DIGITAL

‘The Networked Nonprofit’, the beauty of Ustream and social media volunteering

Yes, because live streaming is fun!:) To me personally it really combines the best of two worlds: virtual world’s ability to put aside geographical restrictions and networking, socializing power of off-line interactions. I have been working with Ustream more recently and I must admit it’s a good tool. It allows interactiveness via chat and social networks; it feeds directly to YouTube (so if your recorded live streaming is not longer than 10 min, or you simply stop and resume recording every 10 min you can upload all files to YouTube with one click!) and it is free.

Last night (night GMT, I mean) I watched the virtual launch of ‘The Networked Nonprofit’ book written by two great women – Beth Kanter and Allison Fine. The launch was fun, well conducted and moderated on-line event, with spice of excitement when Beth has actually sold 100 copies of her book and had to jump into the pool – an ending to a live streaming session you do not get to see every day;) But seriously – I think it was a great idea to start the promotion of the book this way!;)

I posted my notes on few valuable ideas from the virtual launch here, but I would like to focus on one particular on my personal blog: social media volunteering. For people active and aware of social media possibilities, volunteering by donating small chunk of their time together with a bit of understanding of new tools is easy. For charities or people in need that particular donation can prove to be live saving! Forgive me for saying that – as I am relatively new to the social media for non for profit sector – but I do not really see many platforms or communities supporting this type of volunteering. When Clive arrived to London and i learned a bit more about his story, I found it rather natural to suggest my support in anything related to on-line coverage. I met a person, who traveled half the world to speak up for his people in order to protect their future and all I had to (or rather could do!) was to ask for access to his blog, to polish it up a bit. Small changes to me meant really a lot to him and his people – so much, that I was given brilliant feedback! And yes, I did feel good about those what…30 minutes I spend on the blog and following e-mail with few tips. So if there are solutions there to provide that bridge between skilled social media fans and people/organizations who need their help – please point them out to me. If there aren’t – can someone please create one?

0 Comments

  • Thomas Wanhoff

    I like Ustream as well, the only problem I see is that in countries without proper bandwith you are pretty much lost in transmission. In Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos as well as in Thailand it's just not possible (and/or affordable) to watch live streams. Like in Laos you still pay by data transfer (depending on your ISP contract). I think thats the same for many african countries. I remember when Beth Kanter was in Cambodia and for the Cloggersummit we tried to have a Skype Video call in, it didnt work properly. On the other hand I experienced that Al Jazeera streams quite good here in Laos. so it might be just a technical issue. at least for developing countries.

  • sylwiapresley

    I think the quality of connection is always an issue. I was on a very small bandwith contract for a while, which really restricted me – even from watching films on YouTube – so I do understand where you are coming from. It applies both to watching, as well as streaming I believe. When you are in a place with good wifi, but pretty overloaded by large amount of users – which happened to me not once – even if the speed of connection is good, live streaming might not be successful. Thank you for bringing it up, Thomas, I think it's worth remembering to feed updates to Twitter as a backup too, and think about solutions suitable to the venue and the audience.

  • TH!NK3 post – My Story #

    […] it comes to solutions there will always be some limitations, of course. As mentioned under my post on the virtual launch of ‘The Networked Nonprofits’, the quality of Internet connection might become restrictive. It’s a serious barrier of […]

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