AAUW NC has had

• a mailing list open to all members since 1997 or so with more specialized lists (for branch presidents, state leaders) for several years. These are set up as “discussion lists” but only a few people ever post.
• an RSS feed since about 2005  aauwnc.org/feed, which (theoretically) offers a way to subscribe to the news
• a twitter account since 2007 or so (originally set up as a to retweet web site posts marked as “announcements” and encouraging folks to “subscribe via your phone”), twitter.com/aauwnc
• and a Facebook page since ?? (maybe late 2008 or sometime in 2009). facebook.com/aauwnc

These are integrated in the following ways

Tools:

• twitterfeed.com used to read the RSS feed from the web site and repost to twitter
• ping.fm used to post items to Facebook and Twitter at the same time
• tweetree used to read/post as @nes49  – a browser based client that doesn’t have the advanced “listening” features of something like tweetdeck or hootsuite but does have “real names” and threaded discussions which really help me understand the messages.
• twirl used to manage “organization” twitter accounts, making it easy to be both @aauwnc and @ncwu
• The website posts are imported to Facebook using the notes application — doesn’t always work correctly (and seems to be particularly problematic today, sigh).

An  earlier part of the conversation mentioned using Facebook to reach college/university populations. AAUW NC uses it to reach Facebook members in general, and doesn’t gear it for C/U communication in particular. There are many nonmember fans of the page, but few of those are on campuses. They are mostly friends of fans or come from connections through our allied organizations.

None of these communication avenues have a broad reach, and I don’t spend much time on analytics. From anecdotal evidence, I have to believe that the Facebook page is doing a better job of reaching our members. On the other hand, since we’ve set up the page we’ve cut back on our “e-newsletter” publications, and I’m sure we’re missing some people who haven’t “liked” the page, don’t use Facebook at all, and never check the News page on the web site. So we’re going back to basics and looking at better use of a mailing list, which is still the way many people prefer to get their news.  As for nonmembers — twitter and Facebook both reach folks who might not have heard about us otherwise — but we’ve not been  as intentional about the outreach as we might have been.

For more on the general topic of setting up a marketing plan and using new (and old) media, I’d recommend Kivi Leroux Miller’s new book “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide”  (amazon link). It has a number of practical tips, some of which are aimed at larger organizations. But I found it useful to read in the context of a branch/state marketing plan, most of which fall into her “marketing department of one” target audience. See www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com for more. [I'm rereading it now -- let me know if you're interested in a virtual book discussion.]

See also www.aauwnc.org/subscribe.

As background, I spend a lot of my time setting up support for virtual offices. This usually means crafting e-mail alias lists for addresses like “info@something.org” where it’s a really good idea to have more than one person monitoring the e-mail. [You then do need a protocol for who answers the mail, but that's another discussion.]

As more background, most of the sites I work on are hosted at Dreamhost, a very large, but still quirky, hosting company. As an ex UNIX sysadmin, I love the way they offer a select group of software installs that often give me just what I need without the effort of sorting through the myriad of options that are available. They do, however, have a less than stellar reputation for hosting e-mail. So when they started offering Google Apps for Domains hosted with them, I jumped at the chance to move my domain’s mail service to Google.

Anyway, for the first few sites, I was merrily creating my “info@xxx.org” addresses using the “e-mail address” function.

Sometime last month, that just “went away”. It wasn’t possible to set up an address that pointed to more than one external address.

But wait! There’s a new option “group”.  Oh, I guess that’s good — having a Google Group “attached” to the domain. But the overhead of setting up a whole Google group just to get quick alias list?  [Yes, I've been known to use Mailman for a 3-person list when there was no other easy way to edit the alias. But I'm reformed.]

So today I finally tried it, and it turns out their “group” really is just a list of addresses — with minimal Google group functionality. [You can limit who can post to the address, but there's no footer, no subscription page, no files attached to the thing.]

So… What looked like a change really wasn’t much of one. Probably would have been obvious to most of you…

Any lessons here?

http://www.fem2pt0.com/?p=673

Threaded discussion from #fem2 twittercast, 1/18/2009

This transcript attempts to reorder the tweets of the twittercast into threads. Apologies for any misunderstandings. For the raw data, go to search.twitter.com.

• Fem2pt0 good evening, everyone! time to get this twittercast started: what issues should we cover at Fem2.0?
• GloPan: Fair Pay, obviously. And healthcare, work-family balance, how women are depicted in the media…
  • nes49: Would case studies on how GloPan’s topics get pushed through web 2.0 channels be appropriate?
• MadamaAmbi: if I were going to be in attendance, I would want to discuss how to make a movement 2.0
  • blogdiva @MadamaAmbi “how to make a movement” is really a good topic. i have no idea how that is “instigated” or if it can be, for that matter
    • MadamaAmbi @blogdiva I don’t think it can be instigatged, but it can be propagated!!!
  • Jillmz re: how to make a movement-it’s amazing the different ways that can happen-many routes to expression/activism, might depend on issue
• ktdagroovecat: @fem2pt0 generational divide! says the resident fem2.0 millennial :)
  • GloPan @ktdagroovecat digital divide, cultural divide…
• Luci_Kali: perhaps what to anticipate in the 1st 100 days of Obama’s administration in regards to women’s rights, health
• cameronreilly @blogdiva I launched a podcast about feminism last year but it didn’t catch up
• Jillmz I’m interested in rules of engagement: how do we not talk past each other, as well as people w/whom we’re disagreeing on an issue
• veronicaeye But do want to know what media topics peeps want coverd
  • nes49 @veronicaeye – media topics? would the (relatively) new “mom’s spaces” appearing on newspaper sites count? a venue for feminism?
• MadamaAmbi @Fem2pt0 this is so important…I have much to say on this…
• GloPan I am constantly amazed by how many women’s blogs and ventures there are on the Internet, all seemingly doing it on their own.
  • MadamaAmbi @GloPan yep…we need to unify in order to leverage our power
    • dianamarie @MadamaAmbi Excellent! Alliances must be formed across divdes to make a real difference for all women!
  • blogdiva @GloPan what do you mean by that? i mean, blogs were supposed to be about doing it on your own w/o corporate leashes
  • Jillmz I agree w/ @GloPan re: how many individual blogs/ventures; its independence that entices us to speak out, but how can we find others
  • GloPan Blogs should be independent, but single voices speaking on different things not as powerful as many speaking about 1 thing at once.
• Jillmz I think Fem2pt0 is a great example of gravitating for better, more impact (we hope, right!?) but what else can we be doing?
• FaithFeminism @Fem2pt0 What new (tech-y?) methods can we utilize to connect feminist leaders with “grassroots” activists?
• Jillmz making alliances goes back to last week in that it can feel risky to step up when it might involve giving up some independence
• MadamaAmbi I’m getting a little ahead of this convo, but we need a 5 yr plan & a 10 yr plan
• blogdiva we also need to talk about money. raising money for this event has been like pulling teeth because people don’t want to fund feminists
  • Jillmz @blogdiva money issue indeed; here in Ohio, trying to get women in leadership stuff going, also like pulling teeth
  • myrnatheminx @Jillmz Try Nevada!
• GloPan Campaign idea: For one week, we all agree to reach out to 3 blogs a day and invite them to Fem2.0 site.
  • GloPan Of course, there needs to be more substance on issues on the Fem2.0 site.
  • HopeChat @GloPan good evening, I think that is a good idea
• MadamaAmbi @blogdiva that’s why we need to workaround this reality and stream/video/webcam
  • GloPan @MadamaAmbi We are working on it – I think it’s going to happen, just can’t promise at this point.
  • blogdiva @MadamaAmbi i have to double check but am sure webcasting is being taken care of
• MadamaAmbi can we talk about why ppl are afraid of feminists/feminism?
  • Tifanei @MadamaAmbi please do
    • MadamaAmbi @Tifanei I mean, as an ongoing public forum, make this a topic…???…
  • Tifanei @MadamaAmbi I took a Gender & New Media class where we addressed this question. The answers were infuriating, but good lesson learned.
  • MadamaAmbi we’re in a double-bind as feminists. We are trying to take power without upsetting anyone…!!!…
    • GloPan @MadamaAmbi But there are also those who believe that upsetting people is the way to get people to pay attention.
    • GloPan I think the fearlessness about upsetting people is a part of the feminism brand that a lot of people don’t like.
      • MadamaAmbi @GloPan women being put in foreground is upsetting enuf! Don’t have to work at it,imo!
      • MadamaAmbi @GloPan agree! But I am fearless, that’s a fact. I have nothing to lose.
      • dianamarie @GloPan While fearlessness of upsetting people is ok for other activist causes it’s so “anti-woman” that with feminism it burns more.
        • GloPan @dianamarie So true. I worked on the breast implant issue for a while, and the derision over the feminist aspects of it totally GloPan ovrshadowed/buried the real threat to women’s health and their families’ economic security
