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Just a quick note to mention that Eventbrite, a popular event organising web application, has announced discount pricing for non-profits and charities – Eventbrite for causes.

The blog post makes mention of the U.S. requirements, but the pricing extends to non-profits in other countries as well.

I was going to write a quick post on my hopes for the weekend, but I read James Dellow’s take on it this morning and he says it better than I could, so head over and have a read of what he said ;)

I, too, will be attending in a “roving ‘mentor’” capacity, and I’m very much looking forward to participating in developing the variety of interesting and inspiring projects that have been invited to the camp. Should be a lot of fun…

Registration for attending the camp is now closed, but for those of you who want to follow proceedings from afar, follow AuSIX on Twitter, or search for the #ozsicamp hash tag.

As happens with most presentations I do I was tweaking my slide deck right up until the last minute. The Summer School last week was no exception, so the version of my slides that was distributed to attendees at the conference is slightly out of sync with my actual presentation.

Thus here’s a PDF of the slides (6.24 MB) with my associated notes (which are also updated slightly from the distributed version).

From the conversations after my talk, there seemed to be a lot of interest in the diagram about different participation levels. While all this is included in my slide notes, I thought it worth noting that the diagram was conceived by Nicholas Street in response to a couple of reports, most notably the Participate Online research report (PDF 815 KB). It seems the diagram is no longer published on Nicholas’s blog – so I’m reposting it below for reference:

Around the time I came across Nicholas’s post I documented my thoughts, with an emphasis on my experience of Earth Hour 2007 – but have since expanded on them based on conversations with the Social Tech group.

While I still think the concepts are useful to consider, the Participate study is getting a bit long in the tooth now, which is why I didn’t spend a lot of time on that slide in my presentation. Seggr’s post on What social technographic are you? provides some more recent commentary to Forrester’s updated Social Technographics Ladder – both worthwhile references for those of you that are considering different types of participation.

The Pyschology of Influence and Sharing came across my Twitter stream while the Summer School was transpiring, which adds another perspective.

Thanks to everyone who attended the presentation, for the challenging questions at the end of the talk and for the kind words some of you shared with me afterwards. And thanks to EMC for inviting me to talk.

Essential Media Communications (EMC) Summer School

I’ll be presenting at EMC’s “Summer School” program this coming Thursday 18 February. The two-day event is mostly a hands-on practical event, exploring campaigning tactics on a demonstrative campaign. (Disclosure: EMC is one of Zumio’s clients)

My keynote will kick off the event looking at how participatory activism (including social networks etc.) presents great opportunities, but requires a different perspective to traditional tactics to make the most of it.

This is an invite only event, but Gemma at EMC, who is co-ordinating the event, tells me that there are some spare spaces for participants from NGOs and non-profits – so get in touch with Gemma if you are interested: gemma AT essentialmedia DOT com DOT au.

Social Innovation Camp

The team at the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX) recently announced the successful ideas that will be developed at the up-coming Social Innovation Camp being held in Sydney 5-7 March.

I’ll be attending the event which I hope will be a great couple of days. Zumio is also providing consulting services as part of the prize for the winning idea at the camp – more to come on that front soon.

Enviro 2010

In July I’ll be attending and presenting a short talk at the Enviro 2010 conference in Melbourne.

I’ll post more about the topic a little closer to the date, but in essence my talk, which is scheduled for 22 July, will be looking at how applying the principles and tools of design practice and social networking to sustainability challenges presents opportunities for innovation, along with other benefits.

Over the jump I outline a few of the reasons why I think the iPad will do just fine in a commercial sense.

Not a laptop replacement

I was keen to see what Apple had in store as I’ve been hoping for an Apple-based tablet computer for a number of years. During the lead up to the announcement it was pretty clear that the tablet was going to run on the iPhone OS platform, which immediately meant it wasn’t a laptop replacement (though I was interested to see what the end result was before passing judgement).

During the announcement, Steve Jobs made it very clear where they position the device – landing between the smartphone and laptop, not as a replacement for either – and that they focused on making things like photos and browsing the web the key things that it did better than the other devices.

And I think they’ve done that pretty convincingly. And I also think that once people get over the fact it’s not a laptop replacement, they’ll start to see the device in a new, and perhaps more positive, light.

The Name

Some (not too clever) jokes have been made about the name. Some people were disappointed it wasn’t “iSlate” – but what is a “slate” to most of the population – a “Pad” (as in notepad) has a lot more meaning for people. And it fits perfectly with the “iPod” brand. I don’t think this will cause any serious issues for Apple – so moving on…

Lack of multiple open applications

When considering this as a laptop replacement, this is a deal-breaker. But the iPad isn’t aiming for this, and having used the iPhone for the past 18 months I’ve not terribly missed this feature.

In fact, in some cases this is a downright advantage. As my friend Kristian points out the iPad design and lack of multiple open applications can be an advantage in educational environments.

And I see the simplicity of use as a boon for users that are not as confident/comfortable with computers – for example, I think my Mum would really appreciate the simplicity of such a device for basic emailing, web browsing and photo sharing – what she uses her fully-fledged Windows PC (with all of it’s complexity) for 95% of the time.

