ECF workday
A note from Duane about a brilliant new monthly meetup – get involved!
Hi DCers,
Today I’m launching ECF Workdays: a monthly gathering to connect and re-connect Digital Charity and eCampaigning Forum community members by doing our normal work in the same room. It is this Friday in London.
The idea is simple: once a month, we do our normal work in a room with our peers. The small talk, breaks, lunches and any after-work socialising serve to provide stimulation and inspiration as well as a practical hands-on support group for whatever you are doing that month.
When: the third Friday of each month.
Where: I am hosting the first this Friday at the Islington Hub (by Angel Tube) from 10:00-17:00. Tell me if you wish to join.
Bring: Laptop to work from, possibly network cable / wifi dongle / mobile dongle (depending on what you need for connectivity to work)
Join: Email me if you wish to join the ECF Workday this Friday in London. There is only space for 15-20 people. WiFi is free. There is no cost.
As this is the first of many, we’ll improve model as we go, but this is the start.
For those of you in or around London, hope to see you Friday (let me know)
Cheers,
Duane
March meeting
Our next meeting is happening on Wednesday 2nd March at Amnesty UK.
We’ll be starting officially at 4pm, but a few of us will be around from 3pm, so feel free to come earlier.
We’re going to spend the meeting doing something a bit different – putting our wisdom into practice, by helping a small charity with their online presence.
The charity in question is the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, an organisation that provides confidential advice and other support to Middle Eastern women and girls who are facing domestic violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and ‘honour’ based violence.
We’ve not got long, but we think a lot can be done by 20+ people in a room for a few hours!
Some of the areas we might help with:
- Choosing and installing a new Joomla theme (or possibly migrating to a new platform)
- Finding great plugins that will give extra functionality
- Developing a social media presence and writing some advice on how they should manage it
- Highlighting their best content
- Recommending and/or implementing copy changes
There will be plenty to do for the technical and non-technical alike, and if you just want to listen and learn that is fine too!
As this will probably take longer than a couple of hours, we’ve got the room booked until 9pm (we’ll come to some arrangement re food). But of course, if you are only available for a couple of hours, we’d love to have you!
February meeting
Thanks to the Women’s Electoral Lobby at the ANU for the image.
The February Digital Charities Working group is going to kick off our 2011 sessions in style. It will be on Wednesday 2nd February at either Greenpeace or ActionAid.
In my opinion, the sessions that got the best responses last year were probably the email analysis session, Steve Bridger‘s guest slot, the social media monitoring session with We Are Social and the video skills.
What do you want February’s session to be about? We’ll be thinking about it as well, but suggestions are always helpful! Some preliminary ideas:
- Blogging: successes and issues (such as audience). Could potentially do an entire session on this?
- Plans for the 100th International Women’s Day: Who’s in the UK coalition? (March 8th)
- The 6 Billion Ways conference (March 5th)
- Novel ideas for actions: Any interesting new formats or sites opening up new possibilities?
Leave ideas in comments below or on Facebook.
December meeting / Christmas social
On the evening of the 25th November, we’re planning our Christmas social.
The plan is pretty simple. Find somewhere to eat together, then have a few drinks. Anything beyond that we can improvise on the night!
We should book the place to eat however, so please vote below:
http://twtpoll.com/ru0v2o
Add suggestions in the comments or via the Twitpoll please!