In this session, we'll explore how new technologies (blogs, database-driven websites, social bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc) can be used to reach the public and to share information with colleagues and others with similar interests. We'll look at and discuss examples of online strategies using a range of technologies, do a brief overview of what it takes to use them, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. I'm hoping there will be lots of time for questions and open discussion.
I'll start with some general principles developed back in 1997 by Liz Rykert and Maureen James in a book called "Working Together Online", and which Liz has summarized in her "Electronic Strategy Development Primer".
For an any online activity to be successful, it must be a part of the real work: "What am I trying to do here?"
By understanding the range of tools available, you will feel more comfortable and will be more able to plan an approach that will maximize your impact while, we hope, minimizing your own workload and your need to employ expensive techies.
In any on-line effort, there are essentially three things that you can do:
Instead of looking at tools in isolation, what I'm going to do is look at a number of examples that generally speaking fall into each of these categories with you. Of course, these things are interdependent, so it isn't a neat division. And since security is an increasing issue, I'll try to flag things that can be done without installing anything on your computer, or that you'd need a techie to do for you only once -- stuff that doesn't need regular techie maintenance, because all our techies are overworked and wouldn't welcome that, but they sometimes don't mind experimenting with something that will only take them ten minutes ONCE.
Best Start's Provincial Alcohol and Pregnancy Campaign:
Teennet's Smoking Zine involves youth in its development and the site supports Teennet's research. They have a clear "who and why" statement, interactive tools and an engaging tone (contrast with Stupid.ca or Philip Morris).
Health Promotion 101: It's just a plain HTML site, but it answers a need that the OHPRS saw clearly from the questions people asked of the OHPRS and its members. Since it's a stand-alone course licenced under a Creative Commons copyright, people can use it themselves, they can use some or all of the materials for their own workshops, or they can contact OHPRS for more help. It's an educational resource but it's also marketing the "health promotion" message in a way, which supports the on- and offline work of each OHPRS member.
Prescribing Prevention (available February 11 or thereabouts): information, checklists, and case studies all designed to get physicians (primarily) to incorporate more health promotion approaches in the prevention and treatment of stroke. The case studies are key in making the abstract stuff of health promotion "real". It ties into an offline strategy which has a matching publication.
Not so new, but worth a mention because of the ease of adding content to them once they're set up. You don't need to know any HTML. Content separate from design; easy to enter updates and new items, usually through a form on a password-protected page; high startup cost; needs time and programming customization but then the site can be maintained by ordinary people. I'll quickly go through a few that are probably familiar, to get a sense of what you can get for how much money.
Check-in: How many here have a database-driven site? Please jump in with comments on your experience.
OHPE: OHPE is a weekly e-mail health promotion newsletter, which is sent out via a one-way e-mail list. But each issue of the newsletter is actually produced online. Each newsletter item (announcement, job post, etc.) is entered into a form on a password-protected website. When it's done the editor pushes a button on the password-protected site and it produces the text (which in a very low-tech way we then copy and paste into an e-mail message), and the same button simultaneously makes the online versions of all the items go live. So we have a fully-searchable archive without having to enter everything twice. In the $20k range, since the information is not very complex and it is not shared with anyone else at the moment.
Canadian Health Network: Note the very long URLs. The twenty-odd subject-area affiliates contribute the resources, but everything is filtered through the CHN headquarters before going on the site. It's large, powerful and complex, but not fast, and very expensive (>>$100K)
Apolnet shared events calendar: Multiple partners can enter items to the system through a form on a password-protected website, and those items then appear on their own website. Other partners see the new items in a sort of "inbox" and can choose to include them on their own calendars or discard them. This is an open-source application designed to be shared, so after the initial design is done, adding additional partners isn't crushingly expensive ($1-2k range last I checked [anyone know more exactly?]).
A blog is a sort of online journal, but I don't think that explanation gets to their usefulness in a work context. Possibly it's better to say that they're websites that one person or multiple people can securely update very easily from anywhere by filling out a form. The advantage to many of them is that they're free or close to it, and you don't need to install anything on your own computer. You can have one on a blog service elsewhere (such as Blogger or LiveJournal) or on your own website. If you use a service, you don't need to involve a techie at all since there's absolutely no effect on your computer. If you decide to have one on your own website, the software is easy to install and then almost maintenance-free for you (or your techie, if you have one).
Unfortunately I haven't found a whole lot of blogs in the health promotion sector, so it's a bit hard to demonstrate their possibilities in a practical context for your work. Some points to think about -- multiple people can post, it doesn't take any special skills, you can easily edit what's up there, and if you do regularly have things to say, it's a fast way to refresh your site. I'll show a couple of examples of blog-driven sites, and then I'll show you the one I set up as an experiment for this workshop so I can show you how you go about posting something.
