You can learn more about this major event by visiting the registration page. Please note that this conference is a feature event during Net Change, a week long event embracing social tech training and social change makers. Dates for this event are: June 10 – 12, 2009.Last summer, I attended the first Social Tech Training Conference (STT) and the experience changed my life. I’ve attended many learning events over the past twenty years but none like this.

The STT 2008 conference brought together so many talented and creative people from all over North America to share knowledge and strategies for using web 2.0 tools for social change. From that experience, I decided to invest my energies and creativity into working with organizations as a social media consultant.

I’m so pleased to have participated in this training. The community that evolved from STT 2008 continues to be a source of inspiration and guidance as I work with local York Region organizations seeking more effective ways to engage their constituents.

Here is a short advomentary that highlights the STT 2008 Conference.

Social Tech Training Advomentary from MaRS Discovery District on Vimeo.

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Social Tech Training 2008

I had the privilege of managing this pilot project since it’s launch in 2006. Street Kids International initiated the project, building on it’s poverty work in the Region over the past 6 years.  Streetjibe’s founder members were eleven practitioners from nine community non profit organizations. These staff and their respective agencies agreed to form a learning community that sought to build new skills and form collaborative relationships so young people have improved access to relevant services. In the second year we expanded our learning community to include any interested member of the community or agencies serving youth. The whole Streetjibe story can be found on our blog where we shared our collaborative work and encouraged the use of social media tools to foster learning.

One of the most exciting and inspiring stories came from Jenny Vengris from the Hamilton Social Planning & Research Council.Jenny describes how her project, working in partnership with young people has made a significant impact on the Hamilton community. The Street Youth Planning Collaborative is an outstanding example of an effective community collaboration that others groups across the province are looking to emulate. Some of Jenny’s strongest recommendations centered on the importance of community based research to leverage funder support and how imperative it is to have a Social Planning Council that coordinates, responds to and supports these research initiatives.

This video is one of 3 videos that I uploaded to my Blip TV channel. Here is the closing segment of her presentation( third and final presentation (9 min). While the videos are a bit long, they are very useful for us here in York Region as we struggle to catch up to the rest of the province (and country) in respect to securing funding support for a York Region Social Planning Council.

Here are 3 other short videos from the Get Honest – Our Youth Matter Conference:

Emma Rooney our conference organizer opens the day with this impassioned message to participants.

Tom Hollands, a Streetjibe participant talks about his experiences in the Streetjibe Learning Community.

Ryan Caleb, a Youth Speak participant who attended our World Council and Stigma workshops talks about how Streetjibe contributed to his learning.

Over 350 people attended the National Mental Health Week – On the Road of Recovery event at the Newmarket Theatre on April 8th, 2009. From my perspective, the event was a resounding success . I think what made the event so successful was the careful planning and collaboration of the sponsoring organizations and the representation throughout the day of the rich and genuine voices of consumer survivors.

I was very pleased that Social Media Tools for Work & Learning was given permission to film the event. We offered not only to film the main presenters but also staff and consumers about what the day meant for them. In addition to the dynamic presentations given by Bill MacPhee, CEO/Founder of the Schizophrenia Digest and the Stand Up for Mental Health comedy troupe, we have over twenty interviews that will be added to the final DVD.

All of the sponsoring organizations will be given a master DVD copy that they can use to share with staff and consumers who were not able to attend the event. They can also re-purpose the DVD for staff/volunteer training purposes or reaching their stakeholders by posting the DVD on their web site. Once we complete the post production editing process, I will post the full DVD on my site.

The sponsoring organizations included: Canadian Mental Health Association-York Region; York Support Services Network; Krasman Centre; Loft – Crosslinks; Addiction Services for York Region.

This photo slide show and the interview above will give you a flavour of the day. You can see how using inexpensive equipment can still give good quality results. Please leave a comment if you would like to continue extending the conversation.

A slide show that illustrates how interviews are added into our film.

BubbleShare: Share photos – Play some Online Games.

Alex Giancola is a cast member in a play called The Recovering. This interview is an excerpt from the film that Social Media Tools for Work & Learning did of the play.

This play was entirely created and directed by consumer/survivors of the mental health system. I was very pleased when Tanya Shute Exective Director of the Krasman Centre, a mental health drop in centre located in Richmond Hill Ontario agreed to my offer of filming the play at their 2009 AGM celebrations. The Krasman Centre and the Richmond Hill United Church where key supporters of the play from the beginning.

My filming partner Bill and I met the Director and cast at their pre show rehearsal to get their permission to film the play. They were very agreeable to my offer as they saw that having a good DVD quality video could help the play reach a wider audience. They also felt that a digital copy posted on the Internet would be an effective way to raise public awareness.

The acting troupe is seeking financial support from any level of government, Foundation or groups that has an interest in supporting  their volunteer driven production. Supporting The Recovering play would be appealing to groups interested in building inclusive communities, using drama as a therapeutic tool, raising public awareness of and support for individuals experiencing mental illness.

To make the film production more appealing they also agreed to my request that we include brief interviews of each of the cast members. The interviews would focus on their personal journey in dealing with mental illness and how participating in the play contributes to their well being and personal development.

I’ll be posting a link to the full film of the play and interviews of the cast once we finalize the production. Over the coming weeks, I will be writing more about using video and other social media tools to support advocacy and awareness projects in the community.

Please leave your comments about this wonderful dedicated acting troupe who are sharing so much of their story and contributing to a healthy inclusive community.

I love this book “The Groundswell” , winning in a world transformed by social technologies written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  Here is how they introduce their approach to writing the book. We have taken “a broader view of this phenomenon(social networks, media, tools, web 2.0 etc), one that encompasses not just today’s technologies but the fundamental change in behaviour now happening online. The groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. (non profits corporations as well).

This book has rounded out my thinking and made clear why it’s so important for non profit organizations and businesses to learn how to survive and thrive in the groundswell.  The next excerpt from the Groundswell book is a bit long, but for me it so accurately captures the the depth, breadth and permanence of the seachange in how we relate and do business with each other in our neighbourhoods, countries and world.

The groundswell is broad, ever shifting, and ever growing. It encompasses blogs and wikis; podcasts and YouTube; and consumers who rate products, buy and sell from each other, write their own news, and find their own deals. It’s global. It’s unstoppable. It af­fects every industry—those that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses—in media, retail, financial services, technology, and health care. And it’s utterly foreign to the powerful companies and institu­tions—and their leaderships—that run things now. Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you’re in a company, this is a challenge.

The groundswell phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. The tech­nologies that make it work are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, but the phenomenon itself is based on people acting on their eternal desire to connect. It has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. This book exists to help companies deal with the trend, regardless of how the individual technology pieces change. We call this ground-swell thinking.

Having worked in the non profit sector for many years, I know well the challenges of surviving as an organization, let alone having and maintaining a web presence that represents the Mission, staff and operations of the organization. The groundswell for non profits and businesses simply means that they need to learn how to connect more effectively with the ever growing numbers of individuals (73% in the USA) who are active online users.

In the non profit sector, street youth, newcomers, to Canada, the unemployed, seniors wanting to reach out to distant relatives or people struggling with health issues are using online tools to connect with others and access resources. Ignoring the way these people are communicating and using online tools is not an option when your in the capacity building, social change and community betterment business. For social change agents and community organizations, it’s time to listen and learn how to participate within the groundswell.

Non profit organizations like any other business, are now faced with delivering services to a consumers who have access on the social web to knowledge, options and tools that aids them in their everyday living needs. They expect service organizations and staff at the minimum, to be knowledgeable of navigating the web and capable of connecting them with the right information and resources. They no longer wish or expect to passively wait for service. These non profit organizations, by their charter and by their funding requirements strive to adhere to standards of transparency, inclusiveness, equity. Giving people pithy statements about what wonderful services and worthy purposes that your organization promises to deliver isn’t good enough in todays networked world.

So where does creating an online strategy fit in to this picture? Well, the good news is that with good old fashioned planning and a sincere desire to understand what your audience is doing and talking about, you can initiate an organizational change that brings you into dialogue with your constituents, within the groundswell. My next post will focus on the framework for creating your online strategy.

by CowGummy

Many non profit organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of using technology to address their communication and capacity building goals. Unfortunately, they often become turned off and frustrated because of their unfamiliarity with the plethora of social media tools available and how to appropriately integrate these tools into their organization.  One of the non profit organizations that I was involved with was asked by their funder to explain why a new web site was needed when a web site was built 2 years ago. My colleagues asked me to put together a “fact sheet” or talking points to help explain to the funder what was different between the proposed web site and what was built 2 years previous.

I enjoyed putting this list together because it helped me explain in plain language what having a web 2.0 site will look like as opposed to the brochure sites that are the default style of so many organizations in the non profit sector. My list doesn’t include an outline or explanation of conducting an online communication strategy that will guide the web site design and development. I will save that for a post next week. I am sure there are pieces that may be added to the list. If you see anything I omitted, please leave a comment.

20 Reasons for Funding a Web 2.0 Non Profit Web Site

1. We will have a in-house user friendly content management system (CMS), making it simple and easy for updating core text or core content (About page, Programs, Staff list etc) posting relevant news, activities & documents from Governments, Agencies, practitioners to individual residents of our Region;

2. We will have a CMS that increases our responsiveness, relevance, collaboration, advocacy and support with our constituents. (including dissemination of various government reports, call for proposals and feedback from our constituents to government policy makers and administrators);

3. We will have a robust and user friendly data base component to the CMS that will make registration and membership to the organization and its activities easy and manageable for those signing up as well as for in-house staff that collate and use this data;

4. We will have a web site designed to encourage visits, find resources and participate;

5. We will have a web site easy that is inviting, appealing, atheistically pleasing, creating a sense of comfort and an ease of navigation;

6. We will have a web site that utilizes Google analytics to enable us to accurately measure the effectiveness of our web site. These metrics will be matched against our goals and strategies, allowing us to monthly reassess the placement of content and links;

7. We will have a web site designed to utilize web 2.0 tools to allow for communities and individuals to connect with and dialogue with the organization;

8. We will have a support person for any technical aspect related to the site;

9. We will have a site that is search engine friendly to increase online exposure of the organization and traffic to the site (search engine optimization (SEO) strategies);

10. We will have a person facilitating the drafting of our online communication strategy and the coordinating the first phase of determining and implementing the most appropriate communication tools for our diverse audiences;

11. We will have a person training in-house staff on the use of the CMS and the fostering and supporting of online dialogue with individuals and local Regional communities, Agencies, etc.

12. We will have a dynamic platform, rich in a variety of social media tools (web 2.0) that will exemplify and demonstrate the benefits of using technology to strengthen the local Regional non profit community;

13. We will, with this experience and knowledge, be able to facilitate other local agencies in adopting similar online strategies for serving their community;

14. We will have the best communication tool available to address the disconnection amongst marginalized and homeless (at risk of) residents and the organizations serving these families and individuals;

15. We will have a on line presence that allows the organization to offer a supportive online environment where constituents (Agencies, residents, consumers of services etc) a means to have questions answered, learn how to survive with less resources, build partnerships and collaborations, provide timely feedback from residents to different levels of government;

16. We will have a site that we can grow and adapt to the changing complexities of our community

17. We will create transparency, opening the doors and windows to the organization;

18. We will have the necessary online tools to address the complexities of rapid change in our communities and the ongoing uncertainty of working within a non profit sector (system) where short term funding practices foster a disconnect between organizations and practitioners;

19. We will have a site that can assist in generating new funding opportunities and sources;

20. We will have a site that we are proud of and that we have ownership of;

Do you have more benefits that can be used to explain to funders why you need their support to strengthen your Mission and operations through a web 2.0 web site? Please leave any of your thoughts or ideas.

Thanks to Alain at iAutomate for bouncing around ideas with me for this post.

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On Friday, Feb. 14th, I had the pleasure of delivering a workshop in Windsor to workers from the settlement and housing sectors. It  was held at the United Way of Windsor Essex County offices and hosted by the Applied Social Welfare & Research Group – York University in partnership with the Homeless Coalition of Windsor Essex County. The workshop was titled Building Capacity Within the Housing and Settlement Sector. We put together an array of social media tools and presented examples of how social media is transforming how we work, learn and communicate with our stakeholders.  I was very pleased that Marco Campana, Online Capacity Development Coordinator from the Ontario Coalition of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) was able to participate as co-presenter. Marco has a wealth of experience in e-service delivery and a solid understanding of the challenges faced by workers in the settlement sector. OCASI has an award winning online site called Settlement.Org. The site is rich in social media content and is a portal for people seeking accurate information on settlement and immigration issues.

Marco and I organized the workshop with a wiki (a pbwiki). We used the wiki to organize all our resources and to model how wikis are such an effective tool for collaboration and planning. One of our goals was to provide participants with a planning tool that they can use to begin the strategy and implementation process within their organization.The document was first introduced to me at the Social Tech Training Conference that I attended in the summer of 2008. If there is one document worth having in your kit bag of tools, this document is it. The Web of Change and MaRS organization sponsored this event along with leading edge groups across Canada and the United States.

One of the key points we we wanted to leave with the workshop participants was the importance of starting small and developing a strategy to explain the benefits of using these simple, meaningful and necessary tools in their respective organizations.

I corralled Colleen and Heather from the Homeless Coalition after our workshop and asked them to share a few comments about what they learned. Their comments has helped me sort through what worked and how the workshop can be improved. Thanks Colleen and Heather!  A complete video of the workshop was made and I will post portions of it once I complete the post editing process.

A few of the agenda topics we covered in our workshop included:

• Trends in the Non Profit, Business, Library and Education sectors
• The Tools Your Using Right Now
• What is Blogging Anyway
• Practical Examples (the kitchen sink)
• Ning, VoiceThread, Mindmeister – Integration Platforms
• Overview of Web 2.0
• Web 2.0 Planning Document (Web of Change)

I learned quite a bit from this workshop. For one thing, I’m going scale back on presenting so many social media tools and spend more time on a few tools that I believe might apply immediately to the needs and interests of practioners. Taking time to present some basic web 2.0 information is very necessary as it lays the foundation for understanding the concepts and language. I can see that having the morning to set “web 2.0 context” and present an overview of how others are using the tools, followed by hands on experimenting and learning to use the tools in the afternoon would be a good plan.

On a final note, I’ll be sure to use the Web 2.0 planning document as it reinforces the importance of developing a plan and examining clearly the connecting and starting points for implementing social media tools in your organization.

Learning how to work more effectively across sectors and building new skills is an ongoing requirement for professionals. As a community and youth worker (and now a social media consultant) I believe people want to be feel connected, they want to belong, they want to feel valued and competent, contributing to their own development and the development of those close to them. Using social media tools help me feel this way and I recognize the same benefits coming to others who publish online and use web 2.0 tools in their work.

I am very committed to communities of practice and networking initiatives as a means to create new solutions, improve skills and increase the sharing of knowledge across sectors. Over the last 3 yeas I’ve been working as Manager, Canadian Programs, Street Kids International and supporting a “learning community” in York Region.

My project, called Streetjibe, brought youth workers together to learn from each other, build skills and create better networks so youth at risk have access to relevant services and skilled staff. The Streetjibe blog is our online learning community that contains the learnings and tools used in the 25 workshops conducted over the past 2 years and of course introduces social media tools such as blogging, wikis, videos, podcasts as way to build community and engage in conversations with the youth service community.

Networking, collaborations and partnerships are essential practices in non profit service communities. With some of the networks I belong to, I’ve been introducing online tools such as the Ning network platform, wikis, VoiceThread software and collaboration mapping tools such as Mindmeister. While these tools complement face to face meetings, they can also be used to enhance service delivery and engage clients and stakeholders in conversations within your organization.

I am a member of Ning networks in Britain and Ireland. There is also keen interest by many within the educational sector in using these simple and relevant (most often free) learning and sharing tools. Here are the links to the UK groups and a link to a post written by Dean Shareski who writes about teachers who have opened up their classrooms to the world. I’ve also included links to several online learning conferences that I’ve participated in over the past 6 months.

Teachers Who Share Dean Shareski – Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Work Literacy – Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals

Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations 2008 – Hook up with fellow innovative thinkers and international visionaries to gain insight into what’s going on, swap opinions, and shape the future of learning.

Youth Work Online – Youth Work Online is an evolving network of practitioners sharing their learning, their questions, their visions and their ideas about the future of youth work and the web.

Youth Work Northern Ireland Youth Workers discussing the development of their youth work in Northern Ireland

This video is a tongue in cheek take on the new realities of marketing whereby consumers are exercising their independence from slick advertisement practices. I love it as a great example of social media explaining the impact of web 2.0 tools on the buyer – seller relationship. The arrogance of the marketing executive is over the top but overall I believe the video reflects the “head in the sand” mentality of many executives in the business, non profit and educational sectors.

I decided early in life that I wasn’t a sales person. I couldn’t get excited about getting people to buy things and I had very little interest in making scads of money. I chose to develop my career in social work with a major focus on youth work and community development. I love my work as a change agent with organizations and young people however this past year, I’ve being taken over by a strong desire to work on my own as an independent consultant.  Well we all know that consulting requires sales skills so here I was, looking at my biased attitudes that would surely make me the poorest consultant this side of the 49th parallel.  Fortunately I was  rescued from myself, when out of the blue, my very good friend Emma, knowing I was entering into a new career territory, suggested that I attend a unique sales training workshop, hosted by her father, a very high caliber training consultant in the sales industry.

Before, I go on, I need to say I was not eager for this workshop as the remnants of my old attitudes about sales were still solidly in place. Those attitudes had softened over time as 20 years in the non profit industry taught me that my work used sales skills all the time. Engaging your clients, building trust and rapport, facilitating clients to choose to change (buying), creating partnerships for mutual benefit, closing deals with funders are examples (there are plenty more) of how the sales field and my field of social work is closely related. What hadn’t changed was my own deep seated resistance to what I saw as being a pushy guy who forced his products on people who didn’t want them .

As I am a newly minted and gung ho self employed entrepreneur I know that I have much to learn about the business world and the sales process. I accepted Emma’s father’s invitation and made my way down town for a 7:30 a.m breakfast with an 8 a.m. start. Despite the 10 centimetre snowfall the night before, I made it on time and settled in for the session.

Tim Rooney is founder Rooney Earl and Partners . He is a seasoned CEO who draws on decades of corporate success to help businesses accelerate their sales growth and build sustainable sales organizations (from Tim’s bio). As part of his services, Tim provides workshops to sales personal of all stripes and from every sector. He is an warm and engaging man who tells great stories about his experience but he is even better at eliciting stories of the participants and listening closely to the meaning and implications of their stories. Tim’s presentation was called “No Pressure Prospecting” . He explained how his approach falls within a sales training framework called the Sandler System. There were books, handouts, quick tip guides, pamphlets and follow up options and much more available for those that might want to go into ongoing training of the Sandler system.

I felt totally in the zone throughout the day with Tim. His presentation of the material was engaging, funny at times, but mostly deeply connecting to the questions I have about myself and the skills I am aspiring to learn for my work as a consultant. In my social media work, I am all about finding my inner voice and expressing what I feel strongly about. However, I recognize that my doubts and worries (Tim calls these doubts head trash) sometimes get in the way of me getting to where I want to be. The Sandler system framework, as demonstrated by Tim through highly interactive and honest dialogue with participants (only about 12 of us) made a deep impression on me. A few personal revelations and insights that I took home with me were:

• I need to learn to be more succinct in my explanations about what I do (elevator speech)

• I am more than good enough in what I do and what I have to offer is needed by many individuals and organizations

• Tonality is everything

• I have equal status with anyone
  

• Contracting up front about expectations in a “sales” meeting  is simple, meaningful and necessary

• Question, Question, Question – Listen, Listen, Listen,

• It’s about changing your behaviour within a framework – in this case it’s the Sandler System

• It’s right and good to “go for the no” – letting prospects know I need to move on unless they are still interested

• Incremental improvements over time builds lasting change in your professional development

• Discover the pain – it’s the doorway into engagement with your prospect

Well you get the idea. You would need to be there to understand some of my take aways. How much of this is similar to the work I’ve been done in the non profit world over the past few decades. I’d say 100% of this sales system and framework fits for me.

I now believe that having a system for sales communication instead of the traditional wandering around with a whatever works style is a must. It reminded me of my experiences working with traditional non profit boards. These boards also operate as a team of well meaning individuals however there is no system in place for their important work beyond the “Roberts Rules” framework. Until I learned the Policy Governance system designed by John Carver, I didn’t realize how dysfunctional this “anything goes traditional approach” could be. I mention my board experiences because it was here that I learned to appreciate the benefits of having a logical system to follow to address complex processes.

So, as humans, are we all in sales? Probably not.  However Tim’s presentation and the real life examples coming from such diverse participants in the workshop has deepened my understanding of the sales process and added to my enjoyment of engaging others in common interests and now this includes sales.