Social Networking track participant information

Social networking technologies has a special role to play in strategies for activism or for building campaigns. Technologies like blogs, social bookmarking sites, online communities, tagging and so on can be powerful mediums to build communities, get people actively engaged with your message and to take action. This track will look at how we can strategically and creatively adapt these platforms and tools to build movements and advocacy campaigns.

Trainers

Oreoluwa Somolu (Nigeria)
Christina Haralanova (Bulgaria)
Manal Hassan (Egypt)

Track Outline

The schedule has changed to reflect the sessions and discussions that took place in the track

Day 1: 10 November 2008

11:00 – 13:00 session I:

• Social networking & Social Movements (tag clouds)
• Examples of online campaigns
  • Kolena Laila from Egypt
  • Blank Noise from India

• 6th of April Stroke

14:30 – 16:00 session 2: How to communicate your message online

• Group break out: If you are working on a campaign against domestic viloence, How will you formulate your message? And which channels will you use to reach these target audiences:
  1. Youth
  2. Married men

1. Politicians

16:30 – 18:00 session 3: Practical exercise: Blogging on FTX website

1. Editing your FTX user accounts
2. Creating a blogpost
3. Tagging

1. Commenting on other posts

Day 2: 11 November 2008

11:00 – 13:00 session 1: using Social Networking tools for advocacy

1. Promoting your blog
2. Bridge Blogs (ex: Global Voices)
3. Female bloggers
   1. BlogHer
1. Feminist Blogs
2. Mash ups
   • Tunisian prisoners map
   • Ushahidi
• 6 April
4. RSS and aggregators (Practical exercise: create accounts on the feed reader bloglines.com
5. Some advocacy resources
   1. Message in a box
1. Global Voices advocacy guide
2. Some ICT & Advocacy Resources
3. Tech Soup
4. Net Squared
5. Tactical Tech

1. NTEN

14:30 – 16:30 session 2: Practical exercise: On different tools
Group break outs:

1. Content Management Systems (Drupal & SPIP)
2. Setting your personal blog on Wordpress.com and embedding videos from Youtube.com
3. Social Networking using Facebook and Microblogging using Twitter

1. Group discussion on: Sharing experiences of networking in their organisation, Using online tools more effectively, Sharing resources that have been used by other development organisations and social movements

15:00 – 18:00 session 3:

• Report back from groups
• Discuss and adjust next day agenda

• Practical session: Formatting options and adding images to your posts.

Day 3: 12 November 2008

9:00 – 11:00 session 1: Discussion on FOSS and Creative Commons

• Free Software definition
  1. Freedom to use the software in any way
  2. It’s possible to study the software and adapt it to your need
  3. Ability to copy and redistribute
1. Ability to redistribute your modifications
• Dual boot system, and Free Software applications on Windows and Mac
• One site to visit to download FOSS is Sourceforge
• Examples of FOSS include:
  1. Open Office Suite
  2. Firefox Web Browser
  3. “ThunderBird”: http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
  4. Pidgin instant messenger for different protocols and also for secure communications
  5. Gimp for image manpulation and graphic design
  6. Inkscape for vector graphics
  7. Adium , free instand messaging chat tool for Macs that can connect with AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.
  8. Linux, which is an operating software (and alternative to Windows)
1. For applications and manuals regarding security and privacy, check Security NGO in a Box, it’s a bit out dated but you can have the list of apps and download the recent versions of the applications, and the new version of Security NGO in a Box should be released by the end of this year.
2. Linux Distros
3. Ubuntu (the South African flavor)
4. Debian
5. Mandriva
6. Red Hat
7. Fedora
1. Curumim (the Brazilian flavor)
2. Advantages of using FOSS are:
3. More people have access to it, because it is free
4. Not tied to having to purchase frequent, expensive upgrades
5. Can be localised i.e. developed in local language
6. One can be gender-sensitive i.e. use language in the software that is not discriminatory to women
7. People can experiment more with FOSS since it’s low cost and more accessible
8. Anyone with the skills or interest can contribute to the improvement of the software
9. Less worry associated with viruses due to less security holes
10. Bugs are fixed faster, because team of volunteer developers means faster response times
1. Linux comes already with a suite of software, unlike other OS that need to have software purchased as extras
• CreativeCommons

• • Example: search images uploaded on Flickr released under creative commons

11:30 – 13:00 Final session:

• how audio, video and mobile technology can be used for advocacy?

Facilitators from the other 4 tracks visited to share what did they do in their separate tracks, how it could be used for advocacy, what tools are available, which file formats to use and they kindly answered the flood of questions from the social networking tracks.. Thank u Tessa, Cheekay and Francoise

• Video (Tessa)
  1. Example from Tessa
  2. Another example from Tessa
  3. Blip Tv as an alternative of YouTube (with less branding)
  4. Audacity free software for audio editing
  5. dotSub a website with a lot of videos with their subtitles and a community for translating subtitles
  6. pure:dyne

1. Use iMovie for videoediting on Mac, and Movie Maker on windows.. Linux is still lacking a bit, but there’s Blender (3D graphics program but allows video editing) and Cinelerra but they are not very user friendly.

• Audio (Francoise)
  1. The first thing when considering using audio is to ensure that you have a reason for using audio i.e. that you have something to say and that audio is a good format for your audience.
1. Where can we put our audio message?
• Cellphone (e.g. Freedom Phone)
• Radio
• Multimedia Presentation (e.g. PowerPoint)
• Video
• Streaming or Podcast
1. Common file formats are
• WAV (These tend to be bigger, but of better quality)
• MP3 (This allows heavy compression, so smaller)
1. Tools required:
• Microphone
• Recorder (Analogue and Digital)
• Editing Software – This is to edit the sound file. Examples are Cool Edit Pro, Adobe Edition (these are expensive and used by many professionals); SoundForge (for Macs); Audacity (free open source)

• Hijack Cable – Connects analogue recorder to computer. Audio content is transferred in real time.

* USB Cable – Connects digital recorder to computer

The skills involved include writing, background research, recording and editing.

• Evaluation forms to be distributed to and filled by participants

By the end of this training, I will:

• Know how to write and publish my message online
• Learn about social networking tools
• Learn about FOSS alternatives
• Have a blog

• Know how to apply my ICT knowledge to enhance the feminist movement