I just finished reading Joel Hafvenstein’s “Opium Season“, a book that has absolutely nothing to do with social media but which I’d like to recommend to anyone working in the aid-business.
Opium Season is about Hafvenstein’s time in Afghanistan in 2005, when he was working for a USAID funded cash-for-work project that was supposed to supplement the income of people who were due to lose money because of a poppy-eradication campaign.
The problem with donor driven programmes
What makes this book such a good[...]
Archive for the ‘Recommended’ Category
I know many NGOs who produce feature-length advocacy films to state their case against e.g. climate change, human trafficking, dragnet-fishing etc. And I am certain that many of them could be greatly enhanced by an approach like “Us Now”.
Given how obsessed everyone was with how social media helped elect Barack Obama, I’m surprised that I haven’t read more reviews of this book: “Yes We Did – An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand” by Rahaf Harfoush, which gives an excellent overview over how the Obama campaign used social media to mobilize people to donate time and money.
Harfoush (@rahafharfoush) was a volunteer with Obama’s new media team. She describes the different tools that the campaign used along[...]
One of my projects over the last few months was to write and get approval for social media staff guidelines for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). I’m sharing them because I hope that they will be useful to other organizations who are working on similar documents.
One of the most persistent and hardest to dispel myths in social media is that of the “quick win”. Since Facebook, Twitter etc. are easy to use from a technical point of view and since there are always stories of people getting an insane amount of attention through these channels, many people assume that there is no work involved.
Scott Stratten has recently posted an excellent, short video (1:52 min) explaining why you can’t expect to open a social media account today[...]
The United Nations Joint Inspection Body recently spoke to web professional in 40 UN agencies to identify what the most common problems are and how to fixed them.
The result is an impressive document that can be used by many non-profit organizations, NGOs, International Organizations and even government ministries and agencies to address similar problems in their own organization.
The ”Review of Management of Internet Websites in the United Nations System Organizations“ (31 pages) focuses on website governance and strategy – and I still have to[...]
I’ve just been reading Ken Burbary’s blog and came across an excellent story from Scott Monty. I think it’s a beauty in itself and doesn’t need any additional commentary:
“A friend sent me a PDF of an article from a business journal in which a company expressed reservations about this new technology over which everyone seemed to be abuzz. They decided that they would restrict employees’ use of it, because of the fear of corporate secrets getting out, of insider information[...]
As mentioned in an earlier post about the Germany will have general elections at the end of September. As a result some interesting web applications are appearing on the web, geared at trying to help voters with their decision.
Germany’s most respected political magazine, “Der Spiegel”, is trying to make abstract political platforms tangible through a “web soap-opera” called ”Zeit der Entscheidung” (Decision Time). Each webisodes lasts for 15 minutes before the viewer is asked for his party preference. Then, the video[...]
