Last week I facilitated a workshop at the Kellogg Action Lab's College of Consultants Convening. Kudos to Ron McKinley, Tim Brostrom, and Mai Neng Moua for doing such an excellent job of hosting and organizing this event. I wish I could have attended the other workshops that were taking place at the same time as mine - from David La Piana on Strategic Planning and Dione Alexander from the Nonprofit Finance Fund.
My slides and other resources are on the wiki. It was a great opportunity to hear from consultants the questions, concerns, and challenges of their clients face related to social media in a strategic planning context. These folks are experts in strategic planning, financial management, facilitation, board development, fundraising - virtually all levels of nonprofit operation and capacity building. I learned a tremendous amount from the participants comments and questions.
It was also wonderful to see some familiar faces like Thom Clark from Community Media Workshop - an organization that has done so much to inspire and help nonprofits leverage the power for social media. (Thom was kind enough to do an interview with me about their ning use that I will publish in the next few days). I also reconnected with some colleagues I haven't seen in years - like Julia Fabris and Carol Coren.
I really appreciated the post "People in the Real World" that Chris Brogan had today about being a social media translator and the fact that "that even though it seems like lots of us are deeply passionate about this space, most folks don’t exactly understand what we’re talking about." As I said to those in the workshops who were new to social media, I appreciate the power of newbies.
Chris ends his post with some inspiration for all of us who are bridges to social media in our organization, industry, or field:
Teach. Connect. Bridge. Humanize. Human-size. Make it about the people who carry the fire down from the mountain, not the fire itself.
What an incredible, "omnibus" presentation. I'd love to see this in person sometime. Love all the new dog photos, too. Thanks so much for featuring an example from my organization! :)
Something that I'd love to read about on your blog: what are audience's reactions to your amazing content? Are they speechless, blown away? Or do they immediately spring into action? Something else? It'd be really interesting to hear about how some of these folks have moved forward with their efforts after you've inspired them.
Posted by: Jonathon D. Colman | October 11, 2008 at 10:34 PM
Jonathon:
A couple of things. The slides are more for my preparation - and as a leave behind. I often don't get through all of them - and skip around sometimes depending on the levels in the room.
I tend to use slides as a jumping off point for discussion in the room - I always have a mix of levels. So, try to keep it at a basic level and then allow the people with more experience to share what they know.
I get a good response. I do a just three words exercise sometimes at the end - just three words about how you feel. (I get -- inspired, spinning with ideas, overwhelmed in a good way, many questions, opened eyes, etc)
That's why I always create a wiki as a leave behind with lots of resources for people and I do a reflection piece at the end re: what is one thing you will put into action. In the old days, I used to have people write that on a postcard and put in their address - then I'd collect them and mail them in 6 weeks. I do a variation on this with email.
I always get a group of folks in the room - it's getting smaller - who have never really dived into social media - heard the word blog - but just don't understand it. They are also those folks who tend to get overloaded with a lot of information. When I do a longer workshop, I usually do small groups - and let more experienced people work together on an organizational strategy - and I facilitate the group of newcomers - mostly giving them basic definitions and examples and starter steps for personal exploration.
At BlogHer over the weekend, I was teaching a basics workshop in listening - and I had different levels - so if you have a basic level presentation - and you don't add the answers - you can ask the audience to participate - that's what happened -and I'm going to track down the live blog post.
Posted by: Beth Kanter | October 12, 2008 at 07:09 AM