Book clubs and social objects

Recently I had an exchange with Rich Millington about community building.  He made a comment about the need to modernize traditional ways of community building -- book clubs, game nights, etc, and also wondered about a better, modern unifier.  Whether or not community gatherings need to moderinize  is a good discussion to have, but this got me thinking about why people gather and what ultimately comes from it. 

Personally, I think it's less important as to why people gather as it is that they gather in the first place.  In my own experiences, I find that the initial reasons for people connecting may wane but the relationships will remain.  Here are two such examples:

Pub quiz.  When I first moved to Seattle over 10 years ago, my friends and I started going to a pub that held weekly trivia competitions.  We did this religiously for years.  Team members would come and go, but a core group of us remained until the quiz master retired.  The team still gets together often to socialize, but it has been several years since we went to a trivia night together.

Team Works.  This is a program through a local nonprofit geared at team based volunteering.  The premise is that people gather in groups and volunteer in the community once a month.  After each volunteer session, people would typically gather for drinks and food at a local establishment.  I inherited a team from a long time team captain, and I brought on some of my friends to the team, who in turn brought their friends.  The team has now changed ownership multiple times, and I'm not as involved, but several team members still volunteer frequently.  We have been to each other's houses for informal gatherings, in addition to significant milestones in our lives.  Though it did not happen in my team, I know of people who got married as a result of volunteering together.

In both of these examples, the impetus for gathering -- pub quiz and Team Works -- sparked connection between people.  These individuals then chose to continue the relationship outside the initial bounds of the gathering. In many ways, I am reminded of "social objects" as described by Hugh Macleod:

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. 

Objects will come and go, and that's fine.  It's the relationships and connections that make it all worthwhile.

What nonprofits can learn from the recent outages on Twitter, Facebook

Nonprofits (and any organization) can learn a lot from the recent outage on Twitter and Facebook.

1. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket

Much like the websites of Facebook and Twitter being a potential single source of failure, is your organization at risk?

Some questions to consider:

• How diversified is your funding stream?
• If a key member of your board, staff, etc fell ill or left, would the organization still survive?
• How diversified is your social media strategy?

2. Foster innovation of your service(s)

Despite the news that Twitter and Facebook were down, I experienced no problems getting information through TweetDeck (where I manage both my FB status updates and Twitter messages). Had these sites only relied on their website as the only way for people like me to access their services, I would have been out of luck. By opening themselves up to the innovation of others, my service was uninterrupted.

Some questions to consider:

• Does your organization create opportunities for people to build upon the experiences you offer -- perhaps in a manner you did not anticipate or plan?
• How do you encourage people to engage with your experiences in a way that is meaningful for them?
  

3. Have contingency plans

I don't know the details of what Twitter and Facebook are doing/have done in light of the recent outages but I think it is safe to assume they have mechanisms in place to deal with this in terms of restoring service, communication, etc.

Some questions to consider:

• What is the plan for your organization?
• How up to date is your plan?
• Do the people that need to know/execute said plan aware of it? Or does it sit on some shelf or in some folder on your computer?

4. No matter what, learn from your mistakes

If by chance none of the lessons mentioned previously have been applied, it's not the end of the world. Each challenge that confronts us is an opportunity for improvement and learning.

Community building in times of crisis

I've been meaning to post this for awhile -- with the disasters in Burma and China, it seems even more relevant now...

Through the initiative of some friends of mine from Seattle Works, I am now trained to be a shelter volunteer at the Red Cross for King and Kitsap Counties. What exactly is a shelter volunteer? Think of it as those folks who provide emergency, short term shelter for those displaced for any number of reasons including fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, wind storms and any number of other disasters that target the Pacific Northwest.

Admittedly, I knew nothing about what I was getting into when I learned about this opportunity. Mostly, I thought that it would be a nice way to give back locally following so many different natural disasters. And given that shelter is one of the most basic of needs, this seemed to be a great place to start.

The training is made up of three different sections to go over how to care for the masses, the basics of sheltering, followed by hands on simulations. Through each of the sessions, we learned about what it actually takes to plan, prepare, run and manage an emergency shelter. While it was great to learn the specifics roles, tasks and skills required for a shelter, I did not expect to learn about community building in times of crisis.

For years, I always defined community as the result of intentional interactions between people with similar experiences, interests, etc over time. Time, in my definition, never really crossed my mind in terms of a short term, temporary situation which is the desired norm for emergency shelters. Yet, despite the relative brevity of the duration of a shelter, a great deal of work and planning goes in to designing opportunities for community to occur. Whether its through organized activities for children in the shelter, or getting a shared sense of ownership from the clients there by involving them in the operations...there is a concerted effort to make it as vibrant of a community as possible.

This, along with the paper plate notion of relationships has me thinking differently about community. I'm not really sure where it will lead me, but the notion of time -- especially for extended periods -- does not seem to be as important as I once thought it to be.

Blogging presentations

A few months ago, I was asked to give a *quick* overview of blogging to a local nonprofit interested in blogging. These are those slides.

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For those interested, I am also posting some slides I ran across today for more detail on optimizing one's blog. The content is by Scott Hanselman and the slides are by Josh Holmes.

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When stacked against the likes of either Josh or Scott -- I'm no where near in the same league here or here. Regardless, we all blog for different reasons. Me...it's mostly to keep all the different pieces of me together.

Pedal power

Repetition, repetition, repetition. Bicycles have been on my mind a lot as of late due to:

A recent trip to China

…and Barcelona


Now, I learn that the University of Washington is looking at having electric bikes for folks on campus. Not a bad idea, despite the hills, but why electric?

Related, I just finished Giving, by Bill Clinton and one of the nonprofits he mentions, World Bicycle Relief, works to provide access and independence through bicycles. Sounds like a great organization!