Transcript

Speaker: Michaela G. Hackner, Director of Online Strategy, World Learning & Kami Griffiths, Senior Program Associate, TechSoup

Slide 1: You are being recorded...

Kami:

This is an online seminar about Flickr and Twitter.

Slide 2: Thank you to our Sponsor!

Kami:

I want to thank ReadyTalk for sponsoring, and making it possible for us to have this online seminar.

Slide 3: Today's Speakers

And now, I would like to introduce myself. I'm Kami Griffiths. I'm Senior Program Associate here at TechSoup. And I do a lot of different things. I do webinars like this. I do some in-person trainings.

I interview librarians for our MaintainIT Project. And I am lucky enough to have Michaela Hackner here. Michaela, can you say Hello?

It's *7 to unmute your line.

Michaela:

Hi everybody.

Kami:

Hi. Great, so I am going to have you introduce yourself in just a second.

But before that, I would like to recognize all the volunteers that we have on the line right now to answer your questions. So if you guys get a chance, can you chat a little bit about yourself to the whole group today, who you are and where you work, and a little bit about you?

So, Michaela is the Director of Online Strategy at World Learning, a non-profit that hosts study abroad, international development degree programs, and international development projects globally. In a former life she was a web developer for the private sector and a humanitarian aid analyst, and most recently spent some time in Cambodia and Kenya, working for a women's microfinance program.

So thank you, Michaela, so much for taking time to be our presenter today. Would you like to say anything else about your background?

Michaela:

No, I'm just really excited to be here and excited to talk about these tools with everybody. So thanks for coming everybody. And thanks Kami, for giving me this opportunity to share my experience with you guys.

Kami:

My pleasure.

So, to give you a quick overview of the layout for the next hour, I'll be interviewing Michaela about her uses of Flickr and Twitter for about a half hour. We will give about 10 minutes for question-and-answer.

Those questions will have to come through the chat. So if you chat your question directly to Michaela, we will then answer those. Or chat your question and we will try to answer as many as we can in that time.

At about a quarter to, we are going to talk a little bit about TechSoup and the different things we offer on our web site and TechSoup Stock. And we will have some TechSoup Stock customer representatives available to answer your questions. I know many of you may have some questions regarding TechSoup Stock, so hopefully, we will be able to address those questions then.

So let's get started.

Michaela, tell me a little bit about what Flickr is.

Michaela:

Flickr is a photo-blogging or photo-sharing network. And it also is used as an online management tool.

It's free for most people, but depending on the amount of size you want for your account, you can pay a little bit more and have a lot more features.

So there are a lot of different thing you can do with Flickr. You can tag your photos. You can organize them into collections. And actually, Flickr just recently added video. So it is now possible to upload videos that are one minute or less.

Kami:

That's great. So how would a non-profit utilize Flickr for their operation?

Michaela:

Is it okay if I switch to my desktop so I can show some things?

Kami:

Of course.

Michaela:

Okay, hold on one second. Okay.

Screenshot: Ola Kalabird

So, Flickr has a lot of potential for nonprofits. I hope that right now everybody is seeing my Flickr welcome page.

There it says "Hello" to me in a foreign language. They keep switching it around depending on the time of day, so this is in Portuguese.

Over on the right-hand side you can see that there are links to my Photostream, so that would be to all the photos that I upload.

There are links to my Contacts photos, and then there are links to everybody's uploads.

So, I am going to click on my Photostream just so you can see what Flickr looks like.

Screenshot: Your photostream

I recently got a new camera lens, and so I was trying to test out some of its features. So what you are looking at now is a picture of a salt container from Kenya that I photographed with my lens. And below is a caption and title.

On the right-hand side you can see my collection. Actually no, these are sets. And within them I have grouped bunches of photos together that are similar.

And Kami asked about what non-profits can use Flickr for. People are generally drawn to multi-media. And Flickr is one of the top-ten visited sites in the United States. So it's a great way to get exposure for your nonprofit, whether you link to a photostream or group of your photos on Flickr from your web site, and cross-link them within Flickr. So for example, you can host a photo and then the caption can include a link back to your organization's web site. It is a great way of getting traffic back to your site.

It is also possible to use the Flickr API, which allows you to take your Flickr photos and pull them into third-party applications that are most often free. And so there are a lot of cool things that you can do with that.

I don't know, Kami, do you want me to keep going or do you have some questions to ask?

Kami:

I think that's great, and maybe we could go into some other examples. Do you have examples of nonprofits that you have seen that have started to use Flickr pretty well?

Michaela:

Sure. Some of my favorites are Interplast.

Screenshot: interplast's photostream

I'm hoping you guys can see my screen now.

