Social networking

While I was attending and presenting at the UK nonprofits technology conference Pathways to success yesterday, the UK government announced the invitation to bid for a £1.2 million programme to help third sector organisations innovate by exchanging experience online and off. This further fuelled coffee-time conversations about what might be needed to support any technology-related change. General conclusion: culture shift before tech adoption ... so keep it simple, small steps, focussed on real needs.  read more »

The Guardian today carries an excellent article by Megan Griffith on the importance of social networking and social media to nonprofit organisations. It raises themes dealt with in a longer report, available here, that Megan has authored for Third Sector Foresight.  read more »

The RSA is following up discussions it hosted recently on open source politics with a more substantial free conference on The social impact of the web: society, government and the Internet on May 25. It fits with moves by the new chief executive, Matthew Taylor, to re-energise the 250-year-old institution with new forms of engagement inside and out. Earlier posts on that here and here.  read more »

There is now a wiki under development to provide resources for nonprofits on how to understand and use social media. The wiki project was prompted by development of the NCVO ICT Foresight report - basically the Foresight team funded me to develop a glossary of social media and I've kept adding to it. Now there is:

• A section on what is social media
• A glossary of social media - long version and a shorter one.
• A presentation on social media developed by Beth Kanter for the UK Circuit Riders conference
• A social media workshop game that I developed with Beth for the conference
• A page of links, under keywords
• A list of blogs and wikis about social media
• A guide to (non tech) networking

The wiki is being developed in association with the US-based Web 2.0 in Nonprofits created by Michele Martin. More here about how to join in. Any help most welcome.  read more »

The NCVO ICT Foresight report which prompted development of this site is due out at the end of March, as Megan Griffith reports here. Megan writes:  read more »

For many VCOs, online ‘social’ networks have the potential to be disruptive; that is, they have the power to change the model of organising upon which many VCOs, and particularly membership bodies, are based. The connections that ICT facilitates suggest that some organisations may increasingly be bypassed and that power may shift away from top-down hierarchical organisations and towards more fluid and participative networks where there is less need for a centralised ‘bricks and mortar’ coordinating organisation.

The second think-piece from Ross Ferguson is now on the ICT Foresight blog. Again, we would really like your thoughts and comments.

Megan

Several of the ICT Foresight panel are contributing short think pieces to our next report on social networking. I have posted Eleanor's piece to the ICT Foresight blog for comments.

The rest should be coming in soon...

Megan

I was struck by the clarity of thought and purpose expressed in the podcast posted recently by Alex Samuel on her Social Signal blog.  read more »

While the poppy-less Jon Snow sparked a controversy last week, the Royal British Legion (of all people) produced a podcast designed to encourage a new generation of supporters to "pause and remember".  read more »

Here's a response to Steve's posting on Buzz Directors -

http://www.podnosh.com/blog/2006/11/07/buzz-director-beyond-infinity/

which ponders whether such a person could have a potent role in shaping the organisation.

It's a particular crusade of mine to encourage not-for-profits to identify an internal champion (or recruit a virtual volunteer) to take on this role. Call it what you will, and David Wilcox and Beth Kanter, have both had a go at (re)inventing job labels.  read more »

John Hagel in Social Networks and Urbanization offers a framework for understanding the benefits of social networking sites like MySpace, triggered by a Financial Times article on Danah Boyd, entitled “The high priestess of internet friendship”
Here’s an early typology of social network sites that I sketched out after reading the article. Rather than categorize sites themselves it may be more useful to think about three primary functions of these sites – connection, creation and collaboration.  Individual sites can then be analyzed in terms of their relative emphasis on these three functions. It turns out that sites differ significantly in terms of their relative emphasis.  read more »

If you wanted to explain tech-supported social networking to people in nonprofits (and elsewhere) what propositions and conversation starters would you come up with?  read more »

Hi all

Below is a draft structure for the ICT Foresight report on social networking. I would welcome comments. Each section will include case studies and hopefully think pieces written by external contributors (more soon on this...)

Megan

Introduction (1 page)  read more »

Robin Hamman - who work on local online communities with the BBC - offers 6 tips on blog watching for local journalists. They are useful for the rest of us too, and complement How to read blogs? over at I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate.  read more »

Over at Open Business: Designing Business for an Open Model

Howard Rheingold just released on the Cooperation Commons blog a  read more »

In Free wisdom Johnnie Moore highlights a couple of publications I also spotted in my blog browsing, but I'll just quote Johnnie ... partly because that's easy, and more importantly because I would urge you to look around and subscribe to Johnnie's blog too. He facilitates Open Space events - as I recorded here - and through his practice there and on his blog provides a constant inspiration of how to do things with light and playful touches that always get you somewhere interesting .... not necessarily where you expected.

   read more »

 

Here's the start of something I've just blogged on big brands, online relationships, marketing and non profits.  

Josh Hart at mademedia (a Birmingham based web agency) alerted me to a potent combination of community, marketing and technology.  read more »

 

I've just put up some information on a new challenge thrown out to the entire planet to answer the question:

“who will build community through new media?”

There's $5 million available to develop the best ideas.