Japi's Blog

Don't Push The River, It Flows By Itself

Ruby Sinreich was the facilitator for a session called "Don't Push the River, It Flows by Itself".  With an interesting name... the idea behind it is to allow social networks to flow and naturally evolve.

Use and organize networks by the power of the individual which can grow to a large wave of support for a particular cause or goal.

What makes a network effective:

1. Strong social ties -personal relationships, trust, awareness.
2. Common story - shared values, collective narrative, language and words that resonate (tagcouds).
3. Dense communication grid - online and offline: blogs, e-mail, IM, phone & SMS, face-to-face, twitter.
4. Sharing culture - Opensourcy: data, information, skills & expertise, money, space (meeting rooms).
5. Network awareness - feeling like a member, knowing what the network is for.

Some of the takeaways include:

1. A better understanding of the different social networking sites and how to use them
2. How social networking can impact the nonprofit world
3. Strategies on how to use this medium for outreach and advocacy

Ruby is a wonderful and confident speaker - she is very active in the social media universe which is obvious in the delivery of this content.

Changing Your CEO from Barrier to Partner

Marnie Webb, David Geilhufe, Michelle Murrain and Steve Heye were part of a great breakout session.  It was fantastic in that Marnie had the CEO's point of view and David had some excellent examples of situations where he presented to his CEO.

The audience was not huge which allowed for great interaction with real-situation questions and comments.

I filmed Marnie for a few minutes where she explained situations where she has eithe shot something down or chose to move forward with a particular project.  She also explained that there are some piece of information that she DOES NOT want to know... for example:

If you need to purchase a new firewall and you present Marnie with all the details of the research you've done and given your recommendation.  If you give her details such as the brand of firewall, she may delve deeper into why you chose that one and not the one that he buddy CEO purchased or the one she saw on the magazine in the plane, etc... there are some things that she prefers not to know... but if she's put in the situation that she has to decide on something, she will use her best judgement based on the information she has gathered.

Some of the other take-aways from this session include many concepts I've heard our CEO, Ed Schipul, mention many times:

1. Bad news must travel fast - if an approved project is going badly, inform the CEO immediately!  This helps them make a decision on where to go from here.
2. Research and SoundBytes - be sure to do the appropriate research and be able to present it in a quick manner so it makes sense to your CEO (ROI, bottom line, etc)
3. Think risks/security first - Be sure to verify the risk factors of this project and how it can affect the current and future situation of your organization.  Even if it's a very risky project, present an objective view of it... your CEO may be willing to move forward in spite of those risks.
4. Succinct Communication - CEO's typically have many different things going on so it's important to make sure you present/talk to your CEO in THEIR language and in the least amount of words necessary.

This panel was very informative - the team of individuals were well-informed and had wonderfully natural presentation skills.

David Pogue at 2008 NTC

David Pogue, New York Times columnist and CBS news correspondent, delivered the keynote speech this morning to officially begin the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference - He was both entertaining and educational.  He even played the piano and sang a couple of humorous songs at the end of his presentation.

David presented some interesting concepts about voice over ip (voip) and how the cellular carriers are trying not to offer this service.  Their primary reason for not offering this service is that the cellular firms will lose a lot of revenue from the "free voip minutes".  I was able to capture most of the speech on video and tonight I will upload it to my YouTube Channel.  I was able upload the short video of David playing the piano and singing, watch it below.

NTC 2008 1st Day

Wednesday at the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans was primarily about networking, meeting new folks, running into old friends, learning about the new technology offered by the organizations marketing themselves at the NTC Science Fair. 

However, one of the events I most enjoyed happened to me by accident.

During the member appreciation luncheon, I ran into several people I've met the last couple of NTC's... including: Corey Pudhorodsky, James Jones, Beth Kanter, Katrin Verclas and Britt Bravo.  When I was talking to Britt, she mentioned that they were having a Netsquared Meetup at a local bar that night.

Just the day before, I had discussed Netsquare with Jessica Rohloff of the Louisiana Technology Council and she expressed interest in setting up a chapter here in New Orleans. 

So I asked Jessica to come out and here's the magic moment captured for eternity <grin>  Britt Bravo and Jessica Rohloff talking about what Netsquared is and the details she needs to set it up in New Orleans - pretty exciting stuff!

Let's hope it DOES lead to the formation of a New Orleans Netsquared group!

Lionly Love - just amazing

My daughter, Melissa, sent me this and I thought it was just too beautiful not to include it in my blog... as I make another detour from my political posts. 

This lady in Colombia rescued a malnourished lion and when she comes back to visit, the lion shows it's gratitude.  It's truly amazing!

Mustaches For Kids starts Thursday

I will be participating in a funny charity event starting this Thursday, November 15th... it's called Mustaches for Kids.  It's a mustache growing "competition" in which we receive pledges for growing a mustache in 4 weeks (Nov 15th - Dec 15th) - all the donations are given to Texas Children's Hospital.

Jason McElweenie of the Low End Theory and Canerican blog, has been organizing this for several months and it's finally time to start the growing season.

If you would like to donate any amount to my effort, please comment below and I will include you in my pledge sheet. 

And if you would like to purchase a t-shirt (see below), email Jason directly.

Vote for South by SouthWest 2008 Panels

We usually send several people from our office to South by SouthWest (SXSW) in Austin every year.  We are hoping to have our CEO, Ed Schipul, be on one or more panels at SXSW 2008.

If you are reading this blog, I would really appreciate your help in getting his panels selected for next year's event.  If you want to help, please follow these steps:

1. Create an account on the SXSW Panel Picker site (it's free)
2. Go to the Panel Picker page and do a search for these panels:

• We Heart You!! -- Growing Your Business From Within (vote)
  Your employees are your company's heart and soul -- do they know how much you love them? Our discussion will give you some insights on how to improve the lives and brains of your greatest assets, giving you a strong competitive edge and a win-win environment for your company, your employees and your clients.
• iPhone in the Enterprise (vote)
  The iPhone hit the cell phone market by storm in mid 2007. A phone to solve your every need. And one heck of a new user interface paradigm focused on your fingers as an input device. No more windows, only view ports. The Safari browser and Webkit became relevant again. We're giving away an actual iPhone at this panel, so come ready with questions and ideas.
• Pimp My Non Profit (vote)
  Non profit groups struggle with funding and public support issues on a daily basis. Yet many have overcome the odds and made a splash online and offline by using the latest Web technologies -- for pennies on the dollar. This discussion will center around the stories, strategies, triumphs and challenges of innovative non profits with a passion for change and the cajones to rock it out online.
• The Art of Visual Thinking (vote)
  Kelsey’s panel - Visual Thinking is the art of using pictures to solve problems, think through issues and communicate messages clearly. Visual communication has long been used by indigenous cultures in art, storytelling and history. This has helped shape languages and communication styles around the world. Find out how to present ideas visually, cut through the clutter to help explain things in a more concise and understandable manner.

I very much appreciate your help with this... I know it's somewhat of a shameless plug, but I am certain many of the SXSW attendees will learn a bunch from Ed - he's a phenomenal and knowledgeable speaker.

BloggerCon at the ASAE Conference 2007

Ben Martin from Virginia Association of Realtors organized a sub-meeting at the ASAE Conference 2007 in Chicago and called it Association Bloggercon 2007.  The idea behind this meeting was to share ideas on how to blog better and reach our intended audiences.

We had abouit 30+folks there and the conversation was very active.  Some of the people in attendance included:

1. Zach Wilson principal at Gulo Customized Internet Solutions - link to Gulo Solution's blog
2. Greg Fine, CAE of Association Forum of Chicagoland
3. Jeff De Cagna from Principled Innovation - link to Principled Innovation's blog
4. Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber - link to JibberJobber's blog
5. Sue Pelletier, editor of The Meetings Group - link to Face2Face blog
6. C. David Gammel of High Context Consulting - link to High Context's blog
7. Jason Della Rocca, Executive Director of International Game Developers Association - link to Reality Panic

Many others attended, but I didn't have the opportunity to get their information.  If anyone reading this blog-post attended and would like to be included in it, please submit a comment with your information... I will update the post with it.

The meeting was divided into two conversations:

First we talked about how to get leaders of associations to read, comment and get involved in the conversation that is currently taking place in the blogosphere about associations.  We had many suggestions, including the creation of a central bog that would have RSS feeds from all the blogs with association relevant information.

Our second topic dealt with blogs specific to an association - tips for increasing the level of conversation (comments, more readers, etc).  The blogs discussed here were not about generic nonprofits, these were more specific to a particular organization. 

Ben did a great job in keeping the conversation flowing in an organized manner.  I found the input provided by the attendees very useful... in fact, I've I've already implemented this one:

When you receive a really good comment (or comments) on a particular post, it's a good idea to take the comment and make a new blog-post from it (giving proper credit to the person making the comment) and respond to the comment on this new post.

Ben, thank you for inviting me to BloggerCon - I really enjoyed it and learned a bunch!

And now... for something completely different: Sunday at the ASAE Conference

The opening event at the ASAE conference 2007 was phenomenal, as I previously posted.  So I was pretty excited about how the conference would move along - hoping I would have some valuable information and enjoy my time here in Chicago. 

Sunday morning's event was fantastic!

ASAE hired a PCI Communications to organize a three act musical that would be presented on Sunday morning, Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon at the ASAE conference.  PCI was given the task of hiring the talent, choosing the songs and changing the lyrics, writing a script and tying it to the association industry and creating a fun musical to inform and entertain the people attending the conference (WOW, that's a long sentence!).  The end product (so far) has been excellent!

Sunday, the musical covered the inner struggles of "The American Generic Society". The music was awesome with songs like "There's No Profit in Non-Profit" (sung to "There's No Business Like Show Business") and "A Committee" (sung to West Side Story's "I Feel Pretty").  They were able to tie in conversations with some of ASAE's leadership acting in the show.  VERY entertaining and I think most  of the audience loved it and walked away with some useful information.

The keynote speakers after the musical were just as wonderful!  Ann Compton of ABC News interviewed Bob Woodruff and his wife Lee.  The interview was very warm and emotional. 

Bob Woodruff has been a journalist for over 20 years.  In January of 2006, he was reporting from Iraq and he was seriously injured by a road-side bomb.  The interview offered us a glimpse into the nightmare that he and his loved ones endured.  He was in a comma for over 30 days; his wife and his mother were constant pillars of strength for the rest of the family; ABC News and the Disney Corporation were amazing throughout and continue to be this way.

The story was heart-wrenching and inspiring.

Bob is still recovering from the injury to his brain... but he has come a long way from not being able to communicate to now being able to do his work as a journalist.  He is an engaging speaker and now is a strong advocate for medical recovery of all the soldiers in this war.

I noticed many people in the audience engulfed in tears, but also laughing with the wonderful stories told by Bob and his wife.

If you ever have the opportunity to watch or listen to Bob, I highly recommend it.

Monday morning at ASAE Conference

I am going out of order on my blogpost (I will blog about Sunday after this one)... because this morning's opening event sparked me to discuss it here.

As you will read in my next post about Sunday, the ASAE Conference morning events are fun and informative because they are presented as a musical.  Today's was too funny with songs like "If We Had a New Brand" (sung to the tune of "If I Were a Rich Man" from The Fiddler on the Roof), "There's a Space for Us" (West Side Story's "There's a Place for Us") and "Who is Advancing America?" (Also from West Side Story's "I Want to Live in America").  Very entertaining and informative... I loved it!  The music, the dancing, the message were all presented excellently.  I am certain that most of the audience (in a HUGE auditorium) feel the same way.

EXCEPT for the "keynote address" at the end of the event.... OH MY GOODNESS!  I have not witnessed a worse speaker in my life!  That may sound harsh, but it's true.  The message was fantastic (well, the little I remember) but most of it was lost because it was presented so badly.

The address was titled "Associations as Agents of World Benefit" by David Cooperrider.  Sounds really great, doesn't it?  David seems like a brilliant man and he's probably doing some amazing work... but he either needs to take a public speaking course and get a PR agent to prepare his presentations (may I suggest Dan Keeney of DPK Public Relations), or he needs to get someone else to present his message.  Not everyone is a good public speaker, so the former may be a better solution.

David's message seemed to have a lot of value, but I could not follow it.  I looked around the auditorium and noticed a lot of people whispering and falling asleep.  I was saddened by this... I was also BORED OUT OF MY MIND!!!  I've sat through a lot of presentations that were very entertaining but had no value... this was the opposite.

The few take-aways I got from his presentation were that he attended a World Summit (Compact as they called it) sponsored by the United Nations in 2004 (he could have provided something more recent) and a couple of examples where organizations were helping (I can't remember the specifics because I was nearly passed out).

He seemed nervous throughout the presentation, pacing back and forth.  He was not very apt at reading from the teleprompter so it sounded like he was reading (the times where he seemed to not be reading, and speaking from his memories... it was well done and heartfelt).  He also had not timing to his talk, he didn't emphasize specific words and phrases that would have driven the message home; he hurried through the presentation (there was a LOT of material) so most of the information was lost.  Most of the presentation was spoken... very little was shown on the screen which caused him to lose a good percentage of the audience (the visual learners).

I am not trying to attack David in any way in this post... my hope is that someone will read this and reach David to get him to fix his message.  If David does read this, I hope he does not take it personally... I think he needs to find a way to enhance the experience of his message to help recruit and inspire others to join his wonderful and worthy quest.