Twitter is a case in point. The 140-word microblogging service is still seen by many as an exercise in narcissism but at a deeper and more serious level it have found uses in areas as diverse as providing feedback on brands and products, distributing alerts for upcoming events, giving real-time responses to speakers in current affairs programs and even spreading information among activists demonstrating against dictatorial governments.

Both fed and been supported by the growth of a small forest of add-ons, Twitter is rapidly becoming a mainstream communication channel, which means it needs to be considered as part of the social media strategy for all NGOs, councils and other small organisations.

This presupposes of course that you have a social media strategy. The reasons for NGOs and councils to have a strategy and what it should do have been written about in numerous blogs, but the simplest argument is the most compelling – the hundreds of millions of people around the world who use various forms of social media on a daily basis.

What your social media strategy should do obviously will depend on your organisation’s objectives, projects, activities and users (both staff and customers/clients), but the basics are summed up in this post by Spurspectives. I’ve expanded a little on the standard components identified in that post to form this list:

• Adding a blog to your website (of course you can have multiple blogs, but don’t underestimate the demands of keeping even one up to date);
• Setting up a page for your organisation on Facebook;
• Sharing videos (for example through YouTube) and posting podcasts on your website about your organisation’s policies, projects and events;
• Connecting with colleagues and community leaders through LinkedIn and then joining LinkedIn networks relevant to your organisation;
• Using Twitter to post current news and updates about your organisation. These can include links to your blogs, videos or podcasts. You will need to decide who exactly has authority to post tweets on behalf of your organisation and what they will tweet about.

This list is a good start, but one key element of a good strategy is that you should not just see social media only as a one-way street to disseminate information about your organisation. Social media is about a conversation, or rather thousands of many-to-many conversations, and your strategy should be more about how to engage through these conversations with your users and those you are trying to influence.

This means that you need to listen to your target audience as well as broadcast to them. All of the social media components suggested above provide opportunities for feedback, but this is one area where Twitter shines, given that anybody with an account can respond instantly and publicly.

I don’t intend to provide a general intro to Twitter here – this has been well-canvassed in guides like the one on Victorian State Government eGov website or this local government-related blog from the UK. Instead I’d like to look specifically at how to receive and handle the rich stream of responses that Twitter provides.

Twitter is like a fast-moving river, with thousands of tweets posted every second; while you can use Twitter to search for your organisation, this is difficult if it has a long name. To help you can start using a hashtag for your organisation or its services in your own tweets. A hashtag is a short, distinctive is name preceded by the hash key (for example, #wikileaks or #cityrail) which used in tweets. If the hashtag catches on and other people start using it, searching for tweets relating to your organisation will be much easier.

Once you do this you can simply dip your hand into the “twitterstream” in every now and then to see what people are saying about you by using Twitter to search for your hashtag, or a filtering tool such as Tweetdeck, which allows you to display searches for multiple topics. You could then provide these as public feedback on your website by using applications such as Twitter widgets or Twitterfeed.

However, while Twitter and Tweetdeck can yield some interesting posts in real time, they don’t allow you to store the results for later use. For a more systematic approach you need software that allows you to filter and then extract the resulting list of tweets to examine outside of Twitter.

Tweetdoc allows you to enter a hashtag or other search term and then set date and time range and limits on the number of tweets to display. The resulting list is displayed in a PDF file which can be stored offline for later reference.

A similar service is provided by SearchHash. As the name suggests this concentrates on filtering by hashtags (though it does seem to work with other search terms) but is a bit more flexible than Tweetdoc in allowing export to an Excel document, which is easier to use as a basis for further research. Meanwhile other tools such as the Archivist provide a snapshot of statistics such as the number of tweets over time, the  top users, main sources, etc.

Be aware, however, that this is a fast-changing area. Search applications such as Searchtastic which were widely recommended only a few  months ago have already ceased operations. Others such as TwapperKeeper have removed their export facility, claiming that Twitter has alleged that it infringes its Terms of Service.

Setting up a Twitter account and then searching for your organisation’s hashtags or other topics related to your services is an important start, but you can do so much more with Twitter. In a future post I’ll look at how you can use it to help in running conferences and forums.

The Committee’s report, titled The adequacy of protections for the privacy of Australians online was prepared in response to recent significant advances in online technology and its use for social media and cloud computing. The committee was particularly interested in the impacts on personal privacy and the protection of data.

