web development
Digital Storytelling Web Development
Organization:
Center for Digital Storytelling VISTA Name:
Laura Hadden
Program Start:
1/2008
Program End:
7/2009
Project Description:
Our AmeriCorps*VISTA member will assist with CDS ongoing work in Community Digital Storytelling, both developing capacity for our community-based programs in the Bay Area, and working to assist the development of the Stories for Change Website and networking work among local,national and international organizations involved in Digital Storytelling with grassroots communities.
Theier tasks will include:
a)providing organizing and outreach capacities for workshops organized by CDS in collaboration with local partners including Youth Uprising, Art in Action, Girls Inc., and Marin Youth Center,
b)Assisting with a youth-focussed Digital Storytelling video festival at Oakland’s Parkway theater and San Francisco’s Zeum,
c) Assisting with editorial work, continued outreach, and helping to design an online training tool to help organizations use the Stories for Change Portal, and
d)assisting with the organizing and follow-up for the Community Digital Storytelling Gathering in Tuscon, Arizona, Spring of 2007.
Project Outcome:
Laura Haddon Manages storiesforchange.net, a website for uploading digital stories and disseminating resources to facilitators of digital storytelling. She monitors the website, responds to user questions, helps resolve technical issues, facilitates content development and has implemented an initiative to broaden the steering committee and create an advisory board for the site as part of a strategic initiative to increase website utilization.
She has also worked on Center for Digital Storytelling’s (CDS) Silence Speaks website (www.silencespeaks.org) that focuses on disseminating digital stories of individuals that have survived violence and was in charge of updating content on the International Day for Telling Life Stories site (www.ausculti.org). This was an international initiative for promoting the importance of life stories, especially stories of marginalized voices, for developing solidarity and understanding in communities and across borders.
She has also participated in various CDS media and outreach campaigns, and will be involved in strengthening our internal digital story archiving system in order to better serve our workshop participants.
Impact Quote:
“They are both invaluable in terms of training staff in how to use the technology and being able to offer ideas about the potential of the technology for improving our services. In particular, Laura has been able to leverage past experience in the non-profit sector. She came to us with media and outreach experience and is comfortable framing the work of CDS in terms that other professionals in the sector can easily understand. Her leadership skills have allowed her to go to conferences and speak confidently about how digital storytelling is effective as a tool for personal healing and transformation, as well as effectively communicating new information to a variety of stakeholders, constituencies and key decision makers.”
- Andrea Spagat, supervisor
CBO Technology Planning
Organization:
ScienceQuest/EDC VISTA Name:
Lauren Penney
Program Start:
8/2003
Program End:
8/2004
Project Description:
Lauren’s primary assignment throughout the course of her service year at YouthLearn has been to redesign our web and email tools and resources to help us better serve our community.
There were three primary tasks detailed in Lauren’s workplan:
• Leverage existing and new tools/content/resources to enhance website/discussion list/newsletter and related services
• Develop a more systematic, integrated way of identifying and/or creating resources for YouthLearn community and broader field
• Evaluate and improve systems (automated and otherwise), especially our choice/use of technology tools, for efficiency/cost-effectiveness/appropriateness and advise on new technology
Project Outcome:
Lauren’s work has led to three major changes in our online services. She has converted our discussion list to a new format using mailman software that offers us much easier facilitation. She has created a member database where we are able to collect feedback from our community as well as demographic information. Lauren also created an incredibly effective blog format for our online newsletter that can be continually updated by any member of our team and automatically delivered to subscribers on a regular basis. These and other contributions from Lauren’s year have greatly improved YouthLearn’s capacity to harness new technologies and better serve the field.
Impact Quote:
“Lauren has been an extremely dedicated worker and possesses many impressive qualities including commitment to our work, her conscientiousness, her follow-through on tasks, her professionalism, and her willingness to receive constructive criticism and learn/adapt accordingly. We were all consistently impressed with the ownership she felt toward her tasks and the initiative she took with them, as well as her strength as a team player and commitment to other YouthLearn staff members.”
- supervisor
O'Reilly Velocity
When:
June 22, 2010 - June 24, 2010
Where:
Santa Clara, CA
Website:
http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2010 Web performance and operations is an emerging discipline which requires incredible breadth, focusing less on specific technologies and more on how the entire system works together. While people often specialize in particular components, great engineers and developers understand web performance and operations in relation to the whole. The best are able to fly to the 50,000 foot view and see the entire system in motion and then zoom in to microscopic levels and examine the tiny movements of an individual part.