Interplast is an organization that helps do surgeries on children overseas who have different skin problems. And one of the really cool things they use Flickr for, is they show pictures of the people who are benefitting from their program. Now I think they do really amazing work. And I am sure that they have limited resources, so I don't see that most of their photos are tagged or titled with captions.

But you can see the great potential here with these photos. People can see the great work that they are doing. And you can provide a link-back and more context about the program and how it is benefitting its beneficiaries.

Another great example is my friend Gregory

Screenshot: Embrace the stars...

And I actually met Gregory when I was living overseas, and he had just gorgeous photography. I had no idea what he did in his real-life job, but he is actually runs an organization called "Children at Risk Foundation" that is based in Brazil. And he helps educate street children and helps get them off the streets by giving them vocational training and education. And he is also a fantastic photographer.

So what he does is he uses his images to catch people's eyes when they're on Flickr, through popularity and just the community that he has built within Flickr, and then gives links back to his web site and asks people to donate for his program.

And what you are seeing here is his yearly campaign "Reach for a Star." And there are links within his captions to help you figure out how you can help him. But he has got very compelling images, and he links back to his web site.

Kami:

That's great. That is really an interesting use of it. And did you have any others?

Michaela:

I wanted to quickly show people how you can take your Flickr stream and turn it into a photo gallery in like five steps or less.

Screenshot: This is a PictoBrowser

There is a really neat third-party application called PictoBrowser, and I just played with it for the first time last week, and it is really cool. It's free.

And basically what you do is you go to the web site, Pictobrowser.com. You click on Pictobuilder. It might take a little bit because I know the screen takes longer for you guys to see.

Screenshot: PictoBrowser

You enter your Flickr screen name, so mine is Kalabird, and you click continue. And then you can select the images for your PictoBrowser. So I am going to click my set. And I am going to pick my set that is called "what you love." And then you can see the screens loading, and a gallery has been created right there. And then you can click through and see some of the images I've taken.

The really cool thing is you can see, you can roll over the notes section and you can see captions. You can see the link that goes back to Flickr.

And then the coolest thing is that if you decide you want to post it on your web site or your blog, you click continue, and there is the HTML code that you just cut and paste, and put onto your web site. So it's just like You-Tube in that sense. It pulls information from Flickr and pulls it into this application. And you are able to display your images in a really beautiful way with not a lot of cost at all, actually zero cost. So it's a really neat tool.

Another one that I also like is FlickrSlidr. I had already created the slides out here and I just didn't want to go through the creation process again, but hopefully you can see there is also a nice gallery here that goes through a slide show as well if you want it to.

Kami:

And what was that web site called again?

Michaela:

It's FlickrSlidr.com.

Kami:

Great. That's amazing. I hadn't seen that one before.

So if I, let's say after this webinar I want to get started doing this. What are the best things that I can do to move forward. I get an account, and then what?

Michaela:

What you would want to do is, once you have an account, you want to upload photos first of all. So find some really neat photos that you've taken or just a few just to test out, and you can go to the upload screen.

Screenshot: Upload to Flickr

And it's really simple. You just choose the photos from your desktop or your computer, and upload them. And what's a great way to get started and a good habit is to title all of your photos. Provide a little bit of caption, and definitely tag them, because people are always looking for photos that represent certain things.

I know I get a lot of emails about people who found my images because I tagged them with "Africa" or "Washington, D.C." or just different things, "children." So people can find your photos that way as well. And it's a great way, again, to get exposure for your program and your organization.

Kami:

Excellent. And I think that is a really good point about keeping consistency, and once you put it in to name it, to put notes on it. I found myself, and I haven't done this much myself, and it's usually just for personal stuff, but it's gotten to be a bit of a mess, that I don't tag anything. I don't label anything. And now I've got so many pictures on there, it's too much. So I think that's a really good point.

Michaela:

Yeah, and it does not take a lot of time. And what's great about it for me is I use it to manage all of my images, because I have probably taken 10,000 photographs. Now, granted, I have only uploaded 2 or 3000 of them. But when you tag them and upload them, you can search by date, and you can go back and refer to the files that you have, the original files on your computer and know when they were taken and have a better way of organizing them. So I find it extremely useful for my workflow as well.

Kami:

Excellent. So, we are going to allow time for questions a little bit later, but I think we should get started talking about Twitter. So if you could tell me, what is Twitter?

Michaela:

Twitter, if it's cooperating today, because of the WWDC conference, there are a lot of people using it right now, and it has been going down all day.

But it's a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows users to send updates or tweets to a main web, to a Twitter web site. These tweets are text-based posts up to 140 characters long, and these updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Some people…

Kami:

I'm going to interrupt: Is it not working at all? Can we go to see that web site?

