Look What's Up in Osceola!

How I Write Awesome Content

by Kivi Leroux Miller

Let me start by saying that I am fully aware that not ALL of my content is awesome. Far, far from it.

But, I do know that I do write awesome stuff on a regular basis, because you tell me I do (and you are the judge). I often get emails or tweets that say things like, "I was struggling with this exact problem today! How did you know that?" or "I agree with you 100% but could never say that in my office. Now we can talk about it, because you wrote about it."
So I am doing something right, at least part of the time, for some of the people. And honestly, that's the best you can hope for, since awesome is always in the eye of the awesome-gauge holder. What you think is great flew right by a whole bunch of other people who couldn't care less. Maybe next time you'll impress them.

Here are my not-so-secret tips on creating awesome content.

1. Listen.

I am a sponge for needs, concerns, wants, angst, and excitement of nonprofit marketers. I am constantly listening (which is often actually reading) all the time to pick up what's going on in our professional world. I do it by paying attention to questions and reactions on webinars and in workshops, by reading comments on my blogs and others' blogs, by following nonprofits in social media, and more. Creating awesome content is much easier when you know what your readers are thinking about.

2. Find Your Way to Add Value.

But listening is really just the first step. To create awesome content, you have to go beyond just aggregating a bunch of ideas or topics, and to figure out a way to add value. I'm pretty good at seeing patterns, connecting dots, and boiling a whole bunch of stuff down to its essence. That's how I can add value. You need to figure out what your brain is good at, and then apply that to what you are hearing to create value of your own, which you then share in your own awesome content.

3. Put Something New into the World.

I like to do a few big surveys each year of hundreds of nonprofits, and often do smaller polls during webinars to capture anecdotal information, and then I share that information on my blog. I report back on various experiments of my own, from what happened when I gave donations to 20 national nonprofits to the impact of daily blogging. Think about what new information you can help bring to light. Don't get all hung up on whether something is statistically significant or scientifically accurate. As long as you explain your methods and don't overstate your claims, even sharing anecdotal information can be very helpful to people.

4. Show the Thinking Behind the Result.

I see my role as not only showing you how to do things, but helping you see how I came up with the process in the first place, so that you can think through your own problem solving. For example, I could have just given you the agenda for the recent board retreat I did on marketing, but I don't think that would have been nearly as helpful as giving you the adult learning and participation principles I used to create the agenda.

5. Take a Position - And Get Out There with It.

If you can write something that people can't say for themselves for whatever reason -- because the thoughts just haven't coalesced in their own heads yet, or because it would be politically unpopular in the office -- they will love you for you it. Strong opinions are also naturally more interesting and engaging, even if you don't personally agree with them (if you have any doubt about this, you obviously don't watch cable news, which is based entirely on this reality.)
One good example is the post I called My Communications Director is an Idiot. On timely topics, it does pay to get your views out there quickly, instead of just being another "me, too" voice. My blog post that received the most comments ever is one where I shared a strong opinion, and was one of the first to do so, in The Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure.

6. Add Some Clarity.

This may be the most important tip of all. People are so overwhelmed with information, and details, and all the ifs, ands, and buts that they are often paralyzed by it all. If you can add some clarity, so people know where to start and where to focus, they will love you. That's the whole goal of big projects like my six-month mentoring program, and little blog posts and graphics, like the "Is My Message Relevant?" Checklist.

That's how I do it.

An Old Friend in the Library - when rethinking service imperatives, let compassion be your guide

from an article by Jennifer Burek Pierce in americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/my-mind/old-friend-library.
Are libraries serving elderly patrons in the best ways?  Take a closer look at the experiences encountered by Jennifer Burek Pierce and her friend Doris.

As summer days grew longer and the heat increased, so did my trips to the public library. This summer, I had a companion: a longtime friend’s 84-year-old mother—now another good friend. While I cruised the children’s section, Doris would head to the shelves with large-print books. Her library use heightened my sensibilities about how we serve aging adults.

Despite professional statements about serving the elderly—notably Guidelines for Library and Information Services to Older Adults from ALA’s Reference and User Services Association and Serving Seniors: A Resource Manual for Missouri Libraries—I’ve begun to doubt that these ideals play an active part in our daily practices.

Doris’s library habits wouldn’t, at first glance, seem significant to anyone. It wasn’t until I’d been in the building with her over the course of a few weeks, attempting to find a balance between watching to make sure she didn’t fall and leaving her to her own devices, that I started to recognize the patterns.

