Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

How To Make A Back Channel Light Up Like Clark Griswald's House

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to do a Webinar called "Social Media for Trainers: A Bag of Tricks" over at the Engage 365 Online Community site.  I blogged about the content last week.  I had sooo much fun creating and delivering it.  And, in looking over the evaluations and reviews, I think the participants did too.   I got an email from hosts Chris Uschan and Tony Veroeven who shared some numbers, "We had 190 attend and ask 140 questions in a back channel that looked like Clark Griswald's House at Christmas!"

I had to look up the Clark Griswald reference (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), but you might be scratching your head wondering what the heck is a back channel?   It's a live chat during a workshop or presentation and these days, it mostly taking place on Twitter.

Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Back Channel is a must read for anyone presenting at conferences or planning trainings in age of social media. In fact, we gave away a couple of free copies.

I've been experimenting with integrating social media into instruction for the past five years, so the webinar was a great opportunity to reflect on practice.  I covered these three topics:

• Why: Social media integrated into instruction - Pass or Fail?
• What: The art of social instructional design
• How: 6 Tools and Tips

If you didn't have a chance to participate, you'll find the slides, resource materials, and an archived recording over at the webinar wiki. But what's even better is that this wasn't an isolated training, it was part of an new online community called Engage365 which runs on a platform called "Conference 2.0"

This online community, Engage365, is a place to network and share knowledge about how to integrate the use of social media for events. It has 400 members.  The community is hosted by  Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish in collaboration with Omnipress

This is a lively community, mostly because of the expertise of people like Maddie, Lindy, and Tony who are skillful community managers.  However, the platform offers some excellent social features.  It integrates online community discussion forums, structured learning like webinars,  content, with participants' social profiles.   I like how it aggregate the social ant trails of the community.  And, how you click on your "friends" profiles and see their social streams. It isn't a walled garden.

Here's some reflections on the Webinar:

• Overcoming the Strawberry Jam Problem With Social Design
  

I emphasized the importance of knowing your audience.  In the presentation,  I showed folks how to easily survey the audience using google forms.   However, some webinar platforms have a real-time polling feature, the virtual equivalent of asking people to raise their hands if ...  The poll revealed that revealed 40% were beginners/novices and 60% intermediate or experts.  We had similar spread for those having experience designing and delivering trainings.

One participant described this as the "strawberry jam" problem that if the training is trying to cover too much content and too many different levels, than it gets spread too thin.   From my experience in doing technology trainings, no matter well you describe levels and content, you always get a range of experience, comfort, and skill. 

I think you can design around it.  How?  By having the whole group understand at the beginning that there are different levels and how they might react to the material.  Then, I encourage beginners to ask their questions and acknowledge that the content may feel fast-paced - and that's why I've included tutorials on the wiki.  For the intermediate users, I put them to work sharing their knowledge.  After all, teaching others improves retention and helps consolidates one's own knowledge.  Otherwise, more advanced people might get bored or start ask more detailed technical questions.  This is where a back channel like Twitter can be really useful.

Since the engage365 platform is very porous, when I tweeted about the webinar, a lot of colleagues joined.  And they have lots of wisdom to share, so the backchannel transcript had some gems. I was delighted to see that some of my colleagues were excited to try some of these ideas in their trainings and Kivi Leroux Miller suggested that we do a session at NTC this year called "Online Trainings That Don't Suck," so watch out.

• Social Instructional Design
  

I think I made up the term "social instructional design" which is how you integrate social media tools into your workshop AND how you plan for engagement during delivery.  What I wasn't able to find was any research that spoke to the pros and cons, in a scientific way, of integrating social media into instruction.  I was able to find some research and pieces about laptops in the classroom.  Know of any?

My own experience as a learner and teacher is that social tools deepen the learning.   But it is definitely a matter of personal learning styles and treating your participants as adults who can decide how they learn best.  As the instructor, there are clearly benefits - like being able to better read the room, getting really useful insights from participants, and improving your materials. 

• Key Instructional Concepts As Tweets

One piece of advice that I learned from Cliff Atkinson's book was to think about your presentation key points as tweets so people can retweet them.  The book has a cool worksheet to help you plan these out.   It's also good to look at your Twitter transcript so you can see what resonated with participants.  Here's a few points that I picked up that I will integrate into the next time I do this:

• Integrating social media into your instructional practice will change how your teach
• Be prepared to improvise more and drop the script if it isn't working with the audience
• Live in a tool for a month, and experiment with only one tool at time
• Learning the tools is like learning a music instrument, start slowly and work up speed and practice
• Don't hold all your questions until the end, take Twitter breaks and allow for questions

• Understand the art of repurposing your materials to save time

There were a lot of questions along the lines of "how much time does this take?"   Why create a wiki for each workshop.   I remembered some terrific blog posts that Kivi Leroux Miller wrote (here and here) about repurposing content and this definitely applies to instructional materials.  All I can say that if you design for repurposing, it takes less time.

When I design a workshop, I start with a simple framework.  Why, What, How.    The what usually has some sort of grid.  For this workshop, it was thinking about the trainer's tasks before, during, and after - and then how social media tool might enhance those tasks.

• The Place for the Nitty-Gritty How To Questions

There are always nitty gritty what button do I click questions or a specific question about whether a tool can do xyz.  If you are doing a webinar that is why, what, and little bit of how - there is not time for that.  One thing I do is include a list of links to the best how-to and tutorials.  It is also good to have people in the back channel who can answer those questions or do a follow up session.

For follow up sessions, these are best designed as "Ask the Expert" or get your questions answers.  I love the way NTEN does these sessions.  They're done on the phone and chat.  An NTEN staff person interviews the expert on a conference call line, while people listen and post questions in the back channel.  And then an NTEN moderator in the chat answers the questions or asks them outloud, selecting the questions in a logical order.

I could imagine a two-part session.   The why, what, and how and then a second ask the expert session.

Here's a few questions that were posted in the chat during the Webinar:

• What is Beth's delicious user name? (http://delicious.com/kanter)
• Can we get the full site for the twitter statistics?  (Yes check here)
• Can you add audio with slideshare? (yes)
• Are the three wiki tools listed free? (yes, pbwiki, wikispaces, and wetpaint have free versions)
• For webinars - do you have a favorite webinar tool? (I use what the host uses.  I like webinar software that facilitates learning between participants)
• How do you install the delicious tool to google chrome? (look here)
• Any advice about using Google Wave? (here's info about using it as backchannel)
• Have you ever used a wiki during webinar for interactivity? (once and it was disaster, best to use to supplement discussion in between phone calls)

• Extending the learning

I always ask reflective questions at the end of each training - these are 1)  What's one idea you'll put into practice?  2) What's one resource you need to move forward?   This is useful to ask just as the training is over, but even richer if you can ask again the next morning after everyone has had a good night's sleep.  

Learning gets richer when they marinate.   Unfortunately, we don't often have a whole day and half to connect with people we are training.   So, here is where social media -- tools like Twitter can help you connect again with your learners.

What are your thoughts about integrating social media into your trainings?  What have you learned that works or doesn't work?

Guest Post by Brooke McMillan: How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media To Animate Its Community

Note from Beth:  The Lance Armstrong Foundation, known by its nickname “Livestrong”, provides a  network of support for people diagnosed with cancer and their families.  The foundation's mission is to “inspire and empower people affected by cancer” by helping find the information, support, and strength they need to fight cancer.

