Like many consultants, I spend a lot of time reading articles and blog posts from around the web. Here are some posts I found particularly interesting. This time they are about data journalism, crisis mapping, Twitter and a creative YouTube video.
Greenpeace UK is starting an interesting experiment: for the next six weeks, their main Twitter account will be open to all staff members.
Robert Kirkpatrick from the UN’s Global Pulse team is talking about how United Nations agencies would like to use big data to search for crises in real-time. It’s a fascinating talk about how his team has been using data mining techniques to monitor food prices and what more could be done.
Back from my vacation I had the opportunity to listen to a live webcast on “Social Media as a Tool for Humanitarian Protection” that was organized by Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR).
Patrick Meier visited the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington D.C. and got a tour of the brand new Digital Operations Center which AmCross is using to monitor social media during emergencies.
A while ago, I wrote about the global Internet manhunt that the US government was organizing. The “game” took place on March 31 and the strategy of the best-performing team showed, that sub-contracting was the most efficient way to track down the wanted people.
Any discussion about the use of social media in the non-profit world is also a discussion about what impact it has when someone does nothing more than retweets a message or “likes” a post. Take Part has now published an infographic that aims to correct slacktivism’s bad name.
I’m a firm believer that you get what you pay for and in that respect I find little encouragement in the “2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Report”. According to the report, non-profits and NGOs are still very reluctant to allocate resources to their social media activities. But this is also a chance for those who are willing to make the investment.
