[UPDATE - This social good campaign has ended, but had a great response!]

It’s interesting to see how people use technology, and more so social media.  Whether you use social media to connect with your old friends, tending to your Farmville crops, or thinking about others and leveraging the technology to make a positive impact.

Recently I have been involved with a #socialgood campaign to help the Backpack Program of Catawba County, NC.  Seize The Photo Photography in Newton, NC and TPS Photography in Morganton, NC have teamed up to raise money and awareness for the Backpack Program.  In case you do not know, The Backpack Program is a program where kids in need are given a backpack full of food to take home each Friday from school.  The reason that they are given this backpack full of food is because there is a good chance that one of the only meals that they get to eat during the day is at school.  During the weekend, the kids are not receiving school meals, and sometimes go without food.

Can you imagine having to worry about being hungry when you come to school Monday morning because you did not have enough food during the weekend rather than concentrating on getting an education?

Here are a couple of things that we are doing in this #socialgood campaign:

1. Sending out Tweets and encouraging our followers to do the same:
   @seizethephoto is giving $.50 to The Backpack Program of Catawba County for every “Like” on their Facebook Page. http://bit.ly/grZlQW RT

2. Sending out Facebook Messages and encouraging our friends to do the same:
   Did you know that $90 will feed a student in Catawba County, North Carolina for an entire year on weekends with the Backpack Program. Seize The Photo Photography is donating $.50 to every new like on their Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/seizethephoto
   
   
3. Sending out email and asking people to pass it on to others.  Here is a message from Cathy, the owner of Seize The Photo:

Greetings!
My name is Cathy Yount and I am the owner of Seize the Photo (www.seizethephoto.com) in Newton, NC. A few months ago, I joined forces with TPS Photography (www.tpsphotography.com) in Morganton, NC and our studios now work together frequently. Myself and Chris Garner (owner of TPS) got together and decided to spearhead a campaign to benefit the Backpack Programs in each of our respective counties. We have invited several people to become fans of each of our Facebook pages; for each new fan (starting at 1400), we pledged to donate $0.50 EACH to the Backpack Program. So far, STP has 304 new fans and TPS has 293 new fans, for a combined total of $298.50 raised! Seize the Photo also pledged an additional $50 for reaching an individual goal on Tuesday evening, bringing the overall total to $348.50. Our contest ends on Sunday evening, but we still need help raising money for the Backpack Program. I’m calling on you to help us out by visiting our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/seizethephoto) and clicking the “like” button, as well as sharing this email with all of your friends and asking them to do the same. I encourage you to act quickly so that Catawba County can win the competition and raise the most money for an awesome cause. Thank you so much for your help, and please don’t hesitate to call me if you have any questions. Have a wonderful day!

–
Sincerely,
Cathy Yount
Seize the Photo
(704) 651-6890
cathy@seizethephoto.com
http://www.seizethephoto.com

Be a part of this #socialgood campaign and please pass the above items along to any arenas that you can think of so that more people can find out about the Backpack Program and help this social good campaign.  Just in case you were wondering why I am calling this a “social good campaign”…1. We are using social media to push this message out. 2. It is to help a program that impacts actual people in need, making a social impact in our community.

Just for your information, here is a link to more information about the Backpack Program of Catawba County: http://bit.ly/gH61e5

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks,
Lee
@leeyount

On July 6th, 2009 Apple Inc. made an announcement in Maiden, NC that they would be building a large data center with plans to build a phase 2 data center.  I was there with my camera and here are the photos from that event:

I gave a presentation this morning at the Fall NCLGISA Conference in Asheville, NC titled How To Set Up Social Media Sites – Some new stuff | Crash, BOOM, tweet…with a twist.

Here is the description from the session:

You’ve done Facebook and tweeted to the world, so what’s next? Social media tools are maturing and becoming more than a way to send information to citizens. In this session,  explore the traditional social media tools and how they are interacting with new tools like proximity-based Foursquare, using tools like Quick Response Codes to steer users to sites, and crowd filtering tools to gather information. Andpublic safety? Could a tweet save your life? Hear what the Red Cross says about social media.

Click Here to Download the PDF with the presenter notes

Below are the slides from this presentation:

Hurricane Earl

Here is the scenario: There is a category 4 hurricane headed directly for you.  Forecasters say that it is going to turn north at the last minute and impact on your location looks to be minimal (but things can change at the last minute).  There are hundreds of locals and tourist vacationing in your town and you need to protect them from a potential disaster.  What do you do?

This very scenario occurred September 1-2, 2010 on the North Carolina Coast.  Hurricane Earl was a monster of a storm heading directly for the Outer Banks of North Carolina, set to turn north at the last minute.  Although the forecast looked as Earl was only going to brush the Outer Banks with some wind and rain, emergency local, state, and federal agencies did not want to take that chance.  Evacuation orders given to the residents and tourists in the different counties in the path of Earl and people began preparing their homes and businesses for potential damage that was to come.

Among the more traditional forms of communication (TV, radio, press releases, etc.) from the different agencies to inform the public, Social Media was used.  Some of the different social media sites that were used by the different agencies to inform the public, were Facebook and Twitter.  The Federal, State, and local emergency and governmental agencies were constantly pushing information out to the public with short headlines with a link to find out more information often times linking back to their website or blog.

