The NPO Tribe

Web 2.0 – the current phase of the Internet – has changed many industries. Some drastically. Others subtly. The NPO industry is one which has changed drastically. The entire NPO structure is now no longer limited to confined demographics and confined resources. NPO executives, managers, members, funders, and communities are now spread across the globe. Life has changed. Business has changed. Charity has changed.

Seth Godin talks about the NPO landscape in his book Tribes. He says:

The Internet allows some organizations to embrace long-distance involvement. It lets charities flip the funnel, not through some simple hand waving but by reorganizing around the idea of engagement online. This is the new leverage. It means opening yourself up to volunteers and encouraging them to network, to connect with one another, and, yes, even to mutiny. It means giving every one of your professionals a blog and the freedom to use it. It means mixing it up with volunteers so they have something truly at stake. This is understandably scary for many nonprofits, but I’m not so sure you have a choice.

You might want to read this blog post, also from Seth.

NPO’s want to bring about change. That’s the purpose of their existence. They are social change agents. The Internet is facilitating change. I think NPO’s need to adopt the online phenomenon as if their lives depended on it. Oh wait, it does!

Bad Tech Karma

Last week was one of the worst tech weeks I’ve had in my life. Apart from a host of smaller issues, there was one big issue. Our hosting server crashed, and our ISP (who we’ve been with for about 8 years) had a lot of trouble getting it to work properly again. This took days (though it seems like months, no doubt), and eventually the problem even had to be escalated overseas for resolution. A real nightmare. Our sites went down, clients’ sites went down, clients’ emails were down. A disaster. Frantic emails and calls and text messages from frantic clients. Total disaster. And I was helpless.

After the fact, we’ve lost the Jayz TV site, a year’s worth of blog posts (however archived in email rss feeds), some web content, and a new developed website for a client is completely gone and has to be redone. And everyone lost precious time and money. Ouch!

I’m not sure if I should feel comforted by the following; but it seems like others had some bad tech karma last week as well.

I picked up this tweet from my good friend Melissa Attree…

And this one from my good friend Sue Rutherford…

I hope this week brings us all better luck in the tech world.

How about you? Have you experienced any huge tech setbacks recently? Please share in the comments…

Reading Rules!

Teaching is my biggest passion, and each time I teach I get a tingly feeling inside. That’s when I realise that the bit of information I just shared came from a book I read a few months back, or a podcast I listened to long ago, or a video I saw, or a conference I attended. In that very moment I yearn to learn more. So that I can teach more.

I’m old fashioned, so I still read books, the old…paper kind. People in my industry keep saying books are done, books are last century. I don’t buy that theory. I only see books going one of two ways: They’ll either be around forever, or they’ll at least be around for a very very long time to come. Either way, I’m keeping mine! I rarely travel without a book in hand, even if that travel is just into the city for a business meeting. When I deliver seminars I always have books in my hand, I think it’s effective to inspire people to learn.

I’ve taken a small selection of books from my bookshelf, and made a list. These are books that I think might benefit you in business. I have a very long “Book Wish List” – but I have not included any of those books simply because I don’t have them…yet! You can find the list here: http://www.jayz.co.za/books/.

I’ve also made a list of 65 eBooks which I have collected over the the past few years. I think they’re good, and they’re worth looking over when you have a chance. Very large eBooks I print – I simply cannot read on a screen for very long. Smaller ones I read on my laptop, but I have them on Dropbox, so they’re accessible on my iPhone from anywhere. So standing in a queue, waiting for someone, etc is never a problem for me – there’s always some reading to be done. You can grab them here: http://www.jayz.co.za/ebooks/.

Happy reading!

Social Media Revolution

Have you seen this video? It was published on 30 July 2009, and has been viewed 2,015,452 times to date. It reveals some interesting statistics, and I think it’s worth spending a few minutes to watch.

Soccer World Cup with Google Maps and Street View

Google has launched Street View in South Africa, so you can now see your favourite World Cup stadiums and city hotspots online. The image above is from Google Maps, and shows Green Point’s Main Road, with the Cape Town Stadium in the background. Truly magnificent! Of course, license plates and people’s faces are blurred to avoid privacy issues. What is interesting though, is that I’ve seen company signage on cars and this of course cannot be hidden. Try Street View for yourself, but I warn you, it’s addictive. Images are not live, and they’re not current, they can be up to a few months old. So there’s no need to worry about stalkers and the like. This is simply an archive of street imagery that Google has been collecting for a very long time. The launch of Street View is a real big shift for us in South Africa – and I’m very excited about it.

This Google video explains Street View adequately, and towards the end of it you’ll see imagery from Cape Town, which feels nice, I must say.

Are you a mobile user? This video explains Street View for mobile:

If you want to be creative during the World Cup season – or really at any other time – Google allows you to create your own Google Map with a tool called MyMaps. It’s really very simple to do, and it can be done in just minutes. Look at this short video to see how it’s done:

CleverPete has made his MyMaps public. He’s done the Waterfront bus route in Cape Town. Check it out here. This map was created a while ago, but it’s now very interesting because Street View has been activated.

Try Street View by clicking this link.

Brady Corporation goes Google Apps

Brady Corporation has recently adopted Google Apps as their communication and collaboration suite. Small businesses, large corporations, and even cities like Los Angeles, California have shifted to Apps. Read this interesting post: The City of Los Angeles uses Google Apps.

Brady Corporation is a $1.2 billion international manufacturer and marketer of complete solutions that identify and protect premises, products, and people. They have 7,800 employees across 90-plus locations.

Google Apps is a Cloud-based solution, so deploying to users in a single location is the same as deploying across multiple locations. There are no hardware and networking infrastructure concerns. Everything is online. Simple.

Brady says:

“We went with a “Big Bang” rollout for our 6,000+ users, and it’s been a great success. We chose Google Apps for cost savings over other solutions, but more importantly because we believe it’s the strongest platform to take advantage of future advancements on the Internet.”

To share their story they’re hosting the following webinar:
Choosing Google Apps as the Best-in-Class Cloud Solution
Thursday, June 10, 2010
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

Where are your videos?

We spoke to a company today about doing Event Coverage for their workshops. They responded by saying that they have an internal video team. Good. Where do they publish their videos? On their website. Good? Not really.

Firstly, their website is completely built in Flash. Flash is yesterday. Ask Steve Jobs. Then, the videos on their website do not play. They have a video player, but clicking play does not seem to feed the video. That’s one of the many disadvantages of hosting your own videos. That’s yesterday too. Online video hosts such as YouTube are where videos should be. Online video hosting means no strain on your own servers, and you also have the advantage of reaching the huge YouTube community, as well as the opportunity for others to embed your videos into their websites. Viral possibilities. Powerful! CNN, The White House, and BMW would not have their own YouTube Channels unless they saw the value of the platform.

I can’t find this company on Facebook, nor on Twitter. Maybe they’re there, hidden? Their website doesn’t have links to these social networks either. Sad.

This company is doing stunning work, but they fail to see the value of Social Media.

We don’t need YouTube. We have our own website. We have our own web servers. CNN has their own news network. Yet they’re on YouTube. And on Twitter. And on Facebook. I think that’s worth considering.

What are you doing online? Are you ‘playing’ where your potential clients are ‘hanging out’ – or is your head still somewhat stuck in the sand? Is control still the highest priority for you? Even when it damages your brand?

Google Chrome Speed Tests

Yesterday Mashable reported that Google’s web browser, Chrome, was increasing it’s market share while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was losing ground. Chrome holds 6.73% of the market, while IE holds 59.95% – but the downward trend should still be concerning for the big M. You can read the complete story here.

This is actually just a quick post to share with you the new YouTube video released by Google today, emphasizing the speed of Chrome. Very creative. Very innovative.

Why do you blog?

I love blogging. Actually, I love writing. I have been writing for years. I love expressing myself. I love sharing. And I hope people find value in that. I find value in what other people share. Books. Videos. Blog posts. One famous person said that if one day is not an improvement from the previous, then you’re better off dead. So we must learn. We must learn from each other. From each other’s knowledge, thoughts, and experiences. We’re all unique. And we’re all interdependent.

Seth Godin talks about blogging in this video. I think it’s powerful. I’m going to play this video at my next blogging workshop – it’s extremely insightful. I hope you’ll watch it.

Yola got it right!

Yola, an innovative web company founded by South Africa’s own Vinny Lingham, has a very striking slogan. It says: “stop browsing. start building.” I get caught up in this all the time. I’m browsing, reading, researching, reading some more, filing – and I’m spending too little time building. Too little time producing. Too little time creating new products. Too little time developing new seminars and workshops. It’s my avidness to learn that does this. But it’s not a wise thing. I need to have P/PC Balance. P is Production, and PC is Production Capability. You can read all about it in this post. I have my scale titled more on the PC side, when in fact the scale must weigh evenly on both sides.

I’m not always out of balance, sometimes I get some good balance. But those times are too few and far between. This morning I posted a message to Facebook and Twitter. Here is the Facebook version:

Twitter and Facebook are immense resource pools. The information is there. But in order to build, we need to switch off these pools for a while. I find this hard, but I need to correct this. I find many people do.

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