See What’s Out There

October 15th is Blog Action Day, an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to post about the same issue on the same day. This year’s topic was poverty so See3 decided to host a screening of the Dollar A Day film series released by GlobalDevelopmentMatters.

Bloggers, activists and friends gathered at our office to watch The New Silver, a film about a woman in Bolivia who is fighting to build a better life for her family with the help of microcredit. Here’s the trailer for the film:

We followed the screening with a discussion of micro-credit and the role that film and new media can have in educating the public about social issues. Here are some photos from the event:

We also passed out this resource guide compiled by Global Developement Matters:

How Can I Help?
Check out these organizations and join their efforts to save lives and end global poverty.

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice.
The Senate is debating a new Farm Bill, which will set policies that could either help small farmers at home and abroad-or keep them struggling. Please contact your senators today and ask them to create a Farm Bill that reduces misguided subsidies and shifts those resources to support the programs that really need the money.

http://www.bread.org/
Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. Bread for the World members write personal letters and emails to Congress. Working through our churches, campuses and other organizations, we engage more people in advocacy. Right now, Bread for the World is pushing for more and better poverty-focused development assistance and passage of the Global Poverty Act.

http://www.onevote08.org/
ONE Vote ‘08 is an unprecedented, non-partisan campaign to make the fight against global poverty and disease a key foreign policy and security issue in the 2008 election. We’re mobilizing voters across the country to ensure that the next president makes a historic commitment to save lives by fighting global disease and extreme poverty.

http://www.mercycorps.org/
MercyCorps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Global Citizen Corps is a Mercy Corps program that aims to build a national network of youth who think and act globally, have the passion to build a better world, and are committed to ending global poverty.

http://www.care.org/
CARE fights root causes of poverty in the world’s poorest communities. We place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.

Host your own Dollar A Day screening!
Visit: http://globaldevelopmentmatters.org/host-a-screening

Last week we asked our friends on Twitter, “How has your personal or business blog helped you achieve goals for yourself or your organization?” Check out some of the responses below:

Next week’s question: What is your favorite social networking site and why?

I was in Las Vegas over the weekend for Blog World and New Media Expo. It was terrific, mostly because of the people who attended, some of the best bloggers and new media people around. We had @chrisbrogan, @msaleem, @jasonfalls, @lizstrauss, @stoweboyd, @guykawasaki, and many many others (@name is Twitter handle).

Some of the conference highlights were the session with Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Work Week) and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park.

The best way for sure to get the gist of what I learned is from Twitter. In every session people were Tweeting their notes.

If you don’t know Twitter, sign up. It’s basically micro-blogging — blog posts of 140 characters or less. It is also a social network, in that you follow the posts of specific people and they follow you. But you also have tags on Twitter, so everyone writing on a same topic can add a tag (in Twitter a tag starts with a #) and you can see a live stream of all posts with that tag.

So, for example, check out:

#bwe08 — this is the main conference tag

My session tag was #nminside

We had notes like this:

Blogging is a promise, if you’re not willing to fulfill that promise, you shouldn’t blog #nminside #bwe08

Q: How do we control comments? Brand control issues, we’re moving towards a world of radical transperancy #nminside #bwe08

Another interesting one was #cred and #asse9

If you aren’t sure what to do with these, go to Twitter Search and type in the tag with the #

And if you are not, follow me on Twitter @Michael_Hoffman and @See3

Every month, a group of bloggers in the Chicago area meet up to share tips, advice and the latest trends. See3 caught up with them at their September 2008 meeting where we talked about fun websites like:

Swurl.com: Lifestreaming tool that brings all your web content to one blog
Fotoviewr: Elegant photo galleries for your Flickr photos
Touchgraph.com: Easy way to visualize your data
Chicagotalks.org : Local citizen news and journalism

We also chatted with the group organizer Barbara Iverson and local bloggers Gordon Dymowski and David Kadavy about what’s special about blogging in Chicago:

Hey bloggers! Check out the Dogooder Blog Network and spread the good.

I ran into Andrew Mason at his booth for The Point in the sponsor section of the Netroots Nation conference. I remember he caught my interest with a statement that began,

“If mankind and the internet were conceived today at the same time by God, we would not be pursuing change in the way we do today…”

He continued to explain that instead of complaining about certain companies or organizations, we should leverage our powers as consumers and cooperate as a group. He believes that the internet is the best way to mobilize that power.

Andrew Mason is the founder of The Point which uses the web to organize group actions. You can see a funny and instructive video about how it works here and read the latest on the company’s blog makesomethinghappen.net. In this video, Andrew talks about how to empower your readers and build community around your blog.

Blog Tip: How To Build Community - Call For Action!

Spread the word! See3 is building a community of bloggers who support good causes and are receptive to sharing worthwhile messages with their readers. Be the first to hear about new campaigns from organizations like the Sierra Club and receive resources specific to your blog’s area of interest. If you’d like to join the See3 Blogger Network, shoot me an email at Dorothee@see3.net with a short description of your blog or website. I’m sure your inboxes are as full as mine so I promise to only send things that are relevant to your interests!

I met comedian Lee Camp on the bus on my way to the Netroots Nation convention in Austin. And yes, he was very funny. I got a chance to talk with him later in the weekend about the easiest ways to make a video (or any online content) go viral.

Lee Camp is a comedian, blogger and activist who has performed standup comedy around the country and in various videos online. He writes for The Huffington Post, 236.com and performs with LaughingLiberally. He is most famous for punking Fox news as a guest on their show (you can see all his videos at YouTube.com/LeeCamp). In this fourth part of our blog tips series, Lee talks about why comedy is so effective online.

Blog Tip: How to Go Viral - Be Funny

Here’s the “Permission” video Lee mentions as an irreverent and clever take on the gay marriage issue:

Lee also mentions that it’s important to be topical if you want your videos to go viral. Shortly after the Larry Craig bathroom scandal broke, he wrote up a quick video sketch that was soon so popular, CNN was airing it in their coverage.

Blog Tip: How to Go Viral - Be Topical

Spread the word! See3 is building a community of bloggers who support good causes and are receptive to sharing worthwhile messages with their readers. Be the first to hear about new campaigns from organizations like the Sierra Club and receive resources specific to your blog’s area of interest. If you’d like to join the See3 Blogger Network, shoot me an email at Dorothee@see3.net with a short description of your blog or website. I’m sure your inboxes are as full as mine so I promise to only send things that are relevant to your interests!

Last week at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, I got a chance to sit down with famous blogger OPOL who posts as One-Pissed-Off-Liberal on DailyKos. As the third in our series of blog tips, OPOL offers some advice for new bloggers. He talks about how to engage an audience with passionate writing and lots of multimedia. He notes that readers on the web aren’t looking for long, dense paragraphs of text and recommends colorful photos, videos and interactive elements to get readers engaged.

Blog Tip: How to Engage Readers - Be Passionate and Use Multimedia

Spread the word! See3 is building a community of bloggers who support good causes and are receptive to sharing worthwhile messages with their readers. Be the first to hear about new campaigns from organizations like the Sierra Club and receive resources specific to your blog’s area of interest. If you’d like to join the See3 Blogger Network, shoot me an email at Dorothee@see3.net with a short description of your blog or website. I’m sure your inboxes are as full as mine so I promise to only send things that are relevant to your interests!

As I mentioned in the previous post, last weekend I attended the Netroots Nation Convention in Austin, Texas. This is the second on a series of interviews I did at the event with prominent bloggers who share their tips for writing and networking online.

Here’s a tip from Gregg who blogs as Red Wind on The Seminal and capitoilette. He is also the author of Guy2K. In this video, Gregg shares his tips for making your blog stand out among the multitudes:

Blog Tip: How to Stand Out - Become an Expert

And as a bonus, here’s Gregg talking about the importance of social-networking sites (although he personally prefers to stick with email):

Blog Tip: How to Spread the Word - Join Social Networking Sites

Spread the word! See3 is building a community of bloggers who support good causes and are receptive to sharing worthwhile messages with their readers. Be the first to hear about new campaigns from organizations like the Sierra Club and receive resources specific to your blog’s area of interest. If you’d like to join the See3 Blogger Network, send an email to Dorothee@see3.net with a short description of your blog or website. I’m sure your inboxes are as full as mine so I promise to only send things that are relevant to your interests!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Netroots Nation Convention in Austin, Texas. Formerly known as YearlyKos, Netroots Nation was a whirlwind of over two thousand bloggers meeting, eating and twittering their way through panels and events (check out Garrett M. Graff’s great post about the event on the Capital Comment blog). This week, we’re posting a series of interviews with prominent bloggers who share their tips for writing and networking online.

To start us off, here’s a tip from Jill Richardson who led the panel, “The Recipe for Change in America’s Food System” at Netroots and blogs as OrangeClouds115 on DailyKos. She also founded recipeforamerica.org and recently started lavidalocavore.org. In this video, she shares her unique strategy for getting people to read about issues like the farm bill.

Blog Tip: How to Increase Your Readership - Gimmicks!

Spread the word! See3 is building a community of bloggers who support good causes and are receptive to sharing worthwhile messages with their readers. Be the first to hear about new campaigns from organizations like the Sierra Club and receive resources specific to your blog’s area of interest. If you’d like to join the See3 Blogger Network, send an email to Dorothee@see3.net with a short description of your blog or website. I’m sure your inboxes are as full as mine so I promise to only send things that are relevant to your interests!

Our senior writer, Susan Balaban worked for Foote, Cone & Belding/Chicago before coming to work for See3. During her tenure at FCB/Chicago she rose to Vice President/Creative Director, working on nearly every brand and client in the agency. She is most proud of her accomplishments for two of FCB’s pro-bono accounts, Earth Share and The United Way. Both received double-digit donation increases and local and international awards. Her work for Earth Share also garnered the Ad Council’s highest donated television media dollars, and was chosen as one of five print campaigns to run in the New York Times each year.

So it has been with great pleasure that we here at See3 have been able to help out Earth Share and the Ad Council extend their reach online around Earth Day. Over the past few days many green blogs that had never heard of Earth Share wrote about the campaign and their video Promise.

You can learn more about the Ad Council’s environmental work here.