As you read my blog and others out there that touch upon arts and technology, you will notice that there are a lot of suggestions about why you shold integrate technology into marketing, community building, transaction processing, etc., operations. The thing is, you might be left asking how? If you don’t have a tech savvy person on staff, you may never get an answer.
Unless you are reading Extension 311. I don’t suggest you innundate Greg Beuthin with requests to advise you on all your technology needs. Unless, of course, you are willing to pay him for his time. He doesn’t offer step by step instructions about integrating technology. (Well, at least not always.) He is the only person I have found at this point who offers some concrete advice about things to consider and pursue when attempting to use technology in non-profit settings.
Yesterday he provided some thoughts on what type of people should be given responsibility for certain tasks when a non-profit tries to establish an online community. He feels that organizations are apt to incorrectly assume that with donated equipment and volunteers the project can run itself inexpensively. People fail to accurately project the resources and oversight necessary for the endeavor. He lists a number of roles necessary for running such a community and notes which should be handled by an in-house person and which might be trusted to a volunteer.
Via his website, I came across Net2Learn offers resources like Blogging For Non-Profits a helpful page that includes, among other things links to articles like Top Blogging Tools for Non-Profits, How Can Blogging Help Your Non-profit and Top Ten Reasons Why Non-profits Should Consider Blogging.
Hmm, I see I am getting back to the topic of Why you should use technology rather than the How.
But before I end, I wanted to toss one last slightly unrelated link out there that I found on Extension 311– Theatre Without Borders. Granted, it isn’t too original a name given all the other Without Borders organizations . I do like the purpose statement on the mainpage quoting Michael Fields from Dell’arte International- “Theatre Without Borders is like a dating service for international collaboration. I think it is becoming an essential connective tissue in the global theatre workplace.”
Thanks for the link to my Top 10 Reasons post. Now let me tell you why your readers should check it out… ha ha just kidding. Good for you for posting about this frustration. I try to post how-to’s on marshallk.com but have slowed way down on posting there since getting some other blogging gigs with deadlines.
Here’s a couple of how posts I’ve made recently:
http://marshallk.com/how-and-why-to-use-feedburner
http://marshallk.com/how-to-find-good-blogs-on-almost-any-topic
http://marshallk.com/i-love-blummycom
Perhaps those will help and/or be of interest! Best wishes!
Thanks for the pointer, Joe. What I’ve discovered is trying to write a step-by-step how-to is actually incredibly time consuming. I’ll keep my eyes open for video-casts (i.e. short video clips) – because there you see what’s going, as opposed to having to refer to a written text all the time. Otherwise, for something like Flickr, starting at their homepage is just not that helpful (don’t even try Del.icio.us…)
*However* – I’m doing a back-to-basics blogging presentation in Chicago soon, and I’ll try to post my presentation online. A little combo of why AND how. 😉
Take care,
G