Supporting non-profit innovation through NetSquared: a Drupal module for Newscloud

Rob and I are spending the next two days at NetSquared, in the company of 21 outstanding teams working on projects that harness social media tools for social change. We met many of these folks for the first time yesterday, in a pre-conference session that brought the projects together for an afternoon of collaborative idea-sharing and relationship building, and we were incredibly impressed by the commitment and creativity that these folks are bringing to their respective projects. As part of the NetSquared Innovators Support Network we will choose to work with one of these projects on a pro bono basis, providing them with their choice of a customized community participation plan, a recommended community feature set, or complete specifications for a new custom Drupal module.

But one of the themes that emerged in yesterday’s conversation was the desire to foster collaboration not only among the 21 finalist projects here in San Jose, but among the more than 150 projects who participated in this year’s call for Innovation Fund submissions. Like a lot of the folks here, we got really excited about quite a few of the projects that didn’t end up in the top 21, and we started thinking about how we might support their work.

That’s why we’ve decided to extend the same offer of pro bono support to one of the projects that isn’t in the room today. Next month, we’ll start working with Newscloud, an open source media platform that combines news sharing and social networking. Jodie Tonita of ONE/Northwest recently introduced us to Newscloud’s founder and driving force, Jeff Reifman, and we immediately saw Jeff’s work as exactly the kind of technology innovation that non-profits need now.

Using Newscloud, an organization’s members and supporters can identify the news stories that matter to them, annotate those stories with their own reflections, and collaboratively create a window on the day’s issues that reflect their interests and priorities. Individual users may find Newscloud compelling too — quite apart from the social benefits of collaboratively surfacing interesting stories, it’s got a great interface for reading blogs and news sites that displays stories as they appear on the originating site, rather than as plain or reformatted text. The best way to understand Newscloud’s value is to visit the Newscloud site, sign up for an account (it’s very quick!) and take it for a spin yourself.

Our clients and colleagues in the non-profit sector often ask us to help them integrate news into their online communities. They want a way to bring their members and supporters the news that is relevant to their issues and interests, and ideally, they want a way for their audience to interact with those stories and engage in meaningful conversation around the latest news. Newscloud offers that potential, but right now organizations need to either convene on the Newscloud site itself, or install their own version of the Newscloud platform.

We’re going to work with Jeff to make it easier for non-profits to integrate Newscloud’s features directly into their own web sites. Working from our own experience developing non-profit sites on the Drupal platform, we’re going to help Jeff develop a Newscloud Drupal module, so that the thousands of community sites now running Drupal can integrate Newscloud-enabled news sharing directly into their sites. We’ll use our own clients’ needs as the basis for developing the module’s specifications, but we’d love to hear from other organizations about their own needs for news sharing and commenting, so that our specifications can reflect the needs of as many organizations as possible — just leave your comments on this post, or e-mail me directly (alex at socialsignal dot com) to get involved.

We’ll keep the NetSquared community posted on how this experiment evolves. And we hope that other members of the NetSquared community — technology assistance providers, developers, funders, and participating projects — will think about how they might help or collaborate with one or more of the 150 projects that have profiled their needs on the NetSquared sites. The time, advice and support of this community can help each and every one of these projects move forward, and advance the state-of-the-art in using social media for social change.

Freaky Facebook bug?

Anna Strom just invited me to join a group for people whose babies were delivered by Pacific Midwifery. After I joined the group, I went to the “invite people to join” page, and saw a list of all the pending invitations, with the message that “19 invitations have not been sent”, and a “send” button waiting for me. I hit send, and all the people on that list who happened to be in my friend list got the message, but the remaining 14 are waiting there for Anna. But….what up, Facebook? That is one weird bug.

Turn It Off! British Columbia – The Pledge | 30 Days of Sustainability

Turn It Off! British Columbia – The Pledge | 30 Days of Sustainability
http://30daysofsustainability….
that we as British Columbians can and must make real changes in the way we live, for the sake of a livable, sustainable future.
On May 16th, I’m turning off…

1. My hair dryer (so no cracks about the ‘do, ok?)

2. All the #@*!!## beeping, noisy kids’ toys in our house. Let them play with carbon neutral, quiet blocks for the day.

3. My TV. I can read the American Idol results online. 😉

Why would I live without all that electrical goodness, even for one day?

