Aspiration Partnering with Mozilla on Global Drumbeat Event Initiative

gunner | 2 Mar 2010 - 12:18

Aspiration is proud to be partnering with Mozilla to drive the local event strategy for their Drumbeat project. Aspiration will help to prototype what Drumbeat Local events look like across the globe, and train local organizers in how to design and run their own Drumbeat events. The event format and philosophy will be based on Aspiration’s own facilitation methodology.

What is Mozilla Drumbeat? With the aim of finding the next cool ideas that will make the web more open, Mozilla has created Drumbeat, with the goal of better connecting and growing the global community of people using web technology to understand, participate and take control of their online lives. Drumbeat provides a forum for people to share project ideas — and matches the most promising ideas with contributors, funds and guidance. For more information, visit the Drumbeat site.

Mozilla is also looking for local partners and leaders to help them engage the global community of people passionate about keeping the web vibrant and open.

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Mozilla Jetpack for Learning Design Camp

Dates: 10 March, 2010 - 12 March, 2010

Location:
Austin, Texas, USA

Event Details:

Aspiration will travel to Austin to run a 3-day Design Camp that culminates Mozilla’s Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge. Ten projects from the Challenge have been invited to the Camp, taking place prior to South By Southwest Interactive 2010. Aspiration is designing and leading the event in partnership with Mozilla, along with Philipp Schmidt, Jetpack for Learning (JFL) Coordinator, and Brian King and Andy Edmonds, JFL Course Leads.

The camp will bring together developers, designers, and educators who are connecting the best ideas from open education with the coolest new open internet technologies. Design Challenge prototypes will be finalized with support from the course leaders, and additional agenda time will be spent discussing and working toward a shared vision for social learning in the open web. Selection and announcement of ultimate Design Challenge winner will take place during Mozilla’s SXSW Interactive event.

Craigslist Foundation and Aspiration host focus group on knowledge sharing in neighborhoods and local communities

gunner | 23 Feb 2010 - 22:26

Aspiration was delighted to design and facilitate a focus group for Craigslist Foundation’s latest project, code-named What Works, in San Francisco at the end of January. The goal of the project is to assess the degree to which stories and ideas about successful community change can help others achieve success in their own communities. And to the extent that they do, to then investigate how to better get that information distributed where it needs to go. The agenda addressed topics including what motivates people to share their success stories, which organizations are already doing work in related areas, and what audiences and communities might be most in need of this kind of improved information flow.

Participating organizations included Bush Foundation, Causecast, Craigslist.org, IBM, Google.org, The Open Planning Project, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, Wikimedia Foundation, WiserEarth, as well as social media sensei Beth Kanter, Fellow at the Packard Foundation.

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Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects - Washington DC 2010

Dates: 8 February, 2010 - 9 February, 2010

Location:
CITI DC Headquarters, Washington, DC

Event Details:

Thanks to all the folks whose positive attitudes contributed to a very fun and productive MNTP DC 2010 in spite of the winter madness. And apologies for craziness beyond our control to all of you who were unable to get in for the event. Also, big thanks to Community IT Innovators (CITI) for hosting the event when our original venue was forced to close.

Event Overview

After a very successful DC debut this past July, Aspiration and Community IT Innovators (CITI) hosted the fourth Nonprofit Technology Project Management event in Washington DC on the 8th and 9th of February, 2010.

Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects (MNTP) examined the tools and best practices that help nonprofits deliver successful technology solutions - whether it be websites, packaged software implementations, or custom applications.

Feel free to join the event on Facebook and continue the conversation.

Check out the agenda and the list of excellent facilitators.

Interactive sessions and demos allowed participants to compare processes, tools, successes, and lessons learned. Discussion topics included team collaboration, project planning, software selection, migration, and project rollout, and mapping out software tools – from project management packages to collaborative communication to issue tracking and more – that support successful technology projects.

Feel free to join the MNTP discussion list, which we use to continue the collaboration.

Aspiration’s skill in facilitating practitioner knowledge combined with CITI’s experience in managing nonprofit technology projects contributed to an informal, collaborative, and information-rich event.

Integrating Social Media into Your Website

gunner | 14 Jan 2010 - 22:06

Aspiration was delighted to deliver another webinar in TechSoup’s most excellent webinar series, entitled Integrating Social Media into Your Website.

The webinar was offered twice, on January 19th and February 4th.

It was also picked for republishing by CharityHowto.com.

Webinar Overview

More and more organizations are benefiting from using social media tools like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter in their online communications. While the tools can be relatively straightforward to learn and adopt, many organizations struggle with how to effectively align messaging and communications across their online channels.

This webinar will focus on best practices for integrating social media into organizational websites, including basic nuts-and-bolts changes to web page templates and enhancements to contact, staff, and email sign-up pages. Effective and simple processes for coordinating various channels and maximizing traffic between them will be explained. In addition, a range of contrasts will be drawn describing the different natures and uses of the respective channels, and methods for measuring how different channels are driving traffic to one another will be presented.

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Join Us for the February Edition of Aspiration's Social Media Sewing Circle!

Dates: 3 February, 2010 - 4 February, 2010

Location:
San Francisco Nonprofit Technology Center

Event Details:

If you are interested in being more effective with your use of social media in 2010, attending one of these two events will be a great way to build some momentum.

Each seminar is entitled “Building Your Own Social Media Dashboard”, and will be held at two times:

Wednesday, February 3rd from 2pm to 4pm
Thursday, February 4th from 2pm to 4pm

The goal of the workshops is to help nonprofit staff learn both about social media as well as how they can track the impact and reach of their messaging.

These hands-on, learner-driven events will allow participants to set up their own “listening dashboard” where they can track the impact of their online communication efforts (web, Facebook, Twitter, and more), while also tracking issues pertinent to their organization, all with a single free online tool. Participants will use the NetVibes platform to create their dashboards.

The workshops are designed for those starting out in social media as well as those who have established a social media presence but don’t know how to start assessing the reach of their messages and the online activity around their programmatic issue areas.

Because the workshops will be participant-driven, we’ll encourage discussion amongst the group, so bring your stories, questions and frustrations and we’ll see if we can sift out some answers and solutions.

The seminars will take place at the

San Francisco Nonprofit Technology Center
1370 Mission St, 4th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103
See Map

This is a free and open event, but space is limited, so please RSVP to seminars@aspirationtech.org, and make sure to specify which day you’ll be attending.