Michaela:

No it's working. It's just that it's been up and down, so hopefully it will hang on now. The really cool thing about Twitter is that it became very popular overnight at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference last year.

Screenshot: Hey there! Kalabird is using Twitter.

And this year, everybody has been talking about it at different technology conferences, and every time a conference comes up, Twitter can't keep up with the load. So it's constantly adding more to their back end so they can support it. Hopefully, they are going to get this straightened out pretty quickly.

But what you are looking at now is my Twitter account, but I'm actually not logged in. So my Twitter posts are actually unprotected, so you can see the things that I've been saying throughout the day today.

On the right-hand side you have my name and where I am, link to my web site, and then a small biography, that just gives people on Twitter an idea of who you are. So if you decide to follow their tweets, they know that you have similar interests with each other.

So what you are looking at here is just different things I've written over the day. I have been having conversations with people. You can see with the at-sign (@) and then somebody's name, that's a response that's public, but directly to that person. So we are just talking about different things, everything from what I did over the weekend and had lunch with a friend, to making plans with a friend to meet up in Vermont later this week. So it's used for a lot of different things.

Kami:

Okay, I'd like to find out how, other than the things that we are seeing here, can you outlay the ways that you've used it and how a nonprofit can use it?

Michaela:

Sure, and by no means is this, or what I have talked about with Flickr, an exhaustive list. There really isn't a finite number of solutions on how to use these tools. These are just thoughts to help you get started. But truly the possibilities are endless, and they keep growing because of the integration of these tools with other web sites and software.

But some of the ways I use Twitter are to keep in touch with friends through microblogs. So, you know, I make plans for lunch with friends. I see that somebody on my Twitter list is travelling to my neighborhood, so I say Hey, we should get together. I did that a couple of weeks ago. It was great because I had never met the person before but we had been communicating online for a while.

A lot of people use it for asking for help or "friend-sourcing" as Chris Brogan calls it. Twitter is a great way to reach out to a larger community of people who have similar interests, and you can get great feedback on how to solve some of your problems.

Last week, I was asking people to give me some examples of how they use Twitter in their organization, and I got some responses with that. So it's really neat because it's like calling out to your own private help-line, but everybody has a vested interest because you're there to help them as well. So it's a really great way to build community among people who do the same things as you and to also get help on getting things done.

Because, as we know, being a nonprofit, you don't often have a lot of resources at your disposal, so it's a great way of reaching out. And in that way it's also a great professional development tool, because you can find out things you might now know how to do already.

I use it to keep up with industry trends. It's become so prevalent with all the people in my community, the nonprofit tech community that I don't have a lot of time to go to RSS feeds anymore to keep up with what's going on in the world of nonprofit technology. I see what people are tweeting, and then I visit web sites that way.

People tweet during conferences. I was not able to attend the NetSquared Conference a couple of weeks ago, but I got to follow along with what was going on because my friends were tweeting small little snippets about what was going on at the conference.

You can also promote yourself or your organization by sharing links on Twitter. So I was promoting this webinar all week by giving the link out on Twitter, and hopefully some of you guys saw that and signed up. But it's a great way to share.

For example, you could share a new group of photos you've uploaded to the web. I've done that before. You can call out to a new blog your organization has or a new video you've posted on YouTube.

You can also conduct an informal survey, and I know a lot of people do this sometimes where they try to figure out what's going on with something in their organization or with their constituency, and they ask a bunch of people on Twitter, have they had similar experiences?

And finally, the cool thing with Twitter is it also goes mobile. To be honest, I don't really use this tool so much, because I don't have that many text messages on my cell phone plan. But it's a great way you can integrate it with your cell phone. You are able to send text messages to Twitter, and you can receive tweets as text messages on your phone. So, it's seamless integration there. It's really cool.

Kami:

TechSoup has a twitter feed. Is there a way that you can show us the TechSoup?

Michaela:

Sure.

Kami:

We have Meghan Keen, our community manager, tweeting about this webinar right now. So we'll see if everything is working. I guess it will take a minute for it to redraw.

Screenshot: professional development, informal surveys...

Great. So there are lots of different ways that it can be integrated, and I think it's just a matter of starting to use the tool, see what other people are doing, and figure out how you can integrate into your own work.

Do you have other examples other than TechSoup, some ways other nonprofits that you know are using Twitter?

Michaela:

Sure. A lot of nonprofits are using Twitter to get announcements about their causes online, or new web sites, or news articles.

One of my favorites is the Obama campaign has definitely taken advantage of Twitter.

Screenshot: Barack Obama

I pulled this up earlier, so I haven't refreshed it yet, but I believe that he already changed his icon, so I am going to refresh it in a second, so we can see. It's really cool. Just by changing the imagery on the Twitter page really sends a new signal to his followers that something is changing, and that he is ramping up again, and getting excited about running for president.

