It was an exciting morning for students, staff and members of the Multimedia Film Festival Council of York Region. Films that were submitted to the inaugural year for the Festival were viewed by students at 3 different locations. A lively discussion, facilitated by Hillary Van Welter (Waste Films) had students offering their impressions and opinions about the films. This is a short overview of the discussions that took place amongst the schools.
I’m using the term social learning as I’ve just discovered an interesting discussion on this term at Bud the Teacher’s blog. It should be of interest to schools and community groups involved in student & civic engagement.
Beth Kanter is one incredible lady. I learn so much from her blog and her numerous social media channels. In this interview you can see her eyes sparkling and the electric energy that flows out of her with every question asked. The video is long but you can cherry pick which sections you like.
I was interested in hearing about her new book “The Networked Nonprofit“. I am using this term in my posts about social benefit groups becoming a networked organization.
Are you a leader in your social benefit organization? Are you interested in learning more about the basic building blocks necessary for supporting a dynamic, engaging web site that reaches out and deepens relationships with your stakeholders? Are you thinking about how to move your organization on to the social web dance floor but not sure where or how to start? Read on!
I’m sure you appreciate the impact social technologies are having in all sectors locally and around the world. Your leadership role now includes managing how your organization connects, networks, and collaborates with your diverse stakeholders. Also, your new role includes learning how to listen to your stakeholders in new ways so you can adapt and respond to a rapidly changing environment.
In 2009, after 20 + in the non profit sector, I hung out my shingle as a social media strategy consultant and formed my company, Social Media Tools for Work & Learning. Like others, I saw the communication and relationship landscape change across the world as social web technologies were increasingly used to engage and deepen relationships with service users, customers, partners, donors and supporters.
I recognized that it was time for me to combine my expertise in the non profit sector (herein called social benefit sector) with my passion and experience for using social media strategies and tools in my programs. I knew that organizations would need help in figuring out how to shift their thinking as they begin exploring how to adopt and integrate social media strategies and tools into their organization.
Ever since I read the World is Flat, I knew how important it is to have a larger view of your work and career goals. We know that social media is accelerating the pace of change across all sectors of the economy and employment sectors (other sectors as well).
We also know that many of the changes brought about by the social media groundswell are influencing how practitioners are thinking about their future. More and more front line and management staff are thinking deeply about their long term career as opposed to clinging to the illusion that their current job will last forever. I think this is a good thing.
I stumbled across this very interesting post from Luc Galoppin one of my favourite bloggers writing about consulting. Luc is writing a series of posts on the world of work, aptly titled “Love & Work. In this post which I inserted below, he cites the work of Jan Denys, a European Labour Market expert who has just released his book, Free to Work. Denys has composed a list of career anchor points are a simple but a very powerful way to identify and use your anchor points to drive your career. Career Anchors match the ‘who you are’ part with the ‘what you do’ part of your daily life.
In the below One-Minute-Interview Jan Denys explains what this means for every single employee who gets ‘trapped’ into the comfort zone of a stable job: Your comfort zone should be coloring red when you find yourself loosing the external focus and ignoring the long-term perspective of your career.
Nowadays, there is no such thing as a lifelong job in one and the same organization. However, in times of economic crisis we see people digging themselves even deeper into the security of their job: comply more, don’t speak up, play-safe-games and even increase the inward focus. Read more…
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.
Recent and Current Projects
Faith Community
• Social Learning & Collaboration
• Return to Rural – Alberta;
• Film Development Council of York Region;
• Delisle Youth Services - Toronto;
• York Region Alliance to End Homelessness;
• York-Durham Association of Museums & Archives ;
• Streetjibe – York Region Youth Poverty Program, Street Kids International.
Contact
brent@socialmediatools.ca
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.
Social Media – a definition
Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, podcast, forum, wiki or video hosting site. More broadly, social media refers to any online technology that lets people publish, converse and share content online. (via Socialbrite)
Social Learning – a definition
Social learning is participating with others to make sense out of new ideas. What's new about this is how powerful social media works together with social learning.
Marcia Conner, Tony Bingham: The New Social Learning, A Guide to Transform Organizations Through Social Media.
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