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Anne Patterson
Community manager, communicator, creator of Hello Ottawa.
http://helloottawa.ca
http://helloanne.tumblr.com
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Info
- Community Manager at Digital Opportunity TrustNonprofit Organization Management | Ottawa, Canada Area, CASummaryCommunicator, community manager, creator of HelloOttawa.ca.Specialties: Communications, multimedia storytelling, new media, creative development, community engagement, social media for non-profits, community management, web development, UX, ethnography, writing, editingExperience
- Oct 2010 - PresentCommunity Manager / Digital Opportunity TrustAs DOT's Community Manager, I coordinate communications, write and produce web content, manage a community of thousands of youth, organize a series of annual virtual festivals, and mentor a network of 13 global teams as they navigate social media, blog, and produce creative projects. Highlights so far: - Creating and implementing an internal social media engagement strategy that has led to a large increase in internal engagement among DOT's thousands of global interns (from very limited participation to more than two-thirds of the community active and regularly engaged within 8 months). - Spearheading a series of annual creativity festivals (DOT Film Fest; DOT Writing Fest; DOT Innovation Fest) to facilitate staff, interns, and program participants using their own voices and lived experiences to share the impact of DOT's work. - The DOT festival series was mentioned in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: http://www.ssireview.org/opinion/entry/creativity_in_action/
- Sept 2010 - PresentCreator / HelloOttawa.caI created and write Hello Ottawa (http://helloottawa.ca), an award-winning blog that interviews regular Ottawans about the city and their lives. Awards: - Fellowship, Awesome Ottawa Foundation, November 2011 - 1st Place, Placeblog Category, 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards
- Jun 2010 - Nov 2011Editor (Visual Anthropology) / Popular Anthropology MagazineAs the Visual Anthropology Editor for Popular Anthropology Magazine, I edited the Ethnophotography and Visual Anthropology sections from project launch until October 2011. Editing for PopAnthro involved working extensively with artists, documentarians, anthropologists, students, and journalists to create interesting, accessible articles on a quarterly schedule.
- May 2009 - May 2010Social Planner, Geographic Information Services / Social Planning and Research Council of HamiltonAt the SPRC I was a Social Researcher and Program Coordinator for the Community Mapping Service, a social enterprise offering custom research and GIS mapping to charitable and non-profit organizations. Projects that I worked on include: - Hamilton Social Landscape (2011) - Seeking Better Outcomes for Youth in Hamilton (2011) - Hamilton Correctional Services Needs Assessment (2010) - Hamilton Community Action Program for Children Evaluation (2010)
Education-
2004 - 2009University of WaterlooB.A. (Hons) in Joint Honours Anthropology and Joint Honours Geography
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Tweets
- Last day in Ethiopia - leaving for Lebanon this evening. It sounds like I'm missing a pretty fantastic long weekend in Ottawa!
- Man getting internet is tricky in Ethiopia. I feel like I'm going through withdrawals!
- My trip is going by so quickly! Off to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this afternoon. Rwanda, I will miss you. This place is amazing.
- A new fruit to me... a Rwandan tree tomato. Like a tomato/pomegranate cross, but eaten like a kiwi! #Rwanda http://t.co/5kBTNjLX
- Thanks DOT Kenya team! Can't wait to go back. “@DigitalOppTrust: DOT Kenya Blog: Anne Patterson Visits DOT Kenya http://t.co/VhbTuEvK”
- Behind the scenes today in Musanze, Rwanda - @GMugabekazi gets a #ReachUp! participant ready for an interview. http://t.co/SrqLfu4V
- The hills of Kigali lit up at night should be one of the wonders of the world. This country is astoundingly beautiful. #Rwanda
- Day two of filming in Kigali. For the first time this trip I think the heat might actually be manageable for me today!
- Arrived in Rwanda! (@ Hotel Chez Lando) [pic]: http://t.co/xTmcc6Dc
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Posts
On Sunday I’m leaving on a whirlwind three week trip to Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Lebanon to document the impact of Digital Opportunity Trust’s programs in video, photos, portraits, and interviews. I’ll also have the opportunity to finally meet in person some of the many amazing, committed people I work and Skype with daily.
I literally only had about five days notice that I would be going on this trip, so this week has been nutty. Today I’m getting vaccinated, insured, and making sure I’m stocked up on batteries, chargers, and external hard drives - all those fun things.
Have you been to Nairobi, Kigali, Addis Ababa, or Beirut? I won’t have very much time outside of work to be a tourist, but if you have any tips on things to see, do, or eat I would love to hear them.
The great non-profit organization I work for - Digital Opportunity Trust - is hiring a summer student in Ottawa. I know a few people who follow me here on Tumblr are Ottawa-based and job hunting. So: please apply! You’ll get to work with me all summer!
Link: The Guardian - Local bloggers: voices from the global village
My Hello Ottawa project (and my mug, as seen above!) was featured in an article about hyper-local blogging in the Guardian today.
The article highlights some interesting blogs that focus on sharing stories about people and community through digital storytelling. I’m having trouble tracking down a paper version here in Ottawa (although a friend living in France has procured one for me that I’ll be able to get when I see her in August!), but I think the piece I’m included in is an accompaniment to this fascinating article about a mysteriously anonymous writer who calls his/her self the Gentle Author and blogs the life stories of people living in London’s East End. It’s a fascinating read.
My favourite quote from the Gentle Author:
“Without me wanting to sound like a sentimentalist, I write about the things that delight me,” s/he says. “It’s given me a beautiful life.”
from kate bingaman burt’s creative mornings talk in portland | via creativemornings
In very exciting news, I found out today (well, actually I found out last week, but it was officially announced today) that I’ve received the November Awesome Ottawa grant from the Awesome Foundation for Hello Ottawa!
The Awesome Ottawa Foundation consists of a group of 10 trustees from a variety of sectors who donate some of their own money each month to fund a local project. It’s a really great model.
I applied for the grant to help out with transcription services for Hello Ottawa, since transcribing interviews takes up a large amount of my time and is the main reason the waiting list to participate is so long. Huge, huge thanks to Awesome Ottawa for making me their November Fellow.
This is something I’ve been working hard on over the past few weeks: the DOT Innovation Fest, the third in a series of creativity festivals I’ve created to engage DOT’s massive online community of youth, and show off the totally amazing innovative/creative/economic/educational/social capacity that DOT’s programs help to develop (the other two festivals were the DOT Film Fest and the DOT Writing Fest).
This festival is a little different, though: it’s collaborative! We’re asking people from around the world to contribute their unique expertise and suggestions to the discussions about each innovation. If you have a few spare minutes and an interest in how youth from developing economies are contributing to social innovation, please do check it out.
“I am From” is a collective video poem which reveals the personal story behind the labels imposed on us by zip codes and ward numbers. Six young people from Anacostia explore the layers of their identity through powerful prose and visual metaphor.
I was interviewed about Hello Ottawa on the CBC’s Ottawa Morning radio show: click through to listen!
I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous for anything! Halle Cottenham was lovely, though, and I think it went okay. (Yeah: I will kick myself forever for the sell flub. I swear it was just that my brain couldn’t decide whether to say share or tell.)
I was really touched by how kind the other people in the waiting area were. Right before I went on, a man representing the local school board went in to talk about the provincial elections, and right after was the founder of One Change, who was there to talk about a water conservation campaign. They were both quick with encouraging words, which I really appreciated.
Paul Mutant’s “This Painting is Not Available in Your Country” is his way of voicing his opinion on the incoherent absurdity of territorial rights enforcement in the age of the Internet.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira GlassThe thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it’s corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I’ll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no.
- Dave Eggers (via putthison)A January weekend in Ottawa in 5-second clips. This is my first real attempt at video with my new camera, so it’s kind of messy and shaky, but it was a lot of fun to make.
Hello Ottawa placed first in the Placeblog category at the 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards. I’m really, really excited about this! This project has been overwhelming at times and requires a lot of energy; I know I shouldn’t worry very much about what other people think, but stuff like this feels really good. Happy new year, and thank you.
- Q&A with Local Tourist Ottawa
I did a Q&A about Hello Ottawa recently with a great local blog called Local Tourist Ottawa. Take a look for a bit of an inside peek into the Hello Ottawa process.
Local Tourist Ottawa: Anne Patterson Says Hello to Ottawa →
Anne Patterson is the creator of Hello Ottawa, a blog that photographs and interviews Ottawans about their relationship with the city, their favourite places, and their lives. When she’s not busy connecting with interesting people in the city, she’s a community manager at a locally-based NGO and the visual anthropology editor at Popular Anthropology Magazine.
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