Social Media Tools for Work & Learning

MacKinnon’s Cloud Newsletter for York Region Non Profits

August 5th, 2009

2 comments

My hot off the press newsletter, MacKinnons Cloud, is now launched. I sent it out to over 400 people and so far, I’m getting some pretty positive responses. Now that it’s out in the wild, I’m making it available here on my website.

The content below is the cover letter I used to introduce my newsletter to readers. I created a newsletter because I wanted to provide useful resources and share more about what I do as a social media consultant for non profits.

I am connected to many networks and service providers in York Region that are looking to the social web to strengthen their organization and the communities they are a part of. I will do my best to make MacKinnon’s Cloud a useful guidepost for those people and organizations embarking on a social web journey.

The cloud metaphor comes from a presentation given by Mark Pesce gave at the ConnectingUp Australia conference where he suggested that non-profits need to look more like clouds than towers. Beth Kanter and others have written extensively on his suggestion. Here is Beth’s post titled “Can Non-Profit Organizations Work More Like Clouds? How?

A special thanks goes to Alain from iAutomate (web partner) who helped me with learning how to use the free php List software.

MacKinnons Cloud – August 2009

Throughout my career I have sought out opportunities to design and manage innovative initiatives that address complex social issues affecting children, youth and families.

Read more…

Brent Uncategorized cloud, newsletter

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.