When someone asks how ordinary people can use social media to make a change in the world, point them to this collaborative blog of how 5 girls and 4 dads went on a mission to help families in Ethiopia have access to clean water. Five for Water. A very simple blog to hold videos from their trip. This is my favorite quote. “Mom, say hi to mars and tell him to eat his food but not socks.” (Ah, dogs.) You can read the backstory here.
Category: collaboration
Northern Voice Visual Recap
Northervoice 09 is now history – thousands of tweets, images and blog posts. It is time to reflect a bit. I enjoyed every minute of NV again – there is something warm and welcoming about it. I don’t mind the bits of chaos. I love the diversity – especially for a tech oriented gathering. And there are plenty of women! It was another visually oriented gathering for me. Continuing on from my “writing on the walls” from ’08, I again did a lot of visual work in this digitally focused gathering.
On Friday, as already noted, I ran a lightening fast Graphic Recording 101 session which was pure joy. There is a video here. And lots of pictures on Flickr. It was great to hear people say they not only enjoyed it, but were able to move their own practice forward. Yay! More hands on pen and chalk! We started by drawing circles using our full bodies, then horizontal lines, then text (with the tips about headlines the width of your palm, text the width of 2 fingers), then the terror zone – human figures. We practiced start people and squiggle people. The the final burst of color with the application of chalk. It was glorious how color brought even simple practice sketches to life. It was a think of beauty to watch. The artifacts we left behind were then a backdrop for the Photocamp session. Fitting, eh?
A first for Northern Voice, I graphically recorded a keynote – and what a performance it was to try and capture! The seriously funny Rob Cottingham had the capacity crowd in stitches talking about the funny side of social media. I had to draw as fast as the wind. It ended up being two panels, even though the keynote was just under 45 minutes. Thanks to Roland Tanglao for helping get up a second sheet.
It was interesting to think about the process. Prior to the talk all I knew was the title and
that it was mostly stream of consciousness stand up comedy with some “serious stuff at the end.” I got this information from 5 tweets from Rob, so you know the information was under 700 characters. 😉 I’m glad I just went with the flow. It was risky, but fun. I had thought about some sort of timeline image in advance, but that would not have worked. And because they ended up having me draw from the front of the room right behind Rob and under his slides, this felt a bit more like preformance art than just graphic recording. (Some coverage of the keynote here, here and here.)
After it was over, I needed to go outside and lay on the grass and have a quieter conversation with a friend. I felt like I had just run a race, or taken a really hard yoga class. I was physically tired.
Later I noticed something as I skimmed the Flickr pictures tagged “northernvoice09” — the vivid social media chart was behind all the subsequent speakers. It provided a different sort of backdrop and I found great pleasure in that. (Photo by Tris Hussey)
I had the great pleasure of being on a “trio offering” with Barbara Ganley and Laura Blankenship. Our topic was “Doing the Limbo: Navigating the space in between – Create relationships, not distance.” How is that for a long title? Sheesh, what WERE we thinking?
We wanted to give an experience of boundary crossing, so we starte
d the session with a paired drawing exercise (for details, see here and here) for the technique I learned from Johnnie Moore.) The basic premise is without talking, people take turns drawing facial features until they have created a shared face and named it, one letter at a time. As always, this great exercise gets people interacting with each other and then people are amazed at how they let go of their preconceived notions about drawing something and how beautiful their images are.
Then we moved into videos from Barbara and Laura which again set a very multisensory tone – images, poetry, music. As we moved into conversation, I then captured the conversation visually. We wrapped our session with an invitation for everyone to come down front and dance!
After the session the three of us sat down, along with my friends Dave Pollard and Sue Wolff, and did a debrief of the session. We all really enjoyed it and realized we opened a huge pandora’s box that we could not even begin to explore in a 40 minute session. There was so much everyone wanted to say. How about a whole day? Sue twittered out our comments. Later, Laura blogged about it here. I’m waiting for Barbara’s blogged reflections.
The last experiment of Saturday was with Alan Levine using his Livescribe pen/paper to visually annotate his presentation, which itself was on the role of visuals in blogging! For the details, see Nancy LiveScribed Me on Flickr – Photo Sharing
By the end of the day, my chalk was down to the nubbins! It was visual, collaborative, somewhat chaotic and fun.
Just in — Laura made a “Thank you NVoice” video!
Congratulations to Beth Kanter, Active Networker
If you ever doubt the powerful combination of one motivated person and a large social network, take a look at this Businessweek story about my friend Beth Kanter.
One of the Web’s First Social Networkers – BusinessWeek
Ask Kanter about fundraising, and her strategy quickly becomes clear. She reaches for every tool that can connect with people, and she works them tirelessly.
I met Beth in 2005 at the first Blogher. I was intrigued about her taking shoe pictures. I was blown away by her energy and passion to learn and expand what she knew and did. VORACIOUS. And we became friends connected mostly by electrons, often cross posting to each others’ blogs – a lot – in the early years of our friendship.
I watched as her social network grew, the scope of her ambitions expand from a project focus, to changing the way non profits used social media for their communications and fundraising. More than any other individual I know, Beth changed the landscape, one post, one tweet, one connection at a time, all the while understanding the amplifying powers of networks.
Well, not just networks. You see, Beth adds the personal touch. The warmth. The connection. And the fearlessness to try new things, to ask people to engage and participate. The technology stewardship to make all the crazy tools work. This is active network activation. There is nothing passive here.
Using social media for any reason is not disconnected from our warmth and humanity. Just ask Beth!
The Girl Effect – catalyzing positive change
This morning on Twitter, Idocente pointed me to The Girl Effect. WOW! As some of you know, I have been a champion of the GiGis (Girl Geeks in service of the World Cafe community) and have long been a (prejudiced) champion of females in changing the world. So it is no surprise I had a positive response to this site. Take a look at the video.
Over breakfast today in Bonn, where I’m doing some work this week, my friend Ulf and I were talking about where we have seen positive change take place. (Check out his cool work with Science-Connects.) We shared stories about how things seem to work better from the ground up. Where people with passion and ownship make things happen, building on assets and in spite of barriers. Girls and women are certainly catalysts for this in many parts of the world. Take a look at this data from The Girl Effect fact sheet (pdf).
- When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
- An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881[Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)
- Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers. (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science
and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.) - When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man. (Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.)
Since I was in Israel and Palestine last month, I have been struggling on how to write about my experience in a way that is not about judgement, but about reflecting what I saw. The tyranny of person over person is heartbreaking, regardless of the reasons and justifications we create. But from what I saw and learned about, women and children are victims as Israel and Palestine continue without a solution for sustainable peace. The statistics around maternal and child health paint a compelling picture that war, occupation, and the patterns that trigger them are bad for women and children. High levels of maternal depression correlate with poor child nutrition. Raising rates of stunting in children from persistent malnourishment (low nutrition and poor nutrition) are staggering. Cultural challenges that resist healthy patterns of breast feeding and trigger increased poor child health and adult obesity and heart disease in Palestinians.
Where is the hope for something better? For basic human rights of food, shelter, clothing, clean food and water and yes, even peace?
It is with the women.
The women of Palestine and Israel, both, who build bridges across the divides were the most compelling points of light I experienced amongst the bleakness that presented itself. At the conference I was attending, I met a midwife who works for the Jazoor Foundation for Health and Social Development who gave me one of the few moments of light and hope I felt during my visit. She was passionate about her profession of helping women have healthier babies. She was passionate about teaching others to be midwives, even amongst professional disdain from other health care professionals. (US midwives will remember the time when they were dismissed by doctors, and are now an important part of the maternal child health system.) Her brains, her heart, her attitude radiated light. She worked with other amazing, passionate advocates for health, social development and peace in the organization, led by another brilliant, passionate woman. (I’m kicking myself for not having her name handy, but it is on my home computer and I’m on the road!)
Women who are catalyzing positive change.
I would name this radiant midwife, and share a short video we made of her, but I have not asked her permission. I’ll try and remmber to do that when I get home to let you experience a bit of her light.
So the message of The Girl Effect site resonated with me this morning. Wherever we work – in businesses, education, non profit, or independent spirits in the world, what are we doing to foster this light in girls and women? Because so far, they are the best bet I can see for making positive change in the world. By no means am I dismissing boys. But girls are so often dismissed, when they may be the best chance we’ve got.
(A small suggestion to the Girl Effect folks. Your about page is in flash, making it hard to copy and share the stats. Yes, I know I can download the data, but that is one more step. Plus data is still locked in a PDF. For strong virality, making it simpler and easier may be more important than making it slick. )
Online Communities Mini-Conferences
Passing this along from Leigh Blackall…This is a terrific set of “mini-events” around a variety of online community and collaboration topics. NOT TO BE MISSED!
Participants in the Facilitating Online Communties course have come together to coordinate an online mini conference. Below are the range of events scheduled so far. Keep an eye on the conference wiki for up to the minute details. See you there!
A mini conference for Facilitating Online
From Facilitating online communities
Date: 2 – 9 November 2008
All times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) unless stated otherwise. Use this time convertor to work out your times.
2-9Nov Community Leadership Development
Title: Community Leadership Development – review and feedback
Date: online discussion
Duration: throughout the conference period
Facilitators: Valerie Taylor with guests and friends
Venue: blog posts, discussion page threads
Description: Community Leadership Development – online, open education and skills development for individuals and groups working with community-based organizations to provide leadership training, needs assessment and planning, coordination and management of projects to benefit the community.
As Community Leadership Development is a new course modeled on FOC08 and CCK08, participants in the FOC08 Mini Conferences are uniquely qualified to provide input, feedback and suggestions.
Throughout the Mini Conference, questions about the content and the process for the course will be posted for review and comment. Summaries and links to contributions will be posted each day.
Questions, offers of collaboration welcome.
2-9Nov Managing Multimembership in Social Networks
Title: SCoPE seminar discussion: Managing Multimembership in Social Networks: Oct 27-Nov 9, 2008
Facilitators: Bronwyn Stuckey, Jeffrey Keefer, Sue Wolff, Sylvia Currie
Description: How do you track and keep up with blog conversations? How do you manage your time as you engage in social networks? What are our limits as we integrate social learning into our work environments? When you do find yourself becoming disconnected from your networks and organized activities, how do you return to the fray? As facilitators how do you manage multimembership for your participants?
Many of us confess to fumbling along and we engage in multiple networks. Yet, many networks are essential for the projects, sectors and people that we work with, and for staying abreast of hot issues. Multi-membership and multi-platform overload is becoming a BIG challenge!
During this 2-week discussion we invite you to share tips for managing participation in social networks. This seminar is organized as part of the Facilitating Online Communities course mini-conference. There are many ways to participate! Take our survey, leave a Voice Thread, and join the asynchronous discussion.
Venue: SCoPE is an open, online community supported by BCcampus and hosted by Simon Fraser University. Membership is free and open to the public and our discussions are facilitated by volunteers. Access the seminar discussion directly.
Planning for the event: A record of our planning steps is on a subsequent wiki page: /multimembership
5Nov-7pm The Role of an Online Facilitator
Date: 7pm on Wednesday 5th November UTC (8am on Thursday 6th NovemberNZ DST) Check the time in your zone.
Duration: approximately 1 hour
Facilitator: Vida Thompson
Venue: Skype (contact skype user: vidathompson in advance to join this session)
Description I recorded an interview with a Community Facilitator here in Alexandra, Central Otago, New Zealand. For the mini conference I would like participants to listen to the inteview and then discuss their perception of the role of an online facilitator and how that compares to the role of a face to-face community facilitator. This discussion will be held on skype on Wednesday 5th November at 7pm UTC. (Contact skype user: vidathompson in advance to join this session).
All interested people are welcome to attend. It would be good if participants could listen to the interview before the event. Note: The interview does take a while to start as I edited the beginning out.
Please contact Vida Thompson in skype prior to the event so you can be included in the event when it starts (contact skype user: vidathompson or by e-mail address:vidat@tekotago.ac.nz) There is a limit of 9 participants who can talk but no limit to the chat contributions.
5Nov 9pm Interview About Second Life in Second Life
Title: About Second Life
Date: Wednesday 05 Nov UTC at 9.00pm (Thursday 06 Nov 10.00 am New Zealand Time)
Duration: 30 Minutes
Facilitator: Grant Comber (aka Avatar: Clinty Inglewood)
Venue: Explorer Island in Second Life
How to get there? Click on this SLurl Link and then click on the Teleport Now button to zoom to Explorer Island. The Second Life Grid coordinates for the Venue are 195,208,22 (PG) Your Host Clinty Inglewood will meet you.
Reminder: Min computer specs – RAM: 500mb (preferably 1 Gig) Chip speed: 800 MHz Pentium III or better, Screen 1024×768 pixels Internet Connection: Cable/DSL Microphone/headset needed for Chatting
Description:An interview between newbie Grant Comber (Clinty Inglewood) and seasoned Second Life user Harold Atkinson (Hat Carter). General questions on the use of Second Life and sharing of unique experiences. Opportunity for all avatars in FOC to gain some insight into using Second Life especially those who are newbies like Grant!
So if you want to philosophize, go didactic on us or just talk some technical turkey issues please pop in for this casual interview.
My thanks to our guest Harold Atkinson who is a fellow teaching colleague of mine with much Second Life experience. See you there! Signing Off: Clinty Inglewood
6Nov-8am Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work
Facilitated by: Daryl Cook with guest Dr. Mark Elliott.
Mark completed a PhD in 2007 that developed theoretical frameworks for collective activity and mass collaboration in conjunction with a number of real-world projects and now runs a consultancy that provides services surrounding online collaboration and social media / web2.0. In our meeting, Mark will assist us to explore:
- Stigmergic collaboration as a means of explaining how co-ordination is achieved in ad hoc, massively scaled collaborative contexts (i.e. Wikis)
- How we can, as facilitators, use Wikis to collaborate, share and learn
- His experiences from the Future Melbourne project — the world’s first, wiki-based, collaborative city plan.
The one hour session, will include a very brief presentation, but will mostly be informal and conversational. Definitely no Powerpoint.
Please join us!
DATE: Thursday 6th November 2008 at 7PM EST or check the time in your time zone.
VENUE: Join this online event at the Elluminate Meeting Room
Beforehand, please ensure that you computer is ready to use the web conferencing software (Elluminate).
RSVP: daryl.cook@gmail.com
ENQUIRIES: For any enquiries and/or for any assistance with Elluminate, do not hesitate to contact me.
6 Nov-10pm International Online Collaboration Group meets FOC08
Title International Online Collaboration Group
- Date and Duration – UTC Thursday 6 November 10pm-11pm UTC (Friday 7 November 9am – 10am East Australia time)
- Facilitators: Kerry Trabinger (CIT Australia) and Leigh
- Description
This is a FANTASTIC opportunity for the group to meet with teachers who are currently completing a subject called Facilitating Learning Online in Australia. Come and discuss your experiences. Topics will include: – Introductions (where are you from and what area are you teaching in) – Virtual Classrooms – Do you like this platform? Will you use it with your students? Why or Why not? Any tips on using these platforms. – Time Management – How does your Institute allocate time for online delivery? Is it the same as for face to face? – Marketing – how can you get students or participants to join in an online dicussion or virtual classroom session? PLUS you have a chance to try a different virtual classroom platform.
- Venue – VET VIRTUAL (a virtual classroom used in Australia VET Sector – www.vetvirtual.com)
6Nov-1030pm TLC (Think, Learn & Create) Using Mind Maps
Title: TLC Using Mind Maps (TLC – Think, Learn & Create) – Online Discussion, followed by Presentation, – Friday 7 Nov 2008 11.30 am – 12noon NZ DST (10.30 pm – 11 pm Thursday 6 Nov UTC)
Facilitators: Kay Lewis and Elaine Dittert
Description:
- Have you had difficulty keeping up with the ‘overload of information’ during this course?
- Got confused or lost by trying to view all the discussion threads?
- Have you jotted down some thoughts and ideas you’ve read and heard but by the time you’re ready to go over your notes they make no sense?
If this sounds like you, this 30 minute session may be just what you need. It is designed to give you some pointers to help you gather and organise large amounts of data and provide a clear overview, analyse your thoughts, identify problem solving ideas and generate more ideas with clarity, efficiency and accuracy.
We plan to have one special guest speaker:
- Jennifer Goddard, BBus (Admin), Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Master Trainer in Buzan Advanced Learning Techniques, inspirational Director of the Buzan Centre in Australia and New Zealand and co-founder of Mindwerx International. OR
- Jennie Vickers, Buzan Licensed Instructor (senior advanced coach), Masters of Management, Diploma in Business Administration (University of Auckland), BA Law (Honours). Jennie is also an Alumni of the Leadership NZ Programme.
Venue: From your feedback in the discussion here [1], we will use 24/7 Meeting Room (Elluminate) or Skype to host the presentation.
7Nov-4PM EST Storytelling
Title: Storytelling
Date: November 7, 2008 at 4PM EST or check the time in your time zone.
Duration: 60 minutes ?
Facilitators:
Venue:
- Join the event on WiZiQ
- Join the event on Connecting Online.
Description:
- Do you think of stories when you look at a photo, a video, or listen to music? Does the topic interest you as a tool for instruction and learning or are you just curious? In any case, for whatever reason you may have, you are invited to join this storytelling mini conference.
- We will have a live storytelling event on WiZiQ or Elluminate. Please refer to the main page of Connecting Online for further discussions on the topic.
Further Information
8Nov-Midnight Heart2Heart Online
Title: Heart2Heart Online
Date: Tentatively Saturday, November 8, 2008 00:00 UTC Time
Duration: 90 minutes
Venue: TBA (Skype, Elluminate Meeting Room or WiZiQ)
Group Size: Maximum of 8 people
Facilitator: Greg Barcelon assisted by partner Ivy (guest)
A place where we can simply be ourselves… sharing ourselves at a deeper level without the fear of condemnation, unsolicited advice, interruption or being judged.
Traditionally we got this deep level of connectedness with our true selves, and assist others in doing the same, from our families. But, with many people experiencing difficulties in their family life today, we need communities that can become “Schola Amoris,” a School of Love, in which all learn to first of all accept themselves as they are, and then in a greater way accept others unconditionally – the greatest yearning we collectively have.
More about it here.
TBA Connecting Online in Developing Countries
Connecting Online in Developing Countries
Title: Connecting Online in Developing Countries
Date: Saturday November 8, 2008 at: See your time zone, please.
Duration: 60 min?
Faciliatator: Joy Zhao & guest speakers
Venue: WiZi or 24/7 Meeting Room
Description: to be updated…
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Posted By Leigh Blackall to Facilitating Online Communities at 11/05/2008 10:08:00 AM