        • MadamaAmbi @dianamarie you make a really important point…could be a topic all by itself…breaking the archetype open
    • Tifanei personally I am not trying to GET power I think I’m trying to stop people who think they can allocate my already established .
      • ktdagroovecat @Tifanei right on
      • MadamaAmbi @Tifanei what’s wrong with getting/having power?
      • Tifanei @MadamaAmbi Nothing at all. I am just not scared of anyone being intimidated by it. My concern is the aforementioned.
• Jillmz so…there’s communication & engagement; participation & funding; issues – maybe those are general categories for topics?
• ktdagroovecat re: topics: need to offer lessons on “online activism,” not just giving money, but using fb page as soapbox & being thought leader
  • MadamaAmbi @ktdagroovecat yeah, and here is where I ask all of you to check out Feminist Advisory Board for Obama on Facebook
    • ktdagroovecat @MadamaAmbi the reactions i get when i “get all feminist” on my fb page are amazing. ppl shouldn’t be afraid to talk to their networksktdagroovecat @MadamaAmbi about what they believe in… what else is there to talk about? but it’s that fear thing again.
      • Tifanei @ktdagroovecat We really need to alleviate the fear of the damn word. Alleviate the ignorance behind the fear
  • nes49 @ktdagroovecat. Yes.
• GloPan How do we get the millions of women online to become activists? They have the opinions, but just are not connected to the issues.
  • Jillmz @GloPan that kind of thing has come up when issues involve mothers but the group has many women who are not mothers
    • blogdiva @Jillmz oh lord have mercy … that focusing on mothers is taking the attention away from them (or something like that) :P
    • Jillmz @blogdiva LOL I know I know!! lol
    • Jillmz @Jillmz but to be fair…. now… :) I don’t blog my momness a ton, but when solid feminist issues come up…and I throw in my perspective, which is as a mom (cuz I am one), I get some really hateful stuff back; we need to be helpful
    • Jillmz that’s the whole point of engaging: so we BUILD on our different perspectives, make the activism stronger, more universal
    • GloPan @Jillmz Ha! We need to be saints!
      • Jillmz @GloPan LOL You mean…we aren’t? :)
      • MadamaAmbi @GloPan maybe we need to teach/learn how to argue productively…
        • Tifanei @MadamaAmbi and isn’t strong rhetoric the key to everything
          • ktdagroovecat @Tifanei absolutely! can’t be afraid to talk about it, not with anyone. first step is always communication, i think
          • MadamaAmbi @Tifanei dunno. I didn’t study rhetoric, studied psychotherapy, drama, lit, voice
          • Jillmz some conversations w/potential allies regarding race have had to deal w/some of these issues of communication, yes?
          • Tifanei @MadamaAmbi well I am… and it is. In my opinion of course. It’s how any face of a movement did it.
          • MadamaAmbi @Tifanei I’m listening!
          • Tifanei @MadamaAmbi well it depends on which theory you want to consider. All the good ones use relativity to connect with anyone.
          • Tifanei the strongest, most influential argument. It’s the art of influential speech. How can you fail if you’ve mastered an art???
          • MadamaAmbi @Tifanei sounds reasonable. Can u recommend a book/text/resource to study?
  • MadamaAmbi @GloPan one at a time, relationship by relationship, creating connections across issues, cross-pollinating, what we R doing right here
  • Jillmz some of this goes back to how do we engage w/each other, communication, so we don’t talk past each other
  • myrnatheminx Women have to be courageous enough to jump into things regardless of level of “expertise” We talk ourselves out of things
    • MadamaAmbi @myrnatheminx good point!!! great point!!!
  • Jillmz I was just looking over the sessions listed right now – it is AMBITIOUS!
    • MadamaAmbi @Jillmz r you referring to last Sunday’s tweetcast? #fem2 -
      • Jillmz @MadamaAmbi no I was looking at the website for the conference
    • GloPan @Jillmz The program is ambitious because the potential is limitless! #fem2 -
      • Jillmz @GloPan agree completely – untapped and unrealized should be thrown in there too
    • nes49 @jillmz http://www.fem2pt0.com/?page_id=2 does seem pretty detailed. What help is needed from us tonight?
    • ktdagroovecat @nes49 @jillmz i think tonight’s cast is more to make sure everyone’s issue is heard — most important topics sure to be addressed
  • terrizsoloceo @3keyscoach @blogdiva is doing a feminist conversation thing #fem2 I think!
  • GloPan Join Fem2pt0 Twittercast on Tweetchat, room #fem2
  • Tifanei You consider how the audience is going to interpret your message. You consider why they would have different interps and come up with
  • Jillmz fems, I need to turn in – getting excited for 2/2 thanks for engaging, letting me engage :)
    • MadamaAmbi @Jillmz yep, I think my brain is over tweet capacity!
  • GloPan @nerdette Yes, let’s end the Mommy Wars! #fem2
  • GloPan Thanks everyone. Same time next week: Why men should be feminists. And we can have one more nite before confrence. Ideas anyone?
  • dianamarie As much as I’m loving the #fem2 discussion it’s time to either work or hit the sack. Haven’t decided which, but either way… ‘night tweeps!

My background for the conference (which I guess I am thinking of as mix of web 2.0 and feminism) includes

• Working on web minus 1 strategies for using technology to connect people since 1982.
• Using web 1.0 strategies to connect feminists, in particular, since 1996
• Using web 2.0 strategies for feminists and other organizations since 2005.
• Supporting the NC Women United coalition with web/virtual office strategies since 2002 when the nonprofit that had been managing that organization’s projects lost its funding.

I’m a fan of WordPress and Facebook. I’m a twitter dropout (but for limited use of twitterfeed). I’ve been a noisy advocate for better use of technology at AAUW since 2001, and am currently serving as admin of the largest AAUW Facebook group which is about to pass 1000 members.

I hope to connect with new folks and learn new strategies to

• promote AAUW’s mission and feminist goals
• learn how to better use 2.0 strategies for fundraising
• engage volunteers, particularly feminists (of all generations)
• keep up with the whirlwind pace of new techniques that help us all share information without succumbing to information overload.

So, as you can see, I’m a “work on the plumbing” kind of person — not much feminist theory in my background, and I’ll let others do the heavy lifting of crafting positions that I’m glad to help publicize.

I’m looking forward to the day!

Having the items you bookmark show up in your minifeed (old Facebook) or on your Wall (new Facebook) is a quick way to share your interests with your Facebook friends. There are del.icio.us applications, but they end up putting the links on the “boxes” tab — they can be found by someone poking around for information about you, but they won’t (I think) show up on your friends’ news feeds.

It turns out that the new Facebook interface (http://new.facebook.com if you haven’t tried it yet) has a built in way to put del.icio.us links on your wall.

• Click your name in the upper left to get to your profile
• Find the menu item “Settings” near the top (to the right of the menu items “All Posts”, “Posts by You”, “Posts by Others”
• Click the del.icio.us icon in the “Imported Stories” section.
• Enter your user name, and you’re done.

Note that there’s no need to enter your password – only your public links will be pulled into your Facebook profile.

Notes:

• You can get the list of all members from the “edit officers” page.
• My version of Excel (2002) isn’t working too well with non ASCII characters in names. If anyone knows a UTF-8 converter that could be used here (to, say, remove diacritical marks and such — we’re not dealing with huge amounts of non-ASCII data), please let me know.
• There’s nothing but name and network here. But if you’ve got another list of stakeholders, it might be able to match your Facebook supporters with that.
• Networks don’t show for some folks. It may be a problem with people who are in more than one network — haven’t really investigated.


# convert list of members (most recent to earliest) from a facebook group
# format
# First{additional} Last {(Network)}
# to the format
# Number:First{additional}:Last{:Network}
# where number is earliest to most recent

sed 's/make officer//' | # delete cruft
sed 's/^ *\* //' | # delete more cruft
awk '{printf "%s\t%s\n", NR,$0}' | # number lines
sort -nr | sed 's/^[0-9]*.//' | # print in order of last to first then delete numbers
awk '{printf "%s:%s\n", NR, $0}' | # renumber in the order folks joined the group, with number as first field
sed 's/ \([A-Z][^ ]*\) (/:\1:/' | # if a network, put separators before last name and network
sed 's/ \([A-Z][a-z]*\)$/:\1/' | # if no network, put separator before last name
sed 's/)//' # delete trailing ) for lines with a network


Dear AAUW Webmanagers and AAUW Newsletter Editors:

I am pleased to announce the release of the second paper in the series “Facebook for AAUW”.

The links for these papers are:

#1: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddzhjjgr_41fmk9jr
#2: http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dg5fnwtg_0c7srw2wx

The first document addresses “what is Facebook” and gives brief instructions on how to get started. The second document is a more in depth discussion of why AAUW members are finding Facebook a good platform for connecting with each other and how they are using it to advance the mission.

The documents have been authored collaboratively by a completely unofficial group of members from across the country who came together in Facebook. Many of them have found Facebook a comfortable place to exchange information on a wide range of topics — personal and professional as well as AAUW. We invite you to join us to find out if Facebook would be a way to expand your network and amplify your voice.

The documents are written for the “digital immigrants” — those of us over a certain age who may want some background information before jumping into this new environment. However, if you’d rather just explore on your own, feel free to skip the papers and go straight to exploring Facebook. Once you’ve joined, please do also join the AAUW group that you’ll find at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2419848109

At least one state convention will be using this information as part of one of their workshops. You may wish to use the link to the AAUW group or these documents on your web sites or in your newsletters to let your members know that there is an AAUW presence there.

Thanks, all.

-Nancy

Earlier today, I virtually attended four sessions from the Women Who Tech Telesummit. This free series of webinars brought together some amazing folks thinking about Women and Technology from a number of points of view. Check out the sponsors and organizers on www.womenwhotech.com, and thank those that you know!

The slides and audio will be available on the website, but here are a few highlights from the sessions I attended.

I. Build An Online Campaign And Save The World

• Graphic tip: use faces and eyes
• Lists of tools: TechSoup.org, Idealware.org, SocialSourceCommons.org
• TODO: check out networking at Care2.com
• Message rates: Encourage at least one advocacy action per month [What does this mean for the list alerts@ncwu.org which goes quiet for months at a time between sessions?]

II. Women and social capital

Tara Hunt, the moderator has an upcoming book that addesses this issue. She framed the conversation with some “big ideas”

• Mentioned Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and the distinction between “bonding capital” and “bridging capital”. Women build more of the first, while men create more of the second. [I think I missed that on reading it. But the book is one reason I'm so engaged in AAUW.]
• Pew Internet Research: Women’s use of social networking is (understandably) more anonymous. Men are more likely to be open, hosting an audience, more likely to mentor/support each other.

