Community Organizer 2.0

Sometimes a really cool application comes along that can help an organization tell its story, and you just have to write about it. This one is a multimedia application for your website and blog called Apture. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I think it has enormous possibilities for engaging stakeholders, telling your organization’s story, conveying information visually, and keeping visitors on your site. I want to know how your organization will use Apture to its benefit.

What is it? I’ll begin by integrating Apture’s application right now:

It is an application that you install on your website or blog. Using Apture, hyperlinks pop up inside the website story or blog post. You may have already experienced Apture while reading one of the New York Times’ blogs. Besides visitors staying on-site, they will experience – right at the moment of clicking – what you are trying to convey. Apture integrates text, slideshows, maps, video, audio, photos, and the like into your story. Flightblogger conveys stories using Apture, and I think the application adds levels of understanding to each blog post.

The possibilities of using this application are limited only by one’s imagination, and I’d love to hear your ideas.

Here’s one example:

You are a community arts center. Your students are about to put on a show, so you post a news story on the website about the upcoming show and also write a blog post about the show. You link to photos of student artwork, audio and video of the teacher in action, a student’s video story about taking the class, and the news story about the show that was featured in the local paper. At the end of the story, you give the address of the show which pops up the location on Google maps. You’ve told a story, powerfully, about the impact your organization has had on the teacher, students and community, and asked them to act on it by attending the opening. And you’ve done it in one paragraph.

There is an art to storytelling, but I’m not here to write about that. What I want to know is – how will you tell your story differently using Apture?