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Random Musings

.social media fund raising*
by joycekim
August 6th, 2008

UPDATE:  Thanks so much to the following donors so far! You guys are quick!

those of you who follow me on twitter, facebook or this blog know that i spent a good part of july on the thailand/burma border volunteering at an orphanage there that is home to many burmese refugee children and abandoned thai children.

i was expecting some pretty tough conditions there - after all, it is an orphanage. i spent my time teaching the children english, learning about their lives and wishing there was a functioning toilet (!) :) the time flew by faster than i expected. and on my last days there, i spent a lot of time wondering and worrying about their futures.  they are in a tough situation - undocumented in thailand, limited access to schooling and medical care, lack of enough indoor space for the children to sleep comfortably.  but if the children had not found a place in this home, then they could have likely ended up in sweatshops in thailand or the sex trade for some of the young girls. if they were sent back to burma, they could be killed or used as child land mine sweepers - a disgusting practice.

my experiences motivated me to commit myself to running my own fund raising campaign.  they are applying for grants for some of the educational and health programs which are potentially fundable. however most foundations will not fund capital campaigns - which means no money for building buildings and the kids are sleeping on the ground, all crowded together.

so here is my plan: i am going to use all my social media and social networking tools to raise $10,000. this money will be used for the expansion of their building.  i will be using facebook, twitter, google groups, wordpress, digg, etc to see if i can reach this goal.  here are my flickr pics from my trip if you want to see.

i have rebuilt their website on wordpress (so they can update it themselves) and rejiggered their paypal to they can give US donors charitable donation receipts - (side note: it was fun building my first website - if you see major mistakes, let me know). and now its ready for all the amazing donations that all you lovely web 2.0 people are about to send over!

DONATE TO BAAN DADA HERE!


i will regularly post updates on donations and donors here. so come on, be charitable and take a moment to give to some really great kids that really need our help. thank you!

List of Awesome People who Donated - Thank you so much!

8/7: We are at $2000 raised thus far! Amazing!

8/8: wowie, wowie:) $4222 as of today!

8/11: gosh, i really love you guys, i really do.  we are at $6300.

8/14: the grand total now stands at $6542:)  over 65% of the way to the goal in 1 week!!!

8/20: we are now at $7872! and i spoke with the folks at Baan Dada, they already bought bricks with the first batch of money sent over:) real bricks! not the mud ones that they used to make by hand and use for walls.  just over $2000 more dollars to go!

8/24: Yay! Over $1000 came in this week in donations. Total now stands at $8972. woot!

.textcube - better than wordpress?*
by joycekim
March 21st, 2008

ok - i hope i do not get skewered for this posts…

one of the companies I met while in Korea was TNC - a Korean startup which offers an open source blogging platform called textcube (links in Korean). at the moment, they have not launched their hosted version, but i got to play with their downloadable version while i was in korea. after playing with their demo and getting a sample acct, i think it is actually better than wordpress and other US blogging tools.  but, given the head start that wordpress has and the fact that WP has such a large, dedicated community, it may be very hard for this company to make inroads in the english language market.

A few of the advantages:

  • cleaner dashboard
  • easier to integrate videos, photos and podcasts into post.  they have this incredible drag and drop feature which makes it super easy to bulk add photos, format the text around images, create slide shows, resize images, etc. the simplicity is beautiful.
  • intuitive comment tracking system - structured like an email inbox, i think their comment UI system will make it easier for novice users to become comfortable with interaction with readers and other blogs via comments.
  • staff of maybe 15 programmers who are dedicated to improving the services - so requested feature development happens faster.
  • better analytics on the free version.  they track everything and give it to you for free.  need i say more?

Disadvantages:

  • At the moment, they only have support in a few languages - korean and english i think
  • no widespread community support since they are still a small company.  one of wordpress’s strengths is that it has a huge community of developers dedicated to maintaining and contributing to product.  textcube may develop a community down the line, but at the moment, the company does most of the development themselves.

i will keep you all posted on their developments, but just wanted to share some of the cool companies i saw in korea with you.  pic below - from left to right - chester roh (founder and CEO), chang kim (CEO),  me, shin-young park (former ceo of bebetown and current nyu ITP grad student), ted grubb