On almost every visit, she looked for books in the exact same part of the large-print section. Eventually I realized this shelf wasn’t populated with her favorite authors; rather, that particular row, closest to both an entrance and a self-check station, didn’t require her to walk the full length of the building. Also, someone regularly left one of those round scooting stools in that aisle, undoubtedly to aid young, able-bodied shelvers. Doris could never have used the stool for its intended purpose—to stand on it—but the stool did provide her with a place to sit while she browsed. She is, admittedly, tiny, but you could be a few inches taller and still be incapable of reaching, or even really seeing, a third of the books on these shelves. Plus, I’ve scanned the new bookstore-emulating part of the library that is furnished with real chairs, easy-to-reach shelves, and cover-forward shelving. Large-print titles aren’t to be found there.

Watching the staff interact with her was frustrating. I know they were trying to treat her as the capable, independent woman she would very much like to be—and how she tries to present herself. Once, I came looking for her after finding my own books. She had asked for help locating the DVD of Brideshead Revisited, and a staff member had given her a slip of paper on which three call letters were written in the penmanship equivalent of 10-point type. The item Doris sought was on a bottom shelf at the far side of the room.

I know that libraries are busy places and staffers face many demands. I know all elderly people aren’t the same and that some truly don’t want or need that much assistance. Still, I couldn’t help thinking, “This is how you serve a 4-foot-11 woman with white hair, trifocals, and a hesitating gait?”

My concerns are framed by the time I spend in youth services departments. Think of all the things we do to make those spaces usable for kids: low shelves; bold, attractive signage. Think of all the training and professional rhetoric about establishing ways to interact with teens that recognize their need for independence versus the inherent limitations of their age. Why don’t we strive to serve the elderly in the same ways?

Such an endeavor brings us back to the roots of our profession, to Samuel S. Green’s 1876 article, “Personal Relations between Librarians and Readers,” in which he urged librarians to attend to all patrons’ varied needs. Three years later he wrote, “I would have in every library a friend of the young, whom they can consult freely when in want of assistance” (Library Journal, vol. 4, no. 9).

I would also have in every library a friend of the elderly, tactful and sensitive to their changing needs.

JENNIFER BUREK PIERCE is associate professor of library and information science at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Mapping Out Your Big Picture Communications Timeline

This is from NonProfit Marketing Guide.com by Kivi Leroux Miller http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/resources/strategy/mapping-out-your-big-picture-communications-timeline/

Do you feel like you are just throwing out a bunch of words and pictures into the universe without much rhyme or reason, and calling it your communications plan?

One way to bring some order and focus to your communications plan is to sketch out what I call your Big Picture Communications Timeline.

This is often the first step I’ll do with new clients, because it helps me see all the big parts, both moving and immobile.

This is best done on a big whiteboard, but you can also do it with a big sheet of paper. I think this is one of those times where sketching it out offline works best. Once you are done editing, you can clean it up as you move it online.

Since this is a timeline, pick your starting and ending points. A year, with tick marks for each month, is a good place to start, but if another time range makes more sense for your organization, use that.

Here’s what you plot out on that timeline.
Big Events, Outside Your Organization’s Control

Look at the calendar that your organization, your participants, your supporters, and the rest of the world are living with. What holidays, seasonal events, or other regular occurrences have a big effect on your communications?

For organizations that do political advocacy, the election cycle is often important, so you’d put down filing deadlines and primary and general election dates. For animal shelters, the start of kitten season, when stray cats start to have their litters, is mid-Spring (most kittens are born between April and October).

Food banks benefit from lots of food drives in November and December, but the shelves are often bare during the summer when the people who typically organize food drives (including schools) are busy with vacation plans. Nonprofits that offer after-school sports would chart the season openers and championships for the different sports leagues they play in.

Big Events, Within Your Organization’s Control

Next, add the big events that are within your control. Start with events that you host, including everything from annual fundraisers, workshops or conferences, member meetings, major performances, and lobby days. Then add on similar types of events that others host but that you co-sponsor or otherwise participate in in a major way. I’m not talking about events that one of your staff members might attend as professional development, but those events that your whole organization is involved with as a core part of what you do.

Your Major Story Arcs

On top of these events, layer on the major story arcs within your organization, roughly approximating when they happen. These are the major stories that play out as you deliver your programs and services. These are often tied to events you already have on the calendar now, so start there. Try to map out the beginning, middle, and end of those story arcs.

For example, let’s say a Friends of the Library group holds an annual used book sale in the May. While they will have already marked the sale weekend on the calendar above, now it’s time to build out the story around the book sale. If we treat the book sale as the end of the story, asking the community for donations of used books in February and March could be the beginning of the story and sorting and organizing the books in April could be the middle.

Or, you could treat the book sale (or any other fundraiser) as the beginning of the story, since the money raised there is probably being used for upcoming programming. In this case, the end of story might be a new Story Hour Series in the fall. The middle of the story, in the summer, could be the selection of books, authors, and activities for the series.

With these big milestones and stories in place, it’s now much easier to start breaking down this big picture into smaller chunks of time, like a quarter or a month, and to develop a more specific editorial calendar from there.

Technology Trainer Boot Camp

The Nicolet Federated Library System in Green Bay hosted a terrific webinar last week by Sarah Houghton, aka The Librarian in Black, called Technology Trainer Boot Camp.  It was an hour of excellent information and ideas about how to manage the onslaught of technology devices, providing training for staff and for library users alike.

You can access the archived version of the recording right here:  http://blip.tv/nfls/tech-trainer-boot-camp-6271571.  In it, you’ll learn:

• Techniques for helping e-reader newbies, including
• A regular drop-in (1 or 2 times a week) program where people can get their tech questions answered by staff and volunteers—this takes pressure off the reference desk!
• Helping pair up new users of the same device so they can help each other
• How to come up with training topics:  Think Big!  What do you want to teach?  What do you get tons of questions about?  Is there any training you can let go of to free up time for new topics?
• Remember that hands-on is the ONLY way to really teach about technology—you must allow for and encourage exploration
• Adaptability to change is a great thing to teach to staff and patrons!
• 10 great tips for tech training:
• Tell stories to really illustrate your points in a meaningful way
• Use humor
• Stop relying on step-by-steps!  Handouts alone don’t do the trick, people need to explore technology more organically.
• Keep it loose—be willing to shift what you are talking about depending on questions or technology problems
• Give people something to take away (handouts, contact information)
• Encourage exploration—give people time to mess around with a knowledgeable person in the background, ready to help
• Show respect—don’t talk down to people!
• Give them what they came for, even if it wasn’t what you planned to cover in a class.  Don’t overwhelm with superfluous information
• Be a real person—don’t put on an authoritative persona, use real examples from your own life, build commaraderie
• Give avenues for follow-up, be approachable afterwards

I recommend hearing these tips—explained with humor and real examples from Sarah’s experience—right from the horse’s mouth—give yourself an hour to watch the archive of this webinar!     -Leah Langby, IFLS Library Development and Youth Services Coordinator

Library-Book-Burning-Party Sparks Public Response!

Troy Public Library Book Burning:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoT13m8-Kxo

Troy, Michigan couldn’t afford to keep its library open, so it scheduled a vote for a 0.07 tax increase.  The Tea Party waged strong anti-tax group waged a “Vote No” campaign against the increase.  The city worked with Leo Burnett Detroit to run a counter campaign in the name of the Book Burning Party.  Signs appeared around Troy with the message, “Vote to close Troy library Aug 2, book burning party Aug 5.”  The campaign’s Facebook page became the hub for the new campaign, with Twitter, Foursquare, want ads, flyers and more to drive engagement.  The campaign became international news as outcry over the idea of burning the library’s books drowned out the opposition and galvanized support for the library--which won by a landslide.  The campaign won a Gold award for Government/Political at the International ANDY Awards 2012, and was recognized with the Facebook Integrated Media Award at the 2012 Clio Awards.

Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality

from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/technology/google-glasses-will-be-powered-by-android.html?_r=1

It wasn’t so long ago that legions of people began walking the streets, talking to themselves. On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny earpieces that connected wirelessly to their smartphones.
What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.

That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.

“It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these glasses,” said William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer science and software engineering department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can from the behind the glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people duck or dodge around virtual things.”

Mr. Brinkman, whose work focuses on augmented reality or the projection of a layer of information over physical objects, said his students had experimented on their own with virtual games and obstacle courses. “It looks really weird to outsiders when you watch people navigate these spaces,” he said.

They have not seen the Google glasses. Few people have, because they are being built in the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View, Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots and space elevators.
The glasses will use the same Android software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors. They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs.

Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party. They might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.

People flailing their arms in midair as they play those games is a potentially humorous outcome of the virtual reality glasses. In a more serious vein is the almost certain possibility of privacy issues and ubiquitous advertisements. When someone is meeting a person for the first time, for example, Google could hypothetically match the person’s face and tell people how many friends they share in common on social networks.

This month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research and advocacy group for Internet privacy, asked the Federal Trade Commission to suspend the use of facial recognition software until the government could come up with adequate safeguards and privacy standards to protect citizens.

Mr. Brinkman said he was very excited by the possibilities of the glasses, but acknowledged that the augmented reality glasses could pose some ethical issues.

“In addition to privacy, it’s also going to change real-world advertising, where companies can virtually place ads over other people’s ads,” he said. “I’m really interested in seeing how the government can successfully regulate augmented reality in this sense. They are not really going to know what people are seeing behind those glasses.”

More here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/google%E2%80%99s-project-glass-lets-technology-slip-into-the-background/