Social Media, yMedia and Your Organisation - Auckland

On Thursday we ran our last workshop for 2008, tear. The community group focussed workshop was run at Microsoft on Viaduct Harbour in Auckland.

Belinda Gorman, Community Affairs Manager at Microsoft NZ, spoke about her experiences in the NGO sector before starting at Microsoft. She spoke about Microsoft's partnership with Techsoup which donates software and hardware to community groups.

Pamela Minett from yMedia spoke about changing technology and how to successfully involve tertiary students into community groups (NPOs, NGOs, charitable trusts). She introduced web 2.0 and discussed exciting web 2.0 tools that are potentially valuable to community groups in New Zealand.

Jeanie Richards from YouthLaw talked about her experiences in the 2007 yMedia Challenge. Last year, tertiary students worked with YouthLaw to develop an online presence on Bebo for them. Jeanie explained that because the legal information they were trying to disseminate to children and young people needed to be entirely accurate, it was a challenge condensing that information into small bite-sized chunks for the YouthLaw Bebo site. However, the site has been a success including fun quizzes about the law and videos from the YouthLaw stand at the Polyfest. Check out Jeanie's presentation below!

YouthLaw presentation at yMedia workshop

view presentation (tags: ymedia youthlaw)

Thanks to everyone who made the workshop possible and thanks to the people from the following organisations for attending:

• Volunteering Auckland
• Preventing Violence in the Home
• Tamaki Pathways Trust
• YouthWorX
• Auckland Women's Centre
• Discovery Foundation
• Raeburn House
• North Shore Community and Social Services
• Auckland City Council
• Takapuna Community Facilities Trust

The story so far...

Hi, I'm Nathan. I've decided to take over this blog because it hasn't been updated in a while!

Last year, I became involved in the yMedia challenge and had the opportunity to work with YouthLaw and come up with a digital media project to help make legal information more accessible to young people. My best friend, Red, and I worked with YouthLaw to design a bebo page with quizzes and videos that helped people better understand the law.

Well, we won it, and that spun off a whole lot of cool opportunties for us. Money for starters, like $1,000 for winning the challenge. An internship at Saatchi & Saatchi and an invitation to speak at the Digital Future Summit.

Then, I spent all of the semester working for YouthLaw on a film project that will be made available to youth workers and advocates around the country over the Internet. (http://youthlawdm.blogspot.com) And I could use it as to credit to my Communications degree at Unitec! Mean!

Now, I've become involved in yMedia again, helping to organise the 2008 challenge. I've come onboard as the "relationship manager" which basically means I go around and talk to lots of people.

My current todo list is:

* Drink coffee
* Talk to people in digital and media industries
* Find prizes and judges
* Find $10,000
* Write blog

Well I guess I'm doing ok on the last one. I'll do a bit of a recap of the last couple of weeks in my next post! Seeyou!

P.S. Please leave a comment so it looks like people are actually read this :) Sponsors love that kind of stuff!