Beth Kanter has a terrific post about the next topic that the folks over at WeAreMedia are working on:
Social Networks – Build the Nonprofit Social Media Tool Box. Check out their developing list of resources for social media, including links to Facebook tutorials.
Beth mentions a fun and informative video, How to Befriend Your Boss on Facebook about friending and setting privacy settings produced by VideoJug. Seemed like a good follow-up to our previous post here about friending….
Ever since I careened haltingly down the rabbit hole that is Second Life, I’ve been fascinated by how nonprofit organizations and educators are using the virtual world as a platform for e-learning, professional development, collaboration, social networking, and creativity.
TechSoup recently released the report, Nonprofits and Second Life: Promoting Causes Inside Second Life – For Real World Impact by Sandra Bettger (aka Anika Pastorelli), Executive Director of Giving Circles Network.
This “hot off the press” publication is based on interviews with 12 nonprofit organizations that are integrating Second Life to extend the reach of their work. The report identifies benefits of an inworld presence for nonprofits. It also discusses the impact of promoting philanthropic endeavors in the virtual world on real world issues and causes. These include opportunities to:
• Promote the cause, raise awareness or reach a new audience;
• Enhance learning and education;
• Network as part of a broader community;
• Fundraise in SL (Lindens) or in real life (world) currencies;
• Engage and learn personally or professionally (as an individual);
• Volunteer or mobilize volunteers;
• Communicate with, counsel and support members and users;
• Foster independence of beneficiaries;
• Leverage the media (public relations); and
• Provide mutual support (among beneficiaries).
There is valuable information to glean from this report for those organizations already inworld and those that are wondering how to approach this online/inworld environment.
Intrigued? Learn more about the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life:
Recommendations from the NPSL wiki for learning more:
Interested in exploring Second Life? A good place to start is the Second Life Education Grid.
In addition to background and resources, the Second Life Education Grid, in partnership with ISTE will facilitate your entry into Second Life. Register for Second Life through the education portal, and you will be taken inworld to ISTE in Second Life, where you can orient yourself to this new world in a friendly environment. As you wander along the orientation pathway, you will learn key skills for navigating around in Second Life. Look for ISTE’s Docents, education volunteers from all over the world who are there to greet you, answer questions, and get you started.
(cross-posted from jlearn2.0 and adapted slightly for TechStew)
Or is it? I’ve been hearing a lot of questions lately from people in leadership positions about the appropriateness of “friending” community members on social networks like Facebook. These questions are coming from clergy, youth leaders, teachers, etc. – basically, people in authority or mentoring roles, and often people who interact with minors. Many community organizations, youth groups, and classes use Facebook regularly to engage, connect, share, and plan events.
In the absence of organizational guidelines, people are establishing their own social policy based on their comfort levels. I have heard a number of responses to this issue, including:
I’ve started to do some investigating on this topic and would love to hear how you or your community approaches this issue. There are a whole lot of other people out there interested as well!
I also wonder about the implications for community stewardship. How do we determine, develop, and facilitate social norms that are appropriate for our communities? Is this something that organizations are addressing explicitly, or is it left to individual members? What are questions we should be asking?
*lyric from “Friendship” composed by Cole Porter.
flickr credit: “friendship arch detail” by Bitter Girl
I spend a lot of time hanging out at a small airport. Although I am not a pilot myself, I have often observed communities of practice in action among those who passionate about aviation, in particular the interactions among licensed pilots, students, instructors, mechanics, “groupies,” and others who make up this vibrant community.
My friend is a flight instructor – that’s the technical term, but I would say he is an educator. He often gives free workshops for pilots and would-be pilots who want to sharpen their skills and better understand the big picture of how various regulations and procedures connect, with an emphasis on flying more safely and smartly out of our local airport.
In addition to the workshops, he provides food – usually pizza, salad, and well, items that don’t really rate as a food group but seem to appeal to the palates of his primary demographic audience (mostly men of a certain age who clearly have fond childhood culinary memories of snack cakes).
All of this provided gratis and with an open heart.
But here’s where it gets interesting. In response to the workshop invitations, my friend started receiving complaints from people who attend his workshops complaining. Well, not really complaints. Suggestions. Demands. Yelling, even. They wrote about how much they appreciated the workshops. But they wanted to pay for dinner. They told him that it was enough that he was convening the group for a night out and for offering his presentations. He shouldn’t be providing the food without charge – participants wanted the option to help subvent the costs. He was denying them the opportunity to contribute. 
So he responded to their request. At the next workshop, he placed a sign near the inviting people to partake of the free goodies. He added that if they wanted to contribute, they should feel free to donate $5.00, but they were under no obligation. Sure enough, people were more than willing to kick in – and he broke even. Inspired, my friend asked if there were any requests for pizza toppings for the next workshop and he received some good feedback. In addition, one of the participants offered to prepare a special pre-workshop dinner for him the following week.
What I learned from this story (other than the eating habits of pilots) is the power of the transactional nature of communities. People who are invested in a community actively seek ways in which they can contribute – this includes community facilitators who take on leadership roles, as well as regular community members. Sure, there will be members who are more eager or available than others, who make up the core, and there are those with good intentions but limited time or energy who are more peripherally involved (but involved nonetheless). Sometimes community facilitators try to ignite engagement, but miss certain opportunities because they are thinking one way and their members are thinking another.
I shared this anecdote with John Smith and the discussion turned to transparency. Often community members don’t realize the extent of what it takes to keep a community going as a living, breathing entity. It is usually up to the community leadership to set expectations and norms, including commitments of time, finances, and ownership that help grow the community. Sometimes, however, this leadership is undertaken by community members who insist being given the chance to own a piece of the pie.
We listen to each other differently. We remember that community is transactional. This leads to richer engagement. And it could mean the difference between sharing regular cheese pizza and enjoying pizza with “the works.”