Screenshot: Thanking Hillary...

But you can see below the tweets that his staff has written about different news articles about what he is doing and where he is, what issues he cares about.

And there have been a couple of discussions on Twitter about whether or not Obama is going to be the first president to tweet from the White House. His campaign has used so much of Twitter's

resources that it would almost be fitting that he would be the first president to be able to communicate with people from the White House using Twitter.

So I am going to refresh and see if we pull up his new icon. Let's see if it does that. Maybe it's not going to.

Screenshot: Hey there! Barack Obama is using Twitter.

At least in the Twitter application I use, which is called Snitter, it changed earlier with the logo, but I guess his web site hasn't changed.

But the neat thing is you can customize the background to be whatever picture you want as well as your icon, you can change that as well, so it's really neat. You can brand Twitter for your organization.

Kami:

And so, you mentioned Snitter. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Michaela:

Yes, one of the things I thought was really important to mention about Twitter, is how you can maximize it. I was an early adopter of Twitter but I didn't really use it all that much. I got a lot of flack from some of my friends. Because in the beginning I said, Twitter was just another one of those applications and I didn't see a lot of use for it.

I signed up last year at the South by Southwest Festival like everybody who was there and saw how cool it was. But Twitter is only as valuable as the network you have connected to it. So I would be tweeting, but nobody would be hearing me because I hadn't reached out to people, and people hadn't reached out to me.

But this year I attended South by Southwest again, and the Nonprofit Technology Network Conference in New Orleans, and I met a lot of nonprofit techies who also were on Twitter. And as soon as I met them, I would go back to my computer and add them to my Twitter feed. So all of a sudden I had this vast network with tons of resources and expertise that I could reach out to. So it really became valuable to me because of that.

So one of the best ways to maximize Twitter is to not be afraid to connect directly with people you don't know. There is real strength in weak ties and being able to reach out and trust that other people are good, and they are interested in helping you. They are interested in hearing from you, you know, is one of the best things you can do to maximize Twitter.

As I mentioned earlier, Snitter, and because Twitter is having issues I can't really demonstrate it, but Snitter, Twirl, and a couple of other applications have been designed that run almost like instant messenger or email chat. They are actually applications that pop up on the screen that help you follow your Twitter feed. Otherwise you'd have to keep going back to your web site and refreshing to see your latest tweets.

So I find that it's really useful to have one of those in the right-hand corner of my screen so that during the day when I have some time, I glance over and see what's going on. But it's not in my face, and I don't have to go to a web page to view it. So there are a bunch of cool tools that you can use to maximize Twitter.

And you can also connect Twitter to other Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, and Flickr and blog. You can, like I mentioned earlier, you can call people's attention to your Flickr feed. So that's a really cool way to use the tools together.

With Facebook, you are able to do integration so that your status is updated with your tweets, which is pretty cool. And blogging, Twitter allows you to embed some code on your web site that actually shows your most recent tweets so people can keep track of what you're doing also on a real-time basis. Because blogging usually takes a little bit more time than tweeting, so it's a great way to connect almost real-time with people.

Kami:

Excellent. I have a Twitter account. I haven't used it personally very much. But let's say I wanted to expand my network. How do I do that?

Michaela:

That is a great question. And what I would advise you to do is to build your own community. Find people to connect with via Twitter Pack. What I did is, first of all, I had a few friends who had signed up to Twitter. One of them – let's see, where is she?

Let's use Holly Ross as an example, because she's got a lot of people that she's connected to. I looked at her page and I saw all of the people on the right-hand side that she is following. I recognized some faces and realized, oh, I know that person and they're on Twitter. So I would add them to my Twitter account. But some of the others, I would just click on.

For example, click on Corey here, and I see his web site over here, and I know that based on some of his tweets, that he is interested in the same things as me. His bio says, "140 characters is not much to talk about yourself and I've already wasted most of mine." But a lot of people do tend to put more relevant information in their bio that helps people find them. So I basically went through one person after another and found new people to link to.

Kami:

I'm going to interrupt one more second, because it doesn't look like your screen is refreshing. So can you show your desktop again? Can you go back and show your application again?

Michaela:

Yeah. Okay, can you see Corey now?

Screenshot: Corey Pud

Kami:

Yes, thank you.

Michaela:

Sorry about that, guys.

So basically I would just continue. It's so much like going down the rabbit hole, you keep clicking on another person, finding people that have similar interests to you, and once you add them, when you see something that they write that seems relevant or interesting, you can directly respond to them and let them know that you are paying attention.

Also, whenever you add somebody to your Twitter account, they get notified. So maybe they see that you have added them. They might decide to add you as well. And so they'll be following what you have to say.

