NZ Volunteer Awareness Week.

Volunteer Awareness Week 2012 was celebrated in June!  Celebrations were held across the country - we hope you got involved in these events and recognised the valued contributions of volunteers to the community.

During the week many great celebrations were held across New Zealand.  Volunteer awards were held in Hamilton, Nelson, Tauranga, Hawkes Bay and Christchurch.  Volunteer parades and marches planned in Palmerston North and Gisborne, and a fun photo shoot of Marlborough volunteers. The photo included representatives from 130 voluntary organisations.

The Nikau Foundation Corporate Challenge held by Volunteer Wellington recognisde corporate volunteers within the region and the positive impact they have to society.

The Volunteering Canterbury Volunteer Recognition Awards were held in Christchurch to acknowlege the contribution of volunteers. The event had a great turn out and took the front page of The Press.  Volunteer Nelson held a successful Youth Recognition Event with many speakers and entertainers - with over 150 young people recognised!

The theme was 2012 was 'Building communities through Volunteering'.  We hope you enjoyed events and celebrations to recognise the valued role of volunteers across our nation! 

How to Get sued for using Twitter

Twitter is an amazing communications tool.  I type a message of 140 letters, press a button and off it goes to my 750 "followers". If they like it, then they may send it onto their followers. Potentially my message can then get to 225 000 people. If all those people like it and re tweet it, then that is 55 million people! Imagine what my Klout score would do if that happened (I am currently 63, Obama is 99 out of 1o0 and Justin Bieber is  92 ). I digress a little. 

As twitter has grown, we have seen grown adults cry over tweets, people resign, hide and get sued. While this is still a new field, Luke Scanlon a technology law expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com has listed in The Register of the UK ten tweets to avoid if you do not wish to be sued. These in summary are: 

1. Using someone else's Branded Tweets or Hashtags. eg #Qantas #Southwest @Unitedairlines  potentially could result in a damages claim if the use creates a "likelihood of association or confusion with the products or services of the trade mark owner"
2. Copied tweets-  if the tweet which reproduces the work of another gives evidence of that other individual or company's unique choices in choosing and arranging the words or images or sounds.
3. Revealing personal or confidential information
4. Threatening tweets -  if the person to whom it was directed has a genuine belief that physical harm is imminent.
5. Impersonating Someone else is fraud 
6. If the tweet is deceptive in nature or likely to deceive 
7. Menacing Tweets - If a tweet could create fear or apprehension in the minds of anyone who may reasonably be expected to see it then the tweet can be considered menacing
8. Malicious tweets done with the intent of damaging another's business, goods or services through false statements
9.  Harassing tweets 
10. Defamatory tweets - you are libelous if you send a tweet which lowers a person's standing and expose them to 'hatred, ridicule, or contempt'. Does that mean I cannot Tweet about any politician?

When we let freedom ring

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

-- Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech, August 28, 1963

#Biebs move over for Pres. #Obama

An event occurred this week which has impacted on the content of one of my Social Media training sessions! Up to this week, the world's most influential man on the internet was Justin Bieber. This little known fact excites or dismays my workshop participants.

In the last week, this changed with Obama moving to the top spot of the most influential person on the internet and Beiber sliding down. The arbiter of this is Klout, a somewhat controversial measuring tool. Barack Obama has  a Klout score of 99 out of 100 up from 95.  Justin fell an incredible eight points from 100 to a new Kout score of 92.

The cause of this swing was a change in the Klout algorithm. Previously Klout only measured Facebook and Twitter. Now Linkedin, Foursquare and Blogger are included. If you have a Wikipedia entry, this will also impact your score.

The effect of the new algorithm was a jump in my score from 57 to 66. This was after a period of lower activity from me which had seen my score drop down to 47. One of the other upgrades Klout is introducing is the provision of information on what activities cause your score to go up and down.  That will come in the next few weeks.

Klout says that the average Klout Score is around 40. They note that the Score becomes exponentially harder to increase as you move up the scale. For instance, it is much harder to move from a 70 to a 75 than from a 20 to a 25. My challenge is to get over 70!

One of the things that is interesting about Klout is that it does give you some sense of how well a person uses Social Media. For example, Beth Kanter who I consider to be the number one guru on Social Media and Not for Profits has a score of 79. Not quite Obama territory, of course,  but it is definitely enough to tell me she knows what she is doing (and I am not too far behind her!). I have a list of "influential" people that I am connected with.

Interestingly, high scorers can get Klout Perks, rewards for their influence. The idea is you take the perk and then Tweet or Facebook about it. The company providing the perk gets publicity althiugh Klout says: "You have no obligation to talk about the product. You're welcome to tell the world you love it, you dislike it, or say nothing at all. Most Perks seem to be for people with scores over 50 - and living in the USA.

So is Klout good or bad? Is it real or a crock? To be honest, I dont know but I do know that if you engage someone to do Social Media training or marketing and their score is 21, what does that tell you about how well they engage Social Media? You are wasting your time and money. You can find out someone's Klout score by entering their name at Klout.com. You can also download an app for your phone and an app that embeds into Twitter and tells you the Klout score of everyone who tweets.

And of course, Klout ignores the people who have an influence off Social Media. If a volunteer reaches a child to read on a one to one basis, what is their measure of their influence? Life changing but Klout does not measure that does it?

What am I doing?

So, I am building my business
Trying to keep fit
Trying to build my love life ....and make a differenec to the world

I have made some mistakes for which I am sorry and I am trying to fix them. These may take time.

Reunion Shadows

Last week, I blogged about my High School Reunion. Today Dianne Mckenzie a fellow student with me at High School and Head of Library and Teacher Librarian in a 1-12 international school in Hong Kong posts about our reunion and her reflections from an educators perspective. Thanks Dianne. You can contact her at diannecm at gmail.com or through twitter dimac

A few weeks ago I had the privilege to reunite with about 70 or so classmates from my high school years. It was great meeting these people again after so many years and we were still able to have a great time even though distance and time had come between us over a generation. We had been able to reconnect and share photographs through Facebook before the evening which was great to break the ice and renew old friendships.

On the afternoon of the reunion the group was able to walk around the school grounds and even inside the school buildings, reflecting on what had not changed or seeing improvements where they had been made. As we passed different classrooms the conversation invariably was started with "Remember when Mr ... or Mrs... " with a lively conversation about the teacher and incident involved.

After the reunion it struck me as significant how much we remember about our lives at school and particularly our teachers even in the smallest details. Passing comments such as 'he was a good bloke', 'she was as hard as nails', 'terrible teacher', or 'I wonder what happened to them'. We could remember all their names and how they related to us. Someone who was a terrible to teacher to one was excellent to others. All reflected on how the teacher student relationship changed for the better once they moved into senior high school.

The relationship between a student and teacher is a complex beast, but in the end the teacher will be remembered how the students perceive them. Those who were remembered most fondly by our year group were the ones who gave of themselves, showed us their human side, were fair as well as being able to help the students learn to the best of their abilities, fun yet still maintained a teacher student relationship. They were not our friends, they were friendly and they were respected for who they were and they in turn respected us for who we were.






It was also interesting to find out how many of our year group started out in a different profession, but some were drawn to teaching later in life and now are themselves enjoying the rewards of being an educator. I do believe this is due in part to the great influence of the mostly fantastic teachers we had.






The reunion made me re-realise that every interaction I have with a student will be remembered by someone, somewhere. I play a significant role in these peoples lives and, it is in my best interests to make these interactions as positive as possible so that they will be good memories.






How will you be remembered?

Delete Cookies?

Up and Up

I was very excited about two meetings I had on Friday. They were very, very successful and bode well for my continuing to move forward.

Watching the Closing Ceremony for the Olympics has challenged me to keep on the up and up in everything.

So am looking at the week with huge excitement!

Whats a Brand worth?

The most valuable brand in the world according to Millward Brown,  is worth $183million - and that brand is Apple.
Number #2 is IBM - still after all these years.
#3 Google
#4 McDonalds
#5 Microsoft
#6 Coca Cola
#7 Marlboro - extraordinary the brand power of a product that cannot be advertised in much of the world!
#8 ATT&T
#9 Verizon
#10 China Mobile - the world's largest mobile phone operator with about 655 million subscribers


Other selected brands:
#19 Facebook, the world’s largest social network- brand value of $33.2 billion
Ikea is worth $11 billion

What does this mean to be worth this much money as a brand? Is this how we measure impact on this planet?

Rumours

I get bemused when I see this quote on the internet by Abraham Lincoln -it has also been attributed to  Albert Einstein regarding aspects of social media or the net. They were visionary men but not that visionary! Humans are good at spreading rumours and misinformation - the net allows us to do it faster.

I got a lot of shtick last week for a blog article of mine that was discussed at a meeting. People were very angry about some of my comments suggesting that volunteer centres should be de funded or something similar.

I was somewhat perplexed because I have never actually said this. In fact, blog readers will know I advocate for the opposite. For example:

• Bluntly, I am not a big fan of the strategy. One of the reasons, I flagged in my comments on the strategy, was that I had real concerns at the lack of volunteer centre support"21 March 2012 

• The Australian government needs to better resource volunteerism infrastructure. This includes money for Volunteer Centres across all tiers on a contract basis of 3 years or more. This would mean that centres are not scrounging for resources. The amounts of money being played with for the sector are nonsensical when we consider its supposed size and scope.  If we say its economic impact is as large as the construction centre, should it not be funded better? 21 March 2012 

• This is becoming   recurrent theme of mine. How about  decent funding for volunteering peak bodies and resource centres 22 Jan, 2012

• Theres still not enough money to support volunteering infrastructure - or volunteer centres 22 Feb, 2012

What has annoyed me is that no one can find the offending article but everyone was upset by it. If anyone can find it for me,I would be grateful.

It is actually very easy to verify the authenticity of something on the internet. It is called Google. Type in phrase and search. Fakes can be uncovered and real opinions checked on. You can even search through my blog!

Finally, this blog has the option for comments. The idea is that I leave room for discussion and dialogue. If you are unhappy with a post or if you like it, please respond to it. I even let you make comments anonymously! I, of course, exercise the right to remove offensive comments. I will advise when I remove those comments.

So guys next time you are upset by something someone is purported to have said:
1. Check the authenticity -Google it
2. Check the context  -what were the comments/posts before this post? Is the quote in full or has only part of it been used?
3. Check the credibility - is the organisation/person that is passing on the "rumour" reliable?
4. Check the track record of the writer -what else have they said on this issue?

Thanks

School Reunion

Last week, I went to my 30th School Reunion. YES! I am that old!

I was interested as to how many people I mentioned to that I was coming responded with groans: "how awful" or "boring".  I was strangely excited- and nervous. I was not at all a fan of my school. While there were some teachers that stood out and some wonderful fellow students, this school had too many nasty experiences.

The event brought a range of thoughts.

I am amazed at how rapidly, 30 years has vanished. It is cliched, I know, to say in the blink of an eye we were all 18 year olds in school uniforms. Today many of us have children older than 18. Looking at some of the photos, I realised how young we were and we thought we were old!

 We are getting to the point where we will start to be the "older generation". The "old fogeys" are well and truly us! Am I ready for that mantle?

 It was interesting the choices people had made. Some choices had worked. Some had definitely not worked. Some choices had been discarded. A lot of people were not working in the career they studied for after school.

The reunion group seemed split between teachers, health professionals and finance people.

Terrifying Possibility of the new world.

It sounds like something from a Science Fiction movie.

Mat Honan was playing with his daughter on Friday August 3, when his iPhone died and then rebooted to the setup screen. This was irritating, Mat wasn’t concerned,  assuming it was simply a software glitch. As the phone automatically backs up every night. he just assumed it would be a "pain in the ass" [sic], and nothing more. Mat entered his iCloud login to restore, and it wasn’t accepted. Again, he was irritated, but not alarmed. 

Mat decided to restore the phone from his computer's backup. When he opened the laptop, an iCal message popped up telling Mat that his Gmail account information was wrong. Then the laptop's screen turned grey, and asked for a four digit pin number to access the laptop. Mat didn’t have a four digit pin. 

Now Mat, knew "something was very, very wrong". He walked to the hallway to grab his iPad. It had been reset too. Mat could not turn on computer, iPad or  iPhone.

Using his wife’s iPhone Mat called Apple tech support. While on hold, he grabbed her laptop and tried to log into his gmail account whereupon he discovered his password had changed. He couldn’t reset it either because the backup went to iCloud. Of course, the ICloud had already not let him in. 

Mat tried to log into Gmail again, but was told that his Google account had now been deleted. The way to restore it was to send a text message to my phone which Mat didn’t  have access to.

Apple tech support weren’t able to stop the wipe on the Macbook. Or provide the four number pin to log into it. Or give immediate access to my phone. 

What was going on?

At 4:50 PM on August 3rd, someone got into Mat's iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. The backup email address for his Gmail account is that same .mac email address. At 4:52 PM, that person tried to log into Gmail by requesting a password recovery email. An email changing the Gmail password arrived two minutes later to the mac email account. 

At 5:00 PM Using ICloud,  the hacker remote wiped my iPhone. They then remote wiped the iPad at 5:01pm and followed that up with his MacBook Air at 5:05pm. A few minutes later, they had access to his Twitter account. Because Mat had linked his Twitter account to his ex employer's Twitter account years before, the hacker had access to that Twitter account too. A series of nasty tweets started being sent  from the ex-employer (Gizmodo).

Mat lost at least a year’s worth of photos, emails, documents, and more. 

