Introduction

Modern day artists who use the web to either make their art or promote it often have to use a variety of tools to sustain and grow their ‘making’.  With the advent of easier and faster ways to develop content for the web (whether that’s a simple ‘portfolio’ web site or a place to upload pictures), the barrier to artists getting ‘out there’ is becoming easier and easier.

We’ve still got a long way to go, but for now here’s some basics to using one tool (WordPress) to get your art ‘out there’.

WordPress Basics

Wordpress is an open-source blogging platform which acts more and more like a content management system (CMS).  A CMS is an online system for managing and displaying different kinds of media and content through a website.

Some different kinds of content and media are:

• pictures (.jpg, .png, .gif etc.)
• videos (.mov, .swf etc.)
• text (.pdf, the actual text you read on a web page/blog post)
• audio (.mp3, .ogg, .wav)
• embeddable videos/audio from things like YouTube, Vimeo or SoundCloud

WordPress provides a graphical user interface for managing these content types.  All of these files are hosted on a server (either your own or one provided by WordPress, see below).  The locations of these as well as the actual HTML and text that appear in your site are stored in a database.  Your website sits ‘between’ this database and a user’s browser, within in your particular ‘install’ ( which is all the PHP files that comprise the WordPress CMS).

Hosted (WordPress.com) vs. self-hosted (download from WordPress.org)

WordPress can also be hosted on your own server space (which you can purchase through something like bluehost.com) OR your WordPress site can be hosted with http://www.wordpress.com.

A self-hosted WordPress site requires downloading it from WordPress.org and following the instructions.  Doing this means you can have your own domain name as well as customize your website a lot more (but will need time or a web developer to do it).
A ‘regular’ WordPress site is free, much easier to set up, but you won’t get your own domain name (unless you pay).

Basic WordPress Terminology

Posts
Posts are ’serial’ content that are posted regularly i.e. blog posts, like journal entries.  You might use these to embed photos of your latest paintings or art or even upload an mp3 of your latest music.  You can even embed HTML code from video/image/audio hosting sites like YouTube, flickr and SoundCloud respectively.

Pages
Pages are more ’static’ content, like an ‘About’ page or a ‘Contact Us’ page.  Many artist websites may even have a short ‘Artist Bio’ page and if you need help generating an artist statement for yourself, you can read 5 Articles to Help You Write a Great Artist Bio.

Categories
Categories can be thought of like ‘containers’ for your Posts.  When you make a new Post, you check which Categories you want your Post associated with.  Where ever you see and click a link on your website to one of the Categories, it will bring up a dynamically-generated page which lists all Posts in that Category.  As an artist might have Categories on your site like ‘Projects’, ‘Designs’, ‘Exhibitions’, or ‘Gigs’

Widgets
Widgets are awesome.  They are like little ‘blocks’ that you can place around your site with anything you want in them – RSS feeds, code copied and pasted from other websites, multi-media content.  Lots of fun.  You might create a widget on your site comprised of all the different Categories on your site to help people easily navigate and find your stuff.

Themes
Themes are pre-developed ’skins’ that you can ‘layer over’ your site.  The structure and content of your site stay essentially the same, but the Theme will change things like colors and fonts to give different ‘feels’ for your site.  They allow to quickly and easily move between two different ‘looks’ for your site.

Plugins
Plugins add extra functionality to your site.  If you think of your site as a computer, Plugins are like little ‘programs’ that you can install on it to make it do certain things.  For instance, if you are a heavily visual artist, you might install something like the NextGEN Gallery plug in to manage your images into photo galleries and albums placed throughout your site.

Where To Learn More

If you need more help installing WordPress, Wordpress.tv has excellent video tutorials to teach yourself. If you want to delve more into developing your own WordPress Themes and Plugins – or simply want to hack your current self-hosted WordPress installation – check out the WordPress Codex. My favorite part if the Template Tags page which give you the actual code you can mix, match and paste into your own WordPress PHP files.


Other posts you might be interested in

This is a new project I’ve been working on in parallel with my work at MACSD’s DIY New Media Lab.  Also in start-up mode, the San Diego FabLab is “an advanced digital design and fabrication laboratory that allows community members access to high-tech tools in order to actualize ideas through design and fabrication”.

