This is a powerful video that chronicles the story of how we produce and consume commodities. It’s a simple video about very complex environmental, social and economic issues.It’s made by Annie Leonard and the Tides Foundation and Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption.
School children all over the world are getting exposed to the film by their teachers who are fed up with the poor documentation and teaching tools for environmental studies. The New York Times has written an in depth article on the video. Here’s a brief quote “The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution.”
One of my goals is to create effective videos using social media tools to illustrate, advocate and educate people about complex subjects. I am particularly interested in how social media might help disseminate important community based research. This film has set the bar high. I can see how a compelling story, told with passion and clear messages can go a long way to getting the message out.
The video I included is the full version a from YouTube. It’s a must see film… a good one for passing on to your family and friends.
I’m researching the best presentation format for helping audiences of social change agents understand and act on a variety of social work research reports. Today George Siemens at his elearnspace blog wrote about improving his use of visuals to express ideas. When I do workshops I need good visuals that support a solid communication strategy. Like George, I’m working at improving my ability to design effective visuals.
I’ve scrolled through the resources George listed in his post and I was blown away by the excellent tools in each of his links. His list is a portal for every kind of visualization tool you could ever imagine. For my purposes, I discovered that I need to do more strategic thinking about the overall purpose of the presentation before I even open up a slide. The best advice and resource I found came from the Extreme Presentation blog where I learned about the 10 Steps to Extreme Presentation Method. It’s a very powerful tool that I can apply to many of my projects. Below is a master list of visual tools that George collected via his Twitter contacts.
However, I can think of at least one popular speech that was easy to understand by a mass audience — it even moved a nation — but that is “more difficult” than the presentations by Jobs and Gates (and Dell) if one analyzed only the written transcripts. Obviously this is a long-winded way of me reminding you that today is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr., the man behind one of the greatest speeches in U.S. history, “I Have a Dream.” If you just read the transcript of Dr. King’s speech you may be moved or you may not, but I don’t know how anyone can watch the entire speech on video and not be absolutely blown away. It is indeed the meaning of the words and the importance of the content, but it is the power of the conviction and the sincerity of the delivery and the amazing connection Dr. King made with the people that makes this a legendary speech.I hope you can take a few moments today and watch this video of the “I Have a Dream” (March on Washington) speech from 1963. The video is 17-minutes long. If you are short on time, please at least watch the last three minutes. Amazing.
A social non profit is attuned, responsive and adaptive to the complex factors affecting its constituents and communities. In a social non profit there is an alignment between staff, services, governance systems and online communications. Social non profits value learning and innovation and believe in working smarter by using social tech tools to enhance communication, collaboration and learning amongst staff, volunteers, partners and service users. These organizations believe that strategic use of social media empowers staff, improves services and strengthens governance practices.
Recent and Current Projects
Faith Community
• Social Learning & Collaboration
• Return to Rural – Alberta;
• Film Development Council of York Region;
• Delisle Youth Services - Toronto;
• York Region Alliance to End Homelessness;
• York-Durham Association of Museums & Archives ;
• Streetjibe – York Region Youth Poverty Program, Street Kids International.
Contact
brent@socialmediatools.ca
Social Web Partners
I'm very pleased to have a number of very capable and talented consultants as friends and partners that work with me from time to time.
Alain Hurtubise (iAutomate.ca) designs and developments web 2. 0 platforms. Alain has over 20 years experience in web design and enterprise systems programming with large corporations. Alain's passion is paying it forward through his work with me in the non profit sector.
Peter Levesque's company, Knowledge Mobilization Works (based in Ottawa) is dedicated to building the capacity of people to create value through knowledge mobilization.
Mark Holmgren (Mark Holmgren Consulting - Edmonton AB) contributes his extensive organizational change expertise along with an array of social media integration expertise.
Social Media – a definition
Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, podcast, forum, wiki or video hosting site. More broadly, social media refers to any online technology that lets people publish, converse and share content online. (via Socialbrite)
Social Learning – a definition
Social learning is participating with others to make sense out of new ideas. What's new about this is how powerful social media works together with social learning.
Marcia Conner, Tony Bingham: The New Social Learning, A Guide to Transform Organizations Through Social Media.
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