The Internet Will Make You a Better Camp Director, Section 1 - Communication
Introduction
Survey Questions:
- Do you have your own personal website or blog?
- Day Camp / Residential Camp
- Private; Agency/religious; Municipal camp?
- Personal Twitter Account?
- 12 + months on twitter?
- Know what a #hashtag is?
- Have twittered with this hashtag #tristate09;
- You have a camp Blog
- If I say I practice GTD, do you recognize what I mean (answer: I read a great book on organization called Getting Things Done by David Allen and it has helped me organize my life.)
- If I lift the lid off this jar of mosquitoes and say that it isn’t right that only Canadians are exposed to mosquitoes... who’d recognize that? (Bill Gates spoke about malaria at this year’s TED Conference and released a jar full of mosquitoes into the room.)
- (The Question I Forgot To Ask) Who here collects domain names like some people collect bingo dobbers? What are some of your favourites that you are saving for a rainy day business idea?
The 4 S Test
At CAIRN we don't have a lot of toys so we have worked to distinguish ourselves. One of the things that we have become known for is the 4 S's Test.
In order to do any activity, game, skit, song or project you must answer Yes to all four of these questions:
Is it SAFE?
Does it SERVE others (put others’ needs above your own)?
Does it build it SELF-ESTEEM?
Is it good STEWARDSHIP of the Environment?
Communication
- A browser: the program that your computer uses to help you interact with the internet. I always recommend Firefox. http://www.getfirefox.com
- Firefox Add-ons (a.k.a. extensions): extra features and that help make it the most used program on my computer
- Some add-ons I recommend for a camp director are Evernote - gathering research;
Gmail manager - easy access to my work and personal email accounts; and Forecastbar - always available weather
- Foxmarks: I didn't mention this one but it is Awesome. Foxmarks allows me to have the same bookmarks available on all of the computers that I use.
- If you would like to see what extensions I use in my Firefox you can check out the wiki I keep for my Firefox http://myfirefox.pbwiki.com/
- Watch Yourself: One of the best thing you can do for your online reputation is to watch what is being said about your camp online.
- Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts - choosing Comprehensive means that Google Alerts will search blogs and webpages. Receive information by email or RSS on searches that you set up. Some ideas: yourcampname+camp, Travis+Allison [‘cept your name... ;-)], camp+yourstate, camp+yourtown]
- RSS The beauty of blogs is their RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed. It is an easy way to get your message into as many hands as possible
I recommend you Watch a video from Common Craft called RSS in Plain English. The jist of RSS is that instead of going to many websites regularly you can go to one and find all of the changes in your favourite websites since you last looked.
I recommend using Google Reader to keep all of your RSS feeds in a format that is easy to maintain - make sure you subscribe to the feed of your friends camps, authors you learn from and your closest competition. Mine are organized by importance & all of my alerts are under “Brand Monitor”
- Technorati http://technorati.com/ Set up a search for you camp in blogs across the net.
- Google Analytics - http://www.google.com/analytics A great system of reporting on the traffic on your website. Google Analytics will also show you which of your pages are most viewed and what search terms people use to find your camp on the web.
**as a side note: I believe that it is imperative that you always have full admin access to your website once it’s complete. This allows you to do simple things like update the wording yearly
- Recommendations/Reviews Recommendations from other camp families help you clients feel comfortable in choosing you.
Epinions.com (877 results for "summer camp" as of 12/1/09, 1903 as of 19/3/09)
GigPark
campratingz.com
Facebook Pages - FB Pages are better than FB Groups because what you post to your camp’s Page will showing up in the feed of your members. Therefore the friends of your members will see what is going on at your camp.
You should be watching all of these sites things weekly.
**The biggest lesson I can give is to ask campers for recommendations - do it on your blog, email list and mailings to returning campers. Remember the only legitimate way to overcome a bad review is to drown it in good ones.
- Blogs & Other Communication Services Every good camp deserves a blog. It allows people insight into what camp is like on a daily basis and shows your camp's personality.
Vox - free service, add supported
Wordpress - free, open source website & blogging software. Incredible amounts of free & paid templates
Typepad - paid blogging service (this blog is hosted on Typepad)
Squarespace.com - paid website and blogging, getting a ton of buzz lately. I haven’t used it but it sounds like it is a very easy way to create a great looking website by yourself.
- Other Communication Tools
Skitch - The screen capture program that I’ve used to prepare this presentation. Screen Capture allows you to show people what is on your screen.
Jing - Record screen casts - videos of my screen for training, etc. I used Jing to demonstrate to staff how to make their own changes and additions to our new WordPress camp website.
Ning.com - create your own social network - been covered
To Follow Me on Twitter go to http://www.twitter.com/zoic or text Follow zoic to 40404 or 21212 on Canadian phone
