What Internet4Change intends to achieve, first and foremost, is Social Change sector-wide collaboration… on developing an approach to Social Change sector collaboration!
Specifically, in late 2009, I am inviting readers to collaborate with me on developing a reinvented homepage concept for the social change sector, that would pull the broader online presence of a cyber-activist in the social change space dynamically into a functional, personalized page.
As a social entrepreneur who works a lot online, this is a page I want for me, to manage my own collaborative idea development processes. I have a strong hunch that such a page would serve as a useful management tool for others in the Social Change space too. I’d like your help to make it a page that YOU would find useful.
I foresee that if we develop a standardized format for a collaboration oriented page for Social Entrepreneurs that is both informative for visitors and practically interactive for the entrepreneur, then we could have a basis for further developing collaboration systems.
What does that really mean?
There are 4 main areas of my activity as a social entrepreneur that I want my page at internet4change.com to help me organize. I’m going to be using a number of social media tools and spaces to develop a model page that helps me manage those 4 areas – hopefully with some help!
Could what I’m proposing be an interesting way for you to work too? Below are 4 invitations to engage in the model internet4change personal page and collaborative space design.
1. Tools, platforms, communities – I want to be able to have links to all the tools and spaces I use and visit regularly right on my own page where I can find them easily, and I want to learn about better tools as they develop. With little fuss, I want to be able to click and connect from my start page both to other actors in a variety of online sectors, and to content I have created that I want to share. I want to easily play my Social Change related message across platforms and communities and audiences and monitor responses, and I want to exchange useful reviews with others of tools that can help me do that more. My personalized page should offer that kind of start-page functionality for me.
- Blog me please! If you are working well with and/or developing an idea, tool or platform and you think other actors in the Social Change sector should know about it and possibly integrate it into their online activities, please submit a guest post about it that I can post at Internet4Change.com. 700 words max, related to a tool, platform or idea that can enhance online collaboration in the social change sector. Please submit your posts for consideration in a PM to Christina Jordan at Ned.com.
2. How-to – Equipped with links to my cutting edge tools, I want to be better able to use them to take action, and to help others take acti0n, on things that need doing in my wwworld. I want to both teach and to learn. I need help sometimes – not just with tools, but with developing my ideas for change, and I know I can also help you. I want my Social Entrepreneur’s collaboration page to make it possible for me to share what I know so that others can leap over my learning curves. I also want to be able to find the right information when I need it from among my peers at the click of a findable tweet.
- Twitter me sensible! Please send links to @ChristinasWorld with brilliant case studies and how-to articles that can help others in the Social Change sector understand how you’re using 0nline tools to create change. I love to retweet! Help me use #i4c to find and raise awareness of what all of us are seeing that has the potential to work well for encouraging collaboration in the Social Change sector.
3. Standards – For starters, I want a history. Like many others I know, the online part of my career has been disrupted more than once by the disappearance of online communities where I had invested considerable amounts of my time and talents. That is the nature of our wwworld; I am now embarking on a strategy for managing a more diversified presence. Understanding the reality of regular transition that has marked the development of my career as a social entrepreneur online, I want a personal presence that reflects my history as I enter into new discussions today.
I’ve been off exploring some other online sectors for a couple of years now. As I’ve stepped back into the exploding Social Change sector online, I would soooo love it if all of you who are working for change online had pages like the one I hope to build a model of.
- Claim your space! Use the blogosphere, twitter, facebook (an i4c fanpage will be coming soon) or the collaboration space at Ned.com to help me develop a pilot Internet4Change profile, please! If you and other cyber-activists want one, we can also figure out the best way to get it hosted at Internet4Change.com or elsewhere.
4. A Collaboration System: Collaboration in our sector can be amazing. It can also be disappointing if it’s not designed and managed well. We can develop systems to guide our interactions – we can work together to open up some global level playing fields. I am a die-hard fan of the Omidyar developed collaboration platform that currently runs at Ned.com, especially because of the idea bubble-up and reputation building tools, and the archive-transparent wiki and discussion tools.
The functionality available at Ned.com inspires me to think of what it could look like if we were to link many interactive Internet4Change pages together – adding trust based relationship building tools and social-media ready shared workspaces to create a seedbed for cross-dimensional collaboration to grow in.
- Roll up your sleeves: I have started an Internet4Change group at Ned.com, where interested collaborators are invited to work together with me on a) hashing out the development of building a model high-utility profile concept for the Social Change Sector, and b) thinking through how to best connect those profiles together for maximum good.
Thanks for reading. I’m looking forward to collaborating with you!
