Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NTEN We Are Media Project: Week 1 - How Can Your Nonprofit Organization Avoid Drinking the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid ...

Flickr Photo by Mike Monteiro

NTEN's We Are Media: where the community is the curriculum! We invite you to join the conversation each week as roll we out a new theme related to social media and nonprofits.  Come join the smart people coming along on this trip or buzz in to help us identify the best existing resources, people, and case studies that will give nonprofit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to change the world.

I'm the first to admit that I have consumed way too much of the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid.  The expression "drinking the Kool-Aid" has come to mean that "one has embraced a particular philosophy or perspective," although the expression "Don't Drink The Kool-Aid" is a reference to the 1978 cult mass-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.

So that's why I was glad to see in the comments of the first post "The Why of Social Media" a suggestion of creating a "Don't Drink the Kool Aid Questionnaire" by John Kenyon in a comment here.  John is suggesting that the curriculum include a series of questions that nonprofits should ask themselves before embracing the new tools.   Some additional questions came from a comment from Morgan Sully and a comment from Elana Wolowitz.

Under what circumstances should your organization NOT pursue a social media strategy?

Leave a comment, write a blog post (tag it with "wearemedia"), drop your thoughts in the wiki or point to a fabulous blog post or article that answers this question. 

Why Should Nonprofits Embrace Social Media? The why of social media

But Why?  Flickr Photo by Liquid Lucidity

Why Not?   Flickr Photo by MPR529

Today we start NTEN's Be The Media journey where the community is the curriculum!  We invite you to join the conversation each week as roll out a new theme related to social media and nonprofits.  Come join the smart people coming along on this trip or buzz in to help us identify the best existing resources, people, and case studies that will give nonprofit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to BE the media. 

This week we'll be discussing Module 1: Why Your Nonprofit Organization Should Be The Media.  Think we can build a module in a week?  The module will examine why nonprofits should consider incorporating social media as part of their strategic communications and make the shift from passive consumers of web information to content creators. 

Today, please share how you've made the case for using social media in your nonprofit organization's communications strategy?   How you do help decision-makers or others understand why it is important?

Two people,  Lauren Glenn-Davitian from CCTV (a nonprofit community media center) and Kari Petersen  from Davis Community Network are both involved with nonprofits and community media write in their introduction titled "Community Media 2.0" (page 13)

"The ground is shifting beneath us. We are entering a new communications era dubbed by some as "Web 2.0" ....  there are many questions that arise as we shift from our well-worn "TV-Centric" (one-to-many) model to a "network-centric" (many-to-many) model of communications and social influence.   The answers lie within our deep pockets of community relationships, our ability to help people tell their stories, and abiding knowledge media production and and distributions ... to build on these pillars to ensure public access in their communities, free speech and open networks for everyone."

But what if your nonprofit is not a community media center or media maker?   What is the compelling reason for nonprofit organizations to use social media tools to create, compile, and distribute their stories?

Amy Sample Ward has a post summarizing the why social is important from Chris Brogan's recent Twebinar that capture the why:

Social media has an equalizing effect:  It can make large organizations seem small (personal) while making small organizations seem big (participating in the conversation) ... Many organizations hear talk about using social media tools and think, “why?” The reason is simple: The conversation about your organization, your geographic area, your issue or project arena or policy effecting any of those things IS taking place, and it would only benefit you and your community to be part of that conversation.

Kivi Leroux Miller (check out her Be The Media expertise profile) says that she has noticed in her work that many nonprofits understand that they have to communicate with their stakeholders regularly in order to reach goals.

"So when I talk about web 2.0, I always try to frame it in familiar language – you are doing the same thing, just with new tools. AND the good part is that these new tools can actually help you bring people along the continuum of passing interest to patron much more quickly that if you just relied on traditional print communications, in–person events, etc.   And another bonus is that it also brings in new people who would have no contact with you otherwise (the friend of friend thing) much more quickly too."

Today, please share how you've made the case for using social media in your nonprofit organization's communications strategy?  How you do help decision-makers or others understand why it is important? 

Leave a comment, write a blog post (tag it with "bethemedia"), drop your thoughts in the wiki or point to a fabulous blog post or article that answers this question. 

 

An Interview of Me in GEO Magazine in Italy - Anyone Understand Italian?

GEO magazine writer Marta Mainieri did an interview with me recently for the magazine.   She just skyped me to let me know it's on newstands now (in Italy).  Anyone speak or read Italian?

Where is the sweet spot between network and community?

Click to see larger image.

What you are looking at is a tag cloud created with Be The Media Project description and  the highly addictive WRDL (hat tip to Tom Watson).  I think it perfectly illustrates how we will build the modules using swarm lists many people who may contribute small pieces of knowledge.   So, is this a community or a network or something in between? 

A few weeks back, Nancy White put a parking lot for the question "Where is the magic between communities and a network?"   She captured the tweets from people on her favorites list.

Dave Cormier published a paper recently entitled "Community as Curriculum" and that phrase has stuck with me as one way to think about Be The Media project.   

Curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process. This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning. 

With this model, a community can construct a model of education flexible enough for the way knowledge develops and changes today by producing a map of contextual knowledge. The living curriculum of an active community is a map that is always "detachable, connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits"

So, I asked on Twitter, "What's the sweet spot between a network and community?"   Gabe Ormsby says netmunity! Or perhaps a sociesphere?   I'm thinking it might be a community that works in a networked way.

The Community is the Curriculum: NTEN's Social Media and Nonprofits Project - Come Join the Fun!

