Remixing YouTube

I love these remix videos - taking all sorts of stuff from YouTube and making great cutup/hip hoppy stuff. The music reminds me of Money Mark or UNKLE.

EVENT: Outcomes monitoring and IT: finding the best solution for your organisation

M & E Consulting, preponderate.network and Charities Evaluation Services are pleased to announce the first-ever conference on ‘Outcomes monitoring and IT’ which will take place in London on 21st May 2009. The conference will help voluntary and community organisations to:

• understand more about the processes involved in implementing an outcomes-based IT system spacer
• gain an overview of the range of solutions available spacer
• identify specific IT systems that will help you measure the outcomes of your work.

After a morning session of presentations and discussion, the afternoon session will provide an opportunity for delegates to meet one-to-one with IT-system providers and find out more about how different systems work and how they might help them to manage their outcomes data.

Costs vary form £85 to £175 depending on the size of the organisation.

For more information and a booking form visit the event's website:
Outcomes monitoring and IT: finding the best solution for your organisation

FREE ICT Conference from Microsoft and NCVO, 6 May 2009

Tickets are available now for a free ICT event in London in May. Workshops will cover:
• E-learning tools
• Ensuring effective websites
• Delivering an e-campaign
• Technology supporting collaboration
• Managing your supporter base
• Accessible computing
• Innovation in service delivery
Book now on the NCVO website using the link below:
NCVO - Maximising potential through Information and Communications Technology

How long will Gmail be free?

I've just totted up 30 pieces of software that I use at least weekly which have cost me absolutely nothing. In particular I have my Gmail account open just about every moment of the day, so the recent service problems hit me hard. It made me think about how much we can rely on free stuff, and how much I take for granted what I routinely get for nothing.

Although many of these tools may offer upgrades, add-ons or be linked to things I have paid for, I am using all of the following absolutely free of charge:

• Blogger
• Doodle.ch
• Drupal
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Feed My Inbox
• Feedburner
• Firefox
• Flickr
• Flash player
• Flock
• Gmail
• Google custom search engine
• Google groups
• Google maps
• Google search engine
• icanhaz
• Linkedin
• Mediawiki
• Quicktime player
• Skype
• TinyURL
• Twitter
• WikiPedia
• Wordpress
• Yahoo! Search Engine
• Yahoogroups
• Youtube

Most have a single function, but they get used at least monthly, whilst some are built into to other tools, such as Flash Player, so I hardly know I'm using it. And then there's Gmail and Flock (a Firefox-based browser) which is open just about every minute I'm online, which is close to 10 hours on a working day. And I'm sure many other people use a lot more.

Bear in mind that I didn't include my free Flickr because I also have a $25 Flickr Pro account, or 'other people's blogs', which save me money on magazines. Think of the time and effort invested in publishing useful information without any thought of charging for it. Or RSS, which is a vital part of my networked world - if it had been invented by Microsoft it could easily have needed a licence to be built into someone's website.

And I didn't count any BBC stuff, especially iPlayer and news, because I pay for a TV licence. There is also a lot of technical stuff that I can't see but that I know is important to SCIP's work, such as open source server tools which we use for hosting sites. Or my free iPhone apps, some of which I use regularly.

But how long will they be free?
I'd been thinking about free stuff not just because I wanted to point you at useful stuff [although I have only listed things I use regularly and would endorse] but because I was wondering whether the credit crunch presented a threat to my new way of working.

Do they rely on income from advertising to remain free? If so I can only see a downturn in advertising spend in 2009, and perhaps a corresponding decline in free services. Even the mighty Google's income remains firmly linked to turnover in online advertising, and is currently tightening its belt as the squeeze continues. Imagine paying for searches. And GMail is suffering some servcie problems which have underlined the problems in relying on a single provider for a vital service such as email.

Some of these tools are free because I can choose to pay for an upgrade. I'm typing this in the excellent Evernote, for example, which offers a generous free monthly limit - I can upload 20,000 text notes - but has cheap paid-for features which I may find useful in future. It's business plan probably relies on a small percentage of people paying for a service which it can offer for free to millions. Whilst this is based on the very low margins for each free customer there will be some fairly hefty bills coming in each month and it will need to begin seeing some income at the end of the tunnel if it doesn't want it's banks or backers breathing down its neck in the next few months.

And Evernote is a tool that's been round for a while and may well be backed by bigger fish or have a more substantial base of paying clients than, for example, Twitter, which, as far as I can tell, has no paid for features. This free service allows people all over the planet to post short messages that can be shared with thousands of other people. Like text messaging crossed with email groups crossed with blogging. I can't believe any users would say that it has reached mission-critical status, but even minor drops in service cause howls amongst millions of current users.

Will we see a shift in the charges for services as the crunch bites? Or more and more open source as the market for software dries up?

We-Think: Free tickets to see Charles Leadbetter

Charles Leadbetter is author of We-Think - a fascinating new book that explores how we can use collaboration and community networks to create innovation. He's appearing at a free event in Brighton on 26 March - tickets are available now by booking online using the link below.

Connecting Innovation | 26 march 09 | the old market | hove

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

How Museums Can Use the Web

Had a great day teaching museum staff and volunteers in Henley on Tuesday. The course included how to brief a web deisgner, a review of everyone's existing site and lots of chat about how any museum can update, improve and make more of the web. Lots of people are already switched on to what it offers, including video podcasts and blogs, but there is always something for people to do to help generate visitors to their museum and share their collection with the world.

This video shows some of the participants talking about what they learned:



And here's the presentation I made.

090127 MLA-SE Museums and the web

View more Mark Walker.

Teaching Wordpress

The work with Coldean Residents Association is going really well. I'm working with Libby Davy to help them build a new Wordpress-based community website, through a series of short early evening workshops in Coldean Library. We did two sessions in November and are now planning to return to deliver more. They are planning the launch of their site and going great guns in putting together a test site which will then morph into the real thing.

To see what they've achieved take a look at the test site at www.douglascoldean.wordpress.com and watch a video I've posted which features interviews with three of the four protagonists.

This is pretty impressive for a small team of three volunteers and a part-time community worker. A key factor in this success is that the three volunteers have a complementary set of skills and interests and fit neatly into the roles we have suggested are needed to manage the site:

• editor - someone to help manage and develop the overall themes and content of the site. Having the editor of the local newsletter is a perfect fit for this.
• webmaster/mistress - someone to take a lead in technical issues, learning how to configure and adapt Wordpress and other relevant tools. The progress to date is very much down to one person's willingness and capacity to take the basic lessons we have offered and start creating a new site.
• contributors - the third volunteer is chair of the residents associations and sites on all sorts of housing-related committees across the city. So as well as local information and events we have a chance to help amplify his voice and create new channels for local people to communicate with him.

The Community Worker has been very important in ensuring that we have the right mix of people. She is the person who first approached SCIP, asking for advice about building a site and she remains a key point of contact as the website group starts to form, and will be involved for as long as she is funded to be there. She works for the Trust for Developing Communities, based in Brighton, and demonstrates how community development is a vital component in successful community projects.

Leaving aside the usability of Wordpress, the role of the Community Worker is a critical ingredient so far. It provides some continuity for us and additional resource for the community, to help get these sorts of ideas off the ground and running under their own steam. She also happens to be enthusiastic about what were doing, and is asking very useful questions and helping to make sure the group keeps thinking about practical issues and not just playing with websites.

And the trainers? What are we doing to earn our keep?

I think Libby and I sing from a very similar hymn sheet, albeit in a slightly different accent. Our experience has been gained in slightly different spheres - mine more community oriented, hers more business and academic - but we have a lot in common in terms of our previous working lives. We also share a very similar approach to helping people to work with new communications tools and have complementary skills in terms of practical, technical and stylistic issues.

More soon...

Thinking about a database for your CVS?

I've just been talking to someone from a CVS about upgrading their database and along the way I was pointed at a very handy guide on the NAVCA website. Getting to know your local voluntary and community sector toolkit encourages a standardised and common approach to producing a local voluntary and community sector database and profiling the sector in local areas.

It's a useful overview that may give you a broader view of what is possible and what is going on in other parts of the country. The Appendices are also worth downloading, if only for Appendix Five which offers a list of places to look for further help if you need it. Anyone working in a Local Infrastructure Organistaion in the south east region is also welcome to contact me if they have any questions about databases, membership directories and related websites.