Not only were the Federal, State, and local emergency and governmental agencies pushing out information to the public, but the public was posting Facebook statuses and tweeting about what they were seeing and experiencing.  Whether it was during an evacuation and there was a lot of traffic, or actually during the storm when there was some flooding and slight wind damage, people were using social media as a major form of communication.

The hashtag #earl became very prominent early on and was used by FEMA, The Red Cross, The Weather Channel, The Governor’s Office, and the hundreds, if not thousands of people that were referring to Hurricane Earl.  If you are not familiar with hashtags, this this a way that you can search any tweet on Twitter even if you are not following that person and see what they are saying about a particular item.  Because the hashtag #earl became the “accepted hashtag” of this event, agencies and the public were able to follow hashtag #earl and get a lot of information quickly from many different sources.

In the different tweets that were coming across my Twitter feed a lot of them had photos linked in them which was helpful because I could get a feel for what was going on in a specific area at that time even though I was 400 miles away.  I use a tool for searching Twitter called Hootsuite.  With Hootsuite I am able to have many different Twitter search terms in front of me at the same time.  For instance, I had a search column for each of these terms: “#earl“, “#hurricane“, and “#hurricaneearl“.  The most active of the following being #earl.  I also wanted to search any tweet that had the hashtag #earl and the domain names of many of the photo services used when tweeting with a photo, this would essentially make a search column that returned tweets with photos attached to them that had to do with Hurrican Earl.  Here is the search criteria I used: “twitpic OR yfrog OR tweetphoto OR twitgoo OR picktor OR mobypicture OR twitxr OR posterous OR pikchur #earl“.  I was amazed of how many people were tweeting with photos of this event.  I saw photos of the sunrise that morning before the storm made landfall all the way through to the next day where there was some flooding and wind damage.

Click on the photo to see video of: 2010 Hurricane Earl Moves Up the US East Coast

One last thing that I thought was most likely the most interesting part of the entire event was a hurricane tracker, @hurricanetrack (http://www.hurricanetrack.com/) streaming a live video feed from his truck as he drove around the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  I found this feed as a tweet that came across my #earl twitter search.  He was using the service USTREAM with a Sprint aircard/wifi connection.  USTREAM is a free service that allows you to stream a live video feed of almost anything that you wish (within their standards).  The unique thing about hurricanetrack streaming from his truck was that you felt like you were really there.  For the folks that subscribed to his premium service, they could chat with him and he would even go to some of their homes to make sure that everything was alright after the storm had passed.  Having the ability to stream live, the actual location of an event is invaluable to a team in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during an event.  It allows the folks that are making difficult and important decisions about your safety, the ability to see what is actually happening in the field.

With all that said, I think that social media is a great tool especially during an event, be it a hurricane, tornado, ice storm, or any other emergency situation you find yourself in.  It is a way to obtain information from the people that are actually in the event with minimal effort.  It also allows you to get your information from a more centralized place rather than trying to visit multiple websites, blogs, watch numerous TV stations, and listen to several different radio stations.

I also created a Twitter list with a list of people and agencies that I follow in an emergency.  This list is constantly changing, but feel free to check it out and follow it if you need somewhere to start!  http://twitter.com/LeeYount/ncemergency

If you have any questions about this post or would like more information about how to use social media in a emergency, let me know and I would be glad to help!

note: I completed an interview with Government Technology today about this very topic and you can view it here: http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/County-Monitoring-Social-Media-Emergencies.html

Google is giving interested municipalities the opportunity to participate in a experiment that could result in much faster Internet connectivity directly to their residents.  March 26th is the magic date that Google will stop taking suggestions from municipalities and residents to bring a Fiber network to their community.  This initiative from Google is interesting especially in my part of the world where both Google and Apple have decided to set up shop with massive data centers to host new technologies.  Less than a month ago Governor Bev Perdue announced that North Carolina will receive $28.2M for broadband recovery [see post] which makes this announcement from Google, a great way to marry the two projects.

Here is the link to the Google “Google Fiber for Communities” page where you can let Google know that you would like to take advantage of their experiment in your community: http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi

Here is the YouTube video from Google, explaining the experiment:

“New 480-mile fiber-optic network will create more than 230 jobs”

What’s the News?

“Gov. Perdue today announced that MCNC has received $28.2 million in broadband funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to build a 480-mile fiber-optic network for the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN).  The design, construction and operation of the network are estimated to create more than 230 engineering and construction jobs.  In addition, the network has the potential to serve more than 1,500 school and community institutions, 180,000 businesses and more than 300,000 underserved families.”

Who will benefit from this added infrastructure?

“The new fiber build will traverse 37 counties in North Carolina.  Counties in eastern N.C. include: Beaufort, Bladen, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Greene, Harnett, Johnston, Nash, New Hanover, Onslow, Pender, Pitt, Robeson, Wake, and Wilson. In the west, counties include: Alexander, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Cleveland, Davidson, Davie, Gaston, Haywood, Henderson, Iredell, Jackson, Lincoln, McDowell, Mecklenburg, Polk, Rutherford, and Transylvania.”

Read the entire Press Release: http://www.governor.state.nc.us/NewsItems/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?newsItemID=875