Stepping Stones

The Maytree Foundation hosts a monthly lunch and learn program called 5 Good Ideas. In these sessions, experts discuss powerful yet practical ideas on key management issues facing nonprofit organizations.

I attended a 2 hour presentation yesterday (Oct. 30^th, 2007) that featured Jason Mogus, an expert in assisting non profit groups who wish to adopt Web 2.0 technologies, thinking and tools in their organizational culture and to further their Mission. His company, called Communicopia has won international awards for their ground breaking work. Jason’s presentation was titled “Reaching Out in a Web 2.0 World”.

In this blog post I am attempting to capture some of the key messages in Jason’s talk and also a little bit of the conversation that took place at my table of community representatives. I am writing this post because I was asked by one of the staff at my table to make a blog post about the presentation. This post meets Streetjibe’s goal of sharing important stories that has implications to the work we do in our learning community.

Jason used a power point to present his 5 good ideas. He gave a very personal account of his own struggles as a successful entrepreneur who had to reinvent himself and his company numerous times in order to find personal satisfaction in his work. After years of experimentation, failure and reflection Jason has distilled his thinking on Web 2.0 to these 5 ideas (from his handout):

1. Tell great stories. Start with were your audience is at. Balance information + emotion. Talk about success not just problems. Get creative!

2. Give to get. Invest in the process and care deeply about the outcomes, or don’t bother. People sense inauthenticity. Being successful requires regular attention and sustained effort.

3. Let go of control. Collaborate, don’t dominate. Trust that “the people” (your employees, donors, partners or the public) have something useful to offer. Ask for help. You will be amazed at what happens.

4. Experiment and listen. Try new things. Be open to feedback and ideas. Be willing to change based on what you learn. You’ll learn a lot.

5. It’s about the journey. Don’t blow your whole budget on the destination. Build capacity and commit for the long haul.

After Jason’s presentation we were asked to discuss our own ideas on this subject and then share the best idea with the larger group. At my table we had a very eclectic group of community representatives. Here are a few of the comments and ideas presented at our table and shared with the larger group:

• Require staff in your organization to take 15 minutes each day to contribute to your agency’s blog as a way of adding to the internal networking needs and to embed the blogging (or wikis etc) practice within your organizational culture.

• When you are doing everyday collaboration work (emails, planning, coordinating etc.) within or outside your organization try using a wiki to collaborate. You can send the wiki address to everyone involved in the collaboration and ask that they contribute on the wiki rather than sending multiple emails.

• I mentioned that my project uses a blog and a wiki as part of our goal of extending our project to a wider audience in York Region and to give practitioners more experience in using these web 2.0 tools. To illustrate the simplicity and utility of using a blog, I was asked to make a blog post about the presentation and the conversation at our table.

• One table participant shared that he stayed away from using these web 2.0 tools because he didn’t have time to be engaged in this way and that he has 2 dedicated staff to communicate with web 2.0 tools with his team of International Development workers. This led to further discussion about the financial and staff resources needed to implement these tools.

• One of the table participants identified herself as a “luddite” who is fine with email but using these new web 2.0 tools are beyond her capabilities at this time.

• Another person gave a great example of how the Royal Bank of Canada is using web 2.0 tools to engage young people about banking and credit practices.

• A concern was shared that these web 2.0 tools were really not suitable to an audience of older conservative funding partners who are unfamiliar with these tools.

• Another table participant talked about how her group of seniors where forging ahead with experimenting with many of these tools.

I am a very keen and committed supporter of using web 2.0 tools in the Streetjibe pilot project. The presentation confirmed many of my own feelings about integrating these tools within non profit organizations and the potential of these tools to engage a whole variety of stakeholders.

In the coming year Streetjibe will reach out to young people to share their stories and talents through our blog. These stories will be photographs, poetry, podcasts or whatever appeals to young people. We also want to have these stories reflect the tremendous challenges faced by young people as they cope with poverty issues and struggle to find a place in our community.

One of the resources listed in Jason’s handout was a video definition of Web 2.0. It’s called the “The Machine is Us/ing Us” and can be viewed by clicking this link. More resources and information can be found at the Maytree and Communicopia website.