Tag Archive for 'conference'

Community-Driven Social Impact: Presentation & Game

Published in presentation and socialbysocial. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Today I had the great pleasure and honor of presenting at the National Conference on Service and Volunteering. I had a 90-minute workshop which was broken into two parts: a bit of presentation, and a bit of game time. The presentation focused on 4 strategic steps, 3 sets of best practices, and a few case studies for creating programs, services, content, and campaigns in a community-driven process.

Presentation:

Community-Driven Social Impact

Resource links:

  • http://amysampleward.org/2010/05/07/guest-post-on-online-community-report-sustainable-community-building/
  • http://amysampleward.org/2009/08/06/online-community-building-gardening-vs-landscaping/
  • http://netsquared.org/camps
  • http://350.org
  • http://connectipedia.org
  • http://socialbysocial.com

Game:

To play the game with your organization, team or community group, use the documents below to share the grid and other pages to print and cut out the playing cards. The Grid is used as follows:

  1. Who is your community? Share everything you can think of!
  2. What’s the sweet spot? This is the intersection or overlap of the community’s goals and your organization’s goals. What are you going to work on together?
  3. What tools could help? This is where you’ll use the tool cards. Use 10 as the limit when you add up the numbers on the cards – those correspond to the equivalent capacity needed to support the use of the tool.
  4. What roles are needed? This is where you’ll use the role cards. Remember that these are only some of the roles that may be appropriate for your project.
CDSI Game – Grid

View more documents from Amy Sample Ward.
CDSI Game – Tools

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CDSI Game – Roles

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Published on June 29, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 5 Comments

Connect in Person at #NCVS

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NCVSThe 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service (NCVS) is June 28-30 in New York City. The NCVS conference is an opportunity for volunteer and service leaders to get together for in-person networking and learning. If you’re going to be there, we’d love for you to get in touch!

Find us!

Here’s a listing of sessions and spaces hosted by NetSquared and TechSoup:

Community-Driven Social Impact Session

Amy Sample Ward from NetSquared
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010; 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room: 1471
This session focuses on strategies and case studies for creating successful community-driven media, events and campaigns. Participants will learn about best practices and work in small groups to put learning into practice.

Technology Planning for Nonprofits Session

Catherine Hurd and Elliot Harmon
 from TechSoup Global
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Room: 1374
This session will help participants to assess their organization’s technology needs and capacity; work with technical volunteers; and understand the role of technology planning as the foundation for an effective operating environment.

Mixed Reality Learning Lab

Susan Tenby from TechSoup Global along with Interactive Producers Evonne Heyning from and Josephine Dorado
Dates: All conference long!
Location: In the lounge near the ballroom entrance corridor between the conference host exhibit spaces
The team at TechSoup has brewed up a select menu of tools and strategies to provide a social media curriculum to conference attendees on how to explore Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and applications for engaging volunteers and supporters around the world.  Attendees can join a tour of the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life or learn how to use digital storytelling and Facebook for quick and easy updates to keep connected to supporters. Quick tips and tools will be provided on how to get started as well as support for more advanced users.  Also, engage in a mixed reality event as avatars and representatives from nonprofits around the world discuss their work both virtually and in their communities.

Get in Touch Via Twitter

Will you be at the NCVS? We’d love to hear from you: @NetSquared or @TechSoup.  Or connect with us directly:

Published on June 16, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 11 Comments

Great reads from around the web on December 25th

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I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of December 25th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

