I've recently been involved with community building around community building via weekly #commbuild Twitter chats. This concept is a bit meta, I know, but I've found it to be a really great way to connect with other people in my position. Since there are so many community builders involved with the Net2 network in various ways, I wanted to be sure to let you all know about this new opportunity.

Social CodeCamp Call to Action with Fiscal Sponsor WhoMentors.com, Inc.-Introduction to Social CodeCamp

*Invite people to view submit stories, enter contest and donate to local causes.
YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LqMexfpPo8
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SocialCodeCamp

Enter competition, add short films. Tell us your story here...also add your long movies to one of sponsor pages.

San Francisco Chapter, Films For Action - http://Sf.FilmsForAction.org

As changemakers in our communities, it's important to take the time to learn from the communities that we serve about their impressions of our services. Whether your community is of volunteers, members of the public, internal stakeholders, or international organizations, it is valuable to ask them what they think of your work and invite them to help shape the future of your programs. In this month's Net2 Think Tank, we look forward to learning from you about surveying your community!

Microblogs like Twitter are a great vehicle to help organize political demonstrations in countries run by corrupt governments (and an effective way to spread misinformation), but how can nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), libraries, government programs, and other mission-based organizations really use microblogs to promote their work, increase attendance at an event, get donations or mobilize or support volunteers?

The following has been cross-posted from the TechSoup for Libraries Blog:

On the 12th of March, one day after the tragic earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan Ichi - Hiroyasu Ichikawa - the NetSquared Local organizer from Tokyo sent an e-mail to our NetSquared Local Organizer listserve asking for the best practices for mobilizing online communities in the time of a disaster. In the weeks that have followed, Ichi’s e-mail provoked a series of responses from all over the world. In this post, we hope to voice many of the tools, resources, and tactics that have been shared, in hopes of encouraging others around the world to get involved with the digital relief efforts.

Originally posted at my own blog.

Social media -- those avenues to send instant, short, widely-distributed messages and images -- cuts both ways:

• It can be used to organize protesters, but it can also be used to identify protesters and arrest them.
• It can be used to spread information, but it can also be used to spread MISinformation.
• You can use it to promote your organization and cause, and others can use it to tear down your organization.

And it's been used to organize protests since the 1990s - so can we stop now with how "new" it all is?

Over the last two weeks, we have posted parts 1 and 2 in a 3-part series, sharing some of our observations and planning concepts, and hoping to gather feedback and ideas from you. The first part in the series focused on Local and Gloal and the second highlighted opportunities to Expand our Impact.

Like so many people working on projects focused on the issues, technologies and strategies that help strengthen communities, we spent the end of 2010 reflecting on our findings (check out the year-in-review post series). As we dash forward with our plans for 2011, the NetSquared team would like to begin a dialogue with our users around the evolution of the NetSquared initiative.

Recent conversations with community members surfaced three key topics that we’ll be exploring in a series of posts over the coming weeks: The Inter-Play Between Local & Global Programs, Expanding & Evaluating Impact, and Developing a Compelling Network Narrative.

As the year comes to a close, we're reminded to reflect back on some of the highlights from the last 12 months. This is the last in our series of year in review posts I've been sharing to highlight some of the exciting moments for NetSquared and our global community in 2010. 

The NetSquared Community is a global network of people who connect both on- and offline to talk, learn, and share their experiences with using technology for social impact. In this post, I'll share some information about the current state of our global community - and some of the great things that happened in 2010!