Digital Arts Service Corps - website

Month Seven: DIY Productions!

Melissa Niiya — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:10:37 +0000

Long time no field report. In the past few months, there has been a lot of progress and change. Tiffany is our new and awesome VISTA, and with her added support, DIY Media (a program to train youth in documentary filmmaking, social media, etc) has launched. I've been working with her and staff to develop the curriculum for this project.

We're also moving along with DIY Productions. As we build our base of creative and motivated teens through the DIY Media program, we hope to draw from this pool and build a social enterprise where teens make media for non-profits. I made a promo that will become one in our portfolio of films to show potential clients. You can view it here:http://www.youtube.com/user/digitalhistories#p/u/5/sp0t6U0PUJU

I've also been working on a website for DIYP. There was a little hiccup where we had disagreement on colors/design (of course, after building out the whole site...yarrgh) but I think it's now settled and we're running with the attached mockup.

Moving forward, I surveyed residents at one of our low income housing buildings and it seems that most are very pro-internet and don't want us to cut it off... so these results could support an effort to raise capital for wired internet at our buildings... I'm not sure it's feasible to do this in the remaining months, but we'll see. It will be difficult to get organizational support for what could be a lengthy and expensive project. But given that most of the residents surveyed cannot afford internet service and yet use and need it...well... I think it'd be worth it!

Preparing for Summer

Rachel Rose-Sandow — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:25:29 +0000

Josefina Luna is one of the kindest, warmest, friendliest women I've ever met. We started talking one day when we were both waiting to be let into the office, before I was given my own key. She speaks fragmented English, but it's a thousand times better than my broken Spanish. Still, she's been nice enough to teach me Spanish words and speak slowly to me in longer sentences so that I can understand her.

Yesterday, she told me the story of her life. In the Dominican Republic (her native country), she was an accountant. She said she focused mainly on auditing, which she loved. She had her own car and her own apartment.

Then the IMF decided it was time for the Dominican Republic to pay back its debts. The DR government didn't have the money, so it taxed middle and upper class people (Josefina was middle class). She became impoverished, so she moved to the United States. Here, she tried to get several accounting jobs, with no luck. Then, she tried to work as a manager at a factory, but she was rejected as being "overqualified." She removed her accounting experience from her resume and tried again. This time she was hired, but as a laborer. She had to get up at 5 a.m. to take the bus to the factory for work.

Now, she works at SEDC as a meal site worker. She prepares and serves food to elderly Meals on Wheels clients who are transported to SEDC three days a week during the lunch hour. She works only part-time, and she can't afford a car. She needs to take a test to be certified as a public accountant in the U.S., but her English is too limited for her to score well.

I feel like there must be a solution somewhere, but I can't think of it.

Anyways, right now I'm trying to make the file of the SEDC logo larger. It's a .jpg file now, and it has a low resolution, and I've been told that what we need is the original vector file. If we have that file, then we can blow up the logo as big as we want on a sign, poster, etc. Unfortunately, there's been so much staff turnover here that we have no idea who originally designed the logo. I called a local print company, and they said they can redraw the logo for us and put it into vector form, but the charge will be $100/hour. They estimate the time at 2-3 hours. We can't afford to pay that, and I certainly can't redraw it myself, so I don't know what we can do.

Also, I'm updating the website with new events, and I wrote a new version of the newsletter describing the SEDC Cambodian and Lao New Year event in April. I'm working on putting together an informational movie about SEDC and the work it does in the community.

Fortunately, we have a new 15-member Board of Directors, and we should have a permanent Executive Director by the end of the month. My supervisor is one of two candidates for the position, so I'm rooting for him, but we'll see what the Board decides.

Field Report #9: 3 Essential Drupal Modules

Morgan Sully — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:40:12 +0000

So this past month was pretty tedious and slow. As some of you may or may not know, I am currently migrating my org's current website into a new, Drupal-based web 2.0 friendly site. There were nearly 1500 pages from the old site to import,
and much of the (great) content on the old site also remained buried beneath many, many pages - there were no RSS feeds on anything, no bookmarking services built in, and no browsable tag clouds - basic characteristics of web 2.0 sites.

Luckily, most of pages were were outdated and were able to be deleted. However, there were still many tedious bits to the importing - where should they go? How should the specific pieces of content be categorized? Was there a space for them on the new site? What would those new spaces looks like? How can the content be easy to find? Do all the links on this page still work???

My goal was to make the content as easy to browse and share as possible, increase it's ambient findability .

Overview of Modules Used
Central modules that I used on the site included Views, Panels and Taxonomy Node Operations - all three of these made for some fun and challenging work.

Taxonomy Node Operations:
This was a very helpful module. When i imported all of the content from the old site (which took about a week of tweaking to get just right - i was getting all sorts of odd characters and HTML showing up in posts) none of it was categorized. What this module does, is allow a 'mass categorization' of content from the content administration page in Drupal. I of course had to go in and create the categories first, but once done, categorizing the content was easy.

Views:
Views I used in order to create 'landing pages' for particular areas of the site (which were defined by the kinds of content appearing in each). For instance, there is a section of the site called 'Capacity Building' Capacity Building is a service that we offer and on the page that had info about this service(s), i wanted to have all articles having to do with 'fundraising' (synonymous with capacity building) appear there as well. So, all articles on the site which had to do with 'fundraising' I tagged/categorized as such and viola! they now appear on the landing page of our 'Capacity Building' section. I used this technique throughout the site for various sections...

Panels:
This is great module for configuring how you want a page to display. It's a bit like putting Drupal blocks and Views into specified sections (panels) of a page. The front page and the 'Policy and Advocacy Network' pages are both Panels.

I also started playing around the general look and feel of the site through a hacked Drupal theme (SEO Position).

Click on the images below to see before and after screenshots of what I've done so far:

Week 2 of My Vista Year

Marilyn Taylor — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:15:09 +0000

Week 2 of my VISTA year was more of the same from the first week. I'm still working on cleaning up the service listings for the counties on the 4People website. While tedious, it's rewarding knowing that when people look at the county listings, they'll be more accurate with regard to the exterior links. (www.4people.org)

One nice thing is that much of the work is done by telecommuting. Last week I went in to the office only two days: one to collect the mail, the other to discuss how the clean-up project was going. Misty (the other Vista) collected the mail 2 other days.

On a personal note, I found out my horse has laminitis. It's a good thing I brought her home -- she had been put on pasture for too long, too soon (one of the causes of laminitis is too rich a diet, such as too much pasture right after being on hay only). Now she's on dry lot and can't go onto the pasture all summer (bummer). I have to find a source of hay since I can only buy so many bales from my neighbor.

What's new with me

Mike Matthews — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:37:42 +0000

I know a lot of u are tired of reading all of my posts since I do em so often (every 3months-lol) but here I am. Since last time I've gotten a much better handle on web site building though I still have much to learn. I finished the company site a few weeks ago and are just waiting for the go-ahead to publish it to the web. I've mostly been gearing up for the summer where we'll start to have regular classes with students. This is where I'll be getting all my footage and interviews from which to post on our site and future Kiosk network. The Kiosk network will consist of free access computer terminals listing a directory of community resources for ppl without computers or internet access at home). I really enjoy the whole planning and strategical process involved with these plans. How uber exciting!

Screenings, Workshops, Tutorials, oh my!

Jessica McCoy — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:34:22 +0000

Hello hello fellow VISTAs!
Time for a quick summer update. Mmmmm summer...it's a good thing!
So this week we have two digital storytelling workshops going on. The first one is focused specifically for educators, and though I'm not involved in teaching it, I have been working hard to get some new software quick guides put together. It seems like there's an infinite number of software tutorials you can write to support digital storytelling. I've helped with tutorials for Final Cut Express, Photoshop Elements, file management, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Audacity, Premiere, and Sound Studio. And there's a still a few more in the works. All of them will be posted (eventually) to the Stories for Change web portal that Danielle and I have been working on. All y'all who are doing digital storytelling with your organization, check out the site and post your students' stories! And of course any resources you have. Since the site just launched, we're working to get more people signed on and posting.

Also this week we have community screenings for two workshops I helped facilitate. The first workshop was place-based digital storytelling with middle school students, and the second was with Latina high school girls in a leadership development program. I'm hoping to get the stories posted to the net soon...need to get all the releases signed first! I'm looking forward to the screenings, since it will be the first time the participants will show off their work to family and friends.

The other good news is that my organization finally hired two people to help with administrative and postproduction tasks, which is awesome because it frees me up to do work that's more inline with my original workplan. Yay! It's great because they are both basically doing more capacity building work too, just in different areas than I am. And as a small nonprofit, we can use all the capacity-building help we can get. :)

Website Improvement for the VISTA website

admin — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:18:33 +0000

Use Cases

vistas and supervisors:
do you know what is expected of you at any one point in the year?
have you gotten forms off the website?
have you gotten manuals or guidelines off of the website?
do you read blogs or the newsletter (the Digest) off of the website?

vistas:
do you read the vista blog?
do you use the wiki?
do you check the website for news and events? (probably just wait for
the emails)
do you keep in touch with any other vistas?
have you used another vista as a resource?
do you
have you used the website to show others what your work is about?

questions people are trying to answer with the website

uninvolved people:
what is this place?
where is this place?

random web surfer/visitor through a link
why is this relevant?

prospective vista
where is it located?
would I want to do it?
would I be qualified to do it?
where can I do it?
*who can I contact about it?
*how do I apply?
*when is each piece of the process happening?
(a lot of this is in the "supervisor resources" section)

prospective org
where is it located?
do we need this?
what do we need to do to get it?
who can we contact about it?
how do we apply?
what other orgs are involved?
when is each piece of the process happening?

current vista
*where are those forms?
*what is the next thing I have to do with the project?
*who do I contact about ___?
how do I contact other vistas?
what are other vistas doing?

current org
*where are those forms?
*what is the next thing I have to do with the project?
*who do I contact about ___?
what about after my vista leaves?

prospective employer of current visitor

Post-application VISTAs and organizations
**what is my application status?
**what stage is the project at? (project news)
**when is each piece of the process happening?

Specific Comments

-- about section:
the contents of what the about section should be are on the front
page, so do we even need the about section itself? project news
should be more visible. during the application process, people rely
on knowing what is going on, and having it buried here doesn't help
people find it or feel that it's credible. also, do you need the
"contact" link in the secondary menu there? it's right next to
"about" in the primary menu.

-- contact us page:
needs to have info about who is responsible for different things. for
people who are already involved in the project, it's great; for
people with questions who didn't RTFM, there aren't clues on who to
email except the titles. I solve this problem at our organization
with a contact form where you select a subject rather than
individuals to contact. You could follow that with the staff list.

-- the ctc vista project guidelines:
need to be more prominent. they're the first link on the supervisor
resources page, but they're what enable a supervisor to use the other
documents on that page.

-- organization summaries:
it would make sense to have a link to the organization's vista (and
the vista's blog) on those pages.

secondary menu items that link to non-secondary hiearchy pages = bad.
ie, flickr photos, contact us links, "project hq" link in "directory"
section

it might make sense to have an starting page for all applicants
(vistas and orgs) that lays out the process, basically who does what
in what order. I realize that specific dates are basically
impossible, but having an idea of the workflow of the applications
process would be good.

also, possibly the "directory" menu item should be either before or
after the two "resources" items.

Organize and Execute

Kevin Palmer — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:08:53 +0000

Current Projects:

Project: Develop Strategic Plan for HOME, Inc.

Drivers: AJ McGuire, Alan Michel

Result: A strategic foundation that includes well-defined programming, meta-structuring of how all HOME, Inc. related programs converge, detailing of company roles, an updated organizational mission, etc.

Date of Completion: May 2007

Project: Develop HOME, Inc. Organizational Handbook

Drivers: AJ McGuire, Alan Michel

Result: A series of documents that describe in detail What, Who and When of everything HOME, Inc. does.A matrix of what items need to be accomplished throughout the year, who needs to accomplish each of those items and when each of those items needs to be completed.

Date of Completion: June 2007

Project: Communications Hub for Pilot High School Design Team

Drivers: School Design Team Leaders, Committee Members

Result: Site that allows easy communications between Design Team members while also allowing transparency in Design Team decisions

Date of Completion: August 2007

Project: Develop HOME, Inc. Web Portal

Drivers: AJ McGuire

Result: Website that leverages Web 2.0 capabilities for use with school programs, internal communications and teacher training

Date of Completion: May 2007

Project: Build High School Radio Station

Drivers: Students, School Media Teacher

Result: Low Frequency High School radio station that transmits in a several mile radius across Jamaica Plain/Roxbury/Hyde Park. Student run, produced and broadcast.

Date of Completion: June 2007/Fall 2007

Project: Build High School Web Portal

Drivers: School Teachers, Admins, Students

Result: High School web site that leverages Web 2.0 capabilities to allow students to keep a goals journal, maintain a school media repository and enable greater communications between students, staff and parents

Date of Completion: June 2007

Continuous Programs:

Program: Mosaic In-School and Afterschool Program (Media Production)

Drivers: AJ McGuire

Result: End of the year presentation of all student produced work from December 2006-May 2007 at Social Justice Academy.

Date of Completion: End of Service

Program: ETV In-School and Afterschool Program (Media Production)

Drivers: School media teacher

Result: A closed-circuit television program that is written, directed and produced by High School students, airing once every week and a half at English High School.

Date of Completion: On-Going

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?

Marketing Strategies For Your Website

Kevin Bulger — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:17:36 +0000

I have been given the task to increase the viewership and participation in www.sflregionalequity.org (a website dedicated to achieving greater equity in the Southeast Florida region through promoting and enabling affordable housing, transit-oriented development, stronger neighborhoods, and equal access to education and health).

I believe in the cause and I think demand for the website is out there. However, I did not know how to best get the word out. At first I spent approximately 60 hours identifying 1800 possible organizations and local activists who would possibly be interested in the purpose of the site. I then went ahead and emailed and snail mailed invitations to the website with very little response. I believe that of the 1800 pieces of mailings I received 2 phone calls and 7 emails. So that tactic did not get the results I was hoping for.

Next, I decided to create an e-newsletter through Constant Contact. The Collins Center already has an account with them so there is no additional cost to the website. Otherwise, It would cost over $300 a year to run the newsletter. However, I can not use my current email list to send out newsletters because if a certain percentage unsubscribe from the newsletter the account will be cancelled, thereby ruining the service for the whole organization (Constant Contact has a strict NO-SPAM policy). So that tactic could possibly produce the desired results, but it could also get me in some hot water with the Collins Center if the service gets cancelled.

After I spent some time reviewing my ineffective attempts, it became clear that the website needs an informed and focused marketing plan. I scheduled a "Marketing for Nonprofits" seminar this week that the Collins Center was gracious enough to pay for, but one seminar can only do so much. The website is in serious need of tried-and-true marketing strategies that work, and I plain have no expertise in marketing.

Therefore my plan is to a) gain knowledge of basic marketing principles; b) identify best practices for marketing websites; and c) choose one or a combination of best practices to implement.

If anyone else has the assignment of increasing participation in a website or project and would like to share your experience let me know! I think working on similar projects and having others share their input really helps, and it makes the whole process more enjoyable.