  • Social Media: What I Learned This Year | Millennial Marketing – Carol Phillips has a great post recapping what she learned about social media in 2009, including: "Effective use of Social Media requires enthusiasm and diligence." Read all of the lessons Carol learned – and I'd love to hear what you learned!
  • NonProfit 2.0 UnConference and holiday discount | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – NonProfit 2.0 Unconference is coming to Washington, D.C., February 12, 2010, and promises to be "more than just a conference on the next generation web." Plus, if you register soon you can get a 20% discount! Simply use "HolidayDiscount" when you register for the Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference here: http://nonprofit20.eventbrite.com/?discount=
  • Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month – "Five years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we're hearing from sources close to the project. MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces and profile information of other MyBlogLog users that visit their sites." I've used MyBlogLog on this blog as a chance for readers visiting the website to be welcomed by the faces of fellow readers, and not just me; I think, as is explained in this article from ReadWriteWeb, that the MyBlogLog service opened the door to some very interesting uses of community data and will be watching the developments on its future closely.
  • Fundraising Sources for Social Entrepreneurs – December 2009 Edition – "Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows. These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. Download the December 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French and Spanish)."
  • Wikispaces Blog " Blog Archive " How Non-Profits Are Using Wikis – The Wikispaces Blog has some great examples of organizations using wikis in their work. "This month, we bring you some great examples of how non-profits are using wikis. Read on to see how wikis help these organizations reach out to their communities, manage volunteers, create resources, and more."
Published on December 25, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Great reads from around the web on November 18th

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I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of November 18th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

  • 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – Have you registered yet for the Nonprofit Technology Conference? This is one of the best opportunities each year to meet others from the nonprofit technology sector, learn what other organizations are up to, what's new and what's next! I'll be there and hope you will be, too :)
  • What is your conversation strategy? | Powered by John Haydon – John Haydon has an excellent post today to get you thinking more strategically about your use of social media, and not just what tools to use but what to say once you're using them! "When most businesses and non-profits start using social media, they start with “small talk” with their communities. They politely reply to tweets, express appreciation to donors, respond as quickly as possible to customer support issues, and generally try to add value to their network. But all to often, they fail to move beyond the “small talk” and create meaningful discussions that their communities are dying to have."
  • Whuffie Webinar – "What if you had access to the latest big ideas from the corporate world, distilled into a 10 minute video that was 6.5 more memorable than other ways of learning? What if you then had access to one of the leaders in the not-for-profit world who would show you how to take these principles and apply them to your day to day activities? What if all of this was free, every month?" You do! Check out this great webinar series from Polar Unlimited.
  • Idealist.org: Imagine, Connect, Act – Idealist is trying something. They want to see what could happen if we serious commit to working together, on an offline. "It's time for the world's idealists to work together, online and in person. The first step in this campaign is to ask you to take a few minutes to read this proposal. What you'll find there is a vision for this network, a path and a timeline to build it, and an invitation to be part of this movement from the very start. Then, to share your thoughts and join the 1,361 people in 91 countries who are making this happen, please sign up here."
  • YouTube – Direct's Channel – "YouTube Direct allows you to embed the upload functionality of YouTube directly into your own site, enabling your organization to request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos with ease. News organizations can ask for citizen reporting; nonprofits can call-out for support videos around social campaigns; businesses can ask users to submit promotional videos about your brand. With YouTube Direct, the opportunities to connect directly with the YouTube community are endless."
Published on November 18, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 19 Comments

Social by Social Game at Chain Reaction 09

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Today, David Wilcox and I will be running a version of the Social by Social game at the Chain Reaction event in London … which promises to be a terrific 400-strong gathering of community activists, policy people, business leaders, with a few Cabinet Ministers too.

The game will be similar in form to those you’ll find here: we’ll invent a place, break into groups around some social challenges or themes, then use sets of cards to plan how to engage people, choose social media tools, and work out how to fund the package. However, although the format is pretty standard, I’m sure the ideas will be highly creative. The cards and other props are there to stimulate conversation – and that always works.

We’ve tweaked the cards from the last play, as you can see below. Each card has an image (so they don’t all look the same), a description, and budget points from 1-3. The green budget points are for engagement cards, yellow for tools, red for funding. We’ll set a budget for green and yellow, that has to be matched by red.

I wanted to get this preview up so we can do a little promotion of the workshop, and also have an immediate link for anyone who asks where they can get the cards on the day. We’ll shoot some video and report back later.

The official Twitter stream is cr_event, and you should be able to follow tweets tagged #cr09 through a search here. Follow us, too! @socialbysocial

Social by Social game cards for Chain Reaction

Published on November 12, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Gift Economy and Social Reporting at myPublicServices Conference

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The myPublicServices conference is coming up next month here in London and I’m really looking forward to it.  Why?  For two reasons: 1. it’s a gift economy event, and 2. my gift is social reporting.

1. A Gift Economy Event

This is how the myPublicServices conference team explains their ideas about the gift economy:

The web has already transformed the way we book a holiday, buy a camera, and share the snaps. Whole sectors – media, music, finance, publishing – are being turned upside down. But where is the impact on our public services? Why (with a few notable exceptions) are they still so top-down, so inflexible, so hard-to-reach? In sum, so last century?

This conference is about how that can – and already is – changing. It is about how the traditional public sector values of fairness, solidarity and equality are meeting the new networked values of participation, transparency and usability to create new services or add to old ones.

The web has created a new digital gift economy in which everyone can be a contributor and new kinds of public service are becoming possible.

It won’t all be top-down any more (and neither will this conference). We won’t be defined any longer just by what we need from the services we rely on, but also by what we have to give, and how we each can contribute to making our public services better.

This conference is about all that and more. There will be plenty of new ideas – but also plenty of practical examples of how people are already using the extraordinary gift of the web to improve, extend or challenge our public services to be the best they can be.

I think this is a really interesting perspective to build into a conference, especially one about public sector and social services.  I’ll be curious (and will report back after the event) about the kinds of gifts others bring to the event, whether they are workshops, skills, etc.

2. Social Reporting

I’ll be at the conference and my gift is some social reporting!  Along with my Social by Social colleague David Wilcox, we’ll be helping coordinate a team of folks doing video, live-blogging, interviews, tweets, and more!  David and I are really looking forward to it and have already started talking to some interested social reporters.  Visit the myPublicServices blog for more information and to get in touch!

What do you think?

Have you participated in an event that leveraged the gift economy like this? What was your experience – did it work? If you haven’t, what do you think we should watch for, what questions do you have?

Published on October 12, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

10NTC: What do you want to talk about?

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NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference held each Spring is always THE place to be for nonprofit techies: whether you work in a nonprofit organization or with one, are totally technical or fell into your techie job, like social media or like wiring an office.  The 10NTC will be April 8-10, 2010, in Atlanta, GA – mark your calendars now!

But, what do you want to talk about?

I have many things that I want to talk about at the NTC because it’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity to talk about ideas, get advice, or hear stories from others in real time, in one space, as fast as you can share them!  It’s truly like no other conference.  And, I always love getting to talk to people that I follow, read, and am in awe of from our sector IN PERSON! :)

The conference schedule for NTC has been developed openly and collaboratively.  Those interested were able to submit all kinds of great ideas for panels, workshops, and speaking sessions for the conference.  And now you get to vote on what you want to hear!

I am part of four different proposals and would love to have a chance to share some of the ideas and experiences I’ve had with all of you at the event (even if you can’t come in person, you know I’ll post my notes and ideas on this blog!).  Below are links to the four session proposals, and I’d love your support with a vote and comment on any that you want to have at the NTC!

There are so, so many great ideas submitted to next year’s conference line-up.  Review all of the ideas and vote on your favorites here! If you have any trouble voting or have questions about this selection process, please visit the 10NTC voting FAQ here.

See you in Atlanta for 10NTC!

Published on October 5, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 3 Comments

Nten’s Online Nonprofit Technology Conference is here!

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NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, puts on a massive, be-there-or-be-square conference for nonprofit professionals every year (in 2009, we met in San Francisco).  The next event is April 8-10, 2010, in Atlanta, GA.  But, if you don’t want to wait until April to dive into the knowledge and expertise in the NTEN network, you don’t have to!

The NTEN community co-authored a book and is planning an online conference for this Fall drawing on the contributors to move from writing to speaking.  Here’s what NTEN says:

Information Technology is an increasingly essential element of any nonprofit’s operations. But how often is IT an afterthought, often housed in a corner with the staff charged with implementation not brought to the decision-making table? In spite of this, many recognize that an effective technology manager or a well-oiled IT department can and does help extend the reach and scope of any organization. Helping technology managers and leaders understand and rectify the critical issues at the intersection of technology and mission is the inspiration behind the new NTEN book, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders.

Now, the authors and other top experts in the nonprofit tech field will expand on the content and theme of the book during the interactive Online Nonprofit Technology Conference: Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission on September 16 and 17, 2009.

This is a great opportunity for people to participate in a national event, but without travel expenses!  To learn more about the topics and speakers, and how to register, visit:

http://nten.org/ontc

Published on August 7, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Empowering Youth via Social Media: Looking for your case studies!

Published in case studies. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’m preparing a talk for next week and thought I’d open up the proposal to all of you!  After all, I definitely believe that the community is far smarter than me – and really appreciate any and all ideas you have to share!

Next week I will be speaking at and event Bebo is facilitating for members of Number 10 Downing St, local Councils, civic departments (police, etc.), social agencies and nonprofits, and so on focused on creating an integrated No to Knives campaign.  This campaign is targeting youth at-risk of knife crime in the UK and plans to have a large portion of the messaging and calls to action embedded within social media tools/platforms used by local youth.

There are a few other speakers who will be presenting their ideas or personal case studies for this kind of campaigning.

I will be speaking last: tying together the previous speeches, and highlighting key case studies that show how young people have been empowered to shape the future they are a part of.

If you have case studies, either from the organization you are a part of or that you have come across outside of your organization’s work, please do share them! I have a growing list already but am looking to cover some unique and compelling stories for this integral speaking opportunity to influence a major campaign.

Please note: I will credit any and all contributions, of course.  I will also share my speech and slides next week after the event.

Thanks in advance for your ideas and contributions!

Published on July 1, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 5 Comments

I’m going to Reboot Britain, are you?

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An economy deep in recession, ever increasing demands on our public services and trust in our political system at an all time low. We face an unprecedented set of challenges: how can we punch through the gloom?

Instead of more pessimism, at this one-day event on 6 July, we ask you to work together with fresh ideas to Reboot Britain.

How can we take advantage of the radically networked digital world we now live in to help revive our economy, rebuild our democratic structures and improve public services?

Confirmed speakers include Martha Lane-Fox, Gillian Tett (author of Fools Gold), Howard Rheingold,Charles Leadbeater, Craig Newmark (craigslist), Sir Michael Bichard (Design Council and Institute for Government), Jon Gisby/Daniel Heaf (Channel 4), Paul Miller (School of Everything), Alan Moore (SMLXL), Lee Bryant (Headshift), Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital), Andy Hobsbawn (Do the Green Thing), Jon Watts (MTM London), Jeff Saperstein (Creating Regional Wealth), Jim Schuyler (CTO to the Dalai Lama), MT Rainey (Horsesmouth)

New speakers are being added daily. Check out http://www.rebootbritain.com for more.

Over 350 people have registered for Reboot Britain so far.  If you haven’t already registered you can do so here http://rebootbritain.eventbrite.com/ (Tickets are been priced according to your ability to pay.)

As well as the formal sessions we have a Reboot Camp taking place simultaneously across the venue which include the following:

  • Demos present their Progressive Conservatism thinking for public services.
  • How are we going to manage doing more for less?
  • Learning Without Frontiers: How technology is changing cognitive development, and redesigning our schools for the new age
  • WeBank host a peer-to-peer session on new models for lending and borrowing, using Zopa as a case study showing how quickly you can lend or borrow without the middleman

Other sessions include:

  • Innovation Live – Stan Stalnaker, Hub Culture
  • Social Innovation Camp Express
  • Tim Davies – 50 small hurdles that prevent public bodies from unlocking their knowledge
  • Elevator Pitches – online democracy, transparency and participation tools
  • Conversing with local government at grassroots level- Hyperlocality and active citizenship
  • The Stalemate – where next for the media and politics?
  • The future of public service media
  • Social x Social
  • Busting the Silos – opening organizations for growth
  • Practical examples of new financial instruments

I can’t wait for this event! I will be there, blogging and Tweeting; and will also be facilitating the Social by Social game session!  If you are in London on July 6th, definitely check this out.  If you aren’t, well, be sure to follow the blog or my twitter account for udpates at the event!

Published on June 17, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments