Yesterday I conducted a workshop as part of a day of pre-conference workshops for the Making Media Connections Conference.    In the United States, I've noticed that over the past 2-3 years, there is a growing divide in participants experience/knowledge gap.   

Typically, I have two types of participants.   

(1) Already Doing It, Want To Do It Better:  The first group know the definitions of the tools and understands how social media has changed the dynamics between audience and organization.  They've done some amount of experimentation.  This may include some personal exploration like setting up their profile on social networking site or even a blog.   They are now ready to start bringing their knowledge back to the organization and begin an organizational strategy.  Some may already be doing that and want to do it better.  They are looking for aways to spread social media behind the firewall and get around resistance from others within the organization.    (Gordon Meyer has good reflection on the Community Media Workshop Blog).

(2) Need A Basic Introduction:  This group is new to social media, has not experienced directly.  They want to know what is a blog, what is RSS, etc?   Their reaction often is feeling overwhelmed.  They can't see a connection back to their organization.  Social media is a whole new language, a new culture, and whole new thing to add to their to do list.   

This split seems to run along generational lines.  Typically, group 2 is populated with the older cohort of baby boomers.   Group 1 tends to be younger, although not everyone in the group is a millennial or GenXer.

It is always difficult when you are teaching a workshop and you have a range of experience and knowledge.  And what happens is that I end up teaching two workshops at the same time - I have a "getting started workshop" that is all about personal exploration first, defining the terms, and providing some "low hanging fruit" ideas.   The other workshop is geared for people who already understand the why and what and are looking for advice and tips on move past resistance in their organization and strategy.   The key having a workshop with a mix of levels is differentiated instruction - and that happens in small groups. 

You can't do too much of full group discussion or even interactive presentation.  That's because you end up frustrating the participants who are further along and overwhelming the beginners.

This time I had two different small group exercises prepared and split up the full group into these two different sections - just getting started and those who want to brainstorm organizational strategy.    This time, I had a 25% of the workshop participants who were "just getting started" and the other 75% looking at organizational strategy.  The key to sorting them into different groups was the icebreaker (Tweet your burning question on a paper) and putting the questions into a parking lot on the wiki (I will also add some resources or an article to read first for each question at some point today.)

I sat in on the "just getting started group" and they came up a great reflection.   "Social media is like sex.  You have to experience.  You can't just read the manual."  From there we identified some started projects from this blog post "Ten Web 2.0Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes To Be A Better Nonprofit" that I have turned into handout.

The other group played the social media game.  I now have the cards organized into "adoption issues,"  "strategy," and "external communications tools."   The process is to pick someone in the group as the client and discuss these issues and come back with a report out.  I took notes on the workshop wiki.

I have been reading a book called "Brain Rules" that looks at 12 principles related to learning in an age of information and attention overload.   I've been trying to incorporate some of the ideas into instructional practice these days.   Principle #1 is "Exercise boosts brain power."  So, I incorporated having participants move around every time I felt the energy in the room drop.  It seemed to work.

When you discuss web2.0 or social media in your organization or in trainings, have you encountered these two different groups?  How do support both groups in their needs?  How do you work with those who feel that social media and web2.0 is a foreign language and too difficult for them to learn?

Um, yeah.

I'm in Chicago for the Making Media Connections Conference.  Today is a full menu of workshops before tomorrow's conference.  I'm sitting in Heather Mansfield's workshop on Social Networking Sites.  A lot of good practical information about setting up and managing your individual profile and groups (and Fan Pages) on Facebook, Myspace, Change.org, and YouTube.   In passing, Heather made a comment, "You need to have a person with the right skill set to manage your organization's social networking presence."   I asked what the specific skills were.  Her response:

• Someone who is on the Internet a lot
• A risk taker
• Someone who is tech savvy, or at least comfortable or self taught
• Someone who has grown up using the sites and really enjoys it
• Someone who takes a less regimented in communications - less formal - uses happy faces
• Someone who has a good online persona and personality
• Someone who enjoys it

• oEmbed
  sounds potentially handy
• Stop Attacking My.BarackObama.com | The Next Right
  Patrick Ruffini smartly realizes that playing gotcha on the web can be self-defeating.
• Google's Conversion University
  Tips from Google on optimizing just about everything... analytics, adwords, content, search, etc
• OmniFocus for iPhone: Location-Aware Contexts and More | 43 Folders
  I'm not a GTD fanatic, but this looks pretty cool

I heard about this from FriendFeed because Jonathan Colman shared this link and the resulting conversation prompted Jonathan to send me some additional information.  It peaked my interest as part of my continued coverage of Facebook Apps for Good.

