100 million therapy sessions?

According to the New York Times [1] the makers of The Sims have now sold 100 million copies of what has become an iconic computer game. This is a game which is more popular with girls than boys and, according to its makers, is now being included in therapy sessions.
As the Head of the Sims Studio says in the NYT, many adults use the game like a diary, building an electronic version of the world based on their on own lives. "You get to tap into this wonderful childhood imaginary game, which is ‘What if I could create my own little world and all the people in it and watch them go through their business and jump in and change things when I want?’ That is a pretty personal fantasy.”
With the boom in Second Life and other avatar-based virtual worlds people are increasingly immersing themselves in versions of shared reality, which in some way reflect their frustrations with their real lives. According to the article, however, The Sims has failed to move online because people want to keep these fantasies to themselves.
This isn't a huge community-based environment but 100 million different worlds. Perhaps that's a better reflection for our fragmented communities and self-centred lifestyles? And maybe we're all set to become self-medicating therapists?

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

[1] Story spotted on locomatrix.com

A search engine you can vote on

Swicki is a new collaborative search engine, with one or two features that I like a lot, although it is still not the perfect customisable search engine for me.
Firstly it lets you select which websites it is searching. Rather than the whole web you can select up to 50 sites to get your results form - helping to focus on specific information, as well as helping to weed out the spammers and other search engines which can clog up search results.
Unfortunately it doesn't only bring results from your selection - it drops other results from the web beneath the first ten or so from your selections.
It is highly collaborative because anyone who uses the search engine can rank the results they get - and the higher ranking results start to move up the results for the next people who use the search engine. With many searches you can find too many similar references appearing - but using this ranking system can help sift through multiple results using other people's knowledge and preferences.
You can also add comments, which appear with the results. This is a good way of adding signposting to areas of particular interest, or warning of resources which don't deliver what it says on the box.
I've used it to make a search engine to help people from the voluntary and community sector find useful information about ICT. It searches key resources such as the ICT Hub Knowledgebase, TechSoup and similar sites. You can view it at http://community-ict-swicki.eurekster.com/
Not only does it work on it's own page but I've also added it to my blog - take a look on the right hand menu.
It's not the perfect customisable search engine yet. Ideally it would search only the sites you include, rather than the whole web as well. And it doesn't seem to have any keyword matching function which helps deliver specific results to match key words. But the comments and ranking features are very nicely done and show the way ahead for the next generation of knowledge management style search tools.
Take a look at other uses in the Swicki directory Swicki Directory

Marcus and his naked computer

Marcus Pennell at SCIP prepared a Naked Computer for the Community Base Open Day on 17 April - an old PC stripped to the bare bones and running WIndows. Just to show how it all works.
click here to see it in the altogether

TB Alert and YouTube

TB Alert is a charity based in the same building as SCIP. We had an open day here yesterday, with loads of people roaming around chatting to the 40 or so charities and voluntary organisations based here. We also had a film show all afternoon featuring various videos and films made by and about people from the building.
Two of the TB Alert staff are out in India at the moment so they broadcast their greetings via YouTube - a bit like This is Your Life. This was a great way of particpating in the day as well as teaching people more about their work.
Sadly the only technical glitch of the whole day happened when YouTube went down at the critical moment, leaving people here to use good old fashioned face-to-face presentation to fill the gap...
YouTube - TBAlert's Channel

Microsoft event for charities

This upcoming event from NCVO and Microsoft UK is free to registered charities - registration opens next week.

Improving your productivity through technology
Opportunities for the voluntary and community sector
10th June, London

NCVO and Microsoft UK are hosting an interactive conference combining case studies, workshops and keynote speakers to explore the potential of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for small and medium sized charities.

Understanding that complexity, resources and finances can hold technology development back, Microsoft and NCVO aim to introduce you to ways of accessing the latest technology through the help of a special donations scheme, enabling your organisation to achieve more.

The conference will include case studies from charitable organisations that demonstrate how they are already reaping the benefits from using the latest technology. The event will close with an informative session on ICT funding and how you can access technology donations through Microsoft UK.

This full day event is free of charge to all charity employees on a first come first served basis.
Workshops include:

Workshop 1: Costing and Funding ICT in your organisation

Workshop 2: Managing finances effectively using new technology

Workshop 3: Tips and tricks for setting up and managing an online community

Workshop 4: Managing a remote team - How technology can bring you together

Workshop 5: Finding your niche - how new media options can help you stand out to your supporters

Online registration will be open from 23rd April 2008 at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032376570&Culture=en-GB <http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032376570&amp;Culture=en-GB>
Louise Brown

Free Workshop: How can faith groups use ICT?

