Pecha Kucha night is an event format for creative work in which presenters show a slideshow of 20 images, each of which is shown for 20 seconds — giving a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds. Each event usually has 8 - 14 presenters. Presenters (and much of the audience) are usually from the design, architecture, photography, art and creative fields.
The event was originally devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Kein-Dytham Architecture (KDa) in Tokyo, Japan in 2003 and has been replicated in more than 300 cities, including London, San Francisco, Seattle, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Berlin.
yMedia was invited to speak last Thursday, 18th November at Pecha Kucha Night in Auckland: PKN_AKL_23 as part of the MoAD & Unitec NZ Art week. It was a perfect way to re-integrate Pamela (co-founder of yMedia) diving head first back into yMedia life presenting alongside Jade.
Topics from the evening ranged from, film, photography, plastic surgery, sustainable product design and social entrepreneurship. As you can imagine, 6 minutes and 40 seconds is not a lot of time to share all the stories behind yMedia so we focused on sharing a few of the stories from not-for-profit organisations and the projects that came out of the yMedia Challenge 2010.
Please check out our Pecha Kucha slides from the evening here.
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) is a celebration of innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity. The week brings together millions of people across the globe through online and local activities and encourages them to think in innovative ways and to unleash their ideas.
This year, yMedia was honoured to be invited to speak at the GEW launch alongside Mike Cherrett (Deputy British High Commissioner), Marc Ellis (Celebrity sportsman & entrepreneur), Rod Oram (Business journalist) and Sam Morgan (Founder of Trademe) about “How Social Entrepreneurship will make New Zealand a richer nation.”
Jade represented yMedia at the event; advocating the importance of bringing more awareness around the concept of Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship in New Zealand as well as sharing the enthusiasm with Oram about seeing examples of more corporate firms contributing socially. Check out the IN-Business video and article here.
On Wednesday the 26th of May, Jade and Anthea presented the Smooth Operators workshop at Media Design School. If you couldn’t make it or need a refresher, here’s what they covered.
Why Smooth Operators?
There are a bevy of tools online available for not-for-profits. These resources extend beyond social media to encompass everything from communication, to file sharing, to project management.
Our workshop introduces some of these tools specific to operational matters in a community organisation, which can be used for free to some degree.
We can make these recommendations as we use these tools ourselves at yMedia, and we’ll illustrate the value of each service with examples from our own experience, and some ideas for how you might use them.
All of the tools we cover in this Workshop are also detailed in the Online Toolkit, which you can download, print out, save, reference, and generally do with what you will!
For sophisticated email marketing, or sending e-newsletters, MailChimp is a fantastic option. With stacks of free newsletter templates to choose from and customise, the service is perfect for beginners through to expert newsletter craftspeople.
Last year, one of our student teams was able to implement MailChimp for their NFP with no previous experience at all! There is a free level of service, with a restricted number of email addresses you can send messages to at once.
Check out MailChimp’s introductory video for an idea of what the service has to offer:
The website is full of helpful info - don’t forget about Spam laws in New Zealand though! Your subscribers must have opted in to receive communications, they must be able to unsubscribe, and you must list your postal address on every communication.
Ten years ago, seeing a person on screen and talking to them at the same time was a thing of science fiction films. Today, we can do this for free!
We use Skype regularly to keep in touch with Pamela and Adele, who are in Vancouver and London respectively. It’s great to see their smiling faces, and they get to stay connected to what’s happening with yMedia back here in New Zealand.
You don’t have to have an offshore contact in order to use Skype however, you can use it to contact anyone with a computer and an internet connection (the faster the connection, the better the performance).
If you want to see the other person, and be seen, you will both need a webcam. You’ll also both need speakers and a microphone, a lot of new laptops have these all built in now.
Skype does offer services requiring payment, like calling from your computer to a telephone. If you make a lot of calls offshore, it’s worth comparing Skype’s rates to those of your telecommunications provider.
You can see an intro video to Skype here:
To use Skype, you and the person you wish to speak to will both need to install the Skype application, create accounts, and connect to each other.
Uh, what’s an application?
An application is another word for a program on your computer. There are really two types of applications.
Desktop applications - these are programs you install to your computer either by downloading an installation file, or from a CD etc. A lot of these types of programs can be used without an internet connection - like Microsoft Word. Skype is a Desktop Application which you download from the internet, though as it facilitates talking over the internet, you do need to have an Internet connection to use it.
Web Applications - a Web Application is just like a website, but does much more. A website crosses into Web Application territory when it performs complex calculations or processes. Just like the programs you install on your computer, but online in your web browser rather than on your computer. An example of a web app is Gmail, MailChimp, and you will soon be introduced to Dropbox which has a Web App component.
How many times have you forgotten to update your flash or USB drive when working on a document at home, only to get back to the office and need those changes?
Have you been frustrated with email trails full of attachments when collaborating on work with colleagues?
Dropbox is a great solution for document management and collaboration - we find it very useful for our design crew to collaborate on design files - Photoshop or InDesign files which can’t be accessed in Google Docs (more on this later).
The best way to get an idea of what Dropbox is all about, is to watch their intro video:
You can invite your colleagues to access and edit files in your Dropbox folder, where everyone can be confident that they are viewing the most recent version of a document (If it’s important, don’t forget to save a backup on your computer, as someone with edit access could also delete your file!).
Project Management is all about tracking progress against tasks, and managing those tasks within your deadlines. Basecamp is an online “application” or web app, so you don’t need to install anything on your computer to use it.
More appropriate with fairly confident users, Basecamp facilitates setup of to-do lists against projects or milestones, assigning of tasks, communication via messages, document sharing and updating, and scheduling of milestones.
Users can opt in to email reminders of their upcoming task commitments and any new messages requiring their attention.
Basecamp was introduced to the yMedia Challenge back in 2007, and is where all of the teams collaborated on their projects. Since then, it’s been an option for teams in the Challenge, but might also be useful for Community Groups running their own projects.
If you’re interested in Basecamp, they have a range of video introductions and tutorials, but do ask your student team for assistance n setting up. You can run one project with Basecamp for free to try it out.
The Google Suite
Google offers a whole range of free, online tools which are invaluable for NFP’s, including:
Gmail - Gmail is an online email facility, where you may set up a free account to send and receive email. Having a Gmail account creates your overall Google Account, which is in turn used to access the other tools in their suite.
Google Docs - Google Docs (short for Documents) is another online application. This one lets you upload, or create, “Word” documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and even drawings online. You can edit, and even collaborate on these files at the same time, with anyone you invite to have access to your content.
Google Calendar - Your calendar, or Calendars, everywhere. Google Calendars work similarly to Microsoft Outlook Calendars, though free and online with many collaboration options.
Google Analytics - Google Analytics tracks visitors and activity on your website when a specific piece of code is added to your website. You can analyse who visits your website, what country they are from, what website they came from, how long they stayed on your site, how many pages they clicked, and whether they downloaded any files. It’s simple to set up, and Challenge students will be capable of either implementing the facility or giving instruction for it to be put in place.
Google Reader - Google Reader allows you to subscribe to a websites’ updates, so you receive all updates to one place from any websites you follow. This saves you from returning to websites to see if their content has been updates, and can be completely customised to the “feeds” you are interested in. These feeds of updates are called “RSS Feeds”.
Google Alerts - Just like performing a Google Search, Google Alerts feeds you new results for a search term you specify. So, you can set up an alert for your brand name to be notified when it is mentioned online. (Extra for experts - you can use Google’s Advanced searching tools to narrow down your search if you are getting irrelevant results).
The Online Toolkit
This resource is designed as an overview of these, and other, online tools which are available. It provides some idea of what each service has to offer, and in some cases some pointers for getting started.
It’s a work-in-progress, and you will always be able to find the ost recent release of the document on our website.
Exercise!
It wouldn’t be a workshop without some participation!
We asked students in the room to partner up with Community Groups in attendance, and for each group to consider:
What are your Current Processes?
What would you like to do better?
How would you use some of these tools to benefit your organisation?
After 20 minutes spent eating sushi, drinking wine and Monteiths, we were thrilled to hear of Community Groups planning to synchronise documents through Dropbox, to analyse their Website performance using Google Analytics, and to start tracking their brand through Google Alerts.
Onwards!
We are looking forward to seeing these, and many other tools put into use over the course of the yMedia Challenge. If NFP’s have any questions about how to use these tools or integrate them into workflow - remember to save those queries up for your student teams when the challenge starts!
Presenters: Anthea Whittle, Business Development at Terabyte Interactive, and Jade Tang, Freelance Designer, Art Director & Connector yMedia
Venue: Media Design School, 242 Queen St, Auckland Central Date: Wednesday 26 May, 4pm – 6pm
We’re all trying to make the world better in our own way, a task that can often feel overwhelming. However there is a plethora of tools available that can help you operate more efficiently and effectively so that you can get on with saving the planet! In this workshop we’ll show you how to use Gmail, Basecamp, GoogleApps, Teuxdeux and more to manage your projects smoothly.
(Register for the Challenge, and come along to our workshops!)
