Recently at IDS Previous position at SCIP, based on the South coast. Experience in Web and training, supporting nfps in use of web.
So what is Web 2.0? Where are you at? What is out there? Looking at information from a consumer perspective What are your visitors doing? Getting the message out Sharing your favourites An introduction to social bookmarking
We’re going to focus on how these tools can help you directly. Hope it is useful to contemplate how they might help in all aspects of your work Our approach: See what tools are available Have a go yourself – start simple Look, Listen, learn, engage, develop Review and improve How can we develop something together
Feedback on the survey…
Your skills Most used = Things to take advantage of Already collaborating, happy with email and websites Least used = Things to learn about More interaction online, keep using new tools
1. So that’s the Internet then! 2. Empowering everyone to contribute, engage, publish, learn Also “ harnessing [of] collective intelligence” “ the architecture of participation” “ rich user experiences” “ remixable data source[s]” O’Reilly http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
Most free, easy to use Each tool learns from each other to add interaction, features, collaboration Tools crib sheet: http://www. Social: Sharing, within an organisation/partnership/group/the world! Blurring edge of personal and professional Web 2.0: Re-use, syndicate, context, add wrapper Content about visitors etc. e.g. Google page-rank Cloud: Online applications, storage, functions. Don’t “own” the software Software built on software built on….new questions about sustainability, reliability and security
Semantic web Moving from all web pages being “documents” often with incomplete meta data Towards – data explaining what it is: Events, People, Reports, Organisations, Topics, Locations, Opinion An example : I want to go to the dentist on Tuesday. Flip chart What do I want to know? When am I free? Where’s the nearest?, Are they reputable? Do they have any appointments? Can I afford it? My calendar, location, opinion, appointments, price. And then my mobile phone books it for me and the dentist sends me a message… Still hurts! Tools which help us do that. We can either: Expect that great tools, filtering and guesswork will help us get there We can build with this in mind and help things on their way
People’s expectations and habits are led by what they see and use online. Their expectation of how they do things has subtly changed… Example – reading Amazon reviews rather than what the publisher says! So I see web 2.0 as an evolution - it’s about an approach or perspective, not a standard
So people are using it to: easily generate content from their own knowledge and experience; they can share it in different media; they can select and subscribe to knowledge of others, they can re-combine this knowledge into their own personal services. Our aim could or should be: Putting individuals in control of the information they receive Adding value: our own knowledge the feedback of others Engaging in and contributing to learning and discussion. We have to compete and provide evidence why we should be trusted… It’s not complicated – you’re already doing it! A simple example: Searching through web pages vs RSS feeds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU Another example: Tagging: the old debate between language purists, and language pragmatists. The right words are the ones people actually use You may not agree with this, but it is happening! Flip Chart Exercise Your aims: comms and services More effective communications: What do we mean by this? Open Transparent Shared – content, web, ideas, pages, feedback Consumer led Better services: What do we mean by this? More effective Wider reach More responsive Better targeted or tailored Clearer impact
Example: Emergency response organisations The website as a content aggregator: Brings together lots of elements Semantic web Mashups Strategic view and on-ground knowledge OpenData Crowd-sourcing Subscription Multiple formats People at all levels, authority, location What can you track?
Domestic Workers Blog, Brazil Researchers from the IDS Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Consortium have used blogs to contribute to the advancement of the National Federation of Domestic Workers (FENATRAD) and to the empowering of domestic workers in other countries covered by the Consortium, by re-tracing the pathways covered in the organising of domestic workers in Brazil and their struggles. Notorious for its low wages, and lack of social benefits, domestic work remains as one of the major occupations for women in Latin America. However, as a result of the organization of domestic workers and their collective actions, legislation was passed to extend labor benefits such as paid vacations, maternity leave and retirement benefits to these workers, with significant improvements in their work conditions. In addition, FENATRAD, the National Federation of Domestic Workers, is engaged in the development of different programs to value domestic employment, as a means of promoting the enlargement of union ranks throughout the country. The blog was primarily set up to share information about the outcomes of the research and the details of domestic workers legislation. It is fed by the interns of the project, Sintia Araujo and Rogério Barros and their co-ordinator Terezinha Goncalves, with news and discussion about relevant events that come up in the domestic workers' arena. The aim is to pass the blog on to FENATRAD (The National Federation of Domestic Workers) at the end of the research period, so that it can be used as a resource and a method of communication with a broader audience and they can have their own space online. The Empowering Domestic Work project is led by Terezinha Gonçalvez, at the Latin American Hub, Brazil at NEIM (Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Studies on Women), in partnership with the IDS Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium.
Communications Staff in the Steps Centre use a mixture of Web 2.0 applications in thier communications work – video (YouTube and Blip.tv); audio; RSS feeds; blog (Blogger and Wordpress); Twitter; Slideshare; Flickr – with some of these taking precedence according to the aims of the activity. Videos on our YouTube channel have been viewed 1,000 times. They use the channel to promote clips of seminars, and Vox Pop interviews, helping to bring their messages to life and to wider audiences. The chair of their Advisory Board made a video in Kenya that was shown at the London Steps Centre launch and posted online. It has subsequently been watched by 100s of people. http://www.youtube.com/user/STEPSCentre There have been 15,000 views of the Steps Centre Flickr photos – organisations with related interests often ask to use their photos The most popular of the presentations on the Slideshare site has been viewed 3500 times. All have 100’s of viewers – much wider audiences than if they were hidden away on the Steps Centre website. Some communications activity they did around a new Avian Flu paper, based on blogging, resulted in a 63 per cent increase in visitors and 13 per cent increase in hits to their website during the week of activity. The paper was cited by more than 100 different media outlets, networks and bloggers in the week of activity and had immediate impact with their target audience of policymakers. UNSIC (UN System Influenza Coordination) team all had news of our paper on their Blackberries as they stepped off the plane in Egypt en route to a major avian flu conference.
RSS feeds IDS has for some time been supplying RSS feeds, which allow parts of a website to be made available to other websites or individual subscribers. Content from the source site appears on your own website or in your newsreader (software that allows you to pick up and organise RSS content). When the content on the source site is updated, it is also automatically updated on your website or in your newsreader. The latest Outlook can also allow RSS feeds to be sent direct to your email inbox. Benefits of RSS feeds For the user: subscribers can be updated automatically with the latest content from the websites you have chosen to monitor. This means you should spend less time surfing the internet as the content comes to you rather than you having to go to find it yourself. Unlike subscribing to e-mail newsletters, there is no need to provide your email address, which means RSS is more private and secure and cannot be used as a spam channel. For the provider: Web feeds enable publishers to syndicate content automatically, thus saving time and improving service efficiency.
Have a think about these over the break
You may have done something similar before…all promotion starts with this. * We’re going to try to identify where using web2.0 can help * Build on what you’re using already Work out what you might use in future
We’re going to work in pairs to think about the people and groups we work with. This can become a more formal process – we’re doing a quick one for now. Who don’t you think you’re reaching? What are their needs? There may be networks which you are not in
We’ll do one together Then we’ll split into pairs
Where will they go on the Internet? Try some searches – what language will they use? What do you think about the results you get?
It is important to think about how people are arriving at your site and finding your content. Related sites: Partners websites Twitter accounts Relevant Blogs/Podcasts Facebook LinkedIn Competitors Google searches Online Forums We can start to share and map these… After lunch we’ll look at using social bookmarking to collect, track and share these links You can go on to do some more focussed network mapping…
Reviewing your own site You can go on to decide if your website meets these needs and we can talk about that later. How does it meet the needs of your users? What can you offer? How will your content help them? What do you want them to do? My examples - Sign up for news about HIV in sub-Saharan Africa… categorise the feeds, make it simple to subscribe, offer different methods - Tell someone about a great report I’ve read…. IS IT SIMPLE? Now visit your site Does the site help them? We can now start to think of key tasks we want people to perform in access your content. This can become a basis for some usability testing. Helps us review language, prominence, behaviour.
Google is a key player in this… You have Google analytics… Let’s take some of the phrases you used in Google
Show AddThis video This is a key task and something you want visitors to do. Cross browser compatibility – i.e. is the widget available and fully functional across browsers (IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.) Configurability - i.e. can the look and feel of the widget be configured with different icon types, background images, icons added, etc. Usability / Look and feel - i.e. is the tool easy to use. If the tool has a high level of configurability, this is less important. Analytics integration – i.e. can the widget actions be integrated into an analytics tracking package. Network depth – i.e. number of available networks to share with. This is important, but if you have the top 10 networks, you are pretty much covered.
Share nicely – something my children say. We’re now learning this as we grow up on the Internet. Sharing is a different way of publishing. Easy to update and “move” Good for large numbers PLUS People can find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders. A social bookmarking system can rank a resource based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users, which may be a more useful metric for end users than systems that rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it. This also means that a research paper that is bookmarked in a social bookmarking website will generally have a higher search engine ranking.
Show introduction video
Don’t need to do them all, can add more later Create a bundle Show an RSS feed * Usage * Tags * Editorial
Delicious Why IDS chose Delicious. Notes field 1000 chars Excellent RSS Yahoo seemed like good provider Browser integration!
Start slowly – two or three functions Build research into your routine Work out what’s going on Share experience and review
Steps Do some research. There are likely to be as many blogs about using social media in your field as there are “real” content! We’ve talked about sites and networks… LinkedIn, Facebook if it suits you, Twitter
Where can we get a handle on what’s going on? Join some (more) networks Tune in using Tweetdeck Choose some networks to join Share with each other
Demo starting with Tweetdeck http://twitter.com/EldisUpdates http://community.eldis.org/eldisnewsblog
It takes real time and effort for real results. Need to put bounds on this
Demo of Bit.ly Some organisation use this to co-ordinate their results
Things to do when you get home Internal and External