University of California: Protest 101

UC Irvine hosted a budget write-in this week and I can’t imagine why we’re still putting pen to paper.

While delivering letters in bulk to our state legislators is much more civil and respectful than the protests and disobedience that have been observed around UC campuses this past month, aren’t there more innovative, collaborative and effective ways in which to communicate our dismay with the state of the State and University?

After all, isn’t the University of California the top public institution in the world?  Don’t we produce Nobel Prize winners and Fulbright Scholars, life-saving research and game-changing technology?

Advice to UC students.  Take what you know best — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — and turn it into a campaign that legislators can’t ignore, toss aside, or hand to an aide to craft a scripted response.

The write-in would have been a good opportunity for student leaders to flip out their mobile phones and interview each other about the personal impact the fee hike will have on them come the new academic year.  It was a chance for students to plead their hardships, share their personal stories, and talk about their needs… and to tell their stories through a new medium to legislators and public citizens alike.

If just a 1,000 students from each campus joined a Facebook fan page or custom website that integrates Facebook Connect (or the like) and allow students to voice their concerns online – that would be a collective power of 10,000 voices telling their story to the public. The public and media can then help pay it forward and tell tens of thousands of other people how devastating the fee hikes are.

A letter only goes to one person, and your voice may or may not ever be heard.  But new media content can be shared, redistributed, repackaged, emailed, linked, tweeted…  The same effort put into a letter can be put into a message that has the potential to be heard across the world.

And all it takes it the one story that becomes viral.  The one story that tugs at the hearts of the voters of California, the philanthropist across the globe, and the legislator who votes on the UC budget.

How about a video profile of how much it costs to be a bio major:  How much are your textbooks?  What additional lab fees do you pay?  And how are you able to afford the expensive rent around Westwood, Irvine, Santa Barbara?

Letter-writing campaigns didn’t even work in my time as a UCSA Legislative Affairs member or ASUCD External Affairs Chair.  What worked were the face-to-face meetings with the educational committee members, staffers for the legislators or better yet the legislators themselves.

Today, students have the best tools at their fingertips: new media and social networks.  Whether it’s a student, parent, professor or staff member speaking, why aren’t we using these innovative communication mediums, which are either no-cost or low-cost, to effectively lobby the State and its citizens?

A collective voice is a powerful thing when used the right way.

Protesting and rioting may have worked in the 1970s.  But times are different. Technology is different.

The UC’s budget is an obvious mess, and I have strong personal opinions about it.  What it boils down to though, is there’s plenty of blame to spread.  But I don’t think it’s too late to make a new media move — the right move — to influence change from the ground up.

Picket signs, the wood sticks and magic markers to poster board is so last millennium, and so un-ecofriendly.  If you want to be heard, to be green, to be innovative with your message, take a lesson from the 2008 Presidential elections.  That wasn’t that long ago…

Implementing New and Social Media in Non-Profits

(Although I write this post with specific focus on higher education and non-profits, I think it’s a useful guide for start-ups looking to establish themselves on the Web as well.)

New and social media have been around for the last 15 years.  But not until recently have they truly become interactive and conversational.  The tools and communities that make up this medium continue to change the way we see, hear and touch the communities around us.

When I was hired as a communications director a few years ago, my job description in short was to educate the public about research, maintain a static website, and design print publications.  It quickly became apparent that the old ways weren’t working:

1. Information changes too fast. News gets old quick, and to print/re-print to keep up with changes became expensive, and environmentally unfriendly.
2. Were we telling the right stories? We were feeding what we thought our audience wanted to hear.  There had to be a way to “listen” so we could better apply our efforts.
3. Money and the Environment. The cost to print and mail materials – in dollars, trees and carbon footprint – are constant concerns in our world today.  In other words, corporate social responsibility.
4. Walking the talk. This is unique to us, but as a leading computing- and technology-focused institution, if we cannot connect in a way that demonstrates the power of computing and technology, then we have failed to communicate.

Thus, we slowly began to transform our communications strategy and have arrived at the tools that make up new media and social communications today. (All this, in addition to many traditional media efforts that we still practice.)  Here’s what we’re doing in higher education at UC Irvine’s Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences:

• RSS. If you do nothing else, offer an RSS feed to your news, blogs, event calendars, videos, etc.  You can probably gain 50% of your value simply by allowing your community to stay in touch with you, without having to actually check-in.
• Blogs. Both students and alumni blog about what’s on their mind.  Students most often talk about classes and social activities which paint a true picture of college life.  Alums keep in touch and share their experiences about ICS and being in the real world.  Both serve as great recruiting tools for students, parents and faculty.
• Multimedia. Video profiles, audio snippets and podcasts engage the audience in unique ways. Digital media is portable, and when done correctly, engaging.  We create videos profiling students, special lectures and events, etc. We maintain a presence on YouTube and Flickr.  Here’s an example of a marketing video:

• Social Networks. Today, we exist on LinkedIn and Facebook.  But only on these two networks, for the reasons that they are the most reputable, and our particular community are most active on these two social networks.  The beauty of participating in a social network it that its content is crowd-sourced – your community helps contribute to the cause.
• Twitter. This is an experiment, but an inexpensive one.  In fact, we automatically feed news through Twitter so that prospective students (@BrenAdmissions) and interested community members (@UCIbrenICS) can quickly follow us.  We also “listen” to buzz in our community through Twitter and make efforts to engage with the “twitterverse”.
• Second Life. TechCoast Island, our presence in Second Life houses a virtual Bren Hall.  For our ribbon-cutting ceremony, we invited guests from afar to join in the virtual celebration concurrent to the live events. Today, it is used to model real-world research in a virtual setting… an innovative solution to conserving resources and money. We’ve even held lectures and meetings at TechCoast.

• Share Functions. If someone wants to share and offer feedback on anything that is a part of your Web presence, let them.  It’s the best way to create buzz and spread news organically.  These functions can range from digg to del.icio.us to StumbleUpon and more.

These new and social media applications may not work for all ventures.  In fact, I urge that each organization explore and understand their community and resources before investing too much time into these mediums.  But given that you have an active online community that is willing to participate, and that you can produce enough content to keep your online presence from becoming stale, it’s worth at least giving the free resources a try.

Our strategy continues to change as quickly and often as technology and social media do.  I’m curious to hear what other non-profit and educational institutions are doing in this arena.  Do share!

How I Use Facebook (C-Post #1)

Previously, I resolved to go through 100 blog topics this year.  I’m dubbing these the C-Posts.

An apropeau topic, as my mother- and sister-in-laws asked me this morning at breakfast about what value Facebook gave anyone.  Here’s what I told them, in order of importance, as it pertains to me:

• Staying in the loop @ work.  I work for an information and computer science institution.  We’re all about technology, innovation, etc.  So I need to stay on top of the work that faculty conduct so that I may tell their stories.  I often find these stories by following status updates of faculty and staff that I am “friends” with.  In addition, I manage our school’s Facebook group page where I communicate with potential students, current students, alumni, faculty and staff.  Facebook is a quick way for me to accomplish these two tasks and reach hundreds in our community.
• Professional networking. LinkedIn, VisualCV, InCircle and the likes are important tools for professional and social networking.  Facebook is just as valuable, and in fact provides for more in-roads in the communities that are not otherwise supported by solely-professional networks.  A few examples of groups that I find benefit in include Twiistup, UCAdvocacy, and many more.
• Sharing hobbies. People are more willing to share their hobbies online.  I can make connections and have conversations with friends that share similar interests, that I otherwise would not have known about.  I share my photographs, travel stories, etc.
• Staying in touch. Facebook has reconnected me with old friends, which has been neat.  Especially to see how much everyone has succeeded.  More importantly, however, I am able to stay in touch with family members that I only see once or twice a year.

After our conversation, they asked me to help set-up their Facebook accounts.  I think my ballet dancer sister-in-law, in particular, can benefit her career. through Facebook.  Indeed social networking will continue to grow in 2009…

Teens Thrive in Digital Age

In conjunction with our central communications office and the MacArthur Foundation, Mizuko Ito (a faculty member in the area which I serve as Communications Director for) has released the following:

UCI researcher show time spent online is important for young people’s development

Teens who are into texting, gaming and “geeking out” are not wasting their time, according to results from the most extensive U.S. study on young people and their use of digital media. Instead, the study shows that when America’s youth go online, they are developing important life skills that adults often are hard-pressed to appreciate.

“There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy,” said Mizuko Ito, UC Irvine researcher with joint appointments in information and computer science and humanities and lead author on the study. “But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.”

Released Thursday, Nov. 20, the study suggests that parents should help facilitate their teens’ online participation and that educators could benefit from creative classroom experimentation with digital media.

More on Tweets – Lessig @ Free Culture Conf.

Pablo’s hero, Lessig, (obviously second to me :p) is at the Free Culture Conference in Berkeley today. These mobile pics from him:

I think he’s talking about his new CC-licensed book, Remix:

And Pablo was impressed with the Twitter/backchannl activity for the Q&A session: