To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Transformative Collaboration « Alison & Associates – Alison Rapping has a terrific, comprehensive blog post today all about jump starting collaborations. It's a must-read! "Collaboration. It was the hottest “buzz word” of the last decade — And if you ask ten people to describe it, you could get ten very different answers. Collaborations are going to be a driving force in building stronger relationships and stronger communities. In the new decade we are in the “perfect collaboration storm:” energy around our “community visions”, enormous critical community needs, myriad of new nonprofit organizations, and desire for greater impact. This can only happen if we work together. Our community is whole and interconnected; we can’t create a powerful vision in silos."
• Zoetica: Connecting Organizations with Their Networks – Congrats to Beth Kanter, Geoff Livingston and Kami Watson Huyse on the launch of their new adventure: Zoetica! "Zoetica serves nonprofits and socially conscious companies with top-tier, word-of-mouth communication services. A social enterprise, Zoetica provides superior communication consulting, training, and strategy to help mindful organizations affect social change."
• GreatNonprofits: Find non-profits and charities to review, donate, or volunteer. – "GreatNonprofits and Guidestar want to hear about the great nonprofits providing job training or job placement in your communities. Tell us about YOUR experience – how are these organizations having an impact? Which ones are great? Which ones need improvement? Participate in this campaign to recognize the top-rated nonprofits developing your community through job training or job placement." Deadline: January 31, 2010
• Surprise! Only 5% of Websites Have a Twitter or Facebook Link – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Factual, an “open data repository” analyzed 4 million websites via data from Common Crawl, a non-profit group designed to crawl the web and provide data for anyone to use." Check out the stats highlighted by Allyson Kapin in this short but interesting post!
• Nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 announced – Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns – "Osocio is happy to announce a list of ten nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 award. Osocio has started selecting best campaigns featured on our blog, because we want to put the most creative and innovative social ads into spotlights. So that non-profit organizations can learn and benefit from these best practices. This is the Top 10 list of the best social campaigns featured on Osocio in 2009. One of these campaigns will become the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• More Startups. More Jobs. – Here's a great conversation starting piece by Eric Ries: "Advanced countries are competing to attract the world’s best entrepreneurs — the US should too. Entrepreneurship is one of the most significant contributors to a nation’s prosperity. In an increasingly globalized economy, many of the advanced nations in the world are racing to attract the brightest entrepreneurial minds, regardless of their country of origin. The startups created by these highly skilled immigrants will generate most of the jobs and wealth in these countries in the future. This is a race we cannot afford to ignore."
• 2009 In Social Media: A Cartoon Review – Rob Cottingham, from Social Signal, created a very fun video that recaps all the major contributions of social media to the world in 2009 – think you were on top of it all? Well, check out Rob's video and see what you missed!
• Highlights from My Conversation with Tori Tuncan, Founder of Lend4Health – Zane Safrit – "Tori Tuncan, founder of Lend4Health, joined the show recently. Lend4Health is a non-profit organization that facilitates community-funded, interest-free micro-loans as a creative funding option for individuals and groups seeking optimal health. Currently, Lend4Health is facilitating loans for the "biomedical" treatment of children and adults with autism spectrum and related disorders. Tori shared the story of her journey to date with Lend4Health, helping children and their families who experience autism spectrum and related disorders." You can listen to the audio recording of the interview or read the transcript.
• How Digitized Content Democratizes Knowledge – PC World – "If you follow the trend lines for book and magazine availability, pricing and the costs of distribution and digital storage, we'll soon find ourselves living in a world where literally millions of titles are available to just about everyone, just about all the time. How will that change human culture?" This very interesting post from PC World explores implications of the changing digital landscape – it's a great read!
• Chief Reputation Officer: Whose Job Is It, Anyway? – Forbes.com – "n the 20th century, PR and marketing were separate but unequal career paths, and CMO was the highest-ranking and most-respected title to which one in those jobs could aspire. The standard career paths in these areas were relatively linear: As a lead communicator, you went to j-school, did a turn in journalism or an agency and then apprenticed under a "gray hair" boss until he retired. This is compared with the typical path of a chief marketing officer, who got his or her M.B.A. in marketing, hired agencies that made him or her look good, learned how to manage big budgets and award-winning creative and then got in the running for the corner office. Today that is changing because of the increasing importance of reputation management."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Social Media: What I Learned This Year | Millennial Marketing – Carol Phillips has a great post recapping what she learned about social media in 2009, including: "Effective use of Social Media requires enthusiasm and diligence." Read all of the lessons Carol learned – and I'd love to hear what you learned!
• NonProfit 2.0 UnConference and holiday discount | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – NonProfit 2.0 Unconference is coming to Washington, D.C., February 12, 2010, and promises to be "more than just a conference on the next generation web." Plus, if you register soon you can get a 20% discount! Simply use "HolidayDiscount" when you register for the Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference here: http://nonprofit20.eventbrite.com/?discount=
• Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month – "Five years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we're hearing from sources close to the project. MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces and profile information of other MyBlogLog users that visit their sites." I've used MyBlogLog on this blog as a chance for readers visiting the website to be welcomed by the faces of fellow readers, and not just me; I think, as is explained in this article from ReadWriteWeb, that the MyBlogLog service opened the door to some very interesting uses of community data and will be watching the developments on its future closely.
• Fundraising Sources for Social Entrepreneurs – December 2009 Edition – "Each month Ashoka compiles a list of fundraising and other resources for Ashoka Fellows. These opportunities are typically open to all sorts of social entrepreneurs as well. Download the December 2009 version of this list here. (Also available in French and Spanish)."
• Wikispaces Blog " Blog Archive " How Non-Profits Are Using Wikis – The Wikispaces Blog has some great examples of organizations using wikis in their work. "This month, we bring you some great examples of how non-profits are using wikis. Read on to see how wikis help these organizations reach out to their communities, manage volunteers, create resources, and more."

Share your best blog post from 2009 one more time!

Topic:

What was your favorite, most read, most tweeted, or most commented on blog post from this year?  This is your chance to bring it back into the spotlight!

It doesn’t matter what the topic was or how long or short it is, we just want to wrangled together the best of the best for the last Net2 Think Tank of the year.

Deadline: Saturday, December 12th

How to contribute:

• Tag your blog with net2thinktank
• Email Amy Sample Ward the link to your post!

Be sure to get your submission in by emailing Amy the link to your post by Saturday, December 12th.

The roundup of contributions will be posted on the NetSquared blog on Monday, December 14th.

About Net2 Think Tank:

Net2 Think Tank is a monthly blogging event open to anyone and is a great way to participate in an exchange of ideas.  We post a question or topic to the NetSquared community and participants submit responses either on their own blogs or on the NetSquared Community Blog.  Tag your post with “net2thinktank” and email a link to us to be included. At the end of the month, the entries get pulled together in the Net2 Think Tank Round-Up.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• E-Commerce News: Customer Loyalty: If You Build a Branded Online Community, Will Customers Come? – "Despite the enormous popularity of peer-to-peer social networking, the adoption cycle for branded online communities has been relatively slow. That a growing number of consumer brands are transforming their existing static Web sites into interactive online communities is a trend that is not only recent, but also rapidly accelerating." What do you think? Do you have a branded online community for your organization or project? How did you ensure participation and membership?
• ProjectRSS for describing projects (part of the Open Philanthropy effort) – I've recently come across this project from John Brennan (@worldlyjohn on Twitter) and am interested in what you all think about it! "Open source software exists in the computer industry. Open architecture exists in the construction industry. Yet only recently has there been a push for standards in communication of the philanthropic industry. The time is now. Open Philanthropy is about sharing. Open Philanthropy is about community. Open Philanthropy is about working together to increase the size of the proverbial pie (not the piece)."
• The Report | Think Social – "This is a first draft of a longer effort dedicated to the study and advancement of developments in social media in the public interest that enable people to write history by acting online. It features concept definitions and examples for ten trends that we believe are shaping the use of social media in the public interest. We have compiled this list through interviews with public- and private-sector leaders; analysis of initiatives, organizations and government programs; reviews of industry and mainstream news coverage; and submissions from thousands of online participants."
• Five Social Media Fundraising Trends for 2009 – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media – "Over the past six months, I've been collaborating on a book with Allison Fine, titled "The Networked Nonprofit" and we've been sifting through stories, research, and seeing many patterns. So for this post, I'd like to share 5 fundraising trends that we saw emerging in 2009 related to fundraising and social media and that will most definitely continue to have impact in 2010."
• Miro Community – "Miro Community lets you bring together all the videos about a topic, a community, or product into one elegant website, no matter where the videos are hosted." GetMiro.com is an open-source, non-profit video player and podcast client, check out the tool here: http://getmiro.com

This month’s Net2 Think Tank question was, “What do you think will be the big changes, new technologies, hot applications, or successful campaigns of 2009?” We had a great collection of contributions this month.  Take a look at the posts below—many great conversation starters to get you thinking and buzzing about what 2009 will bring.

Check out the predictions for 2009 from NetSquared community members:

• Channing’s predictions cover a wide range of areas from cell phones saving lives to our boards going online. There are even predictions for the hottest job skills in 2009. Read more.
• Joe Edelman explains how mobile phones can fix the broken economy in his mobile manifesto.  Read more.
• Britt Bravo thinks iPhone apps for nonprofits will be coming soon – and she even pulls together all kinds of examples of what’s out there now.  Read more.
• Ethan says in 2009 people will begin to collaborate online to build things other than content, but that it’ll just be the beginning.  Read more.
• John Dukovich predicts that 2009 will be the year of online collaboration for nonprofits, whether it’s with free tools or expensive ones, and warns that nonprofits will need to gauge their needs before choosing the tools.  Read more.

Thanks to everyone who contributed this month! You can share your ideas about technology in 2009 on the NetSquared blog or watch for next month’s Net2 Think Tank to be announced (Feb. 5th).

When I talk with organizations about how they are using social media tools to engage online, whether they’ve already started or not, I find that the most common approach is to set up that Facebook group, add a blog to the website, or even set up a wiki for an event.  But that’s it.  The work, the thinking, the strategy building, and even the engaging stops mostly after the set-up.

Obviously, that’s not the best route to take, but I think groups know that, even if they make the mistake.  We all know from offline life experience that you don’t just schedule a meeting, but you have to show up and contribute for the meeting to be successful; you probably also have action items that come out of the meeting that people work on individually and that also draw them back together for another meeting.  Why is this our pattern?  Because we’ve learned that by creating these kinds of spaces, we can get our work done together.  Which leads me back to the online communities.

We don’t want to just create a blog and ‘walk away,’ so to speak (schedule a meeting and not show up, or have nothing to say).  We want to create a social learning space or a social media space.  This means that we have established a space online where we want to learn, exchange, collaborate, and really engage with our community.  Organizations need to bring their social media tools together so that the interweaving of conversations and extended networks can develop a space where the organization is able to effectively and efficiently collaborate with the community while members of the community can collaborate with each other.  It’s about using our social media tools in a way that goes beyond listening, goes beyond conversation.

Social media spaces can be supported and grown on and offline.  If your organization has an offline, real world event for volunteers, be sure to have digital cameras and video cameras available if possible for people to capture ideas and take-aways from conversations.  David Wilcox, the Social Reporter, discusses how groups can integrate social media tools in offline learning events to successfully reinforce this idea of creating a space.  I think it’s critical that we begin letting go of our construct that social media tools are and should remain separate, and that the work stops after we’ve set up the account or created a loudspeaker.  This mind-shift is crucial: creating social media spaces is the only way for organizations to connect their work online, connect their communities online, and the next step forward in actively collaborating within with community.

2009 will, undoubtedly, bring us more to fill the social media bucket, new places to explore, tools to try, and things to consider.  In 2009, I’d like to see groups recognizing the power of social media tools to create sustainable social learning spaces.  Instead of using social media to send out messages to their audience, organizations will recognize and harness the power of social media to collaborate with their communities.

For the full post, visit the SSIR blog here.

Topic:

This month, your Net2 Think Tank topic asks, “What do you think will be the big changes, new technologies, hot applications, or successful campaigns of 2009?” If you want to read some thoughts before you get going, check out these posts as starting points:

• Social Media Gurus Offer Their Predictions for 2009: A Few That Might Resonate With Nonprofits, by Beth Kanter
• 2009 Web Predictions, by ReadWriteWeb
• Top Internet Predictions for 2009, by Social Computing Magazine

Deadline:
Saturday, January 24th
The contributions will be posted on the NetSquared site on Monday, January 26th.

How to contribute:

• Blog your answer to the question either on your blog or the NetSquared blog. (For directions on contributing to the NetSquared blog, click here.)
• Tag your blog with “net2thinktank”
• Email Amy Sample Ward the link to your post!

We are really looking forward to your answers this month!  Be sure to email Amy the link to your post so that it is included in the roundup on Monday, January 26th.

Photo by Môsieur J.