What would you do if you could build a non-profit website from scratch without worrying about any integration issues?

It’s exactly what I’m doing at the moment. In this post I’m sharing my ideas and I’d love to hear your’s.

http://sm4good.com/2010/03/01/nonprofit-website-scratch/

Based on experiences in Samoa and Haiti, I’m trying to come up with best practice for how to organize tweeting staff in a disaster context so that there is a maximum benefit for the organization.

I have identified four different approaches:

- The organizational approach
- The personal approach
- The CNN approach
- The List approach

read more about the advantages and disadvantages that I see in each approach on Social Media 4 Good:
http://sm4good.com/2010/02/15/twitter-disasters-organize-staff/

I hadn’t been following the news recently, so I was genuinely surprised when I saw “Google Buzz” in my Gmail dashboard today. My first impression is: this could work for me. But not as a replacement of Twitter. I rather see it as something to replace FriendFeed.

I have to admit – I never really got the hang of FriendFeed. While I want a service or an application that helps me to aggregate different forms of information streams, I don’t want to have to visit an additional site. But Buzz is integrated into Gmail which I visit a dozen times a day anyhow. And since most people I know check their Gmail or the iGoogle Dashboard regularly, this means you have real chance to create a lively discussion through Buzz.

To say that the last week was “intense” would be an understatement. From the minute the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement pulled out all stops to help the people on the ground.

Communications is only a small part of that response and social media an even smaller part. Nevertheless – here are my observations:

http://sm4good.com/2010/01/24/haiti-earthquake-social-media-response/

The Red Cross Red Crescent created a Flickr slideshow with photos from Haiti after the earthquake. This will be updated continuously.

If you want to add it to your own blog, you can use the code I posted here:

http://sm4good.com/2010/01/14/slideshow-blog-red-cross-red-crescent-phot...

I have been using Flickr for about two years to increase visibility of the work of Red Cross Red Crescent. Today, I’d like to share some of the lessons I’ve learned.

Why Flickr?

I believe that most non-profits spend too much time preaching to the choir. Flickr is a great website to show what your organization is doing and why it is doing it to people whom you haven’t been able to reach.

http://sm4good.com/2010/01/11/flickr-nonprofits-lessons-learned/

Recent announcements by Google make me think, that the company might go down a path that would ultimately mean more inequality, a worse position for developing countries and a widening digital divide.

I’m referring specifically to Chrome OS, Google’s new operating system, and the announcement that Google would dump Google Gears, a service that makes it possible to use services like GoogleDocs offline. In both cases, Google emphasized the importance of cloud computing as opposed to working offline. The idea is that all data, i.e. your spread sheets, your documents, your photos, get stored on remote servers (a.k.a. "the cloud") and none of it on your machine.

Read more on: http://sm4good.com/2009/12/21/google-cloud-search-giant-widening-digital...

The Red Cross Red Crescent and Reuters have launched a multimedia web documentary - that marks the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. The centre-piece of "Surviving the Tsunami: Stories of Hope" are four very moving interviews with people who have survived this disaster which killed 230,000 people across 14 countries. The Indian Ocean Tsunami is the largest natural disaster in living history: http://tsunami.trust.org

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (http://www.ifrc.org) is hiring a Social Media Officer. The IFRC is the world's largest humanitarian organization, with 186 member National Societies. This is a 2 year position, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Deadline for applications: 3 January 2010
You can apply here: https://jobnet.ifrc.org/public/hrd-cl-vac-view.asp?jobinfo_uid_c=1604&va...

Purpose of position:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) views humanitarian diplomacy as an important element in supporting the collective efforts of its membership and of its Secretariat to meet the needs of vulnerable people and to address the major humanitarian challenges confronting the world today.

My organization recently held a big international conference in Nairobi with around 1,000 participants from all over the world. When our staff got back, almost every single one of them had a virus on their computers that would pop up pornographic ads every few minutes. Lovely.

Apparently there was one central computer where everybody brought their USB sticks if they wanted to print something and that is how the virus spread. I know, it’s ironic for an organization that deals with infectious diseases.

After I had stopped making fun of my colleagues, I asked them why they hadn’t locked their USB sticks so that they were “read only”. All I got in response was confused stares.