The report contains nine recommendations. Key points include:

• Small businesses which hold substantial quantities of personal information, or which transfer personal information offshore, should be subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act 1988.
• All Australian organisations which transfer personal information overseas, including small businesses, must ensure that this information is given the same protection as that provided under Australia’s privacy framework.
• If an organisation overseas collects information from Australia, this information should be protected by the Privacy Act.
• All Australian organisations that transfer personal information offshore are fully accountable for protecting the privacy of that information.

The Privacy Minister Brendan O’Connor has highlighted in an interview with News Ltd that cloud storage was a particular concern.

“While some ‘cloud’ providers are located here in Australia, many more are located overseas,” he said.

“That gives rise to difficult jurisdictional issues, particularly where the laws of two or more countries could potentially apply.”

The Minister has indicated that the recommendations will be implemented.

“This is an important development that will prevent organisations from trying to avoid their obligations under the Act by transferring the handling of personal information to countries with lower privacy protection standards,” Mr O’Connor said.

This point is especially relevant as many countries do not offer the same degree of protection for personal data stored on servers in their jurisdictions against it being accessed by government agencies, or even shared with businesses.

If implemented, the recommendations will have obvious consequences for organisations large and small across all sectors that have made explicit decisions to save costs by moving client data to cloud storage. Even if they have received promises regarding the location of data storage facilities and their security, these assurances are very difficult to check.

However, these are not the only organisations that may be caught up if the recommendations are implemented. The buzz around cloud computing and storage – not to mention the potential cost savings - has encouraged many small organisations to experiment with online applications for their day-to-day computing, such as Google Docs, which rely on cloud storage. The files generated may include a range of personal data which could be covered by the proposals.

In addition, many organisations that continue to use “traditional” PC-based software also rely on cloud storage applications such as Dropbox for data backup or portability. So even if an organisation’s primary storage of personal data is located in its Australian offices, additional copies may be kept on an overseas server and would therefore be caught by the recommendations. Furthermore, the current exemption from the requirements of the Privacy Act enjoyed by small organisations would be removed, even if they do not store data overseas.

While the Senate committee report offers sound arguments for the proposed changes and nobody would deny the fundamental right of people to expect high standards of privacy to protect their personal data, the government needs to work closely with all organisations including small businesses,  NGOs and government agencies as well as cloud storage and software providers to ensure that implementation of these recommendations is not too costly or onerous.

You could of course consider using Outlook, at least to import contact-related data, but there is probably a greater risk of messing up your existing Outlook contact information than there is of “temporary” task data interfering with your Outlook tasks.

So, how do you do this without Outlook? First, consider the following hypothetical workshop attendance list:

If you have a table like this in Excel you will need to import to Word. Once there (or if it is already in Word) you can easily import it into MM but you have to do a few things first, otherwise it will just be a mess with all the data concatenated into a single topic per row.

It was Andrew Wilcox who first described the underlying “trick” to get around this, which is to apply Word’s inbuilt heading styles to each column, say heading 1 style to the first column, heading 2 to the second column and so on, so the table would look like the following (it’s helpful to turn off Word’s heading numbering):

The table can then be imported by highlighting all the required rows (without the header row) then pressing the MindManager button to import to MM.  The data in any column which does not have a heading style (such as the phone numbers) will be treated as topic notes, so the above ends up looking like this as a MM map:

MindManager example map 1

This is fine for a simple table, but what happens when you want to import data to create a more hierarchical map with multiple levels, for example the previous attendance list sorted by organisation?  The first step is to take this list (either created in Word or imported from Excel) and place the organisation column first, grouping the employees by organisation name using Word’s sort function. Then apply Word’s heading styles as previously described so the table looks like this:

The next step is to leave the first name of each organisation but replace each of the repeat names for the same organisation with a simple carriage return/line feed (it’s always handy in Word to make these visible) in the cells below.  This should leave only one occurrence of each organisation name, which should appear in the first row relating to that organisation’s employees.

Then you have to do something a little obscure – retain the Word heading 1 style for the organisation names but highlight the subsequent carriage returns in the table cells under each organisation name in this column and reformat them with Word’s default normal style.

The name and position columns should be formatted as before. Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to import information into MM topic notes using this method, so in this example the phone number column has been given the same level three formatting as the position data:

Proceeding as before to export the table to MindManager, the following map is produced:

MindManager example map 2

This shows the attendees grouped by their organisation. Of course you could use the same trick to group them by position, or to produce a map of a catalogue grouped by product type, shelf location, etc.