(Lil) Green Patch is a social gardening game.  A what?  By planting cute little (virtual) fruit plants with your Facebook friends you can help make the world a greener place!   Facebook users start by either sending plants to their friends or by accepting plants from their friends.  The plants given by your friends are displayed in a (Lil) Green Patch on your profile.     Like a real garden, it requires maintenance and the game includes lots of ways to interact with the larger Green Patch community and your friends.  Just read the application FAQ.

The application is one of the top ten most installed applications on Facebook.  According to Developer Analytics it has 5,217,180 installations with 521,718 or 10% active users.  But what makes it stand out from other popular applications - such as Friends for Sale - is that it combines group dynamics with social activism.   And it goes beyond just putting a cute little green vegetable plant on your profile -- the applications is making donations to green causes.

The application gets sponsor revenue and contributes a portion of that money to save the Rainforests based on the number of installs and active users.  The most recent donation was made May 1, 2008 to the Adopt An Acre program of the Nature Conservancy bringing the total donated to $33,600 and 16,000 members or an average of $2.00 per donor.  According to Jonathan Colman,  (Lil) Green Patch's most recent donation just occurred this past week, but they've been donating $6-$10k a month to Nature Conservancy Cause since January, 2008.

Colman notes, "They're one of the most popular apps on Facebook and they link directly to The Nature Conservancy's Cause at which helps us recruit new members (4k/month at our peak) as well as attain individual donations." 

Recently, Facebook Causes released its numbers for its first year (also discussed on FriendFeed here) The company says they’ve registered 12 million users who are now supporting more than 80,000 non-profit causes worldwide. $2.5 million has been raised for 19,445 different 501(c)(3) charitable organizations.   As Jon Stahl notes in the comments in the TechCrunch post, "So, 2.5MM / 20,000 nonprofits = $125 avg. raised per nonprofit.  Not very impressive at all."

Still, as Max Gladwell notes in the comments, "It's only getting started," and points to his "Ten Ways To Use Social Media to Change The World."  Those who look at the first year of results as positive, such as Austin Hill who said in the comments, "More important then the actual number of dollars donated is the social affect of users displaying the causes they want to associated themselves with.Many charitable organizations spend considerable amounts of money on marketing and fundraising. By allowing users to showcase their own interests through Causes Project Agape is enabling a new form of charitable marketing."

With social gaming applications where users are engaged with the charity through play and generating sponsor revenues - does this model have the potential to raise even more dollar amount?  Do you think Causes first year is pretty good, although the dollar amounts less than impressive?  How is your organization thinking about the value of a Facebook Cause - are you in wait in see mode, we tried but it didn't work mode, or investing for the longer-term mode?

The Meyer Memorial Trust is launching Connectpedia today at 2:00 PM PST - darn, I'll be in an airplane headed to Chicago.   Here's the description:

What if there was a place where we could all exchange what we learn as we go about our daily business? What if nonprofits could see the data and information that foundations use in their due diligence process? What if organizations and people could easily determine which foundations' interests match their project goals? What if foundations could quickly see what groups are working on an issue they are investigating? And so on...

Well, we are building such a place. A place where people and organizations can connect about subjects and places. A place called connectipedia...

Who is going via the Web? Who will be there live?  If you are, please drop a comment with a URL to your blog post or thoughts ...  I'm going to have to catch the archived version and write something up ..

Flickr Photo by lafabriquedeblogs

The phrase "Working Wikily" was coined by Lucy Bernholz (I don't know how many phrases she's originated in the nonprofit, social media, and philanthropy - but this one is a gem).   It is also the title of a report "Working Wikily: How Networks Are Changing Social Change" a paper Gabriel Kasper and Diana Scearce of the Monitor Institute.  The paper provides concepts and specific examples.  It is heavily influenced by the writings of Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody)

What does working wikily mean?  The paper gives this definition:

"Wikis and other social media are engendering new, networked ways of behaving - ways of working wikily - that are characterized by principles of openness, transparency, decentralized decision-making, and distributed action."

I'm beginning a project with NTEN in the next few weeks that focuses on social media, nonprofits, and curriculum development.   We'll be using a wiki to create and house the curriculum materials which will be open source.   Right now I'm focused on thinking about one aspect of the project - What is the social (networked) process around curriculum development?   How can we work wikily effectively?  I participated in projects where we have worked wikily, but I haven't facilitated one.   So, this is new area of learning that I will be sharing over the coming months.

A couple of takeaways from the report:

• Basic Rules for operating in a Networked Way:
  • Promise, Tool, and Bargain - "The promise is the basic "why" for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the how.  And the bargain sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect and what will be expected of you?

• Human Elements:  Trust and Fun matter.  Quote from Beth Novek, "Fun matters.  It's about harnessing the enthusiasm of the crowd, not just its wisdom. And you do that making things fun."

• There are different types of networks or working in a networked way - it isn't just one definition or approach.   These may include:

• Networks of organizations
• Networks of people
• Peer-to-peer networks of individuals working outside of organizations

• The issue of balancing control with the productivity of the network.

Photo by PeppySis

Epeus's Engine has a post titled "How Not To Be Viral" which is talking about social applications spread on social networks.   The term "viral" is now more like cancer - given application fatique.   The post provides an overview of the alternative reproductive strategies to being a virus based on nature metaphors.   These might be useful ways to think conceptually about your social fundraising or activism strategy?

• r-Strategy - scatter lots of seeds
• K-Strategy - nurture your young
• Fruiting - delicious with a seed in
• Rhizomatic - grow from the roots up

More commentary in this post - Why Not To Be Viral

If you were to pick a nature metaphor to describe your social network strategy, what would it be?

• Get Your Gmail Feed Read to You by Phone
• Writing Style for Print vs. Web
  "Summary: Linear vs. non-linear. Author-driven vs. reader-driven. Storytelling vs. ruthless pursuit of actionable content. Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive data. Sentences vs. fragments."
• The price cut that isn't: "Cheaper" iPhone, pricier data plan

It was just over a year ago that I kicked my multi-year Outlook habit.   It happened because of a horrible computer crash.  I have not gone back to Outlook and I've become completely accustomed or perhaps dependent on using gmail for GTD because all of the reasons in the video above.   So, today's Gmail outage created a horribly unproductive day.

According to SKFox blog, there isn't much you can do.   This one lasted at least a couple of hours and was very annoying.  SKFox suggests the following to keep you from banging cha cha on the keyboard:

• Use your email client like Outlook or Thunderbird to download your messages to your local machine with POP3 while keeping your gmail account unchanged. That way, even if gMail is inaccessible, you can get to your old email for reference. Of course, you have to do this once your account is up and running again.
• Visit the gMail Google group to at the least find others in your boat and get the latest updates.

Some users have reported success getting to their mail during outages by using any number of alternative links to gmail. Your mileage may vary, but here they are:

• Basic HTML version: https://mail.google.com/mail/h/
• Older version: http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1

Today’s outage is a known issue, and I hope for all of your coming here from search engines, that it comes back up quickly for you.

Here's the link that Sonny Cloward pointed me to on Twitter about the outage (unfortunately, didn't see it because Twitter was having its own problems)

I don't use my email as a to do list, but I do have a lot of reference information in there, particularly what I haven't processed into a google doc (which was also giving me some issues).   Looks like I better figure out a way to download messages as an off line archive.

What are your best tips for being productive during a gmail outage?

Of course, when I asked who did singing in the rain — to be sure I got the name right* — LucyBeck said “Elmo does it!”

Gays celebrate marriage ruling at annual picnic - Vallejo Times Herald. We had a good time at the picnic. Which, for Lucy, meant that there was a playground near — that’s what she’s pointing to in the pic. For us, it meant we met knew people. New people with kids. Always a bonus.

A lot of folks are asking about the fabulous little laptop that fits in my purse, has no moving parts to break, and comes with Linux and other open source software installed. It’s called an Eee PC (stupidest name ever) and ranges from $300 to $600. You can buy it on Amazon. (If you use their links to buy it, I will get a small kickback from Amazon. Thanks.)

Amazon.com Widgets

Tags: Eee, Asus, EeePC, laptop, linux, opensource, compact