Because May 16th is “Turn It Off! BC” — a day for people across the province to turn off their lights and other non-essential electronic and electrical devices. We’re going to show the world that BC-ers don’t just talk the talk on sustainability — we’re prepared to talk in the dark.

Please join me by:

1. Forwarding this message to three (or more) of your Facebook friends (instructions below)

2. Joining the Turn It Off! BC Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2263583834&ref=mf

3. Taking the Turn It Off! pledge at http://30daysofsustainability.com/pledge

To turn YOUR friends off….

1. Select this message (everything down to where it says THANKS!), copy it, and then hit the “share” link (above if you’re reading this in a profile, below if it’s a message in your inbox).

2. Choose the “send a message” tab, and paste this text into the body of your message.

3. Edit the list at the top of this message to replace one of my pledges with your own (or replace all 3 items).

4. Enter the names of 3 of your friends in the “To” field (Facebook will help fill it in), slap on a subject line (“Can you turn it off?”) and hit “send”.

And while you’re at it, why not post to your profile or your wall, too?

On May 16th, I’m turning off…

1. My hair dryer (so no cracks about the 'do, ok?)

2. All the #@*!!## beeping, noisy kids' toys in our house. Let them play with carbon neutral, quiet blocks for the day.

3. My TV. I can read the American Idol results online. 😉

What will YOU turn off?


Facebook will keep us together

….love is subscribing to someone’s Facebook updates on your cell. The uncanny thing is how quickly Rob’s cell rings once I hit the return key.

Oops, I poisoned my kids

Last month's "how the hell didn't I know that" moment was the discovery that Avent bottles, which both of my children have been drinking from daily for just about their entire lives, contain a suspected carcinogen.

I came across this info not through a consumer alert — that went out in 1999, before I was a parent and paid attention to these things — but because I set out to investigate the rumour I'd heard that plastic wasn't safe for food storage.

Edward Groth, the Consumers Union scientist behind the 1999 story leading to the alert, wrote that

There could hardly be more contrast in these two perspectives. One, based on firm conviction but no data, asserts that there is no effect of bisphenol-A in baby bottles, because none has been observed scientifically and because one part per billion of BPA is "too low" an exposure level to have biological effects. The other, based on simple, undisputed scientific facts, notes that polycarbonate bottles can expose babies to unimaginably large numbers of molecules of an estrogen-like chemical, several times a day. We must ask, on what basis can we presume that such exposure has no biological effects? What if "low-level" exposure is not intrinsically "safe;" what if, instead, our inability to measure effects has created an illusion of safety? In short, a precautionary risk assessment in this case would emphasize not the lack of concrete data showing harm in babies exposed to 1 ppb of BPA in their formula, but rather would recognize that 1 ppb is not necessarily a "low" exposure. It would assess the difficulties of knowing whether or not the quadrillions of molecules a baby ingests daily have any harmful effects on the tiny consumer's developing systems.

The dispassionate observers at plasticsinfo.org note that:

Polycarbonate has been studied and tested for nearly 50 years, and its use in products that come in contact with food is regulated for safety by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as governmental bodies worldwide.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a key building block in polycarbonate plastic. In recent years, a number of researchers from governmental agencies, academia and industry have studied the potential for trace levels of BPA to migrate from polycarbonate products into food and beverages under conditions of typical use. Extensive safety data on BPA show that polycarbonate plastic can be used safely in consumer products.

As a result, the use of polycarbonate plastic for food-contact applications continues to be recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, and other regulatory authorities worldwide.

By dispassionate, of course, I mean that plasticsinfo.org is the web site for the American Chemistry Councils' Plastics Division, which "represents leading manufacturers of plastic resins".

While I'm sure that the American Chemical Council wants nothing more for my baby than a long life full of plastic-purchasing opportunities, I'm afraid I can't take their "don't worry, be happy" message on this one. I've just gone out and purchased a supply of Gerber GentleFlow bottles at ToysRUs, which are made from polypropylene. If money were no object I'd go to Crocodile Baby on Fourth and buy the BornFree glass bottles.

And please note that BPA in baby bottles is by no means the only source of concern about kids and plastics. Check out the Smart Plastics Guide: Healthier Food Uses of Plastics for Parents and Children from the Instittue for Agriculture and Trade Policy. I've collected more resources on this topic and bookmarked them on del.icio.us.