12.01.09 – Last month, OneVietnam Network attended the Northern California United Vietnamese Student Associations (UVSA) summit in Stockton, California. The summit was held at the lovely University of the Pacific over three days and attracted college students from California to Idaho.
The theme of the summit was sustainability, or as they much more cleverly said: fresh to death. Sustainability, or survivability is something that every organization faces, including all the college Vietnamese Student Associations (VSAs) that many of us have been a part of. Some larger VSAs at big schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA have been running for years with no end in sight, but many other smaller ones have only fleeting lifespans and rise and die with the cabinet that founded them.
So what’s the secret to making sure your VSA or other college organization survives your graduation? That’s what the summit was about and the organizers put together some great workshops and activities to help groups develop strategies to address the problem.
We particularly liked the hip hop workshop.
For our part though, OVN hosted two workshops on the tools and technology that have kept us running as small start-up organization. We also debuted our absolutely adorable bird flyers, which you can see in the picture.
But I know what you’re all wondering: what is the technological secret to sustainability that’s OVN’s been using? Well, we shared it at summit, and today we’re going to share it with you!
1) Basecamp: A to-do list with enough functionality for an entire organization. There’s too many features to list, but we’ve been using it effectively to coordinate everything from our commercial shoots to this article post. It’s a great way to keep team members on task and keep an eye on what everybody else is doing. Try it out for your next team project: http://basecamphq.com/tour
2) Yammer: This one of our favorite tools. If you haven’t heard of Yammer, basically think of it as Twitter for enterprises with more functionality. Yammer allows companies and organizations to create small networks limited by email domain names to share micro-messages and files on. Our team, spread out across the country and sometimes the globe, uses it to keep constantly updated about what we’re working on and to shoot ideas at each other. It’s a great way to start free-form discussions and get the creative juices going. More importantly, it makes us feel like a team without having to see each other in cubicles eight hours a day. Get your organization to give it a spin today: https://www.yammer.com/
3) Dropbox: Simply the most gracefully designed cloud filesharing service ever. Dropbox creates what is basically just another regular folder on your desktop (or anywhere else you choose). Except this folder is magic. Use it like any other folder, but whenever you drop a file inside, it instantly gets uploaded and synchronized with every other computer you’ve shared the folder with. It’s like having 10 people working on the same computer at the same time without the fighting. Use it to easily share files and synchronize work across your team or even just to get that essay you need printed to the library without having to remember to save it to a flash drive. Try it out today and never have to worry about backing up your files again: https://www.dropbox.com/
And there you have it: a few of the many not-so-secret keys to sustainability. So now that you’ve learned the secret, go check out the tools we’ve been using to build the next-generation Vietnamese network and help your local VSA achieve sustainability!
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