An early adopter of social media, the Lance Armstrong Foundation leverages social media to engage, connect, and celebrate its community.  The LAF goes beyond a mere presence on social networks, it has taken a maven approach, engaging deeply with supporters with a regularly updated blog,  MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter presences. 

The LAF uses its Facebook fan page and Twitter profile as a way to directly connect with cancer survivors on a personal basis and animate the community.   I asked Brooke McMillan, Online Community Evangelist, for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, to share some examples of how they engage with their community.

October 2nd is LIVESTRONG Day- a day we set aside each year to focus on cancer survivors, advocacy efforts and community participation. October 2nd is also the anniversary of our founder’s, Lance Armstrong, cancer diagnosis. The foundation used social media heavily to promote this day.

Here are a few examples of how we engage with our community to make this day a success:

1. Encourage your community's creativity and creative expression

We use the our blog to share stories about "out of the box" LIVESTRONG Day events and ideas.  Take for example, this post about celebrating "Livestrong Day at Work."

2.  Build partnerships with corporate sponsors

Buca Di Beppo signed on to host LIVESTRONG Day events. We, in turn, gave them heavy publicity. Radio Shack is on board as well as Nike and our other corporate partners.

3. Let the community give to the cause in different ways

We asked people to dedicate their Facebook statues to mark the date and give suggested "tweets" to share their followers.

4. Provide a platform for people in the community to support one another

We try to provide as many opportunities for our community members to provide support to one another by telling their stories on our Facebook Fan Page wall and sharing their cancer experiences.  This bonding and sharing creates a stronger connection to the LAF.

5. Offer ways for the community to create something together

We designed an interactive map function on our website that shows where all the events are taking place. It has allowed me to proactively reply to folks that may not necessarily want to host an event, but would like to attend one in their area. It has also allowed me to highlight some of the really hot areas of the map—like the UK, India, China, US, etc. We had 1000+ events on all 7 continents (yes including Antarctica) and in all 50 states. 

6.  Create opportunities for the community to create social content for your web site

We asked our supporters to upload photos from their events to Flickr and videos to Youtube.  We ask our supporters to tag their photos in a special way so we can easily pull and republish this content on together on the organization’s Supporter’s page.   

7.  Create opportunities for activism

On LIVESTRONG Day we ask our US based supporters to take action and show their support for healthcare reform. We will be sending out an email to our constituents, Facebook blasts, Facebook ads, tweets and more to sign the petition for healthcare reform. The petition will be on our advocacy website LIVESTRONGAction.org

Brooke McMillan is the Online Community Evangelist for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Wiser Earth: A (free) Platform for Networks of Networks and Communities of Action

I'm slowly inching back into a routine which includes blogging.  I wanted to share with you some of what I learned today.

As part of my research at the Packard Foundation, I've had the opportunity to attend a lot of briefings and discussions related to social media and network effectiveness.  This morning Peggy Duvette and Angus Parker from WiserEarth spent some time at the Foundation sharing their experiences in building successful online communities of action and networks of networks on the WiserEarth online platform. 

I appreciated the introduction from Peggy and Angus because while I was aware of WiserEarth, I wasn't entirely clear what it offered and the benefits of using the platform.  Now, I'm a fan!

Some history. WiserEarth's vision comes from NCI’s Executive Director, Paul Hawken, who recognized its need when researching his latest book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming.

“I knew that if we could understand the connections and visualize the breadth of global efforts on behalf of social and environmental justice, we would recognize the largest movement the world has ever seen. WiserEarth is where this movement can begin to see itself.”

WiserEarth is more than a "green" online social network for individuals, although you join as an individual.  The vision is to help the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship to connect, collaborative, share knowledge, and build alliances.   The WiserEarth platform does this through a variety of strategies.

First, there is the Directory - the largest international directory of non-profits and socially responsible organizations - approximately 110,000 from 243 countries.  (There is also an Open API so this information can be repurposed on other areas of the web.)  You'll also find a detailed taxonomy of issue areas related to social justice and environmental restoration.  

But the most interesting part of WiseEarth platform is the groups feature.  It allows groups of individuals or organizations or a mix to set up a space online to engage in discussion, share resources, or collaborative on projects.   What's nice about this feature is that has a lot of flexibility - so you can set up private spaces, semi-private spaces, or public spaces.    It's designed for networks of networks and communities of action, whether the network or community consists of people or organizations.

Some of the groups have been set up by organizations to convene workgroups of staff or collaborations across organizations and need a secure online space to do their work. For example, The Nature Conservancy is part of a group called the US Fire Learning Network group.  The features inside of groups include discussion board, file archive, wiki, events, a map, and a number typical features to support online collaborations.   

An example of "semi-private" group, is the Permaculture Alliance of California.  This was initially set up by an individual passionate about permaculture and wanted to pull together all the various grassroots, ngos, and individuals working on the issue.  

If you're like me, you're probably wondering what the heck is permaculture.   Luckily, there are some subject matter experts here at the Foundation who answered: 

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.

The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems.

While originating as an agro-ecological design theory, permaculture has developed a large international following. This 'permaculture community' continues to expand on the original ideas, integrating a range of ideas of alternative culture, through a network of publications, permaculture gardens, intentional communities, training programs, and internet forums. In this way, permaculture has become both a design system and a loosely defined philosophy or lifestyle ethic.

So, what's very unique about this platform is that is flexible enough to support activists who want to weave together their personal networks around a particular sustainability issue.  It can also support the work of organizations and networks of organizations.   But, the value-added is that you find and connect with other people and organizations that you may not know about - just as you would on a social network like Facebook or Twitter.  But the value here is that all members are interested in sustainability.  

 

When you set up an account, it is much like setting up a profile on a social network.  Except, that when you connect with others, you invite them to join your personal network.  On your profile, similar to Facebook, you can see your friends photos and names, but you can also navigate through your social graph visually.  Above is the visual representation of my social graph on WiserEarth - it shows me groups, interest areas, and friends. I click on a name and explore their network.

Peggy and Angus shared some tips for online community building.  These include:

• What are your goals? Pick three things you want to do together.
• The importance of a technology steward or online moderator
• Think about what you want to accomplish and pick the tools/features to support that work
• You will probably be using a variety of tools
• The importance of piloting an online space before going to scale(here's an example)

Guest Post by Rebecca Leaman: Social Media for Non-Profits: 26 Great Slideshare Presentations You Can Use

Submitted by Rebecca Leaman, publisher of Get your sanity back, Wild Apricot's non-profit technology blog

Great new presentations on social media are coming out almost daily, now that we're deep into conference season, and many are directed specifically to the needs of non-profits. If you've been thinking of launching or expanding your organization in social media, Slideshare is a good starting point for information and advice. But it can be time-consuming to pick through a wide range of slideshows to find those that are up-to-date, actionable, and appropriate to nonprofits.

Here's a hand-picked selection of presentations to get you started.

Some of these have become popuar standards, while others are new material that you may not have seen before. In fact, a few of these presentations were just made available in the past few days! And, as always, if you have a favorite social media presentation to recommend to other nonprofits, please tell us about it in the comments.

Social Media for Non-Profits: Overview
What is social media, why should a non-profit care, and who has the time for it anyway? Beth Dunn’s presentation covers the basics, complete with case studies, and suggests Quick start and Advanced Quick Start tactics to launch your nonprofit into social media.

Social Media for Non Profits and Special Causes
John Sheridan’s presentation at at Pod Camp Halifax 2009 gives an overview of social media and social networking, with plenty of non-profit examples.

Social Media for Non Profits
Primal Media’s sideshow is loaded with information on trends, recent statistics, and examples of social media used by nonprofits.

Social Media for Non-Profits: Succeeding in a Social World
Beeline Labs made this presentation to a United Way chapter in Boston: see especially the “10 Guiding Principles” and “Most Common Mistakes.”

Social Networking Strategy

How To Think Like A Nonprofit Social Media Genius
Beth Kanter breaks it down:

• Understand organizational change theory
• Use the Rule of Thirds (1/3 web presence, 1/3 one-way, 1/3 social)
• Listen first
• Build relationships with influencers
• Make it easy to re-mix your content
• No instant gratification — results require effort over time
• Use metrics to discover what works and what doesn’t

Creating Your Organization’s Social Media Strategy
Beth Kanter walks through the process of developing a non-profit social media strategy, with many practical examples.

Nonprofit Soc Media Overview
Maren Hogan says “These are the things that I would do”: here’s a step-by-step overview of the basic tools and tactics of social media, starting with a website and blog.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Social Network Fundraising is a presentation by Justin Perkins, Director of Nonprofit Services at Care2.com, featuring research on Social Network Fundraising and use of new media for nonprofit marketing — and an excellent analysis of the ROI for nonprofit social networking campaigns.

Using Social Media to Increase Website Traffic
A look at the return on investment (ROI) for using Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com to increase visitors to your website, using the National Wildlife Federation as a case study.

E-Metrics: Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community
Beth Kanter’s presentation advocates “ROI thinking” to help build a community around your blog: using measurements to tell you what works and what doesn’t.

Tips and Case Studies
Who’s Doing What, Where, and How?

• An Introduction to Facebook and Twitter for Nonprofits (Nathan Wright)
• A New Tool for Online Campaigns: How to Show, Tell, and Activate with a Video-centric Microsite (Michael Hoffman)
• Blogging for Nonprofits (Shirley Sexton)
• Energizing Word of Mouth through Social Media (Lee Aase / Mayo Clinic)
• Getting The Word Out About Your Cause With Blogs, Podcasts & Social Networks (Britt Bravo)
• Googe 101 for Nonprofits (Mike Heslin / Google)
• Practical Examples of Social Media for Non-Profits (Laura Lacy)
• ROI of Listening: America Red Cross Case Study (Beth Kanter)
• Sharing Your Story: Podcasting (Britt Bravo)
• Social Media and Social Change in New Zealand (Simon Young)
• Social Media for Non Profits - Tapping into the motivations of The People to change the world around us (Ed Schipul)
• Social Media for Social Good (Ian Schafer)
• Social Media Campaign Report: Tour de Kids (Sarah Allen)
• Social Media Marketing for Non-Profits (Laura Lacy)
• Twitter.org: What, why, who and how for Nonprofit Organizations using Twitter (Amy Sample Ward)
• Upgrading Your E-Newsletter (CanadaHelps.org)

Tip: Whenever you view a slideshow at SlideShare, do scroll down below the presentation area to check for helpful notes on the slides and/or interesting information in the comments thread. And remember — SlideShare is a social networking site, itself, so take a few minutes to explore its features and consider signing up to connect, share, comment, or just to build a library of your own favorite presentations!

Can you add to this list of resources?

Does your nonprofit have a social media how-to or a case study presentation to share?
Please tell us about it and leave a link in the comments.

This article was originally posted on Wild Apricot at http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2009/05/12/social-media-for-non-profits-26-great-slideshare-presentations-you-can-use.aspx by Rebecca Leaman:

Rebecca Leaman is the primary writer for Wild Apricot's non-profit technology blog.

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.

Newsmastering for Professional Development 2.0 Dashboard: Online Community Management Aggregator and Report

My colleague Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web gave me a sneak peak at their Guide to Online Community Management Report and Aggregator.   This is a premium service and it well worth the investment.

The report condenses and summarizes the best thinking about online community management from a cadre of experts - those are online community manager practitioners and gurus.   If you're new to the topic, it is a great way to get up to speed and will would definitely help you inform your strategy.

The other half of the guide is an online component to help you keep up to date.  It's called the RWW Community Management Aggregator.   It is a mashup of RSS feeds on one page that includes:

• The ten best or "must read" blog posts from selected blogs.    The filtering of these posts is handled automatically is based on the number of comments, inbound links, and other signs of engagement.  (Hmm .. sounds like a mashup of RSS run through Postrank)
• The Twitter accounts from a small group of gurus/practitioners in online community management
• Blog roll
• Exportable OPML feeds for all blogs and hot posts

It strikes me that this a fantastic model for professional development 2.0 for online community managers or what education technology bloggers like Stephen Downes call "Personal Learning Environment."  Or a listening post (it's what I have patched together for my blogging listening post, although I it isn't a pretty as Read/Write Web's Online Community Management Aggregator)

It is a premium service, you have to pay $299 - but if I was planning an online community strategy or a practitioner, I'd sign up for this service in a heartbeat because setting up such a system is very time intensive.  Also, if I was new to the field - it's really overwhelming to play catch up.  The combination of a synthesis of knowledge from the past year or so, along with a way to step into the river of news about online communitymanagement best practices without drowning is worth the price of admission.  

 I'm also thinking about the recent social network nonprofits study and this is exactly the type of strategy advice that some nonprofits need to get better results with their online communities.

You learn more about the report and aggregator here.

Study Provides A Baseline for Nonprofit Use of Social Networks

During the NTC, ThePort Network, Inc, NTEN, and Common Knowledge released results of a survey that examines the use of social networking as a marketing and fundraising tool.  There was also a webinar presentation of the results.   The survey polled 978 nonprofit professionals about their organizations’ use of commercial social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), as well as their own hosted social networking communities.

Some definitions they used in the study:

"House Social Network" refers to a socialnetworking community built on a nonprofit's own web site. 

"Commercial Social Network" An online community platform owned and operated by a corporation such as Facebook.

Where do branded social networks like Ning sites fall? 

The survey provides us with a baseline of social network use by nonprofits.

Some highlights:

• Capacity:  Nonprofits are committing staff and budgets to support social network projects and presences, although budgets are small with four-fifths of respondents reporting at least one-quarter of a full-time staff person (10 hours per week) to social network strategy implementation. More than half of respondents expect their staffing or budgets to increase over the next 12 months. According to the survey, nonprofits are more likely to grow expertise from within than use outside help. 

• Strategy: Nonprofits prefer to use more traditional communications and marketing tactics to promote their social network presence – prioritizing web site, email list and events to get the word out about their online communities. 

• Policy: The communications and marketing departments are most likely to own the social network project, with fundraising and executive management the next most common boosters of the nonprofit’s social network projects.

• ROI: Very few nonprofit survey respondents are generating real revenue on commercial social networks like Facebook or branded social networks on their web sites. On Facebook, about 39.9% of respondents have raised money via fundraising, but 29.1% have raised $500 or less over the past 12 months.  On social networks on the organization’s web site, 25.2% of nonprofits survey respondents are fundraising and 1/3 of these fundraisers accumulated $10,000 or more over the last year.

Some thoughts

Capacity

A few months ago, I came up with a somewhat arbitrary framework to answer the age-old question, "How Much Time Does It Take To Do Social Media?" and contributed it to the WeAreMedia Wiki.   I laid it out in terms of type of project and minimum amount of time to accomplish.  I scaled the projects in terms of crawl, walk, run and fly.    For social networking projects which is all about online community management, I estimated 20 hours to get results.   (Those are flying projects)

Community management is more than blasting out messages to members of a Facebook group or posting or streaming content onto your house social network.  It's NOT about "Here's my crap and now let's talk about it."   The work flow is about relationship building.  I was quoted as saying that USAToday. That takes time and skills.

So, it isn't necessarily a function of how much staff time is allocated, although I believe 20 hours is probably the minimum.  It's how that time is being spent.  Is it spent deploying "traditional marketing tactics" or the hard work of community building one relationship at a time.  If not the latter, chances are the effort won't be as successful.

Strategy

My colleague, Allison Fine, in her analysis of the study wondered why groups would choose to set up a house social network rather than use a commercial site and what are the benefits and drawbacks of doing so?  There's a lot of advice available on how to make that decision (see slide 30), but there's a lot to be learned about the steps nonprofits are taking to develop their online community strategy on social networks or house social networks and a greater understanding of the life cycle of a nonprofit's social network community.

What isn't being discussed or described, except in self-organized pockets of the social web
is the overlap between communities and networks.  Remember self-organized networks of people coming together in a moment don't just happen all alone, as Clay Shirky reminded us - there's a core in the center.  

Another point on strategy is whether or not the social network (house or otherwise) is using more of a "cross-posting" strategy versus community building effort - and having an understanding of the pros/cons and potential results.


Policy

According to the survey, the communications and marketing departments are most likely to own the social network.  I wonder how or if  silo culture is or is not getting in the way of better results and the whole nonprofit organization owning its social networking effort.  We are seeing more and more nonprofits develop effective social networking policies that may pave the way for more higher returns if culture is considered.  


Metrics

At least the survey did not proclaim that lack of impressive dollar amounts raised as a failure of nonprofits using social networks.  There's a lot more learning -- especially around connecting social networking results to real change that needs to be happened.  And that won't happen because scarcity mindsets keep us focused on using social media for other objectives.

The survey asked which metrics respondents used in their definition of success for their “house social networks” (social networking community built on a nonprofit’s web site). Respondents indicated that they used number of members and the amount of user-generated content, with fundraising was a lowest ranked metric. What’s unclear is whether or not nonprofits in the survey are measuring engagement and return on relationships.  Of course, that would assume a broader use of networks than just fundraising and marketing, take for example this recent article about social networks and nonprofits from USAToday.

The study provides a great baseline for nonprofits and social networking activity from here forward.

Research Studies of Nonprofit and Social Media Adoption

Inside the Social Networking Nonprofit Study by Influential Marketing Blog

Overbook Foundation Web 2.0 Study by Allison Fine
Nonprofit Technology Survey from Robert Morris University (all technology, includes 1-2 questions for social media use)
Blogging for the Hearts of Donors by Eric Mattson
Social Media Adoption Study by Eric Mattson
Social Media for Social Causes Study

Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities

Learn Trends Digital Habitats

View more presentations from Nancy White.

Most of my work in social media and nonprofits has been focused on the how to integrate a social media strategy as part of an organization's external communications plan or "outward" facing to engage audiences, consumers, and supporters.  There is also the use of social media tools (and online collaboration tools) to support inward facing work, including online groups, communities of practice, and internal coordination or learning activities of organizations working as pure networks.  

My colleagues Nancy White, Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith have been diving deep in the latter for the past couple of years for the research for their much anticipated book Digital Habitats. 

Yesterday, when I got the email announcement CpSquared (The Community of Practice on Communities of Practice) about its new wiki, I went over to explore.   This evolving wiki is already quite rich in useful resources and at this stage has three areas:

• A Communities of Practice Bibliography
• Wikis for Communities of Practice conference
• Technology for Communities project

The Technology for Communities project was started off by Nancy, John, and Etienne.   What you'll find on the wiki is an online community toolbox for online communities of practice work.  They've created a tool template and there are over 30 tool categories using the templates.  Because it is a wiki, it is work in progress, with some pages complete and others in progress.

The array of tools available for inward facing work incorporates many of the same social media tools one could use for external communications such as blogs, wikis, and podcasting, but also includes online collaboration tools including teleconferencing tools, email list tools, and others.

When I explore a toolbox, I have two impulses.  The first is to feed my inner geek who wants to explore the tools and how to use them.  My second impulse is to understand the context - what do you need to think about to apply the tools successfully?   You need to do both,  but as colleagues suggest via Twitter and as Nancy, John, and Etienne lay out in their step-by-step practitioner guide - don't start with the tools.

On The Digital Habits: Stewarding Technology Communities blog, Nancy, John, and Etienne have compiled a Action Notebook with detailed worksheets to help you make decisions about selecting tools in the context.  The big steps:

• Preamble: reflection on the role of tech steward
• Step 1: understanding your community, its characteristics, orientation, and current configuration
• Step 2: providing technology: choosing a strategy, selecting a solution, and planning the change
• Step 3: stewarding technology in use, in the life of the community and at its closing

(This is a different thinking framework than you would use for a social media strategy for external communications but there are some parallels.)

In Step 1, after you have a full understanding of your community's characteristics, you need to examine its current orientation.   The guide has a check list of different orientations asking your to rate each one in terms of your own community.  Nancy White does analysis of the orientation of a bird-watching community and gives a brief summary of what each orientation means.

• Meetings – in person or online gatherings with an agenda (i.e. monthly topic calls)
• Projects – interrelated tasks with specific outcomes or products (i.e. Identifying a new practice and refining it.)
• Access to expertise – learning from experienced practitioners (i.e. access to subject matter experts)
• Relationship – getting to know each other (i.e. the annual potluck dinner!)
• Context – private, internally-focused or serving an organization, or the wider world (i.e. what is kept within the community, what is shared with the wider world)
• Community cultivation – Recruiting, orienting and supporting members, growing the community (i.e. who made sure you’re the new person was invited in and met others?)
• Individual participation – enabling members to craft their own experience of the community (i.e. access material when and how you want it.)
• Content – a focus on capturing and publishing what the community learns and knows (i.e. a newsletter, publishing an article, etc.)
• Open ended conversation – conversations that continue to rise and fall over time without a specific goal (i.e. listserv or web forum, Twitter, etc.)

To see larger diagram

Inspired by Nancy's analysis of a bird watcher's community orientation, I thought I do a little analysis of the WeAreMedia year 1 as a reflection tool for thinking about the next phase.  You can also use it to plan for engagement, stewarding of the community, and selecting tools.  Nancy includes a cheat sheet called a "spidergram activity"

All this to ask, is your nonprofit using social media for "inward" facing activities?  What is working?  How did you select your tools?

Update:  After some back and forth with Nancy White on Twitter, she did this follow up post about the spidergram activity.