Over the next six months, I will have the pleasure of working with NTEN and Holly Ross on a new community-driven funded by the Surdna Foundation.    The reason I am excited about this project is because it represents a new area of inquiry for me as well as a chance to deepen my learning in the topics that I've been writing about here on this blog for years.  But the best reason of all is a chance to work with other people who are passionate about nonprofits and social media.

Here's the project description (and it's evolving)

The Be The Media Project is a community of people from nonprofits who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.  Curated by NTEN, the community will worked in a networked way to help identify the best existing resources, people, and case studies that will give nonprofit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to BE the media. The community will help identify and point to the best how-to guides and useful resources that cover all aspects of creating, aggregating, and distributing social media. The resulting curriculum which will live on this wiki and will also cover important organizational adoption issues, strategy, ROI analysis, as well as the tools.

Ultimately, we hope to build this wiki and community into the "go to place" for vetted resources about social media strategies and nonprofits for individuals who work for or with nonprofits and need practical advice about getting started or to quickly access best practices, examples, or experience from other practitioners working in nonprofits.

As part of this project, NTEN will host a two-day face-to-face social media and nonprofits workshop, a boot camp that will cover strategies, tactics, and tools and will drive from resources in this wiki. The wiki is being released under a creative commons "by" license, the least restrictive license so that those who are training people from nonprofits are free to use or remix it for their needs.

So, what's my role in all of this?  Let begin by telling you what my role is not - it isn't to sit alone and write content  and curriculum from scratch and use a wiki as a content management system.   My role is to help build the community while curating the curriculum/content.   We'll be taking DIY approach, remixing and/or pointing as much as possible.  In one sense the community is the curriculum and we will be working together in a networked way. 

This is an emerging experiment of a community working a networked way.  There are different ways to participate.  There is an advisory group who are working on curriculum and workshops geared at helping nonprofits use social media. (Anyone is welcome to join - if you're interested ping me)    We hope to leverage their networks and also reach out to subject matter experts and practitioners who will help us build out the modules in "Swarms."

So, the next task is to set up a small experiment.  The experiment is to go through the process of building one module - it will give us two things - an understanding of how build curriculum together in a networked way and a finished module.  Then, we move onto module 2, improving upon what worked and stop doing what didn't work.   The inspiration for the process is what Michele Martin has done with her 30 days to better commenting challenges.  I asked her for advice:

• Consider running swarms as a series of smaller targeted tasks (i.e., today contribute 1 example of a great digital story, tomorrow contribute 1 digital story-telling resource). I've noticed that people seem to respond better to very specific, concrete suggestions.

• Use the module template as the framework for discussion and participation.  For example your headings  "learning objectives," "key questions," etc. lends itself to having people discuss these issues--i.e., This week we're discussing the art of story-telling. Today we want to know what you think the key skills are that nonprofits need to tell an effective story. Tomorrow we want to know the key questions nonprofits should be asking, etc.  Although I know the preference would be to have people add info directly into the wiki, we might want to consider encouraging people to blog about it (tagging appropriately) and then we could pull from their the key ideas. That way these issues are framed as discussion topics that might invite more participation. People who might not otherwise contribute might do so if it's in the framework of talking about issues.

• Set a time-frame.  # number of days to building a module or something like that. People also seem to respond to the "challenge" aspect.

• I'd open the swarms to as wide a group as possible--getting examples from other sectors isn't a bad thing to learn from either, plus they have perspectives, etc. that might be worth considering.

This represents a new curiosity and learning opportunity for me - the sweet spot between community and network.  I have not idea what that looks like or how it works ..... We will start the building out the first module next week. 

What do you think?  Any advice before jumping off this cliff?

Making Media Connections: Ning Site

 

The Community Media Workshop is a media organization in Chicago that trains nonprofits to tell their stories to the media, tips sensitive journalists to the importance of these stories, and tries to create better relationships between the media and the diverse communities in Chicago.  It recently launched a ning site - a branded social network for its community of nonprofits.    Thom Clark, Gordon Mayer, and Demetrio Maguigad shared some of their learnings.

1.)   Tell me a little about your organization's social media strategy for its ning (branded social network) site?   What did set out to accomplish? Who were you trying to reach?

Community Media Workshop’s Ning online strategy began as a way to solve a very practical solution—keeping workshop participants and trainers connected. During a social media workshop, trainers Demetrio Maguigad and Gordon Mayer covered a number of online tools with attendees. During the workshop, a number of participants requested that there be a place for them to stay connected and acquire additional materials for their work after the workshop. A Ning site was developed in order to answer this specific need.

For every online social network training we do, we actually present the ning site and demonstrate ways participants can create and customize profiles, syndicate RSS feeds, post blogs, photos and videos and more. We then invite participants to join. After the workshop, we post a discussion topic on the specific training with attached handout materials and links to further help participants of our training.

Other then this practical reason, we also syndicate headlines from our blogs, podcast, and videocast in order to pull them into the Workshops resources and eventually to our flagship website www.newstips.org to purchase our media guide, sign up for additional training, and subscribe to our electronic newsletter.

Every broadcast of our subscription based e-newsletter highlights headlines not only from our online broadcasts but also user generated posts and also a call to join the network.

Because both participants and trainers are members of our ning site, participants can continue discussions with trainers where they left off in the classroom and share the discussion with others.


2.)  Why did you select ning?

Ning's development application is very intuitive and easy. Someone who has no html, CSS, JavaScript, or PHP experience can set up a site utilizing these features in less then 20 minutes and its free. Ning is also very flexible. Developers who are more experienced can create customized scripts and widgets on their site to accommodate the needs of their users.

Developers can also pay a premium fee to remove all ning branding on thier site, as well as remove advertisements. You can even use your own custom URL! Compared to other “out of the box” social website apps, Ning seems to be the most flexible, the most affordable (regarding ROI), and easy to use. Ning also allows open API to work with other popular social networks like Flickr and Facebook. Users can import their Flickr photos from their account and promote their profile pages and widgets on Facebook.

3.)   How are you measuring your success with the site?

Our ning site currently has over one hundred members who post videos, start discussions and connect with others. Although we currently do not have statistical information specifically from our ning sight, approximately 6% of visits to our newstips site is referred by Ning, which isn’t that bad.

4.)   Tell me a couple of stories about the project has delivered value to your organization?

I remember stepping into a Netsquared meet-up and meeting for the first time three people who I’ve chatted and consulted via the ning site. It was as if I’ve known them for a long time. The ning site has given us the ability to connect different networks with one another and keep these other networks informed about happenings and campaigns they are working on.

I also remember when a member posted their first blog post and them emailing me how they think they would have never have done it without the encouragement of others. To them is became a more practical things rather then a big obsticle, and this is what we were trying to reinforce with our workshops.


5.)  How much time did take to launch and maintain?  Who on staff is the "community manager"?

It took us about 20 minutes to set up the intial site, but has gone through a series of revisions based on the user experience and feedback. Our cmmunity manager was Maude Carroll our former Marketing Coordinator, who used the site to build personal relationships with our audiences.


6.)  What would you recommend to other nonprofits who are considering doing a similar project?


If others are to develop a Ning site, we suggest thinking of it  as a very specific tool that should support your main online goals or main wesbite. Audience and users should be identified and the site should be developed based on their needs and wants. Its worthwhile to consider psycho graphics or the general psychology of the user experience you want to convey. Take time to develop a theme or metaphor to keep users thinking of the site as fun and common place to meet but still get the resources they need.

Allison Fine asks, "Is it time for nonprofit leaders to extol the virtue of government service?"

Flickr Photo by Dogs New Cloths

Allison Fine, who authored "Social Citizens", a paper recently released by The Case Foundation on the intersection of Millennials, social change and social media, wonders whether  it time for nonprofit leaders to extol the virtue of government service?

In a piece that Allison Fine has just posted on the Social Citizens blog she points out a hidden cost to the explosion in the number of and interest in causes the past decade that can be summed up by one statistic:  A study by the International City Manager’s Association in 2006 found that only 13% of professional local government managers today are under 40.  In the early 1970s nearly 71% were 40 or younger.

We have been witness to an explosion in interest in volunteerism and nonprofit careers, while interest in government careers has waned. Elected officials and other community leaders regularly laud the importance of the nonprofit sector … but is it time for nonprofit leaders to extol the virtue of government service?

The Social Citizens paper is focused on Millennials (ages 15-29) a super-sized generation in terms of their total number, their passion for causes and their use of social media. Their size and passion are mirrored by the increase in size and relevance of the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. As I say in the paper, young people are marinating in causes as volunteers, nonprofit careerists, and social entrepreneurs.

I told a friend of mine about this statistic the other day and she said, “Of course, who wants to work for government, it sucks!”

What Allison asks is this really a problem or just a reflection of a changing notion of "service" in our society? Go read the piece and respond at the Social Citizens Blog.

Web 2.0 Ennui Season? no? or yes? Is it just me?

Confession.    Before I focused on music performance in college, I was on a path of creative writing and poetry.   I took a course on French poetry and Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil was on the reading list.  He is one of my favorite poets and one of my favorite poems is from that volume, it is called "To the Reader." 

Baudelaire famously ends that  first poem in this volume by personally addressing his readers in the creation of his poetry: "Hypocrite reader--my likeness--my brother!"   Hmm .. 19th century social media? 

The poem is rather dark and has some disturbing imagery.   Baudelaire points out that  boredom or disinterest is the worst of the evils:

There is one more ugly, more wicked, more filthy!
Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries,
He would willingly make of the earth a shambles
And, in a yawn, swallow the world;

He is Ennui!

Fifteen years ago, I was the community builder for an online network of artists.  The Web just hit the mainstream and people were giddy with excitement.  From October until June - we played and played and played. Then summer hit.  A colleague from a performance artist group in NYC posted a discussion thread with the title "Web Ennui."   It was about what happens when the early adopters fascination with a new technology wears off or maybe it was that were spending too much time online and needed to turn off the damn computer and go outside. 

It stuck with me because I connected it to Baudelaire.

I don't have blogging Ennui (or as Steve Rubel calls it "Bored 2.0") - but after a very hectic travel season, I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have to hop a plane for several weeks.    But I still feel like the end of every June is Web Ennui sets in a for a week or two.    Is it just me?

Arts 2.0: Brooklyn Museum Click Exhibit Results: It's not a contest, it's a study in curation of the crowds ...

In April, I taught a social media workshop for artists and arts nonprofits and did some research on how different arts organizations using social media effectively.  The Brooklyn Museum kept coming up as a stellar example, particularly its Click Exhibition, an experiment in crowd-sourced exhibits.   

This compelling experiment in the wisdom of the crowds started off with an open call for works through the museum's various Web 2.0 networks.  The next phase was crowd-sourced rating process - where anyone could be a curator evaluating the aesthetic quality and relevance to the exhibition theme.   And finally, the top 20% of the 389 images are now in a physical exhibition space at the museum and on display until August.  (If you click through the exhibition, you'll notice that images are different sizes - the larger the image the higher the rating it got).  Here's a summary of the impressive participation stats for each phase.

As Shelly Bernstein, staff member at the museum, writes on the project blog, Click is not a contest, it's a study of crowds.  You can click through and see how the 389 images were evaluated by 3,344 evaluators who submitted 410,089 evaluations. (View the Evaluation Statistics.)It will be interesting to read the resulting paper and lessons learned from this experiment.  I'm curious about how the final results may have differed or not from what a curator might have selected?  I'm curious about how or if Click was gamed.

I'm also interested about how the museum approach the issue of moderating or not.   For example, the screen capture represents the top most discussed submissions to the Brooklyn Museum's Click Exhibition.   
One of the photos in the top 10 most discussed is         Tubby  Lambergini. Full Moon Over the East River.   Read the artist statement and then read the discussion.  Quite an interesting thread on gentrification, race, and class.  The photo isn't in the final exhibition - perhaps because it a wide range of evaluations or divergence of opinion. 

One of my favorite photos is Etienne Frossard. 9:15pm, 2005 also making a statement about the changing face in Brooklyn neighborhoods -which is in the exhibition.   It's in the top 10%

Nina Simon wrote an analysis of the project when it launched here.  I also had a chance to interview Shelly Bernstein, the Museum's staff person responsible for the project.  For more about the exhibit, check out this screencast.

 

Effective Online Networking Skills: Adam Cohen's Personal Networking Icebreaker ... What's yours?

Photo by Wally G

What's your best personal networking conversation starter at a networking event?

Background

This week I am an online mentor on the topic of "Effective Online Networking" as part of the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   My opening post shared some ideas and tips.  There were so many wonderful comments and blog posts that I've been able to summarize the wisdom in these three posts -- read them for context, if you're just joining this thread.  Skip, if you've been following.

1.) Your Advice to African Women About Personal Online Networking Skills

2.) Nurturing Relationships

3.) Network Weaving Skills

Context

Adam Cohen left a wonderful comment with some awesome practical and tactical advice about personal social networking:

I can't remember the book this came from, but the best specific tip I have ever received about networking is a question to ask when you are at events and meeting people: "If I were to refer someone to you, what would I tell them?" It has always garnered a great dialog and let's down the walls people put up about promoting themselves. Not to mention I learn a lot and love to connect the dots for people that can value each other.

This got me thinking ... always a dangerous thing ... about pick up lines.  I googled and found this post. And, please, don't get offended, I just had to laugh ...

• Michelangelo: I feel like before I met you, everyone I’d ever known was made of stone.
• Leonardo da Vinci: I find your smile absolutely intriguing.
• Vincent Van Gogh: Ear’s lookin’ at you!
• Sigmund Freud: As far as I’m concerned, there’s just you and my mother–I mean, and no other.
• Thomas Edison: I know you’ve never heard this phrase before, but trust me: You turn me on.

Anyway ... Imagine you're at a conference, a professional networking event.  What's you're best conversation opener?  Share it in the comments, I'll summarize!   

Best Vacation Email Auto Responder Message EVER!

I'm on vacation at a family reunion!  I'll be back on 7/1. Like any email addict, I will feel compelled to read your messages when my family is not looking.  However, I may not have time to respond before they take my phone away from me and force me to talk to humans.  Face to face. For the WHOLE TRIP. If you need more immediate help, please give our office a call.

That came from Holly Ross at NTEN who probably isn't reading RSS feeds on her phone?

People on the Move in Nonprofit Tech: Jocelyn Harmon

Jocelyn Harmon

Making a change in your life - whether moving, getting married, having kids, changing jobs, or whatever to follow your passion - is very exciting.  And probably a little scary, but following your heart is always the right thing to do. 

I just got an email from Jocelyn Harmon telling us:

 

"I'm writing to let you know that I'm leaving NPower Greater DC Region at the end of this week to pursue my bliss –  WRITING, SPEAKING and THINKING WITH OTHERS about marketing and communications strategies for nonprofits!

1. Go where the energy is.
2. Test out your dreams.
3. See if they bear fruit.

So that is what I'm going to do"

I had the pleasure of working with Jocelyn on the NTEN Day of Service when the NTC was in Washington, DC.  I will still have an opportunity to work with her on another NTEN related project (Be The Media!)

Best of luck Jocelyn!

 

Effective Online Networking: Network Weaving Skills

Flickr Photo by Picherthis

This week I am an online mentor on the topic of "Effective Online Networking" as part of the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   My opening post shared some ideas and tips. 

I've been musing about one effectively (dare I use the word efficiently) nurtures relationships their networks?  Amy B left a comment with a pointer to a terrific resource on how to build in networks.  It's called Network Weaving (see their blog).  What is network weaving?

A network weaver is someone who maintains the network linkages, in both the electronic and physical forms -whether for your own personal network or on behalf of an organization. (There are other roles in a network (see here).  In this definition, a network weaver users social network analysis tools or maps to:

1. Understand patterns in social networks
2. Consciously facilitate connections to help make those networks stronger

Today, Oluwatoyin Ajao-Dawodu left a comment that clearly illustrates network weaving in a personal network:

I really believe so much in the power of "Networking"  I have used networking to meet more people that share my feminism principle which has being a source of encouragement for me. I have used it to impact in people by sharing useful information that will help their career with them.

There's a wealth of wisdom in the comments and in other posts that I'd like to summarize:

Two fabulous women networkers here in the US -- Liz Strauss and Connie Bensen -- shared some very recent personal networking learnings.   Connie gave some new tips.  I particularly like the advice about getting out of your silo and exposing yourself to new fields, new ideas, and new people.   

