I have being taken with the expression ” a community is an ongoing series of conversations”.

I’ve adopted this term through my reading of Peter Block’s book, Community – the Structure of Belonging and his latest book written with John McKnight called the Abundant Community.

These books have little in them related to social media but they have influenced my thinking about social media strategies for non profit organizations in the most powerful of ways.

A cliché like “a community is an ongoing series of conversation” helps ground me in understanding how our world is unfolding as we speak.

Like Peter Block I believe that by sharing our unique stories and perspectives we have the potential to create the communities we want.

These little cliche sayings help me keep on track as I work with organizations committed to improving the health and sustainability of their communities.

I found my latest cliché saying in Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus – Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. He boldly states his definition as “ media is the connective tissue of society”.

The context in which he states his definition is related to breaking the notion that media is for professionals only. Clay Shirky sees that the bundle of concepts tied the word media is unraveling.

I loved this section that followed his definition of media.

We need a new conception for the word, one that dispenses with the connotations of something  produced by professionals for consumptions by amateurs.

Media is how you know where and when your friends birthday is. Media is how you know what’s happening in Tehran, who’s in charge in Tegucigalpa, or the price of tea in China. Media is how you know what your colleague named her baby. Media is how know why Kierkegaard disagreed with Hegel.  Media is how you know where your next meeting is. Media is how you know about anything more than ten yards away.

I’m getting a lot from Clay’s book. He describes our emerging world in a way that helps me understand the social changes that are unfolding as we share our stories on the social web.

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I first used VoiceThread a number of years ago to capture the voices of  citizens and residents on how they felt about poverty and homelessness in their community.

The VoiceThread was called Hidden in Plain Sight and was part of the York Region Alliance to End Homelessness campaign to raise awareness of poverty in local neighbourhoods.I’m exploring the option of using it again with a large scale community building initiative called Return to Rural .

My partner Mark and I (Mark Holmgren Consulting) are helping the Return to Rural organization develop their social media strategy. You can read more about Return to Rural in a previous post.

I see VoiceThread as an effective social media tool to continue sharing and collaborating with members between face to face meetings.

You can view it (larger screen) on my VoiceThread account by clicking on this link. Your invited to add a comment if you like.

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A musician from Canada got the run around from United Airlines after he complained about the airline handlers who where tossing his guitar around so carelessly they broke it. He witnessed this poor service from his seat on the airplane.

Needless to say the video went viral and United Airlines lost face and trust from millions of passengers just because they didn’t listen to their customer. His simple act of creating a song and then publishing it on YouTube demonstrate how social media has changed the relationship between business and consumer. It’s no longer business as usual.

A slight title change in honour of Arlo Guthrie who wrote the great Alice’s Restaurant Massacre

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SCRM stands for social constituent relationship management. In the business world, the C usually stands for customer.

This is new territory for me but as I delve deeper into this area, I am coming to believe that SCRM will soon be a very sought after tool (and skill set) in the non profit sector. I believe this because like business organizations, non profits will need to become more efficient at raising money, delivering services, partnering, collaborating and strengthening their staff’s skills using social tech tools. The default organizing software for doing this well is and will increasingly be Social CRM.

Social CRM is about engaging your constituents, not managing them. A Customer Relationship Management software platform (CRM) is a standard tool for segmenting, tracking, monitoring and managing customers in the sales industry. With Social CRM you are able to integrate your social media strategy with the core communication and knowledge management functions of your organization.

As more and more people are conducting their business and personal lives online, companies and non profits are learning that pushing their content to them with the aid of their CRM is not good enough. They are learning the value of giving up control (which doesn’t really apply any more) and inviting people and groups into their operational and innovation theatre.

Watch Paul Greenberg (follow him on Twitter @pgreenbe), one of the early adopter who mapped out the CRM space gives a succinct overview of what’s happening in the Social CRM space. He points out the two converging forces ’social’ and ‘CRM’ spaces that are coming together, yet the third force, ‘companies’ themselves aren’t yet ready for the internal changes that are coming. I picked this video and post up at Jeremiah Owyang’s blog, one of my favourite mentors in the web strategy world.

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I created this map as part of my community development work with a School Board committee. We wanted to look at what groups were participating within the York Region School Board system.

I know the details of this map are not relevant to many readers but as I reflected on on these clusters I started to think of questions that could help our committee make sense of what’s going on.

If anything, I  think mapping is such a cool social media tool  that just compels you to start making sense of of data and asking relevant questions.

Read more…

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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.

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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…

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Isn’t this data exciting! Thanks Forrester Research for your great work. Now when I talk with non profit organizations about adopting social media strategies, I can use current data about what Canadian adults are doing online. More important, we can begin a conversation about the implications to their online communication strategy.

If the organization doesn’t have an online strategy, then the data can be a persuasive argument for developing a strategy. After all, if your donors, supporters, service users, staff, past and future stakeholders are engaged in online activities doesn’t it make sense to be were your constituents are?

An even greater challenge to organizations without a social media strategy is the rising number of Canadians that first judge a non profits online presence when they are considering making a donation. If the organization is not presenting any compelling social media options that engage them in their cause, those potential donors will move on – very quickly.

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A must see and experience site is Museum 2.0. Nina Simon is the blog author and she does such an excellent job of making museums accessible for those who just don’t get out to visit these wonderful resources.

With web 2.0, these buildings and their treasures are open to visitors 24/7 and you are invited to not only soak up the exhibits with your eyes but participate through the wonders of social media.

Another participatory Art & Media site is called ArtsBabble.  Be prepared to while away a few hours. This is what the site is about:

“1. free flowing conversation, about art, for anyone.
2. a place where everyone is invited to join an open, ongoing discussion – no art degree required.

Read more…

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I’m overwhelmed with the innovative and energizing approach taken by Peter Block. His thinking dovetails closely with my interest in community engagement with young people and adults. I am enthusiastically incorporating many features of the community restoration approach in my efforts to restore community through social media strategies and tools.

This short video illustrates some of Peter Block’s principles and what he means by using structure, language and invitation to engage people in dialogue about restoring their community. I think that his ideas have tremendous application for community building in York Region. Fragmentation, isolation and cynicism seem to be taking deeper hold in our community.

A community restoration approach can be challenging for organizations that are used to problem solving, collaboration and outcome based discussions. I especially like how Peter Block in his book Community, the Structure of Belonging talks about how community is really an ongoing conversation. I’ve included a brilliant overview of his model titled Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community – changing the nature of the conversation.

Community Engagement – Restoration of Community

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