NAVCA VCS profiles toolkit

Selecting Software on a Shoestring

How do you choose new software? For many people for many years it's been pretty simple - go for whatever Microsoft does and get on with it. However some problems just can't be solved that easily, like buying a website or database, which are more about buying a service than a product. And the growth of open source has also shifted the goalposts, as has the rapid growth in online services, such as Google Docs or online meeting planners such as Doodle.ch. So is there a simple process everyone could can follow?

It very much depends on what you want, when you want it and who you're asking, but US-based IdealWare has suggested six simple steps for when you're in a hurry and have specific needs - "something that’s neither a big investment nor particularly strategic". It offers a very useful starting point, and I particularly like the fact that Step 2 suggests that you investigate whether your current software can do the job.

This is a really useful point, especially given the wealth of features in Microsoft Office. So as well as suggesting you check out their Six Steps I would add that it's always helpful to have reference books available, especially books such as Office 2003 Timesaving Techniques in the Dummies series. This goes beyond the basics and includes tips for Excel, Word and the rest of the Office suite and I use it at least once every month for fiddly things I don't do very often.

Of course for more advice on just about every topic I'd always recommend looking at LASA's ICT Knowledgebase, especially for larger projects such as websites and databases.

Idealware: Selecting Software on a Shoestring

How small charities can take credit card donations

A new report by the Charities Aid Foundation raises concerns that cash donations are falling sharply as credit card payments and regular direct debits become more common. A 22% drop in cash donations, coupled with a predicted fall in charitable income on the back of the credit crunch is seen as a particular threat to smaller charities - in other words the vast majority of organisations supported by CVS and other infrastructure bodies in local networks across the south east.

Given the costs involved most small charities will not be able to afford to set up credit card payments, but there are several online systems which could help avoid the worst effects of this change. Here is a quick round of three of the best known and ideas about how to use them.

The best known of these is Just Giving, which is very commonly used by people entering large public events, such as the London Marathon, to enable supporters to send their money straight to their chosen cause. Any charity can set up a page on the site, and it currently offers a free 3 month trial, after which it charges £15 per month and 5% per transaction BUT it also adds on Gift Aid when UK resident donors fill in the form provided. They reckon they can turn a £10 donation into about £13.

They have a handy video to explain the concept:

Justgiving Fees - Explained in Video! from Justgiving on Vimeo.

Similar services are available through Charities Aid Foundation's eFundraising service, which includes listing on the CAF website, and www.bmycharity.org.uk, which offers a free Pay As You Go service. This gives you slightly less for each donation but is an ideal way to get started.

Fundraising plans and online promotion

Of course setting up an online payments system in this way is not going to solve anyone's funding problems unless it is part of a more comprehensive fundraising plan. You need to think about who you think will donate to your cause, how you will communicate with them and then find as many ways as possible to advertise and link to your new payments page.

This may include adding a bog to your web site - using Blogger or Wordpress.com for example - or investigating Facebook groups and other new forms of networking to raise your profile and connect with supporters. This may mean a steep learning curve at first but, given the potential financial benefits, and the relative ease with which you can set up payment systems it is definitely a good first step to addressing a significant trend.

A final point is that none of these systems is of any use if you don't have a charity number. Unconstituted groups, social enterprises without a charity number or other organisations will probably have to use PayPal or an equivalent online payments service. There are many services such as this, with all sorts of charging structures, so more research is needed to see which one fits your needs.

Read about trends in giving

Third Sector magazine has a story about the findings of the research and details of the changing patterns in giving at Massive decline in cash giving 'a threat to smaller charities' - Third Sector

Tags: fundraising, ictchampion, scipnews

Age Concern wins first SCIP Award

Age Concern Brighton & Hove is the first winner of the SCIP Award: Technology for Good. Over 150 older people in sheltered housing have been playing games with Nintendo Wii, as part of a healthy living campaign introduced by Age Concern earlier this year. A new ten pin league bowling has sprung up and the reaction has been so good that they're now planning a snowboarding competition.

The SCIP Award was part of the Digital Media Awards South, a new showcase that highlights business and community use of computers and the web across the south east. The Awards were announced at a spectacular Ceremony staged in a church in Hove in late November, and attended by over 350 people.

Its chairperson Dan Jellinek said: "We work with a great many local community organisations who are doing innovative and imaginative work with technology, but we were really impressed that Age Concern had crossed the generations by using a games machine for fun, healthy living for the less mobile, and digital inclusion.

"Some of the most regular Wii players are in their 90s and it has helped create a new social network, so vital for older people who can easily become isolated. they are now thinking about buying one of the new Nintendo boards that mean you can have a go at snowboarding, or take up yoga - puts the youngsters to shame."

The picture above shows Age Concern Director Jim Baker [right] and Luis Algorta [centre], the Community Development Worker who delivers the Wii sessions, receiving the award from Mark Anderson, a member of SCIP's Board of Directors.

More pics of the event and other category winners can be found on Flickr

So what have you been up to?

Here's a catch up after several busy weeks [a bit long, sorry].

3 Nov: Regional ICT Forum, Guildford.

I run a regional forum for anyone involved in ICT-related activities in the voluntary and community sector in the south east. We had a good turn out and spent a very useful couple of hours before lunch talking about how we work with funders to help improve the way that voluntary and community orgs budget for their ICT. This included the input of someone from the Big Lottery Fund and looked at how best to encourage VCOs to think about Total Cost of Onwership when budgeting for ICT - like buying a car and including petrol, insurance and driving lessons in the budget.

There was a lot of support for this work amongst the group but there were also lots of questions about how funders will respond and how we can help them make better decisions. The first step we agreed was to work together on a draft set of guidelines which we ask funders to adopt. We also reviewed other aspects of the proposed regional ICT strategy and came up with plans for workshops about 'How to Buy a Website' which Lucian and I will be running in the new year.

Full notes of the meeting are still in draft I'm afraid, but more to come soon.

6 Nov: RAISE conference/AGM, Oxford.

RAISE is the regional body representing the voluntary and community sector so this was a great opportunity for networking. I learned a lot about Compacts and Local Area Agreements [LAAs] and their relevance to the sector but felt depressed by the presentations by a selection of National Support Services - now known as Improving Support Workstreams. There really is a lot to do to make these worth more than the sum of their very disjointed parts.

7 Nov: Judging the Digital Media Awards: South

A whole day locked in Midnight's basement judging for DiMAS. The other judges were a great bunch and this was a lot of fun. The whole this was very tiring but everyone got a fair crack of the whip and you can see the fruits of our deliberations at www.thedimas.co.uk

The winners are announced at the glittering awards ceremony on 17 November at All Saints Church in Hove, which I'm co-hosting with local funny man Stephen Grant.

I spent the evening celebrating the 10th birthday of the wonderful Working Together Project at a fun-packed event attended by just about everyone who's anyone in the local voluntary sector, and featuring Michelle from Gender Trust's fab stand up routine. I was much less drunk than I expected but also much much more tired than I hoped so went home early.

10 Nov: Big Lottery Fund south east Helper Agencies event, Portsmouth

A nightmare day for journeys but I had a really useful trip to Portsmouth attending an event for Big Lottery Fund [BLF] Helper Agencies [2.5 hours there, 4 hours back!].

These events are run by BLF for funding advisers and other people who provide support to voluntary and community organisations. The aim is to make sure that as many people as possible understand the various funding programmes offered by the Lottery in the region. This session included a great exercise where we had to choose between six funding bids, as if we were on the Lottery Awards panel.

It was a mixed bunch of about 30 people: mainly local authority but lots of voluntary sector organisations such as CVS funding advisers. It was tough exercise but in the end we came to fairly similar conclusions about who we'd give the money to, and I'm now looking forward to delivering a similar workshop in the new year to help people think about budgeting for IT.

12 Nov: Build and Manage Your Own Website, training workshop, Brighton

Libby Davy and I delivered a really positive first session in web design training for a small community org in Coldean, a neighbourhood on the edge of Brighton. This is the first time I've delivered a workshop that uses Wordpress to help groups produce their own website. Everything we prepared went down really well and we had two hours and a group of four to teach, which was a nice gentle introduction. I'm really looking forward to the next session next wednesday evening, to be followed by four more sessions after xmas.

13 Nov. Intellect Third Sector Working Party meeting, London

Intellect is the trade body for the IT indutsry and its swanky Russell Square HQ drew a good mix of people who heard from a great set of speakers including the head of NCVO's Collaboration and ICT Unit, the Digital Inclusion Team who highlighted some great resources and, my fave, Julie from Cosmic who talked about her work in a really inspiring way. Cosmic is the same age and delivers almost exactly the same work as SCIP but is based in beautiful Ottery St Mary in Devon.I have thought of it as SCIP's cousin, but under Julie's guidance it is fast becoming more like a big sister.