How can faith groups use ICT to support their work? this workshop is aimed at people who are active as staff, volunteers or trustees in any faith-based group form the south east.

FREE WORKSHOP: Faith groups and ICT

Brighton, Friday 28 April 2008, 2-5pm

Venue: Community Base,Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XG

HOW CAN ICT HELP FAITH GROUPS?
This free workshop is aimed at staff and volunteers who work as part of a faith-based organisation. It is not a technical session but is aimed at managers and decision-makers who want to know more about how computers and the internet can help their work.

The session will be delivered by Mark Walker and Lucian Borcanescu, who are the ICT Champions for the South East of England.

It will include:
- How can ICT help faith groups?
- Where to get help with ICT
- Budgeting and fundraising for ICT

For bookings please contact either Mark on 01273 234049 or by email at mark.walker@scip.org.uk or Lucian at Lucian@clusterit.co.uk

WOW! The language of the web?

I ran workshop last week for museum staff and trustees about how they can use the web. As well as being a way of sharing their collections every one of them saw it as a way of increasing visitors to their museum and wanted to know how to use it in their marketing activities. The pressentation is posted below.
The museums ranged from small independents, run for free entirely by volunteers, to a large visitor attraction which houses one of the largest collections of vintage cars in the world. The people attending ranged in age from 17 to 70 with a mix of Trustee, manager and student volunteer.
The general position was that the people in the room felt very little control over what was on the site or what it looked like, felt confused by how to update it and were at the mercy of techies about what they could and couldn't do on their website.
Having discussed the advent of the content management system we looked at everyone's sites - screengrabs in the presentation.
This revealed the usual ragbag of designs and styles. Some were more elegant than others, some were more complete or up to date than others. One was designed by the Chairman's son, whilst another cost about £20k, including a first version rejected at the last minute which had cost £10k!
Everyone had an excuse for something not being right on their site, or what they wanted improved, but few felt confident enough to comment on anyone else's site. I was happy to roll through, making positive and negative comments, and suggesting improvements, but it was a far from particpative part of the session.
I realised that many people feel alienated from the web as a medium - they were all regular users of it but lack a language with which to interact fully with it. These are people who have adopted to pseudo-business language of the current voluntary scetor - happy to talk about outputs and objectives and mission - but are feel unable to say that a site looks 'old-fashioned' or is 'basically okay but needs a few more pictures'.
The closest they got was at the start when I asked what they wanted from the day. Amongst various individual issues all agreed that their site needed a bit more 'wow' - and I soon realised that was about as articulate as they could be about what makes a website work.
It made me think we need to include similar discussions in all workshops - helping to build confidence by leading discussion as an 'expert' whilst making sure that people learn a language in which to express their ideas and begin to take control.

| View

A simple guide to writing

I'm preparing a workshop about Writing Reports for Voluntary and Community Organisations, which will combine writing skills with how to get the most from Word and Excel.
It's part of ongoing work to embed IT skills within mainstream community training courses and is based on a successful course I've run a few times about How to Draw Graphs and Charts and Include Them in your Reports combined with training run by Working Together Project about writing skills.
Along the way I found a great site called Writing for Change about writing reports, produced in a past life by Becky Faith, one of SCIP's trustees who is currently part of Tactical Tech.
It's a simple site that's easy to navigate with some great tips.

Save money, improve your service and keep people happy

There's a really useful new article by Simon Davey on the ICT Hub website that explains how to plan your IT training programme. It suggests a step by step process for reviewing and planning your training as well as linking to some excellent free resources.

A lot of staff and volunteers struggle to get to grips with computers and new technology, which means that investment in hardware or software can take a long time to be repaid. Training is a way of investing in people instead, and empowering them to get the most from the resources available to them.

Training Action Plan: ICT Hub

Rural ICT Conference

Lackham House in Wiltshire is the beautiful setting for a very successful conference looking at rural issues relating to ICT
Several people were there from the south east and it was good to catch up with others from across the country

Opening of Phoenix IT centre

Paul Tilley [second right], chair of TWIG Tarner Wide Internet Group and Helen Milner [second left], MD of UK Online, open the new computer room in a small community centre in central Brighton.
SCIP has been a partner in the development of a project which has helped set up and develop a number of similar facilities as part of UK Online Social Impact Demonstration project
Top news for local people in some of the hardest to reach groups

is it worth using social networks for fundraising?

Lots of people are talking about using sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook as a way for charities and campaigning organisations to link up with supporters. This may be a new channel for networking with existing supporters, or a way of recruiting new supporters, through recommendations and online connections.
Such social networks are free to the user, and can be appealing as a way of reaching a new demographic mix. As with online worlds such as Second Life the yoof that supposedly lurk in such sites are the donors of tomorrow and are like gold dust.
But what does it cost and is it a good use of your time? Even if you know what you're doing you can spend hours keeping your profile up to date, adding news and chasing down new contacts.
Justin Perkins at Care2 has done some serious work on whether you can calculate the return on investment in time and effort. for many small groups it will best to find a volunteer to explore this option, but for larger charities, who are already investing heavily in online fundrasing tactics, this is a serious question, which weighs the short term costs of the time spaent against the medium and long term risks of NOT doing it.
Find out more and try the calculator at http://www.frogloop.com/social-network-calculator

How to Choose a Database Workshop

Last week's workshop was a great success. Over 30 people from across the region attended the session that was held in Community Base in Brighton.
Mark Walker provided an introduction to the key issues when choosing a database, and 13 suppliers were on hand to show their products and talk to delegates about their needs.
Some of the key points made were:

• the person taking a lead needs to be a senior manager, not a techie
• a technical person can help with the detailed discussions, and could be a volunteer
• be very clear about your requirements from the start
• talk to lots of suppliers and ask to test their productsremember that the reporting may be the most important requirement - it needs to be easy to get informatioin out, not just easy to put it in.

A copy of the presentation is available from the SCIP website.
Given the success of the session it is likely to be repeated during the summer - please contact Mark Walker at SCIP if you would like to told when this happens.

If a picture paints a thousand words..

One of SCIP's Directors works for Tactical Tech, an organisation based here in Brighton that provides information and support to NGOs around the globe.
It's most recent publication is a great free guide to visualising information - how to get your message across in pictures. It's not a techie guide but provides pointers and examples as the first step in preparing reports or flyers or posters.
You can download it from the Tactical Tech site
Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design | Tactical Technology Collective

Rural ICT Conference

Do you work with groups in a rural area? Please share this email with relevant organisations in your networks.

= = =
REMINDER:: Rural ICT Conference ::

9.30am - 3.30pm, Wednesday 5th March 2008
Lackham Countryside Centre, Lacock, Wiltshire, SN15 2NY
The one-day Rural ICT Conference will provide practical advice and information about how to get the most from computers and the internet. Topics covered workshops will include:

• Rural Barriers to New Technologies
• Rural Broadband
• Homelessness and ICT in Rural Areas
• ICT for Development Workers

This event is funded by the ICT Hub, through Capacity Builders, and is supported by BT and South West Regional Development Agency.

Fees range from £20 to £50. Bursaries are still available and there are subsidies to cover accommodation costs.

More details, including a booking form, at the ICT Hub website

How the internet is being used in the American election

Antony Mayfield lives and works in Brighton and has posted a couple of examples of YouTube videos to show the ways the internet is being used in the US elections. One of them is a great Bollywood cut and paste job featuring Obama, another is a cringy mockumentary about Hillary.
I know these sorts of activities can still seem very distant when it comes to grassroots community organisations but the technology needed to produce these videos like these now sits on many people's desktop.
If the biggest political process on the planet has space for this sort of stuff then it can't be long before we see more and more examples from activists campaigning about local issues.
Open (finds, minds, conversations)...: All the TechPresidents

Google Grant programme for the UK

Google has launched a grants programme that provides free use of its Adsense
advertising tools. That's the way that the adverts appear alongside the
search results on the Google home page.
It means you can use it to generate extra viewers for your website and
therefore raise your profile and help raise funds. You'll need to know a bit
more about how it's advertising tools work but it's pretty simple there's
lots of help available.
More details at http://www.google.co.uk/grants/

New site for Voluntary Sector and Charity Jobs

The latest third sector job vacancies can be found at Good Moves, brought to you by a clutch of voluntary sector organisations. Still seems very Scotland specific, and the interface is not the best but recruitment advertising is big business so let's hope this brings some extra cash into the sector rather than the hands of private publishers.
Goodmoves Voluntary Sector and Charity Jobs

ICT Hub National Awards 2008: ICT Hub

Nominate yourself, or someone you work with, for  the ICT Hub National Awards 2008.
Categories include Most innovative use of ICT, Best use of ICT Accessibility; Delivering social or environmental benefits through ICT; Most improved ICT Management; and individual contribution to ICT in the voluntary sector.
Closing date for entries is 8 February 2008

Blogged with Flock

Do you use Open Source software?

The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) has launched an annual survey,
to understand and track trends of the use of free and open source [FOSS] in
the not for profit sector. It will take about 5-10 minutes to fill out.
The survey is here:
http://survey.dev.mayfirst.org/index.php?sid=75631&lang=en