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The CommunityNet Aotearoa monthly newsletter.
"News and views on community networking throughout Aotearoa."
Our apologies for the strange little empty Panui you may have received on 30 November. Put it down to end-of-year tiredness and a slip of the keyboard.
This is our last Panui for 2004 and we'll be taking a short break over Christmas. The website will be available as always but items you send in will not be added between 20 December and mid-January. The next Panui will be in your mail in early February.
Your views count. CommunityNet Aotearoa and this Panui exist to provide you with useful information and facilities. We're going to ask you in a confidential on-line survey how we're doing: what's working, what needs changing, what to drop and what to add. Please look out for our email inviting you to take part.
A year ago the launch of Grants Online changed the way the DIA accepted applications for Lottery Funding.
The research looks at how New Zealanders use computers and the Internet to take part in and influence the democratic processes in our communities.
The Review of the Financial Reporting Act is aimed at making sure our financial reporting requirements are appropriate for current New Zealand circumstances.
The Stockholm Challenge Award is searching for the best initiatives that accelerate the use of information technology for the social and economic benefit of citizens and communities.
The Community Initiatives Fund
provides support for innovative social development projects run by community leaders that will make a real, tangible and measurable difference within their communities particularly in relation to families.
Commerce Minister Margaret Wilson announced the government would commit $9.8 million to a proposed Charities Commission, and changes to the proposed bill made in light of concerns raised by the charitable sector.
Te Puni Kokiri announced details of a new governance information website and released two new publications at the annual conference of the Federation of Maori Authorities (FOMA) in Wellington.
Latest community news, events, jobs and ads.
Community sites linked this month:
The Funding Information Service quarterly Panui has information relevant to fund seekers and funding providers.
This searchable database contains information about philanthropic trusts, gaming trusts and other community organisations that support the sport and recreation sector.
The Commission will register, report on and monitor charitable organisations. This website contains information and news from the Charities Commission Preparatory Unit.
WestREAP is an a not for profit organisation which offers educational pathways and options for people of all ages throughout Westland.
A great online handbook that aims to encourage the emergence of more active citizens.
Language Line is a telephone interpreting service for clients of participating government agencies, so they can request advice and services in any of 37 different languages.
Designed to help trustees and directors of Maori organisations with their responsibilities and role as guardians and leaders, this site shares best practice on the essential elements of effective governance.
Alternatives to Violence Project Aotearoa runs weekend workshops exploring themes such as affirmation, communication, co-operation, creative conflict resolution, community building and trust.
The Workcentre Trust seeks to enable individuals and groups to achieve self determination, create healthy and tolerant life-styles and exercise positive choices.
More links.
This Panui goes out each month to more than 500 subscribers, by means of a mailing list. How that works is that I send one message to a secret email address. That address is monitored by mailing list software (in our case, Mailman) which checks to see who has sent the message. If it's come from an authorised sender Mailman then delivers the message to all those who have subscribed.
Mailing lists are extraordinarily useful for anyone who regularly sends messages to groups of more than about five or ten recipients. You could use a mailing list for a committee, the users of your service, funders, donors and many other groups.
One way to get a free (advertising supported) mailing list is to set one up with Yahoo or a similar service.
Visit that site and click on the link to Start a New Group. Then follow through the pages, making your choices for your group. The process is very easy and after a few clicks you're up and running.
There are three types of mailing list:
An announcement list is like this Panui list — it's one way only. I can send messages to subscribers but no-one else can. This pretty much guarantees that you won't receive oddball messages about lost cats or the latest "joke" doing the rounds, or for that matter, ads for personal products or schemes to make lots of money using foreign bank accounts. An announcement list is very appropriate for newsletters or updates on activity.
An open discussion list is a recipe for trouble. Anyone can send messages which are then distributed to all subscribers. It'll take about 5 seconds for unwanted spam messages to appear and only moments for the list to drown in excrement.
A closed discussion list allows all subscribers to send messages. This is an excellent way to allow a committee to discuss matters between physical meetings (or instead of physical meetings) or for members of a group to talk about any issue.
If you set up a general discussion list start off by not allowing attachments, not allowing file uploads to the Yahoo website and by moderating all members. If you leave it all wide open to start with you'll find spammers will invade within minutes. By moderating all members you can prevent that. As new members prove themselves reliable and trustworthy you can remove the moderation from their posts.
Even if you feel quite sure in your own mind that Miraz or Bill or Ana or Rajit or … or … would love to be on your mailing list don't subscribe people without their permission. Invite people to subscribe and leave it up to them.
There might be a hundred reasons why people may not want to be on your mailing list and if they don't want to be on the list then don't add their name. If you send mailing list posts to people who don't want them then you are simply spamming, however worthy the cause.
And to be quite sure your list is going only to those who want it use the double opt-in method. All good mailing lists will offer this option. Double opt-in doesn't just add those whose names have appeared as wanting to subscribe; it sends them a message asking them to confirm their intention to subscribe. If people have opted-in by this method then you can be really certain they weren't added as a result of a virus or by a well-meaning friend.
There's plenty more to say about mailing lists and future Panui issues will include more tips.
Add some movies, images, sounds to your web site as you see fit, but tell your visitors what you're doing and give them the controls.
Now that you can buy inexpensive digital cameras, and a cheap microphone to record straight into your computer, you might decide to enliven your website with some multimedia files. That's an excellent idea and your visitors may be thrilled, especially if they have broadband connections.
If you add a file of any kind to your website tell your visitors what the file is, what software they need, how big the file is, how long it will take to download and any other information they need to make an informed choice.
"Watch the movie of our Conference Keynote" looks good at first, but after I've spent 30 minutes downloading and it's still not finished, or after I've spent an hour downloading and I can't play it, I might not feel so kindly towards your organisation.
To find the approximate size of a file Windows users should right-click and choose Properties. Mac users Control click and choose Get Info. You should then be able to see the size, expressed in KB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes) or even GB (gigabytes). If it's in GB then you won't be adding that file to your website as it's too huge. Don't bother about being too precise — you can round up. For example, I have a 20.12 MB movie; I'll just call it 21 MB.
Some people have slow connections; others high speed connections, so how long will my 21 MB movie take to download? You can pick an "average" connection, say 56K or you could give a range of speeds. Visitors with high speed connections will know the file should download a great deal more quickly than with a 56K modem, while those with slower connections can double or quadruple the time fairly readily.
But how long will it take? Well, you can do some maths, or you can visit www.onlineconversion.com/downloadspeed.htm.
Just fill in 21, click the MB button, and it tells you that with a 56K modem that movie will take about 53 minutes. In real life it may take longer, as many factors can influence download time.
So, I spend an hour downloading the movie and now it won't play… Was it a Windows Media file (.wmv), a Quicktime movie (various formats, including .mpg, .mov, .avi), or perhaps a Real media file (.rm)? I wish you'd told me first.
Here's a sample text for my Conference movie:
Download our [start link]2004 Conference Keynote movie[end link] — 21 MB, .avi file. Estimated download time: 55 minutes with a 56K modem. Get the free [start link]Quicktime player[end link].
You may find shorter ways of expressing this if you have many media files all on one page, or if you have a Help page dedicated to media, but however you do it, make sure you give your visitor control through information.
And to encourage you to try it, we'll include a list of community pages making good use of multimedia in the next Panui. Just email us the address of your page with "Camera, lights, action!" in the subject line.
Earlier Site Reviews and Tips are available online.
Check out the helpful new Campaigning and Advocacy Guide, compiled by Karen Davis. This guide provides an introduction to the use of campaigns, advocacy and other and democratic processes to advocate changes in or for communities.
Karen is an experienced campaigner against poverty and unemployment in New Zealand, and is a trustee for Kotare Trust for Research and Education for Social Change.
These two guides have had an overhaul and added new resources and links.
In November 2004 there were 19,854 visits (last month there were 19,532) and many new items:
Currently, the most popular pages are:
The most popular file download was:
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