelings, hopes and fears into art. Arts were literally everywhere; from the big concerts to small concerts, from paintings, posters, and t-shirts, from songs to theatre to dance to storytelling and spoken word. Ask yourself: Would we really know each other in the slightest without the arts? Would we help each other still? Would we survive?

Haiti taught us all incredible lessons in humanity and fundraising. It is my opinion that this disaster, and our collective response to the disaster, map a way into the future of fundraising. If there is anything to learn, anything at all, about the future of fundraising, whether short-term or long-term, local or international, Haiti is it.

You can catch me at the upcoming unconference at Centennial College with a cool and clever name: Talk is Cheap. Please come by, say hi, and go to as many sessions as you can. Take this great opportunity to learn about how social media makes waves in the real world.

I will be joining the panel to talk about the role social media played in raising awareness about the disaster in Haiti and raising funds for Haiti relief efforts. I hope to see you there at 6 p.m.!

6 p.m. – Plenary Session: Social Media & Haiti – How Social Media Made a Difference – Kim Fox, CBC.ca; Jennifer Mayville, Canadian Red Cross; Kristy Woudstra, World Vision Canada; and Elena Yunusov, Communicable – moderated by Maggie Fox, Social Media Group

Many great sessions run shortly after the panel talk, so get your ticket, because free cheese doesn’t last (yes, this unconference is free):
http://talkischeap.ccpr.ca/registration

When I got involved with co-organizing HaiHaiTO, a twitter fundraiser for Haiti, I couldn’t imagine what the actual event would be like. All we wanted was to do more to help Haiti. Turns out, there were many, many more people who wanted that, too. We got a truly awesome community here in TO.

THANK YOU | HaiHaiTO Highlights | Afterglow

• Thank you, more than 200 of you who got #HaiHaiTO tickets!
• Thank you for donating $6,585 directly to the Canadian Red Cross via our HaiHaiTO donation page
• BIG Thanks to all our sponsors! You deserve the spotlight and I am proud to be linking to you: http://www.haihaito.com/sponsors/
• Big bear hug to the people whose desire to do more inspired HaiHaiTO : Tim Yull, Dave Coleman, and Co.
• Lots of love to the GenYTO folks who partnered with HaiHaiTO and helped take it from tweets to action.
• Daphnee, Anthony Guerra Prime, Marcus Chomsky & Abbiyaahwu Asha, you did such great job and took everyone’s breath away with your dance moves and kick-ass drumming!
• Rayanne, our Queen of the Raffle, did a fabulous job with all the raffle prizes! Follow Rayanne at @rlangadon, she’ll keep that smile on your face with her tweets
• Casie, I wish I had your dancefloor energy!  And that raffled top.
• Dear DJs Nicole D’Cruz (@nicopop) and Lee Dale (@Smack416) thanks for keeping our feet move, and our heads spin. Love when that happens!
• Thanks to all the speakers, who took the stage to teach us something about Haiti: Antoine Derose from Pierspective Entraide Humanitaire  http://www.haitiaide.ca, Niraj Joshi from Toronto Haiti Action Committee www.thac.ca and John Saunders from Red Cross Canada, Disaster Management team.
• Thanks for all the tweeting action yesterday night! HaiHaiTO was a trending topic for Canada, and the Courthouse was a top location on the Foursquare. I get a geek-kick out of this.

Stay tuned for more photos and videos, and please be proud of what you have done. Together, we have raised over $10,000 for Haiti, which, when matched by the Federal government will amount to over $20,000 for the Canadan Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

What we have here in TO is very special.

We got many, many people who care. Now, how cool is that!?!

Cross-posted from the main HoHoTO page: hohoto.ca and no, I didn’t write this but I do hope to write like this one day!

Yes, we’re doing it again.

As those of you following the tweets have noticed, HoHoTO is returning this December 16th at The Mod Club in Toronto.

New to all this? Wondering what the heck a HoHoTO is and whether you need an inoculation? Check out this summary video from last year’s phenomenal event, or just… well, you know what to do. If you’re still confused, here’s my post about last year’s event.

Last year, we set the ticket prices at a starting level, then steadily increased the price as the days ticked down toward the event. This year, we’re taking a different approach – less strongarm, more faith in the natural generosity of our fellow Torontonians. I’ll get to the full explanation about ticket pricing in a minute.

First, let’s remind ourselves why we’re doing this in the first place:

HoHoTO grew organically out of a shared belief among a relatively small group of people. A belief that spread like a wildfire through the tweetstreams and blogvines and quickly turned a much, much bigger group of people on to the same core idea:

HoHoTO is about a lot of things. It’s about having an insane night of unbridled, unforgettable FUN. It’s about meeting old friends and new and spilling drinks on them. It’s about dancing like you’re 19 again. It’s about awesome raffle prizes and fantastic surprises. It’s about creating memories to last a long, long time.

But at root, it’s about something even more important. Not to get all glum and earnest on you, but HoHoTO is – and always has been – about helping feed Toronto’s hungry.

That’s why we do this thing.

• In Toronto, people just like you and me made more than a million visits to food banks last year.
• Food bank use is growing – up 18% nationally this year over last. The largest ever year-over-year increase on record.
• More than 37% of the people using food banks are children (and if that doesn’t break your heart, you need to examine your soul)
• The median monthly household income in Toronto is only $980. Hunger in the GTA is a result of lack of money, not lack of food.

Now you have a sense of why HoHoTO was created — to help the Daily Bread Food Bank with desperately needed funds and food.

So far, with our original Holiday party in 2008 and the summer spinoff (oh so wittily labeled HoHOTo) we’ve managed to raise over $38,000. This year, we’re going to try to beat that in one night. Our goal is $40,000. Yes, we’re mental.

Here’s the deal. If you’re employed, gainfully self-employed, or independently wealthy and thinking of coming to HoHoTO, the chances are you’re a hell of a lot better off financially than any of the people we’re trying to help. So we’ve got a bunch of $20 tickets available – but are you really only good for twenty bucks?

A hundred bucks to you is what you take out of the ATM on a Saturday night and find it’s all gone by Sunday morning. To a food bank user, that same $100 could be all they have left after rent and basics to feed their whole family for a month.

Please: before you say you can’t afford any more than the basic ticket, stop and think. Yes, you can.

This year, you’ll see there are blocks of tickets available at a range of price levels. There’s no difference between the $20 and the $100 tickets. Only you will ever know the size of the donation you choose to make.

If $20 really is all you can spare, that’s cool. We still want you there, and we know you’ll be spending more on the night for drinks, cabs, etc.

But please, if you can – think of paying for your ticket at one of the higher levels. It’s just the right thing to do.

OK. Enough begging. The tickets are now officially on sale, here. Hook yerself all up and get ready to have the ultimate Santastic holiday experience at the return of the original party that Twitter built.

Be there, or we’ll bauble your eggnogs.

I am looking forward to the livechat on The Agenda tonight. The topic? Limits of transparency and digital activism. I will be joining @jessebrown to moderate the online discussion, as the incredible Steve Paikin juggles the offline and online guests and comments at 8 p.m. tonight.

Digital activism? What’s that?

It is hard to deny the benefits of the online: news spreads like wildfire, people self-organize into groups to protest and sign petitions, raise funds for charities, and even re-enlist as voters! (..and I do hope we can vote online one day, by the way.) Some issues take off better than others, just like in real life. We live in interesting times: When 4,000 teens join the Facebook group against a proposed change in the legislation, the story gets media pickup few press releases could get, and in the end our Premier notices. We live in interesting times indeed, when our small donations, our individual voices and opinions finally seem to matter. Please join the discussion tonight at 8 p.m. on The Agenda

I came across these social media guidelines and decided to collect those from now on. It’s fascinating to see the different takes various organizations have on the issue of social media engagement. Does your organization have social media policy? Please share – I would be happy to link to it.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-wapos-social-media-guidelines-paint-staff-into-virtual-corner/

Instead of finding ways to encourage engagement, it’s easy to see how these guidelines could drive it the other way. I’m not sure I would do anything in social networking with this as a framework. Steve Buttry explains why journalism orgs need conversations, not restrictions. This should be the beginning of an important conversation within the WaPo newsroom.

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The following are effective immediately:

Newsroom Guidelines for Use of Facebook, Twitter and Other Online Social Networks (emphasis added)

Social networks are communications media, and a part of our everyday lives. They can be valuable tools in gathering and disseminating news and information. They also create some potential hazards we need to recognize. When using social networking tools for reporting or for our personal lives, we must remember that Washington Post journalists are always Washington Post journalists.  The following guidelines apply to all Post journalists, without limitation to the subject matter of their assignments.

Using Social Networking Tools for Reporting

When using social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space or Twitter for reporting, we must protect our professional integrity.  Washington Post journalists should identify themselves as such. We must be accurate in our reporting and transparent about our intentions when participating.  We must be concise yet clear when describing who we are and what information we seek.

When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment.  We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.

Our online data trails reflect on our professional reputations and those of The Washington Post.  Be sure that your pattern of use does not suggest, for example, that you are interested only in people with one particular view of a topic or issue.

Using Social Networking Tools for Personal Reasons

All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens.  Post journalists must recognize that any content associated with them in an online social network is, for practical purposes, the equivalent of what appears beneath their bylines in the newspaper or on our website.

What you do on social networks should be presumed to be publicly available to anyone, even if you have created a private account.  It is possible to use privacy controls online to limit access to sensitive information. But such controls are only a deterrent, not an absolute insulator. Reality is simple: If you don’t want something to be found online, don’t put it there.

Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything—including photographs or video—that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.  Post journalists should not be involved in any social networks related to advocacy or a special interest regarding topics they cover, unless specifically permitted by a supervising editor for reporting and so long as other standards of transparency are maintained while doing any such reporting.

Post journalists should not accept or place tokens, badges or virtual gifts from political or partisan causes on pages or sites, and should monitor information posted on your own personal profile sites by those with whom you are associated online for appropriateness.
Personal pages online are no place for the discussion of internal newsroom issues such as sourcing, reporting of stories, decisions to publish or not to publish, personnel matters and untoward personal or professional matters involving our colleagues. The same is true for opinions or information regarding any business activities of The Washington Post Company. Such pages and sites also should not be used to criticize competitors or those who take issue with our journalism or our journalists.

If you have questions about any of these matters, please check with your supervisor or a senior editor.

NOTE:  These guidelines apply to individual accounts on online social networks, when used for reporting and for personal use.  Separate guidelines will follow regarding other aspects of Post journalism online.