http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeAmKKrIVlc

This was very cool. But again, I could have spent hours browsing these websites. Didn't find too much that related to homelessness. It's not a very sexy subject for a podcast.

I can see that this might be a good tool for our website.

This whole course has been interesting for me. Sure points out how technologically challenged I am, and that there is a whole world out there of stuff that I have hardly ever accessed.

Learning this stuff will help us change how we market ourselves and how we need to appeal to different audiences. Thanks for the opportunity to participate.

Too Many Passwords

I think I forgot to write my post last week. I did read all of the material and actually thought that Zoho Writer was pretty interesting and might be a useful tool.

But I am in password overload. While I try to keep them similar (so that I don't forget - ya right), it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember them all. I should have written them down.

I am now signed up at all kinds of sites that I might never use again. Do dormant accounts just stay there forever?

Well, something else I have never heard of. I have really been in the dark ages.

I can see that this might be a useful tool in some instances. We might ask donors to comment on services, clients to comment on programming or volunteers to tell us about their experiences.

My concern would be around allowing someone the space to negatively rant on about what is wrong with people who are experiencing homelessness. I get enough anonymous messages left on my answering machine already without providing an open forum for it.

Even More Confused

It must be clear now that I am not a techie. I can manipulate my way around the Internet, but all of the stuff we have been discussing is new to me.

I'm not sure any of it would help our organization. Then again, I'm not sure I understand a lot of it.

What I do know, is that I don't have four extra hours a week to attach a blog to our website and keep it up. Nor do we have money in our budget to pay for someone else to do it.

All of the ideas presented this week are very interesting and down the road we might consider one or two of them. But right now we are gearing up for the busiest winter we have ever had, and unfortunately anything that is not essential work is not going to get done.

I am so proud of myself! We just started an employee wellness program, and I have set up a blog for the staff to provide input.

Couldn't have done this without Community Engagement 2.0!

Well, one thing I am learning is that there is a whole lot of stuff out there that I know nothing about. I can see that once you get the hang of it, that some of these tools on Delicious might be helpful.

Are there no Canadian based sites? Nothing against our American neighbours, but I am more interested in news and events and websites that originate in Canada. That is my beef with Technorati.

It has taken me more time than I estimated to find my way around the websites we have been directed to, and has sometimes been very frustrating when I have made the same mistakes a number of times. I guess that once you become familiar with it, it becomes easier and faster.

I guess that I am just a little gunshy where Facebook is concerned. My son-in-law is a grade six teacher. Both he and my daughter had posts on Facebook. A friend uploaded a couple of pictures from their stag and doe last summer to their site. Although neither my daughter, nor my son-in-law had a drink in their hand in the picture, some of their friends did. A reporter from the Kitchener Record accessed the site and called my son-in-law in the fall, at school, demanding to know how he was fit to teach children when he clearly liked to party. The fact that the party took place in the summer, apparently had no bearing. Although the reporter never wrote the story that she threatened to, it caused a lot of hurt and upset that was totally unnecessary.

I would not consider posting anything about our non-profit on Facebook. I think that there are better ways to get the word out there, the foremost being our own website, over which we have control of the content.

The Library Thing was ok. But again, you can just spend way too much time browsing around these sites. It's a really nice day out there today, and I prefer to go for a walk rather than spend an hour communicating with people I don't know.

The Wonderful World of "Feeds"

Who knew all this stuff was out there? Probably my kids! There is a whole electronic universe going on in some parallel world.

Glad we have step by step instructions. While it was not hard to follow the tutorial and set up an account at Bloglines, and find some feeds, following all of them could take up a chunk of my time. At a lot of them, the topics and information were about things that I have absolutely no interest in.

I can see that linking a feed to our website would be a great idea. Which presents another whole problem around ensuring that the information it will generate reflects the mission and philosophy of our organization.

Internet Overload

Yikes! While I definitely see how all of this could enhance our website and other graphic design for brochures and stuff, it would take me hours of playing with it to get what I want. Not sure where that would leave my other mountains of work.

Obviously I need way more education on this stuff.

Looking forward to using technology to my advantage, instead of getting frustrated with it. I am envious of people who type a word here, click their mouse there, and bingo, something great happens.





My only fear is that my six-year old computer might not be up to it!