Conceived by The AVI CHAI Foundation and produced by See3, The Jewish Day School Video Academy helped Jewish day schools improve their use of online video through training webinars, free one-on-one consultations, and this video contest with serious prize money. I watched many of these videos, and enjoyed seeing the creative approaches many took. They ran the gamut, from serious infomercials (I mean that in the best way, meaning marketing videos with rehearsed talking heads) to very creative student work, and down right silly fun.

It’s interesting to note what makes for an effective video. I encourage you to watch the following 6 winning entries and then reflect on what grabbed and kept your attention. What feeling do you actually walk away with? What’s your impression of the school? It’s also interesting to note that the 3 videos the panel of ‘expert’ judges chose were different than the people’s choice. Why do you think that is? What’s common to each grouping?

I can say that good lighting, great sound, reasonable length are absolute foundational elements of any decent video. And some playfulness never hurts.  Rumor has it that they may offer another contest this spring, so study up and then pick up your camera!  Take a tour of the winners:

Judges ratings:

1. Admissions Video (The Weber School – Doris and Alex Weber Jewish Community High School)

2. Milwaukee Jewish Day School Trailer (Milwaukee Jewish Day School)
3. MJGDS 50th Anniversary Video Invitation (Martin J. Gottlieb Day School)
People’s Choice
1. If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (Columbus Torah Academy)

2. A Gem in the Valley (Lander-Grinspoon Academy)
3. Put the P Back in PTSA (Greenfield Hebrew Academy)

Finalists were selected by an expert panel of judges and evaluated based on creative and strategic use of social media to positively impact the Jewish community. “We launched @JewishTweets in March 2008 and from the outset, embraced it for the way it allows us to connect with people everywhere. It has allowed us not only to be heard, but to listen and be inspired by others every day,” said Ephraim Z. Buchwald, founder and director of the National Jewish Outreach Program. “In particular, we wanted to take time to recognize some of those who are leveraging the power of social media to raise Jewish social consciousness and shine a positive light on Jewish life.”

I appreciate that this list includes so many different types of people — entrepreneurs, community organizers, educators, consultants, institutional folk and very non-institutional folk.  Just goes to show you that there’s no right or wrong way to tweet – just be yourself, help others, add value, and have fun.  And as Allison Fine says, “social media a contact sport, not a spectator sport.” So get in the game.

Rabbi Yonah Bookstein @RabbiYonah
Rabbi Yonah Bookstein is the executive rabbi for JConnectLA, which hosts events to help young Jews “connect to something bigger”. A popular blogger, Bookstein’s writings regularly appear in The Huffington Post, Jewlicious and LA’s JewishJournal.com. He also maintains the Facebook presence for both JConnectLA and the Jewlicious Festival, a popular youth event.

Lisa Colton: @LisaColton and @DarimOnline
Lisa Colton is the founder of Darim Online, a nonprofit dedicated to helping Jewish organizations and leaders effectively leverage social media to achieve their goals, including community building, education, communication and fundraising. In the past year, Colton has presented at conferences throughout the United States, and has hosted social media webinars online.

William Daroff: @Daroff
William Daroff is the vice president for public policy and director of the Washington Office for the Jewish Federations of North America. To the Jewish online community he is @Daroff, a prolific Tweeter who offers great insights into happenings in the American Jewish community. In 2011, Daroff co-chaired the social media committee for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Global Coalition for Israel.

Chaviva Galatz: @TheChaviva
Galatz is a popular blogger, Tweeter and social media personality. She created and co-chaired the only Jewish-themed panel at the 2011 SxSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX, entitled Jewish Synergy: Social Media and the New Community. She was named to The New York Jewish Week’s prestigious “36 Under 36” list where she was credited for “Connecting with Jews, one Tweet at a time”.

Allison Josephs: @JewInTheCity
Josephs is the woman behind “Jew in the City,” a popular website and video blog that helps promote a positive perception of Orthodox Judaism to non-observant Jews and non-Jews alike. In the past year, she has been invited to speak at numerous events and was interviewed by NPR for her work.

Esther Kustanowitz: @EstherK
Known to the online community as EstherK, Kustanowitz is a respected blogger, Tweeter and nonprofit consultant. Esther has traveled the globe presenting at various conferences on topics like Jewish communal engagement, social media and innovation. She was recently named a “Jewish Engagement Superstar” by Jewcy.