So it takes a little bit of time but really, in a matter of one week, I had a vibrant Twitter community. I went from absolutely nothing to a really useful network that I rely on and enjoy every single day.

Another way of finding people is through the nonprofit TwitterPack. And this link, I know Kami has it somewhere, and we can definitely get it out to you guys. But it's a wiki, and people have come in and added their names because they are interested in nonprofit technology. So here is a list of everybody who has signed up, saying that they do nonprofit technology and are on Twitter. So if you really had some free time, you could add every single one of these to your Twitter.

So, I think for me it's easier to do it slowly after I've got to critical mass because it's really hard to, it takes a lot of time to figure out how many people you want to add. I think in the beginning, it's better to add more and you can kind of figure out which relationships are more useful and beneficial to you. So it's definitely a great tool to use to find people who are similar.

And the Twitter Pack is not just limited to nonprofits. You can find lots of different categories here. There is a Lawyer's Pack. There is a Books and Publishing Pack. There is a Twitter Bots Pack, Politics. So there is a ton of different groups on here.

Kami:

Very interesting. So when we were speaking before when we were prepping, you were talking about how these tools aren't just tools anymore. They have really become part of your life. I was wondering if you could talk about that.

Michaela:

Yes, I think like a lot of us, we struggle with what sort of applications we use on a daily basis to do our job and to stay in touch with people. And it's nearly impossible to participate in every single one of them.

I would say that Flickr and Twitter have become really integrated into who I am. Dare I say, part of my identity, which is a little scary, but I have found them really beneficial.

For example when I was living overseas for two years, Flickr was sort of my world. I was in some cases living in a very dangerous area and I was not able to get out and meet a lot of people. But I had this vibrant community on Flickr who was excited to hear about what I was doing every day, was excited to learn about the program, the nonprofit I was supporting and the women I was working with.

And, you know, I found it a pleasure every day to upload 1 photo or 2 photos about what I was doing. And people were genuinely interested. So it was really cool to see what they were doing on their side of the world, and also to share a bit about the work that we were doing.

And Twitter, mostly for professional development, because my organization is still working on getting some of our basic blogging and Flickr and FaceBook tools up, but Twitter I use on a daily basis to reach out to my colleagues in nonprofit technology, to share ideas, to ask questions, to get support.

It's really just become an extension of the work place for me. You know, it doesn't end. The walls are invisible. Everybody is part of my community, and I see them as my colleagues.

Kami:

That's great. So we have time now for some questions. I think we'll try to do some audio questions and see how it goes, so if you have a question for Michaela, raise your hand, and while we wait, I am going to go back.

Slide 3: Today's Speakers

And Michaela, if you could answer one more question, can you search for old tweets, like a tweet that has come through and you remember it, can you search for them?

Michaela:

For your old tweets or for somebody else's?

Kami:

I guess for both.

Michaela:

I know that the Twitter archive goes back. It depends on how frequently you tweet. I'm not entirely a hundred percent sure about this, but I know that you can go back about 5 pages on your own Twitter account. Depending on how robust their search is, and I am sure they are probably working to make it even more powerful, you should be able to go back a fair ways. But I don't know. It's more a real-time live tool and less something that you would use to find things in the past. But I don't think it's impossible to do that.

Q & A

Kami:

Okay, so I'm going to take questions. And I apologize if I don't get to everybody. But Adrienne, if you want to ask your question, it's *7 to unmute.

Okay, we will try Emily, Emily Jones.

Emily:

I was just asking about, how do you or can you delete people, or get out of a Twitter relationship if it's really not something that is not productive for what you are trying to do?

Michaela:

Sure. It's really easy. I have sometimes people who add me. In the beginning I was adding everybody that added me. And one of the people was actually just a vendor and was just

trying to get my attention. And you'll see a lot of vendors do this. They see that you are interested in something, and they will try to add you. You can just delete that connection, and it happens right away.

Emily:

Thank you.

Okay, and [indistinct] Stewart, *7.

Female voice:

Could you talk a bit about Twitter apps and the various third-party ways that people use Twitter? I have heard of a bunch of different ones. The only thing that I've tried is Spaz, which gives you instant updates. So instead of going back to the Twitter page and refreshing, it refreshes itself. Does that make sense?

Michaela:

Yeah, no, that is sort of what I was talking about earlier. There are several applications depending on whether you are using a PC or Mac. But some of the PC ones are Twirl, Snitter.

I actually use Digsby, although I don't necessarily think it's the best Twitter app, but it integrates your instant messengers, all of them, so everything from Yahoo and AOL to email, and then even your Facebook and your Twitter feed. So it's a really nice way if you just want to have one application running. But I prefer using Twirl or Snitter, if I was going to use a tool just for Twitter.

But I highly recommend using these tools because it will make the adoption of Twitter much easier, because you don't have to go back to the web page and refresh. And it's really helpful because there are shortcuts to send private messages to people, to visit their web site, and to reply to them. So I definitely recommend using these tools, and I would play around with a couple and see which one fits your working style.

Female voice:

Is there a page somewhere that lists applications and keeps up to date with applications that people have written?

Michaela:

I'm not aware of one. I'm not saying that there isn't one, but I think that several blogs periodically list them. But we can give a list as well.

Stewart:

Thanks.

Kami:

Great. Thank you. And just to remind everyone, this afternoon I will send out emails that will have a link to this recording as well as a list of all the links that we are talking about today. So for those of you, who are frantically writing down on your own, don't worry about it. I will send that out a little bit later.

So [indistinct], do you have a question? (*7)

Female voice:

My question is that I have heard that performing arts groups, that their production crews, their technical crews – I don't mean technical in the IT sense. I mean, production of performance – are using Twitter to communicate at helping to [indistinct] and all of that. Have you heard of this application?

And along with that, I have heard that there is a tool where everyone on that staff say, reports in every half hour, just gives an update about where they are and what's going on.

Michaela:

Yes, I think a lot of organizations are using it for this. Having a background in humanitarian aid analysis, one of the cool things I've seen is that people were twittering after the earthquake in China. They were letting people know where they were, where the damage was. So that was sort of ad hoc.

But I know that a lot of organizations use it to keep track of what their people are working on, if they have a lot of field workers that need to report back in and give status updates. It's a great tool for that. I know that my organization, we are talking about using it as a tool to communicate with our incoming citizen exchange program.

So students who are coming from Serbia, and let's say we want to communicate to all of them in one fell swoop, we can have them sign up through their mobile device and send instant messages or SMSs to them directly from Twitter, and they can respond back. So it's really a cool way to synchronize groups together and share information.

Female voice:

Thank you.

Heather:

Hi there. We just have a quick question about Flickr. Our organization was looking at opening an account, but we had to take a step back when they asked for credit card information when setting up the account. Even though it's a free account, they asked, I guess because you need to be 18 or older, and we are just a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of putting our credit account number out there at all. Is there any way to get around this, do you know?

Michaela:

I wasn't aware that you needed to use a credit card to sign up for a free account. I don't think I did when I signed up for our initial free account for my organization. But maybe things have changed. And there is going to be a representative here at the end of the call that might be able to answer that question better.

Heather:

Okay, great!

Kami:

And Richard Mitchell, *7.

Richard:

I had a question. Earlier in the presentation on Flickr, Michaela showed an example called "Embrace the Stars." On that page on the right-hand side was a list under a title that said "this photo also belongs to." I am wondering what that was.

Michaela:

Let me double-check and pull up the page so that I'm a hundred percent sure what I was showing. Okay, what it also said is "this page also belongs to." Maybe I can pull up the application again. Is that okay, Kami?

Kami:

Yes, of course.

Screenshot: Reach for a Star

Michaela:

What you're seeing on the right-hand side is a list of groups and sets that this photo belongs to. So a set is something that you use on your own Flickr page to group similar photos.

So he's got a set for Reaching for a Star. And you can actually expand that and click through all of these photos that have the same set name. Now below that, you see things like Canon DSLR User Group, Brazil (pool), Green is Beautiful (pool), etc., and these are public groups that people have created that you can submit your photo to.

So it's a great way to get visibility for your photographs. I know that when I was overseas, I would submit photos to an Africa group, an International Development group, Nonprofit groups. All the people who are interested in those photos have a chance of seeing those.

Kami:

There is an interesting question that we have on the chat. Can you receive confidential information on Twitter or is the response received by your entire Twitter group?

Michaela:

That's a great question! There are a couple of ways to respond on Twitter. There is the public response, so that's just responding with an at-symbol to the person's twitter name.

And let me pull up Twitter so I can show this. Let me go back to mine.

Screenshot: TechSoup

For example, if I went into TechSoup, I could say @TechSoup, and that would be public. So people would see that, but they could also see that I had a conversation with TechSoup. Maybe they want to go and look at TechSoup and see what the conversation is about.

Oh, my web seems to be going down.

Another way to send messages is there is a private way that goes directly to email, which is great. A lot of times when I'm tweeting with my friends I don't know their contact information. For example, I was setting up a lunch date with a friend later this week, and she sent me a direct message from her email address that was private. So nobody else can see that. But you do that by typing "D-space" and then the person's name on Twitter. So I would use "D space Techsoup" and then my message.

Kami:

I'm going to bring the slides back because it looks like you're not on the …

Slide 3: Today's Speakers

Michaela:

Yes, my Internet, it's like a developing country sometimes!

