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The
seminar is based on the premise that most organizations will soon need
to make their operations and activities more web-centric in order to
keep in touch with their audiences, to lower costs, improve marketing,
internal workflows, and communications. In our experience, very few people
are taking advantage of many of the capabilities of the web/internet.
Our task is to introduce those capabilities, enable participants to develop
some proficiency in using them, and help them to see how the web/internet
can add significant value to their operation.
There
are 20 web competencies (some micro and some fairly broad) that are
addressed in the seminar, all of which are observable and measurable,
and most are tightly tied to useful applications for business, professional,
and nonprofit organizations. These web proficiencies can be used to improve
and extend marketing efforts, to support clients and members, to collaborate
with others and conference on projects and tasks, to research, train
and maintain. We will focus closely on things that can be done with PDF
files, with blogs and websites, with Google and other search engines,
instant messaging and collaboration applications. Our intent is to enable
you to use these tools and applications to improve your operations, and
to help you to see opportunities that will enhance your enterprise.
- inventory
your system for current versions of software; download, install and
configure newer versions;
- set
up a free e-mail account at Hotmail or Yahoo, and why you will find
it useful;
- set
up filters in your email software that automatically sort and file
incoming email;
- set
up instant messaging with MS Messenger and/or AOL Instant Messaging,
then use IM to improve your communications with a few key associates;
- use
Google, including AND and NOT, to research any topic, and discuss
the limitations and built-in biases of all search engines;
- explore
the world of Google hacks and how they could be used to support clients
and members;
- outline
and explain what websites can do, giving specific examples: to support
clients,
volunteers & members; to market and sell services
as well as products; to organize, stimulate, vent, explain, train,
etc.
;
- show
your staff creative examples of what others are doing, and explain
how your organization might do something similar (within budget);
- discover
practical applications for websites, blogs, virtual workspaces);
- set
up a virtual workspace, populate it with appropriate materials,
establish topics and use it to support members, research teams, communities
of practice, etc.;
- get
non-participants to come to that workspace (which might be as simple
as a Yahoo group or as sophisticated an an eRoom
community) so you begin
to see the dynamics of the group and the level of involvement necessary
to keep it going;
- conduct
a teleconference with your workspace (spreadsheet, document, project
mgmt chart, etc.) in front of others to conference remotely on
a project, budget or document;
- distill
a file using Acrobat and/or a clone/service
- set
up a form with Acrobat;
- annotate
an Acrobat file, add bookmarks, links, interactive & multimedia
content; edit, insert, reorder, and index a PDF file;
- assess
the strengths and limitations of online newsletters in terms of usability,
interest, design, features, and suggest when one might
be used instead or (or in support of) a printed newsletter;
- summarize
the relative merits of blogs, wikis, and newsletters for an organization's
marketing, support, research and other communications
tasks;
- evaluate
the uses of print, online or both for your organization (or one you
are close to as a board member, volunteer, etc.);
- demonstrate
a thorough knowledge of the strengths, limitations and a range of
potential uses for these technologies and applications in your
organization (or a client organization);
- get
more out of your autoresponder, explore the benefits of alternative
browsers (eliminate the popup ads, for example) and email applications.
You'll get a glimpse at security issues, wikis and open source software
applications, although none of those will be specific topics of the seminar.
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