The Maccabeats: @Maccabeats
The Maccabeats, the male acapella group from Yeshiva University, has captivated American Jews with its hugely viral music videos promoting Jewish holidays. Their video for the song “Candlelight” has more than 7 million views alone. In 2011, the group was invited to perform for President Barack Obama at the official White House Chanukah party. The Maccabeats recently helped raise more than $88,000 for Gift of Life through their Miracle Match campaign.

Rabbi Jason Miller: @RabbiJason
Miller is a popular blogger on a wide variety of Jewish topics including technology, pop culture, politics and Jewish law. He is published regularly in the New York Jewish Week, The Huffington Post and the Detroit Jewish News. Rabbi Miller’s video response to former presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry’s “Strong” commercial has nearly 220,000 views on YouTube and was written about in dozens of national and international publications.

Dave Weinberg: @Weinberg81
A Jewish innovator who uses social media to rally people for causes he supports, Weinberg runs Causil, which offers nonprofit consulting, conferences such as the Future of Jewish Nonprofit Summit, aimed at educating the Jewish community on social media. Dave also was invited to lead the Social Media Boot Camp at the AJOP Convention earlier this year.

Rabbi Josh Yuter: @JYuter
Rabbi Josh Yuter is not only a pulpit rabbi. He’s a popular blogger, tweeter, and podcaster (his Jewish-themed podcasts were downloaded more than 20,000 times last year.) After he launched an impressive Facebook page and Twitterfeed for his synagogue, he was chosen by the Rabbinical Council of America to teach other rabbis about social media and “Using the Web to Teach Torah” at its 2011 Annual Convention.

While I’m quite excited about the projects that have been awarded funding, I’m even more excited about the broader impact that this fund has had on established organizations, entrepreneurs, and funders alike.  Having worked to advance the Jewish community’s use of digital media for over 10 years now (wow, that went fast), I can see that even the announcement of the Fund changed the conversations among staff and lay leaders throughout the Jewish community.  While a social media and mobile strategy might have been pushed to the bottom of the agenda over and over again, the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund forced them to put it at the top of the agenda, and to think about it strategically, not just tactically.  Regardless of whether or not these ideas were funded today, providing an incentive, structure and time line I’m sure has deepened and advanced the work of many applicants.

It’s also important to note that the criteria used to evaluate the proposals has an impact beyond the short term decision making about fund allocation.  For example, one requirement was that the projects would be able to launch or achieve results within 12 months.  While in some cases this felt like a really compressed time line, the reality is that we are all in a permanent beta mode — we have to throw ideas against the wall, assess their effectiveness, and continue to refine over time.  If you’re spending more than a year putting it together, either the idea wasn’t sufficiently thought out to begin with, or you’re not prepared to develop in an agile and iterative process.

The fund also set a priority on innovation – though the term was fairly broadly defined. In many cases, I think the made applicants really think beyond the obvious.  I was impressed by how many applications viewed their mission through a new lens as they developed their applications.  While the technology employed may not have been so “innovative” and new, the ways that they were thinking about their work clearly were.  Kol hakavod to those that busted through the walls of their buildings, put the freedom of exploration in the hands of their users, and researched technologies, platforms and models outside of their immediate sphere of influence, or even their comfort zones.

There are many more lessons to be learned from the applicant pool, process, and over time, the outcomes of the projects funded.  Regardless of who receives a check, this Fund was a tremendous gift to our community.  I hope that those who used the opportunity to think in new and deeper and riskier ways will still find inspiration and value from the process, and will resolve to continue to take action on these ideas by incorporating these costs into their operating budget where appropriate, writing other grants, and seeking the support of other funders – foundations and individuals – who also recognize that these tools, ideas and approaches are critical to our communal future.

Are you an applicant to the #JNMIF who didn’t get your project funded this round?  How are you going to proceed with this work?  What non-financial assistance do you need?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Why? Thought you’d never ask …

10) You’ll get to learn from experts in the nonprofit sector in person and learn from their practical experience.

9) Speaking of, where else will you get to attend sessions facilitated by rockstars like Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, authors of “The Networked Nonprofit,” Wendy Harman, of the American Red Cross and Stacy Monk, founder of Epic Change and Tweetsgiving campaigns? (See our list of the top 10 must-attend sessions.)