Aside from developing a tighter partnership with the San Diego FabLab offline (they recently set up a FabTag at our New Media Tent at SDLFF), I was involved with the design of their website.  I handled all site navigation, content migration and architecture while the lovely lovely Ms. Bea put her designer’s eye to the logo, branding and colors – the look and feel.

The site was built using the awesome Thesis Wordpress theme.  I also set up all staff email and online document management using Google Apps.

All in all, a quick, easy site that was a joy to develop with a talented team (Katie and Bea).  I look forward to having more involvement with FabLab personally and professionally.  They do great stuff.

Be sure to check out their latest workshops on their Events page!

I’ve recently started work as a Program Manager at Media Arts Center San Diego. Our DIY New Media Lab now hosts the San Diego node of SHARE. Keep up with the latest happenings on our Lab blog.

I’ve always been afraid of two things – bodies of water (in which I cannot see the bottom) and heights. At 7, I was stung by a jellyfish while swimming. That same year, I fell off a rock face and into a crevice of fresh lava rock, gouging and slicing my flesh as I tumbled to the bottom – it felt like I fell for miles. I came to dread swimming and climbing things.

Over 20 years later, I found myself miles in the air flying across the world’s largest body of water. All to work for a small organization called CuriousWorks. I’d not heard of them until just a few weeks earlier and in a few days, I was going to be helping them make media with kids in the middle of the Pilbara – a place few Australians (let alone Americans like me) ever get the chance to see.

With just a single Tweet as the trigger, I was going to be over 10,000 miles away from home, in the middle of a vast desert, in a country I’d never been to…

I dove in.

Some mornings, I had magnificent dreams and awoke to watch the sun rise over the desert landscape.

Other mornings gave me a taste of the complex realities of kids in rural and remote communities.

And this was only the first 5 days of my trip…

My second week in Australia found me in the small mining town of Newman, Western Australia. Newman consists of about 5,000 people with an extra 2,000 as ‘fly in fly out‘). It sits about 1200 km north of Perth in the heart of the Pilbara Desert. Because of it’s remote location, food and water need to be shipped in to Newman’s only grocery store weekly. Pilbara literally, means ‘dry‘.

There’s a cultural thirst here too – particularly for the young people of Newman. Pop cultural artifacts like StarWars, Twilight and Subway sandwiches are lapped up. The kids constantly talk about wanting to see ‘bands in Perth’. In deed, many young people – Newman’s potential future leaders – end up leaving.

Because of this, BHP Billiton recognized the need for a more sustainable and permanent infrastructure – something for the long term. That’s where CuriousWorks came in.

As part of the BHP Iron Ore Legacy Project and in partnership with Country Arts WA, CuriousWorks helped Newman’s kids develop a wide range of skills they could put back in to their community. Some of these skills were gained interviewing locals outside of school. Other skills were nurtured by developing a class website. Our final part of the project was putting on Newman’s first film festival.

In starting the project, Senior Advisor of Sustainability and Community Relations for BHP Billiton, Scott Bird said:

“We really want to contribute something significant to the town that demonstrates BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s commitment to creating liveable communities that people want to participate in for the long term. We expect this project will create a lasting impact on both the community members and the landscape of the Newman Township.”

Over the next 12 weeks, we worked with teachers, students and parents to build the media capacity of Newman’s young residents. We moved between 5 different locations to conduct our after school media-making workshops while teaching new media classes in the primary and senior high schools. It was hectic, but a lot of fun and the kids we worked with were very productive.

The project accomplished some great things with and for the young people of Newman:

• our kids got on national television and a national newspaper
• our kids launched a student website with an accompanying lobbying website and youth blog
• we also learned 33 other things…

And yes, we felt happy to call them ‘our kids’. They are awesome.

While we accomplished a lot while there, we were not without our challenges. For one, we were outsiders, not just geographically, but culturally too; a Sri Lankan, a Lebanesian, a snow white Australian with a slight British accent and an Asian-American made for some curious workers in a predominantly white town. There were even a few incidents where I wondered if I’d been discriminated against because of my ‘outsider’ ness. In a conversation I had with a local school teacher, she offhandedly referred to the film production, internet literacy development, and photography we were doing with the kids as not ‘real’ teaching.

Coming into Newman, we also expected to have a stable teaching space to meet with the youth. We had anything but. Not only did the local youth center close down a week before we arrived, but the places we’d hoped to conduct our media workshops were unreliable, in spite of the dedicated efforts of our staff and our Newman partners. The recently closed youth center hadn’t even been open a year. Where were after school programs for youth going to be held? Where were the creative spaces kids could go to continue their learning, playing and making when the schools closed? Who would lead this?

Clearly, there was and is a lot of work to do. I wouldn’t say the kids we worked with were disadvantaged in the sense that Americans (like my self) normally think – poverty, homelessness, language barriers. I’d say their greatest disadvantage is the lack of a stable, supportive center that fosters the creative skills they already have.

As of this writing, there is still no youth space for the kids of Newman to meet and make media. This is the task ahead for the teachers, residents and businesses of Newman – to grow and build on the things we developed with Newman’s youth. To stay true to our intentions as CuriousWorkers, we need to ensure the communities we work with can serve themselves.

Newman certainly deserves to.

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Today was a blast.  I got to sit in on a session with Elias at the local community centre where Elias has been teaching during the holiday film week.  I got to have a great overview of a brainstorming session between about 15 kids ranging from 9 – 15 years old.

Today, we covered brainstorming, production schedule (preproduction, production and post production), selecting an topic/idea to film (we settled on a Newman TV variety show) and assigning roles.

The kids had a lot of fun with me asking to say things like:

• dollar
• sausage
• recreation

Dropped R’s = Australian accent.  I think.  But I end up sounding British according to Shakthi:)

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous

>
>
> The adventure for this Curious Worker begins. Will be in flight for > the next 8 hours as I fly out to Newman, Australia.
>
> Yeehaw!

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Today I set a game plan with Shakthi on how we're going to tackle the next 6 weeks in the Pilbara.  I'll need to:

• develop/find/improve on some curriculum for 'object-based storytelling'
• develop/find/improve on curriculum to introduce the 'craft' of working with audio and photography
• develop online social network strategy for cultural leaders in the Pilbara

For the first week, we're going to go to Marble Bar (population? 194) to do an ad-hoc community media class – completely open-ended, depending on who shows up an what they'd like to learn.  Could be storytelling, filming video, even djing if that's what they want;)  Should be fun.  Main purpose is to introduce ourselves to the folks in Marble Bar to as well as connect them to the community media network we're in the process of building.

Second week, we begin 5 weeks of work in Newman, culminating in a community festival.  One of our partners on the ground has already secured Thai dancers (WTF, in a rural mining colony in the middle of nowhere???), MCs and a space for the festival.

In the meantime, please enjoy this lovely video of the CW office loft in Sydney.  In it, I give a nice tour of the CW art/office loft.  It's truly one of the nicest spaces I've ever worked (and will hopefully play in soon!).

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Howdy We Operate Best Together Backers and Fans!

Apologies if some of this is old news to some of you, but I thought I’d condense the past months’ adventures for y’all in this email.  Also, I’d asked some of you if I could add you to my eNewsletter list to stay up to date on my project.  Might you resend me a yes or no – even if you already have?  Your privacy is important and I’m currently doing all these batch emails ‘by hand’ – no fancy eNewsletter software yet:p

Onwards with the updates!
-morgan

August and September have been incredibly busy and enriching months for WOBT.  The scope of We Operate Best Together has also expanded a bit to incorporate some new developments in the adventure…

—Adventures in NYC—
I visited NYC (and Boston) and had an amazing time:

•    got a free roundtrip ticket to Boston (care of Ben Sheldon thanks Ben!) for the NAMAC Conference (http://namac.org/conference)
•    toured the Eyebeam art and technology space in New York and interviewed Emma Lloyd, Director of Technology: http://bit.ly/3zfgiy
•    attended my first SHARE event: http://bit.ly/p33AG
•    squatted a loft in Manhattan with a childhood friend: http://bit.ly/1wbtFE
•    visited with WOBT friends at Digital Democracy: http://bit.ly/548f2
•    volunteered some time with the Transmission Project (formerly CTC VISTA) to redo their wiki: http://digitalartscorps.org/wiki

A brilliant, brilliant time in NYC/Boston was had by all…

—WOBT Site Relaunch—

I also relaunched and got a new URL for We Operate Best Together:  Check it out: http://www.weoperatebesttogether.org You can also subscribe to blog updates (different from this newsletter) here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WeOperateBestTogether&loc=en_US

—WOBT is Now in Australia!—

Aaaand in the midst of adventuring on the East Coast, I got a job in AUSTRALIA with an amazing organization called Curious Works (http://www.curiousworks.com.au/about).  Through creative collaborations nationally and locally, they work to ‘reshape the systems of cultural production in Australia, for the benefit of all Australians’ using new media tools and trainings.

While here I will be traveling to remote Australian communities to do technology assessments, develop curriculum and assist with new media/video storytelling.  Throughout, I will be documenting all my work on the WOBT and Curious Works websites.

Today I venture out into a New South Wales’ (Sydney’s) first dust storm in nearly 25 years to begin my first day of work at Curious Works Sydney artist loft office.  Check out the pix below:

Operate together!
Morgan

P.S.  Don’t forget to send me a quick yay or nay to opt in for ‘hand-crafted’ future updates!

If you want ‘auto’ updates, sign up to get the latest updates from the WOBT blog delivered to your inbox here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WeOperateBestTogether&loc=en_US

P.P.S.  Feel free to share, bookmark, forward or Tweet this post:)

See the full gallery on posterous

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Travis and Liz

Wordles of RFP and Org Strategic Plans

One project which they are launching is D2TV, which documents and allows you to follow the D2 team as they travel throughout SouthEast Asia working on their Project Einstein. From their blog:

Project Einstein, our digital pen pal program, was born from a photo training Digital Democracy conducted in Bangladesh in January 2008 thanks to support from What Kids Can Do. Partnering with MITʼs Center for Future Civic Media and high schools in Indianapolis, Indiana, we are now creating a platform and curriculum for resettled refugees and their peers in the U.S. to connect with refugees overseas.

Keiko and Liz really hit it off when Liz mentioned the Project Einstein. Keiko has been working towards getting a SHARE for Kids going – also another project to connect youth with media (sound) making tools and each other to creatively collaborate and SHARE with each other. I was so happy to simply introduce friends old and new to each other. Definitely a high point for me on my brief trip to New York.

Me and Keiko 2

Me and Liz Hodes

Me and Travis!

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LinkedIn is fun and you can learn a lot from it professionally.  There’s loads of opportunities to be helpful there – that’s the purpose of the internet, right?

Here’s 5 quick tips for using LinkedIn.  What are yours?

1. Import your contacts
   This should be a no brainer.  Lots of online social networks have auto-importing features.  Bring your contacts into LinkedIn in three ways:
   • Manually – this lets you invite folks, one by one.
   • Via your webmail (gMail, Yahoo!, Hotmail etc.) – find out which of your webmail contacts are already on LinkedIn.
   • Upload a file of your contacts – You can export contacts to a file from just about any address book software and simply upload that file.
2. Use the Firefox LinkedIn companion
   Get this Firefox add-on here (and you really should be using Firefox while you’re at it).  The Firefox Companion brings you immediate access to your LinkedIn network as you browse and read email.

   Key features:

   • See LinkedIn profiles for anyone sending you Web email
   • Search your LinkedIn network from any web site
   • Bookmark profiles and searches for easy access
3. Use LinkedIn’s Application Platform to share what you know
   LinkedIn’s Application Directory is fun.  You can integrate Powerpoint presentations and slideshows, events you’re attending and even RSS feeds from your Wordpress and TypePad accounts.  Go ahead and add an Application to your LinkedIn profile.  I use the Wordpress LinkedIn Application to bring blog posts from my Wordpress Work and Career category in to my profile.
4. Ask and answer questions to be helpful
   LinkedIn has a great Q&A section.  Pop in to ask and answer questions occasionally.  There’s lots of easy questions to answer to boost your credibility and helpfulness across a broad range of professional disciplines – Marketing, Non-profit, Administration, Business Operations – and these categories drill down into even more specific sub-categories.

   Hot tip: each category of questions has an RSS feed of latest questions needing answering.  Plug it into your feedreader and you’re sure to find loads of opportunities to be helpful.

5. Update your profile regularly
   You’re constantly learning new things right?  Update your profile to reflect this.  Be findable.  And remarkable in what you do – on LinkedIn and elsewhere.

Got any other hot tips/hacks for using LinkedIn?  Leave ‘em in the comments.  Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn here.

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I’m a big fan of gMail.   I’m also a big ‘plug in’ fan.  Whether it’s for Ableton, Wordpress, or Photoshop (some of my creative tools of choice), I love flexibility and keen ways to manipulate ‘things I make with computers’.

Here’s 2 Firefox addons I use in conjunction with Posterous and gMail to write rich posts without logging in to my blog.

Zemanta

I use Zemanta on this blog and it’s great.  It ’suggests’ links and images to paste into your posts via a clickable sidebar.  Simply click any images or links that appear and it automatically pastes them in – no messy HTML.  And now you can do it from your gMail. Sweet.

How:

1. Get Firefox
2. Get a gMail account
3. Install the Zemanta for gMail Firefox addon

Xoopit

Xoopit rocks.  Aside from matching the email address of folks I’m emailing to their Facebook account (and having their status updates appear in a sidebar), it gives me options for searching, browsing and sharing files – images, music, pdfs – you name it (see screenshot).

How:

1. Install the Xoopit for gMail Firefox addon
2. Configure it
3. Relaunch Firefox and log in to your gMail to see it working.

Posterous

Posterous is new to me.  But I already like it.  Edward Harran is already making great use of it.  From my gMail, I simply send an email to post@posterous.com and it posts that email (even auto-removing my signature) to any combination of social networks I like – instant, multi-outpost broadcast from your email client – rad.  You can even mix, match and specify which social networks to post to by tweaking your “To:” field

“You can also address an email to #{text}@posterous.com and it will post to any site where the url contains that text.

#apple@posterous.com will go to apple.wordpress.com and flickr.com/apple, but NOT banana.blogspot.com”

You can even reply to comments via email.  So.  Cool.

How:

1. Sign up for a Posterous account
2. Sync your blog and social networks
3. Send emails to them and play!

Okay that’s it.  I wrote this blog post as an instruction on how to write rich posts to your blog without logging in.  Was it clear?  make sense to folks reading?  Let me know.

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A little while after NTC09, Beth Kanter tweeted about organizations working like a cloud.  This is a response I sent to her with some of my thoughts on how to foster a network mindset and encourage cloud-like collaboration in non-profit (or any other kinds of spaces for that matter.  What follows is a possible formula + 3 examples.

Formula:

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This is a guest post from Peter Miller, a long time community technology advocate.
Steve Ronan and I, among others, were at yesterday’s broadband application training workshop in Boston. It’s always useful to see who’s attending and get info from the folks who are giving it out, including, as the presenter at several of the sessions, Laura Breeden. Here’s some key things I learned:

1. The $7.2b program, jointly administered by NTIA ($4.7b via BTOP/ the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) and the Rural Utility Service of the Dept. of Agriculture’s Broadband Initiatives Program, BIP ($2.5b) will be administered via three rounds of funding: applications for the first one are due August 14 with the online application system going live at the end of the month; awardees will be announced on November 7. Additional rounds are scheduled for the end of this year and the spring of 2010, so there is good time for planning.
2. There are three BTOP grant categories each needing separate application: Infrastructure ($1.2b this first round), Public Computer Centers ($50m), and Sustainable Broadband Adoption ($150m). It is the last category that is especially interesting in contrast to the other two because it clarifies there is a separate pool of funding earmarked especially for expanding the adoption and subscribership to broadband. Multiple purpose applications will be given extra weight/ preference, so if you’re planning or thinking about a CTC (and/or infrastructure) application, do consider this supplement since it’s undoubtedly part of the work of the other categories and actually has more funding than the public computer centers.
3. Collaboration with other federal stimulus programs in your geographic area gets extra credit (see recovery.gov) and it’s to be noted that states will be given a opportunity to prioritize highly rated proposals before the final selection, so it’ll be useful to know who’ll be advising your governor on this matter.

