Presenting Social Media

Kirk Keller and I will be giving a presentation at the PowerUp 2008 conference on accessibility at the Tan-Tara resort in Osage Beach, MO, on Tuesday, April 22nd. Kirk runs the "Common Nature" blog and I've had the pleasure of working alongside Kirk for almost eight year. I've never worked with anyone possessing as much insight into emerging technologies and how they're applicable to government as Kirk has - take a quick stroll around his blog if you have a chance.

Our presentation, entitled "Social Media - Open Source Software for Connecting with Consumers," basically pitches the idea of expanding your social network online, and details a handful of tools from the Open Source community ranging from simple blogging software up to several fully-featured content management solutions. I wanted to make a post not only to let people know what our presentation is about (and that we'd be out of the office for the day :P), but also to give a list of pertinent links and resources we're using in the presentation. The following list is a meager starting point that can be used to get involved in Social Media, from hosted solutions to installable software that you can run from your personal or business site:

Hosted solutions ::

• Facebook
• Blogger
• Technorati
• YouTube
• Wikipedia
• Del.icio.us
• Flickr
• Yahoo!
• Twitter

Content Management Systems ::

• Drupal
  
• Plone
  
• Quick and Easy
  

Blogging solutions ::

• WordPress

There are literally a BOAT-LOAD (that's a technical term), of other applications out there that excel for social media and networking. Everything from tracking your travel, to mobile blogging, to comprehensive solutions to tie up all the social networking loose ends. The list above represents CMS and blogging solutions that have put their best accessibility feet forward, as well as more popular social media sites that still need to work on improving their accessibility (I'm looking at you Facebook!).

CMS and blogging accessibility resources::

• Juicy Studios reviews popular CMS solutions for accessibility
  
• WordPress.org accessibility guidelines and recommendations

Social media presentation ::

• Keynote format (3.1 MB download)
• Powerpoint format (3.2 MB download)
• Slideshare.com (coming soon!)