Our first session at NetSquared North today covers online community engagement. The ever-fabulous Nancy White is facilitating.

We've started by sharing stories about online community projects we're working on now, including:

Your Kamloops (Arjun Singh)

• site, blog, and mailing list
• largely one-way
• tools: typepad (blogging software), topica (email list tool)M/li>
• some multimedia (ourmedia.org)

Citzen Shift (Catrina)

• deals with broad range of issues
• new issue every three weeks
• each new issue involves engaging a new community and getting contributions from its members, including feedback on our forums
forums have actually been the most static part of the site
• for most topics, there's already some other big online site/community out there
• we're hoping to facilitate more satellites, on and offline
• using a tool called QueryForm

The Corporation (Phillip Djwa)

• film project exposing corporate malfeasance
• site and forum
• e-mail campaign and recruiting
• network of networks (forwarding
• included messages from other groups
• e-mail marketing targeted to local community when/where a film screening was taking place
• created online store to market DVD
• setup tool & method for hosting "Corporation" house parties

>> "heartbeat" model: using offline events to intensify/focus engagement in an online community

 
Armenia's school connectivity program (Nancy)

• Project Harmony went into community and asked about community priorities
• issues that emerged: pediatric health care; how to get a job; preparing young people for job market; volunteerism/environmentalism
• convened onlne 3-4 week events for communities to address these issues, e.g.
• discussing how to get vaccines to communities without doctors
• how to manage health problems caused by contaminated water supplies
• journalists in region drafted legislation

What about the relative merits of ongoing vs. cyclical engagement? It can be hard to get people to engage, so cyclical/intermittent engagement can make it hard to get people to engage/re-engage. But this is very contextual.

Easier to get people to do this stuff outside of North America -- where there is a real hunger for particular knowledge or conversation people are motivated

another example: ShareYourStories.org for March of Dimes, where parents of kids who've been in neonatal units can share their experiences -- they have a real hunger to connect

Rise of blogs has made writing skills a lot more important for nonprofits; how to build that competency?

The "official message" isn't always the most effective voice on your blog: it depends on the context

sometimes you want grassroots stories, sometimes you want the "official" story 

Need to be thick-skinned and open to a wide range of feedback 

It's also important to keep tabs on what people are saying about you -- use a tool like technorati, pubsub, icerocket or feedster