Worlds Touch

Product Key Not Working: Solution

Here I am at David Williams’ house, fixing his computer problems. His version of Word was telling him that his document had somehow timed out, and then the software would crash. I didn’t try to test for that problem, since David told me what he REALLY wanted was to install a new version of Office, Office 2007.

I started out by uninstalling Word, but it turns out that wasn’t enough.  As I was installing, I got an error message that the product key was not correct. I double checked it, had David read it aloud. Nope. It was exactly what was on the box.

You know, I saw a sign on a fire department building yesterday that said, “Just in case, have a meeting place.” It took me a while to figure that one out. I was thinking about places to have meetings, and then why “Just in case.” Finally it dawned on me that they are asking regular people to have a disaster plan, and the first step is to set up WHERE you will rendezvous if you get separated.

Computer stuff is like that. If the product key gets separated from the CD, then you are in enough deep river mud to sink you. Especially if you’ve already deleted the previous version of the software. But David did come up with the product key, and then it wasn’t working.

I found a phone number to call Microsoft. Really, 1-800-MICROSOFT. They take you through a bunch of options and finally suggest you look up a certain code on the support.microsoft site. This particular issue’s code is KB836178.

The Knowledge Base told us to go back and be sure to take ALL the old versions of Office off the computer. We did that, and then reinstalled the new software, and everything is hunky-dory. I’m just typing this to make sure I can type for over ten minutes and not somehow get this weird thing.

Bringing International Development Home

One of my core beliefs is that we should be looking to the developing world for solutions to some of our own problems. In fact, I'd like to bring some of the experts in the field of poverty reduction, group development and collaboration, and micro-finance here to teach us. Missionaries to the West kind of thing. 

I was reminded of this idea this morning when I read this blog entry at Wikispaces. I immediately thought of my discussion with the director of my local nonprofit consortium and one of her buddies involved in neighborhood development in Greensboro, NC. We were brainstorming about ways to connect the different neighborhoods together. This Ugandan project seems like it might offer the flexibility, the simplicity of adoption, the opportunity to share solutions to common problems that Ann, the neighborhood woman, and I were talking about over breakfast that day. We would need more exploration here, following the links and even perhaps a phone call to that prof in Indiana. But this could very well be a low-cost solution with high-tech implications, including workforce development and increased communication and acceptance across the city.

Once you've read the blog entry, here is the Wikispaces site from the Ugandan group.

The consortium, working with neighborhood leaders, wants to know how to strengthen Greensboro's neighborhoods, to increase their ability and capacity to collaborate and to encourage them to do it.

Donna, the leader of the active nonprofit consortium here, and I have been planning periodic training sessions for various nonprofit types in the sorts of technology they are interested in-- web sites, google, salesforce and other databases, etc. I've long wanted to get some kind of technology roundtable or lunch bunch together to share expertise and increase the overall technological know-how in the area, a precursor to me becoming the Triad Tech Maven or something.

At that breakfast, we talked about doing some kind of a content management system like Drupal, Plone or Joomla, with each neighborhood having their own login and web site, and then running forums, etc. I went down to Raleigh to the Drupal meeting to see if that was the answer. I came back thinking it was technologically too complex for the neighborhood folks, many of whom are downright tech resistent and others just tech intimidated.

So we needed something simpler, easier to use. That piece on Uganda hit a chord for me. Here is a very simple collaboration tool that lots of different groups can use, along with an approach to computer literacy that makes a lot of sense for me. The idea that people have to learn the office suite first to be computer literate is no longer true. I think this is something we are doing with movie-making-- we don't even ask whether our students are computer-experienced. They get there, fast, because they have something they want to do: make movies.

If we start with collaboration, it might do the same thing.

Today's Movie-Making: Audio Stories! Facebook!

We took last Saturday off, due to the dearth of volunteers (though actually, I think we'd have had three of us...) and also to the fact the Bhola, our Bhutanese refugee, was invited to participate on the Nepali soccer team at the national convention in Raleigh and couldn't refuse.

So this week, we had a full agenda. Mike Smith, our audio guy, was present and accounted for-- one of two sessions he's able to give us. So each student had to record a voiceover for her or his movie. We had asked the students to come to class with a video they'd recorded on the FlipVideo telling us about the story they will be doing as a movie for the class.

Bhola thought he was recording the audio for his story, and so didn't film his face. Sara did hers, and I'll post it here and on our (!) NEW (!) Facebook group page. Amina, from Niger, did hers, but I ran out of time before I could get it onto my computer. It's fantastic, though, so watch this space for that one when I finally get my hands on it. Nobody else really understood the assignment, I'm afraid. I gave the assignment over the phone, and that's never the best way to convey information to people whose first language is not English.

Mike, who in Real Life is professor of Information Systems at High Point University, took the students one by one to a nice quiet corner of the University of Greensboro building where we hold our classes. Also, Tom Lassiter, another volunteer and accomplished videographer, did the the same. As the students were progressively getting their stories recorded, we worked with the ones who hadn't quite got their stories down on paper. We've worked for weeks on these tales, but some of the students were at that point, creatively, where they faced the WALL. Jean-Francois Llorens, my husband and also a professor at High Point Univerity, worked one-on-one with folks who didn't quite have their stories ready for recording. Lori Khamala, our funder and project director from the American Friends Service Committe also put in some time gently guiding the creatively intimidated.

We emerged triumphant! Everybody's voiceover is now in Mike's capable hands. He's going to take the ums and ahs and dead space out of each. He'll be back next week to get everyone their mpg3 file for their movie.

I was thrilled by the teamwork from the volunteers today, I must say. We are quickly reaching that point in the class where it's fish or cut bait...and we're committed to every single student walking away from this class with a finished movie. Our volunteers are vital...I could not produce nine movies with just me and the day's teacher.

We lost another student today, though, which saddened us. Thang, better known as Steven, just couldn't manage to make it...his second absence and so we had to say goodbye. I even talked to his supervisor at Perdue Chicken and got the impression that Stephen would be given a pass to come to class. Apparently they've got mandatory overtime, and if you miss more than a certain limit, you lose your job. I'm not sure how it happened that Stephen didn't make it today...I really did come away from my conversation with his boss that he was ready to support Stephen's education on this one.

Making up for our vacation last week, we got everybody signed up on Facebook and signed up for our Facebook group. Please do join the group! I'll be posting a notice there whenever I write a post here.

Movie-Making is a partnership between FaithAction International House (including its VISTA volunteer--me), the American Friends Service Committee, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Also in the mix is Worlds Touch, the international tech assistance organization that I founded and direct in my spare time.

Volunteer Iris Blogs about Movie-Making

Iris has been one of the most faithful and persistent volunteers we have in the movie-making class. She also just posted a blog entry about her experience. Wow.

Check it out!

Fair Use Arrives!

I just got a whole education about fair use, and can see that my movie-makers can take everything they want off the internet-- it's all fair use! Bhola gets his favorite cow picture! Eduardo gets his club scenes. Kewl!

This came in a copy of the newsletter for the Center for Social Media. At the bottom of the web page is a link for the Fair Use for Online Video Best Practices manual, which I've downloaded and put on my computer. I'll make a copy for all the movie-making students.

Last Saturday, we spent half the class getting everybody's live action shots off their FlipVideos and onto the flash drives that we are providing for them. They can't save anything on the University of North Carolina at Greensboro computers, since those computers are programmed to wipe off everything that's been added with each restart. Which I think is excellent practice for the university and good discipline for the students, who are then encouraged to keep their stuff together and in orderly fashion.

We spent the second half of the class looking for photos and videos in the public domain or under creative commons license. This is tough, let me tell you. Bhola just wanted a cool photo of a cow. David needs photos of military uniforms. Joyce found the very best pictures of sugar cane fields (she was escaping from Burma and running with two children through the countryside of Thailand to Malaysia) but they were copyrighted.

With fair use, we are SAVED! The purposes they want to use the copyrighted material for fall clearly under the fair use provision of the law. The amount they want to take is proportional. I'm also feeling that the videos we made for the last class are also covered under fair use and I'm going to start posting them on Facebook and at Vimeo or Blip.tv or Dogooder.tv in the next few days. I'm so excited. This opens up the whole world of the internet to our digital storytelling classes.

Friday Morning at FaithAction

Sheesh...I come in half an hour early for a bit a peace. Slowly make my way into the day. Nobody else here. Life unfolding as it should, and all that. I'm just plugging in my laptop when the phone rings. It's a guy who heard from a guy who heard my Salesforce demonstration last spring. He needs help. Can he stop by this morning. Sure. Give it two beats after I hang up with Dwain and the phone rings again. Another Salesforce lead, this time the woman who runs the largest program for the elderly in the area. As we're talking about possible dates for appointments, the doorbell rings. It's a guy with 3600 diapers in the back of his truck. His pastor tapped his wife to go out and spend the nearly $1,000 they had collected for us on diapers at Sam's or Costco. Meanwhile I have the computer booted up, make an appointment with Ellen and about that time, our new intern shows up. I get her logging the diapers on the computer, and the rest of the staff rolls in.

Whew. Coffee is in order and it's not even 10 am.

But we have added new life to the immigrant diaper program. Fully thrilling. We have diapers to give away to folks who come to see us. They can, in turn, spend their money on other necessities, like for instance, food. And getting them to come in for diapers gives us a chance to meet them and hear about their other needs.

Gotta get our new intern an email address and help her learn a bit about our technology. Before the appointment with the guy who called before 9.

Camera Class

Camera Class from Patricia Perkins on Vimeo.

We worked on using our Flip Videos during the Movie-Making Class on Saturday. It was our first session at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro campus, and there were several glitches. Like...I thought Alfonso knew where we were meeting and he showed up here and didn't know where we'd gone. And Bill showed up at UNCG around noon, and by that time, we'd all gone "on location."

Sara was the one student with all her ducks in a row. She'd asked members of the class to be in her movie, and had doctor's whites and two stethascopes and a very clear idea of what shots she wanted to do and how she wanted them to look. She was a role model for all who participated...me included. 

Tom Lassiter, the volunteer I met at the Design and Technology conference last spring, gave the lecture on using the Flips. I'll publish other shorts of that lesson that DO NOT focus on me, but this is the one that came in today.

Google for Nonprofits

Story Boards

Saturday we had a big job ahead of us: Create shot cards for every shot in our video stories. Everyone showed up. For the first time, the Burmese showed up on time! Bringing food for the group! This time it was the African ladies who were later than the others and so were gently ribbed about being eclipsed by the Burmese.

I worked with David on his tale of overcoming his fear of uniforms. Alfonso came for the first time this week and worked with Eduardo, a very good deed, indeed. Alfonso is the videographer at Winston-Salem State University, a historically black university in the neighboring town of Winston-Salem. Alfonso is from Nicaragua, and put in a few Saturdays last winter, working with our students on editing their movies. I had specifically asked him to come this Saturday because I thought it would be good for him to be involved a bit earlier in the process for this course. When he arrived, I knew he would be perfect to work with Eduardo. He's one of the folks in the course who has been the most hesitant about his creative powers.

At first, he told a riveting tale of being deported and left in the middle of the Mexican desert, but then it dawned on him that people he knows and loves would be seeing this video and he wasn't so sure that was the story he wanted to lead with. What story DOES he want to tell...on the theme of My Journey? Alfonso worked with him and, by the end of the class this week, reported that Eduardo is excited again, and glowing. Yes!

By the time we got to 12:30pm, everyone of our ten students had completed their storyboards, done their shot cards and listed the props and tasks they will need for their live-action sequences. The enthusiasm is high; the sense of self-satisfaction is right up there. People know they are learning, and that feels so good.

Oh, and the American Friends Service Committee, our benefactors, came up with a stash of snacks for the classes. I got our partner, Lori, to agree to supply us with dried fruit and nuts. I've never been in a country in the world where people didn't eat dried fruit and nuts...it is the ultimate cross-cultural snack. Cool!

p.s. The Burmese brought vegetable spring rolls. Hmmm...Maybe we can subtly suggest that our Spanish contingent might want to come with some yummy something. And then the African ladies?

Movie-Making is a partnership between FaithAction International House (including its VISTA volunteer--me), the American Friends Service Committee, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Also in the mix is Worlds Touch, the international tech assistance organization that I founded and direct in my spare time.

A Party at FAIH

The Flips Arrive from Patricia Perkins on Vimeo.