Tag: blogging

Glocal Audio Activism: 100 Birmingham Voices Against Poverty

Less than 4 weeks ago I was sitting in the Birmingham office of Oxfam talking to them about how they might use podcasting and blogs etc to drive their part of the your voice against poverty campaign. With apparently little experience, but intelligence, energy enthusiam and passion they’ve already produced this blog and the first podcasts of the one hundred brummies who want their voices against poverty heard. Amongst them is the endorsement of BRMB voice Tammy Gooding:

I think one of the greatest things about us Brits is our conscience. We’re a charitible nation and when the chips are down, it’s the UK that tends to dive in with a big heart.

Well I know Brummies have a reputation of not being afraid to speak their minds so I’m really pleased to be joining in with so many of you to speak out against poverty. I was approached to lend my voice to a cause, I simply couldn’t say no.

They’re now crashing towards a deadline of June 2nd for the World Can’t Wait Rally in London prior to the G8 in Germany next month. These voices want the G8 to honour their commitments on debt relief – although Oxfam also has a second message on funding carbon neutral development.

What does this prove about non-profit organisations, campaigning and new technology? For me it’s the old truth that the technology is not the point – it’s the desire to change things which makes the possible do-able.

By the way if you like this Oxbrum campaign please vote for it on upyerbrum – Birmingham’s local Digg for the things which make the city great.

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Blogging for a Children’s Charity

My friend Beth Kanter has just posted a request for help from a charity based in North Yorkshire and Nairobi.

Alison Lowndes is asking what she can do to attract more interest in the blog she co-writes about the situation of vulnerable children in Kenya. Nedra Weinrich and Celeste at the Studio501c have already chipped in. Alison here are 5 thoughts from your side of the Atlantic.

1 Use your network and your networks’ network. Do more of what you have just done by aproaching Beth for help. E-mail as many people as you can who may blog and ask them (and their friends) if they can write an entry about your blog. It will help increase the number of blogs linking to yours – which in turn will draw attention to what you write (good content by the way).

2 Use more links in your blog entries. Blogging is as much about conversation as it is about sharing information. Write more posts which make linked references to other blogs. Thinks of these as the body language of blogging – each link sends a message to other bloggers that you want to join their conversation.

3 Use tags – your recent piece on Madeleine McCann is pertinent and provocative. Tagging it will help other bloggers (and news organisations) find it and respond to it. If it’s not clear how to do this in your blogging platform you can generate tags using keotagger and other similar sites. You might also like to agree a tag with bloggers who share your interests – so you can find each others work. the Nptech tag is a great example of this.

4 The old blogging mantra of “trackbacks are good”. Trackbacks are a special type of link. If someone uses a trackback link for your site what they write on their blog will also appear as a comment in your blog. That encourages people to write about your material. If your current blogging platform doesn’t allow you to easily include trackbacks think about moving to another platform sooner rather than later. (I think though you can now use trackbacks on blogger)

5 Use Flickr to host photos and link it back to your blog. Kenya is a magnet for British holiday makers, They are likely to find your pics on Flickr and that will attract their attention to your work. From that you may find donors and even online or on the ground volunteer effort.

It won’t happen overnight – but good luck.

Update – the pic is from AVIF’s Flickr site. See also this entry from David Wallace – more on principles than practicalities.  he suggest the four p’s:

  • Participate
  • Plug-in
  • Play
  • Persist

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