… the convergence of social action and technology
Last week I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the Making Links conference in Melbourne. A big thanks to the organisers and the great attendees who all represent organisations and activists doing excellent work for social change. My presentation, ‘Reaching out or Moving closer: connecting with your community’, focused on participation and engagement (See it here on slideshare). In particular ways that people can approach social technologies to initiate and foster relationships with their community.  I focused on how we can use these tools to develop an ecology appropriate to our stakeholders motivations and interests, rather than focusing on the one stop shop idea of traditional websites.

This way of thinking can often be a challenge for organisations who are uncomfortable about giving up the control of their brand or message. However relinquishing control of those things (to some degree and in new ways) are inevitably part of embracing social technologies, and working more collaboratively with our stakeholders and ‘users’. As Aradhana Goel from IDEO puts it, we should be thinking about enhancing our brand through participation (pdf).

For those that were interested in some of the other sources that I quoted around using social media and social change,  I have uploaded the presentation to slideshare and added some links.  Thanks to all for the great feedback.

Whilst at the conference I had the pleasure of seeing a number of  great projects, some of the highlights included the Freedom Centre who have been using msn and other private forms of online communication work support young people on gender and sexuality issues.  Info Exchange  do a wide range of work making ICT available to organisations and indivuals (including setting up free access via satellite in East Timor). Reps from Mission Australia, Barnadoes, Youth of the Streets and the Vodafone Foundation presented their fantastic work ‘Young People Connected’ giving street kids and disadvantaged youths mobile phones, the presentation of which brought more than a tear to the eye. Awesome work thanks guys.