How Microsoft Is Organizing Local News And Nonprofit Impact On Bing Maps In The Cloud
Tara Grumm (Redmond, WA) –
Every day, hundreds of nonprofit organizations are hard at work improving the educational process, facilitating research on important topics, and empowering citizens with skills critical to finding work or starting a business. This doesn’t happen in isolation. When a nonprofit truly connects with its surrounding community, it becomes more effective. This in turn leads to thousands of incredible stories from every corner of the world – stories that help inspire even greater achievements.
One thing that Microsoft is doing to help these nonprofits succeed is leveraging our technology platforms to make it easier for them to tell their stories. With that goal in mind, our Corporate Citizenship team used Bing Maps to build what we’re calling the Microsoft Local Impact Map (LIM). The LIM is a Web app that allows users to discover stories stories about how people and technology are having a real impact in the communities they care about most.
So far, we’ve collected over 1,400 stories from more than 100 countries on the LIM, and you can dynamically explore the Bing Maps platform to discover these projects arranged geospatially around the globe. You can also discover nonprofit projects by topic, which range from donating technology to nonprofits, to helping people get education and jobs.
The LIM also has a feature called Snapshots that empowers users to create a personalized tour of the map,and share that tour with others. Here’s how it works: By clicking the camera icon at the top right of the site,snapshots of favorite stories can be taken. A unique URL is then created that can be shared with anyone. Clicking the URL allows people in a user’s social network to see their snapshots.
Another feature unveils interesting regional statistics about the real impact Microsoft has on a given community related to a story a users selects. These statistics include how many people have been reached through technology skills programs, and the number of teachers trained through Microsoft’s Partners in Learning program.
The LIM combines two of the things Microsoft does best: Leveraging our outstanding technology platform to demonstrate the real impact we’re having on communities in an engaging, geo-intelligent way.
Tara Grumm is the Online Marketing Manager for Corporate Citizenship at Microsoft, where she develops Web presence and digital strategy. This is her first contribution to Publicyte. You can follow her on Twitter at @tgrumm.
