OpenIDEO is an online community platform where creative thinkers from all walks of life collaborate to solve social problems. This project from the newly created nonprofit arm of “design and innovation firm” IDEO leverages crowdsourced innovation, the design thinking of IDEO staff and the experience of mission-driven organizations to address critical social issues.

I recently connected with Rob Gerth, the Director of Digital Media at the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. After learning that the Foundation was using Blackbaud Social to power their community, I became interested in learning more about the Foundation’s efforts as well as the techniques and technology behind its growing online presence.

The monthly Community Builder chat series is part of the #4Change community of regularly scheduled chats, bringing together people from around the world to talk about examples, practices, tips and more as we all explore the way technology can be used for social change.  This is the second in what will be a monthly series of chats specifically focused on Community Building.

When:

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

Topics:

For our September MeetUp, we are thrilled to have longtime online community expert, Randall Farmer, as our guest speaker. We'll also be joined by Bill Johnston, Head of Global Community at Dell, who will be facilitating the event.

Randy will be speaking about managing reputation systems in online communities. His talk will lead into an informal discussion moderated by Bill. Come join us for an evening of online community strategy and in-person networking with fellow online community enthusiasts.

Location

Tom Watson at onLine discusses many of the frustrations that led to the development of Throngz.

Asks Andy Carvin in a recent blog entry that response to C|NET News article debating whethe ror not online social networks are just a trendy trend or here to stay.   In contrast to the C|NET article that looks at it from the business perspective and suggests that the jury is still out, Andy reviews the history of online community building, from the earliest bulletin board systems to community networks to online social networks.  Definitely worth a read!

If you have never been to Cybersoc.com or if you have never read the Cybersoc blog, this is a great time to start.  Robin Hamman, of Cybersoc, is hosting guest bloggers all next week.

 Here's the info:

Each day next week (20-24 March), cybersoc.com will be publishing posts by a series of special guest bloggers to help mark the one year anniversary of cybersoc.com (the blog, not the site which is 10 this year).

The guest bloggers are all leaders in their respective areas and should have some interesting ideas to share. Each of them will use their blog entry here to look back at the highlights of their chosen topic area over the past year and to look forward to give us a glimpse of what developments or changes they're excited, or worried about, happening over the coming year.