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The parallel universe of twitter

10/28/2014

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Succulent garden on the roof deck. Covet.
Spent the morning at the Twitter for small biz workshop (#smallgoesbig) in their downtown San Francisco headquarters. Even though i'm not a for-profit business with holiday sales to drive, i just started really tweeting in earnest oh, last week, so i thought i could use all of the help i can get. 

The whole experience was like a step into the other side of this fabled tech world we hear about. Free breakfast at this free event, with coffee and a fridge full of beverages (coconut water, yum!) heaping bowls of fresh fruit and yogurt, pastries. An incredible roof deck with a succulent garden that is just plain art. And a big ole cafe that i considered sneaking into when i went to the bathroom but a security eventually called me back upstairs. 

I met a bunch of people from hootsuite, a woman who bought a bookstore in north berkeley called Bookish, a guy running the San Francisco Tea Festival, a woman who wants to do growth/expansion in texh startups, and an acquaintance from theexpatwoman --so that was fun. Talks were peppered with acronyms like CTA (call to action), CLA (cost per lead), ROI (return on investment), and lingo like lead gen (eration), and conversion (wha?). All the presenters looked under the age of 32, and there were 2 independent mentions of Sightglass coffee (#who'sthehipsterestofthemall). It reminded me that I actually really like meeting new people! 


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The view from HQ.
At two breakout sessions I learned about twitter "cards" which are just photos with a headline and a call to action that you can attach to a tweet (free to use!) and apparently generate 43% more "engagement" than text alone. You can also do lead generation cards, which gives you the contact info of a user when they click on it. 

However, I just tried to sign up for Twitter ads, which you have to do to create a card, and I can't because my account is "ineligible." I can only take that to mean that I am too small potatoes. Which is true, but that's why I want to use the cards! Not cool, Twitter. 


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The dude from Square, mid sentence.
I also sat in on a talk from Square, the credit card payment company... Which could possibly come in handy some day. If you want to give me money using a credit card, I can now accept it!

What was most useful to me was the basic stuff that was mentioned almost in passing --personal engagement with followers should be 80% of your tweets. 80% of twitter access is mobile, so your site better be mobile friendly (mine isn't, argh!), follow hashtags to get involved in conversations (duh! Hadn't really thought of that. Lord i am old). There is more traffic on weekends so be sure to tweet then.

What a bubble. One of the presenters actually said, "there are 250 million users, so  your audience is on Twitter. It is." And I am thinking well, there is AN audience, sure, but with 7 billion people on the planet there are still a lot of people who aren't on Twitter. So lets keep it in perspective.

Overall though, it was an informative day, and I have learned a bunch of ways to step up my game. Thanks for breakfast, Twitter! 
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Twitter's cafeteria. Maybe one of many, for all I know.
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Pv in guyana

10/24/2014

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Because it was already 1 am when I set my alarm, and also because I am an idiot, I woke up at 4 this morning to participate in a webinar about participatory video. I'm an idiot because the webinar didn't start until 5 am, but I got confused with British Summer Time vs GMT and before you know it, I was staring at my immobile computer screen, wondering why no one else had come to the party. 

I passed the hour eating cereal and picking out new photos for my desktop wallpaper. Here's a random selection: 
But I digress. The webinar finally started. Organized by InsightShare, it was an online gathering of people around the world to talk about legacy and lasting impact of participatory video. The InsightShare team had some great examples of NGOs in South Africa and Cameroon, including one group that has made video a central part of their identity. Insightshare has run more than 200 trainings and it's so inspiring to hear of people that have carried on the work. They also have a great blog discussing the question of legacy in PV. 

Chris Lunch, one of the founders of Insightshare, also talked about how they are working on a PV app (so cool!) for tablets that will give people a simple entry point into the process, and they are developing a fellowship program, because it's usually one or two key people who keep these projects going in the long term. 

We also heard from Jay Mistry of Project Cobra, a group that works with indigenous groups in Guyana. Project Cobra uses PV for topics ranging from tourism practices to local farming and fishing to community radio. Their participatory process is strictly for research, not advocacy, but they are looking for ways to expand their impact to the regional and national level. 

To be honest, I was so sleepy I wasn't able to focus with my normally razor sharp mind (ha ha). But fortunately the whole session was recorded so you and I can go check it out --they'll post them in a couple days. 

Here's a couple more links with PV projects, I haven't checked them out yet but sound like good stuff:

Plan International has supported Filipino children promoting climate change adaptation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1upkBQ0tOeM


Oxfam's PV project in Nepal: 
http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/blog/2014/08/lights-camera-action-raising-youth-voice-through-video
http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/water-health-education/my-rights-my-voice


To learn more about COBRA's work in documenting and sharing Community Owned Solutions using PV and PP you can download their Handbook here: 
http://projectcobra.org/how-to-find-and-share-community-owned-solutions/


Child Led PV Project in Southeast Asia: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlzIoNdLEDc

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you got served

10/21/2014

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I just checked out an ebook from the library on my phone, Total Memory Workout: 8 Easy Steps to Maximum Memory Fitness. I thought the memory workout might help, because my mind is like my DVR, bookshelves, and closets: all filled up. 

The last several months I have been doing all kinds of crucial, life-saving, incredibly dry and boring business stuff. Registering an LLC, finding a fiscal sponsor (a nonprofit that will lend me their nonprofit status so that I can accept tax deductible donations and grants), putting together this website, researching insurance, writing grants. Right. Painful. Nothing you want to make space for in your brain. 
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My business is real! Here's my record from the inter webs.
Today I went to file some more paperwork with the state --and I almost fell for a Nigerian-prince type scam. I got a letter that looked a LOT like a letter from the government, and since I knew I owe them some more money, I was literally on the verge of writing them a check. egads. 
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Doesn't this look like an official document?
When I went to pay for REAL bill, which you CAN'T pay online, I ran into another question: the form asks for your "registered agent." This is the person who is designated to accept the papers you get served when someone sues you… Ya know, like on TV all the time. It turns out that this person is supposed to be available during business hours at their address, and if they aren't, you don't get your papers, don't know that you have to show up in court, and so you lose by default! So even if you do NOTHING wrong, someone can file a totally fraudulent lawsuit against you and you might not even know til you get the bill. This American Life did a show about this and I didn't understand why the people didn't show up for court. Now I do. 

So the solution is to pay a business to be your registered agent. What did people do before the internet? I found a place in the Haight that for $50 will get served for you, and will accept and scan all of your mail so you can get it online. I figure $50 is cheap insurance against predatory lawsuits. Yes, I am paranoid. Our crazy litigious society has made me so. You should be, too. 

So now I have a login and password for the registered agent, for the Franchise Tax board, for weekly and twitter and Facebook but also for Sparkwi.se, the dashboard that tracks all of my social media activity --and how is a girl supposed to keep all of this stuff straight? Hence, my memory exercises. If any of it works, I'll definitely let you know about it. 
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Mistakes are Great

10/15/2014

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In the lower hall of the South Oxford Community Centre, I sat in a circle with a group that included American, Thai, French, Colombian, Australian, Austrian, Dutch, British, Argentinian and Italian scientists, educators, photographers and community organizers. We were there to learn how to run our own participatory video workshops, and I was ready for a week of intense lectures, theoretical discussions, film screenings, and a bit of hands-on training.

Instead, Marleen Bovenmars, one of our facilitators, was demonstrating a wacky handshake: one person holding up two thumbs down –the other person pulling the thumbs downward, as if milking a cow. Soon the room was full of people hilariously, embarrassedly milking each other. I believe we were supposed to make a whooshing sound as well, but I was laughing too hard. Nothing breaks down shyness like mutual indignity.
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That icebreaker was followed by interviewing a partner and then drawing that person's portrait to introduce them to the group, breathless exercises to shoot group videos in ten or twenty minutes, and group discussions reviewing both what we'd learned as workshop participants and as future facilitators. The lectures I had dreaded about three-point lighting, the rule of thirds, or jump cuts never happened.

To be honest, though, I had fully planned to give those lectures about three-point lighting myself, when I start production on my documentary film, tentatively titled
The Long Rescue. The film features girls in the Philippines who are rebuilding their lives after being sex trafficked, and early on I decided that I wanted to train the girls how to shoot themselves, and leave cameras for them to use between my shoots.

I had attempted something similar with my senior thesis in college, but this time, I realized my hubris early on –I don't know the best way to teach camera work, editing and ethics to people with little or no experience with this kind of technology. But I knew who did –Insightshare, an NGO that does just that, notably in its globe spanning project, “Conversations with the Earth.” I had met one of its founders, Nick Lunch, at an event in San Francisco, and instantly loved the ethos he works in –bringing the skills and tools to communities so they can express their own voices in their own way. The videos might be used for communication between villages, with policy makers, for monitoring and evaluation of programs, or in some cases, simply as a process for a group to share, and then destroy the video afterwards.
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Drawing a "perfect facilitator".
So even though I wasn't entirely sure what I was signing up for, I decided to travel to England and join Insightshare's workshop. It is specifically for people like me, who want to lead their own participatory video workshops –but included people with a wide range of applications. One woman will be working with women in Nepal to document change in their lives with tablet devices, another wants to bring participatory video his toxics watchdog group in Burma, and a group of French educators who want to implement the practice as part of 'design thinking' (a really cool sounding process that I can't possibly explain).

The really crucial concept for me in this training is that we are to be facilitators. Not teachers, imparting knowledge, but coaches who make it possible for the participants to teach themselves. Of course we have to kick things off in various ways, but then the job is to get out of the way and let the group direct their own projects.
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Filling in the attributes of the perfect facilitator --visually, not verbally!
PictureMe and my group working on another fast-paced game --making direct-to-camera statements.
For a documentary producer who has learned, out of necessity, to try to control the chaos as much as possible, letting go in this way is the biggest challenge. I have developed my “best ways” to do everything, from setting up a tripod to approaching an interviewee. Which is not to say I'm perfect, but I definitely identify a lot of ways to do it “wrong.” But in this workshop, the first thing we learned is “Mistakes are Great.” It's important to make mistakes, let others make mistakes, and then learn from them.

All of this makes total sense –most people say that they learn by doing, not by sitting and watching someone else do something. And the great thing about the participatory method is that you learn through fast paced games that really make it fun. There will be a big learning curve for me –both in using the PV games and tools and in learning to step back and not try to make events conform to my mastermind plan. I know this will be really good for me, and much better for my girls.

So even though I had been apprehensive as I got on the plane, (my mother had asked, “Do you have to go all the way to England? Isn't there somewhere in the US you can do this?”) I am incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to do this training. I got practical tools to use in the Philippines, as well as a ton of support and inspiration for the project. I met intelligent, articulate, funny people who are working to make the world a better place in their varied and thoughtful ways. I finally made it to a real English pub and Harry Potter's Great Hall. And I know that no matter what happens with the film, bringing PV to the girls in the Philippines will offer them a valuable new tool for self-expression and media literacy.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Contact >
      • Volunteer
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    • Take Action NOW
    • This Adventure Sneak Peek Clip
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