This is the first blog post in the February Net2 series on online community organizing. We are kicking off with an interview featuring NetSquared Community Curator Claire Sale. Before embarking on her journey with NetSquared and moving out of the US, Claire worked for the American Red Cross as a social media specialist. Recently, after living in the UK for while, she moved to Saudi Arabia, where she is exploring an expat life.

Many of you know Claire, but she talks little about herself. I hope this interview will shine a light on the great job she has been doing for NetSquared, as well as introduce you to her full “online community organizing” experience. Read Claire’s blog to find out even more about both her adventures, and her passion for tech & social change. Also: if you have any more questions to Claire -- give her a shout via Twitter @clairesale or feel free to leave a comment here.

Q: What lead you to get involved with community organizing?

I have always been interested in nonprofits and communication. When I was working at the American Red Cross in 2007, I kept getting “caught” finding ways onto Facebook and G-chat even though they were blocked at my office (they’re no longer blocked, but that’s a story for another day!). Instead of getting in trouble for using social media at work, the organization moved me to the social media team and encouraged me to use my social networking skills to serve the Red Cross community online. Very quickly, I learned that I had a passion for this work.

Today, I work as the Community Curator for NetSquared, which is really just a buzzword-laden way of saying that I’m a community organizer. I really enjoy connecting people and ideas to help build a greater good in the world - something I’ve been lucky enough to do both in my role at the Red Cross and my role with NetSquared.

Q: What makes a community? Why do they need organizers?

A community is a group of people that have something in common. It may be geographic, demographic, or a particular concept that brings them together.

Community organizers serve to help focus, support, engage, and provide opportunities for a community of people. Many communities exist without formal organization, but those that have a formal structure tend to be more effective and create greater impact. From my perspective, the best community organizers are those who make the goals of the community the mission of their work.

Q: Tell me about your role as NetSquared’s Community Curator.

Broadly, I am tasked with supporting both our online and offline communities. I contribute to our blog and social media efforts and work closely with NetSquared Local organizers to launch, grow, and support local community groups in over 50 cities around the world.

Q: What’s your take on online and offline community organizing?

In the old days (you know, 10 years ago) we used to organize communities via events. Someone would throw a party or a townhall and everyone would get together to socialize or have a meeting on a certain topic.

Then came the social media revolution and lots of people jumped on the online community organizing band-waggon.

Today, our goal is to mesh online and offline community organizing. For example, NetSquared hosts NetSquared Local (offline) events all over the world every month. Many of those offline event participants are collaborating between meetings via social media, the NetSquared online network, and other online tools.

And, to take it one step further, some groups have been livestreaming (live video) events so people can participate in a realtime discussion - whether they are sitting in the room, or sitting on the other side of the world.

Occupy Wallstreet is a really great example of online/offline community organizing.

Q: How can community organizers collaborate?

Many community organizers work together to share ideas and best practices across their groups. What we’re finding is that by helping each other do better jobs, we’re actually helping to grow something much bigger than any of our own communities/causes. Here are a couple of examples:

•     Community Organizer Handbook - this handbook was launched by my team in 2010 for use by Net2 Local organizers, but has since been used by community organizers around the world as a guide for local organizing and a resources for sharing ideas about launching and building local community groups.
•     #CommBuild Chats - These weekly Twitter chats focus on issues and topics relevant to those working on community building or in community management roles. These chats originated out of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools.

If readers of this interview have other resources for community organizing collaboration tools, I’d love for them to share the links with me!

T.B.C.

That is not “all” folks, we have two more posts to go. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s piece on Sylwia Presley and her experience with managing the online community of Global Voices.