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THE SECRET TO A ZERO-BOREDOM CONFERENCE: PROPOSE A SESSION TOPIC (OR TWO)!

JUST 18 DAYS UNTIL NETSQUARED CAMP VANCOUVER

We’ve all been to conferences with yawn-worthy sessions on topics that are totally irrelevant – or simply uninteresting. We want NetSquared Camp to be the complete opposite of that. Here’s a simple way to guarantee that your NetSquared Camp experience is as un-boring as possible: Add your session ideas to our wiki! It only takes a minute, and gives you a chance to share your ideas with other attendees before the event so we can all get an idea of what everyone’s interested in.

Editing is easy – you don’t even need to create an account!

Go here: http://netsquaredcampvancouver.wikispaces.com/Session+proposals

P.S. Don’t worry if your idea’s only half-formed – sharing your burning questions, biggest challenges, and/or areas of expertise can be helpful starting points.

NetSquared Camp is more fun with friends

NetSquared logoAlready RSVPed for NetSquared Camp Vancouver? Hooray!

As of this evening 71 people have registered, but we’re got room for more! Please invite your friends to join us at NetSquared Camp. Feel free to use the copy below (or draft your own message.)

Social sharing copy

EMAIL

I’m going to a cool summer camp and I think you should too. NetSquared Camp is a free, one-day event where nonprofits meet geeks to develop practical skills in social media, marketing, communications, design and technology. You bring your questions and professional challenges. We’ll table them with your peers and some of Vancouver’s brightest to workshop actionable applications for social change. NetSquared Vancouver: by sharing knowledge, experience and best practices, we can all make exponential gains for social good. RSVP for your ticket to practical, positive change:http://netsquaredvancouver.eventbrite.com

FACEBOOK

I’m going to a cool summer camp and I think you should too. NetSquared Camp is a free, one-day event where nonprofits meet geeks to develop practical skills in social media, marketing, communications, design and technology.

http://netsquaredvancouver.eventbrite.com/

TWITTER (Our hashtag is #n2camp )

#Nonprofits meet geeks to make gains for social good. #NetSquared Camp #Vancouver is free and fabulous: http://bit.ly/a3YrBH

>17 characters remaining for reTweets

NetSquared Camp organizers meeting- Tuesday, July 6

Come out for the second NetSquared Camp organizers meeting. Everyone’s welcome!
Date: Tuesday, July 6
Time: 5:30 – 7:00pm
Location: 302 Water Street, 4th Floor: Water Street Arts Society.
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NetSquared Camp Vancouver

Register for NetSquared Camp Vancouver in Vancouver, British Columbia on EventbriteDate: Saturday, August 14
Time: 9:00 am – 4:00pm
Location: SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street
Cost: By donation!

Attention Social Change geeks! You are invited to join us at Vancouver’s first NetSquared Camp.

What’s that? It’s an unconference bringing together nonprofits, activists and social entrepreneurs with their friends and allies in the world of technology and communications (social media folk, developers, designers, writers, marketers….)

NetSquared Camp Vancouver will focus on practical skill development and peer learning, so come with your questions and experiences.

Example topics:

  • how do I grow and manage my email list?
  • What fundraising strategies work best online?
  • Facebook Groups vs. Pages – which is right for me?
  • What’s CRM and why should I care?
  • How do I make a blog work for my organization?
  • How do I create a social media strategy?
  • What are best practices for Google Adwords?
  • How do I make an awesome Youtube video that converts to web traffic?
  • What’s the point of your website?
  • What is Drupal and why should you care?

Got a great topic you’d love to share? Add it to our wiki.

Internet Help Desk:

Are you new to this newfangled internet stuff? Why not join us at the Internet Help Desk?

Get one-on-one help from local experts who can answer your questions about such topics as:

  • How to create an email campaign
  • How to use Google Analytics
  • How to setup  Google Adwords
  • How to create a free site using WordPress.com

It’ll be awesome fun. See you there! RSVP now.

Vancouver ChangeCamp – there is such thing as a free lunch (with ticket!)

Flag of British Columbia
Image via Wikipedia

Hi Campers!

We’re less than 2 weeks away from Vancouver ChangeCamp.
Don’t have tix yet? Your problem’s solved at http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/

Here’s what you should know:

  1. The province of BC just joined us as a sponsor. That means LUNCH IS NOW INCLUDED with your ticket.
  2. ChangeCamp is a no-barrier event. Can’t afford to go? Don’t want to participate in the capitalist system? Email eli@vandergiessen.ca and I’ll provide a free ticket.
  3. Check out the session proposals at http://vanchangecamp.wikispaces.com/ And feel free to add your own.
  4. People are the heart of ChangeCamp. More people = a better event.

