Meant to blog this last week, but other (actually, quite important) stuff got in the way.

Thanks to Britt Bravo for tipping me off (via Netsquared) about Amnesty’s Eyes on Darfur website, where it is asking supporters to monitor 12 villages in Darfur that they have deemed “vulnerable” to attack via satellite.

And get a load of this.

Listen to the gasps from the audience as Microsoft Live Labs Architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Seadragon and Photosynth at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference in California.Is it just me, or is the pace of innovation speeding up by the day?

Hat tip to cxpartners.

First post in a while for a number of reasons. Anyway, this stroked my ego.

The three images I uploaded to the “All photographers now” exhibit were showcased in the Musée de l’Elysée galleries in Lausanne, Switzerland recently.

How do I know (given that I’m in the UK)? Well, I received an email informing me that my images were exhibited. But that’s just the half of it: attached to the email were some installation views of my images in situ, showing them projected on the gallery wall – like the one pictured (and here’s the original photo on Flickr).

I wasn’t 100 percent sure what might have happened to my images once I’d uploaded them via this form.

My mate Nigel (who knows about these things), reckons the photos would go into a database that gallery downloads, gets stuck into some sort of slideshow and then just projected, as you would a presentation.

What made this different to, say, the Flickr Peep Show in Amsterdam a couple of years ago was that they have linked it all together – by taking a photo of my photo being shown… and email that back to me – although probably not that sophisticated, really. Maybe a webcam capture linked with my name and email address.

For a not-for-profit, maybe this is something a commercial partner might want to sponsor for a few grand (my emails from the Musée de l’Elysée suggested they had done a partnership with Hewlett-Packard).

My Flickr buddy Ed Fladung recently suggested that Yahoo! develop a micro-payment system for Flickrites who wish to sell their photos. Even better, a way of funnelling the payments to their favourite cause – although you (the not-for-profit) may want to vet the photos ‘donated’ in your name. Anyway, you get the picture!

This isn’t altogether new. I know of the Big White Box, which was set up by Brunel University student, David Bailey (must be another one), as part of his research into “how the collaborative power of the internet can be used to raise money for charity”. Profits are donated to a handful of UK charities, although I couldn’t get word from David on how much, etc.

And let’s not forget the brilliant DoggySnaps.com. I interviewed Tim Malbon about how the Dogs Trust will benefit from selling the rights to the cream of the crop posted there. As an aside, I actually met Tim for the first time at the Goodness 2.0 event the other evening (see Ian Delaney’s write up on the NMK site).

Greenpeace are at the top of the innovation tree with some pretty awesome participative campaigning. Take the GreenMyApple and Defending our Oceans campaigns, which give people a voice and a platform.

I followed the Greenpeace ship “Esperanza” as she voyaged the Southern Seas, via this stunning photostream on Flickr.

The whole DIY phenomenon has certainly been spurred on by Flickr, other photo-sharing communities, and the explosion of Creative Commons.

If you’re not doing this already, ask your supporters (and their networks) to submit some photos for the front cover of your annual report. You can even draw upon the freedom of the commons, and invite photo remixes.

Have you seen the ‘naked’ covers to some Penguin Classics in the bookstores? The publisher invited readers . There’s an online gallery, and some of the best ones can be viewed on Flickr, too. Great innovation.

There are so many other examples. For example, my mate Ed Mitchell will have one of his Vietnam photos on the next WWF calendar. One of my own photos of corn drying out on the roof of a church in rural Mexico (rather mundane you might think) recently accompanied a news article on citizen journalism website, NowPublic. And I could talk all day about the impact of the After Wilma group on Flickr.

The remarkable and omnipresent Beth Kanter has pulled together Ten Cool Examples of Nonprofits Using Flickr. These include a few of my own favourites and is a must-read.

I particularly like how the ONE Campaign explains to those without a Flickr account just what they need to do to add their face to the Faces of ONE Group.

In February, Flickr released a bundle of improvements for Group administrators, including the very cool ‘Invite a Photo’ feature:

You’re surfing through the Flickrverse and you find a photo that would be perfect for your group. This new feature will allow an administrator to invite that particular photo to their group without membership requirement. You’ll see a new link under the comment box that says ‘Invite this photo to…’

I hadn’t spotted this until this week.

Amazing to think that just two or three years ago, sourcing photos for a website was a real headache.

Nancy Schwartz invited me to submit a piece for this week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants theme on “How do Nonprofit Communicators Compete for Audiences’ Attention?”

So here goes…

Back in October, in my second post to this blog, I wrote about what I believe is our sector’s secret weapon: storytelling

Some fifteen years ago, I frequently travelled around the UK for Oxfam talking to often quite large groups of the charity’s dedicated supporters about ‘third world debt’ and ’structural adjustment’. Inevitably, I weaved in human stories from the ‘field’ to help illustrate the impact of these reforms on those living in poverty, the intended beneficiaries of Oxfam’s projects.

It seems that Michael Gilbert of Nonprofit Online News has a similar past. In his review of “Storytelling: Branding in Practice“, Michael says:

Back when I was a lobbyist for environmental and consumer organizations in the mid Eighties, I came to the conclusion that our cause had a secret weapon. We didn’t have the advantage of good ol’ boy webs of relationships with legislators. We certainly didn’t have the cash that built and sustained those relationships. But when the system worked and the fourth estate was functioning properly, we sometimes, just sometimes, had an amazing power on our side: the power of the true story.

Of course, we’re not talking about stories in a ‘newsworthy’ sense, but rather stories that remind your colleagues of the reasons they joined your organisation: passion for the cause.

In my last post, I went on a bit (too long?) about engagement. Now, I’ve always found it difficult to engage with a piece of direct mail, and this will only get more difficult with the trend towards a more visual culture. (But I’m looking forward to listening to and learning from Anna Crofton of Whitewater when I meet her on Wednesday.)

I’ve written previously about how Kresta King Cutcher has been posting powerful images from Rwanda to the Flickr photo-sharing community. And you could try weaving your Flickr photos into a storyboard.

For a primer on digital storytelling, you can do no better than read J.D. Lasica’s 10 Easy Steps tutorial.

When all the ingredients are in place, you get something like this:

• The Water Buffalo Movie by Robert Thompson

A plea: make a little time (8 minutes to be precise) to watch this inspiring story about a water buffalo donated to the Su family in China (thanks to Carnet for the tip).

It moved me to tears.

I can imagine empowering the entrepreneurs on Kiva to tell their own stories in a similar way.

By the way, I learned from these guys that this week is National Storytelling Week here in the UK. Good timing, eh?

Update: after posting this in a bit of a hurry, I’ve since noticed that Robert has a whole page dedicated to the water buffalo story. He’ll revisit the Su family in March to do a follow-up interview.