Kami:

I'm going to take one more question and then we are going to talk about TechSoup Stock.

So, Lauren Johnson (*7).

Lauren:

I was wondering which browsers were best to use when you are using these social networking applications, Firefox, or Safari, or Internet Explorer?

Michaela:

I think that – I am sure people have strong opinions about which browser works better than others, because some people really care about their browser. I tend to use Firefox because I think a lot of web applications were designed for Firefox. It is an interesting question for Flickr.

And this may be too nitty-gritty, but Firefox and Internet Explorer don't support color profiles. So if you're an avid photographer like me, your images don't look exactly the way that they do in Photoshop, as they do on Firefox or IE. IE is a little bit better. I'd say that Firefox probably has the worst color handling, and the best would be Safari. But really, you've have to imagine that your audience is using all of them, so at some point, you kind of have to let it go.

Lauren:

Right.

Kami:

So we are going to move on now to talk about some of the TechSoup things. So I'm going to just hit Mute-All and at the end do *7 when we wrap this up.

So I wanted to bring you over to my desktop and show you some of my applications. I am going to go through some things that TechSoup has to offer, talk about the TechSoup web site, the things that we have to offer, and some of the products.

Screenshot: Today In TechSoup

Flickr is something we have to offer on TechSoup Stock.

I am sure you are all familiar with our web site but you are probably not familiar with all the different things that we have available. So if you haven't yet submitted, or are on our By the Cup newsletter, you can register for that on our homepage. Then on a weekly basis, you will get information about our upcoming webinars and different product promotions. So if you are not on By the Cup it would be a good thing for you to do.

Our home page always changes the new events coming, and different articles that are being spotlighted in our blog. And we do have a blog with different information that goes in as an article.

In our Learning Center, here are a ton of different articles on different topics that might be interesting to you, different areas for some than others.

And there are - the online Community wanted to talk about – tomorrow, all day in the forums, there is a link about it here on the top, an online discussion about Twitter. So, there are a lot of questions we weren't able to answer today that, if you're still interested in learning more about Twitter, you should go online to our discussion forum tomorrow and ask your question there. Michaela will be answering questions as well as another volunteer which I'll talk about in a minute.

And then for Get Products, if you haven't yet registered for TechSoup Stock, you should do so. And then under here, getting started is everything you need to know about registering to get your organization organized and part of TechSoup Stock.

And we have products from – I am going to go back to my presentation – we have 27 vendor partners.

Slide: TechSoup Stock Vendor Partners

And like I mentioned Flickr is one of our vendors. And you can get that – we have it in a year-package or a 5-year package.

And I guess we have a little bit more time. I was hoping to get on our line someone from TechSoup Stock, but if you have specific TechSoup Stock questions, please submit them in the chat right now.

We have a couple of folks available to answer specific TechSoup Stock questions. So for those of you who might be wondering, where is my order, or why aren't I eligible for a certain product? Here is a great opportunity to send that question through the chat and have somebody answer it.

Slide: Upcoming Online Seminars

I wanted to also promote a webinar we are doing tomorrow about Content Management Tools. It's at 10 AM. You can register. There is a link to the registration on our website

And we will be doing a similar webinar to this, a one-hour webinar on Online Conferencing Tools next month, July 8th, and that will be talking about tools like ReadyTalk, which will enable you to do things like webinars and online conferencing.

So, I guess we have another few more minutes to talk about, to answer Twitter or Flickr questions.

Michaela, can you un-mute your line again?

Great. So we have hands raised still from a couple of folks. So Kathy Daniel, *7.

Kathy:

I wanted to know, could you explain Twirl again? I understand tweet, Twitter, but what is Twirl?

Michaela:

Sure. Twirl like Snitter or for Mac would be Twitterific, is a third-party application that, basically what you do is you identify in the tool what your user name is and your password, and it pulls all the Twitter tweets into that tool.

So normally to use Twitter you need to keep your browser open, and in order to see the latest tweets, you need to refresh your browser. The great thing with Twirl, or Snitter, or Twitterific, is that it automatically refreshes on your desktop almost like an instant-messenger window. So there is a nice little interface for you to see tweets real-time as they happen without refreshing. So it makes it easier to use the tool.

Kami:

Great, and Emily Jones, *7.

Emily:

I just wanted to know more about using videos. Somebody had mentioned that to me and you mentioned it earlier on Flickr. What would be a typical application of that?

Michaela:

I know that some organizations, I would say most of them are using YouTube for videos. The cool thing about having a short video on Flickr – because they have to be a minute in length, I believe. I haven't actually uploaded a video because I'm a photo girl, but I've seen a lot of them. It's kind of a nice way that people who usually visit your Flickr stream can actually see your organization, or you live. So it's a neat way to have both video, and photos in the same place.

