Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.
NetSquared is an initiative ofTechSoup
NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
Must we get together to get things done?
The NetTuesday group in Houston met on Monday, actually. Our local NetSquared MeetUp heard from Knowbility's Kelsey Ruger, an extraordinary thinker about the power of technology to bring about social change. Katie Laird blogged it.
Many in the Houston Net Tuesday Meetup have noticed that Kelsey serves as a kind of human bridge between innovative groups of social activists, including the NetSquared group; Refresh Houston - a collection of accessibility and standards experts; and AIR-Houston - the annual accessible web design contest that benefits dozens of nonprofits from the greater Houston area.
It's great to find so many people in such diverse groups sharing ideas and inspiration. As they try to get some mojo behind the June BarCamp (this is the third time the date has been moved back), however, it's hard not to wonder why the online apps still can not begin to touch the organizational power and effectiveness of face-to-face meetings. It would seem that these tools should help us focus. Online, you don't have the distraction of showing baby pictures or noticing how much hair loss or weight gain someone has had since you saw them last. Your time should be exponentially more efficinet. But it doesn't really work that way most of the time.
Does anyone know which sessions will most directly address that question?
- Sharron Rush's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Subscribe
NetSquared Newsletters:
>>Subscribe to NetSquared News and other email updates.
NetSquared Community Blog:
>> Subscribe to the Community Blog RSS feed.
>> Subscribe to the Community Blog comments RSS feed.
when emailing your congressman doesn't quite feel like enough
That's a fantastic question, Sharron. While, like accessibility, the relationship between online and offline activity and organizing is one that could potentiallyinfluence any discussion about using the web for social change, there is one in particular that may be of interest to you:
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/activism
The description starts off "While online activism can make an impact on the world, it's vitally important that we consider how all these exciting new technologies can be leveraged to mobilize and activate people effectively off-line." I encourage you to post your thoughts and comments on that session.
One of the featured speakers is Michael Silberman, who led Dean's meetup campaign in 2004, and is also the organizer of NetSquared DC.
My experiences have lead me to believe that online and offline relationships, rather than competing with each other for our time and attention, strengthen each other. Having an online connection strengthens the relationships forged in physical gatherings, while meeting up with people in the real world makes online interaction that much richer. We'll test this out at the NetSquared Conference :)