darkness. is it? wait, no. am i? am i?
am i awake? am i? am i gonna die?
dumb tongue, tongue dumb. must wake. must wake.
my hhhand, my hhhand is shhhake, is shhhake
ing. gaah, lift my life up, out of this bed
confused, yep, check. and check, my aching head.
get fed, get fed, don’t trip, don’t slip, don’t fall
bed, floor, table, door, open drawer, race into the hall.
she sees me and knows a maniac is on the loose,
in the kitchen, 3am, doublefisting orange juice.

–
A poem by Felix, a member of TuDiabetes.org, read July 24, 2010 during the first “No-Sugar Added Poetry” book party held at Philz Coffee in Berkeley, CA.

Get a copy of No-Sugar Added Poetry and help the Diabetes Hands Foundation.

1. Don’t “follow” all 5,000 people. Pick up on conversations as they cross your Twitter home feed.
2. Follow people you care about. If you do this, you increase your chances of finding relevant conversations you care about whenever you take a look at your Twitter feed.
3. Look at who the people you care about are following: you may find some great people worth following there.
4. Create, maintain and use Lists, to listen more intently to a particular topic or within a particular vertical.
5. Take advantage of saved searches.

For more tips, read the fabulous post “Follow the Few To Get To the Many” by @kanter (someone you should follow, BTW!)

Inception is one of those movies that leaves you thinking. But that is a description that falls in many ways…

When we went to see inception, two of the other three people that joined us were seeing it for the second time. Reading forum topics about Inception, this is not a uncommon situation (people watching it 2-3-4 times to try to make sense of it…)

Truth is Christopher Nolan got us all talking. Even film music fans (I count myself among them) are talking about how the score plays subliminally with slowed-down versions of Edith Piaf songs!

The movie’s “true” meaning (something that Nolan may never give up… even something he may not even know himself) may never reveal itself to us. But that doesn’t matter too much, I think.

What stuck with me was the power of inception… beyond it, think what we as parents can do to our children by making them believe something as they are children: that they can realize their true potential, that they can make reach their goals… we are in a way planting those same seeds of an idea that were mentioned in the movie.

What did you think about Inception?

Get your copy of No-Sugar Added Poetry at http://bit.ly/getNSAP

It’s not only that Google Apps has pretty much been unavailable for us at the Diabetes Hands Foundation since approx. 3 pm (local time is past 10 pm), which in itself is a big deal for us, as we depend on Google Apps for all our email, calendar, etc.

But it’s appalling that the Google Apps Status Dashboard shows no issues today in spite of the major global outage they are having (see this discussion on the Google Help Forum). I thought I’d post in here a screenshot of the “no issues” page as it appears right now, followed by the error page we get when we try to reach our DHF Google Apps email…

We realize it’s a free application… but at least own up to your issues, Google!

¿Se acuerdan de Camilo Sesto? Leía hace un rato en su página de Wikipedia que en Septiembre del 2009 anunció por enésima vez que se retiraba del mundo de la canción.Tambien leí que este año supuestamente estaría grabando el que sería su último disco.

¿Es idea mía o se ha estado retirando desde hace como dos décadas? En cualquier caso, aquí tienen un video muy ochentoso con Camilo Sesto, interpretando su exitazo “Perdoname”.

P.D. Consegui este peculiar aviso en Camilo-Sesto.com, indicando POR QUE Camilo Sesto no esta en Twitter (supuestamente):

“[Camilo Sesto] nos ha pedido también que les informemos a todos que él no participa de NINGUNA RED SOCIAL como por ejemplo FACEBOOK, TWITTER, HI5, MYSPACE Y SIMILARES… Que aunque le gustaría mucho estar más cerca de todos sus fans, por cuestiones de tiempo (falta del mismo) le resultaría imposible atender este tipo de medios de comunicación, por lo que NO POSEE NINGUNA CUENTA EN NINGUNA RED SOCIAL…”

¡Ya saben: no se dejen engañar por impostores! “The real” Camilo Sesto está offline!

A few weeks ago, I blogged about Bing and how it had broken into the top 5 referrers of traffic to this blog. Today, I am happy to report StumbleUpon has entered that space too.

A few weeks ago, as a result of a former Ning colleague joining the ranks of StumbleUpon (SU, among friends), I decided to give it a shot again. I installed the extension to help me stumble upon pages as I visit them.

So far this month, I am seeing SU behind approx. 5% of the traffic to my blog. Are you seeing anything like this?

I was gone for a few days, taking a vacation around my birthday last week… this is what happened to my Twitter account.

I am not saying you should tweet a lot every day. I am just saying, when you don’t people stop following you. Who? Those who NEED you to show signs of Twitter “life” (i.e. fake followers) every day. Should you care? Not really…

Should you NOT tweet at all ever? Not either. It may actually make others think (even your friends following you on Twitter) that you forgot about your Twitter account.