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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• Are You In The Tribe? What Seth Godin Teach's Us About Creating Communities
• Social Networking - Go Where the Fish Are!

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?

Connectipedia Launches at 2:00 PM PST - Why don't we have Internet in airplanes?

The Meyer Memorial Trust is launching Connectpedia today at 2:00 PM PST - darn, I'll be in an airplane headed to Chicago.   Here's the description:

What if there was a place where we could all exchange what we learn as we go about our daily business? What if nonprofits could see the data and information that foundations use in their due diligence process? What if organizations and people could easily determine which foundations' interests match their project goals? What if foundations could quickly see what groups are working on an issue they are investigating? And so on...

Well, we are building such a place. A place where people and organizations can connect about subjects and places. A place called connectipedia...

Who is going via the Web? Who will be there live?  If you are, please drop a comment with a URL to your blog post or thoughts ...  I'm going to have to catch the archived version and write something up ..

 

Blog Day and One Web Day: Are You Participating?

August 31, 2007 is the third annual Blog Day.  BlogDay is focused on getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest.    On that day, you write a post recommending 5 blogs to read.  You are suppose to notify the bloggers, write a brief description of their blogs, and tag your post with BlogDay2007.  It's simple to do and a great way to connect with other bloggers and pass along some link love.

On that day, I'll be in Cambodia at the first Cambodian Blogger Summit Conference.  Since the event is dedicated to BlogDay,  I'm sure that my BlogDay post will point to five (or more) Cambodian BlogHers.  I plan on participating in a small group session called "Gender and Blogging" facilitated by Sopheap Chak.  (I enjoyed Sopheap's recent post about public education about not littering in Cambodia)

After I get back in September, OneWebDay is next community web event on my calendar scheduled for September 22, 2007.  OneWebDay is a celebration of the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.  Check out this mini-documentary at dotsub for more about the event.

Susan Crawford is the founder of OneWebDay.   She’s a law professor in New York City, a member of the ICANN board, and a fellow of the Center for Democracy & Technology, and the Yale Information Society Project.  She teaches communications law and cyberlaw, and writes frequently about these subjects on her blog and in published articles.  In researching the origins of OneWebDay, I learned that BlogHer Mary Hodder was involved in some of the initial evangelism for the day.

In a recent interview about OneWebDay on Juxtaviews, Susan described some of the barriers to making a better Web:

In thinking about how to use OWD for your own purposes, it seems to me (personally) that you should keep in mind that these obstructions are different in different parts of the world. For some people, just getting access is an obstacle. For others, it’s highspeed access. For others, it’s symmetric access (uploading and downloading). Censorship/gatekeepers of all kinds are concerns, particularly at the infrastructure layer, all over the world.

Nonprofits can help make the web “just a little better than it was before”  simply by taking part: it’s up to you to decide how.   The event is on the NpTech Group Upcoming Calendar (the tag for the nonprofit technology field), so I suspect there will be some creative ideas that nonprofit techies will contribute to the event.

Building Online Communities with Drupal and Dave Briggs has a new blog!

 

David Briggs has a new job and as a result as a new blog called FEconnect.

FEconnect is a blog about using social media and web 2.0 technology in building communities in the further education sector. It’s also a platform for building online social tools to provide practical benefit as well as demonstrating the power of the web as a platform for community engagement.

His post, "Building Online Communities With Drupal" is an excellent primer for non-geeks.

Update 8/24 - Here's Some Reverse Linktribution:  TechSoup Blog points to Building Online Communities With Drupal

From Austraila to Dubai ...

My colleague Mike Seyfang thought there might be someone in my network interested in this opportunity.

I would appreciate it if you could bring the blog post below to the attention of anyone who might be interested:
http://silkcharm.blogspot.com/2007/07/job-community-manager-dubai.html

Global Jam on Online Communities for Social Innovation

Roshani Kothari of OneWorld pinged about this Global JAM on Online Communities for Social Innovation event next week and meant to post it.  I was reminded after reading.  Britt Bravo's NetSquared blog, here's some info about the Global JAM on Online Communities for Social Innovation from Nancy's White Full Circle Interaction Blog: 

If you are interested in social change and innovation, I encourage you to participate in this (FREE) event coming up next week. The "price of admission" is filling out a survey by the 15th, so jump on this now! Here are all the details...

July 18-19 Global JAM on Online Communities for Social Innovation

You are invited to the first Global JAM on Online Communities for Social Innovation, July 18-19 .  A JAM is an online discussion that is time limited, asynchronous, moderated, and subsequently analyzed.

The goal of this event is to collectively identify technology requirements for effective online communities to better support those working in social change and innovation. The intention is to share what we learn quickly and broadly.

YackPack

 

A couple of days ago some of my twitter friends who are videobloggers started talking about Yak Pack.  The metaphor is a web walkie talkie.  It is a little widget that allows live chat on any web site.   The videobloggers were using it on their wiki.  When I arrived to check it out, I heard Michael Verdi talking to a few others about the video blogging documentary.  It was a little strange, reminded me of citizen band or "CB" radios we used to use as teens in the late 1970's.

I'm connecting it to the questions that came up on yesterday's Community Squared telephone conference to discuss tagging communities and got onto the topic of how online communities are changing given Web2.0.  I was reflecting about snippets of conversation that happen around tagged items in the NpTech tagging community -- although not all have been deeply reflective conversations.  I used the metaphor of a school of fish swimming together in a tag stream.  Etienne, or someone asked "Does swimming together in a tag stream make us a community?"

So, here's a tool that may (or may not) facilitate those conversations around "stuff" or tagged items.   And, there's been some emerging use in this way, of course, from the online learning/educator community.

Via Stephen Downes I discovered some reflections from Always Learning about how they used Yak Pack to record audio conversation and then easily published the conversation.

Online Facilitation in a Web2.0 World - Workshop from Nancy White

I'm an alumnus mentor of Nancy White's Online Facilitation Workshop..  I was a student in the workshop almost two years ago and have subsequently served as mentor.  I have never learned so much in my whole life and had fun doing it!  Both as a student and as a mentor.  Even better, the other people I met through the workshop -- other professionals who do online facilitation,  support communities of practice, and work with web2.0 tools -- I have learned from and continued a peer relationship.   And, of course, the content is excellent as is the instructor, the fabulous Nancy White.

I'd highly recommend it ... better hurry .. because it starts on May 7th and there are a few spots left.

Screencast: Using Widgets to Build Community on Blogs Featured on NTEN Blog

 

Original photo remixed from flickr photo by Stinky Peter
Screencast in conjunction with NTEN
View the screencast as higher quality flash file -takes longer to download here

I'm so excited!  My screencast on widgets is featured in this month's NTEN newsletter in a section pointing to "How To Build Online Community."  The link will take you directly to the screencast, but I also went to the trouble of putting together some extensive program notes that will help you explore widgets in more depth and provides credits to all the wonderful cc licensed material I used in the screencast.  I didn't want those to get lost.  They follow below.

Screencast Program Notes

These program notes will help you implement some of the ideas presented in the screencast. If you have questions about widgets or want to share your organization’s experience (good and bad), the NTEN Affinity Groups, particularly Emerging Technology, Nonprofit Bloggers, or Nonprofit Webmasters, are good lists to connect with your peers on these topics.

