MeshugAvi Blog

Birthdays are one of my favorite Facebook features. I love keeping up with people and being able to wish them well. If you are like me though, you find yourself on gmail, google calendar, and google reader more than on Facebook, and the list of upcoming celebrations on your Facebook homepage doesn’t always cut it.

Reason to Celebrate

Never fear my dears! All that awesome birthday data that was once stuck in Facebook can now be liberated for your use elsewhere.  fbCal, a very handy web tool, can help you get your hands on birthdays and Facebook events.

Once you give the application permission to access your Facebook data, there are a number of options.

• Subscribe to your birthdays calendar through Outlook or another desktop calendar application
• Cut and paste the calendar url. In google calendar click the Add button above the list of your calendars and choose “Add by URL”. Then paste the url from fbCal into the box marked “Public Calendar Address:” and click add.
• Download a copy of the .ics calendar file to your computer to upload to a service of your choice or on google calendar choose “Import Calendar”.

What do you think? Is fbCal even worth it, or are you finding yourself on Facebook anyway these days? What other yummy data would you like to get out of your account?

As I have gotten more into social media and Web 2.0, friends have increasingly asked me what the heck social media is. This fun video from the folks at Common Craft is a fun primer. They’ve done some great videos recently that you can find and view on their site. I love their simple style of using paper to demonstrate complex ideas succinctly. Enjoy!

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Well the contest from my last post didn’t go quite as I had planned. I had hoped to learn from you about your favorite charities, but for now I will be choosing one of mine, American Jewish World Service, to receive the $10 donation. If you’d like to help this cause out too, you can visit their take action page where you can not only donate funds, but also get involved in a number of advocacy efforts as well. Also, I really do want your input though so next time don’t be afraid to take me up on it

AJWS On the Brain

AJWS has been on my mind lately for a few reasons. For one, my sister Leah is starting work for them in the New York office on Monday in her new baller communications job! Hurray Leah I’m so proud of you! For another I heard from Rosie de Fremery, the IT director there, on twitter the other night about the aid word AJWS is doing to help in the fallout from the Myanmar cyclone. It’s impressive that they took advantage of the connections they have from organizations they already support there to get involved quickly with the recovery.

Great Video

Here’s an awesome AJWS video I found in a post by Michael Hoffman called The Age of YouTube: Using Online Video to Reach the Masses.

I find find this video to be very effective mostly because of the way it tells a story and relates that story to tangible values that people can connect with. Images of poor Ugandan children that could have been framed as a typical sob story in the tone of a plea are transformed into a message about fulfilling Jewish values and being a good global citizen. My favorite section is this quote from an AJWS volunteer:

“I am so grateful that AJWS is there to allow me to do this. To take my Torah learning to the streets.”

What I like about this video most is the way it shows AJWS as a positive representative of the Jewish people in the world through its efforts and frames a call to action within the seasonal and traditional context of the (at the time) upcoming Passover holiday. What do you like or dislike about it? How could this be improved? What nonprofit videos have inspired YOU to get involved?

Recently, while visiting with friends in New York and DC over intercession vacation, I started a round of informational interviewing in an attempt to learn from friends and some other nice folks. Now that classes are back in gear I thought I’d reflect on some of what I’d learned and also thank the people for sharing their time and experience with me. Hopefully this series will grow as I pick the brains of more interesting people.

The meeting I was most anticipating on this trip was with my friend Tamar Weinberg. Tamar and I go back to high school in South Florida, though when I got in touch with her recently I admit she remembered me a lot better than I did her- which was embarrassing and super flattering. She’s been terribly encouraging and generous through my exploration in the web space so far.

Tamar blogs at her own blog techipedia and also at a number of other blogs including SEroundtable, Life Hacker - where she’s the weekend editor, and sometimes over at her old gig 10e20. She also facilitated some awesome student activism at my high school last year, setting up a blog for people to voice concerns and raising the ire of the administration. When I met her in Riverdale she had just come from a meeting and was freshly groggy from 4am exploits the night before after the new Digg algorithm was released (Not that things seem to have improved much at Digg since then.)

Tamar has a mixed attitude towards her new found fame in the blogosphere. The notoriety she has found in the online social space seems almost to have caught her by surprise. Despite her rockstardom, she impressed on me the level nature of the playing field and insisted that the pieces fell together for her through luck, persistence, and the help of a few key people along the way. I’m beginning to get a welcome taste of the kind of openness she’s encountered across the social space from people with genuine interest in what she had to say in my own limited networking experience. Meeting with Tamar, the need to take risks and put yourself out there really stood out. Most people are willing to listen and share their experience, but with that comes the expectation that you be forthcoming with your own take on things as well.

Tamar certainly has dedication and experience in the social space and the humility to match it. Her narrative is really interesting and there’s little doubt we’ll all continue to benefit from her advocacy on behalf of the online community in the future and get to see her rise to still brighter achievements. Thanks for the advice and yummy lunch Tamar!