Emira Mears's Blog Posts
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Do you need an App or just a good Mobile ready website?
October 13, 2011 Comments
There's a lot of talk about mobile and tablet ready Apps these days, and for very good reason. There are some very impressive and excellent apps out there that are changing the way a lot of us managing information and interact with each other. That said, I just sat in on a webinar for a Mobile Giving app for non-profits and while the technology has certainly come a long way and is pretty darned easy to deploy at this point, I was left wondering whether or not it was what most non-profits need.
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Redesign in Process: Overview of a Content Audit
October 12, 2011 CommentsWe're currently in the process of redesigning and redeveloping our website and I'm documenting bits and pieces of that process here. The first post about the redesign process is here.
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The Cobbler's Children: A redesign in process
October 6, 2011 CommentsYou know how the saying goes: the cobbler's children have no shoes. Ditto for the web studio and their website. We've historically struggled mightily with getting our own web house in order every 3 years or so and frequently get beyond a point where we're in desperate need of a retooling. The story is always the same: putting client work/client needs first. That said, we work really well with deadlines and our current one is Lauren's impending maternity leave. A date arriving all too soon, and not one with room for extensions.
So. We're putting our collectives noses to the grindstone and getting our own house in order over here, and it's been a really rewarding and illuminating process, I think for the team, but certainly for me.
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Why We Still Build Websites
September 29, 2011 Comments
A month ago or so, a colleague and friend of ours, Jason Mogus, wrote an eloquent and widely circulated blog post titled "Why We Stopped Building Websites." It's a great read. And, I'll admit, when I first read through it, I found myself wondering if perhaps we at Raised Eyebrow should, in fact, stop building websites. After all, Lauren and I, the partners in the business, don't really have that much to do with the day-to-day building of websites any more. We have brilliant staff who manage the ins and outs of website design, development and deployment. And I agree with Jason's thesis that it's not just about websites anymore. -
Testimonials & Persuasion
September 22, 2011 CommentsI attended the Social Media Week session on Social Good yesterday and a few of the presentations, in particular one given by Melissa Dingmon, got me thinking about concrete ways non-profits can use Social Media tools to help persuade individuals to join their communities.
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Measuring Your Organization's Facebook Impact
September 12, 2011 CommentsIf, like me, you're skeptical of the simple numbers like "# of followers" or "3 of likes" on Facebook and want to be able to dig a little deeper into what kind of an impact your organization's Facebook presence is having, I highly recommend taking 10 minutes to read Mari Smith's summary in her post How to Measure Your Facebook Impact.
Mari gives a great overview to help you dig a little deeper into the effect your Facebook Page could be having on your organization, covering things like:
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A Multi-Site Drupal Installation for the PSAC
July 27, 2011 CommentsThe Public Service Alliance of Canada is one of Canada's largest unions and represents workers in the Federal Government across the country. The union itself is broken down by regions across the country, and like many large organizations, suffered from a total lack of consistency in terms of the tools and infrastructure they were using for their online communications from one region to the next. In 2010 we were contacted by the PSAC National office to put together a plan for creating one core code base — we proposed Drupal — that would then run individual website for each region. The regional websites would share the benefits of:
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Getting Beyond 'Slacktavism'
July 20, 2011 CommentsWhen the trend of creating campaigns and getting folks to "like" them on Facebook was heating up I have to admit I felt pretty darned jaded and unenthusiastic by it. For me, it all came to a head with the Support the Monks in Burma Facebook campaign, which quickly became one of the largest groups on Facebook at the time, which was in 2007. What impact was clicking on a "Like" link really having beyond some basic awareness raising I wondered, and was that awareness raising even enough? I'm not alone in critiquing Facebook activism, and in fact a whole term around it "Slacktavism" (or sometimes Clicktivism) has evolved, referring to basic/simple actions that people can take online that really don't have any actual impact in moving a campaign or issue forward.
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Raised Eyebrow to the Rescue
July 19, 2011 Comments
Last week our team got to feel like superheros coming to the rescue of a longtime colleague/client with a very quick, but also very satisfying project -- who doesn't like feeling like a superhero? The call came from CUPE Local 79, a Local that represents City of Toronto workers, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and Bridgepoint Hospital. The challenge: they had a media campaign and ad buy, tied to a campaign, rolling out in roughly a week and their website house was, well not exactly in order. -
Raised Eyebrow Webinars for Non-Profit Organizations
July 11, 2011 CommentsThis September, we'll be starting a series of webinars on a variety topics for non-profit organizations. Each webinar will be approximately an hour long, including time allotted for questions, are open to anyone interested in the topic, and are free to attend. The topics are drawn from regular themes that emerge out of our strategy sessions with clients and workshops we've given on a smaller scale in the past. They will be presented by the partners at Raised Eyebrow, Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears.
The topics and dates are listed below with links to further descriptions as well as links to GoToWebinar, where you can register for the events. We do hope you'll join us, and if you have suggestions for topics you're interested in having us address in future webinars or workshops, please let us know.
