Get the full archive here!

Some of the tools discussed include:

• Hootsuite
• Bit.ly
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Owly and htly
• Tweetdeck
• TweetWhen
• and so many more!

Read the full transcript from the April event, and check out previous CommBuild Chats – hope to have you participate and share next month!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, May 19th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the CommBuild Chat:

These monthly chats originated out of the #4Change network and 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. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!

Hope to have you join us in April!

Review the full chat transcript!

Questions in the November chat:

1. Is it important to discern/clarify what a community expects to get from their participation in the community? Or is it OK if everyone is in it for different reasons? (From Laura Norvig)
2. What are examples of, best practices for, or learnings from engaging community members around various kinds of media, like videos and pictures instead of text? (From Mazarine Tryez)
3. What are online communities good for?

Community accountability:

Something I am really interested in is the way that we can support each other in growing and improving by being open about what we want to do and holding each other accountable as a community to be better all the time. At the end of today’s chat, I asked participants what they will share or do because of the chat and I’m sharing those highlights here:

• Laura Norvig: Storing up some ideas in my toolbox for future launch of online discussion boards. Posting more video to Facebook.
• Shalena Broadnax: Echoing Green is operating in a relatively new space for us—deepening our online community engagement. Setting expectations with our community will be key in the development of our new platform.
• Bonnie Koenig: The need to make discussions about technology to all members of the community.
• Ash Shepherd: I really liked the discussion around intentionally building flexibility into community expectations.

And as for me? I’m hoping to be more intentional and thoughtful in planning, promoting and executing the chats to build on the successful and rich conversations so far to make these community activities as positive as can be! I hope you’ll help me

Join the December Chat!

For details of the December 16th chat and for full archives of previous chats, visit the CommBuild chat page.

Recap: October

Get the October Chat archive.

Some of the examples and recommendations from this month’s chat included:

• UN Food&Ag Org (FAO) has done a great job with their Share Fairs – sharing the discussions and training on and offline. You can look at #sfaddis to see what they did recently from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia
• TechSoup Global has an upcoming Digital Story Telling contest, getting orgs to put together 60 second vid’s about what they do/who they are. We’re leading up to it providing webinars and chats, but will be hosting an awards mixed reality event in February. Second Life and IRL at TechSoup HQ in SF.
• The Community Organizers Handbook available as a public resource, you can certainly refer there for information/feedback/best practices on offline organizing: http://organizershandbook.wikispaces.com
• Video is such an inclusive medium. I personally love how it presents the opportunity to be involved in a community, sometimes in a real-time format, from a distance.
• The League of Women Voters of SF has found that making 1-3 minute (no longer than 5 min) videos gets much better pick-up online
• The Alliance for Climate Education makes presentations about climate change to high schools around the US. At the end of every presentation, they put up a slide where students can either 1) join their cause on Facebook or 2) text them to sign up. It works really well
• I recently watched Bioneers and some TEDx’s being streamed from a satellite location with local people – becoming my preferred way to participate. Smaller setting, still get the information, lower cost. Here’s a writeup on the talk Charles Baker from Meetup.com did last week @ TechSoup, might be helpful – http://blog.techsoup.org/node/1483
• I have also found that giving people specific roles is successful – empowering for them
• After meet ups online communication generally takes precedence and thats why its so important that both communities are connected
• I also think the immediacy of that communication is key, as well as presenting opportunities to get involved. I usually note the names of specific people who had interest or were good leadership candidates.
• and much more!

If you missed the chat or want to revisit it, access the full chat archive here.

Upcoming: November

The next chat will be in November. If you have a question or topic you’d like to discuss, be sure to leave a comment here so we can ensure it’s covered. The chat is just an hour long so be sure to submit your questions in advance!

Details:

• Date: Thursday, November 18th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the Community Builder Chat

These monthly chats part of the #4Change network and 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. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!  Hope to have you join us next time!

When:

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

Topics:

Thanks to the rich conversation in last month’s chat, we have our main questions selected already. But, you can still add thoughts ahead of time, or share more questions that we may get to or save for another upcoming chat. This time we will be addressing:

• Migrating a community from one platform to another
• Building a loop between online and offline community activities

Share your ideas ahead of time in the comments below, or on twitter using #4change and/or #commbuild – have an idea for a better hashtag for this chat? Please leave a comment with your idea!

Did you miss last month’s chat? That’s okay – you can still see the full transcript here!