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Online Community session at NetSquared North

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

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