Act 1:  What

What we're talking about are web widgets and the definition is:

A Web Widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate html-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are akin to plugins or extensions in desktop applications. Other terms used to describe a Web Widget include Gadget, Badge, Module, Capsule, Snippet, Mini and Flake. Web Widgets often but not always use Adobe Flash or JavaScript programming languages.

Robin Good recently interviewed Marshall Kirkpatrick about Mash-ups and he asked Marshall to define widgets in the context of the conversation.  Here's his definition:

A Widget is a piece of code that enables a non-technical website publisher to pull in data and a display for that data from another website, so they can have, say, news ticker headlines or a personal horoscope, or local weather or an RSS feed.

Act 2:  Why

A few important questions to ask before your consider adding a widget to your blog or web site.

You need to think about these questions first, widgets second

• Does your web site or blog publish excellent content on a regular basis?
• Do you ask good questions that lead to conversations online?
• Do you have strategies for encouraging those conversations and linking them to your content?
• Do you write blog posts that inspire lots of comments?
• Do you employ a social networking or online outreach strategy that engages your regular readers and enables new readers to discover you?

Since widgets were fairly new, I installed a mail widget on my blog and asked nonprofit techies what they thought. 

Here's a summary:   

Using widgets is not yet a common practice on nonprofit blogs and folks are still experimenting and learning.    Still, there are benefits:

• Easy to use, don't need technical skills
• Can help you extend or enhance the conversation on your blog
• Can help you "listen" by gathering feedback and other information from your blog readers
• Can help you easily link to other sites, content, or individuals
• Can help make your blog more "findable"
• They are lots of fun

You can read a more detailed report of what folks thought here.

Before you go hog wild on widgetbox and install every widget known to mankind, consider the following:

• If most of your readers are following you via blog readers, they may not "pop" out of their reader to visit your browser.
• On the other hand, many blogs end up being positioned higher in search engine searches, so there must be some blogs that are being discovered via the browser and not a reader.  So, perhaps widgets should be designed to reach first-timers or new readers.  Consider them as a strategy for point of entry. You need to know from where your audience is coming to your blog.
• Consider your audience when you select a particular widget.  If you're a podcaster and your audience is likely to a microphone installed on their computer, than those message widgets might make sense.
• The use of widget must be linked to the topic, content, or purpose of your blog.  For example, linking a poll to a post on the topic.

Act 3:  A Few Good Examples

Group 1:  Interactivity

Polls

One of the most used widgets by nonprofits are the audience poll widgets.  Katya Andresen explains why.  Polls are a great way to get reader feedback too.  I used the Vidzu poll to get feedback on a blog post here.  In the screencast, I demonstrated how easy it is to add a poll to your site using the widget, PollDaddy. 

• You can do a general reader survey like, the nonprofit tech blog
• You can connect it to content in a post like the Bamboo  Project
• Or you can connect to the key goals of your blog like Save Guimaris

Chat and  Messages

The example I showed in the screencast was on Dave Wallace's blog, Life Kludger.

Message/IM Widgets: I installed the message widget from Odeo and the IM/Chat Widget from Meebo.   Using mail widgets and chat client wigets but depends on your audience.  Are they likely to use these features to engage with you?

The best comment line can be found at Emergency Trap Blog.  Its from MobaTalk and has a better interface and also automatically shares messages you've received.   

Be sure to test these widgets to make sure they are installed and work.

Group 2:   Content

This group of widgets allows you to take content from one site or location on the web and easily republish it elsewhere.

Here's a few examples:

Delicious Badge:  I use this widget to publish my social bookmarking bookmarks on my blog.

Flickr Widget/Badge:  If your organization is using flickr to say run a photo content or a community tagging project, it makes sense to add a flickr badge to your web site.  The Flickr widget lets you select all your photos, a particular tag or group.  It lets you customize the color, size, format, number of photos, etc.

Technorati Search Widget:  If anything else, I use the search widget on my blog to retrieve posts I wrote about a while ago, but can't quite remember when or what category I filed them in.  Visitors or readers might find the search useful as well. There are a lot of search widgets and thankfully Christine Herron did an exhaustive review of search widgets.   With that said, I get complaints from some  of my blog readers about the Technorati Search Widget, so I'm looking for suggestions.

Group 3: Fundraising Widgets

When I produced this screencast, widgets for fundraising or charity badges were just being announced.  The market is changing rapidly and there have been a lot more personal campaigns and activity.

Fundraising is the life blood of nonprofits and is another area of active experimentation using strategies called “personal fundraising”  Think citizen donor, citizen philthanthropist.    Widgets, charity badges, blog fundraising plugins allows your supporters become messengers for your cause. the shift is now from the organization raising money to the supporters taking on that role/responsibilities. The Widget just helps people track their commitment and shows progress being made.

Katya Andresen of The Nonprofit Marketing Blog has written extensively on the topic of personal fundraising.  You'll find these posts here and I'd drop everything and read them now!

I wrote a case study about my experience launching a personal fundraising campaign here.

First of Its Kind lists the top ten personal fundraising campaigns and has lots of excellent how-to guides.

Britt Bravo recently put together a terrrific list of personal fundraising causes.

I've aggregated a lot of these and other resources on the topic on my wiki portfolio.

Act 4: Where to find widgets

There are three general types of sources to find widgets to install on your organization's blog or web site:

1.   The particular Web2.0 Social Networking Tool or Service

Many widgets I came across are designed to work with various Web 2.0 social networking tools like del.icio.us, flickr, blip.tv, Technorati, etc.   So, if you are already using one of those services and want to integrate content onto your blog, check on their web site first.  Now, they may not be calling it a widget, some refer to as "badges."  Simply look in the "help" section of your favorite Web2.0 social networking site.

2.   A Widget Gallery or Directory for your Blogging Platform

I'm not a techy, so I use typepad.   Typepad has integrated widgets into the blogging platform, so adding a widget is even easier than cut and paste!  It's one click!   There is a widget gallery where you can go shopping for widgets.

There are also other platform-specific widget directories:  wordpress (here and here) and blogger  If you're on another platform, try the Squidoo Widget Finder Lens.

I went through the typepad collection and installed (unstalled) a lot of them because, to be honest, some did not hold promise for a nonprofit org blog.  With that said, the collection is growing and I did find the ultimately easy to install and just what I wanted delicious linkroll widget here, The Vidzu Audience Poll Widget (here) as well as a few other good possibilities for the nonprofit blogs here, here, here, and here.
Since widgets installation is integrated with my blogging platform it was one less click to install or unstall -- and not time consuming. 

I played around with the widget that allows we to easily stream my delicious links on my sidebar. (If you're not using typepad, don't despair, you can grab the code for a number of delicious widgets here, here, and here)  I am a big tagger so this was a must-have widget for me.  However, I don't want stream my entire collection of links though.  So, set it to stream based on the tag "linkblog" and that way I can relate the links to current posts or whatever theme I'm researching.

3.  Third-Party Widget Directory and Aggregator Sites

There are widget directory sites like snipperoo which organize various widgets for end-users to pluck and install and for widget developers to upload and share.  However, what the newest thing is something called a "Widget Aggregator."   As described at the recent Widget Live Conference "New widget aggregators are forming to organize and classify the world of widgets into simple and easy to deploy collections. These aggregators offer one widget box to rule them all, creating a single point of integration for new widget users."

