Elijah van der Giessen

I help nonprofits build community.

Month: November 2012

Community Building tweet chat: Why your community needs to go offline — November 29, 2012

Community Building tweet chat: Why your community needs to go offline

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I’m gonna host a chat on December 11. You should join us!

Belt AND suspenders

TOPIC: Why your community needs to go offline

DATE: Tuesday, December 11.
TIME: 1-2 PM EST/ 10-11 AM PST

Are you really trying to create a community? Then you’d better seriously consider starting up regular face-to-face meetings for your members. Join the community for a discussion about the value of recurring offline group meetings, and share your stories of how offline community has inspired change. When and how should you create a meetup group? How are offline and online communities connected? And what’s in it for the organizer?

You should come. You wouldn’t want me to quote Margaret Mead at you, would you?

Follow the magic hashtag

YOUR FACILITATOR
Elijah van der Giessen must be 100 years old, because he started doing Community Building back when “online social networks” consisted of email. Currently he’s the NetSquared Local Community Curator supporting a global volunteer network of 50 groups that each year hold over 450 events for the nonprofit technology sector. He’s also been the volunteer coordinator for outdoor festivals, environmental NGOs and Canadian Idol.

And yes, he wears a belt AND suspenders. That’s what old men do.

ABOUT
These conversations are focused on issues and topics relevant to those working on community building or in community management roles. They are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools.

Anyone interested in community building, whether you are formally in a Community Management job or not, is welcome to join the group and participate in the weekly chats. You do not need to be a member of NTEN to participate, but you can join us online at http://my.nten.org/group/commbuild

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Go to http://tweetchat.com/room/commbuild (or use your preferred twitter chat client), login to your twitter account, and join the conversation! Just be sure to tag your tweets with so your tweets are threaded into the conversation.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

  • What offline communities are you a part of? Which ones do you value the most?
  • WHY did you join your offline community? Why do you think others join?
  • Do you lead an offline community right now?
    If you have peer offline organizers elsewhere do you interact with them? How is the * network managed and sustained?
  • Are your offline and online communities connected? How?
  • What online tools do you use to manage your offline community?
  • What’s your #1 tip for a community organizer that wants to organize an offline meeting?
  • How do you recruit offline community members? Online? Offline?
  • If you have both online and offline communities how are they different? Demographics. Engagement. Activation. What’s the crossover?
  • What’s in it for the community organizer?
  • What’s your favorite online community right now?
  • People can be shy face-to-face. What’s a good icebreaker?
  • What’s your most transformative community experience? Was it online or offline?
Are you competitive? — November 16, 2012

Are you competitive?

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A blog post from NetSquared.org encouraging local organizers to host events on a monthly basis. It’s the key to growth!

Black Lab Mother & pupLocal organizers:

Are you curious about how big your local group is compared to everyone else? Well, wonder no more because you can see the leaderboard on meetup.
The top five
  1. San Francisco: 1962
  2. Wasington, DC: 1335
  3. Vancouver, BC: 1329
  4. Toronto, ON: 1194
  5. New Orleans, LA: 1019
You may have heard the saying “it’s not big it is, but how you use it”. I think they were talking about meetup groups. But most of us are in this to make a big impact in our communities, and having a bigger meetup helps. :-)
Factors of group growth
I’m sure there’s lots of patterns we could find in this data, but to me there are two key factors. One we control and the other we don’t.
  1. Big groups are usually in big cities (naturally!)
  2. Big groups hold events consistently every month.
Consistency is the biggest factor in group growth. It’s as important as event quality!
Need help coming up with event ideas? Check out this list of event formats and topics. I can also help you find a co-organizer, which makes it much easier to hold events every month.
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Photo by blogdnd. Creative Commons-licensed on flickr.
NetSquared September update — November 11, 2012

NetSquared September update

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fall leafHere’s what I did as the NetSquared Local Community Curator in September 2012.

 

September is here, and even ‘tho the new year doesn’t come for another four months I still think of September as a time of rebirth and renewal (I’ll always think like a student, I guess.)

Check out all this rebirth and renewal:
Camps

We’re already had two NetSquared Camp events (Honolulu and Cameroon/Nigeria) and there’s another six  coming between now and November.

Platform
We released the latest release of the NetSquared platform this week and the old blog posts are back!
September events
The NetSquared local organizers are going to keep you busy this summer. Here’s a taste of some of the events planned so far.
NetSquared update October 2012 —

NetSquared update October 2012

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My Geek-o-Lantern.

What I did at NetSquared in October 2012

October is here! This is going to be a big month for NetSquared. Not only are we going to be holding three regional camps, but there’s also 18 local meetups scheduled and a major local organizer-focused update to the NetSquared platform.

Camps

There are three NetSquared camps scheduled for October:

And in November there will be two more:

Platform
Notification feed

The seventh release of the NetSquared platform is now live. It includes several new features including notification feeds (Facebook-style!) and NetSquared camp pages which appear as green dots on the local map.

What comes next? A major revision of the local organizer pages, to be rolled out October 23, 2012. Hopefully that will solve some of the ongoing bugs y’all have been struggling with, including an unpredictable meetup integration and hunt ‘n peck map icons. :-)

October events

A quick scan shows 18 events happening across the NetSquared local network. Did I miss any? I think our local organizers have put together an impressive lineup. :-)

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Photo: My Geek-o-Lantern. Creative Commons licensed by Neal Gillis

NetSquared November update —

NetSquared November update

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Here’s what I’ve been up to in my gig at NetSquared Local Community Curator.

Winter is finally arriving in the northern hemisphere (and we’re getting jealous of our southern friends). This November the NetSquared community is holding the last of this year’s NetSquared Camps and is holding even more monthly meetups than last month (at least twenty-one!). This month also saw the launch of the Microsoft Windows 8 Contest, which is open to US-based developers.

The future of NetSquared local

What does the future of NetSquared’s local meetups look like? Please join Billy Bicket, TechSoup’s VP of Community & Platform and Sheeta Singh, Development Director for a community meeting to discuss the future of the program. Please indicate your availability on this doodle poll if you’d like to join this conference call.

NetSquared Camps

Late October saw NetSquared Camp Europe and NetSquared Camp Vermont. In early November it was Guatemala’s turn and in late November the Australian and New Zealand organizers are holding NetSquared Camp Downunder. This four-city meetup will be streamed live over the internet and you’re invited to join them! You can RSVP on the Virtual NetSquared meetup group.

Platform

Events shown based on location

The ninth release of the NetSquared platform is now live. Most of the changes are improvements to the challenge functionality of the site, but it also includes the display of events to logged-in users of the platform. When a user is on the site they are now shown their closest local meetup event (because we know their location). This will help bring more people to your meetup.

I’ve also created a screencast overview of the local organizer pages on the platform as well as a guide to creating and editing your local organizer page. Let me know if something isn’t clear.

Windows 8 Apps for Social Good Contest

I’ve been pretty quiet for the last few weeks because I’ve been supporting the launch of a joint project between Microsoft and NetSquared. Want to help people find the closest organic produce? Interested in making it easier for people to conserve more energy? Can you make online donations easier? How about making math easier for kids? The Windows 8 Apps for Social Good Contest invites both new and seasoned developers to create an app for “social good” – and you could win one of three cash prizes to help fuel your dream and keep it going! There are three cash prizes starting at $15,000. Good luck! Please note, the contest is only open to residents of the USA.

November events

A quick scan shows 21 events happening across the NetSquared local network. Did I miss any?

Photo by Tim on Flickr