I don't think they are intending it to be just like YouTube, but I think that they just rolled it out recently and they are probably determining the best way to move forward with it. Maybe they are going to make it possible to upload longer videos.

But it's a neat way to sort of let your audience know – Oh, you also do videos.

So maybe you can do a little teaser on Flickr if you have a large audience there saying, "Hey, here is a video, and here is a short snippet of a video we have over on our web site. Come check it out."

So it's kind of a neat little teaser tool. I could see it being used like that.

Kami:

And – let's see -- Linda Wilman, *7.

Okay, how about Morgan Sully, *7.

Okay, third time's the charm, Debra Zimmerman, *7.

Liza:

Hi, this is actually Liza Brice. Debbie is my Executive Director, but I'm on the call today.

I just have a question and that being, are these tools, Flickr and Twitter, are they best for certain kinds of nonprofit, let's say direct aide, or smaller ones versus larger nonprofits?

I'm just trying to figure out if this is really relevant to the work we do at Women Make Movies, which, we are a distributor of independent films, nonprofit.

Michaela:

That's a great question. And I think that what I mentioned earlier when I talked about the different uses for it, the way people are using these tools is evolving on a daily basis.

So I think what you need to do is try it out, and figure out ultimately what your communications goals are. Then identify different tools that you can use and maybe determine it based on that, of costs and resources necessary to maintain them and kind of go from there. Because I've seen large nonprofits who use Twitter as much as I've seen smaller nonprofits use Twitter. So it can be anything from, you could buy your movies and the films your people are promoting. You can use it to communicate with people who are interested in submitting films. I am not entirely sure about everything your organization does.

Liza:

No, that's pretty close to it.

Michaela:

So, it's a great way to use it for that, but again, what I think with all of these tools, you really have to test it out based on your organization.

For my organization, we don't necessarily have a use for Twitter just yet. There are some other things we want to get to first.

But look at your resources, mostly human resources, because these tools are free for the most part. And then figure out what your communications goals are, and I would go from there. It's worth testing it out, playing around with it and seeing how it works.

I hope that helps.

Slide: Continue the discussion...

And just to let everybody know, and Kami mentioned it earlier, we will have a forum all day tomorrow that Marshall and I will be around to answer your questions. So if you have more specific questions, and you want to get into a longer discussion about them, feel free to stop on by and post your questions.

Liza:

Okay, great, thanks so much.

Michaela:

No problem.

Kami:

I think we have time for one more, so Melissa, *7.

Melissa:

My question is, we are a performing arts organization, and we have been interested in using the Flickr application. But because of the proprietary nature of our material, we have been looking at whether or not Flickr does give the opportunity to make the photos where you would not be able to download them, or people that are viewing them would not be able to download it?

Michaela:

That's a great question.

I didn't mention this earlier, but there are a lot of different ways that you can set your privacy and your rights, on Flickr. You can set your photos to have creative comment so it encourages people to use your images and manipulate them and do whatever they want with them as long as they give you credit. There is one I think you don't need any credit for, and there is another one that says you can use this photo but you can't alter it. And then finally, you can do All Rights Reserved, which is what I have on my images, so that sort of makes it illegal for people to use your images.

And then within the privacy settings, you can make it so that nobody can download your images. You can maybe set it, if you want your friends and family to be able to download those, or you can make it so that nobody can.

I actually do that for my images because a lot of people have found that sometimes the good of humanity does not spread across the world on the internet, and sometimes your images will wind up somewhere else. So just to keep people from taking a screen capture of your image, but at the same time the quality of that image that they take a screen capture of, will not have a lot of options for print or publication.

I think you're pretty safe for that.

Okay, great.

Kami:

Great. Thank you so much.

So now its noon and it's time to wrap it up.

I want to just thank Michaela again, so much for taking the time to enlighten us and explain some of the ways that she is using Flickr and Twitter.

Slide: Thank you Ready Talk!

And again, Thanks ReadyTalk. They have made it possible, by donating the online conferencing to help us expand awareness of technology for the nonprofit sector. And ReadyTalk helps nonprofits and libraries in the US and Canada. So we'd like to thank them for sponsoring this event.

Slide: For More Information

And again, I'm Kami Griffiths and I am really appreciative of everyone taking time to participate in this webinar. And if you have any questions, here is my phone number and my email address. You also have my email from the ReadyTalk registration.

I'll be sending out a link to the recording and to any of the links that we have been talking about.

So thanks again.

And we have a webinar tomorrow, and another one on July 8th. So thanks and have a great day, everyone.

Michaela:

Thanks everybody.

Kami:

Thank you.