open2media http://www.open2media.org exploring social media for non-profit organisations Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:28:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2 en 1667904http://www.feedburner.com Round up from the conference session http://www.open2media.org/2008/03/02/round-up-from-the-conference-session/ http://www.open2media.org/2008/03/02/round-up-from-the-conference-session/#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:09:42 +0000 Laura http://www.open2media.org/2008/03/02/round-up-from-the-conference-session/ We had 2 lively sessions on the first day of the conference, with a wide range of participants in our audience from across the UK who worked with a diverse range of voluntary and community organisations.

Beth speaking in the Naked in a Goldfish Bowl Session

Beth Kanter from Boston joined us in the session using Skype (we hoped to have tested out the fab Oovoo but wasn’t to be, with wireless bandwidth issues on the day!).

Beth shared her experiences and enthusiasm of her recent fundraising successes and the factors which helped to make it happen by using social media. Big thank you to Beth for joining us, especially with the first time we ran our session being just after midday here in the UK, and only 7.30 am there with Beth in Boston. You can read Beths reflections on her part on our session here.

In our session we discussed about purpose, need, openness, transparency, and membership amongst other areas as well as some of the tools or ways that can help make it happen. Resistance from management or committees was raised several times as a potential barrier from adopting social media in voluntary nonprofit organisations. Our session was very much a discussion and conversation about use of social media and the change needed to help make it happen rather than us just saying ‘here are the tools and here’s how to use them’. We discussed about the reasoning and about the wider picture too, how people are using different ways to communicate and work together and that organisations should be looking to incorporate social media in addition to their current communications practice.

Paul Henderson from Ruralnet was able to share the insightful experience of his organisation that currently are ‘naked in a goldfish bowl’ themselves, as they are consulting with stakeholders and the wider community in exploring how to develop their future services online and openly.

We also ran the social media game (devised by David Wilcox) which is a really useful way to introduce the range of web 2.0 tools available to help organisations to make choices about what they want to do, and to decide how they are going to do it, and find and discuss a variety of tools to help make that happen. The tools included those for supporting of telling your story and reaching out and the tools to help work in collaboration or partnership with others or that can support more effective information management.
feeding back on the social media game
As with many conference sessions, we only had 90 minutes and on the second run of the session later in the afternoon, our lively discussion and conversation left us too little time to actually play the game, but we equipped participants with lots of ideas and examples for them to take away and use when supporting their own organisations in the field.
If you want to download the social media game as a tool to use in exploring social media with your organisation, you can download it from www.socialmedia.wikispaces.com/social+media+game.

]]> http://www.open2media.org/2008/03/02/round-up-from-the-conference-session/feed/ Using Oovoo to chat about the forthcoming session http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/23/using-oovoo-to-chat-about-the-forthcoming-session/ http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/23/using-oovoo-to-chat-about-the-forthcoming-session/#comments Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:28:48 +0000 Laura http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/23/using-oovoo-to-chat-about-the-forthcoming-session/ Chatting on Oovoo about the panel session at the conference

Today, I used Oovoo for the first time to chat to Beth Kanter, based in Boston about her participation in our session taking place this Thursday. Oovoo is amazingly simple to use and see the picture about for a snapshot of what it looked like when speaking to each other. We hope to be using Oovoo in the session or Skype so that Beth can join in with David, Nick and myself to share her experiences with social media and nonprofits.

]]> http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/23/using-oovoo-to-chat-about-the-forthcoming-session/feed/ Inspiration for our workshop http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/15/inspiration-for-our-workshop/ http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/15/inspiration-for-our-workshop/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:38:22 +0000 David Wilcox http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/15/inspiration-for-our-workshop/ This may change - and I haven’t really checked with Laura - but at our workshop I expect to be referring quite a bit to the amazing development work my friends over at Ruralnet|UK are doing. Briefly, they are about to celebrate 10 years of providing online services to community and voluntary organisations, rural and urban too. It has been a “walled garden” approach with paid-for services behind a login. They are now re-inventing the whole thing in the social media world where a lot of good stuff is free. What’s extremely interesting is that firstly, they are doing the whole thing in the open, and inviting people to contribute online and in meetings. Secondly,they are rising to the challenge of mixing free tools and paid-for services. More at the links above to items I’ve written, or directly at ruralnet|online here.

I should say I’m working with Ruralnet, particularly with the sort of game we’ll be running at the workshop … so I’m a touch biased. But since it’s all open, you can form your own judgements.

I also hope that Paul Henderson, who is leading the development work, will be at the conference … and that I can tempt him to give a wave from here!

]]> http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/15/inspiration-for-our-workshop/feed/ How we created conversations using social media http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/22/ http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/22/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:16:43 +0000 Laura http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/22/ Part of this blog is a follow on of conversations which took place on my blog when I recently asked the question “Social Media for Non-profits - what do you recommend?” in preparation to help David, Nick and myself to be able to collaborate and create a workshop for the UK Circuit Riders conference. In true collaborative social networking style, I asked the question, not only on my blog, but used other networks including Twitter, Facebook and Seesmic too (plus the old fashioned ‘web 0.0′ face to face with small organisations to see what their needs were!).

Using my blog and various networks was a really useful way to reach out to others and I received lots of comments and suggestions back from many people, some who I knew, and others who I had never connected with prior to this which was really exciting, getting an active global conversation taking place using a variety of media.

One example of creating conversation was the reply on Seesmic I received from Brian Rendel, based in Michigan who offered some of his ideas of what we should share in our session to help ICT development workers/circuit riders with helping them understand and join in with social media. Follow this link to see his reply …

Do feel free to comment and participate in this new blog, if you wish to write articles / posts that are relevant or submit information or links that we might have missed, do contact us!

]]> http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/22/feed/ What we did last year http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/what-we-did-last-year/ http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/what-we-did-last-year/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:59:17 +0000 David Wilcox http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/what-we-did-last-year/ For me this year’s Circuit Rider conference will be a great opportunity to take forward some of the discussions we had at last year’s event - and again get the benefit of working with a front-line expert.

Last year I had the chance to run a workshop with the amazing US-based blogger Beth Kanter, which included her knock-out presentation on social media, and the first run of the social media game. Reports are available on the social media wiki, together some other guidance we’ll be updating there and on this blog.

More later on how we are planning the game - meanwhile here’s Beth’s slides from last year. I hope Beth may be able to join us virtually. I already know it is going to be a lot of fun developing this year’s workshop with Laura Whitehead. However good the Net, there’s something about being in the same country, sharing the same issues …. and running to catch up with yet another highly productive collaborator! Beth, Laura - how do you manage to do so much good stuff?

]]> http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/what-we-did-last-year/feed/ How to get sign up for social media adoption http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/how-to-get-sign-up-for-social-media-adoption/ http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/how-to-get-sign-up-for-social-media-adoption/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:26:08 +0000 Laura http://www.open2media.org/2008/02/10/how-to-get-sign-up-for-social-media-adoption/ How can we support circuit riders to help organisations with developing and integrating social media tools within their organisation? I’ve discovered in my work with organisations, that the newest smallest fledgling groups who were the most receptive to this new way of working and connecting with members and potential stakeholders were eager to learn anything that could help them reach out to new audiences. For the larger well established organisations it would mean a huge shift in behaviour and approach to communications but willing to allocate capacity to develop their own approach if they could encourage wider involvement and acceptance across the organisation. The small to medium sized organisations running and growing steadily for a couple of years were the ones, that most probably have always had issues with their ICT controlling them, rather than them being in control. It is often that category of organisation that found modern fangled media too much to take on board instantly, although were happy to consider it and seek to implement those forms that could be relevant and purposeful practices with it in future strategies.

What tips do you have at increasing sign up within an organisation that you would like to share?

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