Someone claiming to be the hacker got in touch to says “didnt guess ur password or use bruteforce. i have my own guide on how to secure emails.” Apple then confirmed that Apple tech support provided the hacker with access to the iCloud password. Before yelling too loudly at Apple, the hacker was able to use "

some clever social engineering that let them bypass  security questions"

My learnings:

1. Have a company policy around passwords eg when changed, length. We need to emphasise how careful we must be with passwords
2. do not write down passwords in public places
3. do not use the same password on every account
4. Have an email account that is only for backup password requests and the like. Give it out for no one and nothing
5. Be aware of who has password access to your organisation's server, email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Change common codes when an employee or volunteer leaves
6. Do not use your Mother's real maiden name when asked that security question. This is the most common question asked. It does not take a genius to find out what most people's mother's maiden name is
7. Think about the other common security questions asked by companies. Eg where born (Facebook tells me that). My First car? If your facebook timeline says: Got my first Volvo in 1996 or if you sent a tweet that said " said good bye to my first car today. will miss my Toyota" then anyone can get that information
8. Do a password audit. What are all of the passwords in your organisation? In your personal life? Who knows what?

Olympic Pity Party

Australia is having a bit of a Pity Party at the moment. Out of the 61 countries that have won medals, Australia is in the 24th place with 20 medals (one Gold, 12 silver and seven bronze).

This is unusual for Australia who are used to much greater wins.

For example, Australia won a total of 14 gold, 15 silver and 17 bronze medals at the Beijing 2008 Games. In Athens, Australia got  17 gold, 17 silver and 16 bronze. And at the "home" games in Sydney in 2000, the hauls was 16 gold, 25 silver and 17 bronze.

What does one do when one is used to winning and life takes a different turn?

Friday Facts: Aussies and Charities

A brilliant report came out last week from Millward Brown, a research company who specialise in research about advertising, marketing and brands. Australian Charity Perceptions Report 2012 gives not only some very solid information but also demonstrates that fund raising in the Australian market is different to other markets.

Too Many Charities
There are approximately 200 000 charities registered on the Australian tax system. Of those about 25 000 have DGR status which means they can collect tax deductible donations. Of those, Millward Brown found that Australians remember Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of Australians are loyal to a select few charities. People over 50 are liable to be much more loyal to a small number of charities. A very important finding is that only 13 percent of Australians do not think there are too many charities. 57 percent think there are too many and 30 percent neutral. In the state of NSW 66 percent think there are too many.

What do Aussies want to donate for?
The  most important types of charities for Australians were:

• Disaster relief 64%
• Health 61%
• Poverty prevention/relief 52%
• Human rights 37%
• Animal welfare 37%

Which Charities are the best known?
Who has the pubic consciousness? Unaided, the first charity mentioned by the sample was The Salvation Army (19 per cent). Fully half the people talked about the Sallies. Red Cross came next (41percent mentioned- 17 percent first charity mentioned). St Vincent de Paul came next but only had six percent of first mentions (28 percent of respondents talked about them).  In order the most commonly mentioned charities were:

Fred Hollows (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Salvation Army                                                                                                                              
2. Red Cross
3. Saint Vincent de Paul                                                                                                                         
4. RSPCA                                                                                                                        
5. Cancer Council                                                                                                 
6. Heart Foundation                                                                                                             
7. Oxfam                                                                                                                        
8. Smith Family                                                                                                                 
9. Guide Dogs Australia                                                                                                               
10. Unicef                                                                                                                       
11. WWF                                                                                                                          
12. Fred Hollow Foundation                                                                                                           
13. World Vision                                                                                                                 
14. Greenpeace                              

Of those charities, The Salvation Army Red Cross and Cancer Council were the most trusted which suggests Red Cross (who I volunteer for) have shaken off the bad publicity from misleading communications after the Bali Bombings.

With the exception of Fred Hollows, Greenpeace and Oxfam Australia, the above charities are very old long standing institutions. I was interested Reach Foundation, Starlight, Alannah & Madeline Foundation (who sacked one of their patrons Grant Hackett in May), Cystic Fibrosis (65 Roses), White Ribbon who have some fairly high profile events didn't appear at all. 

Don't ask us to give

Another key learning is that only 15 percent of Australians are okay with being asked for donations. 60 percent are tired of being asked for donations - almost a quarter are sick of being asked. This has some important consequences for the next few months and years. For me, there seems to be a key Australian psych that occurs in day to day life. Many of us are happy to help people (family, friends, strangers) but Aussies hate whingers/complainers. Don't ask for help and don't keep on asking. Charities need to remember this. 

Charity Efficiencies

While only 56 per cent believed charities should be run like a business,  87 percent of people want to know more about how their money is being spent.

Ways of Support
While 61per cent of people were interested in donating, 31per cent were interested in volunteering. Fully half of people would buy charity merchandise and almost half would buy a product where money went to the charity as a donation. (Take note charities). I would be interested in the overlap eg how many people would both volunteer and donate.  How man would buy merchandise instead of volunteering.