Social Media Tools for Work & Learning » 2009

Cooking Up a Collaboration Web Site with Drupal & Open Atrium

September 29th, 2009

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A fabulous dinner is best prepared by merging each dish so that everything is ready to eat at the right time. This takes some planning and ingenuity along with a confidence in your abilities to create an outstanding feast that everyone will like and talk about for a long time.

Preparing a feast is a great metaphor for building a dynamic web site and integrating a client’s social media strategy into the site building process. My partner Alain (from iAutomate) and I have prepared for our roles as head chefs by accumulating collectively over 40 years of experience in the IT and social benefit sector. Our business focuses on supporting non profits in using collaborative web platforms and online communication strategies to engage their audiences.

We clearly heard from our client that a combination of solid informative content, membership opportunities plus collaboration options were needed for this web site. All of us, client team, my partner and I put the broad brush strokes to a plan that would achieve these outcomes. Essentially we were aiming to marry the web site architecture with the social media strategy and mix in the right content to present to the public for viewing and participation.

Intentional Peer Support – Krasman Centre hosts Training Workshop

September 5th, 2009

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When Tanya Shute, Executive Director of the Krasman Centre told me just how important and integral the Intentional Peer Support (IPS) framework was to Krasman programming for mental health consumer survivors, I was intrigued. Tanya explained that the Krasman Centre was hosting a special week long training on IPS and people were coming from across Ontario to participate.

As a volunteer with the Krasman Centre, I saw an opportunity to add a record of this event for the Krasman video library as well as my own video channel on my web site. It was also a chance to demonstrate how using social media is an effective way to disseminate knowledge and practice to a wide audience of people interested in social issues and change.

Without hesitation, I offered to do a video interview with Shery Mead, the consultant hired to conduct the training.

What follows are 3 video’s. The first one is with Shery Mead and the last 2 are with Ann Thompson, a Recovery Educator and participant in the training program. I think you will find them very enlightening in respect to the emerging field of mental health prevention and wellness programming.

I’ll start by providing a short introduction of Intentional Peer Support (from Shery’s web site).

What is Intentional Peer Support?

Intentional Peer Support is a way of thinking about purposeful relationships. It is a process where people (or a group of people) use the relationship to look at things from new angles, develop greater awareness of personal and relational patterns, and to support and challenge each other as we try new things. IPS has been used in crisis respite (alternatives to psychiatric hospitalization), by peers, mental health professionals, families, friends and community-based organizations.

Shery offers a broad range of training based on individual needs. These may include training in intentional trauma-informed peer support, warmline skills, peer run crisis alternatives, co-supervision, Facilitator training and training for professionals in recovery-based practice.

Ann Thompson – Recovery Educator – next page

The Social Non Profit – My Lens

A social non profit is attuned, responsive and adaptive to the complex factors affecting its constituents and communities. In a social non profit there is an alignment between staff, services, governance systems and online communications. Social non profits value learning and innovation and believe in working smarter by using social tech tools to enhance communication, collaboration and learning amongst staff, volunteers, partners and service users. These organizations believe that strategic use of social media empowers staff, improves services and strengthens governance practices.

Social Web Partners

I'm very pleased to have a number of very capable and talented consultants as friends and partners that work with me from time to time.

Alain Hurtubise (iAutomate.ca) designs and developments web 2. 0 platforms. Alain has over 20 years experience in web design and enterprise systems programming with large corporations. Alain's passion is paying it forward through his work with me in the non profit sector.

Peter Levesque's company, Knowledge Mobilization Works (based in Ottawa) is dedicated to building the capacity of people to create value through knowledge mobilization.

Mark Holmgren (Mark Holmgren Consulting - Edmonton AB) contributes his extensive organizational change expertise along with an array of social media integration expertise.