In my next post I will discuss using Word to import task-related data especially when it is grouped under headings. Unfortunately this is a lot more complex to achieve.

In fact I have written about mindmapping software before because of its particular usefulness to small organisations, but I thought I’d write something this time for the nerds this time especially those who are reasonably proficient users of MindManager which is the leading PC-based mindmapping software available on the market at the moment.

This exercise was prompted by an innocent query on an MM forum about creating maps from Excel files. While it is possible to link to an Excel spreadsheet, Mindjet (the publishers of MindManager) have so far refused to provide a facility to directly convert an Excel file into a mindmap (or vice versa).

While a number of third-party solutions exist for exporting to Excel, there are few that provide for importing spreadsheets in this manner. This shortcoming also affects other areas; while MM does have extensive capabilities for importing from and exporting to Outlook and Word, it doesn’t work that well with tables generally.

Now I don’t pretend to be an MM expert but I have used it for a few years and the following is the result of my experimentation with MM, Excel, Word and Outlook. I’d welcome any feedback if somebody has come up with simpler approaches.

OK, so you have a table of information that you want to turn into a MM mindmap. How best to approach this depends primarily on two things; the nature of the data (for example, whether it’s a straight-forward list of task-related information or a multi-levelled table of data) and the format of the table (mainly whether it’s in Word or Excel).

As a general rule of thumb, the easiest approach is to use Outlook as your intermediary. This applies especially to task information; all recent versions of MM are designed to handle import and export of Outlook items, albeit in different ways.

For example, you may have developed a table of actions in either Word or Excel which will look something like this (I’m using European/UK/Australian dd/mm/yyyy date format, but you can use others, so long as they are consistent with those available in Outlook):

If the table is in Word, the best approach is to strip out all text apart from what is in the table, convert the table to text using tabs as breaks between fields and save the file in txt format (tabs are a safer bet than commas as your comments or other fields may have commas in them). This can then be imported into Outlook.

If the table is in Excel, you can export it directly into Outlook. However, you must do two things first; highlight and name the table range and then, if you are using Excel 2007 or 2010, save the file in 2003 format (unbelievably, Outlook 2007 or 2010 can’t import Excel files later than 2003).

Irrespective of which format you start with, you then need to go to File Open/Import in Outlook, select the option to import from another program or file and choose tab separated or Excel 97-2003 formats as appropriate. Choose the file to import and then the task folder in Outlook as the destination; you will then be asked to confirm the mapping of the imported table’s fields to those in Outlook.

Once imported into Outlook, it is an easy matter to highlight the tasks and export them to MindManager. You can then decide whether or not you want to retain the link between the tasks in MM and their counterparts in Outlook. A number of other fields can also be mapped and imported, including resource, priority, percentage complete, etc.

It’s important to note that MM and in particular version 9 has a very specific approach to the relationship between start date, due date and duration, which will be explored in more detail in a future post. In summary, however, if you have any two of the following, start date, due date and duration, MM will calculate the missing item.  Further, MM will base its calcuations on working days as identified in MM’s Task Info Options. If a due date falls on a non-working day, MM willl push it onto the next working day.

While the approach outlined above is an obvious choice for task-related material, it can also be used to import other sorts of tables, even those without date fields. In both cases, however, this approach is only suitable with a relatively simple table where the tasks can be imported as topics at the same level and the fields can be related to those in Outlook. In future posts I will look at importing more complex tables, as well as importing tables when you don’t want or are unable to use Outlook.

Facebook iPhone interface

Checking tweets or Facebook and LinkedIn updates is a no-brainer. The linear nature of most social media interfaces also means that there is comparatively little difference in the user’s experience between a smartphone and a PC, despite the latter’s vastly larger screen real estate – and of course you can add comments and updates anytime, anywhere.

The same, linear, slightly retro feel applies to switching from app to app and to opening multiple files within the same application – just like the early versions of Windows, or the first time you fired up Internet Explorer (obviously the experience is a little different on tablets such as the iPad because of their larger screens).

On the other hand, the ability of smartphones to integrate different applications with social media is probably their strongest feature next to their portability and for ease of use beats computers hands-down. The most obvious example is the act of taking a photo to email or to post to a social media website, both of which are accomplished in a few seconds and just two or three steps on most smartphones.

