HEY GARGOYLE: a Modest Correction

I’m the Speaker for the UC Literary and Athletics Society, Canada’s oldest democratically elected student government. It’s a pretty amazing job, I get paid to moderate meetings. The largest challenge of the job, however, is remaining completely neutral on issues while also showing discretion as to how long to discuss each topic.

On Monday The Varsity published an article about the UC Lit withholding The Gargoyle’s funding. The Lit is charged with releasing funds to The Gargoyle, which is funded by a levy imposed to UC Students. This process is in place to ensure responsible use of UC Student Funds.

The Gargoyle budget was not approved because of council concerns that 20% of the budget was being spent on foot, drinks (including alcohol), and two end of  (compared to 2-3% at The Varsity; 6.5% at The Mike; and 10% at the Strand) and that these drinks, including alcohol were being illegally consumed within the main UC building.

I’ll keep my opinion out of this post, but what I will take issue with is The Varsity interviewing Gavin Nowlan being interviewed for the story. Gavin wasn’t at the meeting. Perhaps this is why some of what he told the Varsity was factually incorrect:

• “The vote [to reject our budget] was done in about five minutes (WRONG! It was at least 15, I was keeping track) without any questions being asked to the two editors [of The Gargoyle] that were at the meeting (WRONG AGAIN! A representative from The Gargoyle was given time to present their budget in full – no one was timing their speech or cut them off. There was a question period after The Gargoyle presented where council members were able to ask as many questions as they wished).
• “They just voted it down without any discussion (WRONG! there was discussion for 15 minutes or more), which was kind of shock to us considering that the UC Lit is famous for arguing for hours about the spelling of people’snames in their minutes (This is odd, seeing as in the last Gargoyle, after the Lit gave the paper a grant to purchase a scanner,the publication devoted a page to correcting spelling mistakes of our secretary and personally attacking various members on council).”

Gavin’s interview to The Varsity is nothing more then hearsay, he wasn’t at the meeting and in both of the quotes in the piece he is factually wrong. What happens to The Gargoyle’s money is yet to be decided; however, I felt the need to set a couple things straight moving forward.

UPDATE: The Gargoyle’s budget got accepted by the Lit last night.

The Potential of Twitter Lists

In October Twitter launched a new “lists” feature that allows users to make lists of their users for the sake of organization.  The feature is already getting popular use: Time has a “funny people” list; the New York Times has a staff list, and the Huffington Post is even using a List API for Word Series Coverage.

What really caught my eye is when Kyle Baptista from Engineers without Borders twittered about how EWB was jumping on the Twitter List bandwagon and has made lists of their staff and their overseas volunteers for people to follow. EWB is a fantastic organization that you really should check out – they do pretty amazing work.  It really is fantastic that they are adopting this technology so early on; however, the question that rose to my mind was how does an organization like EWB control the tweets of its staff and volunteers?

There exists a continuum within the world of social media: at one end there is little transparency, total brand cohesion and little dialogue within social media channels; on the other end is total transparency, rich conversation over social media channels, and the risk of sagging brand cohesion at times. Aggregating tweets of staff members is risking and blurs the line as to what is said in one’s private versus work time. What if a staff member’s tweets do not correspond with brand of the organization? Do organizations that adopt these techniques need to develop social media strategies that expand to individual twitter use? Is this justification for reprimand?

What are some organizations that get it right, balancing this social media continuum?

HEY UTSU! Don’t Spam My Facebook!

I got a message last week from a member of the University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU) saying that I was tagged in a Photo Album entitled All Out November 5th. I went to the photo and I wasn’t in it; instead was tagged along with 30-odd other people in the photo as a way to promote the UTSU Student Day of Action on November 5th, a day where the the UTSU and anyone who isn’t overcome with apathy or fed-up with the repetitive and unnecessary vilification of the University of Toronto marches outside U of T administrative buildings demanding they drop fees.

I’m all for promoting UTSU initiatives, in fact I’ve previously blogged about the need for the UTSU to take on more outreach initiatives, but the mass-tagging of photos on Facebook  is nothing short of spam.  It takes advantage of a feature built into Facebook that posts photos on the walls of people in which they were tagged.

 

UTSU photo tagging = SPAM.

I want to keep this from becoming a rant, but I wonder how the UTSU can justify doing this. Regardless of one’s beliefs towards the UTSU or the drop fees campaign, spamming has become a fairly frowned upon behavior. With anti-spamming bills such as C-27 slowly making their way into legislation, I wonder how long it will take for this legislation to expand into the realm of social media.

My advise to the UTSU: fix your social media strategy, immediately. A while back I wrote about what makes a good Facebook Page, the UTSU easily gets a failing grade. It’s only social media channel is Facebook, which is a group not a page, and is really not used for anything but broadcasting information. Social Media offers an incredible chance to communicate with your supporters – hear their views, engage in conversation, and connect with those that may not be directly involved.

If anyone from the UTSU reads this, email me at andrew.rusk@gmail.com and I would gladly discuss ways to bring your social media to a point that fits your needs… I’d even consider building it myself. In the meantime, however, only tag photos of me that I am actually in.

 

Writing Emails for Student Engagement

I get anywhere from five to twenty bulk emails a day. Most of these are sent to a listserv of students, either by students or for students. When working in Student Engagement at jhr, a lot of my job was emailing our student chapter members across Canada. Here are some of the tricks I learned concerning writing emails to engage emails:

1. Get to the point. Right away. In the first sentence of your email. If you have multiple points in an email, use an agenda at the beginning of the email where you list what you will discuss in your email.
2. Use the subject line effectively. Use it to state the subject as well as any other action you require. If it’s important, write IMPORTANT. If you need a response, write RESPONSE REQUIRED.
3. Keep things positive! Use exclamation marks! It sounds silly, but it works! (see?!?)
4. Even if you’re upset, keep positive. You don’t want to alienate your readers. They’ll stop reading.
5. Assume people don’t read your emails. Studies in workplaces report that employees don’t read their emails if they don’t deem them important. If you’re emailing volunteers or students there is even less of an incentive for them to read your messages. If it’s important, ask people to respond that they received the message.
6. Track your outgoing links. Use bit.ly to track how many links are clicked in the emails you send. This helps you understand if email is an effective communication tool for your audience.
7. Consider using an email program like iContact to send your email. This allows you to see specific details of how many people are opening what you send. It may cost a bit, but the data you’ll gather about your lists may make it worth it.

Is there anything I’m forgetting?

End of an Era

Today is my last day working at jhr (Journalists for Human Rights). I started working at jhr in May 2008 as the Student Engagement Intern – my job was to organize a conference at the end of the summer. I fell in love with the mandate and the people at jhr and convinced them to let me stay on the team after my internship ended. As Domestic Programs Coordinator, I was able to achieve a couple large successes:

1. I created a High School Engagement Program. The initiative helps youth become media producers and advocates, while supporting jhr’s work overseas. After the first year the program was 20 schools strong and is building further in its second year.
2. In September 2009, I launched Press4Change – the world’s first human rights news site with content produced exclusively by youth. It’s still in beta, but overtime I don’t doubt this initiative will be huge
3. I built a Social Media Strategy. I brought jhr, internally and externally, into the age of effective Facebook and Twitter use. I successfully acquired a Youtube nonprofit account despite being a Canadian based NGO. I convinced the ED, Ben Peterson to start what is becoming a very successful non-profit management blog. I built the program to the point that in September 2009 we had to hire an intern to help maintain our infrastructure.
4. I created more structure to jhr’s Speech and Presentation Program. If you want to bring jhr in to speak there is now a booking procedure and friendly staff member to help you make arrangements.
5. I added structure to our internship program. Interns with jhr have a blast contributing meaningful work to the organization. Ben has blogged about the program here.

 

jhr is a great organization that will always have a special place in my heart. I don’t know what other organization would give a 19 year old student a Program Coordinator role and trust them to do a great job. Ben took a huge risk hiring me, and I will always be indebted to him for that.

 

I am moving on from jhr to pursue several other opportunities in the fields of Social Media, PR, Development, and related fields. I’ll write more about that in the future.

 

For the time being, however, thank you for taking the time to let me reflect and reminisce on a fantastic year and a half at one amazing NGO.

Slideshows with Audio: A Very Short Introduction

I was asked by a colleague at jhr about screencasting in order to make instructional videos/powerpoints for remote training.  I had read about screencasting after a Hubspot seminar sparked my interest, but had since forgotten. I looked into it and am writing this post as a place-holder so I don’t forget in the future.

The Basics: Adding audio to Powerpoint

1. Do it on Powerpoint. Powerpoint has the capability to record narration right into the slides so that people can receive the full presentation experience when they are not watching the speaker directly. Here’s a great slideshow about doing this.
2. Do it on SlideShare. Slideshare allows you to match up MP3s with slideshows. The only catch? You need to host the audio someplace different on the web. Still a pretty cool feature. You can learn more here.

Screencasting: A Whole Different Experience

Screencasting has a whole slew of uses apart from giving presentations remotely: recording issues to show tech-service assistants, providing step by step software instruction videos, etc, but the value in giving remote presentations is priceless.  It allows “real-world” examples, all of a sudden not limiting your presentations only to powerpoint, but to any program you wish. There are two options for doing this:

1. Camstudio.org provides a free open-source screencasting tool.
2. Camtasia offers supposedly more features, but at a cost of $299 (they do offer a free trial, if you want to test it out).
3. There’s a couple other programs, anyone have any experience with these?

Honestly, I’ve never used any of the above programs, so giving a recommendation, at this point, is really outside of what I’m able to do. But hopefully this post provides a brief overview of the capabilities that are out there.

Now I put it over to you. Have you ever tried these programs? What were your experiences? Are there great solutions I am missing?

Julie and Julia: Brilliant beyond Meryl Streep

Over the weekend I saw Julie and Julia. You should too.  The film follows the lives of Julia Child and Julie Powell as they each in their own way come to age. Julia finds here place after being relocated to France with her husband, learning how to cook at the Cordon Bleu.  Fifty years later Julie works through Julia’s cookbook as she tries to launch a writing career and cope with the grief of working in New York post 9-11.

A sweet storyline, effective cinematography, and Meryl Streep made the film amazing, but even if you took that all away the film would have still been brilliant. Why? The movie very successfully served to also market a series of books: Julia Child’s biography, Julie Powell’s book about her blogging project, and, of course, Julia Child’s Original Cookbooks. I’ve been completely unsuccessful in finding Julia Child’s Cookbook over the last couple weeks, and sure enough, it’s virtually sold out across the GTA.

Regardless of whether this movie gets any Oscar nominations, it is still a winner – creating a buzz in both the movie and book industries.

Colder Than Most People From Toronto

I just got forwarded on this article about how Coors pulled an ad campaign in Vancouver about Coors being “Colder Than Most People From Toronto.” The CBC Article is here. The article featured a Katheryn Morton from Newmarket, complaining that it is insulting and not a good way to bring people to a province.

Let me add to the criticism: shame on you Coors for giving in to pressure to pull down these ads. I was born in Vancouver but live in Toronto, I laughed incredibly hard when I saw the ad. It’s an amazing display of WOM advertising and you should have let the criticism come in.

As for Kathryn Morton: congratulations on contributing your voice to censoring the creative and humourous minds at Coors. Their beer would have to be left in the ice box for a pretty long time to get down to the chilling attitude you help to spread upon Toronto. For shame.

The purpose of WOM is to get people talking -  Coors did just that and should be congratulated.

Not such a hot dealz, ttc.

If you live in Toronto and ride the TTC, you’ve no doubt seen the posters on the trains advertising TTC Metropass Hot Dealz. The program advertises some of the “great” perks of paying over $100 for a monthly pass; specifically, a nominal discount to to six of Toronto’s tourist hells: The CN Tower, the Ontario Science Centre, the Zoo, Casa Loma, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Ontario Place.

My question is: how were these partnerships decided and who is the audience of the promotion? Tourists have a really limited incentive to buy the MetroPass unless they’re here for an extended period. Admission to these locations is hardly incentive for Torontonians to purchase passes.

Don’t get me wrong, people buy Metropasses and people also go to these attractions, but for my two cents, the value of this partnership wasn’t worth the salary of the person who set it up.

People that ride the subway regularly, but don’t necessarily buy metropasses include: students; occassional commuters (sometimes drive, sometime ttc); and families (I know, the list goes on, but you get the gist). Tourist attractions attract tourists, and families. Tourists wont buy metropasses, and families will only if it REALLY makes sense (they’re expensive). Therefore, bad partnership.

Why not try partnering with Cara Restaurants or a sports franchise? Someone with a broader audience to capture those that could realistically take advantage of this offer, if it offerred something of value.

Facebook for Dummies

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday – I was really feeling under the weather and took the day off blogging (and work, for that matter).

This post is a bit of a placeholder that I will build up overtime, and I hope it will in turn be a monologue of best practices for Facebook use for small organizations/ student groups/ etcetera.  I was inspired to write this after I was invited to yet another failed attempt at Facebook use by my college at the University of Toronto.

The Difference between a Profile, Group, and Page

A profile is intended for individual people. It doesn’t work for organizations – Facebook even discourages the creation of organizational profiles because it’s not in your best interest. No one wants to befriend a organization acting like a person on a social media site. I’m a big supporter of jhr, but I wouldn’t consider jhr a “friend.” That’s just weird.

A group is just that, a group of people congregated around a mutually shared interest. It allows discussion and sharing, but it is moderated by profiles (people). Great for sharing information about hiking in your city, not so great for organizations.

A page is meant for organizations. Check out jhr for a good example. Viewers cannot see the administrators, and when a staff member updates the site, it shows like it is from an organization, not from a profile.  This is the gold standard for Facebook use by organizations.

What about content?

I don’t think anyone knows the most effective content to provide to Facebook supporters – I say let it be frequent, meaningful (producing a value added), and reflective of your organization’s culture.

This is all I have to write currently, but if you have anything add, please chip in with the comments.