World Suicide Prevention Day

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, which is observed Sept. 10 each year to promote worldwide action to prevent suicides. This Christian song is dedicated to the memory of those who have taken their own life. I trust people from other faiths or none will find the song helpful. 

Sad

Grieving about he expected but unexpected death of my sister Tamsin aged 46 this evening

The Paralympian Rip Off

Evan George O'Hanlon is a triple gold medal winning Paralympic athlete from Australia, who competes mainly in category T38 sprint events. As of 2011, he is ranked first in the world. (Wikipedia). He holds a world record time. Last weekend, he took another Gold medal for the 100 metres last weekend in London.

At the same Paralympics, O'Hanlon is leading several other Paralympians in what Fairfax calls "a silent, heartfelt protest.". He has taping over the logos of the multinational sporting companies on his sporting gear that he feels have not helped enough to support athletes with disabilities. In fact the companies being blacked out have never supported the Paralympians.

 In the same week that O'Hanlon made his record time in the 100 metres, his request for sponsorship from a sporting goods company got this response ''We are aware of Evan as an outstanding athlete, however we are unable to support him.''   O'Hanlon has never been sponsored by any company although ASICS have paid for his uniform this Games so he is displaying the Asics name.  (I wear Asics so that has made me happy about my shoe choice).


Australian Paralympic team officials have advised they will not prevent athletes from covering the brand names of multinational companies that they believed had not helped enough to support athletes with disabilities. These multinational companiues get publicity from their logos on the gear but get this often the Paralympians have paid for their own uniforms.

Not good enough. O'Hanlon said: 'By covering it up, we're proving that we do have worth...It's what any Paralympian deserves.''

It feels to me, we already under resource the Paralympians. They get less media attention. And yet they are as brave and as dedicated as any able bodied athlete. The TV commentary I saw said of O Hanlon that he "owned the stadium" for his race.

I understand that the Olympic audience is far bigger than the Paralympians but lets treat these guys with some real respect.  

How can we change this without being tokenistic?  Could we pair up Olympic and Paralympic athletes so that a sponsor has to sponsor both? Could Olympians donate 10 per cent of their sponsorship funds to a Paralympian fund? In Australia, could Sports Australia ensure that all of our athletes (Olympic and Paralympic) are dressed? How can we help those Paralympians from a developing country? Could the world's sporting goods companies create a fund

Eastwooding

The internet showed how it morphs and forms itself this week.

It started with Clint Eastwood's appearance at the Republican National Convention where he talked to an empty chair as if it was Obama during his endorsement of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The sequence starts at 3mins 25 secs...

The chat to the chair became an online craze almost immediately. The next step was images were photoshopped into the Chair including the Princess Leia hologram and scowling Olympian gymnast McKayla Maroney.

This spawned a whole lot of things including a Simpsons newspaper front page with Grandpa Simpson and the headline became "Old Man Yells at Chair" (originally it was:  "Old man yells at cloud")

Comedy site HUMORdy published a video of the chair's imagined response ("my record of providing excellent lumbar support is beyond reproach"). It is hilarious!!! Watch it here:

Then a @InvisibleObama appeared on Twitter.

Invisible Obama ‏@InvisibleObama

I'm the first to break through the glass ceiling. RT @mbierm:@InvisibleObama do you hang out with other invisible presidents?

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17hInvisible Obama ‏@InvisibleObama

.@mittromney is holding a "victory rally" in Cincinnati. "Mission Accomplished", Mitt. Was looking for the banner, but it must be invisible.

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31 AugInvisible Obama ‏@InvisibleObama

If I was a Droid, my name would be C-Thru-B-O.

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What was fascinating is that, according to Ohmygov in the 24 hours after the Convention, Romney gained 23 thousand new Twitter followers and Ryan gained 18 000 new followers but @InvisibleObama ended up with 42 000 new followers- more than Ryan and Romney combined.

After the final night of the convention, Robert Gehrke (@RobertGehrke) a reporter with the Salt Lake City Tribune, had a colleague take a picture of him pointing at a chair and tweeted it with the tag "Look its Eastwooding". Within hours they were joined by over 25,000 "Eastwooders" on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram  all sharing pictures of themselves pointing at empty chairs.

This was followed by babies, cats and dogs staring at empty chairs.

Even the US President (or a clever adviser)  joined in the fun tweeting a photo of himself at the office in a chair marked "The president", with the comment "The seat's taken".

It is fascinating to see how Social Media can ru with something, develop and nurture it. If you want to see more of the Eastwooding pictures, check out my Pinterest board:

So True

"We are all different, there is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit. What is important is that we have the ability to create… This creativity can take many forms, from physical achievement to theoretical physics… However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Stephen Hawking, 2012 Paralympics Opening Ceremony.

Happy Fathers Day Dads

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?