Widgetbox For bloggers like me, Widgetbox offers a Widget panel. Once this panel is placed into a sidebar of a blog, any widget can be added simply via drag and drop.  It supports a range of blogging platforms.

Although the interface was a little geeky - after clicking around - it was very easy to install (and unstall) and update the widgets and panels I installed.

Act 5: Summary:

-Widgets have the potential of extending the distribution and connection of a nonprofit's content and can also can be useful in amplifying the community s associated with an organization's web site or blog.
-Widgets are easy to use and install and do not require special technical skills - they're fun too!

How to get started ...

-Successfully using widget to realize outcomes is going to be a matter of experimentation and learning.  Above all, the widget needs to be connected with your blog's content, readers' interests, and amplify conversation.

-Pick a few widgets, install them, and track them over a period of a month or so.  Figure out if your strategy is bringing in new traffic, generating more comments/activity on your blog, etc.  If not, do be aware to ditch it.

I wrote, shot, edited, and produced this screencast a few months ago and I'm already seeing how a lot of changed in the widget landscape.  So, if you'd like to add your thoughts, please drop a comment in the post.

Credits
Opening Sequence
Music

nervoso con las guitarras by: norelpref

Photos
Robots
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stinkypeter/91821888/in/photostream/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stinkypeter/91821889/in/photostream/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stinkypeter/91821886/in/photostream/

People at desk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyfoo/

Dictionary
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jvk/

 

Nobs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/driggs/

 

Ze Frank's Word Game
http://www.zefrank.com/wp1/magnets/index.html

Conversation
http://flickr.com/photos/chrisheuer/

 

 

 

Outreach Strategy
http://flickr.com/photos/pdr/

Geek Skills:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acaben/62925785/ 

 

Geek:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sd/7746599/

Grow A Geek:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmyroq/110996294/

Money:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noahwesley/120499365/

Get Your Damn Tags Right! A Tagging Community

 

Via a post from the Tags/Networks/Narrative called Vocabulary Soup, I discovered another tagging community called, Get Your Damn Tags Right.

Occasionally, communities may well form around tagging. For example, the social music site Last FM has a group called "Get Your Damn Tags Right" which pretty much does what it says on the tin. I suspect that a quick search through various web2.0 sites will find groups interested in tagging.

The issue is whether this activity needs a new term to describe it. Emergent communicative practices from communities are not exactly unknown - the whole practice of the ethnography of communication lies in understanding the relationship between culture and communicative practice - and tagging is, in my view, a communications device. Part of this project revolves around exactly this issue.

That said, I love the term "feral hypertext". Jill Walker coined the term in 2005 in a great and provocative article. Feral hypertexts and tag clouds as narratives are one the trajectories of this project. I'm not sure where it will go, that's why it's an "Adventure in Tagging."

I looked at the Get Your Damn Tags Right community statement of purpose:

So, are you one of those people who absolutely hate having your music files mistagged? The artist has to be correct, the title the proper title, the track listed for the correct album, and all have to be spelled exactly right and with proper capitalization? This is the place for you.

And, as we may never have song moderation, this may be an eternal problem, unfortunately.

If you ever happen to see a group member with mistagged music, feel free to publicly give them crap about it here in the forums. Just do it in a friendly manner (as in pointing and laughing, not pointing and insulting). And mention the proper information for the tag, so that it's also constructive.

Be aware that this group focuses on badly tagged music files, not the tags applied to artists and songs by users of this site.

On the public forum, the discussion threads range from making fun of sloppy taggers "What's the worse tag you've ever seen?"  (Answer: Pink Floyd as Punk)  to threads asking for advice about what tag to use when tagging, Opera, for example.

Now, back to this other idea about Feral Hypertext

Definition of Feral:
Feral (a): Of an animal: Wild, untamed. Of a plant, also (rarely), of ground: Uncultivated. Now often applied to animals or plants that have lapsed into a wild from a domesticated condition.

Definition of Feral Hypertext:
The most interesting—and the most feral—aspect of Flickr is the tagging. Instead of providing a set list of possible keywords, Flickr allows users to type in any tag they like. Each photo can have as many tags as desired.

You're Doing That Wrong! Rule of Thumb

A link to a Web 2.0 report led me  to post on the concept of 'collabuary' raised in the report, which prompted Stephen Downes to comment in reply, trying to distinguish between folksonomies and collabuaries (which he thinks isn't a useful term; it just means 'vocabulary' or 'taxonomy').  Some others disagree.

When I received Stephen's comment I was in the middle thinking about this issue as it relates to tagging communities from the perspective of online behaviors that encourage group collaboration or individual action.  Since Downes is an expert on this topic and works in a different discipline than NPtech, I sent  an email in reply, which I later refined in this post, describing the NPtech tagging community and how it is partially group collaboration, but partially individual action.  Stephen's reply:

So where does the line between group and network apply here? Good question - it contains elements of both. I guess I would say, as a rule of thumb, that you pass from 'network' (autonomous action, folksonomy) to 'group' (collaborative action, vocabulary or taxonomy) when somebody says, "You're doing that wrong."

My colleague, Nancy White, another expert in online community, responded:

Why does "you are doing that wrong" act as a trigger. Why not "hey, that was useful, lets do more of it together" be a group forming trigger. Or "hey, you are doing that differently than I am, let me learn from you?"  The values that aggregate us are surely not neutral, but they are also not only negative!

I really need to get this podcast of Nancy and Lee's Session:

Online communities have come a long way. When I started working on them around 1999-2000, commmunity was still communitiy, but the software was limited and the rules were different. These days new technologies, ideas and websites have pushed the community envelope in new directions. The old rules don't always apply and I'm interested in talking about the new rules for the new communities.

Resources included in the wiki with podcast

Beware the online collective - link and a short piece in Time by Jaron Lanier
summarizes a longer article called Digital Maoism
Several Responses to the article.  - link

Nancy have you diagrammed what the new rules are?

What does social design look like in these new communities?  Can you even design it?

Update:  Not two seconds after I blog this, Mike Seyfang from Austraila skypes me about his TALO pipe and we chat.  TALO stands for teaching and learning online and is a global event based out of Austraila!
He will be contributing some his shared work around creative commons and maybe collabularies.

What are your most useful synchronous online facilitation practices?

Photo by/NC from Matthew Saunders' Flickr Stream

TechSoup holds regular meetings for nonprofits in Second Life and I have been attending regularly and sometimes facilitate like this I did this past week.  So, I've been reflecting about effective facilitation of virtual meetings in Second Life  Right now the primary method of group interaction is via  unmoderated chat interface. 

Sometimes it doesn't support the process of collaboration effectively for all the reasons we already know.  But there is also a trust issue too -- particularly if you don't know all the avatars in real life.  Given that you are starting a virtual representation of people - you may be proned to projection.

I've thought using the moderated chat protocol that is interface independent.  I learned one from Nancy White when I took her online facilitation workshop.  It goes something like this:

-If you want ask a question type ? into the chat line
-If you have a comment or observation type ! into the chat line
-When finished typing, type GA
-If you need multiple lines, use  .... at the end of your phrase to indicate you're not finished.