She doesn’t need to have Twitter open while she chats on Skype and sending an email – that type of activity just isn’t necessary all of the time – for many users any of the time.

I suspect that future versions of the iPad and iPhone will introduce this as an option, but it’s not, to me, the deal-breaker that a lot of people are making it out to be.

Price

When I was considering the iPad the estimated AUD price for the 3G version approaching AUD$1000 seemed quite steep. I then considered using a non-3G enabled version (which is significantly cheaper) and realised that most of the time I would be using it would be in locations with wifi – at home, at work, or at a cafe (of which an increasing number provide wifi).

Given that the wifi-only version of the iPad is only about $50 more than a Kindle eBook reader, which has many more limitations than the iPad, it’s a no-brainer which one I’d buy if I was considering such a device.

The sharable computer

What struck me about the design is how it would be used in a family environment as a low-cost sharing computer. I can envisage a family after dinner with the kids interacting on Facebook or playing a game in the living room with their parents watching TV. The kids go to bed and Mum picks up the iPad to check their email. Some friends drop in unexpectedly and Dad grabs the iPad to show their visitors photos from the recent family camping trip.

The form factor of the iPad makes it an ideal appliance for this kind of sharing – and many of the features of the iPad seem geared towards this kind of use.

Multiple purposes to be discovered

Many of the uses for the iPad will become more apparent once they hit the shelves and people start to imagine using one.

I’m about to start uni again this year, and I can see the iPad being an invaluable tool for reading papers and researching. Reading PDFs on a laptop is only a little less sucky than reading it on an iPhone. The iPad would be a perfect device for this type of reading. Coupled with a stylus-based PDF annotation app that saves notes with the PDF to the cloud (which will surely come soon) it would be magic – think Skitch on the iPad.

Imagine if the iPad music playing app supports AirTunes/Airport Express? Even if it doesn’t, the device it would be a great “controller” for a Mac-based media centre setup like the one I’m hoping to assemble in the coming months.

Some of the Apple Keynote remote control apps for iPhone have options for spotlighting and annotating presentations in real time – the physical size restrictions of an iPhone screen make these a little clumsy. The iPad would be the perfect antidote to these limitations.

My partner Angela is considering the iPad as an option for taking notes with clients in her health practice – the form factor is less intrusive than a laptop, but potentially much better than taking hand-written notes.

There are many, many potential uses for the iPad that extend beyond the “laptop replacement” that many people were hoping Apple would deliver. This device really is the “webbook for the rest of us” – and I think it will do well commercially as a result.

Update: an interesting tangent over at Seggr on the iPad and magazines. And Ethan Nicholas guest posts on TechCrunch saying some similar things.

Enterprise 2.0 for Breakfast – January 2010

Thursday January 21, 2010 at 8:00am

Single Origin

60-64 Reservoir Street
Surry Hills, New South Wales 2010 Get Directions

This is our second Enterprise 2.0 for Breakfast in Sydney.

James Dellow aka Chieftech (from Headshift) and Alex Manchester (from Step Two Designs) invite you to join them for breakfast to chat informally about Enterprise 2.0 and related topics like Knowledge Management, Intranet 2.0 and Collaboration.

Come along to ask questions and share your experiences of introducing social computing to the enterprise!

I’ll be attending – hope to see you there…

have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The full article hints at the reasons for the change in perspective.

As someone who is committed to a free and open internet, and also was worked with Amnesty International Australia on their “Uncensor” campaign in the lead-up to the 2007 Olympics, I am very heartened and inspired by Google’s decision.

It is also good to know that Google is actively campaigning in Australia to stop the censoring of internet access here.

Hopefully y’all will be having an enjoyable break yourselves :) See you in the new year.

I’ve just finished reading Convergence: How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector (PDF direct link – 856KB), a report released earlier this year by La Piana Consulting that looks at emerging trends in the nonprofit sector.

The report examines a number of key trends, including:

• Demographic shifts redefine participation
• Technological advances abound
• Networks enable work to be organized in new ways
• Interest in civic engagement and volunteerism is rising
• Sector boundaries are blurring

It suggests that current funding models need to be revisited, that a strong sense of core values and differentiation is important (I call this values-based branding), that organisational and partnering models may need to be considered, and that technology will play a key role in the nonprofits of the future.

These are the types of organisational challenges that social business design seeks to address. And the all, perhaps to different degrees, require a certain approach that relies heavily on an open and trusting culture. A difficult task for organisations that don’t already have these things in place.

I get a sense throughout the report that La Piana seem to be suggesting an approach not dissimilar to the “integrated flow” approach I advocate in the increasing surface area post from the other day.

It recognises and clearly places social media and network engagement in context and does a good job of expressing some of the challenges associated with it, as well as recognising the benefits including the low-cost nature of the tools themselves.

It also does a great job of presenting mini-case studies of nonprofits and social sector organisations that have successfully embraced some or all of these trends.

I would highly recommend the report to anyone working in nonprofits and NGOs, especially those in leadership/management positions, as I think it highlights many of the challenges nonprofits currently face, trends that are likely to increase in influence into the future.