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).

• Blood and Milk » Blog Archive » Ushahidi, Twitter, and the future of foreign aid – Alanna's post is a great example of the power of networks, social media, and open systems. As she notes, her example has luck but it is an example of a growing model of a changing world. What do you think?
• Net2 Think Tank Round-up: Age Segmentation in Social Networking | NetSquared – "For this month's Net2 Think Tank, we asked you to share your thoughts and best practices for using social media with or for a particular age group. We are hoping to understand what tools or practices appeal to different age groups online and how organizations can best target their efforts to those audiences. This round-up is a summary of the responses we received from the community and it will hopefully serve to help you re-think the ways that you're targeting your limited audience." Add your thoughts or blog posts in the comments!
• Marketing for Nonprofits: Want to Build Community Online? Become a Bridge Builder. – "Marketing online, in particular, is much more than putting up a static website to announce your gala or ask people to volunteer. It's about having a CONVERSATION with people who care about your work and can help you reach your goals. OK, you've heard this before. But the real question is, HOW do you become a community manager and/or how do you find the right person for the job? What is the skill set you should be looking for?"
• Social Spaces – I'm really excited to see Social Spaces, a project fueled by a friend a colleague, take off! Social Spaces is project which studies positive community projects and aims to test if these types of projects can be stimulated elsewhere through spreading ideas and practices. It is currently focused on 5 main areas: Hand Made – Portraits of Emergent New Culture, Traveling Pantry, Community of Practice, Organizational Workshops, and Research. Check it out!
• Don't focus on technology, focus on behavior — SocialFish – This presentation by Paul Adams, Senior User Experience Researcher at Google, reposted on the SocialFish blog, nails home a point I feel like I talk about it every day: it's not about the technology, it's about the people! Great slides.

In Grizzard’s new review series, Eric shares a video book review of the book! Take a look:

I’m so thrilled about his review and honored by the positive response! As far as the downsides he notes:

• Beginner focused: It’s true; we were commissioned to create a handbook for organizations, communities and individuals just getting started with tools the wanted to keep the book as hands on for those at the beginning of the process as possible.
• The size: Yes! I, too, was incredibly surprised about how big it was! The design concept was to mimic the orientation of a web page within the book, so you could have comments, information boxes and so on in the side bar with the main column acting as the main content on the page, just like a web site. I think that could have been treated to a slightly narrower product though.
• The companion: As much as we wanted to give people straightforward and simple information, we also wanted to be sure they had options. The companion is also intended so that if someone comes across a tool that they are unfamiliar with, like vimeo for example, they can easily understand how it may work by seeing it listed as an alternative to youtube. Too much information – noted! We hope it’s still useful!

Thanks to Grizzard and Eric for sharing the review of the book. Check them out at: http://www.grizzard.com

And if you haven’t read the book yet, you can read it online (or buy-on-demand) at: http://socialbysocial.com

About Social by Social

Co-Authored by Nigel Courtney (CASS Business School), Andy Gibson (Sociability), Clive Holtham (CASS Business School), David Wilcox (Social Reporter) and myself, Social by Social is a practical guide to using new technologies to create social impact. It makes accessible the tools you need to engage a community, offer services, scale up activities and sustain projects. Whoever you are, it shows you how to take technology and turn it into real world benefits.  Social by Social isn’t a manual in the classic sense. This work is still pretty new and there isn’t a simple model to follow. Instead, it asks you the questions which you will need to answer, shares some of the routes other people have tried, and offers signposts to help you find your way. And it invites you to join an ongoing conversation as we all find the way together.

The book is available to read online or download in PDF format for free, the hard copies are print-on-demand, all available at: SocialbySocial.com

How to Win

My favorite part of the NTC is getting to sit down, in person, with so many different people and learn about their work.  There are really amazing things emerging and growing in our sector and the more we talk about what we are doing with others interested in weaving the network, the more collaborations emerge and more impact can be made.  So, to win a book, you have to want to tell me all about the work you do – simple enough, right?  To win a book, simply leave a comment with:

1. Who you are
2. What you are working on
3. What you’d like to talk about at the NTC

To qualify you have to be attending the NTC so that I can give you the book and we can talk in person.  I only have 4 copies left so I will draw 4 names at random from all those who leave a comment at noon (Atlanta time) on Wednesday, April 7th.

Really looking forward to hearing from you!

—–

UPDATE: Winners selected!

I took all those that are attending the NTC that added comments below and assigned each name with a number, then used the random number generator at Random.org (in case you ever want to have an easy way to get random winners in something you are doing, too!) to select the four winners.  And they are, random order:

• Margaux
• Erin
• Eric
• Jennifer

I’ll email all of you to be sure you know you’ve won and to arrange your book pick up!  Thanks everyone for commenting and getting conversations started. I know I’m looking forward to chatting with you and hope others use your comments to start conversations, too!

Since co-authoring Social by Social last year, David Wilcox and I have had the opportunity to collaborate and facilitate various events for community and local government groups.  Most recently, we facilitated at the Transformed By You event put on by Medway and Kent County Councils as a jointly-supported event to look for new ways to do things with the community. Creating documentation for the event to share with those organizing and helping out on the day was the last push I needed to finally write up the process and approach for others to use, remix, and share.

The documentation explores Project Spaces conceptually as well as provides examples of how to hold a Project Spaces event.  And I want to share it with you, get your ideas, and start a long-term process of collaboratively improving and refining this model.

Check out the Project Spaces wiki.

Some people are beginning to use twitter for adverts…and doing ‘paid tweets’ Is this going against the whole ethos of SM and especially Twitter, when authenticity is the key?” -Claire

I’ll be posting my slides and speaking notes on Tuesday for my session on the topic of “the future of online revenue generation for charities.”  More to come on this question then!  For more:

• What Will Online Giving Look Like Next Year
• 2009 eNonprofit Benchmark Study

“I work in a small organisation and have heard a lot about web 2.0 and social media but have not thought it through in relation to my organisation. What are the key things we should think about if we are going to use social media?” -Jenny

To start with, remember that social media isn’t one of your projects or mission areas.  Social media is a tool for you to use to help you achieve your mission.  Including various social media tools in the way you do your work (whether it’s communications, fundraising, outreach, volunteer recruitment or service delivery) comes from strategically identifying the right tools for the right things.  Key questions to ask include: who is your audience? where are they online already and how do they want to interact with you online (is it in the same spaces or different ones, is it conversations or promotion, etc.)?  One you know who you are interacting with, why you want to interact with them, and why they would want to interact with you, choosing the appropriate platforms or tools to do it is much easier.  For more:

• Messages, Stories, and Conversations: Creating a Strategy for your organization and your supporters
• 5 Steps to a Successful Social Media Strategy
• Social by Social, a handbook in using social technologies for social impact
• We Are Media, a wiki-based community project curating resources about using social media in nonprofit organizations

“How do you convince technophobes and people who are resistant (or a bit afraid) of the value of social media tools?” -Ellie

I have looked resistance in the face, many times.  When it happens, I always take a deep breath and remember that the resistance isn’t particular to me or to social media.  The resistance for your organization, staff, leadership or board is probably the same that would come if you presented opportunity for any kind of change.  Change is, far too often, scary.  The best thing to do, then, is to show why it isn’t scary but necessary!  If you’ve set up any social media experiments of your own, either representing yourself or the organization, measure your work and the success to share back (how has using those tools increased volunteers, grown your email list, saved you time on promotion, etc.).  If you don’t have any examples to use of your own, look at what others are doing in social media that are in your same sector, geographic location or interest area and use their examples (many organization are public about the work they do in social media, check their blog and see if they share their own case studies).  For more:

• The Social Media Ready Nonprofit: Dealing with Resistance
• Why Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media (Or Not)?
• Dealing with Resistance

“Can you give an example of how a voluntary organization has used Social media effectively to engage with their supporters to generate income for their campaign/cause?” -Claire

There are many different examples out there, ranging from small organization fundraising locally to organizations leveraging the global community for change.  Twestival and Tweetsgiving are relevant and recent with many different people coming together to make them happen.  The difference with using social media for fundraising is that your organization may not even be involved anymore, the way it was offline.  I could create a fundraising page or campaign for your organization, maybe tie it into my running a marathon or my birthday, and would never need to ask your permission, get your information, or even handle the funds!  Social media enables individuals to become your fundraising department, as well as your communications department, etc.  The best tip I can give in this regard is to make sure you put enough information out that people can support you the way they want (don’t get mad that people have the wrong mission statement about your organization, just send them the correct one and say “thanks!” for supporting us; and make sure your real one is prominent to begin with, like on your profiles in social media platforms and so on).  For more:

• International Fundraising on The Baudcast (Podcast)
• Birthday Cause Wrapped Up
• Social Networks for Fundraising
• See the Charities that were Awarded a $10,000 Grant from Hanes
• The Wired Fundraiser: A Study on Technology and Online Fundraising
• Online Fundraising: Harnessing Technology to Build and Maintain Relationships

—–

About ‘Ask the Expert’

“Ask the expert” is a new benefit for NCVO Members. They can ask questions to experts in the voluntary sector and to NCVO advisors.

About NCVO

NCVO is a highly effective lobbying organisation and represents the views of its members, and the wider voluntary sector to government, the European Union and other bodies. We are also at the leading edge of research into, and analysis of, the voluntary sector.  We campaign on generic issues affecting the voluntary sector, such as the role of the voluntary organisations in public service delivery and the future of local government. Learn more about the NCVO here.

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

Well, Idealware has just taken it a step further by launching a Social Media Resource Library!

As they explain:

As a first step in our year-long social media research initiative, Idealware has compiled a library of nearly 200 – and growing – resources on social media. And, we’ve incorporated an easy-to-use tagging scheme so that you can find the resources most helpful to you.

The Social Media Resource Library , compiled in Delicious, will help your nonprofit gain valuable insights into how to best use social media for your organization. There are a lot of experts out there (while a majority of the resources tagged are from Beth Kanter and Mashable, there are tagged items from over 50 sources), and we are making it easier for you to find what you are looking for.

You can start searching the Library or learn how to add more resources by visiting the Idealware site here.

Go dive in! And be sure to share your ideas about the Library so the Idealware team and the rest of us working to provide resources can be sure there’s everything you need to meet your needs.

We split participants up by topic areas for discussions and Community Voices team members lead the small group conversations, while others used various tools to capture what was said (audio, video, tweets and blogging). After the small group discussions, we had volunteers from each group provide a short report back to the full room of some of the highlights or lingering questions that came out of the conversation. During these report backs I captured a word cloud on a flip chart of key words. Here’s what came out of each session:

Session #1 Word Cloud:

COMMUNITY
What’s of interest?
PEOPLE
Existing Communities
Stereotypes
Individual Level
Lead
Participate
FUN
Creative Approach
Visible Benefits
Relevance
TRUST

Session #2 Word Cloud:

Relevant Content
Community of Interest
Individuals
No Jargon
Partnerships
TRUST
What’s Success?
User Generated
Access to People
COMMUNITIES
Offline vs Online
HUMAN

The words in all caps represent the words that were repeated in each report out. If you look at the two sessions, you’ll see very similar key words and phrases. Even more important to the topic of the sessions and, I think, in Community Voices’ work in general, the words that every group used that appear in all caps are pretty much the same in both. The biggest focus: trust and communities.

Digital inclusion is not about cool social media tools, or even fancy hardware. It starts with people and stays with people.

What do you think?

Were you there, and have ideas to add to this reflection? If you weren’t there, what ideas do you have about the things most important to digital inclusion other than technology? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Remember to visit the Community Voices group to connect with the rest of the conversations going on there.

Learn more and connect with Chain Reaction!

We succeed when we work together… Chain Reaction is a community of people, passionate about social change, who are saying ‘we can make a difference’.

Chain Reaction is a unique and challenging project based on a very simple idea – that we all have the power of our own actions, but that none of us on our own can change the world, not governments, not businesses, not charities. We succeed when we work together The Chain Reaction Networks helps individuals and organisations to connect together. We provide spaces – at ‘real life events’ and on line – in which people can collaborate with others across the boundaries that divide us and commit their energy to new ideas and new ways of working that will change the world.

Social by Social at Chain Reaction

David Wilcox and I will be leading a round of the Social by Social game!

Drawing on the learnings included in Social by Social: a practical guide to using new technology for social impact, the Social by Social Game walks participants through the strategic steps of creating a social media program for your community, whether you’re part of an organization, a geographic community, a campaign, or anything else.  The game is a fun way to collaborate with others and learn more about what’s needed to create a project that leverages social media.  We promise: it’s fun!

NFPTweetUp after Chain Reaction

The next NFPTweetUp will take place in the evening after the main Chain Reaction event.  This is a great way to pull in new people to the tweetup experience and a super opportunity to keep conversations going even longer from the event.

A meet up of social media users and those interested in the potential of social media for themselves or their organisations.  This event brings together organisations for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and networking – it will be part learning, part sharing, part social, collaborative, casual and very friendly. Note:  You need to reserve a ticket for this evening session as spaces are limited – tickets are free of charge. (Read more about NFP Tweetup here)

Connect. Collaborate. Commit.

Chain Reaction is taking place November 12th, 2009, at Canary Warf, London.  To find out more, use these links:

• Why are people coming together this year at Chain Reaction 2009?
• What will happen at Chain Reaction 2009?
• Who is speaking at Chain Reaction 2009?
• Who should attend Chain Reaction 2009?
• How can I register at Chain Reaction 2009?

You can also follow Chain Reaction on Twitter: use the hashtag #cr09 (you can also follow activity @chainreaction or @cr_events).