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Blogging, Networking or Collaborating – which platform to use?

January 29th, 2009

2 comments

Recently I was asked for advice from from a colleague in the educational sector in regards to choosing an online tool for a group of educational administrators. He told me they were a group who were not particularly tech savvy and wanted something to help them share practices around school initiatives they were launching within their Board. He saw the platform as an open space where people can think and share their ideas freely. They opened a site on blogspot.com however he added that they may have some money available to pay for a platform with more to offer than blogspot. His personal criteria was that as long as it was the user friendly, easy to manage and an accessible platform available to individuals who not only have varying degrees comfort with using social networking but also have a range of hardware configurations (and firewalls). In sum he stated that “basically I’m looking for the lowest common denominator”. Well his criteria was a bit fuzzy, but without talking with him in person, I offered these suggestions.

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.