I will be leading a workshop this Saturday at the Northern Voice conference in Vancouver. The session is called "Social Media for Social Change" and I’ll be partnering with the lovely Kate Dugas of Vancity’s ChangeEverything.ca online community.
Here’s a session description:
Social media offers incredible opportunities for people and organizations to connect with others, organize more efficiently, and take advantage of people’s natural desire to express themselves and connect. But the most successful social change campaigns don’t just rely on social media alone. We will explore some leading online social campaigns and communities including the United Nations Foundations’ Nothing But Nets,MakePovertyHistory.ca / The One.org, and Vancity’s Change Everything.ca to understand how organizations and people find the right tools and strategies to power their work sustainably – on and offline.
Topics covered include:
- aligning your personal values and passions with your online and social media strategy
- planning to succeed: the science of campaign planning, filling an audience need, and aligning with existing content
- the underlying organizational structures required to publish content and build relationships online
- how to’s for online communities including: who to invite first, how to set the right tone, and moderation: how much is too much
Northern Voice is billing itself as Canada’s first blogging conference that is "inexpensive, informal, and accessible to techies and newbies alike". This year promises to be the largest yet, there were about 300 people registered at the last count I saw. I believe this year is sold out so you can’t join us at UBC this weekend but I am sure we will be posting some session notes, podcasts, and lots of blog posts will be coming out of it. It is a blogging conference after all!
Post Presentation Update: The talk went well, there were probably 80 people who stayed for it at the beautiful UBC forestry centre during the Northern Voice conference. I’ve found two blog posts that summarize the key points from the talk well from a few participants, Mike from UrbanWorkBench, here, and Quinn from Countably Infinite,here.
