Digital Arts Service Corps - collaboration

Flash drive fun!

Jessica McCoy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:31:40 +0000

Hello everyone! Time for an update. I've been way way busy lately (I'm sure you all know how that feels). We just finished a weeklong workshop with middle schoolers at the Marin Youth Center's Computer Clubhouse. It was my first time in a computer clubhouse, they seem like a great idea! While I was there I learned a little about making beats using FruityLoops. Fun! But a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Right now the main things on my plate are working with Danielle and others on Stories for Change, a web portal for community-based digital storytelling facilitators. Danielle is head of the committee that's creating the site and I'm helping with content collection. We're getting close to launch so I've been extra busy gathering up resource materials, formatting them, and uploading to the site. It's a Drupal-based site so luckily the uploading is relatively simple. (someone else built the site, someone far techier than I am!)

Anyway it's been really eye-opening to see all the work that goes into planning a website. The site should be really great resource for anyone interested in using digital storytelling in their community work. I'll keep you posted on when we launch.

Other news:

--Fellow VISTAs Naomi Jimenez and Brittney Fosbrook came to CDS to do a digital storytelling workshop a few weeks ago. Yay! Hopefully they will post their stories on Blip.tv to share them. It was good to have a little VISTA reunion...I hope we can collaborate further on digital storytelling work with their organizations.

--I finally got an external hard drive to hold all my work! Thanks goodness. I've been having a lot of issues staying organized because there hasn't been one computer where I can work all the time. I'd been daydreaming about this portable drive from LaCie and voila! CDS came though and now I've got it in my hot little hands.

--Speaking of hard drives and such, we also just got two new flash drives to use in our workshops. They are super handy, especially since we often need to transfer files from machine to machine, Mac to PC, etc. We found these 2 gb flash drives for just $20, can't complain about that. What we do complain about is the way our flash drives tend to grow legs and walk away from our workshops. This time we've attached smurf keychains to the drives, we'll see if it makes them a little trickier to just stuff into your pocket. I ran across these other ideas for how to make USB flash drive modifications, seems like good clean CTC VISTA fun and an anti-theft measure, too. Maybe I can make one out of the VISTA robot?

On-line Collaboration Software

Tim Wescott — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:04:50 +0000

At the CTC Conference Call last Friday, I was asked to do a brief presentation on web-conferencing tools. Naturally, a presentation about web-conferencing tools deserves a presentation given on a web-conferencing tools, especially since the call consists of people literally all over the US. Therefore, I set up an account on Vyew, and gave my presentation there. You can still view the presentation (and its mishaps) if you go to Room 313064.

I chose Vyew primarily because it's free and doesn't require any downloads (other than a Flash plug-in for your browser). We also didn't require VOIP or any other fancy features. It worked relatively well, for our purposes. The call was part presentation, part experimentation. Everyone was able to see the presentation, and seemed to have a good time exploring the features, especially the whiteboard. This was somewhat problematic, in that I allowed everyone the ability to modify the presentation, which can be a bit distracting when the slide you're talking about disappears. At one point, I had to reload my powerpoint slide, so if you visit room on Vyew, you will see a very disjointed set of slides. When I was done, the other VISTAs on the call had a good time with the whiteboard feature.

I also attached is my original powerpoint slides, as well as my Excel file which contains a comparison of several web-conferencing tools, including a side-by-side comparison of their features and price.<

CTC VISTA 2.0: The Evolution of the Project's Communications

danielle martin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:37:30 +0000

by Danielle Martin

Last fall, then VISTA Leader Saul Baizman wrote a candid article on the latest evolution of the CTC VISTA Project communications scheme for the Fall edition of the Community Technology Review entitled “Build an Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure in 21 Days.” At the time when Saul first started tackling the problem, the Project’s site was mostly a static site with contact information and some examples of the Project work. In his tenure at the Project, Saul helped the site evolve from a confusing, multi-tool system to a more simplified contact directory complimented by a webblog system.

Old CTC VISTA Project Directory

But like all things technology, new dogs with new tricks appeared in the form of an open source content management system called Drupal. After a little fiddling, the Project staff discovered that Drupal could perform many of the same functions under the same database umbrella. Concurrently, the Project has evolved in emphasizing opportunities for collaboration and resource sharing among CTC VISTAs on our new site CTCVISTA.org.

The idea of developing common resources as a Project is not a new one. The implementation of the priority areas (Community Networking, Community Organizing, Digital Media, and Technical Assistance to Nonprofits) last year was stimulated by the potential of connecting often very different organizations around the theme of empowering communities with technology.

Over the year, Project HQ staff realized that any discussions and content sharing among the VISTAs needed to be simple and, more importantly, fueled by their immediate challenges and interests, and not just by more general issues of the larger field. CTC VISTAs could be better served by a simple space for sharing timely, specific resources. Also, with a wider view of all the work of each organization at the ground level, the Project has the perspective to connect the dots – to spark connections among similar projects across organizational structures and geography.

This expansive view across organizations, as well as across national membership organizations such as CTCNet, NTEN, NAMAC, ACM and others, also made it clear that there are many existing (and unfortunately unused) resources available. In a time of excessive content generation and media overload, the Project didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. However, many new VISTAs don’t have time or research skills to sift through all the content available on the Web. So with the advent of aggregation and tagging technologies, we decided to incorporate tools such as Delicious for social bookmarking and other tools to pull local CTC VISTA site content into “resource pages.”

Unfortunately, this call for collaboration clashes with the current environment where non-profits are often in competition with each other. We see the CTC VISTA Project as an ideal proponent for fostering a new environment of resource sharing for several reasons:

As usually new recruits to the non-profit sector, CTC VISTAs can bring fresh ideas and tools into existing non-profits.
The one-year timeframe of CTC VISTA’s work allows for focus on specific tasks and development of a reachable end goal – but many of these tasks are almost impossible without reaching out to others for help or training.
These VISTAs are connected through the CTC VISTA Project, and thus there is an inherent network of peers to reach out to for help and advice.

New CTCVISTA.org

And thus, we revamped the Project website, using Drupal technology and are attempting to adjust our thought processes and communications mechanisms to new, open and tag-based ideologies. The VISTAs now only have to log into one place to view the directory and blog about their experiences. Each bit of content created on the site (blog entries, newsletter articles, and new resources) is tagged by both priority area designation and free tagged by the VISTAs according to their own naming conventions. The Project also adjusted how VISTA Leaders support groups of VISTAs, now by priority area and with focused monthly conference calls and resource portal home pages. We also plan to use the new resource portal as a place to gather pertinent content in a timely and useful way.

So in the way of all great iterations of technology, we did not throw away the hard work done by past VISTAs like Saul – we made a conscious effort to evaluate our work and communications and extract lessons learned. With a focus on user-generated content and social networking principles, the Project hopes to create a positive experience for a new set of VISTAs as well as create a space for continuing innovation and cooperation in the years to come.

Danielle Martin

Danielle Martin is a VISTA Leader, serving both at the CTC VISTA Project HQ as well as with MassIMPACT, coordinating new programs and training in digital storytelling and other multimedia community organizing projects with housing developments in MA. Her background is in after-school multimedia programs for youth, instructional design for web-based trainings, and fundraising and development. She was previously the Technology Director at the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club (MA) Computer Clubhouse.