A couple of easier ways to get information to come to you so you don't have to spend time looking for it -- it's easier to delete a few e-mails than to have to go out searching.
Some websites have special "feeds" you can collect up in one spot so you can see what's new very quickly. There's a small program called an RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") aggregator that works with your web browser that remembers which feeds you're interested in for you, so all you do is add a feed to the aggregator -- just like adding a new bookmark, and about that fast -- and then you can easily see what sites have added new things and what the new titles are. It's a bit jargony but if you do an information scan routinely it can save a lot of time. Here's one decent plain language explanation. See CBC's feeds page for an example.
These feeds are not hard to add to a website, so if you're thinking of updating your site it's worth looking into adding a feed or asking your developer about it. It's a cheap and easy way to add another method for sharing your message.
I use an aggregator called Sage, but there is an extensive list of other options on Wikipedia
Most journals and newspapers are happy to e-mail you their tables of contents for free, which can make possible a wider information scan in less time than if you had to check their websites or go to a library to see if there's anything of interest.
Look for "Content Alerts" (such as Oxford University Press' journals offers), "e-mail alerts" or the like.
I imagine most of you are on e-mail discussion lists such as Apolnet or Click4HP.
Check-in: How many are on a discussion list (or more, or many)? How many run such a list?
Discussion lists have advantages over plain e-mail because it's so easy to set up archives, and nobody gets accidentally left out of the To: line on a message. Most newish discussion list software will set up an online archive for you with a click of a button, and with the same click you can make the archives private so they're available to those who are on the list only. New people who join the list can then check the archives to catch up on past discussion, and if you're working together on a project it can be an effortless way to preserve your work. It's a lot of benefit for minimal effort and cost.
Once they're established, even more one-way lists like OHPE can act as discussions of a sort -- a lot of what we put in OHPE each week is sent to us by e-mail; we don't need to spend a lot of time searching out information.
Yahoo Groups is one fairly reliable place you can set up a discussion list for free and without involving any techies, but check their privacy policy to be sure you're OK with it. Some website hosts offer a certain number of lists along with the website hosting, so that's another place to check. If you end up needing to pay someone to set up a list for you, Web Networks is one of the cheaper places I've found.
This is using things like MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ or Yahoo Messenger to send messages back and forth in real time. Kids call it "chat". The software is free and easy to find, but requires that you be able to install things on your machine. I use IM to talk to my database developer in Vancouver -- it's much faster than sending e-mail back and forth, and (being free) it's cheaper than phoning. You can have multiple people on a conversation and you can have the software record everything, so you can hold online meetings that essentially take their own minutes. If you serve clients, you could use IM to add another channel of service provision, although whether this is effective really depends on your field. It can be a nice anonymous venue for people to ask embarassing questions in private.
One nice free IM program that handles MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and more is Trillian, which is very easy to use and which doesn't install any spyware. Trillian lets you set up accounts on any messenger service you like and use any or all of them at the same time and without fuss. There's a "Pro" version you can buy that has more features, but the free "Basic" version is just fine. If you have a web camera, it even lets you "video chat" (like having a videophone), but I haven't decided yet whether that's a good thing.
del.icio.us (my del.icio.us bookmarks) is a free utility that lets you keep your bookmarks online. More importantly, it lets you categorize them using your own words. You can attach multiple words to each link you add, and then you can search on any of those words by simply clicking -- so you can find things again more easily. The social part is even more interesting. You can see what other bookmarks OTHER people have added using any of your words, and you can see who else has bookmarked the same things. It's quite an efficient way to both keep and share web references. There is also built-in RSS so you can add someone's del.icio.us page, or one of their words, to your RSS aggregator to see when they add new things. Weakness: it's hosted remotely, so you need to back it up somehow, just in case. It's pretty easy to save the HTML file and just keep it somewhere in case you ever need it. Also, it can be a bit slow and is prone to occasional short outages.
With the advent of ever-cheaper digital photography there's a great opportunity to use photos to convey a message quickly, cheaply and effectively. See, for example, ten by ten which gives a 100-photo snapshot of world news. Less fancy but in its own way just as effective at conveying a message is the photo pages the Parkdale Tenants' Association use for their Golden Cockroach Award contender buildings. Now that you can even take half-decent photos with cellphones and it's easier than ever to put things online, it's worth thinking about how photos can be used to support your messages.
Start small and let it grow
Consider new tools that could support your work and make life easier for you and your clients
Experiment!