Archive for the ‘Activism’ Category

An historic blizzard in blasting the Northeast and is shutting down air travel, affecting emergency vehicle response rates, and forcing many to stay indoors.

In classic social media style, Twitter users respond by tagging blizzard related tweets with #Snowpacalyse and #Snomageddon hashtags.

Some tweets are light-hearted:

Other tweets are serious requests for assistance:

Two Twitter Superstars, Cory Booker and 50 Cent have very different approaches to dealing with the resulting blizzard crisis.

CORY BOOKER – Public Service
Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker (@corybooker), is using Twitter as a sort of radio dispatch system to connect Newark citizens with updates on snow plow activity and to help with emergency services. With over 1 Million Twitter followers, much of the Twittersphere is seeing him in action and the media is taking notes.

Mayor Booker actually rolled up his sleeves and went out to dig people out.

50 CENT – A Lesson on Hustling
In a smaller scale shoveling endeavor, multi platinum rapper 50 Cent (@50Cent) shoveled his way out of his Connecticut home then said he intended to go into the shoveling business.

50 Cent later told his 3.7 Million Twitter followers that he was scaling up his shoveling operation and had hired 3 kids to help with door to door sales.

Whether or not 50 Cent was really charging and hiring people for his ad hoc business or just having some fun with his followers remains to be seen. But his tweet stream does provide a lesson on how to flex one’s hustle muscle.

Final Thoughts

I can personally relate to both Snowmageddon approaches. On the one hand, I’m all about public service and helping others in times of need. Cory Booker is definitely one of my role models. On the other hand, as a someone building my own consulting business, I appreciate 50 Cent’s startup hustle mentality.

I think that the snow fall and our response to it is a larger metaphor for strategies on how we’ll approach the new year. Will we work collaboratively and negotiate our way through the recession, job loss, and home price collapse or will we focus on our own personal islands?

Related Articles
* Mayor Hacks Snowmageddon With Epic Tweets- Wired Magazine
* 50 Cent Shovels Snow for Money After Northeast Blizzard – Billboard.com

Photo credits
* 50 Cent on Plixi
* @douglasingram on Twitpic
* @AgingBackwards on Twitpic
* @hijofrizbe on Twitpic

Due to a number of factors, a great number of people (friends, supporters, participants) cannot make it this weekend to San Luis Obispo. But we still expect a very good group, so we have decided to hold a big meetup in town and postpone the formal event for early 2011 when more people can make it.

Come join the Latino2 speakers and organizers and Central Coast leaders to discuss the formal launch of LATISM 2012 and help us plan the Spring event.

Lunch is on us at the Native Lounge in San Luis Obispo — a truly unique dining experience — and the conversation will be good. We’ll meet at 2PM and stay as late as we have a crowd.

I’d like to personally thank everyone who has been so supportive of the Latino2 conference and the LATISM 2012 Initiative. I look forward to meeting with you at the tweetup and discussing how we can build this into a bigger event.

Tweet-up information

Native Lounge – San Luis Obispo
1023 Chorro Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401-3222

Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010 – from 2pm to 4pm (or later, as long as we have a crowd)

Lunch is on us!

Sincerely,

Latino2 producers and LATISM,
Jose Huitron @josehuitron
Giovanni Rodriguez @giorodriguez
Jesse Luna @jesseluna

Photo Credit: rx_kamakshi on Flickr – License

Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) is proud to announce San Luis Obispo as the second stop on the Latino2 California Tour.

Come join us on December 4, 2010, at the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center in San Luis Obispo. California’s Central Coast is the birth place of “La Causa”, the Latino civil rights movement. The conference will focus on the theme “Community and Collaboration in Central California: Then and Now.”

• REGISTER for the Latino2 conference (FREE)
• Tune into Latino2 conference details on the official site

Getting Excited?

The video below is a compilation from the first Tour stop in Los Angeles. Many thanks to Gina Ruiz (@ginaruiz on Twitter) and Deldelp Medina (@deldelp) for sharing pictures and videos!