This is a major advantage in terms of convenience and time saving, compared to using a digital camera, uploading the picture to a computer and then sending it. The quality might not be as good and you may not have the range of tools available on a PC to manipulate the image, but for most day-to-day purposes, who cares?

This mashing of applications on the iPhone can be used in less obvious ways. Recently I had to scan a receipt to email as part of an expenses claim. Again, it was far easier and quicker to use one of the many iPhone scanning apps rather than crank up a high-quality but slow scanner and turn on the computer.

Dragon Dictate iPhone app interface (recently released in an Australian accent version)

OK, the iPhone’s scan image wasn’t as great as the scanner could have done, but I didn’t need OCR quality and it was certainly good enough for my purposes. The same triumph of convenience over quality applies to a host of other things involving applications and social media which are easy to accomplish on the iPhone, from emailing voice recordings to posting movies to YouTube, or using the Dragon Dictation app to compose your next Facebook post.

As a result, I think we are at the beginning of the next wave of innovation in social media and the web generally – and as smartphones become ubiquitous and are increasingly the weapon of choice for going online, the potential for all sorts of combinations involving apps and social media seems almost limitless.

Despite me locking the keyboard, my phone had taken to making random calls from inside my pocket. In the main these were to the somewhat-bemused people who I had recently rung or who had just rung me. Then the calls became more random, depending no doubt on whatever combination of shortcut keys were pressed at random after the phone somehow managed to unlock itself. Finally it was the police who were summoned; when the call was made then promptly terminated by the phone they turned up at my house while I was away to check on my health, which not surprisingly caused general consternation.

So it was off to the  (Australian carrier) Telstra shop for a new phone. My Windows phone was with Telstra; we were already committed to a Telstra home bundle to which I wanted to add my new phone, thereby gaining a discount. Telstra at the time also had a good deal on data packs, which meant I could get 3GB of data for less than $20 a month. I had already decided on a 32GB iPhone 4 - at the time I felt that it was significantly better then the Android phones then on offer (just two months later they are more evenly matched). What could be simpler than setting this up?

Actually quite a lot, as I discovered on one of the more bizarre days I have experienced. To cut a very long story short, my old phone was linked to Telstra’s old billing system while our home bundle was in the new system – and there was no way to link them, or even to transfer my mobile number to the new account. Furthermore, the discounted data packs were available only through numbers linked to the new system.

The only option was to port my number out of Telstra to another carrier, wait an hour or so then port it back in, whereupon it would be welcomed with open arms in the new billing system - or so the theory went. In practice it took over four hours as I wore a path across the shopping mall, backwards and forwards between the Telstra and Vodaphone stores. At one stage my (old) phone was in some sort of telecom Limbo – announcing itself to be a Vodaphone while its billing system was still in Telstra land. Eventually, after I had walked between the two shops transferring various incantations involving account numbers and numerous bits of phone shop-speak, I was duly signed up back at Telstra with my shiny new iPhone.

I should say that despite my dismay regarding this whole process, the staff at both phone stores were very helpful – especially those at the Vodaphone shop, who netted only $2 from the whole transaction.

A few observations about the process and my new phone:

1. Telstra really, really needs to get its act together regarding the whole account transfer business. I will never get those four hours back.
2. Things have really progressed in two years; my new iPhone runs rings around the old Windows Palm Treo.
3. One obvious improvement is the iPhone’s greatly superior interface - not quite as intuitive as some claim, but relatively easy to grasp once you have a few basic rules explained.
4. Still, I miss being able to write emails with a stylus as I once did on the Palm – although I have to concede that the voice dialling and control on the iPhone are pretty good.

What’s this got to do with Web 2.0 and social media? I’ll talk about that in my next post.

I’m very pleased to say that Mindjet seems keen to follow through on its initial response, with senior management contacting me regarding the letter. These discussions have been very positive; they are ongoing, but a few key points have emerged:

• While they obviously would have preferred it if there wasn’t anything to be concerned about, Mindjet really appreciated the fact that users were prepared to take the time to identify problems in a constructive way. They also thanked me for coordinating these responses and providing them to Mindjet as a compiled map;
• A point release of MM9 should emerge in the next few weeks, possibly as early as next week. This was obviously already in development when they received my map of user concerns but it should address at least some of the key issues detailed in the map. Further user issues will be addressed in future point releases, which are likely to be more frequent than was the case in previous versions;
• Mindjet are exploring options for greater input from MindManager users to help identify issues and gain a better understanding of customer needs. To complement this, Mindjet are also looking at ways to improve their communications with their customer base.

