About video blogging

Just read a tweet from someone who wanted to find good resources on the Web about vlogging. Thought I would add to that conversation with a list of video blogging blogs and other sites.

NOTE: This is a quick list, not thoroughly explored. We’ve done a cursory looksee, but nothing thorough. We’re not endorsing any of these sites or have any personal connection with the owners. We’re not responsible for any of the information on these sites.

I’m also including a list of my favorite places to find examples of the best video being produced for the Web. Please chime in and let us know about your favorites, too! NOTE: These are sites that we DO know and love, although we’re still not responsible for their content, though we’d love to be contributors.

Links to video blogging sites. How-tos and wherefors:

• The obligatory Wikipedia page on Vlogging
• The video blogging toolbox: 100 tools, resources and free software packages
• Cloggersummit: Video blogging in Cambodia (includes their own list of vblogging links)
• Common video shooting mistakes from Robert Scoble, via Beth Kanter
• Workflow for editing Alive in Baghdad video, by Michael Verdi (more advanced information)
• How to create a free video blog

Some of my favorite sites that feature the Web’s best in video content:

• MediaStorm
• The Washington Post, documentary video
• The New York Times, video
• SlateV
• The Toronto Star, video
• The Spokesman-Review, video

Random Note: MUSIC and vlogs. Three words that you need to be aware of when thinking about using someone else’s music, including your favorite NIN track: Copyright, copyright and copyright. If you didn’t compose it or have explicit permission from the composer and musician(s) to use the music in your public video, you are using it illegally and unethically.

There are many free (or cheap) and legal ways to get music:

• compose your own, if you play an instrument;
• become a composer using clips from garage band or other similar software;
• ask a friend who plays an instrument to let you record and use her/his music;
• for a small fee, you can buy rights’ free music from many sites;
• you or a friend can perform and record (most) music created before the copyright law was enacted around 1940.

Here’s a site that goes deeper into the subject: Music Copyright Laws in the U.S.

Hope this helps! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and more ideas to making and watching great online video!

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Why should nonprofits use social media?

This topic seems to have boiled over this week! I’ve been quizzed about it personally and seen blogs and tweets exploring the same question. Why should nonprofits use social media? What are the benefits? Why should we pour effort and time into a process of one-to-one relationships?

The value proposition

To my mind, the nonprofit mindset is a form of social media. Simply put, both nonprofit methodology and social media tools connect people with people on a personal, emotional, non-corporate basis. That makes nonprofits a natural fit for online social media. If you compare the benefits of both, it becomes even clearer.

Benefits of social media

Although the ROI is less direct to the financially focused eye, the community building return on social media investment can be golden. One of the foremost proofs of social media value is a marketing tenet: People are infinitely more prone to buy or believe in something based on the endorsement of someone they know over a commercial or spokesperson.

Its easier to gauge the value of any plan if you have a set of clear goals that establish your expectations.

Nonprofits depend on committed relationships with their members – their staunch fans based on a shared passion for a cause. Therefore, goals for connecting with members via social media must reflect that respect for the membership and your shared concern.

The list of goals attainable through social media includes:

• Connecting with your membership
• Providing an information source for your membership
• Giving your members more ways to communicate with you
• Giving your members more ways to communicate with each other
• Creating a broader community and increasing membership

Because so many people are engaged in social media, maintaining a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other sm tools, you are going to your members. You’re offering members ways to connect with you on their terms, where they’re comfortable and active.

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Decluttering…but how?

A great question posed by http://contentious.com and twitter’s @agahran via a Seesmic video HERE. 

That’s a mammoth ordeal I’m thinking about, too. Here is my proposed five-point method for dealing with a basement and house full of generations of stuff:

1) Categorize

I look at or just think about the chaos that is my basement, and my brain wilts like a dehydrated nasturtium. However, things get better when I start mentally putting my stuff into categories. For me, the major stuff groups are: books, music (tapes and CDs), photographs, papers/writing and desk materials.

Now I’ve got a place to start. I can tackle one category at a time. This also helps me identify storage needs for each category, too; shelving for books, boxes or shelving for music, boxes and archival things for photographs; notebooks, boxes, cabinetry for the papers, etc.

All things not in these categories will be more manageable when I deal with them later.

2) Identify piles

Set areas/bags/boxes with intentions. Mine: KEEP; GIVE AWAY/LIBRARY; GIVE AWAY/FRIENDS; GIVE AWAY/THRIFT SHOP; RECYCLING; TRASH.

And it REALLY helps if you act on those intentions immediately. Load up the car with the giveaway items and take directly to their landing pads, accept no other appointments until the stuff is gone!

3) Enlist a helper

Having someone else to help you, especially when we’re talking overwhelming loads, helps you focus better and carry things. Plus, it’s another brain to think creatively about how to organize the stuff you keep.

Also, it’s great if one person can keep the momentum going as the other hauls the stuff away.

It’s great if you have a spouse or sibling who can be a second pair of hands. My brother helped me clean our mom’s garage – a feat that would taken MUCH longer and been infinitely harder psychologically and physically without him.

4) Schedule the declutterama

Next, it’s important to cementing the clean up in your schedule. Again, that’s easier to do when someone else is involved, otherwise a lunch date or social opportunity or an amazing Frontline episode can be forces more powerful than your will to clean. Make it a priority. 

Also, schedule for success. Tackle one category at a time. Finish something within the time frame you’ve slated. If “Books” is too big for a few hours, set out to arrange them in their own categories, or tackle a certain amount to go through.

5) Make a plan

Set it all in writing: The categories; the piles; how you’re going to deal with the things you keep. Just like embarking on a craft project, set out the materials you’re going to need so you don’t get stopped by a dangling detail.

That’s the plan. I hope it helps others…and me! Let me know if this works for you and what tweaks you’d recommend. 

Happy decluttering!

 

 

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