This protocol might make some aspects of inworld chat only meetings smoother and less multiple threads, but introducing it into an established group's meeting practices might be a little like herding cats. 

I also find that I reach cognitive overload with the SL chat client pretty fast because:  1.) chat history flys by and I'm scrolling back to catch up   2.) The chat window I'm reading covers up the screen if I want to reach the history without scrolling,  so I have to move it around to watch what is happening in world  3) I have to translate the avatar name to real person name and relate to agenda or summary notes that I'm taking elsewhere. 4) There isn't a place inside of the virtual world where you can easily post the agenda and I haven't found a virtual flip chart yet.  It kinds of gets in the way of effective facilitation.

I also don't like using chat alone because it sometimes can get chaotic, leads to miscommunication, and feels so slow.  That slowness is great if you want to immerse in a conversation where you reflect and explore, but it can be really annoying if you're trying to come to agreement, determine actions, and make decisions.  I've always had chat as a back channel to a conference call and used it to summarize key points as a sort of electronic flip chart.   There I go again, wanting a virtual flipchart.

At Friday's meeting in-world, someone brought along their roundtable with expandable seats.  It worked for me because of the clock technique we often use to facilitate conference calls.   Now, if I could just find a flip chart in SL that let's you type in the summary of key points - I'd be a happy.

That's why Nancy White's post on most useful synchronous online facilitation practices really caught my eye.  So, I read it with this question in mind:  What techniques can be applied or adapted to Second Life facilitation or virtual world interface facilitation?   How does SL compare to these other tools and where does it fit on the gradient?  And, how does a virtual world tool help or hinder effective online collaboration or a synchronuous online communication?

Nancy takes us through a gradient of modalities and technologies for synchronous meetings.   Nancy observes:

For one shot interactions where you cannot expect a lot of investment in learning tools or processes, the conference call (land line and/or VOIP) is still the dominant choice, but I try to include SOMETHING visual in the mix

This is interesting to me because Second Life is quite the opposite - there is a huge investment in learning the tools, there is no audio (although that is changing) and it is all visual.  How much does this help or hinder effective collaboration?  How might it influence your choice of using Second Life for a project?

Nancy goes on to describe why multiple modalities are important:

The reason to have something beyond the is two fold: one is to increase our engagement and participation, particularly for those of us who are not great in an aural-only mode. With a visual, I'm less apt to start doing my email or staring out the window. For the same reason, I love my cordless phone because I find I listen to long phone meetings better when I can walk around and move away from my computer. It does something to my thinking. I'm still hard wired for VOIP calls and, despite the price, I am tempted to get a bluetooth headset for the computer.

I'm very similar to Nancy in that I have attention issues with aural-only mode.   But, I'm also finding when I don't any aural mode for group collaboration meetings - chat only - I start to have similar attention issues.   So, that's why I like having both the visual and the aural.

There is a new tool called SecondTalk that lets you integrate skype with Second Life.  While not yet perfect as some colleagues have noted here.  Problem, of course, is that I'm not sure exactly how it might support a group call on Skype.  (There is also the problem that Second Life sucks up a lot of memory, and some folks might not be able to run both apps at once.  I know that running both together on my computer slows things to a crawl.)

Nancy's next point is about how the visual and aural support the process of collaboration:

The second reason is other tools can support the process of the meeting or gathering. Using a chat room to collectively take notes, or a wiki to evolve the agenda and take notes during a meeting. Co-editing WHILE discussing a document. Queing up questions in a larger phone meeting via chat so that a) you know you are on deck to speak and b) people have a chance to be heard, especially if they are less inclined to jump in to a conversation.

This gets me back to wanting that virtual flip chart.   Another thing that happens and I know there is probably a way to prevent this - is that our meeting are taking place in a busy place where visitors often come by who are not involved in the group.  The other day, we had someone come by with their virtual dog who fetching a ball.  It's cute, but it flooded our chat transcript with "woof woof."  Now, I'm a huge dog lover, but it disrupted the meeting.

Nancy goes on to talk about the type of tool you might consider for ongoing meetings with larger groups:

When you get to the place where you are doing larger meetings (over 8 or so), or are doing ongoing live meeting practices, it starts making sense to consider more sophisticated tools and pratices. This is where things like web meeting tools, co-browsing, and such can be useful.

What I notice about web meeting tools is that most of us don't know how to make the most of them. We may learn how to use all the tools and features, but we haven't had exposure to good facilitation practices. We try and duplicate offline experiences (be they useful or not) and not really take advantage of the medium.

Of course, the meetings I'm attending in Second Life are related to planning and implementing projects in Second Life.  So,  while some aspects of the interface are annoying - as I've outline above -- it comes back to a question of "What makes for a good facilitation practice in Second Life?"  Given that it is a virtual word, do online facilitation techniques used in RL or other types of online applications make sense?  How can we take advantage of the medium of Second Life? 

I keep coming back to damn virtual flip chart.  I posted a question on the educator listserv and there doesn't seem to be one. yet.

Nancy's post continues with some observations about synchronous online facilitation techniques gleaned from reading "Learning in Real Time" by Jennifer Hoffman and Jonathan Finkelstein.   

When we facilitate synchronously we not only have to manage the software, the domain of the conversation, but we also are working to legitimately request and get the attention of participants who, for the most part, we cannot see. We have to do this across a diversity of styles and skills. It is truly a "ringmaster" job ....

What I notice is that Jonathan writes about something I learned from my colleague, Fernanda Ibarra. It is the masterful use of a shared white board to move people from being consumers of a meeting to being active participants. Fernanda showed me how she prepared a whiteboard screen with clipart of a circle of chairs. As people entered the web meeting space, she invited them to write their names under a chair. This helped orient them to and practice with the tool, created a sense of "group" and gave a visual focus as people entered the "room." It was brilliant. I've riffed on that idea and found it very useful. We've done After Action Reviews with the white board taking the place of a flip chart used F2F. We've even had virtual parties. This brings together , text, and images.

This starts to get really excited about the possibilities of Second Life and really using the medium.  Now what if our shared table (see above) could also be a shared white board -- our collaborative virtual flip chart.  Of course, you'd need the aural channel for it to work.

Nancy points to a few good resources on the topic of synchronous online facilitation techniques that I need to explore ..

"Learning in Real Time" by Jennifer Hoffman and Jonathan Finkelstein
Top Synchronous Training Myths and Their Realities - By Nanette Miner
InSynch Training and their Synchronous Training Blog
LearningTimes training

 

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Online Cards As Indicator of Online Community

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I had the pleasure of being part of the Global s community, covering Cambodia after meeting Rebecca MacKinnon.   So, when I got the request from Georgia Popplewell to participate in an electronic Bon Voyage Card, I wanted to send along my good wishes.   She assembled them into a bubbleshare.  Rebecca posts a blog thank you and explanation.

Nancy White points to a Get Well Seymour created by people from all over the world sent to Seymour Papert as he recovers from a horrible accident.  Nancy observes that electronic traces like these are great indicators of community engagement.

Meanwhile, my Flickr Photo Birthday Card Remix Contest has 14 photos in it! It is going to be very difficult for the judges (my kids) to choose a winner - they are all so creative, funny, and expertly remixed.  I also like the variety of causes people care about. 

And, if you haven't sent me a card yet, there is still time!  The contest runs till the end of the month.  The details are here.