Do you ever have to organise meetings for lots of different people, and end up playing diary matching games by email for days on end? Some people use Outlook to find available dates, but more and more people are using the elegant Doodle.
To use Doodle just go to www.doodle.ch, post up a list of possible dates and invite people to visit the page you create. They can then indicate which dates and times they can make, without needing to log in. As people add their details the page notifies you which dates are the most popular.
It’s free of charge, it’s very simple and as well as scheduling meetings you can use it for other polls.
Archive for the ‘“circuit rider” scipmark icthub’ Category
Do you Doodle?
Posted in "circuit rider" scipmark icthub, icthub, scipmark, scipnews on May 2, 2008| 1 Comment »
TB Alert and YouTube
Posted in "circuit rider" scipmark icthub, ictchampion, scipnews on April 18, 2008| 1 Comment »
TB Alert is a charity based in the same building as SCIP. We had an open day here yesterday, with loads of people roaming around chatting to the 40 or so charities and voluntary organisations based here. We also had a film show all afternoon featuring various videos and films made by and about people from the building.
Two of the TB Alert staff are out in India at the moment so they broadcast their greetings via YouTube – a bit like This is Your Life. This was a great way of particpating in the day as well as teaching people more about their work.
Sadly the only technical glitch of the whole day happened when YouTube went down at the critical moment, leaving people here to use good old fashioned face-to-face presentation to fill the gap…
YouTube – TBAlert’s Channel
Free Workshop: How can faith groups use ICT?
Posted in "circuit rider" scipmark icthub, scipmark, scipnews on April 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »
How can faith groups use ICT to support their work? this workshop is aimed at people who are active as staff, volunteers or trustees in any faith-based group form the south east.
FREE WORKSHOP: Faith groups and ICT
Brighton, Friday 28 April 2008, 2-5pm
Venue: Community Base,Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XG
HOW CAN ICT HELP FAITH GROUPS?
This free workshop is aimed at staff and volunteers who work as part of a faith-based organisation. It is not a technical session but is aimed at managers and decision-makers who want to know more about how computers and the internet can help their work.
The session will be delivered by Mark Walker and Lucian Borcanescu, who are the ICT Champions for the South East of England.
It will include:
– How can ICT help faith groups?
– Where to get help with ICT
– Budgeting and fundraising for ICT
For bookings please contact either Mark on 01273 234049 or by email at mark.walker@scip.org.uk or Lucian at Lucian@clusterit.co.uk
WOW! The language of the web?
Posted in "circuit rider" scipmark icthub, scipmark, scipnews on April 1, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I ran workshop last week for museum staff and trustees about how they can use the web. As well as being a way of sharing their collections every one of them saw it as a way of increasing visitors to their museum and wanted to know how to use it in their marketing activities. The pressentation is posted below.
The museums ranged from small independents, run for free entirely by volunteers, to a large visitor attraction which houses one of the largest collections of vintage cars in the world. The people attending ranged in age from 17 to 70 with a mix of Trustee, manager and student volunteer.
The general position was that the people in the room felt very little control over what was on the site or what it looked like, felt confused by how to update it and were at the mercy of techies about what they could and couldn’t do on their website.
Having discussed the advent of the content management system we looked at everyone’s sites – screengrabs in the presentation.
This revealed the usual ragbag of designs and styles. Some were more elegant than others, some were more complete or up to date than others. One was designed by the Chairman’s son, whilst another cost about £20k, including a first version rejected at the last minute which had cost £10k!
Everyone had an excuse for something not being right on their site, or what they wanted improved, but few felt confident enough to comment on anyone else’s site. I was happy to roll through, making positive and negative comments, and suggesting improvements, but it was a far from particpative part of the session.
I realised that many people feel alienated from the web as a medium – they were all regular users of it but lack a language with which to interact fully with it. These are people who have adopted to pseudo-business language of the current voluntary scetor – happy to talk about outputs and objectives and mission – but are feel unable to say that a site looks ‘old-fashioned’ or is ‘basically okay but needs a few more pictures’.
The closest they got was at the start when I asked what they wanted from the day. Amongst various individual issues all agreed that their site needed a bit more ‘wow’ – and I soon realised that was about as articulate as they could be about what makes a website work.
It made me think we need to include similar discussions in all workshops – helping to build confidence by leading discussion as an ‘expert’ whilst making sure that people learn a language in which to express their ideas and begin to take control.
| ViewA simple guide to writing
Posted in "circuit rider" scipmark icthub, scipmark "ict champion", scipnews on March 28, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I’m preparing a workshop about Writing Reports for Voluntary and Community Organisations, which will combine writing skills with how to get the most from Word and Excel.
It’s part of ongoing work to embed IT skills within mainstream community training courses and is based on a successful course I’ve run a few times about How to Draw Graphs and Charts and Include Them in your Reports combined with training run by Working Together Project about writing skills.
Along the way I found a great site called Writing for Change about writing reports, produced in a past life by Becky Faith, one of SCIP’s trustees who is currently part of Tactical Tech.
It’s a simple site that’s easy to navigate with some great tips.
EVENT: Arts and ICT
Posted in "circuit rider" scipmark icthub, ict hub, scipmark, scipnews on January 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The ICT Hub and Voluntary Arts England are running a one day event to help voluntary arts and crafts organisations make the best use of technology, both in the running of their organisation or group and in the delivery of the arts and crafts. This event is taking place in Birmingham on 13th February 2008 from 10.30am – 4.00pm. Prices range from £0-£50.
More info at the ICT Hub website <http://www.icthub.org.uk/events/a_wider_embrace_increasing_participation.html>
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