Blog

A Multi-Site Drupal Installation for the PSAC

The 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:

Why We Love EZP Hosting

As a web studio we spend a lot of time talking about what it takes to build a site but it's just as important to have a place to put it.  We’ve tried a lot of different hosts over the years and it’s such a refreshing change to have a great one that I felt like shouting (alright, quietly typing) it to the world. That host for us is EZP.

When choosing a host, you might Google “Top 10 web hosts” and pick out the cheapest and highest-rated but it’s not exactly cut and dry. We’ve had issues in the past with hosts charging hidden fees for easily-enabled features and we realize now that a good rating on a host doesn’t mean anything coming from a reviewer who has never needed any support.

Getting Beyond 'Slacktavism'

When 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.

Raised Eyebrow Webinars for Non-Profit Organizations

This 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.

Accessing Influence with Twitter

A lovely Twitter interaction happened to one our beloved colleagues/clients last week that exemplifies one of the things that I find most interesting and powerful about using Twitter at this moment in time: the low barrier to entry in terms of connections with spheres of influence.

In this particular instance, one of the owners of Lunapads.com, Suzanne Siemens (@luna_gal), posted this tweet:

For those who can't "speak" Twitter, what Suzanne did here was share with her Twitter followers that she: