Be The Media: Working in a networked way

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?