So far the Mindjet response has been exemplary and indeed it does show signs of developing into a model for other companies. Obviously we will have to see how well Mindjet deliver on their initial promises, but they have already taken the first step that many other companies fail to do; that is, admit it when there is a problem and respond openly, instead of trying to sweep it under several layers of spin.

 To summarise, MindJet recently introduced MindManager 9 with a range of new features, many of which are worthwhile. However, key aspects of these changes appear to have been poorly implemented in the rush to market. In addition, some important features of the previous version which many users relied upon were dropped or reduced in functionality, potentially compromising the product’s fundamental role as a brainstorming tool.

When I put out a  request for responses from affected users on relevant forums I received strong feedback which I consolidated into a detailed MindManager map. I forwarded this to Mindjet with an open letter outlining the changes that users were demanding in upcoming service packs for the product – click here to see the map  (requires Flash), go to Biggerplate to download the map or click on this link to download the letter to Mindjet - as well as writing about it here.

I commented that it would be interesting to see if this modest exercise had any affect. I’m pleased to say that it has. On the Yahoo MindManager forum, Garrett Scott from Mindjet made the following response to my post:

Alex,

Thank you for taking the time to pull all these comments together and create
this letter. I have passed this to the highest levels of Mindjet and we are now
digesting your comments and feedback. A lot of the feedback you have included, I
have previously escalated and our Products and Engineering are already looking
at them.

I will tell you that the first service pack is due out the first week of October
so I can’t say that these fixes will be included. But our teams know how
important these issues are with you, our most dedicated power users, and are
formulating ways to address your comments.

We will only know how committed Mindjet really is to addressing these issues when the service packs start rolling out (and of course we’ll be using the map of MindManager issues which I compiled to keep tally of what they do in response to the problems we have identified). However this is a very positive beginning: potentially this exercise in “user power” can grow into a proper dialogue between Mindjet and its customers which can serve as a model for other companies that want to make major changes to their software (PC or web-based) which could potentially affect their existing user base.

At this stage I’d just like to say thanks to the Garrett and the people at Mindjet for listening.

While MindManager (MM) has a web-based incarnation, Catalyst, I have to confess that I use- and have become addicted to – the PC-based version. MM is the Rolls Royce of mind mappers- it’s big, it’s expensive, but it’s got everything and it does everything.  And I use it for everything, from brainstorming, to project planning to article outlining to – well, you name it.

The numbers back up Mindjet’s claim that MM is the market leader, with about 1.5 million users, roughly a third of the 4 million plus mind mapping market (though I’m not sure if these figures include the web-based applications).

A month or so ago Mindjet, who produce MM, released the latest version (MindManager 9) to much fanfare. I’m the first to admit it’s got some great features, including a new slide view which allows you to present the map in sections to an audience and interact with it at the same time, and a built-in Gantt view.

Unfortunately the changes have come at too high a cost for many users. Mindjet appears to have embarked on a strategy to attract new users by repositioning MM as an Outlook task and appointment manager. While there are many worthwhile aspects to these new features, key aspects appear to have been rushed to market and as a result they seem to have been poorly implemented.

Furthermore the new features seem to have compromised the product’s fundamental role as a brainstorming and product development tool from which tasks will eventually be exported and linked to Outlook, rather than the other way round.

The story from here on in is a bit technical for non-MM users, but it illustrates some of the difficulties that can occur when companies make a major change in direction in search of new market share which leaves their existing user base stranded. It’s even worse when some of these changes are not fully thought through.

A request for feedback on issues with the new version which I placed on key MM forums has elicited a strong response. Based on these I’ve prepared, appropriately enough, a detailed mind map in consultation with key members of the MM user community. I’ve forwarded this to Mindjet with an open letter seeking changes in the first and subsequent MM9 service packs.

It will be interesting to see if this small exercise in consumer protest has any affect. For those of you who are interested in this issue, click here to see the map  (requires Flash), go to Biggerplate to download the map or click on this link to download the letter to Mindjet – and if you are a concerned MindManager user, pass these links on, post comments on the Mindjet and Yahoo MM forums and write to Mindjet yourself.