F2F & Online Events: Wrapping them Up Together

Did you know:

• 74% of nonprofits now have a presence on Facebook
• 80% have a full-time staff person spending at least 25% of time on social networking

The data comes from a recent survey sponsored by NTEN, Common Knowledge and ThePort and appears in a brief white paper offered by ThePort titled Best Practices: How Nonprofits and Associations Enhance Offline Events Using Social Networking. The Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report is available from NTEN with additional data and insights.

My take on the questions:

• How can online social networking support and enhance an offline event before, during and afterwards?
• How can social media create a more valuable experience for attendees and those who can't make it but are interested?

Timely questions since a group of us in Kansas are currently planning for a SPF SIG Community Sector Networking Event so this particular paper and these questions are perfect. What I took away from the paper is a a number of best practices pre- post- and during to support events. Ideas ...

• Open a conversation about the Conference or event where people can post questions for the event hosts, logistical staff and even workshop presenters
• Open a Forum on a conference topic and invite the presenter to join and talk about it
• Write a blog post about your experience as it relates to the topic
  
• During the conference, return to the discussion thread and add comments and notes from the session to support those unable to attend but are interested
• Blog your workshop experience
  
• Breakout the cell phone camera and take pictures and post them each day on your social networking site or on twitpic, flickr or other photo site, linking them to the Forum or blog post
  
• Use your flipvideo camera and post a video interview with a workshop presenter or group discussion on the topic
  
• Conference organizers and presenters can post links to or embed handouts, materials and slide decks from sessions
  
• Invite a presenter to join you on your social network to host a follow up conversation after the conference
  
• Find people you met at the conference on your social network (or invite them to become members) and friend them so you can stay in touch
  

The Paper has a lot more including ideas for generating revenue to support events and additional ideas for the wrap-around. I know that many organizations worry if they put the conference content online people will opt not to attend. I've long believed the reverse is true - as the paper also suggests.

...more online engagement equals more attendees at the planned event.

In these tough economic times I'm suggesting we can practice new ways to be virtually inclusive even when people can't afford to make the physical trip. The weaving of both online and offline networking, conversation and learning wind up creating a sense of belonging and people support a community to which they belong. Peter Block says:

The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.

Seems to me we can actually use online interaction through technology with our offline events and bring people together in ways that strengthen relationships and widen the net(work). By interacting online we are helping to reduce the isolation and connect people in thoughtful, engaging ways.

How are you using social networks to engage people around your conferences and events? Any Tips or Best Practices you've discovered you'd be willing to share?

Social Network image Source: Gustavog

So What Does it Mean?

I posted a video a few days ago titled Did You Know? (Thank you Katherine!) It is chock full of interesting bits of information, some of which rattled my thinking, tugged at my heart or raised my curiosity. If you haven't seen it, take 5 and take a look.

What are the implications for prevention?

Brett Sculthorp commented mentioning the need to move past our old ways of learning within disciplines, in fact he even challenged the notion of multidisciplinary (which is about as far as I'd thought about) pushing the thinking into ...

... inter or trans disciplinary futures oriented framework that informs us about relationship, and therefore, knowledge systems. Physical technologies are a manifestation of deeper psycho-spiritual dynamics, an understanding of which should be the foundation of prevention.

His thoughts connected to some work just completed for/with the Kansas Family Partnership, AAPS and Kansas Regional Prevention Center Network with Ken Homer from Collaborative Conversations. Ken offered a new three-part Interactionar℠ series Collaborating for Results: How Conversations Get Work Done. The first two workshops in the series build collaboration skills in preparation for the the third, Coping with Wicked Messes: Shifting our Focus from Problems to Participation. In this session Ken describes the circumstances most of us find ourselves in from time to time -- situations where communications break down -- we talk past one another -- our thinking and systems get increasingly fragmented -- usually because we are thinking and working from different places and perspective (disciplines, silos) and always having to make our case from our own scientific viewpoint.

It was with this in mind that I read Dan L's suggestion:

Forget about specific job skills, focus on increasing self-efficacy with respect to handling new technologies and situations. Problem solving is also a must, as is a basis in the major theories..so long as you know to look for and be comfortable with the weaknesses of those theories.

Many fields are moving toward an understanding of (social) network analysis to understand communication flows and bottlenecks. Prevention is finally getting on board with systems thinking, but has a way to go.

While I see the point in dropping the focus on specific job skills, I'd suggest this is a both/and opportunity. We need some specialization and some generalization -- skills that help us hold both at the same time. I've taken the liberty of placing the distinctions Dan offered side-by-side here along with an image to try to capture and see the idea. The distinctions made me think of agency/organizational silos and how they tend to work the same way. One could easily replace the words academic orientation with agency, field or organization. Whether we work in juvenile justice, mental health, treatment, prevention or public health -- we all have a way we see and approach the social issues and even collect our own data via our own data systems.

When we get together in inter-disciplinary groups to work collaboratively (like agency level advisory groups or the twelve community sectors) we often have our discussions but when we leave the group we go right back to our own mental models of how things work. Sadly, a missed opportunity for developing new knowledge or achieving breakthrough thinking.

Dan commented further:

In Prevention, we've adopted a popular systems model, but now we need to get beyond testing programs and move to testing theories from other "fields." (e.g. don't tell me scare tactics don't work when there are fields of study that show how and when fear based appeals can be powerful, and the conditions under which they are less likely to succeed)

There is so much to learn and in some ways it depends on the path of the conversation and how we engage each other. Trans-disciplinary work is like working with wicked messes. It requires a foundation of deep listening and developing shared meaning in order to successfully identify possibilities, outline actions and evaluate/reflect on the outcomes. In some ways this is reflected in Brett's follow up comment only from a being rather than doing perspective.

The underlying thread to my comment was about developing our prevention practice from an understanding of our essential human ontology/being which demands as you suggest a systems or synthetic rather than analytic or disciplinary approach.

This is most definitely a deeper context than simply doing programs, policies and strategies. It is more than service delivery. It is more than training or technical assistance. It is more than the technology. It requires more of us in our day-to-day learning and practices in prevention. (read through the complete comment thread if you'd like the full context.)

What strikes you about the conversation?

Did you know?

Think things are changing fast?
Take 5. Watch the video.
Comments are open -- let's talk.

What did you see that strikes you as important?