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I first became acquainted with David Neff, the local director of Web, film and interactive strategies for the American Cancer Society, through the his participation in the Social Media Club of Austin. David has both a background in programming and public relations. At SXSW08, David a panel called The Future of Volunteers: Adapt or Die. Now that the dust has settled from SXSW08, I caught up with David to find out about his latest project: |
Lynn Bender: Tell us about SharingHope.TV
David Neff: SharingHope.TV is one of the first User Gernerated Content Communities built by a non-profit. On the community anyone can share video, audio, photos and artwork about their cancer experience.
Bender: The first? That is surprising. CMSs have been around for almost a decade.
Neff: Ahh but not one’s around User Generated Content — at least not video, photos and artwork.
Bender: Did you build the system from the ground up, or did you start with an existing framework — like drupal or jive? How many developers were involved, and how long did it take to complete the project?
Neff: We had 3 developers involved and they were all local Austin talent. The site was completed in around 6 months which was a record turnaround for us!
Bender: I find it hard to believe that the site was the work of three guys. It’s an incredible site.
Neff: The entire site was built in PHP5 on the ZenD framework while our entire registration system was built on Ruby. The API for the flash encoding and player as well as other calls was purchased off the shelf from a company called VMIX. Ian Mouton was the php programmer and Tom Brown our OpenID and Ruby expert. If you need a Rails person here in town check out Tom Brown. Our web designer was Nicole DeZalia who works for us here at the American Cancer Society, I was just the brainchild and project manager. We are running SharingHope.TV on Slicehost and on Ubuntu Gusty. Slicehost has been an amazing provider.
Bender: Did you start with more or less a complete set of specifications, or did you modify the specs as you were building out the site?
Neff: Oh we modified the heck out of it. We knew we wanted certain things such as categories to group media, openID support, Creative Common licensing of materials, etc but it was very fluid. We are totally in love with OpenID.
BenderCan you tell me a bit about the pros and cons of OpenID? I’ve heard mostly praise, but a little grumbling as well. It seems that adoption by service provider is growing much faster than adoption by the user base.
Neff: Although I am not an OpenID expert I know that the average user is really tired of signing up for u/p u/p u/p again and again. Even here at the American Cancer Society you had to have diff logins for all our Web properties. From one message board to another, etc. OpenID really helps us solve that problem for the avg user. Now it’s up to us to educate them. We plan to implement it on all our Web properties in the next year and half.
Bender: If you had to start the project again from scratch, is there anything you would have done differently? What advice do you have for folks considering similar projects?
Neff: yes I hope we can at least get our employees and volunteers on board to help that adoption. I would say that if you have to invest in one form of “Web 2.0″ technology (and I do hate that term) it should be user generated content. Listening to your constituents and what they have to say is one of the most important things any non-profit for for-profit can do. We have built a community for people to share their cancer experiences in digital form and that will give other hope.
Bender: A couple of questions regarding non-profits. Several houston-based social media experts, like Erica O’Grady and Ed Schipel, say that Austin is a huge center for non-profit activity. Do you find this to be the case as well, and if so, to what do you attribute that?
Neff: I would say that would be true to an extent. I think it has to do a lot with our “Social Good” attitude in Austin. We are a very caring and friendly city. Also being near the capital has a lot of advocacy benefits when it comes to influencing laws. I do wish more people came to the 501 Tech Club here in town. Imagine Geeks and Non-profits folks (I’m both) meeting and sharing ideas.
Bender: Tell me more about the 501 club in Austin. Is that similar to NetSquared?
Neff: yes very similar except I think we have livlier discussions.
Bender: A few of my friends who do fund raising often tell me that it is easier to ask for $10,000 than $100. However, looking at the campaigns of Barack Obama and Ron Paul, I’m not sure that is still the case. With respect to cancer research, organizations like the Susan Komen Foundation seem to be proving that to be no longer the case as well. Are the new tools we have at our disposal changing the non-profits in fundamental ways?
Neff: Oh yeah we totally see the rise the the micro-donation and the micro-volunteer. We have people donating in Linden Dollars in Second Life. So, yes we see the rise of the micro-donation to be very important. In fact every video on SharingHope.TV has donations tied into it. We think that is a first to tie online video into donations. Will it work only time will tell?
Bender: Can you tell me something about the role of the Creative Commons in sharinghope.tv? You seem to have given it prominent mention.
Neff: Yes we really really want to honor the wishes of the media creators on www.sharinghope.tv. — meaning that we give them 4 options to license their materials. We also found a bunch of local bands and bands from San Diego that have licenesed their music for people to use in their videos on the site. The options we give people are listed here: http://www.sharinghope.tv/creative-commons and the music we offer them to use (so we don’t get sued like YouTube) is can be found here: http://www.sharinghope.tv/music.php.
Bender: What kind of opportunities are their for folks who may not have money to donate, but would be willing to code for a good cause? I remember that the League of Technical Voters codeathon attracted over 50 coders who devoted a weekend.
Neff: I know I was very jealous! We have a host of “Dream projects” that we need help on from updating old asp pages to helping us implement new API’s on SharingHope.TV
Bender: Do you have any specs online for these unfinished projects?
Neff: no but I could do that or have people contact me if they are interested. There is a views API and a plays API that we need to put on SharingHope.TV but would love to find a coder to volunteer to do that. We are also looking for someone to just help us make minor php tweaks
Bender: Well, if you put up a specs page, I’m sure that quite a few of us would be happy to link to it.
Neff: Consider that done. I know the VMIX API has a dev wiki as well. Also I am just looking for coders to blog about it in general for publicity and to let people know about the site — to show off all our tech….non profits can do cutting edge technical work as well!
Bender: you mentioned that you were the project manager. I’m finding more and more that the key skills to have are no longer having a knowledge of data structures and algorithms but rather a knowledge of scoping and managing projects. How does this compare with your experience?
Neff: What you are saying is very true. I can’t code PHP worh a crap but I can read it and help people stay on track. Scoping is a skill all int itself today. Currently I am the Director of Web, Film and Interactive Strategy. So I come from a Web Development and Communications background. Which is nice to be able to understand and write code and talk about it.
Bender: You spoke at SXSWi this year. How was your panel experience at SXSW?
Neff: Oh I love SXSW. Hugh and the folks do such a good job. We did a panel on the Future of Volunteers and where we need to be in 5 years to recruit them and keep them interested. As you might imagine that will involve a ton of digital outreach. Check out the video here: http://www.fispace.org/home/2008/03/adapt-or-die-th.html
Bender: Our audience is pretty geeky. Any new projects in the works that you can tell us about?
Neff: Oh I know your audience is geeky! That’s why I read it and I love the happy hours. I recommend them and 501 tech club all the time. As far as new things we are swamped right now coding out all the specs on SharingHope.tv and just telling people about it. If you know anyone with cancer please point them our way. We are here to help!
Bender: David. Thanks for your time.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I work for a vendor that David uses and find him to be a creative and technical professional who is a pleasure to work with.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Thanks for this post. I am excited about the work geeks are doing behind the scenes to make it increasingly easier for non-techies like me to share creativity online. And thanks, Dave, for providing individuals in the cancer community with a way to reach out, share their stories, and know they are not alone.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I really enjoyed David’s talk at BarCamp Austin III, sorry I didn’t get to chat with him more!