Author: Nancy White

How the World Sees the US

Water
Creative Commons License photo credit: celebdu
I’m back from Ethiopia and Las Vegas – talk about culture shock. I have a stack of half finished blog posts and a cold and the cold is winning. So in the interim, I’m going to post pointers to some interesting sites. (Doesn’t take too many brain cells which are not doing so well at the moment!)

First is a collection of music videos from the world music site, Calabash, which give a musical perspective on one of our US presidential candidates, Barak Obama. To get a sense of how the world sees the US, listen to the lyrics on viva música!: Obama – The WorldBeat Album.

When I work outside of my home country, people often ask me my political views. Trust is given or withheld depending on my answer. Regardless of your politics, it is really important to have a sense of how the world views the US because it is a global society and we can’t sit isolated from the world. In some ways, we are very good at playing out in the world. In others, we have a lot of ground to cover.

If you are a US voter, please think about this as you make your selection. How the world sees and understands us matters. Like it or not, that starts with our leaders! However, it doesn’t stop there. What we do to respond to the terrible losses in Burma or China matter as much as our response to losses in Oklahoma. So let’s be part of the world from the top down and the bottom up.

CPSquare “Connected Futures” week 1 blog post

Week 1 Workshop Blog Post

I’m lending a hand for the CPSquare’s (http://www.cpsquare.org) “Connected Futures” workshop which started the last week in April. As part of our collective “end of the week activity,” we are all to blog a reflection either on the workshop discussion board, or on our own blogs. Since I am currently offline while I write this, my timing will be off, but I decided to share it on my public blog as a “peek in” to an ongoing experiment.

(Why am I offline? I’m currently at ILRI in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where I’m co-facilitating a face to face element of an ongoing distributed workshop on knowledge sharing in international agricultural research. The network is down. Who knows for how long…???)

The workshop is devoted to looking at the role and impact of new technologies on communities of practice, and how we steward those technologies (or technology stewardship. If I were online, I’d be linking all these things to previous posts and definitions, but that will have to wait until later!)

This is not a workshop for the fainthearted. In the first week we are asked to register and acclimate to a fistful of online tools, from wikis to blog readers. While we have a “home base” on a discussion board, our activities will range across tools and modalities so we have some real experience to reflect upon and learn from. But all this jumping around right off the bat, before we’ve all gotten to know each other, feels pretty challenging. The brave post that they are feeling confused and I suspect others are quietly nodding in agreement in front of their computer screens.

What facilitates coherence? Especially in a complex world? What enables some of us to feel comfortable with incoherence, ambiguity and incompleteness while others take it as natural? Furthermore, how do we reconcile these differences when we are intending to act “in community?”

For me, these questions are always on my mind when I am in the technology steward’s seat. (Or on that keyboard!)

Noticing some nice non-profit wiki work

CCN Wiki HomepageA while ago Beth Kanter put out to her network a request to know about useful nonprofit wiki practices. I meant to reply, but, as usual, got distracted. Today I received an email update about a local coalition here in Washington State (USA) that reminded me about their great wiki work. Check out the Communities Connect Network Wiki . Early on, I had the pleasure of working with Peg Giffels who was their main wiki gardener (among many other roles.) Peg “got” that there was both an information architecture and a set of social processes associated with their use of a wiki as both a project communication tool and as a knowledge sharing tool.

Intially the blog was going to be a general place for coalition members to share stuff. But we all know how general stuff goes — slowly if at all. Then Peg hit on using the wiki to be the central point for the coalitions training programs. Now, at the completion of this last round, Peg has a site that is rich in materials (print, audio, video), has an integrated wiki orientation and training component, reflects specific member areas and contributions (for example here and here) and is well organized and “gardened.” The left navigation links to major areas of the wiki.

One of the things that came out of the early “Wiki Wednesday” hour long telephone based orientations was that people came to get trained, but left with new connections to other coalition members. When asked what was best about the calls — it was always the people they connected with. Peg lives that in the way she works with the coalition. While she stewarded the technology and the content, her attention to the people came across to me, as I observed the wiki development over the months and now years.

Like most wikis, there is a relatively small proportion of editors to page views. For example, in April, there was a rough average of 220 unique visitors per day, 2-3 editors and intermittent spikes of editing across the month. This makes sense given the ‘wind down’ phase as well. There was a huge jump in traffic between February and March. I should ask Peg what was going on!

Interestingly, while this wiki is very focused on Washington state, there are viewers from around the world. I really wish I knew what they thought, in what ways, if any, they benefited from visiting the wiki. I appreciate that the Communities Connect project worked with such openness. They have made a contribution that is bigger than their own project work. I like that about public wikis.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this cool wiki with you. Do you have any great wikis you’d like to share with the rest of us?

P.S. Beth, when I went to find the link on your blog, I noticed two things. Your search box is now waaaay down on the left nav bar of your blog – I almost gave up looking for it. And it is a Technorati search, so I have to go to Technorati and THEN link back to your blog. Maybe consider putting in a Google or other direct search option? I want to find your great stuff FAST! And yes, I’m finally becoming a searcher!

The magic between communities and networks

Every time I re immerse myself in thinking about the space between communities and networks, my mind races. I should be doing April billing, prepping for travel, finishing editing, yet I keep jumping into conversations with my networks and communities about NETWORKS and COMMUNITIES! This morning we had a great one on Twitter and I wish I could drop everything, keep conversing and then reflecting. But I can’t. So here is the marker for the conversation, as best I could capture it by favoriting all the related Tweets –> Twitter Network – Community Conversation. If someone can continue to hold the space for this conversation as it wanders across media, please, I thank you in advance. There are some FABULOUS thoughts from aroberts, csessums, edmittance, band, budtheteacher, peterscampbell, stevebridger, melmcbride, CourtneySellers , injenuity
, nandito, coyenator, webb and MtnLaurel. THANKS!

For more of my obsession, tags…
Community
Networks

Want to take your blogging to the next level?

People ask me, “how do I become a better blogger and how can I make money at blogging?” There are tons of great resources out there on how to become a better blogger, and I usually don’t have a good answer for the second part. But today an email from Ben Rattray of Change.org gave me a thought. Change.org is looking for paid bloggers around activist issues. There is a monthly stipend – I’m sure it isn’t huge, but this is a paid gig. It offers a good writer the chance to hone her skill, get exposure and street cred as a paid blogger. And heck, while doing some good! It’s a good combination. Check it out…Change.org

Want to blog on an issue you are passionate about for an audience of hundreds of thousands of activists and nonprofit leaders?

Want to create the premier online space for your issue and become a leading voice for social action?

Change.org is launching a social action blog network this summer and is currently hiring a team of part-time bloggers/editors to help create a movement for change around the major causes of our time.

Each blogger will lead an online community focusing on a different social, political, or environmental issue, maintain a daily blog covering news and offering commentary, convene leading nonprofits and activists working on the issue, and help people translate their interests and passions into concrete action.