Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Scott Henderson, Guest Post -- Rethinking Your Database: From Sacred Collection to Engaged Community

Courtesy of Scott Henderson, publisher of Rally the Cause

#1 Thing You Need To Know from This Post:
The single most important asset of any non-profit organization is its relationships with its volunteers, donors, and other stakeholders. If you treat these relationships like sacred data collections instead of an engaged community, you are at risk of becoming irrelevant.

A More Detailed Exploration:
I spend a good portion of my time traveling across the country to attend conferences and meet with clients and prospective clients. Even in this digital era, the custom of exchanging printed business cards is alive and well. As you can see from the photo to the right, I have quite the collection.

But don’t confuse that collection of cards for a robust network of strong relationships. Getting the card is just like adding a new person to your organization’s database. If you do nothing to build the relationship, that business card becomes an artifact proving very little other than that you once had contact with the person.

The Historical Role of the Database
Common wisdom says that you can measure an organization by the number of people who are in its database. Historically, a central staff maintained this database and treated it like a sacred collection of artifacts. In an era when information didn’t flow so easily and it was very difficult to connect with people you’d never met, protecting that collection of records at all costs was a self-evident truth. After all, these records had taken a great deal of work to assemble and represented the lifeblood of your organization.

The Fundamental Shift Happening
Then something funny happened. The Internet made it much easier for individuals to connect with each other. With 1 billion owning personal computers, 1.5 billion having Internet access, almost 4 billion owning mobile phones, and easy-to-use software tools to connect and communicate using these devices, your expectations of the world around you have changed.

You expect to have much greater intimacy and immediacy with those people and organizations you care about. And, you’re not alone. Your donors, volunteers, and potential key stakeholders have the same growing expectations. Now, we can all search for long-lost friends as well as new and interesting people. It just takes a Google search or looking around on Facebook or Twitter to make them magically appear in front of you.

With the advent of opt-in communications, you now have access to a meta-database that includes much more robust information about your stakeholders, which they are freely sharing with you across many different online platforms…if you are on these sites and actively listening.

Accepting the Reality of Self-Organized Swarms
Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of this Interconnected Age is how easy it has become for a small group of people to reach out thru their existing network of relationships to create awareness for a cause, layout the vision for leading this cause, and then assemble a mass of champions to achieve their goals.

No longer are these people waiting for non-profit organizations to reach out to them with your glossy annual report and well-crafted annual appeal letter. They are seeing the need and organizing their own armies. These self-organized swarms are a reality and will become even more prevalent.

“Mr. or Mrs. Non-Profiteer, Tear Down This Wall!”
The time has come to tear down the mental walls that you and your leadership team have constructed around the relationships most important to you. I’m NOT saying that you put your database out on the web naked as a jay bird for all to see. What I am saying is:

Stop treating your database as a sacred collection of data controlled by you and begin to see it for what it has always been: a dynamic record of the engaged community who want to help you achieve your mission.

You can’t just measure that community based on database records. You need to also consider the interaction you have with the people who have joined your Facebook Fan page, subscribe to your Flickr account, watch your YouTube channel, follow your Twitter stream, and choose to invite you into their lives from their online platform of choice.

This is critical for your organization to stay relevant, because it is this mosaic of relationships that you can use to mobilize people to rally around your cause. If you’re not doing it, someone else will.

A Sneak Peak of the Pledge to End Hunger Campaign Case Study
This spring when we launched the Pledge to End Hunger campaign (www.pledgetoendhunger.com) to coincide with the South By Southwest Interactive Festival, one of our main goals was to better understand how social media can be used to help non-profit organizations and cause marketing campaigns. [For a campaign summary, I recommend this post on Beth Kanter’s Blog.)

While we’re in the process of finalizing the campaign case study to share with you and the rest of the world, I do have some interesting data to share with you now regarding this topic of databases. One key thing we were seeking to determine was which would generate more traffic to the campaign website: existing email databases or Twitter followers.

Cultivated vs. Non-Cultivated Emails
Between the for-profit and non-profit organizations leading the Pledge to End Hunger, we had seven existing email address databases. Five of the seven databases had been cultivated thru ongoing email correspondences and had a demonstrated affinity for one of the organizations leading the campaign. The other two databases were a collection of people who had participated in eBay charity auctions and had little to no affinity to the organization keeping the database.

We consider the first five to be cultivated databases and the other two non-cultivated. All together, these databases totaled 132,831 names, with 57,831 from cultivated databases and 75,000 from non-cultivated databases.

Email Databases vs. Meta-Databases
To compare the results of these email databases, we put them against the Twitter audience of the fifty people who stepped forward as #HungerPledge champions. These were individuals from different geographic areas representing many different industry verticals who were willing to promote the campaign thru Twitter and blogs (if they published one). Collectively, they had contact with almost 208,000 people thru Twitter alone.

In the first seven days of the campaign, we used email and Twitter equally, so let’s compare the three in that period of time. So which database prevailed: cultivated emails, non-cultivated emails, or Twitter?

- 57,831 cultivated email addresses generated 2,204 visitors at a 3.8% conversion rate.

- 75,000 non-cultivated email addresses generated 19 visitors at a .03% conversion rate.

- 207,426 Twitter followers generated 4,154 visitors at a 2.0% conversion rate.

Conclusions from This Data
1. All Databases Are Not Created Equal - Organizations who cultivate their relationships with those in their email databases can mobilize a higher percentage of their known stakeholders when compared to individuals who mobilized their general Twitter audiences and even more than non-cultivated email databases.

2. You Don’t Need an Email Database – Social media makes it easier to tap into people’s existing relationships. Using fifty individuals, we amassed a larger audience and generated more site visitors than the seven existing email databases.

I’m sure there are many more great conclusions to be made here, so let me know what you think. Plus, here’s your chance to add to my broader thoughts about databases or (even better) challenge my notions.

Find me on Twitter: @scottyhendo

This article was originally posted on Rally the Cause at http://rallythecause.com/2009/07/05/rethinking-your-database-from-sacred-collection-to-engaged-community/ by Scott Henderson:

Scott is a cause marketing director for MediaSauce, helping non-profits and corporations use online media to pull off their next big thing.

Guest Post by Chad Norman: Power to Your Peeps! Why Real-time Fundraising with Twitter Works

Submitted by Chad Norman, publisher of I dig webby things...and I bet you do too

I dig speaking at nonprofit conferences and events, and one of my favorite topics to cover is the real-time use of social media. It's the perfect mix of emerging technologies, social media, communities, and the web - some of my favorite things.

The conversations inevitably get stymied around Twitter - which is no surprise, as every nonprofit is trying to figure out what the tool means for them. A channel for promoting your mission? A monitor for listening to chatter about your cause? A way to connect your org to your community? It's all of those things, but it's also something else: a real-time fundraising tool!

Raising money on Twitter is happening all the time. Beth Kanter stood on stage at Gnomedex and used Twitter to help raise $2,657 in 90 minutes. Last November, Tweetsgiving used Twitter to raise over $10,000 in 48 hours for a school in Tanzania. And just last month, I used Twitter to raise $350 in a couple hours to help send the NTEN staff out for a relaxing excursion. These examples show just some of the ways Twitter can enable real-time fundraising. Clearly it works...but why?

Tara Hunt calls it Whuffie. Chris Brogan calls it the Trust Economy. I call it the Deep Network. Real-time fundraising works because of social capital...because we tend to trust the people in our network. When an org sends an email, the open rate can be low - but when a person sends an email to friends, the open rate is 90%! This is because of trust, and works the same way with Twitter or any other people-based network. When we build up large, diverse networks consisting of supporters, friends, and peers, we are creating a bank of trust to draw upon when needed. When it comes time to ask your network for something, they will not need the time to interpret your motivation - because they know you and your org. And some will be ready to act...right then!

So use Twitter for listening, communicating, and promoting, but don't overlook the platform as a vehicle for real-time action. Build your network around mutual trust, a sense of community, and personal attention. If you've taken the time to cultivate a trusting, loyal, and engaged following, you should be able to turn that social capital into financial capital - and in a hurry if need be. After all, when you're among friends, it's never hard to ask!

This article was originally posted on I dig webby things...and I bet you do too at http://forums.blackbaud.com/blogs/webbythings/archive/2009/05/26/why-real-time-fundraising-with-twitter-works.aspx by Chad Norman:

Chad is an internet marketing, social web geeking, podcasting, skateboarding, family-oriented web guy running a green nonprofit at www.GoGreenCharleston.org/

Guest Post by Susan Tenby -- Learned a lot about online community using TweetChat: tool and content were both teachers

Submitted by Susan Tenby, publisher of Online Communities for Social Change

Today I had several discovery moments of serendipitous learning via Twitter. I am noticing lately, that I am hearing all my news before it even hits the web, let alone TV, via Twitter. There is something so gratifying about reading a news-ticker on the bottom of MSNBC TV and saying , “Yeah, old news, read a tweet about that 5 minutes ago.” Twitter is becoming more important to us every day, and it will soon change the way we live. It definitely changes the way we are perceiving what is current and the way that we are receiving information.

When I was 12, I remember my father used to mock me for obsessively checking my voicemail. “You’re not a doctor”, he’d say, because he was one. I used to obsessively check my email, and then I moved on to obsessively checking my Facebook feed, but now I try desperately to limit my distraction and ADD time and I just manically check my tweet-stream.

Today, one of the hundreds of time i was obsessing on TweetDeck, my lens of choice, to see who was saying what and who was talking or re-tweeting me, I noticed that someone whom I respect in my field, Online Community Manager, Angela Connor, was talking about stuff I found to be interesting and using a hashtag I didn’t recognize, #Cmtychat. I followed the hashtag, and I was all of a sudden immersed in a lively discussion of community managers from all over the world, talking about what we do and sharing best practices.The discussion hour was half over by the time I arrrived there, but I tried to join in without seeing too lame and ignorant. One of the things I learned in this event was the new members to a community often felt embarrassed to post for the first time, and it is imperative to welcome the newbies and encourage them. This is something that is common sense, but it was among hundreds of rules of thumb that were nice to be reminded of.

I joined in and started tweeting about my work with Nonprofits and Online Community and mimicked the behavior of the others. Soon, I was being addressed by them and responded to, and I was really happy to have stumbled upon this spontaneous and free conference about online community. I started observing my own behavior as a community newbie (to their conference) and reflected upon my behavior, using it as a lesson of how to better manage the communities that I run.

I used the #Cmtychat hashtag at the end of my few posts, and then discovered that the technology was even deeper then just tagging your tweet.

I clicked into the discussion and found myself in a new site that was just an aggregator of all of our tweets who were using that hastag. There is a tool called TweetChat and as you can see from this week’s community chat conference, it grabs all the posts with the same hash tag, deposits them into a separate silo, giving you the experience of being in a separate chat room, rather than distributed all over Twitter, which is actually what is happening. Best of all (albeit a little unnecessary, unless you are seriously lazy), if you tweet from the Tweetchat engine, it will add the hashtag for you. I discovered this when I added my post there, with the hashtag at the end, and then saw it posted in Twitter with a double hashtag. (Oh, the many ways we can go on about being embarrassed by tweeting. I guess that will be another post entirely.)

So, it was quite a hyper-real and helpful experience learning about online community best practices and doing it on an entirely new tool, having not been invited to participate and just jumping in and chatting, which put me in the shoes of a newbie, somewhere I haven’t been for 9 years.

Twitter is a networking tool, in addition to all the other reasons we tweet, and I now have dozens more followers and people I follow, whom I may only had met if I was actually attending the same forum or conference with them. However, in this instance, the simple curiosity about a tag, brought me into the event, and I will definitely be going back every Friday at 11am-noon PT.

You can read the transcript of this week’s Community Managers’ Chat here: http://bit.ly/tDUMg

This article was originally posted on Online Communities for Social Change at http://susantenby.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/learned-a-lot-about-community-using-new-use-of-twitter-tweetchat-new-to-me/ by Susan Tenby:

Online Community Director,TechSoup.org and Nonprofit Commons in Second Life. @suzboop on Twitter

Guest Post by Hildy Gottlieb: 3 Steps to Success on Facebook

Submitted by Hildy Gottlieb, publisher of Creating the Future!

We hear it almost every day - another organization who is wildly successful on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace. Wanting that same success, organizational leaders sign up, spend a while getting the lay of the land, and start participating.

Soon they begin to doubt they will ever see the wild success that other organization experienced. Resigning themselves to paltry (if any results), they sigh, “We tried it, but Social Media is just not for us.”

They could not be farther from the truth.

Virtually every organization can successfully put Social Media to use. The first step towards that success is determining what exactly “success” will mean for you. From there, success simply requires a plan. As with most successful actions, the important part of the effort is not so much what you do, but the thinking that comes before the doing.

Social Media is Just a Tool
Imagine this conversation.

"I am thinking about getting a phone. Who should I call? What should I say to them? How long before the phone will help us reach our goals?"

Sounds silly, of course - but that is really what we are asking when we ask, “What should I talk about on Twitter or Facebook or MySpace?”

Just like a telephone, Social Media is simply a tool (or more accurately a group of tools) that can help  facilitate engagement.

And just as you do not need a separate plan for using your telephone or fax machine to facilitate successful engagement, you also do not need a separate Social Media Plan. What you do need is an overall Community Engagement Plan - a plan that will guide all the engagement activities of your whole organization, whether in person or over the internet.

Creating a Community Engagement Plan to Include Social Media
Community Engagement is the process of building relationships with community members who will work side-by-side with you as an ongoing partner, in any and every way imaginable, building an army of support for your mission and vision, with the end goal of making the community a better place to live.

You can begin to create a Community Engagement Plan by asking 3 simple questions:

 Question #1:

What parts of your organization's work & goals can be enhanced by engaging others, in person or online?

What do you want engagement to accomplish for your organization? As you answer this question, avoid ever-meaningless catch phrases like "get the word out about us." Also, yes, put "money" on the list, but quickly get beyond that, too.

Dig deep to ask, "What could really be different / better if we engaged others in the various aspects of our work?" Make a separate list per project / program. And to be as successful as possible, make a separate list for each of your goals within each program.

 Question #2:

For each of those goals listed in #1, what types of people / groups could you engage to accomplish that goal?

For each goal, list every single group or type of individual that might help you reach that goal.

 Question #3:

For each of those groups, then, ask, "What might we ask or tell about, that will inspire / encourage / intrigue individuals in those groups to want to work with us to accomplish our goals?”

This question will lead you to a list of subjects to communicate (i.e. tweet about) that would interest your target audience in your work.

Using these three questions, you will now have far more than just a list of things to tweet about (or share on Facebook, etc.). You will have the beginnings of a hardcore Community Engagement Plan that can begin to help you “build relationships with community members who will work side-by-side with you as an ongoing partner, in any and every way imaginable, building an army of support for your mission and vision, with the end goal of making the community a better place to live.”

You don't need a consultant to flesh out a complete Community Engagement plan. Just use our step-by-step Community Engagement Action Kit

Original article by Hildy Gottlieb. Located in the Community Driven Instititute archives at http://www.help4nonprofits.com/UseItToday/UseItToday-Success_on_Facebook.htm:

Hildy Gottlieb is president of the Community-Driven Institute, whose mission is to make visionary community change practical and doable. She is also author of The Pollyanna Principles: Reinventing "Nonprofit Organizations" to Create the Future of Our World.

Guest Post by JD Lasica -- Socialbrite: A new sharing & learning hub

Submitted by JD Lasica, publisher of Socialbrite

Socialbrite.org fills a glaring gap in the social media world. While young people and early adopters increasingly turn to the social Web not only to socialize but to communicate, explore new ideas and share new experiences, nonprofits and social change organizations are still generally stuck in the top-down, one-way world of Web 1.0.

The young and the wired are moving at an accelerating pace away from old-school destination Web sites and toward the social media ecosystem embodied in the real-time Web. In this new world of Twitter and Facebook, of citizen journalism and astonishing grassroots campaigns like Twestival, it’s easy to feel befuddled by the dizzying pace of change.

That’s why eight leading nonprofit technologists and social marketing experts have come together to create this learning and sharing hub. Socialbrite is here to offer articles, videos, resources and tutorials on how to take command of all this Web 2.0 jazz and put it to work for your organization or cause. (You won’t see marketing flackery here.)

And please note: We’re here not only to show how social tools can be used to advance the social good – but to learn from you as well. We'll be republishing some of these articles on learning wikis, and everything here is released under a Creative Commons license, so we hope you'll take part in this ecosystem of sharing.

A sharing and learning hub

We invite you to cruise around the site — and we hope you'll help us spread the word. You’ll notice that we’re not starting from scratch. You’ll find:

• A directory of Web 2.0 Productivity Tools in dozens of categories that can help organizations get a handle on the social Web.
• A Social Media Glossary that offers a deep, friendly introduction to dozens of social media terms in plain English.
• A first-of-its-kind Twitter widget that tracks tweets about nonprofits or social causes in real time.
• A Free Photos Directory, Free Video Directory and Free Music Directory that offers nonprofits, cause organizations and Web publishers a guide to hundreds of online resources for adding legal, high-quality content to their own websites, blogs, newsletters, printed materials or online presentations.
• A Causes widget that points to charitable actions and donations on other sites such as Global Giving and Facebook Causes.
• Scores of additional articles, guides and tutorials to help newcomers and veterans alike get better acquainted with this fast-moving space.

Team members

I’m joined in this effort by:

• Beth Kanter, the author/trainer/strategist behind Beth’s Blog
• Katrin Verclas, founder and editor-in-chief of MobileActive.org and past executive director of NTEN.
• John Haydon, who advises small non-profits, small businesses and social entrepreneurs on how to implement inbound marketing strategies with the social web.
• Amy Sample Ward, organizer of London Net Tuesday, who connects nonprofits with new media technologies.
• Ken Banks, a Hewlett Foundation grant recipient who focuses on using mobile technology to foster positive social and environmental change in the developing world, particularly Africa.
• Sloane Berrent, a Kiva fellow, social philanthropy activist and a former executive at Causecast who’s currently serving a three-month tour in the Philippines.
• Carla Schlemminger, who has more than 17 years experience in marketing communications, branding and strategic public relations.

Credits for our launch

We want to acknowledge some of the people who got us to the launch pad:

• Esteban Panzeri, the brilliant Argentinian developer and tech god who built most of the site based on some sketchy wireframes.
• The team at BlitzLocal in Boulder, Colo. — especially Dennis Yu, Chad King and Austin Stierler — who took us under their wing and agreed to host us for free.
• Beth, Amy, Katrin, John, Ken, Sloane and Carla, who all took a leap of faith in signing onto this team effort.
• Matt Mullenweg and the entire WordPress development community for their open source code and awesome set of plug-ins. And a thank-you to the coders at Intense Debate for the commenting system we settled on.
• Uta Ritke, the Marin County graphic designer who designed our logotype.
• Chad Capellman of Boston, who lent his development help and keen CSS eye to this project.
• Elegant Themes, the WordPress premium themes house that gave us the underpinnings to build our customized theme upon.

Please join the conversation

We want this to be your site, too! Please add your voice — tell us what conversations, articles and resources you’d like to see on Socialbrite.org in the months ahead.

As we explain on our About page, we're out to bust some silos. When it comes to sharing insights about the tools and best practices that drive the social Web and advance the social good, the nonprofit, citizen media, open source and education communities have more in common than we realize — but we rarely talk with each other.

So one of our goals at Socialbrite is to help people in any sector get up to speed on the social Web and find the right strategy and tactics to help your organization or cause.

We believe that people — not large institutions — will be the driving force behind social change in the years ahead. People want to make a difference, and now we have the tools to help others — directly, smartly, without intermediaries.

It'll be fascinating to report on those developments — and put them into practice — in the years ahead. Hope you'll pay us a visit and follow us on Twitter!

This article was originally posted on Socialbrite at http://www.socialbrite.org/2009/06/29/socialbrite-why-were-here by JD Lasica:

JD works with social change organizations, nonprofits and businesses on social media strategies and best practices.

Guest Post by Holly Ross: The Second Coming of the Online Community Manager

Submitted by Holly Ross, publisher of NTEN

Your job isn't going to exist in a few years, and it ain't the economy's fault. Blame it on social media.

If you're implementing social media smartly at your organization, you already know it raises more issues for nonprofits than it solves. Chief among them: who does it? If social media is about individuals conversing authentically with a community, who's in charge of the conversation?

You'll find most people responsible for social media in marketing departments. But shouldn't program staff be involved, as well? How about leadership?

I'm fascinated by the ways social media is changing how organizations structure themselves -- and in particular, how social media is redefining job titles in our sector. To whit: the second coming of the online community manager.

ReadWriteWeb has a new report out, "The Read Write Web Guide to Community Management", that marks the ascension of the online community manager (2.0). They do a great job summarizing exactly why the role is so challenging:

The job is part customer service, part marketing, part public relations, and part web savvy. Some of the skills required are timeless and some are very new and unique to the web.

Yeah, what they said.

We used to organize our jobs by who we were talking at: people with problems (customer service), the population we want to engage (marketing), the media (pr). Now, we don't have the luxury of simply talking AT people. Those same people are talking to us, and each other.

We all need someone to be part of that conversation.

But how are you supposed to write a job description for that? Doesn't it sort of sound like you're hiring someone to goof off online all day? The ReadWriteWeb report has a price tag, but it's well worth it if you're really considering these issues.

I'll summarize some of my favorite bits for the rest of you:

Are communities any more engaged when there's an official community manager?

• Well, yes. There's a great case study from Tom Humbarger. Watch the engagement levels drop as soon as he's laid off.

Is the ROI all about the web metrics?

• Not so much. The report points out ways community managers contribute to innovation, recruitment, and other key areas of an organization.

How to Frak it all up

• I love the list of ways to screw up online community management. My favorite? Be afraid. Sound familiar?

Oh, and there's a plethora of case studies. I loved the report so much I twisted MarshallK's arm -- OK, I just asked -- and he gave us three copies to give away free to NTEN members!

Here's the deal members: Leave a comment below telling us how social media is changing your job description, and we'll pick three at random to get the prize!

This article was originally posted on NTEN at http://nten.org/blog/2009/05/13/second-coming-online-community-manger by Holly Ross:

Holly has spent more than five years at NTEN, combing through all the technology fads and listening to the NTEN community to line up the webinars, conferences, and research that will help members use technology to make the world a better place.

The distinction between enabling conversations and an online community. How do engagement strategies and skills differ or are similar?

Source:  Mzinga: How To Determine Operational Readiness for Building a A Community vs. Just Enabling conversation.  Via post from Rachel Happe on the Social Organization

I'm in the process of reviewing the content of the six modules for the strategy track that we've created so far for the WeAreMedia.  I'm want to keep an eye out for content that isn't clear, logical flow, and gaping holes.  Just hitting the pause button to catch breath and think about any mid-point corrects before we jump into the next set of modules which focus on the tactical.   I'm also doing some weeding and reorganizing as well as putting my newbie glasses on.   

I'm returning to Module 5: Engagement Strategy and Skills which is described as:

A traditional online community is a group of people who interact together and have a relationship over time on a site where people can interact around a common interest.  A loosely coupled online community is a group of people who are joined together by a common interest and have conversations is different - this might include groups on social networking sites or a network of blogs.  It's important to determine if your organization needs a traditional online community or something else. A critical factor for success in both is having an engagement strategy. An engagement strategy can help your organization attract more traffic, loyal supporters, more content, more links, and other values. But it requires investing the time to build relationships with people (yes, even one-on-one interaction) or "network weaving skills." This module covers the key touch points for developing an online engagement strategy and a look at network weaving skills.

One of the learning objectives is:

• To understand the difference between traditional online community and loosely coupled community and how that impacts your approach and engagement strategy
• To understand the basics steps for developing an engagement strategy to guide online community building efforts
• To understand the techniques for encouraging online community participation
• To understand the best practices of network weaving skills and how to apply them for a loosely coupled community

This a revision based on an insightful comment by Nancy White in the original description:

I think it is important to distinguish between a community - where there is relationship and interaction over time, and a site where people can interact around a common interest. If relationship and a sense of group is desired, that will impact your strategies. There is a difference between an online community and a larger social network strategy. Sometimes you don't actually need or want a community - you want something else.    

This module mashes together a couple of ideas and it may be confusing.  Just after we wrapped up Module 5, I came across the post from Rachel Happe at the Social Organization blog called "Social Media Is Not Community" which gets at the heart of the confusion.  Rachel observes that the concept of social media and the concept of community are often used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. She says that social media can help foster communities but it is limited to a conversation around content.   Social media are the tools that the community can use for its networking and conversation and relationship-building. Or put more succinctly, Content Ninja says, "you can't build a community around content."

Rachel goes on to identify specific characteristics of an online community in her post much as how Nancy White has defined a traditional online community.  She ends with two possible approaches:

1 - to use social media to enable conversations and get a better idea of how constituents respond to specific content, initiatives, goals. This is much easier both to understand and implement.

2 - to create communities that extend their capabilities and engage their constituents in richer ways that results in higher retention, lower risk, increased ROI, and faster operational capacity.  Communities have enormous strategic benefits to companies but require considerable investment (in resources, time, and tools) and are difficult to implement because they have a significant impact on business processes.

I left a comment on Rachel's post and we had a bit of email back and forth where she further clarified the difference:

I equate option 1  with having a bunch of people watching a movie together and then chatting about it afterward.   Option 2, or a community is more like your local pub or church where, when you go, you don't necessarily run into all the people in the community and there may be new people, but in general you see the same faces and develop relationships with the regular visitors.  Those two different things require a very different level of commitment, spending, resources, etc. Both are valuable but they have different purposes and pay off.

I asked her if she had grid which outlined the differences.  She sent me the graphic above and also spelled out the assessment process in this post.

So, the first step for nonprofit is to answer the question, "Do you really need an online community or something else"?   The module should have a checklist of questions to help a nonprofit determine whether you go with option 1 or option 2.  And, if you do choose a community, what questions do you need to think through to help you plan for a successful online community and getting people to participate.  And, if you choose to use social media to enable conversations, what are the engagement skills?

Engagement skills are the techniques that you can use to encourage participation - the one-on-one interactions.  I've called it "network weaving" in the module.  I think engagement skills are important to the success of both options.  Do you?

Is there more clarity to this module?  More confusion? What do you think?

WeAreMedia Module 5: Nancy White Suggests Asking "Do You Really Need A Community?"

Photo by Stephen Rees

Yesterday, we started Module 5:  Community Engagement Strategy and Skills of NTEN's WeAreMedia project which focuses on community engagement strategy and skills.   Here's the description:

An online community is an interactive group of people who are joined together by a common interest. Whether your organization creates its own branded social networking site, connects with people on blogs or sets up a presence on a larger online social networking site like Facebook, Digg, or YouTube, a critical factor for success is having an online community engagement strategy. An engaged online community can help your organization attract more traffic, loyal supporters, more content, more links, and other values. But it requires investing the time to build relationships with members (yes, even one-on-one interaction) or what we call "network weaving skills." This module covers the key touch points for developing an online community strategy and a look at network weaving skills.

The discussion questions are: (and we're giving away free books to participants- details here)

• What questions do you need to ask to guide your online community building strategy?
• How do you encourage community participation?
• What are the best practices for network weaving (one-on-one interaction with your community members)?

Nancy White dropped a thought-provoking comment (in purple!) in the description -- simultaneously opening up some insights and modeling the "add don't take wiki" approach used by colleague, Dave Cormier.

(I feel compelled to put in a comment here -- feel free to delete after you consider it. I think it is important to distinguish between a community - where there is relationship and interaction over time, and a site where people can interact around a common interest. If relationship and a sense of group is desired, that will impact your strategies. There is a difference between an online community and a larger social network strategy. Sometimes you don't actually need or want a community - you want something else. )

Nancy also created another important discussion question:
Do you really need a community? Or something else?

There are tons of communities and networks out there. People only have so much time in their day to participate. So before you go about building an online community, consider if this is really what you need and what your constituents want.

• Are you constituents online? If not, why build an online community.
• Are your constituents members of many other social networks and communities? Will they join YET one more? If not, can you leverage connections into the communities and networks they already belong to?
• Are your constituents using mobile devices more than computer based devices? How will this impact participation in more "traditional" online communities?
• Do you really want a community, or are you simply looking for ways for people to access and create content, but they really don't need/want to interact with each other and form relationships while interacting over time around a topic of shared interest.

Nancy is making a distinction between "traditional" online communities where there are relationships between people in the community and people connecting together around specific interest area or a Tribe.   This module has originally put these together under one definition of "community" with the latter being "loosely-coupled" communities.   But thinking we need to re-think this a bit.  Off to ponder "Are You in the Tribe?" 

Maybe the focus on this module should be more "engagement" strategies - and the ways you can do this.  If you have a group of people that you don't want to necessarily interact with one another, but want them to create content -- you'd still need an engagement strategy to encourage participation.  It would, definitely, as Nancy suggests, impact where and how you might do this.

What do you think?    

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Congrats to Mazarine Treyz - The First Wiki Contributor to WeAreMedia Module 5

Congrats to Mazarine Treyz, Senior Development & Communications Officer, Urban League of Portland.  She was the first one to contribute something to the WeAreMedia Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills. 

The question was:  How do you get prepared for an online community?  What questions do you need ask as part of your planning?

The Brains On Fire blog tell us why it is so important to be prepared before you launch an online community effort:

Online communities are popping up everywhere. And I really can’t see the point behind most of them. Is it so the CMO can point to it and say, “Look! We’re part of Web 2.0, too!?!” And then there’s the numbers game. These companies want 10,000 people in the first week. So they have contests. Giveaways. Gimmicks out the wazoo. And the people come. But the don’t stick around. There’s no community there. It’s just another website. Another registration form. With no sticking power. No reason to come back. The community has no sense of community, because most CMOs see it as just another vehicle to push messages through.

So before you jump into the online community pool, there is a lot of heavy lifting to do up front. A lot of questions to be asked. And a lot of hard work to make sure you create something that’s long-term and sustainable instead of another flash in the pan. The first thing to keep in mind? Ninety-two percent of word of mouth happens offline. So make sure the online supports the offline and vise versa.

Otherwise you’ll have a nice, pretty site that ends up being another community ghost town.

Holly Ross talks about this in her post, "Are you a marketer or online community manager?" and Maddie Grant gives us the three top reasons why online communities fail.

Rob Cottingham and Alexandra Samuel have an excellent set of questions to ask before you launch an online community.  Many will help you shift your perspective towards supporting your users needs,  what good marketers do already. Other questions will help you get your organization on board.

Mazarine shared this tip:

In your next staff meeting, when discussing marketing,
a. Ask for a show of hands, who has heard of Myspace? Who has heard of Facebook? (You'll get some people who know.)
b. Show them social media = ROI, with who, when, and why. (kiva.org, prime example, mercycorps.org, another) (make printouts or use a projector)
c. Show them concrete examples of what is currently happening at your org (a monologue) and show them what is possible (a dialogue).
d. Ask them, "Would you rather have someone talk at you, or have a conversation?" -By Mazarine Treyz, Senior Development & Communications Officer, Urban League of Portland. (Urban League Facebook page)

We're so delighted that we decided to give away one more book!  So congrats to Mazarine.   

Six more lucky wiki contributors to Module 5 between now and August 3rd will have an opportunity to get a free copy of either Media Rules and Mobilizing Generation 2.0. Share a couple sentences about your experience from your nonprofit organization, or point to an excellent resource and add a sentence to describe it. Be sure to include your name with a link to your email or web site next to your contribution. We'll pick six contributors randomly to receive a copy of Ben or Brian's awesome books.

What are you waiting for?  Jump in over at the wiki.

WeAreMedia Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills - Participate and Win A Free Book!

Photo by FourDoxn

This week we are discussing and building Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills as part of NTEN's We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits project.   Here's the description:

An online community is an interactive group of people who are joined together by a common interest. Whether your organization creates its own branded social networking site, connects with people on blogs or sets up a presence on a larger online social networking site like Facebook, Digg, or YouTube, a critical factor for success is having an online community engagement strategy. An engaged online community can help your organization attract more traffic, loyal supporters, more content, more links, and other values. But it requires investing the time to build relationships with members (yes, even one-on-one interaction) or what we call "network weaving skills." This module covers the key touch points for developing an online community strategy and a look at network weaving skills.

Some of the inspiration for this module comes from Alexandra Samuel and her Bringing Your Community To Life workshop.  Alexandra suggests that you offer incentives for participation.  So, thanks to NTEN, we are offering prizes for participation - six lucky wiki contributors to Module 5 between now and August 3rd will have an opportunity to get a free copy of either Media Rules and Mobilizing Generation 2.0.

So, what do you have to do to get a free book?  Between now and Sunday, August 3rd, answer one of the key discussion questions at the wiki.   

• What questions do you need to ask to guide your online community building strategy?
• How do you encourage community participation?
• What are the best practices for network weaving (one-on-one interaction with your community members)?

It is super easy to participate.  Share a couple sentences about your experience from your nonprofit organization, or point to an excellent resource and add a sentence to describe it. Be sure to include your name with a link to your email or web site next to your contribution.   We'll pick six contributors randomly to receive a copy of Ben or Brian's awesome books.

What are you waiting for?

Working Wikily: The fine lines between content and curriculum and self-directed learning and instruction ....

 

Photo by JRhode (Jason Rhode)

One of the personal learning threads that I'm following is working wikily - and relating this to current work, including NTEN's WeAreMedia Project.  The way I do that is not just do the work, but reflect along the way in a socially-networked way.

Dave Briggs pinged me to let me know that he just wrote a primer on wiki collaboration and since I've been obsessing about this lately, he thought I'd be interested.  And, yes I am!  I love step-by-step guides like this, especially if you're just starting out.    The type of collaboration described is using a wiki to capture notes from a meeting and for follow up.  One could do this for workshops as I've done

Yesterday, I shared some thoughts on the collaboration process.  Michele Martin responds with great insights and some provocative questions.

She accurately sums up the curriculum research and writing process as a a form of crowd-sourcing.   I've called them "swarms"  where calls are put out each day for people to respond with resources, tips, links, etc. that relate to a particular topic or question in the curriculum.  Michele goes on to observe:

It's my observation that the swarms have been a sort of combined subject matter expert analysis and brainstorming session-- really. This has been a great way to get a lot of content quickly and Beth's individual wiki pages set up for each module have helped us organize that content.

 

She also provides a valuable peer reflection on my online facilitation process - I was afraid of being too heavy-handed:

In facilitating this brainstorming portion, Beth has been using a light touch. She puts out the questions and calls for resources and has provided an organizational framework for responding. She also summarizes what's being discussed. There have been few if any "directive" behaviors from Beth in keeping with Dave Cormier's "Community as Curriculum" idea of letting knowledge evolve through the interactions of a learning community. As a result, the community truly is creating the curriculum.

So, looking at the visual above from Jason Rhodes - we are working wikily and covering the purple triangle on the top - content.   Michele's questions are green and blue sections - learner and instructor and of course the network and collective in the middle.   

Last night was I looking over Module 1 and Module 2, I definitely saw these as "rough drafts" and more editing/shaping or curating is needed - but I think more of the modules need to built out.  Michele also points out the fine line between process and product:

I see a lot of great resources, ideas and questions, but I'm not sure that I see an actual learning module that a nonprofit could pick up and implement on their own

The NTEN project includes both the wiki and some face-to-face workshops.  The wiki was originally envisioned as a self-service resource or content for nonprofits. The development of this content is being done collaboratively.    The face-to-face workshops will draw from the content in the wiki and part of my work will be to put together a trainer's guide and workshop instructional materials based on the wiki. The workshop is 2-day boot camp -- so obviously couldn't do everything that's in the wiki. 

And, since the wiki is available under cc - anyone is welcomed to use these materials in their own training, curriculum development work.  And one would hope, that if people were drawing from the source materials, they might add a link to how they were remixing the content in the wiki to suit their trainings.

In the comments, Betsy Hansel notes:

I think the dilemma is that you will not see exactly what happens to the module as it goes out there ... it's a bit like sending your children out in the world, isn't it? You don't know what will happen or how they will process what you tried to teach them.

 

But what if we were to provide some guidance on how to reshape the wiki "content" for "instructors" or "learners"?   Michele offers two options for process:

a) Go through another iteration of Module 1 where a smaller group of instructional designer types take the content and re-organize and re-configure so that it's a "stand-alone" kind of workshop in the format that people seem to want

b) Create some kind of companion piece that explains to people how they can take the module content and reconfigure for their own use, teaching them a new skill in the process?

The first option feels a bit beyond the project scope of work, but the second looks very doable.  With that said,  I am very curious what the steps would be for option B? Do you have a check list or list of steps? I think that would be helpful to have as part of this?

Getting Conversation Ready

Holly Ross wrote a good reflection piece about public conversations on blogs and how to get your audience ready for that conversation.  She makes the point:

What I am saying is that your audience may not be ready to have the conversation that social media enables.  That's because social media does not just enable conversations.  It enables PUBLIC conversations.

I think we have to remember that it takes time build the community to have the conversation and that it doesn't happen right away. You have to be ready as conversation facilitator.   Alexandra Samuel did a workshop called "Bringing Your Community to Life" at Netsquared and offered some terrific practical advice about you get the conversation started.

Some key points:

Key points to encourage participation:

• Focus on promoting conversation
• Make it happen, don't wait for it
• Connect like-minded participants
• Connect complimentary threads
• Plan pro-actively, implement reactively

And once you activate the conversation, your organization needs to be ready to embrace it. While NetSquared was taking place, another event There's A New Conversation - described as "reflecting on the past 10 years since the publication of the Cluetrain Manifesto and what the next 10 years will be like as more and more of us defect from marketing and join the conversation!" was taking place.  Jeremiah Owyang gave a presentation at the event and it was live blogged here.

Much of it comes from the Groundswell book and I am familiar with the content.  A new nugget of insight was about how to deal with detractors.  Here's the advice from the notes: 

Dealing with Detractors.

• Have resources ready. Staff, processes, resources, etc.
• 5 types of detractors. Legit complainers, competitor, engaged critic, flamers, and troublemakers (trolls). For trolls, ignore them, or figure out how to expel them from the community.
• Listing of why they make trouble, how to recognize them, and what you should do for each type.
• What goes wrong? Sue, shut them down, disregard, freeze, don't engage.

I wrote about dealing with criticism a while back when a colleague mentioned having to address this on social media sites.  I'm curious if how nonprofits that are switched to conversations are dealing with detractors?  Have you interacted with these different types of attractors?  Care to share your experience?  What's your advice?

My Dinner with CPSquared Colleagues and Connected Futures: New Social Strategies and Tools for Communities of Practice

Last night, I had an opportunity to meet some CPSquared colleagues face-to-face in Cambridge for dinner.   Not wanting to miss an opportunity to play with my new toy, err, learn how to use my new tool, the Nokia N95,  I did a live broadcast of our dinner.  I discovered that you can see the chats on the phone while you are live broadcasting and that I need to do some adjustments of the volume or get closer to my subjects when they are talking.  (More reflections on technique can be found on my N95 learning journal)

Since the live broadcasts are automatically referenced on witter from QIK - I started to get direct messages routed by SMS to my phone while we were broadcasting.  Ryanne and Jay even Ustreamed our live streamed - how meta. Having this connected network on Twitter and Qik - connect with the CPSquared Meet up Face-to-Face seemed so appropriate.

I got a second opportunity to spend some face-to-face time with John Smith and finally meet Bronwyn Stuckey who was in the US from Australia.  I've been lucky enough to be involved with the planning and curriculum development for   Connected Futures:  New Social Strategies and Tools for Communities of Practice workshop with John and Brownyn as well as (who along with Beverly Trayner, Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, Nick Noakes, Shawn Callahan, Shirley Williams, and Susanne Nyrop.

Here's the blurb:

Are you in, leading or interested in the development and support of communities of practice who want or need to use web based tools to connect and be together?  What  role do technologies such as blogs, wikis and social book marking might play in your community’s development? If these questions intrigue you and you
are an explorer and learner, then you’ll want to check out this new learning event from CPSquare:
Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice

This online workshop is ambitious - it runs over five weeks and includes virtual field trip and an experimental lab where people will get practical experience with the new web tools and how to integrate them into an existing community of practice.   I'll facilitating week 5 along with Shawn Callahan and Susanne Nyrop that is focused on helping participants summarize their learnings and think through implementation.  I'll also be doing a field trip of the NpTech Tagging Community.

I also got to meet an amazing group of local CoP professionals.

Patti Anklam (who has written a practical guide to creating and sustaining networks at work and in the world and I just ordered from amazon.)  Her blog post is here.

Nathaniel Welch, Senior Manager from CFAR

Naava Frank, Knowledge Communities

Gian Jagai

Elayne Sheridan, Harvard Business School

Meet AmeriCorps

Ben's Flickr Stream

Ben Sheldon's tweet about picking up some postcards for the new Americorp web site peaked my curiosity.  Luckily, Cheryl left me a comment pointing me to the Meet AmeriCorps site.   The purpose of the site is:

In our opinion, the best part of being in AmeriCorps is meeting other AmeriCorps and VISTA members. They're friendly, compassionate and dirt-poor, just like us.  We created this website to help us find other service members and alumni in our community and across the country.

What I really like about the site is how they have used tags to facilitate people finding one another.   It is also a great example of pivot browsing.   You can look for people by Interests, Skills, or People/Geography.   I'm curious how people will connections ... This would be a cool thing to have for the NpTech Community.

 

Penguin Day Reflections: OS as FairTrade, OS Feminism, and OS - the Next Generation

Open Source Feminism - Click to Play

Penguin Day is a day-long workshop for nonprofit organizations to explore the range of issues and options inovlved in using Free and Open Source Software.  Penguin Days happen in different locations several times a year and for the past three years, these meetings have taken place after the annual NTC: Nonprofit Technology Conference.  Last Saturday, I attended my first one.  Although I was pretty exhausted by Saturday,  I learned a great deal.

I was curious to observe the gender balance at Penguin Day and while I'm not as meticulous as Christine in counting and calculating the number of women and men in the room, I took a quick video to get a reading. Very roughly, the percentages for Penguin Day look better than industry standards for both OS and commercial software.  The video incorporates some slides from Angela Byron's excellent presentation, "Women in Floss" which also speaks to the dark side of gender issues in FOSS communities.  The presentation offers some good pointers to women in how to get involved in FOSS communities.

Click To Play

The morning started off with a Spectrogram Session.  A line was drawn with duct tape from one side of the room to the other.  Aspiration's Executive Director, Allen Gunn, read a series of opinion statements and asked if we disagreed or agreed or were neutral.   Everyone in the room found a place on the line relative to their opinion.  A group dialogue followed allowing people to articulate why they felt one way or other.

I'm sort of foggy on all the questions - due to my tired state, but the first set of opinion statements was "Nonprofits should adopt open source software for practical reasons" and "Nonprofits should adopt open source software for philosophical reasons."    The discussion reminded of the one I heard in the UK and read later on the Circuit Riders list "Is Open Source Fair Trade for Nonprofits?" (Interesting that KhmerOS had a table at the Cambodia Fair Trade Expo)

The video captures those on the philsophical side.  I was standing on the "adopt for practical reasons" side of the line.  I was somewhat persuaded to come closer to the middle in listening to David's and Jamie's arguments.   I think that of advocates need to have open source technology stewards behind them to be successful -- there is a need for stewards to guide the choices, training, translators -- to help nonprofits adopt open source software.

Might I dare suggest that future spectrograms include a question about gender balance in OS? Or, has this issue already been discussed in this context?

I attended a session about OS Online Communities facilitated by the Joomla! guy (whose name I can't remember due to my exhausted state and I apologize for that). UPDATE:  His name is Johan Janssens.  He told the story about the growth and challenges facing the Joomla! community.  (These stories need to be written down and it sparked a memory of a conversation I had with Zittrain at iLaw in 2005 who pointed me to a researcher at HBS who was looking at Open Source Software Communities.)

The questions that emerged from this group were not different from those that are asked when we talk about online facilitation and online communities.   These folks would be perfect participants for Nancy White's Online Facilitation Workhop. 

• How to bring new people up to speed.  How to get the good pieces to rise to the top.
• What are the tactics for supporting online open source communities?
• What makes online forums work or not work?  What are the best practices?
• How to get into the forums without being labeled as a stupid newbie
• How to engage people in valuable conversation?
• How to prepare the next generation of moderators in OS communities?
• What is the best tool for very large communities?
• How well does the tool support the organic growth of the community?
• What are the techniques for conversational weaving?
• What is the gensis of an open source community? 
• Since OS communities generally begin with a small group of developers or a scratch your own itch approach and some developers tend to be egomanics - how do you build community within this culture?

I participated in the speed geek session where about ten people get to pitch a project or idea to a rotating group of four or five people.  I pitched my Open Content game for Nonprofits.  In retrospect, I designed the game more for a range people who work in a nonprofits - technical and mangerial - and this audience a mix of more technical and technology providers.    Still, I got a lot of great feedback for the next remix of this game.  (Sorry Janet, no videos too tired to multi-task.)

After a lunch of pizza (which accelerated my tiredness), I lead a very small group informal discussion on Open Content.  We didn't play the game, but we had a great discussion about the creative commons licensing and the issues the notion of open content surfaces.

While she was busy facilitating a linux session, Michele Murrain had managed to blog a very thoughtful post shining a light on the Open Content issues (pay for it or set it free).  I agree with Michele's viewpoint, although I understand why Michael Gilbert and Laura Quinn respectfully disagree:

But ultimately, yes, I do think that all content that we provide to the nonprofit sector should be freely available, and under Creative Commons (or similar) licensing. That's the only way to provide important information to nonprofits that need it - some have a hard time affording even nominal fees for that sort of thing.

Click to Play - Adam Thompson Interview

At the end of the day, I met Adam Thompson who teaches at UofC Santa Cruz and I discovered that he distributes some of my blog content to his 25-40 students each semester.   He notes that the field is changing fast and that the blogosphere moves faster than textbooks and the "by" license makes this sharing easier. 

So, if my content was locked up and available on a fee basis, I might make some money but then again I might have less exposure.  I guess the key whether your main source of income is from the sales of your actual content or whether your content is line extension and you make your income via consulting or teaching.  Lots to think about here.

Click to Play - Are Mediated Experiences Bad?

I went out for a group dinner after Penguin Day.   I got a ride from Simon Rowland who was using his blackberry and GPS to help navigate to the restaurant to meet up with the rest of the group. In the front seat, Simon was talking about mediated experience with Zac Mutrux and how our engagement with gagets gets in the way of us being in the moment and interacting with people face-to-face.   This reminded of a post I wrote called "Shall we put away the cameras and have a conversation?"

This calls to mind a debate in the educator community about some years ago about computer-mediated experiences - and how it is a (mostly) bad thing.  Has this view changed by the pervasive Internet access? What struck me is that Simon is probably a Gen Y and Zac a Gen X and I'm a babyboomer.  My perception was that younger people do not feel mediated experience is a bad thing.  I was wrong -- this attitude isn't necessarily generational.

Click to Play - OS Next Generation
Music - Voyage Black

And, since I mentioned generations, my kids are "We Gen" and I wonder if they think mediated experience is a bad thing?   I must also mention that the blow up penguins were huge hit in our house - they are still being flung down the stairs.   Even more importantly, it gave me a chance to introduce the kids to the concept of Open Source software -- Harry's observations about penguins were interesting.

Is it time for a Social Reporter?

What does the Internet look like?

I've been trying to organize and clean up I don't know how many gigs of information, some dating back to 1992, the year I started working online full-time.    My first online community builder/facilitator job was with Arts Wire, an online network for artists, that used a unix-based, text-based online discussion software.  I facilitated online forums, provided technical support the 500 members, and training.   

Arts Wire, a project of NYFA, was originally intended to be a place for artists from all over the country to meet, exchange ideas, and talk about their work via the Internet.   As the Internet changed dramatically with the launch of the Web, the content of my work did too -- although the themes and concepts remained the same.   While in the early early 1990's I was helping people figure out which dipswitches on their modem to push or  write and send email using PINE, this later morphed into helping people learn how to build web pages or develop web literacy skills.  And, now mid-2000 this has changed again  ... into gaining web social (networking) skills.

The drawing is from one of the many, many technology training workshops I did in those early web1.0 and web .0 days ....  somewhere around 1996 or 1997.   I always started with a creative icebreaker activity -- this one was "What does the Internet look like?"  While many of the drawings were abstract, the showing connected people presages the social web. 

What sent me on a trip down memory lane was this excellent post by David Wilcox describing a new role for an online facilitator using social networking and media tools. 

It occurs to me that I should try calling myself a social reporter; it feels more comfortable for this purpose than knowledge activist or technology steward.

I like the role/label and think David is spot on.   I'm having a little bit of trouble with the word "reporter" - perhaps a play on citizen journalism?   Is an online facilitator of people using social networkings  -- are they a passive observer or an instigator?   Is "reporter" the right role?

I used to think a lot of what my role and use different labels.   Here's a few I played with from 1992-2002 during my time working with NYFA/Arts Wire.

• Electronic Bulletin Board Sysop
• Onlne Facilitator
• Online Community Builder
• Telecommuter
• Gophermaster
• Webmaster
• Webmistress
• Webster
• Web Manager
• Web Goddess
• Digital Creative Thinker
• Information designer
• Cybrarian
• Electronic Preservationist
• Telecollaborator
• Situated Trainer & Learner
• Nonprofit Technologist

As I found this list, I realized I'm adding something to the label Nonprofit Technologist.  I'm not sure quite what.  It goes beyond blogger and tagger.   Citizen instructional mediamaker?  Social media coach?   Who knows ...

Now matter what we call it - social reporter or something else, what are the skills and competencies to be one?  How are they different from web1.0 online facilitator?  And just as I write that sentence, I check David's blog and find that being GMT, he's already evolved his thinking along with other colleagues.  Let's catch up ..

 

David is thinking about this role in the context of using wikis, blogs, flickr and other tools for capturing knowledge for conferences, a thread we obsessed on collectively last month.  The Perfect Path blog muses about the social reporter role and rich records:

We have agreement that it's a "good thing" or at least a "nice thing" to have a richer record of a days proceedings and that blogs and wikis are a good way of producing that. What I agree we haven't done yet is get to the point where we're able to weave everything together to make it useful enough to participants that they want to do more than view the record.

But maybe that's not our responsibility...yet. I see a risk that we're pushing people too fast along a learning curve that we've taken a while to go along ourselves .... Maybe we should just let this aspect sink in for a little bit - if they want to interact as well, then that's fantastic and we should be ready for it when it happens, but in the meantime, perhaps we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment.

Especially if we are also introducing more social aspects to the event, breaking down the distinction between presenter and audience - novelty fatigue might set in - I have to remember that not everyone gets bored as easily as I do!

Here's David response:

If the ethos of the social reporter is to promote collaboration by standing on the side of the  user/reader/viewer and helping them to contribute, we have to take this very seriously. Evangelising - come on in, it's wonderful - doesn't work any better than warnings - you'll be left behind if you don't.

Part of the answer is being clear about the purpose ... what real benefit will tech-supported collaboration bring - and aware of the prevailing culture which may not be receptive. I think it is also about respecting people's preferences. That's partly about personality, and partly about offering a choice of audio, video, text and so on.

All that means that social reporting, to be successful, requires a pretty full set of skills and tools.  As Lloyd says, instead of pushing too hard we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment. If we can't get the gigs, maybe we need some simulated rehearsing ... a sort of emerging social reporting conference, where we all practise on some willing non-tech participants. Any sponsors up for that?

Hmm .. yes, the tools are easy, but skills probably take some time to develop and hone.   One skill is the ability to think through your fingers quickly - the ability to listen, photograph, record, and process it in a way that isn't simply the vacuum approach.   And, you have a high degree of comfort with the tools .. so you don't even have to think about it as you are capturing.

Last week or the weekend before I was at a conference, with wireless and live blogging and vlogging.  I've noticed now that I'm using the digital camera, the microphone, and text all together -- like a drum set.  And that has taken some time to master -- just practicing.

My YouTube Interview with Steve Cliff: Part 1 - Six Tips for Community Tagging Projects

I did a post about the Steve Cliff and the Voterss Project and it reminded be that for over a year I've been attempting to do multimedia conversation and I have only been able to talk to myself!

So, I posted the video below as a response to Steve's introductory video, asking him for some tips for success in a community tagging project:

Here's the response I got:

 

Here's a transcript of the answers:

Hey there Beth. I was excited to get your video question.  Almost as excited as I was when I got the call from YouTube founders about a $1million grant!

Interrupted by a call from his wife.  Steve’s buying an Ipod Shuffle!

Actually, we didn’t get a million dollar grant.  We’re out there in the wilderness doing our grassroots thing, using tools like Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, etc.

I have six tips on how to start a community tagging project:

1 Pick a compelling theme

Don’t make it so narrow and obscure that only one or two people are interested in the topic. 

2. Connect with natural behavior

There are people who are already bookmarking particular resources.  Seek out those people first.   Don’t make tagging extra work or add on.  Find the people who are already tagging information in your topic area and work with them.

3. Pick your tags carefully

We had a problem with mno06 as tag, because it brought up all the YouTube users with mn in their name.   If you use a tag that has a date in it, like mno06 – it becomes dead.  We became more generic and used mnpolitics.

4. Display the results

Make sure people can see the results of what they are doing.   Our aggregation page allows people to see what we’ve collected.

5.Go beyond your known community

You are going to go to those already tagging or doing videos in your content as a first step..  Use the contact and social networking tools built into the tools to find them and connect with them.  Ask them to add your tag to the items they are already connecting.  That’s how we seeded our project.  For example, we found someone who was tagging photos of election themes.

There are people now beginning to contact us and are interested.  There are people creating new flickr accounts to join our efforts and we're teaching them how to tag.   Then shift to the new people who aren’t tagging or creating video.

6.  Tools, particularly video, need to be become easier

The biggest challenge is that I have to record in video and then upload.  YouTube needs a flashbased video recorder built into the interface.  It has to be one click and easy to do it.  Also, with flickr, people need to realize that they you need more than 5 photos to be live.  Also, YouTube has a delay.

I posted a video with a follow up question and Steve says he will answer it next week.  So, stay tuned!

Participatory Media: Who Owns the Work You Share?

This is an excellent analysis of the issue of corporate control and ownership of your participatory media.  Asking all the right questions:

How far can these corporate facilitators of the new "user generated content" be trusted to safeguard the democratic roots from which they have grown, and how might their vested interests interfere with the fundamental messages being communicated by this empowered audience?

Here's some of the answers:

The massive popularity of sites such as YouTube, with its millions of visitors per day, is in no small part due to the ease with which it allows anyone to rapidly share video with huge audiences that might never otherwise encounter their work. But a closer look at its license reveals that users sign over a great deal of control when they choose to share video through the service. Robert Cringely writes:

''Here are the exact words of the new YouTube license:

"...by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business...in any media formats and through any media channels."

The YouTube license says "you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions." And while that's true, the license explicitly gives them the right to do whatever they want with your video. They say they don't have the rights to sell users' content, but the wording says otherwise and there's nothing in the license to prohibit them from doing so.''

While paying lip service to the democratic, free sharing of information, then, services like YouTube reserve the right to co-opt, edit, repackage and sell on the citizen produced media that they distribute. Likewise, sites such as MySpace gather information on their users to use in future marketing campaigns, or sell on to interested parties. The choice of which service you use to distribute your homemade productions can, then, have a huge impact on how they are accessed and who has control over them, not to mention the ways that they might be swamped in advertising, sidelined by sponsored content or used to promote products and services entirely beyond your control.

Young Caucasus Women Project

Britt Bravo and I have the pleasure of being the blogging mentors this week on the Young Caucasus Women Project.  Our assignment was to write an essay on the topic of "Who's your favorite artist (visual, dancer, performer, writer, or musician) and why?" 

Here are our posts:

Britt Bravo:  Art for Social Change
Beth Kanter:  Are You An Artist too?

The young women were given the same assignment and part of our tasks as Mentors was read and comment on their work.  It has been a delightful experience and it's also helped me expand my world music collection.  They've recommended some terrific musicians and music from their countries.

Here's the posts - read and comment:

Leyla has a hard time choosing one favorite artist.

Dilara likes Alicia Keyes and views her as a role model.

Remziyye has a number of artists that she enjoys and describes why.

Elene discusses Kurt Cobain and the impact that his music has had on her.

Siran appreciates what art brings to her life.

Sheyda discusses an Azerbaijani jazz singer.

Technorati Tags: net2, nptech

Nancy White and the Seven Online Competencies at Northern

Nancy White at Northern Conference gave an amazing presentation/interactive lecture on the important assets of online interaction.  The title was "Nancy White and the Seven Competencies of Online Interaction.   I wasn't there, but Alan Levine captured it on a mp3 file and blogher Bev Traynor took some notes.   All we need are the PowerPoint slides to complete our virtual experience.   I think she is wearing her purple pajamas, but not sure ... 

Update:  Nancy reports that she didn't wear the purple PJs and here PPT slides can be found here.  There was a tip in the comments on how to compress PPT slides.

Here's Nick Noake's remix.

Technorati Tags: nptech, onlinecommunities

Global Mentoring: 74 More to Go!

I met Lucy Hooberman, of BBC R&D at the Global s London Summit where I learned about her pledge on pledgebank.  (There was a lunchtime presentation of pledgebank).   

I, Lucy Hooberman, will mentor a minimum of two people in the developing world in the area of my skills base and expertise (media, communications, broadcasting , democratic media building, participatory media, community video). I will do this for free for a minimum of six months (in my free time). The mentoring will be in person or via email/skype and the mentoring connections will be established by a website and database that I am willing to take responsibility for creating but only if 250 other  people will mentor a minimum of two people in their skills.'

I signed up, but in a email this morning Lucy needs 47 more pledges to go!   So, if this mentoring project strikes your interest - sign up!

Technorati Tags: nptech, net2

Mobile Community: Definition

This term was new to me, mobile community and immediately caught my attention.  The definition:

A network of interpersonal ties that provides sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, social identity, and which always connects its members regardless of where they go.

Here's the blog and community forming around this topic.