Ashoka and the Lemelson Foundation invite bloggers covering the intersection of technology, invention and social change to be the official blogger at the upcoming Tech 4 Society conference in Hyderabad, India where 100 Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows will be attending, in addition to other changemakers, to share ideas and projects that are changing the world through technology and invention.

Is your organization looking to expand your reach and communicate more directly with your supporters and community? Are you considering starting a blog to help you do this? Join Becky Wiegand from TechSoup during this free webinar as she interviews Allyson Kapin, blogger for Care2's nonprofit marketing blog Frogloop, and Jason Griffey, who literally wrote the book on blogging for libraries to discuss the ins and outs of starting a blog for your organization. From considerations like which tool to use, how much staff time to commit, whether volunteers and interns should help, best practices, and how to launch your blog into the blogosphere, we'll discuss all the basics of how to get started. Register today!

Whether it’s blogging, communicating with donors, or trying to lure Facebook users to a cause, your writing skills have never been more important. On Twitter, your masterful haiku skills might come in handy - but beyond that, what does it mean to write in the age of distraction?  Thankfully, Cory Doctorow comes to the rescue.  I read this article a little while ago, and his advice keeps rattling around.  I particularly like his idea of leaving a rough edge when you work.  Read Cory’s advice…

Happy Holidays, N2 community!!

I've been hush-hush for a while because the team over here has been discussing a critical issue - what do we need to be doing in order to get you all engaged a whole lot more?  The N2 blog is not churning up the type of engagement we had hoped to see and we're scratching our heads wondering why.  We're providing content - perhaps its not what you want or need?  We're focusing that content on social media strategies - perhaps we're missing the mark?  Essentially - we're rethinking our strategy and we want you, the community, to guide us.

If you're even remotely into social media and have yet to read (or hear of) Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel (and the host of other authors who played a part in bringing the book to life), then you have some catching up to do.  Published in 2006 about the way blogging was changing businesses (and with tremendous foresight regarding how blogging would continue to change business), the book is still exceptionally relevant to business managers who not only want to grasp just what the &%*$ social media means, but want to see that meaning in context...especially a successful context.

Today is Blog Action Day!  This year, the focus of Blog Action Day is poverty - it's a day when thousands of bloggers all focus on one issue with the goal to raise awareness, inspire action, and shake up the blogosphere.

What's this all about?

For the last several months I've been involved in a project called RootsWire.  The project was initially started as a means to pull together content from the different blogs and web sites covering the Democratic Convention in Denver.  We are growing (at least conceptually) in scope to be an aggregation and cooperation site for bloggers and hyperlocal sites across the US.

Our intention is to build tools for sharing of content between sites in geographic areas, and to have local editors throughout the country who will build a human-edited daily digest of news generated by grassroots sites and organizations. 

Hey Everybody, Hope your team won this weekend (my G-Men brought it home in OT!)

Okay, so your trillion dollar budget dried up and now you don't have that sweet video lab with staff of seventeen anymore to get your video posted online. Life can be cruel sometimes, and Puffs with Lanolin is your best friend...but, wait, ne'er fear, Utterli is here. Utterli is a app that can be used to post audio and video to the web using your computer, mobile device, cell phone (and possibly more - I only dug as deep as using my laptop at this point.)

A few years ago I had the distinct pleasure of sitting thru a 7 hour session with Shel Holtz presenting on the topic of using new media tools for all sorts of repurposing communications efforts. Besides getting to see Ray Kurzweil speak for 2 hours, Holtz's presentation was the best I've seen on the topic. So I'm going to review his book, co-authored with Ted Demoplous, blogging for Busines: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care.

Now, right off the bat, some employees may contend that their blog is not used for business purposes, to which I ask...are you kidding? If you're talking about your company, you're talking about the business of your company, end of story.