Picture credit: lastorset on Flickr

This is the news article that prompted the creation of this poll:

LAUSD to use fingerprint scans for school lunches

This issue is of interest to me for several reasons:

• I used to work for a company that sold fingerprint recognition components
• I taught for eight years
• And, I’m fascinated by the overlap of technology and culture

Like this poll? Share it and feel free to discuss in the Comments section.

Photo Credit: lobstar28 on Flickr – License

Do you follow over 100 news sources? Are you the first to retweet earthquake tweets? Do you send late night DM’s to major new sources then see them show up on the news a few minutes later? If so, then you’re definitely a news hound.

Here are five tips to keep you at the top of the news food chain.

1) Follow a lot of news sources via Twitter.

News agencies are changing the way they present news information online. Before they used to only post full news stories. Now many are employing the “first to break” strategy. In that strategy, news agencies will start with a tweet on Twitter then move on to a very brief post on their site. If you follow a lot of news sites then you can use some of the other techniques below to stay ahead of the story.

Actress and activist Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) is great at posting hot news. If you look at who she’s following on Twitter, you’ll see a ton of news sources. By finding then retweeting news items, Alyssa is able to provide a valuable resource to her followers. Hot news also makes for great retweet material.

2) Follow a lot of people on Twitter.

If you are really on the hunt for news, you need to follow a lot of people. Breaking news happens all the time, in all parts of the world. Reading tweets from many followers helps build a picture of what’s going on without having to cobble information based on Trending Topics.

Rich Sanchez from CNN (@ricksanchezcnn) follows over 47,000 people and feeds on Twitter. This helps him track stories and connect with potential news sources.

If following many people puts a crimp in your social media plan, then rely on method number one and follow top breaking news sources.

3) Use Twitter’s advanced search.

With Twitter’s advanced search you can track down stories based on 18 different filters. One of the most powerful measures is searching by Place. For example, if you know there is a strong earthquake in a particular location, you can enter that location in the “near this location” textbox then set the distance from that location. This will show tweets from people that are actually in the area.

Also, if you enter “Twitpic” in the Words section, you can retrieve tweets with links to pictures.

4) User Twitter lists.

My process for tracking natural disaster news is to spot the news items from my timeline then do an advanced Twitter search and identify people who are in the region. The next step is to add those Twitterers to a new Twitter List. I used that news tracking process during the Fort Hood shootings.

Tracking people near the news site during an emergency or natural disaster helps give a three-dimensional view of what’s happening. The tweets are also likely to be less “filtered” then that coming from official news sources.

5) Search emergency live feeds.

When you are on the news hunt for information on an emergency or natural disaster, do a Web search over [cityname] + “fire department live feeds.” Fire trucks are often the first on the scene of an emergency and you can usually find a live feed online. I used fire department scanners to track the plane crash in Denver in 2008.

6) BONUS: Search Web Cams.

You’ve been very patient up to now so I’m throwing in a 6th Hot Tip. If you do a Web search over [cityname] + “live cam” or “web cam” you will usually be able to get video of the area. I used this technique during the last tsunami watch in Hawaii and off the California coast.

Assignment

The next time emergency news breaks, use techniques 3-6 above and get a rich 3D view of the news story.

Do you have any other resources or techniques that you use for tracking breaking news? I’d love to hear about them.

One year ago today (July 4th, 2009), thousands mourned the death of Eric De La Cruz after he was unable to get a heart transplant in time. Eric’s sister, television journalist Veronica De La Cruz (@VeronicaDLCruz), had reached out to her Twitter network and started an historic campaign that would connect thousands, raise over one million dollars in three weeks, and play a significant role in the U.S. health care debate.

There are hundreds of stories like this on Twitter and each one revolves around a strong community. After being a part of the Eric De La Cruz campaign (#ERIC) and many other efforts, I have identified four key tips for building strong and lasting Twitter communities.

A Quick Note
Please note, Twitter is one large community, so when I write “community” in this post I’m really talking about niche communities.

1) Follow community leaders

The best way to learn about amazing Twitter communities is to follow Twitter leaders and innovators. Following leaders helps understand the way they engage their communities and the larger dynamics of that particular community.

There are thousands of leaders who have had a significant impact on Twitter, in industries, and in society in general. Here are three community leaders:

Sarah Evans(@prsarahevans) – Founder of #Journchat, a Twitter chat organized to connect journalists, PR people, and bloggers. #Journchat has had tens of thousands of participants [my guesstimate] and has been in existence for almost two years. Journchat is even crossing over into mainstream media as it will be broadcast from NBC next month.

Mack Collier (@mackcollier) – Blogger and founder of #blogchat. #Blogchat has activated a large community of bloggers, with over 400 active participants per week and is growing.
Leslie Carothers (@tkpleslie) has been connecting members of the struggling furniture and interior design for the past two years.

2) Care and have a mission

Amazing Twitter communities start when the founders are passionate about a topic or cause. The topic may be promoting the furniture industry, sharing ideas between journalists, or helping to raise awareness for a cause. Chances are, the community will flounder without a strong reason for its existence.

Here are some examples of Twitter users who create community by caring:

Stacey Monk -(@staceymonk) has help created some of the most innovative and heartfelt fundraising efforts including Tweetsgiving.

Danny Brown – (@dannybrown) set up a network of tweeters that helped charities contribute via his #12for12 campaign.

Beth Kanter – (@kanter) has built a massive community of non-profit organizations that are promoting social change.

3) Reach Out

Community building on Twitter is a proactive behavior. Once you have a network of trusted friends, you can reach out to them and encourage them to reach out as well. The more powerful the intent of the community, the broader the reach.

The number of community members is not as important as the strength of the network. In the diagram above, the blue areas represent the “density” and connectedness of the trust network. The largest circle is the larger Twitter community, which may be listening but not necessarily engaged in the community.

Magic happens when different communities meet and support each other. At some point, the #ERIC group connected with a large number of Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails supporters and Trent (@trent_reznor) ended up joining and helping the cause in an amazing way.

4) Stay Connected

Twitter is a big place and it’s easy to get lost. The top three ways to stay connected are to use a hashtag when tweeting community-specific information, to set up a chat, and to use an avatar banner.

Hashtags
A hashtag is a combination of a “#” symbol in front of a short keyword or keyword phrase like #ERIC, #journchat, #tweetsgiving, #blogchat, or #12for12.

The hashtag is something Twitter users created and has since been adopted by Twitter. Twitter clients like Twitter Web and TweetDeck allow users to click on a hashtag then be linked to a search over other tweets using that hashtag. For example, if a tweet contains the “#blogchat” hashtag, clicking on it will take you to the #blogchat search results.

Hashtags become extremely powerful when community members start to monitor the hashtag content on a consistent basis. I monitor the #blogchat, #ERIC, #vlogchat, and the #WordPress hashtags and have them set up as different search columns in TweetDeck. This process allows even people who follow thousands of others to see the single conversation stream related to the hashtag.

Chats
Twitter chats are conversations held at regular times that use the related community’s hashtag. This Google Document lists over 150 Twitter chats and includes the names of the chat founders and the chat schedule. Chats help sustain long term community relationships.

Avatar banners
Avatar banners are the little graphics that are added to avatars to represent a cause or community. During the Iran election, thousands of people changed their avatars to have a greenish tint. During World Cup, I noticed a lot of country flags on avatars. For the #ERIC campaign, I created an avatar banner that also included the #ERIC hashtag. Once I started using the #ERIC banner on my avatar, others in the group created ways to easily distribute the banner and in a couple of weeks hundreds of people were wearing them.

Review

So if you are interested in starting your own strong Twitter community, you may want to follow Twitter leaders and learn, make sure you have a compelling reason to start a community in the first place, reach out and build your forces, and stay connected using things like hashtags, avatar banners, and scheduled chats.

Do you have any other tips for building an effective and strong Twitter community? Do you have any amazing stories that you would like to share about an existing community? I’d be honored if you left a Comment and shared with this blog’s community of readers.