Please take a moment and think of just 2 people who just HAVE to be at Vancouver ChangeCamp. Then forward them our URL and a personal message.

Thanks!

Vancouver ChangeCamp: how can government become more open and responsive?

Coat of arms of City of Vancouver
Image via Wikipedia

Nonprofits have a strained relationship with government. It seems like we’re always yelling at them to open up their data. “Release the fisheries report!” “Publish the grizzly mortality counts!”

Wouldn’t it be great if nonprofits, community activists, policy wonks and government all got into a room and discussed our differences? What if government data defaulted to open, rather than closed?

Sounds kumbayah? Well, it isn’t. In fact, it happened last year. Community activists and nonprofits sat down with representatives from the provincial and municipal government (including Vancouver’s Mayor and BC’s Director of Citizen Engagement). And amazing things came from it, like:

Join me for Vancouver ChangeCamp 2010
When: Saturday, June 12. 8:30 – 5:00pm.
Where: W2 Storyeum, 151 Cordova W., Vancouver BC

Ticket are $20. RSVP at http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/

What is Vancouver ChangeCamp?
Vancouver ChangeCamp is a participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, political players, change-makers and government employees to answer these questions:

  • How can we help government become more open and responsive?
  • How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

ChangeCamp addresses the demand for a renewed relationship among citizens and government. We seek to create connections, knowledge, tools and policies that drive transparency, civic engagement and democratic empowerment.

The conference will be participant-driven, with the agenda created collaboratively at the start of the event, allowing participants to share their experiences and expertise.

When: Saturday, June 12. 8:30 – 5:00pm.
Where: W2 Storyeum, 151 Cordova W., Vancouver BC

Ticket are $20. RSVP at http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/

CONFIRMED: Vancouver Change Camp to be held Saturday June 12 at the W2 Storyeum

It’s good to have a hobby. Even if your hobby is something weird, like organizing conferences.
So I’m proud to present the second of this summer’s keep-Eli-out-of-trouble projects:

Vancouver Change Camp 2010

Date: Saturday, June 12
Location: W2 Storyeum
Early-bird tickets are available now for just $15 (until May 15)!
How you can get involved:

WHAT IS VANCHANGECAMP: A participatory, web-enabled event to imagine and build new ways to collaborate for social change in the digital age. ?

WHY: Change Camp is a collaborative, participatory and web-enabled event that is meant to explore the following questions:
  1. How can we help our governments be more open and responsive?
  2. How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

How to add captions to your Youtube videos in English and French

My parents have a hell of a time explaining to their friends just what it is I do at work. And who can blame them, since it’s a bit jack-of-all-trades-y.

And so, for their edification, I present a summary of a recent project.

====

Subtitling videos used to be VERY time consuming. It would take a volunteer all day to transcribe the video, time the in and out points for each line of dialog, and then enter it all into Final Cut Pro. Ick!

Naturally, we avoided translating most of the video clips we produce. Which makes the David Suzuki Foundation’s Quebec office very sad. <le boo hoo. le sigh>

But now, through the magic of Google’s translation service and Youtube’s automatic transcription and timing features, we can subtitle a video with 30 minutes of effort.  That means we can easily make all our videos bilingual.

Check it out!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Ew7v7lZeY]
(to turn on the captioning click the triangle button in the bottom right of the Youtube player and then hover over your language)

Here’s step-by-step instructions on how to add French subtitles to a Youtube video:

  1. Upload your video to Youtube.com
  2. Get Youtube to transcribe your video by going to the “Captions and Subtitles” tab Youtube Captions and Subtitle tab
  3. Instruct Youtube to transcribe your video, then wait about an hour.
  4. Download the “English:Machine Transcription” file
  5. Clean up the Transcription file in a text editor, because Youtube’s translation is wonky! (“police team is wasted energy”??)
  6. Upload your corrected text file (but keep the “.sbv” extension” to Youtube

Congratulations! You now have a clean caption file in Youtube that can be automatically translated into dozens of languages.
Translation magic from Youtube

But what if “good-enough” isn’t good enough for you? What if you need a perfect translation?

  1. Cut and paste your timed caption text into Google Translate and let it work its magic
  2. Get a native-speaker to review and correct the translation
  3. Upload the corrected text to Youtube (remember to change your text file’s extension to “.sbv ” and if you’re dealing with a language with accents save the file in UTF-8 format.)

And you’re done!

Helpful links: