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This past Friday was our third event in the series Communicating in the Age of New Media and focused on social media tools. It was a wonderful success, at least in my opinion, and took place at IRCO (Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization) offering us a chance to have applicable conversations and applications of our small group scenarios, many of which focused on immigrant and refugee or other special needs populations. My standard review process includes noting three positives and one negative, so, here's my take on the event:
Rose: Facilitator
We were very honored and thrilled to have Beth Kanter come out to provide us with an overview of social media and the tools nonprofits are and can be using and then walk us through the day's workshop. She provided great insight and helped the groups every step of the way with suggestions, ideas, and thought-provoking questions. You can even read Beth's reflections on the event on her blog!
Rose: Participants
Beth was terrific, but our participants really made the day for me! They were positive about the new media tools and ready to learn. People were jumping right in to the workshop scenarios and energetic in creating strategies using social media to help nonprofits best do their work. When faced with this much new information, people can get scared and overwhelmed, or excited and motivated. I was thrilled to see that our participants were the latter.
Rose: Conversation
At every table around the room, conversations were taking place that proved how energetic and enthused the participants and the leaders were about the topic—what is not to be excited about? After all, some nonprofits are ahead of corporations in adopting social web tools! One great tool that my group touched on was the utility of wikis for organizations and their members. What better place to collaborate and build community through participation and contribution than in a wiki? We even set up a wiki for the event so that the notes, ideas, questions, and great conversation could be recorded and continued.
Thorn: Time
With such a motivated group of participants and a guru facilitator, it was hard to call it a day. We could have easily worked on the scenarios in small groups, had conversations and answered questions together for many more hours. Even this thorn has a rose: Check out the wiki for the event and we can keep discussing and collaborating!
I hope all of you who had the opportunity to be with us on Friday enjoyed it and learned something you can put to use at your organization. To those who could not join us, we hope to put on similar events in the future and I will continue to post here on ideas, issues, news, and information to help you use social media tools in your organization.
