Children’s Cancer Foundation, established in 1992 aims to improve the quality of life of children with cancer and their families through enhancing their emotional, social and medical well-being. Its vision to become a world-class provider of resources and psycho-social services to children and families impacted by childhood cancer was most inspiring. However, in order to achieve its aim and vision, CCF will first have to raise awareness of the organization itself to the public in the fastest, easiest and cheapest way.

In my opinion, the best solution will be making use of the many social media network tools. As you can see, currently, the CCF website is not constantly updated and it’s still not making use of the web 2.0 tools and neither are they making use of the many social media network tools.

Firstly, they should start out by using the first social media network tool- Twitter.
Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Ever since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Even so, the fees are as low as perhaps 5 cents per sms. This way by creating a twitter account, CCF can promote itself through twitter, posting events and anouncements just once and more than one people will know about it. The public can also follow and keep themselves updated and at the same time, by opening up access to the public, people can comment and keep in touch with the organization. Not only is twitter cost saving, it’s also more convenient as to compared to replying mails and smses. One which is too time consuming and some people don’t usually check their mailbox and sms can be really costly if you were to send it to many people. Therefore, i find twitter a really good social media network tool that CCF should try to raise awareness.

Secondly, by creating a blog will be another good suggestion to raise awareness. Having twitter will only allow CCF to send short messages to the public but a blog will be different and of a bigger impact. By creating a blog, CCF will be able to post their full upcoming event/activities outline, stories of the cancer patient, photos of their successfully held events and also have several related videos embedded at the website for the audience to browse through. With this, it’ll also make use of another social media network tool- Youtube, a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos for free. Back to blog, you can also link the twitter to your blog so that the public can have more choice of interaction and an easier access to CCF. And you can always publicize your blog through making announcement on twitter and raise awareness to the public about the blog.

Lastly, the last social media network tool I’ll like to propose will be the usage of facebook. As we know, facebook is the in thing among most of the teenagers and even adults themselves. By creating a facebook account, CCF can invite many people to join the group and post the link of their blog (where the updates will be) on the shoutout and raise awareness to the public of the organization.

To sum it up, we can see that all the social media network tool work together hand in hand and how great it is to make use of them to help the Children’s Cancer Foundation publicize themselves to the public. With the growing numbers of internet users these days, by making use of these tools, more people will learn about CCF and maybe attract more volunteers to the organization itself. Not only is it cheap, easy to use but also more efficient and it’ll definitely improve the current situation if CCF takes a step forward to make use of these tools to keep everything updated and interesting for the public.

http://ccf.org.sg/aboutus/mission.html

http://www.ccfoa.org/

Starlight Children Foundation is a non-profitable organization dedicated dedicated to improve the quality of life for children with chronic and life-threatening illnesses and life-altering injuries by providing entertainment, education and family activities that help them cope with the pain, fear and isolation of prolonged illness. The website is constantly updated with news and events to help viewers keep track of what’s going on. On top of that, Starlight Children Foundation make use of the many social media network like twitter, facebook, blogs, youtube, and etc to help them keep in touch with the public.

Out of the many social media network they have used, i’ve chosen to elaborate more on the blog. Blog is like an online diary or journal which allow the user to sign up for a free account and create their own webpage to post about their daily lives, activities, events and some for publication purposes. As compared to the older media, before such social media network were introduced, people have to keep an diary or print activities/events brochures to notify the public about their organization. With such new media technologies, publication and raising awareness of the organization is made easier and more convenient.

Starlight Children Foundation have created a My Space page, an online blog which allow them to update with their activities and events constantly for the viewers to follow. This way, viewers can easily go to the organization’s blog and check out their updated events and activities easily. Not only so, their blog also allow visitors to comment, sending their regards or simply post a question. The blog is constantly updated, their last post is on 1st of feb 2010 which was only a few days back from now. This will show how efficient they are in managing the blog and how effective it is to promote their organization through such social media networks. In my opinion, Starlight Childer Foundation creating this blog, is an effective way of raising public awareness to the organization. Firstly, the blog has every detail of the activities and events to let the public know and participate in them. Secondly, the the organization makes an effort to update the blog constantly so as to not lose viewer’s interest and this will make them keep coming back for more with the constant updates. Thirdly, not only can the viewers read the things posted on the blog, they can also comment on it which makes things more interesting in a way.

In comparisons with Starlight Children Foundation’s use of blog and Children Cancer Foundation (CCF), the CCF can also make use of such social media network to raise awareness of the public to the organization. By creating a blog just like what Starlight Children Foundation did, CCF can also do the same thing like posting their events and activities up on the blog and also allow the viewers to comment. Of course, the organization should make an effort to update constantly, and perhaps post videos or real life stories of the patients to attract the viewers more. By doing this, more people will be attracted to their events and eventually the aim will be met, CCF will get more attention from the public than before.

Reference list-

http://www.myspace.com/starlightfriends

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=134006498

Firstly, he mentioned that going into the real working world is really different from doing projects in school. In the working world, you need to stick to your client’s requirements to complete this certain projects and it’s totally different from a school project you’re doing. For one example he mentioned, if your lecturer rejected a school project that you did, it’ll just be another fail however, if you’re in the working world and your client rejects your work, it’s not the end of everything and you’ll need to keep on improving on your work till the client of yours is satisfied. Judging to this point he mentioned, it makes me realise that i have to be prepared to take in the good and bad comments from the outside world so that i can fit into the working world and keep on improving myself to meet my client’s need.

Secondly, he mentioned that it will better for the designer itself to keep a portfolio so that your client will have a better understanding on your background and profession. On top of that, you can charge a higher rate than the rest of the freelance designer and if you do a great job, your client can easily recommend you to more business opportunities.

The tough part about his job, for example, to build a website for your client, it’s not as simple as it seems. It takes up to 3 days to do up a website draft to give your client a rough idea of how the website will be like. After your client is satisfied, it’ll be the revision and coding, whether html or other software is needed in the website and this alone takes about 3 to 5 working days. For the final review, it takes about 2-3 weeks just for the client’s approval or any other amendments that should be made. It’s really not easy for all these, it takes a little patience and alot of commitment when you accept a project in the working world. No matter how many obstacles along the way, you still have to complete the project on time no matter what.

What’s inspiring after listening to his talk was that how he made his way up to become the co-founder of RippleWerkz. No doubt about his passion and interest for these media works, he started saving money before his NS and started out as a freelancer at first to get himself familiarize before he set up the company with his partner. I see this as a good learning point where I can also start out the way he did and perhaps make a name for myself.

Lionel Chin say that the greatest sense of achievement he got was to see that all the famous bloggers and company are using the websites that his company have constructed. For this i feel it myself even when ive just complete my school project and got a good grade for it. I must say, he is one good life example we should look up to to realize our goals in the future along with 3 characteristic he possess- passion, hardwork and determination.

This article has made me realise the convenience of TwitterPeek as compared to a mobile phone. TwitterPeek allows the users to tweet and view what others had tweet about as and when they like. These convenience them as they do not have to locate for a wireless connection to go on to Twitter and check what their followers had tweet about. With TwitterPeek, communication between one another is made easier as you’ll be able to see what your followers had tweet about, knowing what’s up with their life even when they’re a million miles away from you, it overcomes geographical barriers.

However, it is important to note that though TwitterPeek made it more convenient for the users, it does not allow web browsing and the application that it provides can be downloaded for free. Take for example, ipod touch and iphone users would be able to download the free application which is known as Twitterrific which serves the same purpose as TwitterPeek and it also allow web browsing which TwitterPeek don’t support. Thus, from my point of view, people would rather purchase an electronic device which supports more features than just getting a TwitterPeek for such a high price.

We can see from the article new media have brought us more conveniece to communicate with one another and options as compared to the past. Where the basic phone we have can only be use to send sms or make a call, then it supports media player and camera function, till now that we have wireless, TwitterPeek is launched just like another mobile device to make communication easier. Perhaps now, instead of just smsing one another about what has happen about your daily life, posting it on Twitter will let everybody you need to notify know straight away what you want to share and reduce the trouble of texting everybody one by one.

With new media like TwitterPeek, ordinary people like me and you are given the opportunity to voice out our opinions and views without having the need to face any criticism while at the same time receiving feedbacks about your views. In the past where we don’t have all these, such opportunities were not given to them which is a pity.

In my opinion, new media is an advantage to me. For example, applications like Twitter and Blogs makes communication between me and my friends easier. Such new media trends have been really popular among teenagers and not only so, even reknown celebraties such as Paris Hilton is hooked up with the trend. You can’t deny that more and more people are being supportive of such trends but however, the factors that affect the society will be if everyone relies on new media so much, people might lose the interactive skills with others when they meet up face-to-face and some might not even be bothered about what’s happening around them but just stay in their comfort zone, with their gadgets and spamming keys.