I made some good contacts and enjoyed the very positive discussion about supporting use of IT by the third sector. I'm not sure where else this sort of audience may come together so I'm hoping it will continue to grow, esp as a forum for shaping relationships.

Quick catch up with some of the other regional champs afterwards - great to see them and a shame we can't seem to coordinate more face-to-face meetings better/at all.

14 Nov. NetWeight, University of Brighton

I chaired a meeting for NetWeight project, a DoH-funded research programme led by Prof Flis Henwood at Uni of Brighton. It was a lively and very informative session summing up the work we've done to date on the project, and especially reflected on some workshops I helped run. These were about how people could use ICT to self-manage their weight but included introducing complete beginners to blogging, storytelling and redesigning local websites.

I really enjoy being involved in this project and there was a really good mix of people at the meeting, including workshop participants [also known as The Guinea Pigs], members of the research team and partners such as local providers of health information.

Much more work is needed to capture and feed back key issues for the Department of Health, but I'm already building lessons from these workshops into what I'm delivering in my web design workshops in Coldean. I also hope we can do some more work with the participants from these workshops, beyond the life of this project.

17 Nov. Chain Reaction 08

Had a great day out a Chain Reaction event on the south bank in London. As well as crying at the video for Peace One Day, I got to hear Lord Mandelson and Gordon Brown talking up social enterprise we also got to hear from Dragon's Den tall boy Peter Jones, Tim Smit from the fab Eden project and loads of inspiring people out to change the world.

I was a social reporter for the day with David Wilcox leading a busy band of people adding lots of live content to reflect the day's events. The videoboo was an especially eye-catching means of conducting video interviews and beaming them online. I particularly enjoyed mixing it with lots of young people from all sorts of volunteering projects, and learning more about Disruptive Innovation. Very enjoyable train ride home too.

20 Nov: Social Enterprise Day.

Illness had kept me sidelined for a couple of days but I did get an hour with some politics students who wanted to know more about SCIP's work. I took the chance to explain social enterprise and they had some very insightful questions which I hope I answered sensibly.

Other stuff in my head right now:

• talking to people in Kent about how to connect with their project that is supporting development workers across the county
• lots of detailed finance and reporting stuff on the BASIS-funded project I'm managing about embedding IT skills in the vol and comm sector
• back to the Isle of Wight on Monday for more work on their IT volunteer recruitment campaign
• trying to understand who's trying to carve up what from the Government's £1m requests for bids to coordinate a network of Digital Mentors - and how SCIP can be involved
• publicising and organising the BASIS-funded event we're running on 15th December about how people learn IT skills
• recruiting an evaluation consultant for the BASIS-funded Embedded IT project
• planning the next sessions of the wordpress training for the residents of Coldean
• learning my script as co-host of the Digital Media Awards in next Thursday night
• planning SCIP's xmas do

How do you measure digital inclusion?

So tonight the Wordpress training starts at a library here in Brighton. We've designed a very simple opening session so that we can work out some basic stuff, including:

• what are the skills of the group?
• what sort of website do they want?
• what sort of support will they need in the coming sessions.

I've set up a test site for the group to play with, as well as a Surveymonkey survey to capture some basic details about them. I'm hoping this will help us think about how this training is helping to tackle digital inclusion, so I've included questions about how much they use technology.

Questions include:
1. Tell us about your computer skills.
For each question please choose one answer from:
Never tried, Need some help, Comfortable, Do it all the time

• Basic computer use - saving files, clicking folders, etc
• Browsing the internet
• Sending email
• Using a digital camera
• Viewing videos
• Putting pictures or videos on websites like Flickr or Youtube
• Running my own website

2. How often do you use technology?
Choose from: Never, Not very often, Every week, Every day

• Mobile phone calls
• Text messaging
• Sending and receiving email
• Surfing the internet
• Working on my own website
• Contacting friends or family through social websites
• Posting videos or pictures on a website

There are other questions about what they like about the internet, their skills, and what they think are the barriers to people using new technologies.

I'll post up some replies once we've collected them but I wondered whether there any other suggestions for other ways of asking questions now which we can use to judge digital inclusiveness in the future?

