Thanks for checking out my home on the web. I’m posting here (in fits and starts), and on Twitter, (which is possibly from where you have just come) rather than at nfp 2.0. 
The Potted Me
I help some of the UK’s biggest charities unlearn stuff and trust more of their own people to build relationships online that support collaboration, transparency, advocacy & philanthropy.
I am an experienced online community builder and mentor, and encourage organisations to release authentic voices in their organisations, particularly through storytelling and fundraising networks. I’m an award-winning blogger and blogging coach, and a contributor to several reports on online fundraising. I organised a successful Blue Peter Appeal twenty years ago and am currently an Advisor to LeapAnywhere.com and on the Board of the Child’s i Foundation, having had many and varied roles in between. I’m invited to talk about all this at conferences (too many to mention) and to small groups, such as charity marketing managers and digital engagement teams (e.g. The National Trust and Action Aid).
Clients
I feel privileged to work with great people at The Big Lunch, The King’s Fund, RSPB, The Tree Council, Make Your Mark, Flickr, NCVO, Action for Children, FreshNetworks, cxpartners, The Lounge Group, cScape, Policy Unplugged, Amnesty UK, Sift, Samsung Mobile, Media Trust, the Charity Technology Trust, and a wide and hugely talented network of friends.
For the past six years, I have also ‘managed’ a thriving “benchmark” online community for the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD). In short, I get up to all sorts of stuff I feel passionate about.
Some recent presentations
If you want to read more…
I coined the concept of a buzz director for people inside organisations who champion the use of social media to effect positive change.
I really don’t like silo thinking, and I’ve earned a bit of a reputation for not shying away from asking challenging questions of charities around issues of transparency and sustainability in the 21st century.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve helped organisations like the British Heart Foundation, the Labour Party, and the Church of England (and too many more to mention here) all create a presence and do good stuff online.
I’ve won a few awards for my blogging, too. In 2006, I was the first non-Mexican recipient of the Colibri Ecotourism Achievement Award, which is presented to “a leading catalyst working towards ecotourism in Mexico”.
In 2003, I received the awfully prestigious Lente de Plata (’Silver Lens’) award from the President of Mexico for my writing.
I created two respected Mexico-related blogs:
- After Wilma, a blog that challenged the broadcast model of communicating a destination to tourists in a crisis (makes for a great case study!)
- Mexicanwave, (Ten Best Travel Blogs, The Guardian), which was for many years the independent online resource most often cited in guidebooks to Mexico (although there’s nothing much going on there now, these things are persistent).
What else? Well, I think I’m a half-decent amateur photographer. It gets me outdoors where I have a developed a particular fondness for peering up at the sky from beneath a tree (not sure what this says about me). I own only a Sony Cypershot compact digital camera, but I’m pleased with the results. My Mexico x 100 series of photographs has received some acclaim outside of my immediate family and been viewed 16,000 times.
I won’t bore you with the details, but here’s a list of some of the things I am now…
- Builder of Bridges
- Digital Communities Manager, CIPD
- Board member, Child’s i Foundation
- Advisory Board member, Leap Anywhere
or have been…
- Member, NCVO ICT Foresight e-panel
- School Governor
- Community Manager at Sift
- Business Development Manager, travel portal (which dot-bombed)
- Charities Development Manager, Justgiving
- Director, Web Consultancy… with Nigel Dunn
- Campaigner, Oxfam UK
- Operations Manager, Blue Peter Appeal (honestly)
- Academic Advisor, Macmillan Education
- Primary school teacher, Mexico (I swear, never again…)
- Observer, Federal Elections, Mexico
- Welfare Officer, Student Union Executive (when I had more hair on my chin than I now have on my head)
I moved out of London in 2002, back to the West Country where I grew up (as you do). I now live in a particularly green part of North Somerset with my young half-English, half-Mexican family. Not too far from Bristol though.
You can get hold of me by email: mexicanwave [at] gmail [dot] com
or Skype:
Skype: buzzdirector
