Virtual wrappers for old-style conferences

Community gatherings and conferences offer an opportunity for collaboration and interaction, As well as the learning that takes place on the day they can also signal the start of new relationships and activities. A recent post from David Wilcox shows how Social Reporting can help event organisers use video, blogs and other technologies to create a high value virtual wrapper to augment real world activities. As well as the practical benefits this approach also underlines the need for not for profit organisations to think about how the widespread use of new social media tools amongst its supporters may change their role.

David [a co-founder of SCIP back in the mid-90s] has experimented with a variety of highly accessible techniques and a wide range of events - from video interview booths to handing out video cameras and building event-specific blogs.

Not surprisingly the secret to success lies in careful preparation, thinking about the community of people attending the event and what they could gain from the use of such tools. It could be a way of simply recording proceedings for people who cannot attend or a way of building a new online community that continue to function well beyond the event itself.

David links this to the proposal by Prof Clay Shirky that not for profit organisations need to think about their role as a focus for or convener of supporters. An interview with Professor Shirky can be found here

Read more about social reporting here: How social reporters can help turn old-style conferences into the new convening spaces

Making Facebook more accessible

A tool to make Facebook more accessible to visually impaired users has been created by Project:Possibility, a group of not-for-profit software developers in the US. The application, which can be found at http://fastlink.headstar.com/pp2 allows visually impaired users to log in, navigate and use the site by combining screen reader technology with other coding techniques.

Brian D’Souza, a team member who worked on the project, explained:“We leveraged an existing technology developed by Google which combines use of screen readers and java script and navigation methods to make navigation and modification of content of webpages easier. It provides a lot of value for a blind person.”

Facebook’s popularity has risen dramatically in recent years, with more than 150 million users worldwide. However some users claim it does not fully support assistive tools, with several groups active on the site itself pressing for a more accessible service, such as The Official Petition for a More Accessible Facebook which contains almost 1,500 members. Some measures have already been taken by Facebook to accommodate the needs of disabled users, such as releasing screen reader-friendly versions of some of its applications.

The Facebook tool was one of a series of projects created at the recent UCLA SS12, an annual ‘code-a-thon’ held at the University of California, Los Angeles. Software developers spend a weekend working on projects for disabled people.

Story taken from e-access bulletin, a free monthly email newsletter’ available for subscription at http://www.headstar.com/eab

How to set up online forms to collect information

Ever wanted to collect sign up information for your event through a website? Want to have a spreadsheet with all the delegate's details at your fingertips? Want to be able to download that information and use it again in the future? Sounds like you could use a Google Form, a great new tool that lets you quickly easily set up an online form, and even embed it in another website.

Google Docs is a set of online tools that includes a word processor, presentation software and spreadsheets. It can be used to keep your documents online so you can access them anywhere and it includes lots of features to help you share documents and collaborate with other people.

Now it has a neat new tool that you can set up a form to gather information and enter it into a spreadsheet through a web page. I came across it when someone who's running a conference I'm going to used it me to ask me which workshop I'm going to and whether I have any dietary requirements.

If you already have a Google account then it's very simple to set up, and if you don't then it may worth thinking about. It will beuseful for anyone with any sort of administration role, whether it's booking places at a traing workshop, collecting personal contact details as people register for feedback collecting feedback after it.

Official Google Docs Blog: Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting information