By Deborah Fishman
An all-volunteer magazine put together by a geographically diverse, online community of young adults 22-40, PresenTense Magazine has always been a collaborative enterprise. As such, we’ve made ample use of many Google products, storing and sharing articles in Docs, communicating in Chat, and organizing and tracking article progress in Sites. Yet the lack of integration has made using all these tools in concert a challenge, and we are always interested in exploring better ways to perform these tasks.
For our tenth issue, PresenTense Magazine launched the Digital Issue – the first-ever print magazine to be published entirely in Google’s new tool for collaboration, Google Wave. The platform allowed us to pioneer new horizons for journalism by seeking to address a key challenge for journalists today: how to collaborate in a digital age.
Google Wave enticed us with the ability to collaborate on all aspects of the magazine production in a single package, as well as offering several new and exciting features. For instance, “playback” allows users to review the sequence of changes and easily restore a document to a previous version. Two modes of engaging with waves – edit and reply – give greater flexibility in editing documents and leaving comments for writers. Since edits and replies are updated in real time, authors and editors can interact naturally, as if in an in-person conversation. Wave also includes the ability to add images, maps, videos, and other gadgets right in the collaboration space.
It was especially fitting that we set out to explore Google Wave for our Digital Issue, focused on the Digital Age and how it is affecting young Jewish community- and identity-building today. Google Wave allowed us to take advantage of the very digital trends and technologies we were discussing, to produce content to act as the starting place for a larger conversation. We found that, while rough around the edges as a pre-Beta product, Google Wave has some real potential for online collaboration.
Ready to embark on a whole new world of Wave discovery, we soon realized that our first hurdle was getting on Wave to begin with. A collaboration tool only works when your co-collaborators also have access. Each issue of PresenTense Magazine is the product of over 70 young Jews – writers, editors, advisory committee members, and art team members – who work together through the creative process, from the initial brainstorming phase through the final production. Wave invites are a scarce commodity, and for 70 contributors, you need an allocation strategy. Google’s arbitrary approval process further baffled our editorial team.
Even with an approved Wave account, not all writers were as eager to ride the Wave as we had hoped. The great flexibility offered by the Wave platform belies the fact that Wave is – to many – unintuitive. It took significant effort for many writers and editors to learn such Wave basics as how to reply to a message, causing a great deal of frustration. Even those who persevered encountered a fair share of frustrations from frequent crashes, missing features, and various other unexplained occurrences. For those accustomed to working over e-mail and chat, the lack of integration with GMail meant many participants did not notice changes until days later.
Along the way we also came across some collaboration-enhancing perks. When posting in real-time, one author and a commenter discovered they were able to have a brief exchange of ideas inside the Wave and then delete all but what they wanted to preserve for others to see. Another pair of authors were able to “meet” each other and converse when they bumped into each other on their articles’ section contents page.
PresenTense Magazine is generally published as a glossy, in-print magazine. One of our defining features has been our full-color photographs and artwork, skillfully laid out alongside articles and other content. Wave does offer the ability to drag-and-drop images into an article, and you can even view them as a slideshow or one at a time as full-screen images. However, inside a “blip” the images appear as either small icons or full-size images taking up most of the page, and it’s not possible to wrap the surrounding text around them. The unsatisfying formatting was further complicated by Google’s mysterious rules governing whether and how blips are indented, depending on where exactly one clicks and whether one selects edit or reply.
PresenTense Magazine is the foundation for a vibrant community. Over the past five years, our ten in-print issues have acted as a community organizing tool, bringing together hundreds of young Jews around the world with ideas and enthusiasm about the future of Jewish innovation. However, there are challenges inherent in grassroots work with young Jews spanning time zones around the world. The geographic distances involved provide the tremendous benefit of enabling us to incorporate different perspectives and start conversations that may never occur otherwise. But it can be difficult to find appropriate online collaboration tools that have all the functionality we need. We found a lot to like on Google Wave, and we look forward to future improvements to the medium.
Deborah Fishman is the Network Animator for the PresenTense Group, engaging and empowering the PresenTense community to explore issues facing the Jewish People. As the volunteer managing editor of PresenTense Magazine, Deborah has managed hundreds of volunteer writers, editors, and visionaries.
Lisa Colton, Founder and President of Darim Online, was a member of the advisory team for Presentense Magazine’s Digital issue.
Like many, I do a lot of my tweeting through my iPhone when I’m anywhere but my desk. I read while standing in line at the grocery store, or waiting to board an airplane, etc. Often I’ll find great insights or links to resources that I want to follow up on. So I “favorite” them. This little star is a great way for me to flag the best-of, and things I want to return to. They are also a great way for you to tap into what any tweeter really likes. On any profile, just click on “favorites” to see all the tweets that user has favorited.
Often when I hit that little star I’m intending to blog about it. Frequently, I don’t have the time to craft lovely prose about these nuggets of wisdom. But you deserve them. So, I give you a brain dump of some favorited tweets. It’s just a beginning. There will be more brain dumps, I promise.
Click on the links to find rich content, click on the username to see their Twitter profile and add the authors to those you follow. And add your own favorites in the comments below.
MOBILE
Definitive guide to mobile fundraising – everything you need to know to get started. From @mobileactive http://bit.ly/d7g9×8
Great article about texting for nonprofits: http://bit.ly/crFhrY
RT @nptechblogs: Wild Apricot Blog: Is Your Nonprofit Website Mobile-Friendly? http://bit.ly/8lwj5l
New blog post: Four ways to send a SMS (a mobile text message) http://bit.ly/bXLrEP
SOCIAL MEDIA HOW TO
How to Cross-Post Your Social Media Updates http://bit.ly/6tOxho
morning reading: “How social media has changed us” from @mashable http://bit.ly/4WacTJ
RT @johnhaydon: RT (please) “The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now” http://bit.ly/6P7pGo
mashable Our most retweeted post right now: “The Tao of Tweeting” – http://bit.ly/4QsPnQ
HOW-TO Write Effectively for Twitter & the Social Web http://ow.ly/pq5N
How to stream your next event live for free in 4 easy steps http://om.ly/dDco
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY AND MEASUREMENT
The Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of the 100 Ways to Measure Social Media http://bit.ly/7xlIjl
kdpaine anyone trying to measure their “Thought Leadership” efforts? might want to read this: http://bit.ly/4IXJnL
Fantastic post by @kanter on about best practices for crowdsourcing and social change. http://bit.ly/6XXxxb
->@askdebra: Professional Goals for a Social Media Strategist http://bit.ly/5OgwPN
I LOVE this video on social media ROI (especially the quote: “our director of social media is the customer”) http://bit.ly/BxRN6
maddiegrant: Why Facebook, Twitter and Google Are Your Non-Profit’s New Home Page http://j.mp/6IuUXd
99 foundations that actively use Twitter http://bit.ly/dJtrm
RT @mashable: Social Media Policies from 80+ Organizations – http://bit.ly/tdlA9
Reading It’s Time To Get Your Sermons Online http://ow.ly/YCo4
Innovative ways to use technology in the classroom: http://ow.ly/BLDv #jed21
OTHER GOODIES
socialmediameme
Social Media All-Stars: Who are the true leaders of the social media space? It’s such a great question that I’ve t… http://bit.ly/79Vq6b
Social Media for the Trainer – Resources http://bit.ly/bG4NJh #socialfish
RT @pchaney: A Social Media Business Model That’s Really Social http://bit.ly/1PxtDD
Why people matter more than content http://sbne.ws/r/3t7G
Social networks will be like air? Hard to believe? Read this http://bit.ly/bKmSwV
Great article on CRM for nonprofits and the resistance to funding technology infrastructure: http://bit.ly/bEp0BJ
johnhaydon: 13 Social Media Best Practices Implemented By The Top 200 US Charities http://bit.ly/5N2OMo
New at Socialbrite: How Google’s real-time search impacts your nonprofit, a quick screencast from @johnhaydon. http://bit.ly/8e5vyy
66 comments and going. Strong emotions on friending and defriending behavior – http://bit.ly/4PLJnP
A guide to listening and translating it into good conversations on twitter http://bit.ly/TWdup #nptech (good examples)
Check out @MicheleDonohue’s NP Times article on nonprofits and Twitter http://bit.ly/4B36Et
Google CEO Eric Schmidt On The Future Of Search http://bit.ly/Fv9qb
By Ellen Dietrick, Director of Congregation Beth Israel Preschool and Kindergarten
It’s the season of inclement weather closings. The time tested ways of notifying families of school closings, announcing it through the radio, tv, and a weather closing phone line, produce mixed results. An issue remained: families had to consider that the school might be closed to think to check in with these information sources. At our school, a sudden unexpected flood meant those with flooding basements thought to check if the school was impacted, but those on higher ground went on with their usual routine, never considering that the school might be closed.
A little voice rang in my head: Go to your audience.
With the traditional systems, families had to come to us. How could we get the information straight to them? Email notifications helped, but with children to feed and dress, lunches to pack, and that pesky missing shoe to find, so many families keep the computer off during the early morning hours. Email again requires your audience to come to you. I considered a phone alert system, like those used by politicians, but they were expensive, requiring monthly subscriptions. And not everyone appreciates a 6am wake up call.
Text messaging to the rescue! Now parents receive a text message on their cell phones the instant the decision is made. We still maintain the traditional notification systems, but the text alert gets by far the most praise. From the parents’ prospective, it is direct and simple, and comes straight to them. The information in on hand the moment they wake up. For many they get the text before they go to bed, and can start planning accordingly for the next day. From an administrative prospective, it is easy to use, time efficient, and at 2-5 cents per message, depending on the type of message and the plan you choose, quite affordable.
Sample text messages from this unseasonably snowy winter.
So those childhood memories of sitting by the radio, waiting as lists of school closings were announced are no longer. An easier way has finally arrived.
How to get started:
- There are many text messaging alert options out there. We chose Ez Texting http://www.eztexting.com/
- Sign up now. Don’t wait until you need to send a message. Advance preparations are critical.
- Allow families to opt out. Some phone plans charge for text messages, so not everyone will want to be notified this way. We offered the chance to opt out in our weekly school newsletter and out of 130 people, we had 6 choose to opt out.
- Consider your groups. In our case, there may be times we will want to notify just teachers of an emergency schedule change.
- Load the cell numbers onto the site, grouping as appropriate.
- Purchase credits.
- When you are ready to send a message, simply log in, type your message (the number of characters is limited, so keep it short), and hit send.
And remember to add a cell phone field to every registration form, so you have the information to use.
Kudos to the Lippman Kanfer Institute at JESNA for launching their JE3 project, Technology and Jewish Education: A Revolution in the Making! [Full disclosure: your friends over here at Darim were involved in its development]
The project revolves around the question: “What does it means to ‘do’ Jewish education in a 21st century digital world?” The JE3 site features a core narrative that explores various aspects of the integration of technology-facilitated: visions of Jewish learning, the transformation of learning and teaching, examples from the field, concerns and challenges. Along with this context-setting narrative, the site provides a platform for articles from leading Jewish educators.
Want to get in on the conversation? Read, reflect, respond… submit materials, add comments to articles, tweet using the hashtag #jed21…. C’mon over….!
Last week’s launch of the iPad signaled Apple’s entrance into the digital world’s growing market for the “third device.” While personal computers and cell phones are two distinct devices, some are calling for a gadget to fill the space in between the two. Whether that device is going to be more like the do-all netbook/tablet iPad or a dedicated reader like Amazon’s Kindle is yet to be seen.
What can be said though is that these new devices are not a passing fad. Some hopeful analysts claim that the iPad and Kindle, by offering new format possibilities for books, newspapers and magazines, might just save the media industry. E-books, for example, are currently available for 125,000 titles on Amazon and make up 6 percent of the site’s total sales in books, including 48 percent of all titles available in both formats. But forecasters project sales to grow exponentially in the near future to the point that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has proclaimed that after a successful 500-year run, the book’s time has come.
For the People of the Book, a people not generally known for its early entrance into new technology opportunities, it’s time to start envisioning how things will change as we become the People of the E-book.
- How might the Jewish community increase Jewish literacy as more religious and educational resources become digitized in e-formats, and thus become more easily disseminated and accessed?
- Will prayer become more individualized as siddurs (prayer books) become available to everyone and can be carried without adding any extra bulk to a briefcase or book bag?
- Will learning of Jewish texts attract new students as Torah and Talmud become available in new formats?
- Will Jewish life become less expensive by saving on the purchase of books at religious schools and day schools?
- How might synagogues and JCCs build relationships beyond their walls as sermons, newsletters and blog entries are sent to the palm of constituents’ hands?
- Will all Jews need a handheld device, like new students at some universities, in order to fully participate in all the community has to offer?
We want to hear from you! How else might the Jewish world change as it enters the digital realm? What’s your organization or community doing to interact in the digital world?
David Frank
In the “old days” one hallmark of a “professional” photographer was that the photog was never without a camera. By that standard, today just about all of us are professionals.
Cell phone cameras are ubiquitous. Now we go through our days visually armed, as it were, often immediately emailing friends the resulting photo reconnaissance of our lives. We post these mega-pixel bits and bytes of our lives in our Facebook albums. We tweet them to whoever will follow. We collect them in vast numbers on our computers. Sometimes they are dark, blurry rectangles that assert simply that we exist. Sometimes they surprise us with unspeakable depth, transforming even a random moment into a powerful enduring memory. Sometimes we make prints of them so they can become our companions, or even turn them into hardcover, realio-trulio coffee-table books all about us.
What does it all mean? Have we all become self-obsessed users of the latest must-have tech-tools for noting, recording and sharing our lives? Or – think of this – have we, perhaps, all become historians newly in procession of cutting-edge tools for making meaning. Using these tools is it possible that we can now translate our busy, sometimes chaotic lives into the illustrated narratives that, upon reflection, help us understand who we are, where we fit and what we mean.
Here is a small example of what I am getting at. I have spent about an equal number of years in my life working as a Jewish educator and as a photographer. Recently, I have begun to photograph bar/bat mitzvahs – but with what I believe is an interesting twist that incorporates the sensibilities of both.
It is not just about a party. And it is certainly not about lining up the family and at my prompt encouraging them to, “Say cheese.” In fact, I do as little directing as possible. Just like you can with your cell cameras at the ready, I am after stories from real life. I begin months before photographing the child studying, working with the rabbi and cantor, documenting the mitzvah project, the party planning, the suit/dress shopping, anything related to any aspect of what is involved in a 21st Century bar/bat mitzvah – taking pictures that ultimately give me the raw material to tell a much bigger story. Now a trusted confidant, I interview the child exploring what they make of all the attention being heaped upon them, their Torah reading, their expectations, and their fears. I talk to the parents about their child, their aims for the event, their Jewish identities and what they hope to pass on to their children. Then I weave a narrative – words and pictures – and I put them in a book – a personal history book that can play an important role in helping a family define and express the meaning of the experience.
Bat Mitzvah – Images by David Frank
And, here is something to consider – even the very fact of photographing makes meaning. Remember, I’m not talking about a “Say cheese” grab-shot. But I’m also not suggesting anything about the quality of the camera you might use. I’m talking about the quality of paying a particular kind of attention that has the capacity to suggest to your young subject that THESE aspects of your process (the study, the talks with the rabbi, the time spent alone drilling words of Torah, etc.) are significant and valuable. And the resulting photographs then can take their rightful place.
And the photographs make the memories. That’s why we take pictures. We grab from the swift flow of undifferentiated life a few split seconds of our lives and say, “Stop! Just now I want you to be this age, with these people, in this place – forever.” Such pictures, especially at peek moments can help to define who we are.
Consider the photo documentation of your own life. How your memories are sparked when you peruse an old album. “Look at my big hair!” “Those are some crazy lapels!” “Look how beautiful Mom was when she was young.” What if the interior monologue could continue… “Here I am before my Bat Mitzvah. I’m so proud that…” or “Wow, this was the first time I touched a Torah.” or “Here I am in the rabbi’s study…” Pie in the sky? Perhaps, but without the photographic jolts to memory over the years the event loses its specificity and its power to shape identity. Identity = authentic experiences, sensitively documented and well remembered. My own, now adult, daughter is still awed by the photos that remind her that all those people had come to see HER.
At a recent Bat Mitzvah the family stood on the bima with the rabbi reciting the Havdalah blessings. They tasted the wine, smelled the spices, illuminated their fingertips – but missed, until they saw the photograph, the moment when a daughter, caught up in her thoughts and feelings, rested her head on her mothers shoulder. It lasted for a second. Went unnoticed. But the photograph now has great familial power. The photograph creates the memory. The memory is inexorably tied to this very intimate and Jewish moment.
You have the tools. You have the digital means to enter the rush of ones and zeros and use it to stop time, to write histories, to interpret the present in service of the future, to fill the histories of those around you with the memories of Jewish moments. And these moments make meaning. They illustrate the narratives through which we come to know who we are.
Further resources:
The Meaning of Family Photographs by Charles Williams
http://homepage.mac.com/williamszone/dostal/research/meaning.html
Candid Photography, and the Meaning of “Real-Life” by Len Bernstein
http://www.lenbernstein.com/Pages/candid.html
Reading Photographs to Write With Meaning and Purpose, Grades 4–12 by Leigh Van Horn
http://www.reading.org/General/Publications/Books/bk612.aspx?mode=redirect
Social Media And The New Meaning of Photographs
http://understandinggraphics.com/brainy/social-media-and-the-new-meaning-of-photographs/
Family Photographs: Content, Meaning and Effect by Julia Hirsch
David Frank was a photojournalist and graphics editor at various newspapers in Michigan before becoming a Jewish educator and the Director of Conferences at CAJE. He is a storyteller, always trying to tell the public story, the back story, the whole story – your story. He makes art out of both the simple and the sublime moments in life. He lives in New Jersey. You can learn more about his photography at http://www.davidfrankphoto.com
In the coming days and weeks we’ll be sharing 10 things you should have on your radar screen for 2010. If you’re already on top of them – mazel tov. Share with us what you’re doing in the comments. If not, time to get hip to the new decade. Don’t put it off. This isn’t the future, it’s the present, so pay attention.
To kick us off, mobile mobile mobile. Everybody’s got a phone in their pocket, and increasingly it’s a pretty intelligent one. The iPhone, Blackberry, Android and others are taking over the market, and shaking up the status quo. Assume that people are looking for and engaging with you while on the go, not just while sitting at their desk.
Some things to know:
- Compose your emails for easy reading on a mobile device. Send a test and check it out on a Blackberry and iPhone. Some Blackberry users are reporting a lack of patience with graphic emails because it takes too much time to wade through. “Give me the bullet points and important information straight up and in brief” seems to be the attitude.
- Start learning about fundraising via mobile. I just made my first donation by text message to a radio show I love, This American Life, when I saw a tweet. $5 went on my AT&T bill. So easy! Check out http://www.mobilegiving.org/ to see how they do it. Sophist Productions has been hosting events (a UJA Young Leadership cocktail party, for example) where people “text to pledge” their donation, and pledges are projected on the wall. Yes, it is a new world. And it works. Read more here on text-to-give programs.
- Redesigning or tuning up your website? Make sure you’ve got a mobile friendly version. Check out a Google tool here to see what your web site can look like on a mobile browser. Beth Kanter iPhone-ized her blog with an easy $200 IPhone app tool. Learn about it here.
- Twitter was conceived of, and largely used as a mobile tool. Thus, don’t neglect this community when you are putting together a mobile strategy.
Want to learn more?
http://mobileactive.org/ is a great org with useful resources and a discussion list on how nonprofits are using mobile in their work.
http://www.mobilecommons.com/ offers services for marketing, advocacy and fundraising via mobile (and thanks to Mobile Commons for donating their services for our Boot Camps)
http://www.mobilecitizen.org/ has excellent resources for mobile use in education and nonprofits.
Great resources from Wild Apricot: Is Your Nonprofit Website Mobile-Friendly?
Examples of cool, mission-centric mobile uses from nonprofits, on Beth Kanter’s Blog
[cross-posted on jlearn2.0]
Fascinating story about community and more, presented by Alon Nir (@TheKotel) at Jeff Pulver’s (@JeffPulver) #140 Characters Conference in Tel Aviv earlier this month:
Read Alon Nir’s blog post about the experience, and learn more about Jeff Pulver and the #140 Conference – see if there is a meet up or conference in your neighborhood…
I just registered for #140 Characters Conference NYC ‘10 in April – and in return I received a discount promo to share with my friends - how cool! So, come on and join me, friends!
Read all about it: “Synagogues Blogging and Tweeting their Way to New Kinds of Communication,” by Sue Fishkoff on JTA!
The article describes how congregations around the country are taking advantage of resources such as webcasts, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and video. Darim’s Lisa Colton notes that synagogues and religious schools are using social media to foster new models of community participation and engagement.
Props to our Darim Online members and friends - including Ellen Dietrick @cbipreschool; Gabby Volodarsky, Temple Sinai Oakland; Rabbi Alan Lucas and Rabbi Jeni Friedman at Temple Beth Sholom, Roslyn; Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Westchester Reform Temple; @Sixth & I; and, Congregation Ner Tamid - for diving into social media territory and sharing their stories!
How is your synagogue or religious community tapping into social media? Share YOUR stories!