I’ve been trying to make the experience for Water For People constituents more interactive utilizing social media, to which I am fairly new. But today I had a breakthrough (not without a little help from Jon Gosier). Using Twitter, Yahoo Pipes and Feed Burner, a non-profit can have someone out in the world making notes of their experiences on Twitter, then Yahoo Pipes will separate the Tweets into separate RSS feeds, then FeedBurner will give you code so that you can post the constantly updating feed onto a web page specific to the keyword that you filtered against if you want this on your web site as content. I can think of so many possiblities here – the local humane society could set up “easy” breed-specific adoption feeds for potential new pet owners to know the instant a dog/cat/ferret of their choice comes up for adoption. The local political committee can parse out feeds depending on their constituents interests. The homeless shelter could send out up-to-the-minute requests for what they need that day (food, blankets, volunteers, money, etc.) and specifically reach the people that can offer those resources. It’s really quite amazing. Of course you don’t have to use Twitter, but why not put the information out on an application that is growing widely in popularity and gain followers for your organization that way as well as have people subscribe to your RSS feed? If this is all old news to some folks, then I completely understand. And it’s quite possible there’s an easier way to do things than the way I mentioned (please comment if there is!) – but my point is more that social networking is going to do a world of good for non-profits in order to get out our message in a free, and in many ways “cutting-edge” method. I thank Jon (mentioned above) for opening my eyes!
July 22, 2008
The Picture is Never Crystal Clear
My yoga class was wrapping up today and the teacher said in her final words, “Remember that with any judgment you make, you only had part of the picture.” This struck me specifically because just earlier today I sat frustrated and sad at my desk because a woman in Florida lost her son to heatstroke while she was in a nail salon getting a manicure before her wedding which was planned later that day. The headlines read “Boy Dies After Being Left in Sweltering Car for More Than 2 Hours” and “Boy, 4, ‘boiled to death’ in 139F car after his mother went for manicure on her wedding day.” Try this for an experiment. Type in “Boy dies in car while mom at nail salon” into Google. At the time of writing, a majority of stories dramatized the story by making it appear that the mother had purposely left her child in the car. But upon reading almost every article, you’ll find within about four paragraphs that it is quite likely that the child snuck back into the car and hid behind the seats of the SUV after his mom dropped off other children at a relative’s house. But you would never know this from the headlines. A grieving mother loses her son and all the media can do is blame her on the front page and exonerate her on the inside page. How many people scan the front page and never click through to the story? Newspapers have always jumped for the opportunity to use a cliffhanger headline – but at least newspaper headlines are followed by the full story within a centimeter. The Internet can’t be so crass, without creating a lot of false rumors and needless victims.
Just like we never know the full story when we’re in a simple conversation that has the words “she said, he said” spoken throughout, we never know the full story about any topic. There’s always a piece we’re missing and judgment will always come at the risk of our compassion.
