This month’s NetSquared Net2ThinkTank asks bloggers to share their thoughts on How Can Nonprofits Use Twitter? Should They Even Bother?
Here ya go, Britt….
Without diving too deep, I think my advice is to learn to use Twitter as an individual who happens to work for a non profit, then with other twitterers in your NPO, think if Twitter makes sense to you. It is one of those tools which really requires a sense of the possible practices to really then think about strategic application.
My friends and colleagues over at CPSquare
, the community of practice on communities of practice, are launching a member driven event next week, Platforms for Communities of Practice. Since I’m often rambling about technologies for communities, I thought some of you might be interested. Here’s some snippets about the event which is all online – from the comfort of you computer, in your jammies if you please…
We’re exploring a half dozen platforms together — attempting to look at the software through the eyes of a community that’s been on that platform for a while. Currently we’re expecting to visit:
* xPERT eCommunity (Q2learning)
* CompanyCommand – Eco (Tomoye)
* TBA – Web Crossing
* TBA – drupal
* CIARIS – Custom-made using Ruby on Rails
* Story-telling in Organizations – Ning
* Best practices in e-learning community – Moodle and FacebookFor each platform / community combination we’re having several levels of engagement:
* Read a post about the community and the platform, written by a knowledgeable person
* View a video that represents a tour of the aforementioned community
* Self-register to use a “play space” where you can get a sense of what the software is about and how it works
* Participate in a discussion on the platform itself with community members about their community and their experience of using the platform
* Participate in asynchronous discussions back here that summarize or reflect on all the foregoing
* Participate in a synchronous phone conference about all of the above
* (Might be follow-on summarization and reflection and meta-conversations)Rather than asking which platform is “the best” we are asking, “what kinds of communities thrives on each of these quite different platforms?” We’re inviting community leaders, technology stewards, and software vendors to all spend three weeks together thinking about issues of common concern.
The event is organized by CPsquare members and is open to guests who register here. (CPsquare members who are presenting or facilitating can bring a guest for free.)
Just a note: if you are not a CPSquare member and can’t get in for free, you may want to consider becoming a member. Full membership is $150 with discounts for students and others. So it may be cost effective to join and then participate for free!
This image from Allison is too good not to reblog…
Allison’s Blog: Twitter connects once again
I pretty much ignored work, blogs, and Twitter over the holidays to be more present with my family and to give my brain a break from thinking about work all the time. (By-product of a work-a-holic practice.) I did go through my Twitter contacts and accept all the requests to follow. Then I made my feed public. It was the “Return of the Plankton.” The convergence of those two things put me over the edge. The flow from Twitter was more than I could digest. I lost the feeling of intimacy of connecting with friends and friendly strangers.
Then I read Jim Benson’s recent post on Twitter, Seeds of a Meme. And I started nodding.
Twitter has been called a conversation ecosystem. It is actually part of a larger conversation ecosystem that includes .. well .. everything. Blogging, Facebook, email, chats at a coffee shop, daydreams.I see Twitter as a plankton layer-level of the ecosystem. Every animal on earth does not need to eat plankton, but without plankton we’d all be in a world of hurt. “Everyone twittering” seems like an absolute nightmare.
Everyone will not be twittering. Everyone will not be blogging.
But conversations will start in one medium and move to another and then another. From Twitter to blogs to mainstream media to public discourse. Twitter and its successors will seed the conversations of the future.
Spot on, Jim.
From a practice perspective, I have to trim back down the number of people who follow me. I’m not sure I care if my feed is public or not, but it does act as a filter on requests to follow and discovery of new people. It’s not that I’m against discovery, I just can’t handle the volume.
I am not a whale, a filter feeding white anemone, damselfish, nor a basking shark. I do not eat plankton as my primary diet. My form does not have enough of those feathery things, with large surface areas to filter in all the phytoplankton. For my phytoplankton (Twitter) is seasoning to the rest.
Dave Sifry is filling the quiet end-of-year time with a project that makes it easy to ask and answer with and for each other online in a variety of ways. Sifry’s Alerts: Announcing Hoosgot: Resurrecting the Lazyweb
Today I’m unveiling a new service that I put together over the last 48 hours. It’s called hoosgot.com. Hoosgot (pronounced “who’s got…”) is a simple way to ask who’s got what you’re looking for. Just put “hoosgot” in a blog post or a Twitter tweet and it’ll show up on Hoosgot. Send a twitter to @hoosgot, it works as well. You can tag a post with hoosgot or lazyweb, and we’ll pick it up as well, as long as your blog is indexed by Technorati. It’s meant to give you a place to send the requests for all of those things that you’ve wanted, but just can’t find – chances are, what you want already exists and someone else out there in the ether knows about it (or has built it!)If someone’s got what you’re looking for, or a clue in that direction, they post a comment. RSS feeds flow from the posts and the comments.
For example, you might ask:
hoosgot an easy-to-use pencil sharpener that has suction cups on the bottom so I can stick it anywhere?
or:
hoosgot a simple camera bag that you can stick a laptop in, and still carry over your shoulder without knocking over pedestrians? Note I’m not looking for a knapsack or a backpack, I want it to act like a messenger bag…
And so on.
It works if you work it: Give back to the web
Of course, you should subscribe to hoosgot, it has RSS feeds (the main feed and the comments feed) so you can watch and participate – for Hoosgot only works if you comment on the questions posed. Happen to know where someone can find the information they seek? Interested in collaborating with them on creating that invention described when the person invoked hoosgot or the lazyweb? Leave a comment on the entry, and give back to the web that has given us so much.
Hoosgot is a great community indicator in that it has its roots in the work of an earlier community (Lazyweb) and many individuals, it is offered as a gift to the world, and it lives that value in the very service it offers. Pretty sweet. Thanks, Dave.