The session then was a conversation with Joan Blades and Arianna Huffington. I’ll need to get the podcast and relisten.

III. Women and Open Source

• Included a discussion of “hacker culture” which, though I’ve been working with Open Source since 1982, I’ve never really embraced. Developers lists tend to have blunt talk about how code can be improved — but the suggestion was to learn take criticism as encouragement. It’s when you’re being ignored that you need to think about finding a new community: if your comments aren’t worth criticizing …
• This leads to a discussion of “finding the right community”. Open Source work can be seen as participating in a “karma bank” and it’s not often obvious how to choose the right community where your contributions can be effective (and so you can repay what you’ve received from other projects). There was a suggestion that open source projects evolve and that later in their life cycles they are more accepting of work like documentation, user interface analysis, etc. If that’s your area of expertise, you might also choose “end user friendly” projects instead of those like coding the kernel. Another example was the Drupal dojo community where “newbies train newbies”. [There's been a recent discussion on the Systers list about women in open source. The recording of this session may be of interest there.]
• See FlossPols.org for information on policy issues related to open source.
• LinuxChix was mentioned in a couple of contexts. In particular their courses include “Spineful Living” (as opposed to Spineless). I think the archive for that course can be found at http://mailman.linuxchix.org/pipermail/courses/2007-April/thread.html.
• A slide with a list of resources, included PHP women, DrupalChix — see the recording for others.
• Ended with a discussion of nonprofit open source: Larger involvement in women, very friendly, respect contributions other than code. CiviCRM, Organizer’s database, were two projects that were mentioned.

IV. Web 2.0: Hot Or Not?

Beth Kanter’s slides are posted on her blog. I made the following notes.

• What’s new is ease of creating content, ease of shaping audiences
• Choose tools that match demographics and “technographics” [I think we're considering this with Facebook for AAUW.]
• Slide from Forrester Research — demographics and use of social networks gave an interesting picture of age vs. ways of participating. [Click through to the version on slideshare, then go to slide 12 and hit Full Screen in the lower right.]
• Learn techniques for listening — case study from Red Cross
• It’s about conversations
• Be careful with staff roles – need those who are familiar, but all need to understand; define a box — discussions about the downside. [Easter Seals -- written policy on social networking, code of professional behavior.]
• Thoughtful experimentation. Different messaging on different networks.
• How do we make it safe to fail? to learn?
• It takes time — 2 hrs/day minimum; Sisyphean task to see ROI

Connie Reece: Case study of the Frozen Pea Fund

• Amazing story. From first tweet to engage a community (12/5/07) to 501(c)3 formed (2/20/08).
• Dollar investment may be small. Consider ROI in terms of “return on involvement,” “return on influence”.
• Social media: intersection of sociology, media, technology. New tools to do what’s been done for some time.

Heather Holdridge, Care2.com

See the recording to her answers/comments on some of these topics:

• Web 2.0 meeting human needs
• What makes campaigns work?
• Who should try social networking campaigns?
  Lots of volunteers, huge email networks, dedicated staff, max’d e-mail marketing
  Not free – will need dedicated resources
• 1.0 vs 2.0 – Save Darfur; $415,000 in 10 days through e-mail (M&R consulting) vs. $15,000 in 6 months from 1 million “friends”
• Compare/contrast Social network, website
• Goals (success?) – Awareness and Outreach (yes), Advocacy (some), Fundraising (minimal)
• Social network ROI calculator – frogloop.com/social-network-calculator
• What metrics? Might not be money or actions taken. [For me and our small Facebook experiment, I think the key metric is the number of members moved from the periphery of the organization to real participants in significant communications projects.]
• IFAW – case study; campaign specific pages

Q&A

• Digital natives vs. digital immigrants: check Pew Internet studies, Forrester, the digital native wiki – how young people are using social media
• Go deep on one platform – allow friends to spread to other platforms

Beth: beth.typepad.com
Connie: everydotconnects.com
Allyson: www.radcampaign.com/blog/
Heather: www.care2.com/politics

• Twitter Primer from Beth Kanter. Lots of info and links like the ones below.
• Twitter in Plain English from CommonCraft. A very short video that covers the basics in CommonCraft’s engaging style.
• The Big Juicy Twitter Guide from Caroline Middlebrook. Well named tutorial.

In any event, one thing I just learned about was the “favorites” option. On your twitter home page, over on the right, there’s a set of “stats.” The ones you’ll use most often will likely be the “Following” and “Followers” — how many folks you’re following and how many are getting your tweets. Next is “Favorites.” I’d assumed that was “favorite people,” like “top friends” in Facebook, and I ignored it because I just don’t do ranking that way. But it’s not. It’s favorite tweets — a way of marking messages as ones you’d want to get back to later. Just click the dim star at the end of a message and it will be listed in your “favorites.”

The goal of this exercise is to put AAUW info into the SMS stream so the SMS “natives” (who might not be reached with e-mail) get at least a few pings (if they choose to connect). We’re months away from figuring out if this really works — I won’t have much time to publicize it until after July 1. One piece to evaluate will be whether this really does bring in new contacts — or just reaches, say, the Facebook contacts in a different way.

But, as I said in the comments on the previous post, I think we’re there. The missing piece was twitterfeed.com. I’d heard of it before, and even got part way to setting up an account (had used my yahoo account to create an OpenID). But the full possibilities didn’t really register.  Here’s the summary:

1. Set up an RSS feed for the items you want to send to twitter. [In AAUW NC we have an "announcements" category for items that appear on the front page of the WordPress-based www.aauwnc.org. That seemed like a good subset of all the news to share in twitter.]
2. Choose an administrator for the twitter feed and set up an OpenID  for the administrator. Now this is my first experiment with OpenID, so it’s unlikely I understand all the implications here. One can use a Yahoo or AOL account to generate an OpenID (I used Yahoo). It also looks like it’s possible to link a WordPress.com or Blogger blog to set up an OpenID (if I’m reading the twitterfeed help correctly). I haven’t read the T&C’s carefully — if someone has a link to the OpenID basics (particularly OpenID for an organization rather than an individual), please post.
3. Create a twitter account that will retweet the items in the RSS feed, or choose one that already exists to tweet information of interest to the expected audience.
4. Login to twitterfeed.com with the OpenID and create a twitterfeed that links the RSS feed to the twitter account. There’s a minimal amount of configuration (titles only, include link).
5. Tell people who want to get the messages through IM or SMS to follow the twitter user created in #3 and set “notifications” for that user to “on”. [The assumption is that such folks exist -- otherwise everyone could just follow the RSS feed directly over the web.]

Now I’m not an SMS “native” (I can send and receive text messages on my phone, but it’s not something that I’ve integrated into my life). I haven’t drunk the Koolaid of IM (remembering the evil that was “write” back in the 80′s). I don’t use a PDA (paper DayTimer person, would you believe), let alone a smart phone. So I may have missed the point completely. If so, please do holler at me. But if you want to get AAUW NC announcements through twitter, follow “aauwnc”.

Other notes:

• Twitterfeed puts a limit on the number of messages it will forward – currently a max of 5 messages an hour. Consider this when choosing your feed in #1, and don’t expect “real time” forwarding of the messages.

• I “own” bbvx, so setting up twitter.com/bbvx was okay. I’m currently board chair for the all-volunteer AAUW NC, so I think I’m okay there, too. I do have a question, though, on what approval would be required to set up similar accounts for “aauw” and “nccwsl,” and what safeguards we should think about when passing, say, “aauwnc” from one person to another. [Yeah, yeah, I've been webmanager for nearly 10 years, but at some point ...]
• What happens to the tweets that are sent to the account set up in #3? If one uses an account that is set up just for that purpose, it, presumably won’t be “following” anyone, so there will be little motivation for anyone to check the twitter account. That means, I think, that direct messages will go into a black hole. Replies (@ messages) could be followed via RSS using an RSS reader that allows for authentication on the feed (I’m using RSSOwl).