Monthly Archives: March 2010

Slacktivism: Can it be a good thing?

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Since 2009, I have been reading quite a bit about slacktivism. In most contexts I have found the term, it has had a negative connotation, directly implying that slacktivists are people who are too lazy to engage in something meaningful.

Today, I read a great blog post that made me realize that I have been missing a very important dimension about slacktivism. It’s not just about people being too lazy (though there sure is some of that involved): there’s an element of acknowledging the fragmented attention span (and wallet depth) that most people have these days. As a result, if you can engage millions of people for a short period of time and get them to sign a petition (and pass it along to tens of others) or have millions of people to TEXT a $10 donation, you CAN make millions of otherwise seemingly pointless contributions VERY meaningful.

But “The Art of Activating Slacktivism” by Kari Dunn Saratovsky goes one step further. He introduces the “teach a man how to fish” concept:
“Nonprofits spend too much time trying to figure out how to use social media tools to entice new donors to give them $10, when they should be figuring out how to empower their existing donors to leverage social media tools to raise money for them.”

I look forward to incorporating this concept into our future fundraising campaigns at the Diabetes Hands Foundation.

Chuck builds an asymmetrical Rubick's Cube… in 6 minutes!

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This is my friend Chuck Lin. We met through TuDiabetes back in 2007 (he was one of our first members!) Here he is working his way through an asymmetrical Rubick’s Cube with SILVER walls (I know… it’s crazy) in SIX MINUTES! In a previous video he did it in a little over 10 minutes but he did it out of sight, so I told him that he needed to show the building process in camera. He did it. He’s good!

Vote For What Is Right: A few words to people in the House

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Reading many of these week’s commentaries about the upcoming health care bill vote this weekend, I find so many people alluding to the “political cost” of voting one way or the other. People in the House are being pressured to vote for or against the bill in part based on the chances of getting re-elected this Fall.

Heck! I even got an email yesterday about a doctor that threatened reps in his district to do everything in his power to make sure they loose their job next Fall depending on their vote on this bill.

I get it. I see how some politicians will still continue to think that way… well, perhaps MOST politicians. But what I am trying to get at is: THAT IS NOT WHY YOU WERE VOTED INTO OFFICE. You were voted to do what was right.

Regardless of how I feel about the current health care bill up for vote this weekend (I am for it): I want people in the House to think about what is RIGHT and then VOTE for the bill based on that.

If it costs you re-election in the Fall, you will go down as having done the right thing. If you vote for or against the bill and get re-elected BECAUSE of your vote, SHAME on you. You are not worthy of being an elected representative because you’ve sold your soul to the highest bidder and forgotten what it means to be a public servant.

Just Talking with @iam_spartacus

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Last week I chatted for a little over an hour with Christopher (a.k.a. @iam_spartacus) for his podcast Just Talking. It was an amazingly fun conversation as it always is with friends from the Diabetes Online Community (a.k.a. DOC). :)

You can listen to the show, download the MP3 or subscribe to Just Talking on iTunes.

Thanks so much for the fun time and the opportunity to share a little bit of what we are doing at the Diabetes Hands Foundation and TuDiabetes.

Health: a "resource for life, not the objective of living."

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The title of this post is one of the elements that captured me from the following presentation by Rajiv Mehta, Zume Life.

He talks about patient-driven health-care, patients as designers (which reminds me: check out the 2010 DiabetesMine Design Challenge!) and people focusing on life, NOT health.

I look forward to chatting with Rajiv in person soon. You can following on Twitter: @rajivzume.

How to switch from a Facebook Group to a Facebook Page

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A long, long time ago… in a galaxy far away… Wait. Wait! Not so long ago and not so far away: Facebook used to only offer Groups as the means for organizations to get “community” going under their roof. I can’t put it any nicer: Facebook Groups SUCK!

So, I was very happy when Facebook introduced Facebook Pages (read this Mashable post for a detailed explanation about the differences between the two). The only problem is that Facebook does not support the transition from one to the other.

At the Diabetes Hands Foundation, we used to have two groups (one in English and one in Spanish). Today, we only have a Diabetes Hands Foundation page (which we invite you to join!)

This is how we did the switch to the Facebook Page:
1) For each group you want to transition, send a message to all members inviting them to join the new page. Make the message time-sensitive: “This group will be closing in X days. Before then, make sure to join our new Facebook Group.”
2) Repeat the message at X-1, X-2, etc. days until the day you close the Group.
3) Close the group.
4) Stop accepting new members and also de-list the group so that it can’t be found when people search groups on Facebook.
5) Repeat steps 1-4 for all other groups you want to consolidate into your Fan Page.

Yes, you will be loosing members in the process but having a Facebook page is SO much better. Groups are indeed an afterthought at Facebook these days. Pages give you a lot more tools to interact with and track members (as well as managing them).

Have you made the jump from Groups to Pages too? Why don’t you share your experience?

IF YOU FOUND THIS POST USEFUL, PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO THE DIABETES HANDS FOUNDATION.

3 lessons in 3 years

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Recently TuDiabetes.org turned 3. To those that have stuck around since then and put up with my unending talk about the community (and its Spanish-speaking counterpart, EsTuDiabetes), receive my thanks! To those that stopped being my friends on Facebook, I don’t blame you: I know I have being a pest at times! :)

As a way to give back, I wanted to share 3 lessons I have learned about running a nonprofit diabetes social network in the past 3 years:

  1. Running a social network is not easy. Even having a solid platform like Ning at hand, the real work of running a social network comes where the rubber meats the road, i.e. when conflict arise… and conflict WILL arise. We’ve seen it even in a place that you wouldn’t expect to be conflict-prone: in a social network of people touched by diabetes, WHY would people argue or fight? The answer: throw politics or religion at the most civilized group of individuals and stand back. We may have things in common, but many times we let the things that separate us get in the way.
  2. Running a nonprofit is not easy either. I definitely wish I had known about options like having a Fiscal Sponsor early on (I know tell everyone that asks me for advice and even some people that don’t ask me for it -consider Fiscal Sponsorship as an option before you take the 501(c)3 plunge), so that we could have explored that option. We learned a lot in the process of applying for the tax-exempt status at the Diabetes Hands Foundation, but we also learned that it’s not the only way in which you can do good in a nonprofit context.
  3. Helping others is the best thing you can do in your life. You may be wondering, if running a social network (which is at the core of what we do) and running a nonprofit (which is the umbrella under which we live every day) aren’t easy things to do, why do we keep on doing it? Because the joy of seeing people discover they are not alone; the lessons people can take with them to improve their diabetes management, health and life; the result of seeing empowered patients who used to feel isolated before is PRICELESS!

Here is a video that touches on all three things. We posted it on TuDiabetes in 2009, after several weeks of an ongoing internal conflict in connection to type 1 diabetes vs. type 2 diabetes (which is worst)… the whole conflict led to this, which is where I stand today in regards to managing community and connecting people touched by diabetes, so we can all help each other out more than we can by having each of us stand on our own.

"Food Rules" rules!

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Yesterday, on the way back and from San Francisco, I read Food Rules, the latest book by Michael Pollan. I decided to do a little Twitter experiment for 64 days.

Starting today, every day for 64 days I will tweet Michael Pollan’s 64 Food Rules one per day.

To do so, I will be using the #foodrules hashtag and in every tweet, I will include a link to Food Rules‘ Amazon page (I hope many people will get the book -at $5 not only is it VERY cheap, it’s also very valuable in terms of the lessons it carries for each of us about healthy eating).

Below is the Twitter widget, showing the tweets I’ve posted so far with the #foodrules:

Privacy: How Much Is Enough? Or Too Much?

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Earlier today, I was reading the post by my friend Kerri from Sixuntilme where she refers to how her views on privacy/disclosure have evolved since she became pregnant. It dawned on me that I have also changed how much I value my privacy online, perhaps not since we had our son but more in the past couple of years.

Back in March 2007, we started TuDiabetes, a social network for people touched by diabetes. At the time, I was already fairly comfortable in social media, being a member of more than a dozen networks. This meant, I opened myself up quite a bit… perhaps too much.

Below are some of the things I do when it comes down to my privacy. Why? Because there are enough people out there that don’t have the best intentions in the world. So that doesn’t mean I have shut up and stopped participating  in social media altogether (those who know me know that NOT to be the case -if you don’t know me, Google me and you will see what I mean). It just means to be mindful when you share something online, withholding what you don’t feel comfortable sharing with people you don’t know.

  • If I am traveling, for vacation or business, I don’t announce it ahead of time. Even more so, most of the time, I don’t write ABOUT it while I am away.
  • If I am at a place at a given moment, I may write about it (a restaurant or a venue) AFTER I leave, not while I am there. That is why my use of FourSquare was so short lived.
  • I only give my personal address to people I know (in real life) in person or people who need to know it (like someone sending me a personal package).
  • On Twitter, I follow everybody I find interesting and relevant in connection with one or more of these: Venezuela, diabetes, nonprofits, social media, music, etc. But on Facebook I only befriend people that I know, either personally or through enough of an online correspondence, to make me feel comfortable sharing with them more than I do on Twitter.
  • On Facebook, I have a list of Family and another list of panas (my real-life buddies). Any personal photos (where anyone in my family appears) I only share with those two lists.
  • On LinkedIn, I typically only accept invites from people I know or have worked with before.

Some of these list items have been cause for some people to get upset at me: I insist -it’s nothing personal… just my own privacy policy.

Do you think I am too paranoid? What is your online privacy policy like?