Liz Strauss shared her networking gems in the comments.  My favorite "Meet friends by noticing people who have thoughts that intrigue you and begin by asking them to elaborate on what they said."  Back on her blog, Liz invites people to answer this question - and help change the world.  Karin added a tip about using your blog for personal networking. 

I'm participating in this project because of two awesome women network weavers in Africa - Ore Somolu and Sokari Ekine.   I met Sokari Ekine through her fantastic bridge blogging of the African blogosphere on Global Voices.  I was a mentor on Ore's Blog Mentoring Project in Africa as Joitske Hulsebosch  also writes about.  I also had a chance to work with Ore through Nancy White and KM4DEV Journal on Technology Stewardship. 

Ore Somolu, Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre, reflected on the importance of quality versus quantity in building a network.  That is most important to build it one relationship at a time.   This jogged my memory about some fabulous personal networking hacks that Chris Brogan shared almost two years ago.  (You'll find them summarized here along with some other resources suggested by Marnie Webb and others). 

Alana sent me a link to her blog post via Twitter, "What would I tell women in Africa?"  She offers her advice and also reaches out two people in her network Maggie (in Uganda) and Alan Clayton (recently back from a fairtrade tour) to check in and comment.

So, what are the soft skills for network weaving?   I found a Network Weaver checklist from June Holley, one of the Network Weaving blog's contributors.  What would you add to the list or how you adapt for personal networking?

Effective Online Networking: Nurturing Relationships

It's Harvest Time for Networking and Tomatoes by Beth Kanter

This week I am an online mentor on the topic of "Effective Online Networking" as part of the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   The project will teach women how to use Web 2.0 tools and other ICTs to effectively develop and advance their work.  Participants are learning how to use these tools to initiate and manage projects; as well as identify networking opportunities with others.

I started with a post with some thoughts about effective online networking. (And posted an invitation to others to participate on my blog).  Oreoluwa Somolu, Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre, left a thoughtful comment. 

I like how you point out that it’s the quality of the relationships that you build online that matters, not just how many people you meet. An analogy is when we attend conferences or other ‘live’ networking events and focus on collecting as many business cards as possible, without taking the time to have proper conversations with people (as well as you can in those settings) and following-up with them afterwards.

It made me think of that photo I took to illustrate this post.   That was almost two years ago.  I had this huge pile of business cards after a year of attending conferences.  I was also contemplating the first Boston PodCamp and improving my networking techniques. 

Chris Brogan shared some excellent post conference networking hacks.   I particularly liked this little trick:

I play “shuffle up and email” often. I take my cards from past events, and then send someone a random email (hopefully with value to what they’re doing, and mindful of what I’d want to do with them). The email is a “ping,” a chance to show them that I’m still out there, and that we might still have business. Further, it might just be the thing that gets someone thinking of me for another opportunity.   

I also thought of a post by Marnie Webb called "Networking Your Networked Network" where she points to a ChangeThis Manifesto called "Care and Feeding of Your Network" written by Bob Allard, an entrepreneur developing software tools for connectors and businesspeople (www.youshouldmeet.com / www.referralmonitor.com)  He offers five steps to greatness in Networking:

1. Know what he/she is working on.
2. Think creatively about how to help
3. Make a meaningful introduction
4. Follow up
5. Keep your network informed about what you are working on.

Connie Bensen left a comment on the other post with some more networking tips.   Connie's writing about networking is some of the best I've read!

This brings me back to the rest of Ore's comment:

I’ve met many people online, with some who I met only years later and who have now become good friends and important collaborators, who have helped me in some way professionally.But this would probably not have happened if I was so focused on what I would get out of the relationship and not bothering to nurture it properly.

Ore is talking about reciprocity which is an important principle in the nurturing of relationships in your network.   How do you nurture relationships?  How do you this effectively (dare I use the word efficiently) if you are doing this on behalf of your nonprofit?

 

What Advice Would You Give to Women in Africa About using Web2.0 Tools to Advance their Work?

Oreoluwa Somolu

I've known Oreoluwa Somolu virtually for several years.   I came across Ore's writing via Sokari Ekine's fantastic bridge blogging of the African blogosphere on Global Voices.  I was a mentor on Ore's Blog Mentoring Project in Africa as Joitske Hulsebosch also writes about.  I also had a chance to work with Ore through Nancy White and KM4DEV Technology Stewardship issue.  It is amazing to me that we have this rich history of working on project together, but we have never met face-to-face!

Oreoluwa Somolu is Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC).   So, when she invited to participate as a mentor in the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   Of course, said yes.

The project will teach women how to use Web 2.0 tools and other ICTs to effectively develop and advance their work. Participants are learning how to use these tools to initiate and manage projects; as well as identify networking opportunities with other organizations. This project builds upon the work of the Blogs for African Women (BAWo) initiative; an earlier project aimed at introducing blogging to young Nigerian girls.

The mentors are assigned a topic and week and write a post.   The idea is to have a conversation with the participants.  They include:

• Oyindamola Akinpelu
• Olubusola Babalola
• Oluwatoyin Gbadegesin
• Obo Henshaw
• Phillicia Menewah-Deegha
• Olubunmi Osinuga
• Oluwatoyin Shinaba

So, this is my week to participate and my topic was "Effective Networking Online."  I decided to share some inspiration from two women bloggers who have often inspired me about effective personal networking — Liz
Strauss and Connie Bensen.   I've boiled it down to a few networking principles that work not matter what tool or site you're using. 

