Join the monthly Community Building chats!

Two weeks ago I shared a couple reflections that I had on a recent #4change chat about community building – the major output from that chat and the follow up blog post was the call I heard for a regular opportunity to talk about community building. So, I said that I’d take the step to host a monthly chat if people were interested in joining; and you said YES!

Monthly Community Builder Chats

Why: In addition to the level of interest from people on this blog and from the #4change chats in the past, I’m looking forward to having a regular opportunity to connect with others working to build community on and offline, share ideas and tips, and really start creating a community of the community builders in a way that gets us all out of the various email lists or forums and into a more public forum.

The #4Change team that has managed/supported/hosted the monthly chats for over a year now has recently come to a very interesting transition phase – there are quite a few options on the table and many directions that we could take, including a partnership with Internet4Change. I’m really interested in what happens next, and not just because I am part of the team but also because I think we can be a case study in ourselves of the changing landscape and processes of online collaboration. I want to keep these chats associated with the #4change network so that more people can find and participate, we can more directly share across other topics, and these chats can stay bundled together with anything/everything else that comes next in the growth and evolution of #4change, whether as part of the larger Internet4Change or not. Exciting times!

When: Thursday, August 19, at 9-10 pm UK (1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern)

I know that at this point it is just a matter of picking a time and making it happen. I’m willing to do just that, but want to note that I’m open to having rotating times or multiple chats to better accommodate the fact that we have a global community (and that we all need to sleep at some point!). I also think we can start with an hour-long slot and use it to stay on topic and drive conversation without people spending a long time with a chat.

Where: Click here for the live-chat (launched on the 19th)

I plan to continue exploring the best options for these chats, and welcome your feedback. For this first chat I want to use CoverItLive because 1. it’s a tool that I know works, 2. has twitter integration, 3. does not require installation for anyone to participate. The link above will work to join the chat on the 19th and will work to access the transcript when the chat closes.

What: Community Building Across Platforms

For this first chat, I wanted to go ahead and pick a topic so that we had something to drive with. In the future, I’d love to have others suggest topics that they working on or want to explore with the group.  Even though I’ve selected the topic for this first chat, I haven’t picked the questions that will guide our conversation! Please share the questions you’d like to explore by adding a comment here ahead of time and I’ll use those to feed our discussion.

Really looking forward to starting a monthly conversation on community building with you – feel free to use the #4change hashtag and if you’d like to suggest something else, go for it! Perhaps #4change.commbuild or something? Let me know 🙂

See you on the 19th!