Tag Archive for 'networking'

My Social Actions – is it yours, too?

Published in socialchange and webtools. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Social Actions, the platform that makes it easy for individuals and organizations to share actions across the web, has just launched it’s Ning-powered social network:  My.SocialActions.

The social network side of Social Actions is an exciting venture – it’s a way to make actions more personal and track the actions your participate in or start.  It’s built on Ning, so it has some features you’re probably familiar with, too.

Check it out on My.SocialActions.com

Peter Deitz, the founder of SA, has shared his 10 Ways to Make a Difference on Social Actions – a guide to using SA to make a difference.  The 10 ways you can make a difference include:

  • Find actions
  • Share actions
  • Reflect on the actions you’re taking
  • Share your wisdom with others
  • Get advice
  • Customize your profile
  • Connect with like-minded people
  • Post events
  • Invite your friends
  • Keep it real

Check out Peter’s Guide to using Social Actions – or jump over to My.SocialActions and start making a difference!

Published on January 22, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

NetSquared welcomed in the UK!

Published in community. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I have been busy since we moved to London last month, meeting with leaders of the local nonprofit technology community to hear what the biggest obstacles are facing consultants and staff working to help nonprofits adopt strategic technologies, biggest needs are for a group that brings the community together (Net Tuesday London!), and what I can do help.  The conversations have been affirming, enlightening and enthusiastic.  I’m ready to go!

Net Tuesday London is officially in the works!  Put the evening of November 4th on your calendars folks – it should be a wonderful first event bringing together social changemakers of all kinds to discuss social media.  More details will be announced soon.

Two great movers-and-shakers that I’ve had the opportunity to talk with include David Wilcox and Dave Briggs.  David wrote up a fantastic intorduction for me on the SocialReporter blog.  Here’s a bit:

A year ago a group of enthusiasts for web-enabled social innovation and change met in London committed to setting up Netsquared in the UK, loosely based on the Netsquared conference and community started in the US.

It didn’t happen like that, and although the social innovation landscape is now more highly populated, a bit more joining-up would be helpful.

Fortunately Netsquared has come to us, because community builder Amy Sample Ward has moved to London to start up Net Tuesdays like those common in the US and elsewhere. As you’ll see from the video, Amy is already networking furiously, and would like to partner up with others in the field for events and other activities.  Read more…

Dave gave a wonderful shout out as well!

I also got the chance to catch up with Amy Sample Ward, who works with NetSquared helping non-profits get the most out of technology. She’s now based in London and will be doing her best to help UK NFPs catch up.  Read more…

Thanks so much to all the people I’ve talked with so far about supporting the nonprofit technology community here in London and in the UK!  I’m just thrilled to be working with you.

Here’s the interview David recorded with me yesterday:


Amy Sample Ward from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

Published on October 15, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments

NetSquared Blog – Guest posts this week

Published in networking. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Many of you are familiar with the super star Britt Bravo, she is part of the Net Squared team, her blog is Have Fun * Do Good, and she represents Big Vision Consulting.  Well, Britt is on a much-deserved vacation and asked me to fill in for her daily blogging on the Net Squared community blog.

I just posted about CARE Connections, the new, free, online network bringing together those interested in and working to end global poverty.  It is an interesting network to check out, especially if you or your organization focus on women’s empowerment, anti-poverty, and/or world news. 

CARE is a humanitarian organization working to fight global poverty by serving individuals and families in the poorest communities of the world. CARE recently launched CARE Connections, a free, online community to connect you with others supporting global poverty work, women’s empowerment, world news and more. You can learn more about CARE Connections, here.

With CARE Connections, you can:

  • Connect with others who share your interests in global poverty and humanitarian aid news.
  • Join the conversation on the blog
  • Tap into the latest news from around the Web on global poverty, women’s empowerment and world events
  • Create your own profile, invite others and form groups and events

Read more about CARE Connections on the Net Squared blog.

Published on July 21, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Be The Media: Working in a networked way

Published in community. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

NTEN and Beth Kanter are igniting a great collaboration between nonprofit technology social media folks, called Be the Media. This experiment in working in a networked way is a terrific example of social media in and of itself!

Some terrific folks are signing on to collaborate and share their knowledge of social media tools, strategies, and success stories. (You can see the list of participants here.)

Be The Media is based on the beliefs that:

  • With the advent of Web 2.0, more and more nonprofits understand the opportunity of using social media strategies and tools to realize outcomes.
  • Nonprofits that want to integrate social media strategies and tool need practical skills, advice, examples, and methods that will improve their effectiveness.
  • There are many excellent existing social media guides, articles, resources, checklists, and training materials in the nonprofit sector and beyond. Building the curriculum in a networked way on a wiki and offering it through a creative commons license will allow nonprofit practitioners to share ideas and avoid duplication.

Be The Media will:

  • Pull together a wide variety of individuals who will collectively help contribute ideas and pointers to content that is meaningful to the nonprofit leaders and staffers who are charged with integrating social media into their communications strategy
  • Provide a hub for the vetted resources, connections, and conversation on this topic.
  • Provide access to resources such as articles, tips, checklists, presentations, case studies, and individuals offered by people in the network.

I’m really excited to be part of this process! What I am most excited about is to see the way the organizing/participating/leading network grows and changes the content and the way the following/learning network grows and changes the project’s goals and deliverables.  By this I mean to say that I predict those following the project as ’students’ or listeners, etc., have quite the potential to shift where the project goes based on voicing opinions, questions, and needs.  Those participating as leaders/experts will have a responsibility to listen to those voices and steer this experiment in the appropriate direction.

I think it will be a great opportunity for all of those involved to learn a lot about the power of networks as well as the topic areas/individual tools/etc.  You can check out the Be The Media project here.

What questions do you have about social media that you hope to learn more about and want the Be The Media project to address?

Published on July 1, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Networking for Success: Beth’s turn!

Published in community and events. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

A couple weeks ago, I had a chance to mentor for the Networking for Success project which helps teach African women about web 2.0 tools and how they can utilize the Internet in their work.  It is a great opportunity to facilitate learning using the very tools they are learning about!

This week is Beth Kanter’s turn as mentor with the topic of Effective Networking Online.  You can check out her post and follow along during her week.

Beth is a terrific mentor for the topic and the project.  Her first post on the Networking for Success blog for this week is a great online networking primer for anyone to refer to.  I recommend you check it out and stay tuned this week as the participating women learn more and engage via the blog with their own thoughts, questions, and ideas.

Have you ever participated in a learning process which required you to utilize the very skills you were learning?

Published on June 23, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment

Social Media event review

Published in workblog. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

I just posted this review of our new media event from Friday on my work blog. Has anyone taken part in an event on social media tools using scenarios of local nonprofits? What was the outcome?

This past Friday was our third event in the series Communicating in the Age of New Media and focused on social media tools. It was a wonderful success, at least in my opinion, and took place at IRCO (Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization) offering us a chance to have applicable conversations and applications of our small group scenarios, many of which focused on immigrant and refugee or other special needs populations. My standard review process includes noting three positives and one negative, so, here’s my take on the event:

Rose: Facilitator
We were very honored and thrilled to have come out to provide us with an overview of social media and the tools nonprofits are and can be using and then walk us through the day’s workshop. She provided great insight and helped the groups every step of the way with suggestions, ideas, and thought-provoking questions. You can even read Beth’s reflections on the event on her blog!

Rose: Participants
Beth was terrific, but our participants really made the day for me! They were positive about the new media tools and ready to learn. People were jumping right in to the workshop scenarios and energetic in creating strategies using social media to help nonprofits best do their work. When faced with this much new information, people can get scared and overwhelmed, or excited and motivated. I was thrilled to see that our participants were the latter.

Rose: Conversation
At every table around the room, conversations were taking place that proved how energetic and enthused the participants and the leaders were about the topic—what is not to be excited about? After all, some nonprofits are ahead of corporations in adopting social web tools! One great tool that my group touched on was the utility of wikis for organizations and their members. What better place to collaborate and build community through participation and contribution than in a wiki? We even set up a wiki for the event so that the notes, ideas, questions, and great conversation could be recorded and continued.

Thorn: Time
With such a motivated group of participants and a guru facilitator, it was hard to call it a day. We could have easily worked on the scenarios in small groups, had conversations and answered questions together for many more hours. Even this thorn has a rose: Check out the wiki for the event and we can keep discussing and collaborating!

I hope all of you who had the opportunity to be with us on Friday enjoyed it and learned something you can put to use at your organization. To those who could not join us, we hope to put on similar events in the future and I will continue to post here on ideas, issues, news, and information to help you use social media tools in your organization.

Published on December 11, 2007 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

To network, or not to network, is NOT the question!

Published in networking. 2 Comments Tags: , .

As Elizabeth Dunn and others are discussing lately, the question to answer is not whether you and your organization should use new media networking tools or not, but which ones and for which purposes.

One major factor in deciding between the growing list of social networking sites, is the age group of your donors, supporters, or service members. Facebook and Myspace are the ones you probably hear the most about but many feel that these sites are only used by college-age and twenty-somethings. Actually, Facebook has seen a 98% increase in the last year of users 35 and older (click here for more metrics).

Elizabeth does an excellent job at facing this dilemma using the metaphor of learning a new language:

Of course most of your current donors aren’t on Facebook and MySpace – it’s still a pretty new thing for most of the population. However, most internet usage has historically been led by the young and the early adopters, followed – in time – by the rest of the general population.

When your constituency finally makes it to Facebook, MySpace, or whatever global site we are using in 5 to 8 years, don’t you want to be there when they go looking for you?

And don’t you want to be already quite good at it?

Of course you do! Getting started with networking and fundraising tools now will help you gain supporters, volunteers, fundraisers, and even partners both in the short term and the long term.

Has your organization made the dive into social networking yet? What was the most surprising part of the new tools?

Published on November 21, 2007 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Want your own social network?

Published in networking. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

As TechCrunch and others are reporting, Change.org launched a service for nonprofits to create their own branded social networks.

These networks are built to include many of the features nonprofits want, including: pages for fundraising, news, events and project updates, fundraising widgets, posting photos and videos, blogs, forums, and even Facebook integration (if the Facebook application of Change.org is added).

Organizations like CARE, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and Humane Society of the United States have already established their networks in Change.org. As you can see by looking at one of these organization’s profiles, supporting the group by joining, spreading the word, or donating funds is visible and easy. Nonprofits can redesign the pages to fit with their existing logo, colors, branding, and website.

I really like that Change.org is evolving from a place where individuals can connect on issues, causes, and politics into an even more engaged user base directly involved with nonprofits in a more meaningful way. What do you think?

Does your organization have a network on Change.org? You can sign up here.

Published on November 20, 2007 by Amy Sample Ward. 1 Comment