So, come join the conversation over at the project blog and share your thoughts with these amazing women in Africa about effective online networking.

Other posts that were part of this project:

Network Weaving Skills

Nurturing Relationships

Are you one of the 16%? The HyperConnected

Most likely, only my Cambodian blogger friends like Lux Mean will understand the reference.  So, let me explain. Dop Pram Moi is how you say sixteen in Khmer.  The song, "I'm Sixteen" was made popular by the band Dengue Fever  

According to a 16-page Nortel Whitepaper, "16% of people are 'hyper connected' [and] that 16% is expected to balloon to over 40% in the coming years." Such people "use many more devices, channels, and tools then 'regular' people" and "they are generally always on, always connected and see this as a good thing."  (hat tip Stephen Downes)

Claire Fisher of the Remote Access Blog points out:

The hyper connected have a few traits:

• The boundary between work ad personal time is virtually non - existent.
• They use many more devices, channels, and tools then "regular" people.
• Hyper connectivity among employees has the potential to increase security risks due to lost hardware, software, internet transfer of files, etc.
• They are generally early adopters of new technologies and consider themselves to be global people.
• Only 1/3 of hyper connected people see themselves as early adopters
• They are generally always on, always connected and see this as a good thing.

There more at the hyper connectivity blog.

I have to ask, what, if anything, does this mean for nonprofits?  Will this become something listed in a job description?   How will we balance personal productivity with social productivity?

Social Network Demographics: Is there a middle ground between email is for old folks, social networking sites are for young people?

Nick O'Neil found this video and used in a post called "Facebook for Grandparents."   I set up my eighty-something Dad on Facebook - and his reaction "Cognitive Overload!" -- Although when I posted videos of his grandchildren on his profile, he emailed me saying he enjoyed the video. 

A question I'm often asked is "What are the demographics of social networking users?"  and what is behind that question is the need for some information to decide what social media strategy is right for their organization's goals and audiences and further, social networking or not?  I keep a couple of my links to social network site audience data here, but it is a moving target.

For example, I recently came across some recent Facebook demographics posted by Ben Lorica at O'Reilly (Hat tip Ben Rigby).  Did you know that Facebook makes available demographic data through its advertising platform. Here you can obtain estimates for the number of Facebook users by age group, gender, education, country, and more.   (If you want some step-by-steps, follow the instructions on slide 3).  If you play around with this feature, you will learn that the majority of Facebook users (around 90%) are under age 35.

Source

This made me wonder about social networks and baby boomers. Less than one-quarter of US Internet users ages 40 and over use social networking Web sites, according to the JWT BOOM/ThirdAge "Boomers, Healthcare and Interactive Media" study conducted last month. The study groups baby boomers into categories by ten year increments and the analysis shows that with age, social networking site use drops sharply.

What's interesting is why they don't use social networks.  The study respondents said their main problems were: privacy, time and just not seeing the point.  The Social Media Optimization blog suggests there may be  opportunity to appeal to boomers through smaller niche social sites, like for AARP which has added a social networking section to its web site or this network for retirees.  Of course, one could also argue that if the bulk of your audience is from the baby boomer and older and you don't plan to reach out to younger people -- perhaps social networking sites are not the best Internet strategy for your organization.   

The question is when the baby boomers start dying off and the younger generation comes into its own, will they look like that those people in the video above?

How has your organization made a decision about social networking?  How do you consider demographic information in the decision?

An Interview with DigiDave - Dave Cohn about first steps into social media

Click to play

I met Dave Cohn (aka Digidave) at the Netsquared Conference where I did a quick video interview with him about getting started in social media. (Dave did a video interview of me about the cute dog theory)

Dave won the Knight News Challenge and with the grant money he will build a nonprofit to pioneer community funded reporting.  The site is called Spot.Us.  I enjoy reading his blog.  So, it was nice to connect face-to-face and do more than wave hello.

That reference is from a conversation that Liz Strauss started about lasting relationships and 15 second friends.  Rachel Happe wrote a blog post back in February called "Relationship is development process and technology can help (sometimes) and in the comments of a post that I wrote musing on what Liz and Rachel wrote, Rachel observes:

I've been at two conferences recently where I've met a large number of people that I had only talked to online and it has been a rich experience because they are people I may have never otherwise walked up to out of the blue but because there had been a shared context we immediately had something to discuss. Interestingly, for me it means I say less 'hello' and more of 'tell me more about x...'

Yes, this resonates and my meeting Dave is a great example - I got to know him first via conversation in the comments of our blogs.   Someday, maybe Rachel, Liz, Dave, and I will find ourselves at the same conference or cafe table and have a fabulous face-to-face conversation about social media, relationships, citizen journalism, business and social media and nonprofits!   Meanwhile,  we can do it via our blogs!

 

June 20th Is National Take Your Dog To Work Day

Flickr Photo by Beth

You all know that I'm a dog lover, right?  That's Sadie who passed away 5 years ago this month.   She has her own dogbook profile on Facebook!  Anyway, if I still had a dog it would be at my feet tomorrow in my office.  Here's the scoop:

First celebrated in 1999, Take Your Dog To Work Day was created to celebrate the great companions dogs make and to encourage their adoption from humane societies, animal shelters and breed rescue clubs. This annual event encourages employers to experience the value of pets in their workplace for this one special day to promote pet adoptions.

On June 20, 2008, businesses, animal shelters and pet-care professionals from around the world will work together to better the lives of shelter dogs everywhere.  Thousands of businesses will open their doors to employees' pets on this day in celebration of the great companions dogs make. Pet Sitters International invites your business to Join us! as we celebrate a decade of working dogs!