8 ) A wide range of nonprofit professionals—executives directors, marketing and communications professionals, development and program staff—and organizations will be there.

7) It’s a great way to step outside the silo of our community while creating partnerships and mentorships within it.

6) It’s fun! NTC is not your average stuffy professional conference. You get to enjoy ice cream bars at the mid-afternoon break and cocktails with friends at the After-Party. Yes, you read that right—ice cream and cocktails!

5) We’re offering a discount to the members of our network (see below for how to take advantage).

4) The adventurous-and-always-fun-to-learn-from Esther Kustanowitz will be there.

3) Can we get you a warm chocolate chip cookie with that ice cream bar?

2) Guaranteed free wifi throughout the conference. You’re encouraged to fool around on your iPad/blackberry/laptop during sessions—but only if you’re tweeting or live blogging.

Finally, the #1 reason why we think you should join us at NTEN this year is …

1) We’re hosting two really awesome gatherings just for you!

The first will take place on the morning of Thursday, March 17, before the NTC officially gets underway. We will gather from 8 am – 11am, using these three hours to:

• Get an update on the state of the Jewish digital union, including a debrief of the results of the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund;
• Discuss the new rules of the digital game and how they apply to your work;
• Hear a few case studies of leading practices in the Jewish and nonprofit sectors; and
• Work through an obstacle-busting exercise based on the issues your organization is facing.

The second gathering will be Friday evening for a light and easy Shabbat dinner. Come to eat, schmooze and continue the conversations sparked by Thursday’s gathering. Nothing fancy—just food, new friends and some time to TGIF.

You do not have to register for the entire NTC conference to attend these events (though we do encourage it).

Sold? Ready for next steps? Great!

A) Sign up for NTEN. To take advantage of our special rate, you will need to follow these steps:

• If you’re new to NTEN, you’ll have to set up a free and easy account. (Or login to your NTEN account.)
• Go to 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference
• Select “Darim Online” in the “How did you hear?” field when registering to receive the NTEN member rate.

B) Fill out this form to let us know you are coming and if we can expect you for Thursday’s gathering, Shabbat Dinner and/or the entire conference. Again, you don’t have to register for the NTEN conference to join us at one or both of these events.

C) Take care of the details like transportation and hospitality.

D) Let us know if you have any questions.

Until next time!

Your friends at CLSFF and Darim Online

Tell us the details of your story, and be entered to win a free pass to the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference (“NTC”) from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and Darim Online.

NTC, an annual event organized by NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, will take place March 17-19 in Washington, D.C. It is a rare opportunity for the tech-friendly and curious Jewish professionals to connect with, learn from and share knowledge with peers and experts who are dedicating their talents to the nonprofit sector.

A wide range of nonprofit professionals—executive directors, development professionals, marketing and communication folks, IT staff, program staff and others—from both very small and very large organizations will be present to discuss how technology, marketing, communications and leadership are essential to advancing your mission.

Do not miss out on this amazing opportunity to step outside of the silo of our community to learn from the rockstars of the nonprofit technology field while also engaging in facilitated discussions and schmooze sessions with your fellow Jewish professionals.

Better yet, you can earn the chance to do it for free simply by telling us how you are using technology!   Leave a comment below to be entered.  Your story may be featured on the Darim and Schusterman Family Foundation web sites!

Deadline for submissions is December 15!

* Thank you to the Nonprofit Technology Network for donating this conference registration to the Jewish community!

THEN SIGN UP FOR OUR ONLINE BOOK GROUP!

That’s right.  Starting in January, we’ll be hosting a free online book group to discuss the concepts and their application to our work in the Jewish community.  Bonus: experience the joys of the new Facebook Groups feature while you’re at it.  You can join the book group now, and we’ll kick off discussion in January.

That gives you just enough time to get copies for your co-workers, plus one for yourself, and read it in mid-December while everyone else is still scrambling for that other holiday, or by a cozy fire, or on the beach in Hawaii or where ever you might take a winter vacation…

Have you read the book yet?  What are you interested in discussing?  What ideas grabbed your attention?

BJENY-SAJES (a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation), the Experiment in Congregational Education, and Darim Online (Equal Opportunity Employers) seek to pioneer new approaches to education through more robustly engaging parents and networking educators, clergy, and lay leaders involved in educational innovation. The new social media tools offer the opportunity for us to take a leap forward in this vital work.

We are now hiring for a new position, based at BJENY-SAJES in New York City.  The Social Media Project Manager will lead and coordinate the design and implementation of two projects specifically focused on enabling early childhood centers and congregational education programs to share innovative educational approaches with member families and build learning communities among educators, clergy, and engaged lay leaders from across institutions engaged in these new educational practices.

Find more details about the job here.

In recent years a number of creative, and largely independent, social entrepreneurs in the Jewish community have taken matters into their own hands, building and launching interesting applications on a shoestring, sometimes at night while holding down a full time job to pay the bills.  But in general, the organizations, their audiences, the designers and programmers, and the funders haven’t been speaking the same language. Some people are preaching open source and others and pressing CDroms.  Where do we go from here?

Three of the nation’s largest Jewish foundations – the Righteous Persons Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation – have announced the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund to help energize the community to focus on the need for new media innovations, and to help bring them to life.  While a pool of $500,000 injects important dollars to jumpstart new and support developing projects, I think this fund — and the role of three prominent foundations — is a critically important statement to the community.  This is not optional anymore.  This is our present, and our future, and there is no time to waste.  I know a lot of people with some very creative ideas, and this is a tremendous opportunity for us to recognize the talents that exist within the Jewish community, and to take advantage.

The fund intends to support interactive, digital efforts that are creative and impactful, and which and engage with Jews and Judaism in ways that promote moremeaningful and vibrant Jewish life in the 21st century.  The Fund will support individuals, 501c3 non-profit organizations, social enterprises, and for-profit businesses. Collaborative projects are welcomed and encouraged.

All the details and the application form are here. Deadline is November 22, 2010. Funding decisions will be made in February, 2011.

On the first, we need to learn how to be more nimble — learning new skills, evolving our decision making processes to be able to move more swiftly, and being able to adjust structures to keep the machine humming when the outside world shifts.

But all of this is only possible when we are successful with the second.  Leading through change is a great challenge, that involves not only good business strategy, but excellent communication, team building, listening, and attention to the psychology of change, not only the logistics of change.  If the Jewish community needs one thing, it’s people who are superb leaders in times of change.

Several years ago, when Darim was shifting from our original work of building web sites to a focus on training, coaching and consulting, I read a powerful book, Managing Transitions, by William Bridges.  The take home message:  Change is situational (like a light switch), but transition is psychological (a process).  We need leaders who know what change needs to be made to thrive in the “new normal”, but those same leaders also need to facilitate a transition, which requires a whole different set of skills.

If you haven’t noticed, the Jewish community isn’t the only one recognizing this need. (It’s comforting to know we’re not behind the curve on this one!)  A flurry of new books are hitting the shelves focused on change strategy and management in today’s world:

• Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath (from Amazon.com): In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.
• The Power of Pull, by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison (from Amazon.com): In a radical break with the past, information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into its stream.  But many of us remain stuck in old practices—practices that could undermine us as we search for success and meaning. Drawing on pioneering research, The Power of Pull shows how to apply its principles to unlock the hidden potential of individuals and organizations, and how to use it as a force for social change and the development of creative talent.

Coming out soon:

• Open Leadership, by Charlene Li (co-author of Groundswell) (from Amazon.com):  “Be Open, Be Transparent, Be Authentic” are the current leadership mantras-but companies often push back. Business is premised on the concept of control and yet the new world order demands openness-leaders do not know how to be open and be in control. This must-have resource will help the modern leader understand how to lead in the new open world-where blogging, twittering, facebooking, and digging are becoming the norm. the author lays out the steps that leaders must take to transform their organizations and themselves into being “open” -and exactly what that will mean.
• Empowered, by Josh Bernoff (co-author of Groundswell) (from Amazon.com): Fueled by data from Forrester Research, Empowered is packed with the business tools and information necessary to move your organization several steps ahead … and lead … your people (who are) armed with cheap, accessible technology, and are connecting with customers and building innovative new solutions.

What are your strategies for managing change?  Where have you been successful?  What’s hard?  Do you have advice or other resources to add to the conversation?  Onward!

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.