Use LinkedIn to make your work easier

I've been using LinkedIn as a passive repository of my face-to-face network. Occasionally, people find out we have a common acquaintance and that's fun to know. Not a life changing application for me.

I've been wondering whether I should/could use LinkedIn in more ways. Friends told me that they find/receive CVs of interesting candidates through LinkedIn. Get in touch with conference organisors etc. A new teacher at the Masters was found through LinkedIn contacts.

Though I never have to find candidates for vacancies, we recently looked for a partner for a consultancy, using our good old face-to-face network. We found a great one, but it would have been a nice experiment to try and use LinkedIn.

Commoncraft has made a video about LinkedIn. (their videos hardly need to be spread as they are widely known by now). However, I liked this video about LinkedIn because it doesn't explain the basics of LinkedIn but explains how you can use LinkedIn to facilitate your work.

7 Introductory resources into web2.0 tools

Wikis, weblogs, mashups, photosharing, mapping, social bookmarking. People who start to learn about web2.0 tools, ask me where they can get a good and short overview of the various web2.0 tools. Honestly, I don't have one great resource to recommend to them. It's quickly overwhelming for people new to the field. Seven pointers:

1. Euforic is developing a web2share wiki, which is good basic resource.

2. The commoncraft show with its series of videos on tools like blogging, wikis, social bookmarking, twitter. It explains the advantage of the tools in very clear easy to understand language.

3. Tim Davies has developed some one page guides like this on social bookmarking. You can access the whole series here.

One level up in terms of overwhelminess:

4. The top 100 social media blogged by Steve Dale

If I really want to browse for tools (level 5 in overwhelminess) I go to:

5. Go2web20 website or

6. The organizer's toolkrib (less elaborate) and

7. The Seomoz web2 awards website

My first self-made widget

I'm proudly presenting my first self-made widget! I have built it with Sproutbuilder, which I got to know through Beth Kanter.




I have used the example of a conference about communities of practice in the Netherlands, that we'll be organizing on June 2. I particularly liked the countdown feature. You can do much more like adding audio or video to your widget (though it already seems heavy for non-broadband internet users). If you want to know more about widgets, you can read one of my earlier blogposts.

Free online fora for hire!

We've set up a Ning forum for online exchange between a group of people who are in the process of starting their own businesses. We chose Ning because it is super-easy to design and there is a Dutch version. When setting up the forum, you can choose a template, and you can drag and drop the elements you want in your online forum, for instance a blog function, a video upload function etc. You can also choose to make it as easy as possible and to add these elements later (by dragging these elements into your design). I used the video upload function and it didn't work, so I had to find a work around via youtube. I sent an email to report it, and within one hour, I got a reply and it was fixed! I thought this was an amazing service too.

I still can't believe how easy it is to set up these kind of forums as compared to software packages whereby you need a specially skilled webdesigner, webbuilder and webhost to design and build an online forum. On top of the length of the design and build process, there are often the translation problems. It is hard to explain all the features you want, and for the builder it is hard to explain the details of what exactly he is building.

I really wonder what the future of online forum design will look like. Some disadvantages of a free forum for use within an organisation:

1. There are advertisements in the free version (though if you pay something, it will be removed).
2. You may want the look of your forum to match your housestyle.
3. You are stuck with some design features and can not build it entirely according to your own design.
4. ??

Especially in this phase of experimentation with online discussions, I think it can be a great solution to start with a free and easy-to-set up forum, so that you and the other users have time to find out what features they like/need/desire.

Experimenting with Twitter

We conducted a week-long experiment with Twitter, for 12 people who were not yet familiar with the tool. In this blogpost, we'll describe the experiment, and we'll summarize the reflections and new ideas for applicability of the tool. I'll also share my own ideas about Twitter in more detail.


Twitter is: A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Basically you update your information continuously with short messages (max. 140 characters) and you can follow/be followed by others who read those messages.

Our experiment was introduced with the following instructions (here summarized):

1. 
   Sign up for a twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/ (in the right upper corner) and add a photo of yourself by clicking on Your Profile and share you twitter account (eg. http://twitter.com/joitske) in the wiki and Add the other participants to your twitter to follow them.
2. Twitter away during the week…. You can twitter by logging in to Twitter.
3. Experiment with messages for the whole group by using @ecollaboration
4. Type of content: Share what tools you are working with, what tasks you are busy with in your organization, and ask the (stupid) questions you never dared to bother others with.
5. Write down your experiences in the wiki.

The experiences summarized:

Though the interface looks clear, people needed quite some time to find their way. How to find the message? Where to reply to a direct message? etc. Someone felt like she might have missed some opportunities in the tool. It doesn't take a lot of attention, but needs frequent attention, hence people felt that it is time-consuming. People differed in their opinion of seeing added value: "it's fun to know how the others spend their time, but not really helpful" someone said.

Possible applications of Twitter:

It's interesting to see that people have very different opinions ranging from "The additional value of use isn't big", via "I would focus to use it for information exchange such as questions or recommendation and not to exchange moods or any kind of actions" to "I can see the potential for project teams that need continuous communication, or organisations or people that want to communicate to their "followers" about a conference, a campaign, or general news and progress. Also for theme focused groups (like e-collaboration)".

For me it has shown again that a new tool can be very uncomfortable in the beginning, especially if you don't know how it's going to help you to do your work. It may actually take longer than a week before you get at a certain level of comfort. Personally I started to enjoy Twitter after some days, because I really got to know some people better by what they are doing. I also got some interesting links to blogposts etc. but to follow that up takes time. So it easily diverts your attention from what you were doing. A colleague in Ghana added me to twitter too, and that experience made me realize that you can be very close with a group of people anywhere through twitter, much closer than through mailing lists, online forums, or an occasional chat session. Knowing his concerns, and frustrations (eg. with uploading) reminded me of the different context in Ghana.

But as someone said: it needs discipline to exchange and have added value. And it seems that this is not for everyone. That brings me to the observation that tools like twitter can bring new linkages and communication (I learned quite a lot more about the 3-5 people who were very active!) but you have to be carefull not to create too many divisions if people who don't find a tool intuitive are left out. On the positive side, almost half of the people who twittered, were not at the face-to-face meeting, so it is a way to engage a different group of people than with a face-to-face meeting.

How to explain blogging in Ghana

(picture:openingsceremony training web2.0 for journalists, source penplusbytes)

I'm still catching up with my bloglines.. after my summer holidays I could not keep up and have these kind of number (183) behind the blognames, which is extremely discouraging and even stopping me from reading. So I'm trying to reduce the number of blogs on my bloglines too. But going through them, I do like the wide variety of blogs, giving such different views to the world...

From Emmanuel Bensah's blog I got a report by Mr. Abissath about a blogtraining Emmanuel gave in Accra. The write up is so elaborate and different from the other blogposts I was reading that it made me happy and I can just imagine the scene of the training and the atmosphere in the room there.

"As stated in the opening paragraph of this write-up, when Emma was taking
us through the Blogging lesson, he made the subject matter so interesting with
his famous analogy that the learning became fun for us all. Before he started,
he asked the class that all those who were married should show by hand.
Virtually everybody in the class raised up their hands. Initially, nobody knew
what he was driving at some of us even raised up both hands. Then he proclaimed
(and I am paraphrasing him here): As behind every married person there is a
partner - a wife or a husband, so, too, behind every Blog there is a Blogger!
Suddenly the entire computer lab burst into spontaneous and prolonged
laughter. He himself could not help it but to laugh infectiously. Then someone
asked him whether he himself was married and he said capital NO. So it turned
out that all the students in the class were married expect the lecturer rather.
When he was asked why he was not yet married, he responded: "I am studying you people and I want to learn from you first." His answer to the question made the class to laugh even the more. Emma could be in his 30s or so and he is a man of impeccable and fantastic sense of humour."

The name Emma is used for Emmanuel. The full post by Mr. Abissath can be found here. More information about the full training can be found here. The training is a follow-up from the web2.0fordev conference that took place in Rome. (help! another blog with (105) behind its name!)

Zentation to combine videos with powerpoint presentations on the web

Via Erwin Blom I discovered Zentation, you can upload a powerpoint presentation and link it to a google video presentation! Very useful. though some of the slides on slideshare are quite self-explanatory, it can be more powerful in combination with a video. (or would be video with the slides be enough?)

Blogger integrates feedburner feeds

A short blogpost to alert all blogger-bloggers to the fact that feedburner and blogger have apparently collaborated to make the integrating of a feedburner feed into your blogger blog easy. You go to settings, then site feed and add the URL of your feedburner feed. Having a feedburner feed is very useful if you want to monitor the subscriptions to your blog. You can read more here.

blip.tv for development

By recommendation from Jay Dedman I moved from Youtube to blip.tv to host my videos (almost forgot I started with castpost). I thought blip had roughly the same features as youtube, but I liked the fact that when you embed videos, you don't have a large triangle and YOUTUBE on your video. Just looks better with blip.tv.

But yesterday I discovered an important reason why blip.tv is better for use in a development context. Namely, it is very hard to download videos from youtube! It's quite easy from blip.tv. This feature is helpful if you want to put the video on a server or on a CDrom to play it back to an audience with unreliable or low bandwidth connectivity. Though it is not impossible on youtube, it is not as easy as on blip.tv

Social bookmarking - the next steps for the NPK4DEV tagging experiment

During the knowledge management for development workshop participants engaged daily in projects which made it possible for participants to work on something together. We decided to do a project about our tagging experiment. We are using the unique tag NPK4dev (non-profit knowledge management for development) to tag resources on knowledge management in a development context (you can see the tagcloud here). We worked for one afternoon, after which everyone disappeared except Christian, George and myself. The three of us then continued to produce this video to explain the usefulness of social bookmarking for individuals and groups with a common interest. We used the commoncraft videos about RSS and wikis for our inspiration! We had to make it in roughly 1,5 hours, so we didn't have time to make more drawings. We had to do it three times (the first two times we made major mistakes). The first time we had placed the drawings neatly in a row, so our task of putting the images was easy. The third time, though, every thing was a mess, so we were crazily searching for the relevant images.

Click To Play

Christian was so nice to make a timeline of the NPK4Dev tag that we are using to tag resources about knowledge management in a development setting. (here's the blogpost) The timeline is brilliant, you can see blogging and 'howto' are big hits topic and recently agriculture scored high. If you'd be a facilitator of a community of practice and everyone (or the majority) of the people are tagging, it would be a perfect tools to monitor the interests.

Some new ideas I gained:

• The way Christian is able to digest flows of information and pick up interesting stuff amazed me as compared to other people who complaint about information overload when a list produces more than 3 mails per week. I guess the keeping track of RSS feeds and scanning information is a new skill. - let alone reading it. It also depends on how you define your professional need for keeping up with information and recent developments.

• We can make a next step with our tag by offering several subfeeds by combining tags. For instance npk4dev+blogging can make for a feed on blogging for development. npk4dev+news can generate a news feed.
  

• If you'd be a facilitator of a community of practice and everyone (or the majority) of the people are tagging, it would be a perfect tools to monitor the interests and it can help you in the preparation of events etc.
  

• You can combine the feed with a customized search engine eg. google coop to make searching in the links easier.
  

• It'd help to make sense of the flow if you could highlight excellent resources, either by rating, or by adding a tag like top10. Then you could highlight the top resources in another space (wiki, newsletter, whatever) for people for whom following the feed doesn't work.

• Generally speaking, you help the users (especially for people without broadband connections) by working on the information, by printing lists, printing top information, adding top resources in websites or wikis, sharing summaries in discussion lists, etc. (you'd have to work out what works for people).
  

• Magnolia seem to offer more and better features than delicious, like taggers profiles and community spaces and better tagcloud options. (hmm, should we all shift??)

Ira Glass on video-storytelling

Via Beth Kanter, we got in touch with Steve Bridger who did a presentation on online fundraising. I missed it, but I'll definitely go through his presentation! It was nice to meet up, but even more surprising is that I only found out back home that he is the blogger of the npf2 blog, which I already followed via my bloglines. I realise it's more fun to read a blog when you know something about the blogger. And realize I had never shown any interest in the writers of some of the blogs I read.

On his blog I read the blogpost Bring the love back which links to a microsoft video with a short scene in a restaurant between a guy with 'the advertiser' on his t-shirt and a woman with 'the consumer' on her t-shirt. It funny and a sort of metaphore story. I'm thinking this should be a next step for my vlogging process. I've experimented a lot with interviews, which are straightforward, but I would like to experiment with new forms too. Via the yahoo-group on videoblogging I found this - longish- video with Ira Glass (There's one with Dave Eggers too!). He explains that a good story is composed of three building blocks:
1. an anecdote (with a sequence of events)
2. the bait (constantly raised question)
3. the point of the story (the moment of reflection, should not be predictable)

He also stresses that you have to record a lot of crap before getting to high quality work. (heard that before with regard to painting!).