If you aren't able to bring your pup to your place of employment, considering volunteering at your local animal shelter or even taking in a rescued pet of your own.

And, if you are a nonprofit techie with a cute dog, please do the NpTech Dog Group on Flickr.

More About Widgets for Nonprofits

| View | Upload your own

About a year ago, I did a lot of research on a screencast about widgets for nonprofits and put together two wikis - Nonprofit Widgets (for a session at 2007 NTC Conference) and Fundraising Widget.  So, I was really interested in hearing what colleague Peter Deitz has to say in his recent NTEN Webinar on the Sprout Widget.  Alas, travel schedule prevented me from hearing it live, but Peter posted his slides and examples.

Here's the links to examples he mentions

KaTREEna Plantometer
Every Human Has Rights
2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference
The Niapele Project
$40 for 40 Years of Fair Housing

I like Peter's analogy of a widget as a bumper sticker.   I've heard some people describe widgets as suitcases.  What's your metaphor for a widget and widget strategy?

Choose the Winners -- 2008 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards: Polls Close on Friday

Nancy Schwartz wants you to help her select the winners of the 2008 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards, to be announced in July.   The tagline finalists you see here have been carefully culled from the more than 1,050 taglines submitted to Getting Attention Tagline Awards.   Hurry, the voting closing on Friday, June 20th.

Giving and Receiving - Building Relationships With Social Media - What Liz Strauss Taught Me

How To Give And Receive Compliments

Last week when I was in Chicago, I had dinner with Liz Strauss.  She gave me a compliment and I started to do my usual (get embarrassed, deflect it).   She gave me some great advice, the best way to receive a compliment is to smile and say thank you.  I'm taking that to heart, Liz and trying to learn how to do that.  This morning while browsing the social media how-to videos over at  video jug, I stumbled onto the one above that covers giving and receiving compliments and certainly there is a connection to social media.

But first,  I want to say thank you and give a smile back to Alex Steed for awesome compliment on his blog, Four Netroots Gurus We(No-So-Secretly) Have a Crush On.

It is impossible to describe Kanter accurately without wholly offending a large bloc of people, but here goes: Beth is God. There. We said it. Beth Kanter is God. Dare you you disagree? Have you ever seen this woman at a conference? Faced with her, you’re rendered awkward, graced, and feeling somewhat irrelevant by comparison of accomplishments. Back up a little bit and observe those around you; they’re all trying to figure out how to get involved in a conversation with her, how to somehow connect with her. In [the extremely approachable] Kanter’s 25+ years of involvement in web-based organization, she has seen it all and she graciously shares slivers of her brain on her blog every single day.

Liz recently wrote a post the other day called "Lasting Relationships and 15-Second Friends."  Liz points to a study that explains the nature of relationships from Maki.   Liz points out that lasting relationships share a number of factors in common, but the most important is reciprocity.

It’s a simple thing. When someone calls, writes, comments, links, or asks for help, do we respond or do we let it ride? Lasting relationships last because we are persistent in nurturing them.

Rachel Happe wrote a blog post back in February called "Relationship is development process and technology can help (sometimes)."   Rachel lays out a framework of how relationships evolve between individuals:

• Encounter:  You encounter someone online or face-to-face.
• Recognition: This happens when both individuals can put a name/face with a context.  The fastest way to get to the recognition stage is to have an interaction that is highly relevant and has something to offer - an idea, a perspective, an experience.
• Relationship development  Once two parties recognize each other they can move into building a relationship.  To build a meaningful relationship there must be a joint initiative. 
• Friendship;  Represents a degree of trust above that of colleagues.  People often lose sight of this stage of a relationship in business.  We get wrapped up in getting to the end goal and think that friendship is ancillary to the process - and depending on the project or goal, it may not be necessary.  However, for certain business relationships which are strategically important, friendship is incredibly useful and it allows initiatives to proceed more quickly than if people are not friends above and beyond the work relationship.  A true friendship will allow two people, ironically, to operate more autonomously because they trust each other and the decisions they will make so constant re-calibration and discussion is not needed - and that saves a lot of time.  Additionally, successful people usually have more than enough work and projects to choose from and because they have to choose, they will prioritize projects with friends more highly because they are more enjoyable, easier, and faster.

Liz Strauss points out that social media and networking gives us the ability to connect with more people faster, but to develop lasting relationships you need time to nurture.    "Is there a numerical cap on how many friends we can have?" (or more to the point, develop relationships with).   I'm referring to the Dunbar number - 150 - the ceiling on the number of personal contacts a human has the capacity to maintain.  The article says that new research suggests that social networking sites will help humans surpass this limit.   I'm not so sure ...

Maybe we're getting stuck in the encounter stage.   As  Liz notes in the comments of this post, "All I know is that more time than ever is spent saying “hello,” and less time is spent actually talking."   So, how do you resist the fast friends or friend collecting and get to know people when you don't have huge amounts of time?

Excellent Collection of Social Media How To Screencasts

How To Download YouTube Videos

VideoJug - Life Explained on Film is an excellent site for instructional videos and screencasts on a wide range of topics, including some fantastic how-to content for social networks and other tools.   The example above is one that plucked from the socialnetworking tagged videos.  This site is going to be an excellent resource for hunting and gathering of resources as part of the BeTheMedia project ...

ASSK Why Burma Can't Wait on June 19th

Since May 1 (eerily, 3 days before Cyclone Nargis), Fanista launched a campaign called Burma: It Can't Wait with the US Campaign for Burma and the Human Rights Action Center.  The site has featured provocative short films starring actors, filmmakers and musicians on the topic of human rights and Burma.

On June 19th, Aung San Suu Kyi’s 63rd birthday.  (She shares the same birthday as my daughter, Sara).  On that day,  people across the web will work together to educate and inspire online users to join and/or donate to the campaign, promoting the idea that freedom is the best birthday present.  The slogan is  “ASSK WHY IT CAN’T WAIT” - a nod to the acronym for Aung San Suu Kyi’s name, ASSK.   

So, if you see people tweeting about ASSK's birthday, it's about the Burma Can't Wait Campaign.

What's the sweet spot between personal productivity and social productivity?

Photo by Natala007

While stuck in O'Hare on Saturday, I wrote a post about personal productivity as related to "email overload" and rounded up some tips. (Written while being stranded at O'Hare airport due to flight cancellations does not always allow neurons to connect ....)   After posting it,  I remembered the phrase - "Social Productivity" that I read in one of the final chapters of "Connect: A Guide To the New Way of Working on the Web" by Anne Zelenka.   I didn't have the book with me and couldn't quite remember exactly the details, but googled a bit and found this post from her personal blog about productive multi-tasking. 

Then I got a track back from the email dashboard blog that rounded up all posts that responded to the New York Times article about information overload.   It pointed to a post from Stowe Boyd called "Information Overload, Schmoverload" that suggested the article was another attack on connectedness and whole brain attention.

"The old school thinking is about individual productivity: but the social revolution has moved past that into network productivity, which entails connectedness and social meaning. The personal hit on productivity is real, but it's not a cost: it's an investment; and the juice is worth the squeeze."

Stowe goes on to clarify that personal productivity is not the way to measure the benefits of social tools and coins a phrase "network productivity" - perhaps better described as "network effectiveness" which in my mind consists of the Three "R's" of network weaving (relationship building, rewards, and reciprocity) -- all of which involve tasks that take time.   Stowe Boyd says much better:

As we have moved from hierarchical, top-down, centralized work -- think Henry Ford's assembly lines or the pre-Internet global corporation -- to networked, bottom-up, edgewise work personal productivity has been trumped by network productivity. Network productivity is the effectiveness of a person's entire network: contacts, contacts of contacts, and so on.

Connected people will naturally gravitate toward an ethic where they will trade personal productivity for connectedness: they will interrupt their own work to help a contact make progress. Ultimately, in a bottom-up fashion, this leads to the network as a whole making more progress than if each individual tries to optimize personal productivity. (Trust me, its provable. I studied queuing theory in graduate school.) I call this Boyd's Law, by the way.

Perhaps more importantly, the willingness to assist others leads to closer social connections, and increases the likelihood of reciprocal behavior, where an obsession with personal productivity does not.

He also talks about the value of "disconnecting" - to focus on the other tasks - but suggests that our bias should be towards being connected. 

My argument is not really about the downside of missing something flowing by the torrent of information everyday, nor is it about being a busy little bee working like mad on some sort of modern information assembly line. It is about the psychological, spiritual, and work benefits of connection. Note that for these to hold, people will have to learn to be much more judicious in the determination of who -- and how many -- they will connect with. The willingness to swap personal productivity for connection is just that: it is an ethical choice that asserts that the bonds of connection, today and over time, are more important -- not just abstractly, but in the most concrete way -- than making headway on this piece of work, right now.

He also builds an argument for multi-tasking or rather the overhead of multi-tasking. 

Yes, it is true that moving from one full brain task to a different full brain task has a high cost of participation, especially for some one who doesn't transition from task to task on a regular basis. However, learning to operate in a flow mind state, where partial attention is being paid to "partial tasks", can lead to the transitions costing less at each interruption.

 

I'm reading John Medina's Brain Rules.  There is a whole chapter on attention and it covers multi-tasking and Medina observes that multi-tasking is myth because the human brain is not capable of focusing on more than one thing.  He outlines the process that we go through when "multi-tasking" - it is more like rapid attention shifting between tasks.  (Shift Alert, Activate Task 1, Disengagement, Activate Task 2).  He says the brain does these four steps in sequence each time we shift from one task to another.  That's why people loose track in the middle - now where was I? when switching tasks.

He suggests that those who appear to be good a multi-tasking actually have good working memories, capable of paying attention to several inputs at one time.    According to the research that Medina points to - it takes longer to complete a task  -- so there in lies the meaning of what Stoww Boyd was saying about participation in his piece.

So, I'm wondering where the sweet spot between personal productivity and networked productivity comes into play?   More on this in the comments to this post.  I also twittered this question and got some thoughtful responses:

Dave Wallace said in a tweet

While I know what you are getting at, I feel connectedness and productivity needn't necessarily be at either end of a gtd continuum

PF Anderson said in a tweet

I think of it as appropriate balance between input and output.

I am wondering how nonprofits may (or may not) appreciate the value of networked productivity.  In a recent article over at NpTech News called "Twitter: Networking on the Run"

But the best "value proposition" of Twitter, one that seems to be shared by many of Twitter's early adopters, was summed up by Cloward. "I'm better at my job because of Twitter, because I have access to a wide network that I didn't before. I can ask questions, get them answered, share information, and get feedback. The reason why organizations send staff to conferences is to 1) gain knowledge, and 2) network. Twitter lets me do that every day."

All this leads me to ask:

• Does your organization value or understand the concept "networked productivity"? Why or why not?
• How do you balance networked productivity with personal productivity?
• What is the value of "disconnecting" and do you think your organization has a bias towards connectedness or disconnectedness?