]]> http://askmanny.com/2010/07/what-happens-when-you-dont-tweet/feed/ 0 http://askmanny.com/2010/07/diabetes-hands-foundation-as-a-networked-nonprofit/ http://askmanny.com/2010/07/diabetes-hands-foundation-as-a-networked-nonprofit/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:13:54 +0000 Manny http://askmanny.com/?p=2308

Networked Nonprofit, image from Beth Kanter

Beth Kanter’s most recent book, The Networked Nonprofit, co-written by Allison Fine, points out social media tools integral to nonprofits fall into three general categories of use:

• Conversation starters
• Collaboration tools
• Network builders

In this post, I share examples of how the Diabetes Hands Foundation, behaves as a networked nonprofit and ways in which we can become more networked as well.

Conversation starters
Conversation starters are a natural part of our day to day. We run two social networks on Ning for people touched by diabetes: TuDiabetes in English and EsTuDiabetes en español.

On the networks, people seek for support and information, posting fairly specific questions like “What do I do to cover my diabetes supplies now that my COBRA is about to expire?” Or they may conduct informal surveys like “What is your favorite way to handle a low blood sugar episode?”

We’ve learned that open-ended questions in general elicit the largest number of comments and replies, while the more specific questions typically generate fairly useful and targeted answers, though perhaps not as many as a “survey” kind of post.

The lessons we’ve learned we’ve incorporated into other channels such as Twitter and our Facebook page and seen comparable results, when we’ve initiated new conversations.

Collaboration tools and crowdsourcing
A good example of collaborative work and crowdsourcing the Diabetes Hands Foundation has conducted is TuAnalyze, launched in mid-May 2010.

TuAnalyze is diabetes data-mapping app running on TuDiabetes. Almost 1,100 members of the network have signed up for TuAnalyze so far, close to the 1:10:100 rule of user-generated content, considering the network has more than 15,000 registered members.

Participants enter their hemoglobin A1c data, a reflection of their average blood sugar level for the past three months. Once a minimum number of data points have been entered in a particular area, the area lights up on the map getting colored according to the average A1c value. The data collected also informs research at Children’s Hospital Boston, a nonprofit with whom we collaborated for the development of the application.

Another example of crowdsourcing at DHF is the No-Sugar Added Poetry book, available July 2010. This diabetes poetry book is the result of poems submitted by TuDiabetes members in early 2009. We conducted a contest during which we judged poems submitted based on a series of attributes and gave prizes to the winning submissions. We got a sponsor for the book (Roche Diagnostics Corporation), secured permissions to publish the poems and identified a publisher for the project. I plan to share more about the lessons we learned throughout this project soon.

Network builders
Having run two diabetes social networks since 2007, we understand how important it is for people to connect with one another in meaningful ways. This is indeed part of our mission (“To connect people touched by diabetes and raise diabetes awareness.”)

In 2009, we confirmed it is equally important for diabetes social media leaders and advocates to connect between them. A summit that gathered several people in this category inspired Diabetes Advocates, a new program we launched in early 2010.

The premise behind the Diabetes Advocates program is simple: to leverage the power of networked resources in a co-op fashion, introducing members of the program (bloggers as well as organizations) to new audiences and constituents through diabetes conferences and media outreach. These offline channels that are normally outside our individual reach become accessible and affordable when you pull a network together.

Another example of network building we’ve developed in Diabetes Hands Foundation is the HealthSeeker Facebook game we launched in mid-June 2010. The game gives rewards for simple tasks such as eating brown rice or going for a walk. In the game, the players’ Facebook friends become a source of support and encouragement to help them adopt healthy lifestyle changes.

Becoming a more networked nonprofit
Is the Diabetes Hands Foundation the best example of a networked nonprofit? Hardly. We need to keep on listening, engaging and building relationships along the way. We also have to improve how we leverage social media specifically in two fronts: fundraising and governance.

I hope this post may inspire you to make your nonprofit more networked and I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions.

Yesterday, I met an email in my Inbox with a BIG smile! Just as Pearson came forward to underwrite educational networks on Ning, WEGO Health, a social network for Health Activists who are passionate about health conditions, announced an exciting option for health networks on Ning.

Under this partnership WEGO Health will provide health-related communities with Ning Plus service. Jack Barrette, CEO of WEGO Health said:

“Since its inception, WEGO Health has been dedicated to empowering Health Activists to lead active health conversation on the web. The health networks built on Ning are a powerful example of Health Activists at work, and we’re thrilled to be able to extend our mission through this sponsorship. We look forward to collaborating with health-focused Ning Network Creators to expand their reach and impact.”

If you want to learn more about the partnership, read the announcement on WEGO health or apply for a WEGO Health-sponsored Ning Plus package.