Wikis in plain English

Another great video from Commoncraft: this time explaining wikis. It's just brilliant how they explain it without using computer screens. The video takes 3 and a half minutes, and explains wikis taking the example of a group of four people who go camping. When I saw it explained, it made me realise that I could use wikis much more often than I do now. When we prepared a training as a team of three persons, it was just at the day of training that we realised how much we had used a flurry of e-mails and that it would have been easier to have a wiki or online environment for ourselves too. On the other hand, I have just used google docs for our (lengthy) article and when we coincidentally worked on it at the same time, some lines disappeared so we went back to good old word documents (just feels safer at times!)



Click To Play

Practical examples of web2.0 in the development sector

I did a presentation during a Euforic training in Maastricht about web2.0 tools, especially blogs wikis and RSS feeds. During the presentation I showed some practical examples of the way people or organisations use these tools for learning, networking, advocacy, fundraising etc. with the aim of stimulating the imagination of the participants who had just learned about the technical part of the tools. I had not uploaded the powerpoint presentation on slideshare, as it is not one of those presentations that make a lot of sense without the actual presentation. But yesterday at work I discovered slideshare is also a very good helping you to access your own powerpoint presentations when you are away from your own computer! I must say there are some great presentations shared, but I'd still feel guilty about using someone else's presentation slides... So I decided to upload it and see whether the embedding works.... (I don't think it does, what mistake do I make?)

RSS in Plain English

I'm at time hesitant in crossposting, as I have the impression most people who read my blog, read almost the same blogs I do. Only when I read an interesting Dutch blogpost, I'm confident of the value of crossposting in English, as I'm assuming your Dutch is terrible.

I found this video from Common craft via Nancy White's blog. It's explaining what RSS is and what RSS readers can do to make you faster in keeping up with your favourite websites and blogs. It's really simple and good, and can be used for training and introductory purposes. I'm happy to crosspost it because I also liked the refreshing way the video was made. Instead of using a computer screen, print outs and drawings were used. The vingers make it lively. It's a nice way of making an instruction video without having to show up with your own face (something I like to avoidO. It's a good habit to point to the code of the video in your blogpost for crossposting too (since I have an account on blip.tv, it was clicking a matter of clicking on share, my blogname was already known to blip.tv and within two seconds I could repost it).

Common craft explains: There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start. They intend to make a commoncraft show so there's more coming and I'm going to subscribe to it.

Click to Play

How to vlog a meeting or presentation?

I developed a 12-step vlogging process to help a network in Ghana (GINKS) produce an ICT4D stories blog. They were amazed that it is so easy to do, easier than maintaining a website for instance. We did two videos in the office together for fun, then did two video interviews jointly. The last two videos were published on their own. You can see them all on the GINKS blog. We are still figuring out how to link the blog to the website as a page of the website. Thanks to Jay Dedman and Beth Kanter for their tips along the way! there is an IBM podcast too on how to get started with online video. In it, they also make the point that it is very easy to get started with video editing software which is already may be on your computer (like windows moviemaker) which is of reasonably good quality. In combination with the easiness of uploading it to various site, and the possibility of tagging and blogging these video productions, it is a powerful way of bringing people closer together.

Step 1: Attend the meeting or listen to the presentation you want to vlog
Don’t video the whole meeting or the whole presentation. It could become boring and it will be time-consuming for people who were not around to watch it. Hence you have to attend the meeting and listen carefully to what is said. After knowing the details of the meeting or presentation, you can formulate 1-3 interview questions. The questions should lead the interviewee to expland on the core of the meeting, or rather to zoom in on one interesting detail. The interview question can either capture the core of the presentation, or one aspect of the discussions that take place.

Step 2: Choose your person(s) to interview and formulate your interview questions
If you vlog a presentation, it is clear whom you are going to interview, but if the meeting is attended by various people you have to make a decision whom to interview. Choose a person with an interesting opinion or controversial view, who can explain his/her view passionately. Basically the way this person talks will determine the quality of your video. If you have a lively meeting, you might also try and interview several people with the same question. You can have one or several questions. When you try and cover a presentation, you might need 3-4 questions and your video might end up in 3-5 minutes. When you have a specific topic, one question might do, and you may have a video of less than 1 minute. Western people are often more to the point and can talk about a topic without introduction. With people in the south, you might need to plan slightly more time and it may work better to ask introductory questions. You will learn what works by making lots of videos.

Step 3: Ask the interviewee(s) for 5 minutes of their time for a video interview and brief them about the process
It is unlikely people will say no, when you ask them for an interview of 5 minutes. You may brief him/her about the procedure (we will go to a quiet place, I will ask you the following two questions, etc) so that it is clear what is expected of them.

Step 4: Decide on the place of the interview and go there
If you do the interview straight away on the spot immediately after the meeting, it will be more spontaneous than if you do it later and the person will have the topics of the meeting or presentation fresh in mind. But you may have to find a relatively quiet place and good background. It is important to have light on the spot or on your back- so you are not experiencing backlight. Some rumour on the background is OK, as long as the interviewee is clearly audible. It might even give a bit of ‘colour locale’. If this doesn’t work, you may have to make another appointment. When you make an appointment, you can influence the place of interview more and you can choose a light and quiet place. Think about the light too. You can open curtains and put on the light.

Step 5: Do the actual interview and video it
You can do ask another person to ask the questions, or you can do it yourself. If you ask the questions yourself, the interviewee is more likely to look into the camera, which gives the feeling of direct contact. Be clear to the interviewee when to start, and be clear to yourself about the procedure. Are you going to include your questions in the video or will you add them later as text? You might tell tell the interviewee to begin with their name/affiliation and rephrase the question too. If you are not using an external microphone you have to be really close to the interviewee. Andy Carvin has developed some interview tips.

Step 6: Upload the video to your computer
You have to transfer the video to your computer using a cable. A wizard will help you to select the videos from your camera. Make it a habit to delete ‘old videos from your camera, and to upload and process the video as soon as possible after shooting it, otherwise you risk to copy a lot of videos which you don’t need. Make sure you know where you copy the video file (eg. under my videos) and give a logical name.

Step 7: Edit the video
Even if you don’t need to edit the video itself (eg cut part of it), and you don’t want to add any titles to it, you still have to convert the video into the right format. (if you use windows moviemaker from .mswmm to .wmv extension)

You can use one the following free programs for editing:
Windows movie maker
Virtual Dub
Jumanne
Cinelerra
Wax
Avid Free DV

Step 8: Host your video on the web and post it to your blog
There are lots of video sites where you can open an account and host your videos. The advantage of hosting your video on the web is that you don’t use space on your computer, you can access it from anywhere. But also important, from these sites, it is easy to crosspost it to a blog (making it into a vlog when you upload videos regularly). When you use a popular site, you may have lots of viewers too. Some of the site where you can host your video are:

• Blip.tv
• Youtube
• Google video
  (apparently with larger hosting capacity)
• Our media
• Yahoo video

I don’t know about the last 2, but in blip.tv, youtube, and google you have the option to add your blogaddress to your account, so that you can post your video on your blog with one click. In blip.tv you can even upload the video to your blog at the same time that you upload it to blip.tv. It will show the video ‘embedded’ in your blog. Embedded means that you see the picture of the video and start button so that readers and start the video from your blog, without having to go to the site where the video is hosted. It will look like this:

Step 9: Write a summary of the interview on your blog (and indicate how long the video is)
When readers see the video on your blog, they may not know how long it is and whether it is interesting enough for them to watch the whole video. You can edit the blogpost and write a summary of the video content. This will help readers to decide whether it is worth to watch the video. It will also help people with lowbandwidth who might not be able to watch the video to access the information by simply reading the text.

Step 10: Advertise the video if possible
You might announce a specific video to people who might be interested. Untill you have the idea that most people are subscribed to your vlog, you may post it to relevant Dgroups or send it to individual people. Don’t announce every video in the same Dgroup though, but if you have a special one, you might announce it and explain why it is special.

Step 11: Send the link to the interviewee and ask for feedback
This is important, because the interviewee has given you his/her time, and might be curious to see the result (and proud!). He/she can also help you to send the link to other interested people. When there are comments on the blog you might alert the interviewee again.

Step 12: Wait for compliments
(or ask for feedback if you don’t get any)
You can use the references to your blog to see whether other site have referred to your video. You can see the number of times the video has been viewed on the site where you host your videos (blip.tv, youtube or any other host).

Meeting Chris Lunch on participatory video

Last month, I was too busy to blog some of the meeting sI attended and it seems late to blog them now. So let me be a good blogger today and blog the meeting I attended today with Chris Lunch from Insight on participatory video organised by CTA in Wageningen. (and yes, in Wageningen you always meet some old faces from the good old days like Huub from World Report who still has the same sense of humour so that was fun!).