There was lots more useful info, to be sure. Workshops across the country continue through July 24.

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UPDATE: Digital Democracy Won a $5000 FACT Social Justice Award!

This past week, I got invited to be a Project Champion for NetSquared’s N2Y4 Mobile Development Challenge. With some nice great encouragement from Beth Kanter, Amy Sample Ward and Justin Massa, I decided to become the Champion for Digital Democracy’s Handheld Human Rights.

From the project description:

“Handheld Human Rights provides a secure hub for groups around Burma’s borders documenting human rights abuses. By allowing users to submit data directly from their mobiles, Burmese refugees in community organizations will be able to turn data on abuses into action. Once abuses and alerts are channeled through the hub and mapped, this information can be used to raise international awareness and support advocacy campaigns to bring gross human rights abuses to the International Criminal Court…

Handheld Human Rights is designed to accomplish two goals: to make Human Rights data 1) more accessible, and 2) more actionable.”

I’m really excited to serve as an advocate for this project.

Check out their Digital Democracy’s website or read their latest posts below:

When I served as an AmeriCorps CTC VISTA Leader, I mailed a package to all of my VISTAs introducing myself and giving them an exercise* I found invaluable during my own Year of Service. I called it a ‘Purpose Keeping’ exercise – basically, it’s a mission statement generator that uses this formula: i.e.

[your unique qualities] + [interacting with others] = [a better world actualized]

That’s essentially your mission, right?

*Adapted from a chapter in Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be)

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I’m an artist.  Too.  Definitely into non-profit technology work, but one of my passions is my music and getting it out into the world.  When networking and explaining what I do professionally, I’ve spent countless hours crafting and re-crafting my ‘resumé‘.  It’s always a work in progress.  Well, like my professional statement, my  artist’s bio also changes as I grow and develop new techniques and skills.

But where do you start when making your own artist’s bio.  Here’s 3 resources for coming up with your artist statement.

• It’s an Artist’s Bio, Not A Resumé
  This one’s geared towards musicians, but should be translatable to your form of making.  Covers red flags to look for, the importance of humor, and knowing your reading audience.
• 25 RANDOM THINGS: Action Steps for Your Artist Statement #3
  This one is great because it focuses on the writing and story of who you are.  The rest of the series is pretty excellent too as is the rest of Luanne’s blog.  I particularly love her wall hangings.
• How To Make a Great First Impression (as an artist, online)
  This one is pretty geared towards online profiles, uploading pictures of yourself.  But I love the tips it has.  One takeaway – make a quick list of words that describe your art – these can then be used in your ‘keywords’ used to describe your page for search engines (and thus make you more easily discoverable online).
• How to Write an Artist Biography: A Bio Made Simple
  Also music related, but again, translatable (that’s half your work as an artist, right?  Translating the awesome?)  I like this one because it provides a paragraph by paragraph template.
• How To Write Your Artist Bio
  • This one also provides a template too – in three sentences:
    “(Full name) is a (state)-based beadwork (profession or verb+er) who specializes in (list of two beading techniques). She is currently (verb+ing) a (noun) that will be (published/exhibited/for sale) in (date). You may contact (first name) at (website or email address).”

Do you know of any good articles/resources on writing your artist statement?  What about your artist statement?  Please link in the comments below – we wanna know!

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I’m a community technology activist and believe that access to knowledge is a key factor in reaching our potential as humans.  Lately, I’ve had a few ideas running around in my head.

• bridging the work of  old school activists (knowledge, history, experience) with new school activists (enthusiasm, technical aptitude, hyperconnected online and off)
• listservs as ’spinal cords’ to movements and communities
• moving from grassroots organizing into cloud computing for activists
• not reinventing the wheel

How we can bridge the knowledge, history, experience and resources of ‘old school’ community technologists with the ‘new school’ energy, technical aptitude and net centric thinking of some of my peers?

I’m sketching out a ‘ecosystem prototype’ that I’d love feedback on.

(Disclaimer: if the following is a bit too ‘techie’, please ask for clarification.  I’m no expert, but I’m sure between us we can clarify in the comments for those coming to this post after you)

Template for Building a (Community Technology) Knowledge Network with Common Online Tools

1. Community technology fans/supporters contribute/create knowledge about community technology (issues, resources, policy) through some open, internet channel:
   • a blog post (Blogger, Drupal, Wordpress etc.)
   • a socially bookmarked link (del.icio.us, Digg, Twine, etc.)
   • a Tweet (small, viral, quick)
   • an email (content sits in people’s email boxes, but these days, can now be emailed into blog posts, social networks etc.)
2. Each of these channels ’sits’ someplace on line and has an RSS feed coming off of it.
3. These RSS feeds are than pulled into an cross-posting service/network to proliferate outward into other networks.

Some of the components for building this already exist on the wide open web:

Posterous

you can email just about anything to a special address and have it appear on a webpage (with it’s own RSS feed).  Can even integrate with your other social network accounts.

Twitterfeed

This service allows you to pull in any RSS feed and have it ‘autotweet’ into the Twittersphere.  Mash it up with bit.ly and you can track the analytics/virality of the shortened URLs on the web.

A Working Prototype

I’ve built a working prototype of how something like this work here using Twitter, del.icio.us and Twitterfeed.

http://twitter.com/ctnetwork

To see your posts appear in the Tweets for this Twitter account, simply bookmark you CTC related posts on del.icio.us with ‘ctcnet’.

Connect with Other Activists

Check out the following links to connect and learn more about community technology:

The CTCNet Google Group
The CTCNet Facebook Group

Johanna Bates invited me to come and present alongside Angela Siefer, Davis Park and Cindy Leonard at the upcoming 2009 Non-Profit Technology Conference in San Francisco. Our session is called: Career NPTechies: How to graduate from the accidental techie academy and become a tech leader. We’ll be providing practical strategies for advancing your nptechie career, important nptech career development resources, as well as connections with colleagues at various stages of their nptechie careers.

In preparation for the session, Johanna asked the presenters for some some tips to give to attendees.  Here’s mine:

1. Community is like an operating system – works best when up to date
   Each part works in conjunction with others. Be sure you update to keep in touch (status updates across social networks, pursuing your own professional development and writing about it/sharing it, etc.). By updating/upgrading your own skills, you make your network that much more powerful.
2. Build for the future - train the trainers
   What you’re doing can always be done better by the next person. Make it easier on them. Document what your learn. Prevent the reinvention of the wheel. Not only does this solidify your own understanding, skills you learn can go in to your ‘tool belt’ in training trainers.
3. Get a homebase – get a blog
   Knowledge is nourishing and keeps on giving, but you need a table to serve it at. Your blog can be like that table. Or a food pantry even. Add to it and people will want to come back for seconds. While the items never expire on the web, adding fresh content to it gives your network the nourishment it needs while giving you the ingredients for tasty dishes of knowledge later on – workshops, consultancies, training etc.

Our session will be on April 27th @ 10:30am. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Do you have any tips?  What’s worked for you?  What are some indispensable tools/networks/resources you’ve tapped in your own nptech career development?

BIO

I’m a community technologist. I figure out the best ways for people to use technology to engage their communities. Whether it’s through pre-existing systems and networks or custom built ones, I weave people, technology and human resources together to ensure measurable impact for your community-based online/offline initiatives.

My top three specialities:

• online relationship/social network cultivation
• Wordpress/Drupal design and implementation
• Twitter, Facebook, eNewsletter and blog communications integration

Community networks I’m engaged with:

• CTC VISTA: I regularly contribute to their wiki. I also served as a VISTA Leader.
• The National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture: I currently manage their website and online presence.
• Digital Democracy: I helped them win $5000 as a Project Champion for Netsquared’s Mobile Development Challenge
• CTCNet: I currently serve as an ad-hoc listserv moderator. I also helped facilitate a great report from the conference with Belinda Rawlins, Director of CTC VISTA.
• N-TEN: I crowd-funded my way to the conference, co-presented a session for nptechies and then helped facilitate a meetup of fellow community technologists.
• The San Diego LGBT Center: I co-developed their Digital Media Project, built toolkits and created/taught classes on digital storytelling using the Center for Digital Storytelling’s train the trainer model.

I’m a builder as much as I am a strategist. Download my resume here or read on…

THINGS I’VE BUILT

• built an online ‘listening portal’ to monitor brand mentions of NAMAC: http://bit.ly/namac-listening-post
• built a ‘federated search engine’ of a national network of community media centers: http://namac.org/federated-search-beta
• built, launched and contributed to online communities of creative audio/video/film artists: (http://bit.ly/comm-launch)
• founded and developed offline electronic music communities: (http://www.sharesd.org/about)
• developed and refined one of the Media Arts Center of San Diego’s Digital Storytelling Stations: (http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/services/digitalstorytelling.shtml)
• created a digital storytelling toolkit that was adopted and remixed for the web: (http://ctcvista.org/files/mediatoolkit/begin.html) note – the quote on that page is actually from Natasha Freidus from Creative Narrations)

CURRENTLY WORKING ON

• We Operate Best Together – a project to map the stories of social innovation and social change in creative communities worldwide. Also running a pledge campaign that ends July 4th! Make a pledge!

CONSULTING SERVICES
I can also provide a range of consulting services to help you or your organization develop it’s capacity to be effective online and off. Some of the services and trainings I can provide are:

• content management system installation, configuration, development
• choosing appropriate technology for your goals and mission
• strategic planning for your online social network initiatives
• finding appropriate technology vendors
• blogging and social network etiquette
• online community management
• online brand monitoring
• online video streaming
• Drupal/Wordpress
• content marketing
• digital storytelling
• djing
• various open-source tools and software

Most all web development I’ve done over the past couple years has been self-taught – online courses, tutorials, and friends have all given me invaluable knowledge to apply to my skillset. There are also a few essential tools I’ve come to love in my work and learning. Here’s five of them.

1. Firefox
   I’m a huge fan of Firefox.  It’s strength is it’s Add-ons – small useful little ‘plug ins‘ that you can use to ‘personalize your browsing experience’.  Installing them is as simple as clicking the little ‘Add to Firefox’ button on the page of the Add-on you are looking at.  Here’s three of my faves to get you started:
   • Web Developer Extension
     This extension has been one of the most valuable extensions ever made for me.  It’s allowed me to understand the content and structure of HTML and CSS like no other.  I’m particularly fond of it’s ‘live editing’ feature which allows you to edit the CSS of web pages in a sidepane – live – so you can see the results immediately.
   • Colorzilla
     Colorzilla is a handy extension that can extract the color information form any page.  You can then use this to do color matching in your CSS as well as other graphics/photo-editing programs like Photoshop or Illustrator.
   • Measureit
     Measureit allows you to “Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.”
2. CyberDuck
   Cyberduck is an open source FTP and SFTP client for Mac OS X. You can easily drag n’ drop files to and from your server using a GUI.  Handy if you’re not into using the command-line (though ideally, as a web developer, you do know how to use the command-line. Right?
3. Text Wrangler
   Text Wrangler is a great code-editor for CSS, PHP and other kinds of files used for web and other programming environments.  It’s great for web developers and server admins.  Has nice integration with your server with a ‘Save to FTP/SFTP Server…’ option in the file menu.
4. Stickies
   Who doesn’t need a quick way to post random bits of information and code that you may only need once? Stickies does this.  Come default on all Mac OSX systems.  You can download it for PC here.
5. del.icio.us
   Sometimes as I’m developing, I encounter some technical hurdle, bug or glitch – figuring out whether it’s actually a bug or something I’m just not seeing is sometimes half the work!  These times take me to the internet to go and look something up and if I find something useful, I bookmark it.  That way, if someone I work with/train in the future encounters the same problem, I can refer to the bookmark.  Friend and colleague Ben Sheldon said it best – I use the internet to help me remember stuff so I don’t have to;)

These are just the tools that I use.  I didn’t put coffee or iTunes in the list, though these are usually quite essential too;)  What kinds of tools do you use?  Do you use the above tools in any innovative ways?

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Danielle Martin

After serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA member for over two years, I wonder: have any other government departments or agencies considered a “trade community service for education or debt relief” model for accomplishing the tasks it’s set up to do?  Why or why not?  If so, are there other models that exist?  Where?  How?

Also, has anyone else thought it odd that “community service” is either seen as an altruistic act or a punishment?  What else might community service be?