How Can VCOs Learn the IT Skills They Need?

I’m working on a Lottery-funded project looking at ways of embedding IT training in other community learning activities. So we’re teaching budgeting but it includes training in Excel, or we’re teaching report-writing and showing how to use some of the features of Word. We’re holding a free event in December to discuss what we’re doing and share ideas about to help people learn the IT skills they need. Full details below.

** How Can Voluntary and Community Organisations [VCOs] Learn the IT Skills They Need?
A free event to share ideas, funded by the Big Lottery Fund through its BASIS programme.
    * What IT skills do you think staff and volunteers need?
    * What learning activities will help them acquire and make best use of those IT skills?
    * In what way will those IT skills make their work more effective?

WHERE:  Community Base, Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XG
WHEN:   11.00am – 3.00pm, Monday 15 December 2008
HOW MUCH: Free of charge

* Who should attend?
    * Anyone interested in meeting the training needs of the voluntary and community sector
    * Anyone interested in how people learn IT skills
    * Anyone interested in better governance, planning, financial management or communications by voluntary and community organisations

* Embedding IT skills in the voluntary and community sector
SCIP and Working Together Project are developing and delivering a range of training to help organisations acquire the IT skills they need to address four key issues:
   * Governance
   * Financial Management
   * Communications
   * Planning

This is funded by a three-year grant from Big Lottery Fund under its BASIS programme and means we can look at how to embed IT training in other community sector training courses.

Our approach is to identify key tasks and then include appropriate IT training within existing courses. So we will now include Excel training as part of Budgeting and Fundraising courses, rather than just delivering standalone Excel training.

* Help us get it right
We started the project on 1 January 2008, so this event gives us a chance to tell you about our progress to date, describe the new courses we're developing and review feedback from the people we're consulting.

More importantly we're starting to plan next year's programme, so we're really interested in your views about how to deliver learning activities that help people make effective use of IT.

We're planning a highly participative event, to help you share ideas and to help us learn from your experience. It includes:
    * Introduction to us and our project
    * What can IT do for VCOs?
    * What IT skills does this require?
    * How will people learn those skills?
    * How can IT skills deliver more effective organisations?
    * What shall we measure?
    * What shall we try next?

Book now!
We're providing a free lunch so we need you confirm that you're coming.

To book a place please reply to this message, or contact Jane Hill at SCIP on 01273 234049.

Wordpress stepping stones

SCIP has been down the DreamWeaver route for many years, but right now I think wordpress is the best short and medium term solution. I'm now looking at the progression route for an organisation starting without a website and would welcome views on what I'm thinking of:

1. Brand new org or never built a website before:

• wordpress hosted site to learn basics of posting stories, creating static pages, working with images, sharing tasks within a group, editorial issues, etc
• build test site to learn basics then rebuild launch site
• budget = 20 hours training + zero for website + 20 hours for group to launch site

2. Second generation site

• hosting wordpress on your own server [ie paying for hosting]
  
• want specific look and feel not available in word-press hosted themes, or functionality only available in specific widgets
• this requires some degree of expertise in managing and updating the site software, plus a decent host familiar with wordpress
  
• budget = 10 hours training + £100 pa hosting + 20 hours for group to re-launch site

3. Third generation site

• take control of the code on a self-hosted site
• buy in or learn CSS skills and other wordpress-related magic, eg to integrate site fully with a database, calendar, map, whatever
• budget = ? hours training [eg CSS] + £100 pa hosting + 40 hours for group to re-launch site

4. Moving on

• depending on the size of the organisation and its needs it may be necessary to move onto drupal, or some similar CMS, which will probably mean buying in much more expertise and support
• by this time the org should be muchy better at specifying and administering an appropriate solution, and therefore pay less and get more for their money.
• budget = ? £3k for group to pay agency

Any thoughts based on your experience?

I also wonder whether this model holds for small businesses?

Why Wordpress?

I'm planning a training course to help a community association learn how to build and run its own website. And I'm using a hosted Wordpress.com site as the platform for this training, as opposed to other possible solutions, suich as self-hosted Wordpress, Typepad, blogger, drupal, joomla, build your own in dreamweaver, etc. But why Wordpress?

After years if patiently explaining ftp to people who didn't want to know about ftp I'm hoping that choosing a theme and agreeing what pages to have on their site will be more useful, engaging and fruitful to most people than having to work through the back end techie bits or get to grips with html. It seems an ideal way of helping people understand the process from the front end side of things, like what it looks like and what it has on it, with more time to explain some of how it works and play with the CMS-style administration interface.

I run a wordpress-hosted site as ICT Champion, having previously used blogger for some time. I should say that I've also set up a self-hosted WP site and I did it in about an hour but that included 45 minutes finding and configuring an ftp client. Then I spent a lot of time downloading themes and widgets and wotsits and fixes and then uploading them and installing them and remembering passwords and whatever else. Then the latest version was released and I had to carefully back everything up, save everything in then right place and reinstall blah blah

Simple enough stuff to be sure, and offering a great deal of flexibility and control which I may well need at some time in the future, but I can't I can't tell you how much happier I am since I started using a wordpress-hosted site and working within its limitations.

The trickiest techie bits were working out how to have the blog entries appear on a page with a menu tab [by no means intuitive to me but actually just a couple of menu items in different parts of the system] and fruitlessly seeking ways of embedding javascripted stuff like google maps.

Aside from posting I now spend most of my time thinking about categories, which I realise need to drive my navigation much more than the page structure, and re-categorising old stories as I fiddle with my categories. [On which point Blogger has a much easier way of retro-categorising batches of stories than wordpress, which requires you to do one at a time.]

I can also look at promotion and content and editorial issues with a much clearer eye than when I used dreamweaver, when I seemed to spend a lot of time tidying up folders and playing with plugins etc.

By the way I have used Typepad, and I liked it, but it costs, which Wordpress doesn't, so it feels like a safer option for first timers. And I also tried blogger and it doesn't support static pages, so I think it's less interesting to people who want a website, not a blog.

And so I favour Wordpress, both as a nursery slope for people new to building a website, but also because it's probably good enough for most organisation's relatively modest needs.

And in case anyone needs evidence of people's modest needs I leave you with a link to a site which has been used to create a web site/presence by more community organisations than any other in our area - perhaps five times more than we have worked with ten years:
http://www.communigate.co.uk/sussex/viewgroup.phtml?group=3

This is a layer in the internet's geology which is technically outdated but remains a useful reminder of just what people in community organisations want to do on the internet and where they have to start if they're ever going to do it.

More soon on this as I start preparing the notes...

What you need to know to run your own community website

I'm planning some workshops for a local community group that wants a website. Rather than selling them a website they've asked for some training in how to build and run their own. Now we have to work out what to teach them. Here's an update on progress.

I'm working with Libby Davy for the first time - a local social media person who crossed my path in various ways and seemed like a good choice when the person I've worked with before on web design sessions said she was a bit too busy. Turns out she's a great choice: we're both full of ideas, and have complimentary skills and experience, so it's been a very creative and enjoyable early process.

We'll be working with a neighbourhood group in Brighton - a resident's association with no staff, supported by a community development worker who has been the link to SCIP until now. They have a Council grant to fund this - £1000 - and we'll be working in a swanky new library building on an estate on the edge of town [which shall remain nameless as I'm not working with them yet].

Now Libby and I are planning the sessions in detail, as we have the beginnings of a timetable, with two sessions planned in November to be followed by four or five sessions in Jan/Feb/March. Yesterday we had a great time mapping out topics we want to cover, so here's my version of what we've got in our long list [in no particular order]:

• how to use wordpress.com [our chosen software solution]
• passwords, permissions, getting a webmail account
  
• storytelling skills
  
• teamwork/working with others/collaborative skills
• getting to know the internet - trends, demystifying, searching, etc
• why do it? how can a website help a community association
• roles and responsibilities of a community web site team
• planning: aims, milestones, processes, resources
• planning your site: what it has on it - page structure
• planning your site: what it looks like - pictures, colours, fonts, logos
  
• promoting your site
• working with pictures
• working with sound
• a guided tour of someone else's community website and how they run it
  
• working with video
• building links with others/community networking
• how to get other people involved
  

I've got some really good stuff via the UK Circuit Riders email discussion forum and another regional ICT Champ who has run wordpress training, but none of it encompasses such as broad set of training outcomes. So Libby and I need to work out how to teach that lot in six two hour sessions and we're now working on lesson plans, course outline and handouts.

More soon.