I have been busy with vlogging, but had not explored the link with participatory video, hence I was looking forward to this meeting. My assumption about participatory video was that you give the camera to farmers and other people at community level so that they produce their own video. Though that was Chris' definition too, others used a much wider definition of participatory video in which you let people participate in the choices filmers make like topics, subjects, storyboard editing, etc.

The process of Insight's participatory video process can be summarized as follows:

• Participants learn video skills
• Facilitators help groups identify and analyze important issues
• Short video messages are directed and filmed
• Footage is shared and watched
• Learning and exchange is facilitated
• Communities have full editorial control

More in the training book developed by them which can be downloaded from their site.

The advantages of participatory video mentioned (between the lines) were that it can help people to focus and articulate their opinions, you have a concrete product, which can be shared. It can foster consensus building, and it helps identity building, people can be seen more easily as an expert. I would have liked to articulate better how it can work to enhance learning and shift power relations. In some of the examples, farmers were listened too because they had a video. Otherwise they would have been ignored. In that sense, it can work to increase inclusiveness of development processes- but that has to be facilitated in a skilled manner. I suspect Chris is first and foremost a good facilitator who happens to use video as an instrument. I would like to become more skilled in knowing when to use participatory video, when an online discussion or any other means to stimulate creativity in a group process. I do believe participatory video can open up people's minds because it introduces variety in means of communication (as you could use other channels).

Various filmmakers shared stories of how they used to carry kilos of equipment, and that the new camcorders have made participatory video possible. I shortly presented my vlogging process (will blog this in my next post). I am convinced that this can be a next step in video technology, which can also work to empower the 'hard to reach' as they were called.

Jay Ded works on an interesting video project from India, which he announces here. He believes there is a great hunger to learn more about lives in other countries (especially in the south). Amazing how some of the world are disconnected; the vloggers, the participatory video people, the filmmakers. So thanks to CTA for connecting some of us today!

Vlogging in Ghana

Click to Play

I'm introducing the network GINKS in Ghana into the art of vlogging (not that I'm a specialist but I'm one step ahead of them). It's amazing that a vlog will solve all the problems they had with the management of their website! (uhm, those problems will still not be solved, but the blog is bypassing all the complex constructions and negotiations with the website host and gives them direct control over content management). I've had several requests to share the process and I will later.

As part of the process, I made one video myself during a conference on e-governance organised by CTO. Vikas Nath explains his idea that empowerment of women in governance using ICTS should pass via supporting women to increase their incomes via ICTs.

My question at the beginning is not right question, but apart from that, I think it is a great video because of the background, the vivid colours (it is nice to look at) and the focussed topic (it is only 40 seconds long). At one point, Vikas explains his point quite passionately, that's what I like about it. There was a discussion on gender and ICTs during the conference, and I liked the point Vikas made. The next day, I asked him to explain it again. Since he knew what point I was refering to, it doesn't matter that my question was not the right question. More about the technical options we are working with lateron.

You may ask how many Ghanaians have broadband connection to watch vlogs. I think the use of vlogging in development should go with equipping intermediaries with video ipods too, but to get the process going, we might as well as on the content production side. On the other hand, we should not underestimate how fast this process has changed for professionals in Ghana (a lot of them do have access to broadband connections) so for exchange between professionals this may work (let alone for people in the north who are interested to follow what's happening in Ghana).

Ning: just what I was looking for?!

Via my husband and Checklist, a Dutch blog, I found Ning. Though I don't even try to keep up with all the new tools that are thrown on the internet, but I must say this looks just like the kind of tool I was waiting for. It gives you the opportunity to build an online platform in a super-user-friendly and easy way! You can choose to add or leave out features like video, blogs, etc. and you can choose whether you want a public or private platform. Erwin Blom created a Dutch one if you want to have a look. If you want a 12 minutes instruction you can watch this video:



Considering my recent experience with customizing a microsoft sharepoint environment for an online workshop (which needs technical expertise etc.) Ning sounds like an amazing innovation. With sharepoint, after all efforts, you get very un-userfriendly features; there is no email alert with content, there is no way to see a whole thread at once without clicking about 10 times, etc... A disadvantage of Ning could be the advertisements, but if you pay some money, it will be removed.

The funny thing is that they call it a social network (build your own social network). Whereas I would call it build an online interface FOR your social network. I may be old fashioned because I see the first useful application of Ning for existing groups. With the public version, you can choose to build a ning around a certain topic that may attract new people, so in that sense it might be a tool to build a social network too. (still can't believe that works well with starting with an existing social group or network)