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Topic: ONLINE EVENT: Social Networking and Content Management systems
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moweitzman
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 ONLINE EVENT: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 7:01 AM
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Certainly social networking is a great new trend on the web. But how does it help non profits? My .02 is that non profits desperately need to excite their members and potential members about the cause. They need to create emotional attachments that sticks over years. Posting articles on a web site alone doesn't do this. You need the human touch, and social network brings that in spades.
So, IMO the way to do this on a non profit web site is with a modern content management system like Drupal or Joomla (there are probably others). These systems help you build terrific traditional "article publishing" web sites with editorial approval and all that if you want. But they also specialize in community interaction with buddy lists, private messages, forum, chat, blogs, etc. These are the ingredients of an interesting web site, and thus a more energized membership.
-moshe weitzman
[This message was last edited by Susan_Tenby on Apr 20, 2006]
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Girlstart
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 RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 7:15 AM
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Is there open source software that is similar to these that runs in ASP instead of PHP that anyone knows?
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claw
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 7:40 AM
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Moshe I think that you're right about social networking can help non profits bring their members together to create emotional attachments and a real sense of community.
I think that there are several options that you've got.
Drupal or Joomla are great options for people who have technical talent in-house who can implement those solutions.
ASP services like Crowd Factory are great for those people who want to plug something into their site.
Note that for people without tech resources and who want something quickly - you can also use existing services like Tribe.net to set up your community.
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am
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 8:50 AM
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Chris is right on the mark -- while at Tribe (OK, even before) I got really excited about how engaging social networks are even among people who don't know each other and might never have connected without the software to facilitate.
Communities form where people help each other with everything!
We created Crowd Factory to make custom social network communities easy and accessible, and are surfacing an API that will allow the kind of deep customization developers want to do was well.
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Mark Fredrickson
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 9:46 AM
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I would add two points to those already made:
1. There are a number of hosted/ASP style Drupal solutions out there. (Bryght, Advantage Labs, and now (or soon) CivicSpace On Demand). I would assume there are some Joomla/Mambo equivalents.
What I haven't seen (and would really like to see) is a contract based support company for Drupal. Pay a reasonable fee to have someone available to answer questions, fix small details on the site, etc - an organization that can site between the managed hosting company and the non-techny non-profit staff.
If anyone knows of such an organization, please let me know.
2. Policy and habit are larger barriers than technology. Having a Drupal based website will not create a vibrant user community. The NPO has to understand how to engage constituents at their level. I'm not saying anything that has not been said (more eloquently) before, but I thought I'd stress this point.
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silona
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 RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 10:03 AM
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Actually one thing I am trying with EFF-Austin.org is to be able to match with NPO's with a resident Geek when we have our next penguin day.
it was kind sad last year when we had a bunch of geeks but no NPO's show up. I'm heading up the next one and I'm already giving free classes at our local NPO center on OS tools and when and how to impliment them. To help with the fear factor...
I also think that drupal has much to offer the small NPO set.
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jlorance
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 2:34 PM
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Moshe,
Thanks for starting this breakout as well... I am going through this dillema right now in deciding how to craft an online collaboration space which is designed to encourage and build a community of (technical) support... and I'm trying to decide whether a social networking angle (people-centric) will encourage people to share with each other more vs. the traditional publishing model.
In other words, are people connecting or wanting to connect with others more than connecting with the information? Thereby seeing that the people are the interesting part; but really are the carriers of the information?
Am I making sense here? I think we're mostly talking about orientation about how you get at information and how you encourage people to share and communicate two-way/multi-way.
John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup
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jlorance
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 2:38 PM
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As mentioned in this thread, while the technology is there... folks don't necessarily have the know-how on how to build and sustain a community. This scenario happens so often in the offline world as well, where organizing structures aren't built in a sustainable way and continually depend on leadership, resources, etc from a single individuals..
So, despite platform, packaging up the know-how I think is key for non-profit success for organizations that want to better leverage constituencies.
I think the same probably applies to social networking.. I think a few books could be written here (and probably have been)... around how to use the Internet to do online social networking...
John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup
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tutormentor
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 2:47 PM
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I like your comment, "packaging up the know how". That's what I've been trying to do for more than a dozen years. The "know how" I'm trying to package is expertise on building and sustaining a community of volunteers who mentor inner city kids to careers.
I share much of what I've learned, plus links to others who do this work at http://msg.uc.iupui.edu/TMC/html/index.php and then host networking forums to draw people together to share their ideas, build relationships, and expand the knowledge.
In the Tutor/Mentor Institute section of my site is a power point titled "building a network of purpose" which describes the steps I take to do this.
The key is a few people with a vision that they are persistent about sharing with a growing number of people. If such people have the ability to recruit volunteers for key roles, such as tech support, they can harness many of the applications that are being discussed in this forum and that would make their work much easier.
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Daniel F. Bassill
President
Tutor/Mentor Connection
Cabrini Connections
800 W. Huron
Chicago, Il. 60622
312-492-9614
http://www.tutormentorconnection.org
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aldon
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 19 2006 2:58 PM
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Blogger Corps was set up a while ago in an effort to match NPOs with resident geeks. Given world shrinkage due to the internet, resident geeks, might not be physically resident, but only resident in terms of shared interest or goals.
Unfortunately, Blogger Corps hasn't yet reached critical mass. It has been difficult to get bloggers to volunteer. And, NPOs that would most benefit from bloggers probably don't know that they would benefit, or what sort of questions to ask.
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korczowski
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RE: ONLINE EVENT: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 20 2006 10:51 AM
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We chose to use Jotspot (a wiki platform that provides a number of easily customizable applications) instead of one of the open-source CMS because of the lower startup and maintenance costs. There are definitely trade-offs in making such a choice, the most obvious one being that you sacrifice a certain degree of control over how the site evolves. In any case, I would be really interested to hear about cost estimates of setting up and maintaining a site using Drupal or Plone (which seem the most appropriate) that include applications like event management, forum, blog; enable sub-groups to be set up easily; and so on. Something along the lines of omidyar.net.
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Erica Rios
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 RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 20 2006 10:55 AM
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The big picture question for me is how can social networking tools (foaf seems to be the focus here) reinforce the identity and level of committment in a real-life community.
This is the scenario I am working with. I work for the Anita Borg Insitute for Women and Technology. (our website that is in the proces of being re-designed:www.anitaborg.org) We have an existing community of women technologists committed to the cause. Let's put a number to it for the sake of this example - 5000 people. The level of committment varies, but their involvement is consistently demonstrated through participation in one of our programs, volunteering, and connecting us with their employers (their employers are technology companies).
From time to time we will have "big" events like the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (www.gracehopper.org) where a significant amount of our community members meet in person (1000 or so). These in person events often trigger a flurry activity and increase our "members" committment to the organizaiton/cause.
I have a dream tool in mind that is essentially a foaf type of software that begins as a closed community, but is open enough to invite others in.
What does that mean? We invite the 5,000 or so members of our community to create some type of myspace/friendster type of profile where they can easily connect with other members of the community. In order to create a profile and become a member of the community they must agree to a principles statement such as "I believe in the mission of ABI and am working to advance women and technology." They would then be given the opportunity to invite others to join with the price of admission would be agreeing to the value statement.
While the connections amongst the people would be ad hoc, there would be a core value system or set of activities that connect them. We want a social networking tool that reinforces committment and involvement in support of growing a real-life base of support.
Are there any open-source or proprietary software solutions that would allow us to do this?
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CatherineGeanuracos
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Building new networks
Posted: April 20 2006 11:10 AM
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Hello everyone -
I couldn't spend any time in this (very interesting) discussion yesterday, since we were launching a new site -
MomsRising.org
It's part of a combined book launch/ online organizing effort modeled on MoveOn.org to mobilize mothers (and people who have mothers) to support family-friendly policies and help end discrimination against mothers and caregivers.
We're struggling with some of the same issues raised by Erica - what is the best first step to build an online community of our members, and create both open, horizontal linkages (local affinity groups, moms support networks) and vertical communication channels (between MomsRising.org as well as a link between our aligned organizations and our members).
Our site's built in Drupal, and we're going to roll out a forum and member profiles, but I'm curious to hear what people think the first step towards creating this new social network should be? Hosted, relatively structured forums? Profiles that allow people to define the types of information they want to post/share? How much emphasis to place on the capacity to create private networks vs. public display of user-generated content. Is photo sharing more compelling than blogging? So curious to hear what you guys think...
Also wondering about the bad side of this stuff - security challenges, people feeling exposed - these discussions have really been focused on the positive (which I think is right) but there must be some difficulties, too...
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netclift
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RE: ONLINE EVENT: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 20 2006 11:52 AM
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At E-Democracy.Org we are using the new open source GroupServer platform: http://forums.e-democracy.org
It looks like a web forum, but it is really a very smart e-list platform with some social networking aspects built into the member directory and file sharing (see .9 beta release, we are using older version).
In my "work" life I am using the latest version of GroupServer to host DoWire Groups: http://groups.dowire.org (Democracies Online Newswire)
Try to register for a group to get a sense of what the member directory will look like. You'll note that I ask for folks LinkedIN and Del.icio.us page links instead of try to create an "be all" system.
I am in the process of moving a 2700 person "listserv" to the new platform before opening the two-way online groups on various e-democracy topics. Over time I plan to suggest improvements to the member directory function that will allow communication among users based on preferences rather than just pre-defined larger groups.
For more on the Zope-based GroupServer platform see: http://groupserver.org
Cheers,
Steven Clift
Board Chair, E-Democracy.Org
Democracies Online - http://dowire.org
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phoutz
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RE: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 20 2006 12:55 PM
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Erica--to me it sounds more like you want a VC platform than a foaf system, though perhaps I misread you. Two interesting platforms that come to mind are Caucus (fairly mature and robust) and Venice (maybe more features but probably needs more love and care from IT)
http://caucuscare.com/
http://venice.sourceforge.net/
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Brenda Dorsett
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RE: ONLINE EVENT: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: April 20 2006 8:12 PM
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Moshe,
I agree with you on the human connect aspect. Non-profits or any other business for that matter which wants to be successful needs to appeal to volunteers, donors or employees on a personal level. You have to be able to get them to see your vision. You will have to involve them in the process, inspire them to act. They will have to see and understand the problem as you do and collaborate to come up with a workable alternatives. Think outside the box....challenge the process. Just because it's the way things have always been done, does not mean that that is the only way to do it. While I don't knock electronic communication in any form, I say nothing can replace human interaction. When you are face to face networking, using eye contact, and the inflection can be heard in your voice and passion come through "loud and clear."!
Brenda Dorsett
elearner@capella
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adavidow
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RE: ONLINE EVENT: Social Networking and Content Management systems
Posted: May 01 2006 8:57 AM
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I agree very much with Moshe. Whenever I think about building community around an organization, I am very cognizant of the late Jane Jacobs' work on face-to-face community, "Death and Life of Great American Cities".
When I read that work years after I had begun work on online community I was started at the parallels, and then reflected that people are people, online or off. So, when she writes about how neighborhoods are alive when they are multi-use - when there are apartments above shops, and there are restaurants or other late night places so that there are people around throughout the day (and night), and the space is safe, then people enjoy coming.
All the moreso with websites. It isn't just having forums or mailing lists, but how people can interact with the site, and with each other via the site. In the old days (say, up until 3 or 4 years ago), this mostly meant using better and smarter asynchronous discussion tools (mature forums tools that enable a mix of nntp, email, webforums as needed, and that are smart enough to facilitate returning people to places where they posted, and to facilitate seeing what new content has been added since a last login) and adding ways for people to remember/bookmark pages. Now we can add much more - tagging, for instance, or ways of rating pages; comments on material that would have once been uploaded as static.
We've moved from basic brochure-ware, to database-driven content that is somewhat more complex, to commentable, taggable content; blogs, and more. Building that on top of a framework such as Drupal or Joomla makes a lot of sense (although, at least in the case of Drupal, with which I am becoming familiar, the community forums tools are among the least well-developed ones ). Another alternative is to look at hosted community tools such as World Crossing.
Don't reinvent the wheel. Add flexibility where your organization can support it. Don't be afraid to start with what is sustainable today, and have a five-year technology plan that includes adding programming or support staff as use of the tools becomes more familiar and more pervasive inside and outside the organization - but which doesn't require starting out learning both how to manage a programmer or systems administrator, while also exploring blogs or wikis.
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