Telling a story using social media: Webinar Notes

November 3, 2009

Today was the last webinar leading up to the Blandin Broadband conference later this month (Nov 18-19). I’m posting the presentation, link and questions from the webinar. I’ll add the audio when I can. (Audio now online – link on right side of page.)

I was the presenter. I want to thank everyone for their kind attention and help. I was nervous! We heard from a few social media users and had some great questions – especially about what social media tools work with limited broadband. You can get a good summary from Twitter #mnbb09 (the link will only be good for a while, until new Tweets on the conference replace the old). I was delighted to see that a few folks start Tweeting about the session.

Questions:

What are rural nonprofit organizations using?

Take a look at Main Street Project. Also check out the Minnosota Voices Online group. You can check out the members and/or past conversation. Folks there have been talking about their projects – mostly in rural areas. And we did a (very unscientific) survey of use: http://blandinonbroadband.org/2009/09/12/rural-use-of-social-media/

Links from the Presenation:

Social Media Revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
Cluretrain Manifesto: http://www.cluetrain.com
Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
Minnesota Voices Online: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mnvoices
Blandin on Broadband: http://blandinonbroadband.org
WordPress: http://wordpress.com
How to Start a Blog: http://byteoftheweek.com/2007/12/12/starting-a-new-blog/ (with WordPress, from 12/07)
Twitter Shortcuts: http://byteoftheweek.com/2009/06/18/twitter-shortcuts/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
Twitter Search: http://search.twitter.com/advanced
RSS in Plain Language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
Picasa: http://picasa.google.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com
Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com
Flip Video: http://www.theflip.com
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com
Ping.fm: http://ping.fm/

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Posted by Ann Treacy

Social Media considerations for Cities

October 16, 2009

I want to thanks Stephanie Weiss, from the League of Minnesota Cities, for sharing links on documents they used in a recent tour talking about social media. She shared two documents that I think would be helpful to anyone charged with thinking about social media policies:

Social Media and Cities: Questions and Considerations (pdf) includes basic definitions of various social media tools and some nice examples of how social media should be implemented and how it might be inadvertently implemented. It includes questions to consider:

  1. Should the city use social media? (You’ll want to think about staffing levels, staffing interest, technology support communication needs and overall city goals.)
  2. What social media tools should the city use?
  3. Should the city take a centralized or decentralized approach to social media?
  4. Are postings to social media government data and/or subject to records retention?
  5. What about city staff who use social media for personal reasons?
  6. What about elected officials who use social media?

There’s also some nice etiquette tips for official (and unofficial) social media accounts:
Account names – reflect a connection to the city IF you’re official
Transparency – be upfront about any connection
Honesty – hopefully obvious
Mistakes – correct them quickly and be upfront
Mind the law and existing policies and guidelines
Only post to third-party sites when it is relevant to city
Media contacts – still go through normal channels

They have also posted a computer use policy. There’s a straightforward policy to use as explanation of that policy. I won’t go into detail – but it looks good and I’m a big fan of borrowing from smart folks over reinventing the wheel.

There’s also a document related to communication between council members. It’s helpful if the open meeting law ever applies to you. It’s also helpful as a citizen because while I think electronic communication is essential to getting anything done – I also want to be able to see how things are done by the government.

A preferred method seems to be to discourage email (or other online) communication among segments of the city council and use email as a way to share info by sending an y info to a single person such as the city clerk – and have that person send on to the group.

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Posted by Ann Treacy

UnSummit Notes – but you need broadband

October 14, 2009

I missed the Unsummit in Minneapolis this weekend. I had penciled it in but found out before I headed out on Saturday that they had sold out! My hard luck is their good news.

I’ve been looking for good notes from the conference – and today I find that Steve Borsch did a great job (How your company can achieve a champagne presence on a beer budget).

I love his approach; he outlines top, cheap tools for small business owners (and others) to build a great online face with some virtual elbow grease and not much funds. It’s a valuable article for anyone looking for tips. I won’t recap but I’ll post my favorite quote:

I’ll assume you have a broadband Internet connection in your office, and you or any of your associates do at home if you’re completely a virtual company or startup.

Steve definitely follows broadband even to know that not everyone has it, which I think makes this comment more poignant. You need broadband to use these tools; these tools give you a huge edge in marketing and cost-savings, if you don’t have broadband you are at a deficit. That’s why companies who want to relocate choose areas with broadband. That’s why people who live in areas without broadband are at a disadvantage. And to bring it full circle – that’s what communities need broadband – and why communities in unserved areas need to do what they can to get it.

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Posted by Ann Treacy

Rural Use of Social Media

September 12, 2009

rural_soc_mediaThe Daily Yonder has been writing a lot (well some) on rural use of social media lately. Last week there was a great story of a farmer in Oregon and her use of Twitter. She started a Twitter account for the farm to connect with other farmers, which took off when she found herself the proud owner of piglets and needed some help.

Her story reminded me of Jennifer Peterson in Pine City. She was the blogger without broadband that I interviewed last year. It’s great to see the increase in stories about rural social media use.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article (The Party Line is Crackling) and a study on use of social media in rural America. The report looked at 3,000 MySpace accounts (at the time MySpace was more popular than Facebook) of rural and urban users.

They found that rural users had fewer MySpace friends, and the friends that they did have tended to reside closer to their home, that rural women are more likely to use social media than men, and they are more apt to set their profiles to “private” than their urban counterparts. The article said, “In short, rural users relied on social media primarily to bond with existing close friends rather than building friendship bridges to users in other areas of the country.”

I wanted to see how rural use would stack up more locally so I invited members of the Minnesota Voices Online (an email list of social media types, which includes a number of rural folks) to take a survey that looked at the same characteristics. (Your welcome to take the survey now too if I get a lot of new data I’ll do an update.)

I’ll post the raw data below. I found similar results, which also rang true with the comments made in the one open ended question I asked. What I thought was interesting was the difference in Twitter versus Facebook, which also came up in the open ended question. More rural folks use Facebook – and they tended to have more friends living within 10 miles of their home. Fewer rural folks used Twitter.

I was only dealing with about 25 respondents. It appears as if there were a handful of super users who probably skewed the results – except that at least one was in a rural area and one in an urban. And in real life there are super users and there are the rest of us. Like the original study, I was looking mostly at current users too – so this doesn’t include the hordes of people who aren’t using social media yet. Although I hitnk that group is shrinking. I happened to talk to a group of about 20 Metro-based women realtors this week and a quick show of hands indicated that about 90 percent were on Facebook.

It’s interesting to see growth of social media. I think as more and more people become proficient social media users that more will want to post video clips and pictures – and more and more broadband will be required. I hope that the supply will be there to meet the demand. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | MN, New Media, Research, Rural | Permalink
Posted by Ann Treacy

Difference between rural and urban social media use

August 31, 2009

Do rural users of social media have fewer social media friends? And do those friends live closer than the friends of urban social media users? And who’s the biggest users, men or women?

I just read an interesting article in the Daily Yonder (The New Party Line is Crackling) about how people in rural areas use social media and these things came up. Apparently there was a study of 3000 rural and urban MySpace users (MySpace was bigger than Facebook at the time they started the study) and the researchers found that rural folks had fewer MySpace friends, they lived nearer to those friends and women were more likely users than men. The report came out in 2008.

I was wondering if the same would be true today and/or true in and around MN. I don’t have time to pore over 3000 MySPace or Facebook pages but I thought I’d create a survey and see if folks wouldn’t mind taking it: http://tinyurl.com/m9ydn7

It’s 16 questions – but they are quick, especially if you either don’t use social media or you happen to have your profiles open. (I’ll report on results after Labor Day – so please feel free to get others to take the survey.)

Thanks!

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Posted by Ann Treacy

Grand Rapids nonprofits using new media together

April 9, 2009

Last month I had a pleasure of doing some Google Calendar training with the Grand Rapids Area Nonprofit Directions (GRAND) group. The training went well. (You can see the presentation here, if you’re interested.)

It’s not so much the training I found interesting though – it’s the coordinated effort. Bill Coleman and I had been visiting with the GRAND group for a while. As a group they wanted to better use technology. But as individual groups they were all over the spectrum of technology users.

Some have self-built Drupal web sites with tons of functionality; others don’t have a web site. Some do live streaming, most (but not all) send out email newsletters, some have blogs. Some have IT staff, others have an IT hat that’s given out based on proximity to the computer or problem, not necessarily experience or interest.

One shared goal was a community calendar. We looked at a couple of options – but in the end Google Calendars won out for several reasons. First (and probably most importantly) the Grand Rapids Community Internet site uses it. Second, it’s easy to use and you don’t need to have a web site to publish it. Third, it’s free.

The beauty of Google Calendars is that it’s easy to share events with other users – through the magic of RSS. On a practical basis that means that each nonprofit organization can set up their own calendar, they can post both public and private events, they can invite people to attend events and send out reminder – all through the calendar. They can also add a partner’s calendar to their own or vice versa. Or they can all contribute to a community calendar while decentralizing the maintenance for the calendar.

And again, it’s the coordination that impresses me. The tools are out there now to work together like Google Calendars. A good way to maximize the usefulness is to get a group together to talk about shared goals and what technology can help meet them.

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Posted by Ann Treacy

April Blandin eNews

April 8, 2009

Blandin Get Broadband CommunitiesHere’s the news from our latest newsletter. It’s mostly a compilation of Minnesota-related stories from the blog in the last month – but sometimes it’s nice to have it compiled.

Minnesota News from the Blandin on Broadband Blog

Minnesota Voices Online Unconference
Last weekend Blandin Foundation sponsored a successful unconference focusing on Minnesota Voices Online: Connecting rural Minnesotans with new media so every place can share its voice in the Internet age. Materials and video are available on the MVO web site (http://mnvoicesonline.org/). The conversations and connections continue online on the MVO email list. http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mnvoices

Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force
The Broadband Task Force meeting in March featured representatives from the healthcare industry. The mood with the Task Force members was more collegial than past meetings and there seemed to be a drive to start actively creating the recommendations for the legislature. (http://tinyurl.com/cr68ju) They started by compiling members’ broadband value statements (http://tinyurl.com/d9phop); many statements seemed to mirror Blandin Foundation’s principles from the vision created a couple years ago. (http://tinyurl.com/d2j4y2) For April’s meeting each member is assigned to write five paragraphs to potentially fit into the final recommendations.

Minnesota Broadband Coalition
Some members of the MN Broadband Coalition met to talk about how to work together to get stimulus funding in Minnesota and how to support the work of the Ultra High-Speed Task Force (http://tinyurl.com/crog2w). The conversation continues online. http://tinyurl.com/5mdwh7

The Blandin Foundation has compiled a list of “Online Tools to Save Money” http://tinyurl.com/c9ded5

Local Broadband News

Chaska
Chaska posts security camera video on their blog and invites citizens to help catch criminals. http://tinyurl.com/df7yxd

Chisago County
Frontier helps a family in rural Chisago County by bringing broadband to their home. Good news but is case by case expansion scalable? http://tinyurl.com/dje9ag

Cook County
Cook County is preparing to be a potential recipient of broadband stimulus funding. They have created a web site to promote broadband to the community and update residents on their fiber feasibility study. http://tinyurl.com/d3pm7b

Eveleth
Eveleth makes their plans for the future but some eagle-eyed citizens realize that broadband is in the backseat. http://tinyurl.com/d4nwsd

Goodhue County
Hiawatha Broadband Communications (HBC), Goodhue County and the Southeast Minnesota Network are pursuing funding have expressed an interest in pursuing funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. http://tinyurl.com/dybtj8

Hoffman
A grandma in Hoffman uses her broadband connection maintain a blog and make Skype calls that help her stay in contact with a grandson in the army. http://tinyurl.com/d46dsh

Jackson
Jackson turns down Windom’s offer to expand fiber to their area. Cost seems to be the major factor. http://tinyurl.com/crbwfg

Moose Lake
Moose Lake plans to apply for broadband stimulus funding to sustain and expand their wireless service through the Water & Light Commission. http://tinyurl.com/d997te

Red River Valley
Residents of the Red River Valley and potential volunteers around the state turn to the Internet to connect need with support. http://tinyurl.com/cafx39

Sebeka
Located in Sebeka, CrossUSA started a business in 1997 that employs IT experts to work remotely with larger business across the US. CrossUSA is changing lives because they have the broadband they need to support their business. http://tinyurl.com/dnkete

Winona
The local library is a place to get online in Winona, especially as people are cutting costs. http://tinyurl.com/cdqz93

Bill ColemanColeman’s Corner

I am just completing a regional telecommunications inventory and assessment study for the Upper MN Valley Regional Development Commission. (http://umvrdc.org) This work is being completed through a technical assistance grant from Blandin Foundation through the Community Broadband Resources Program. http://tinyurl.com/cseu7e

The region is unique in several ways. First, it has significant FTTP networks deployed by Federated Telephone and Farmers Mutual Telephone that enable big bandwidth to be delivered to any customer – in town or to the barn – in their exchanges. Second, the region has large areas covered with fixed wireless; this service provides users with an option for broadband, but it is one that is generally limited to lower speeds. This technology generally works well on the western MN prairie. Third, the area has many communities, including their county seats, where DSL service and cable modems services are generally limited to the city limits or not far afield. Fourth, the region suffers from middle mile scarcity; that is, there are very high costs for providers to connect to the Internet hub in the Twin Cities as connections have to be routed through multiple providers.

Our report did not deal much with public sector networks, but the topic was brought up by a committee member. We heard about the growing use of state online applications and databases driving the need for bandwidth. We learned about the significant costs facing county governments and school districts as they seek to increase their bandwidth through their existing providers. In one case, an additional T1 was an unaffordable $900 per month through the regional government network contracted to a regional telecom provider. The local cable provider has offered a 10Mb connection for around $100 per month. This confusing situation calls for some more investigation!

The regional committee is setting priorities for future action. Those won’t be announced until the report is final, but the group will be working on several fronts to increase the technological vitality of the region.

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Posted by Ann Treacy

Building capacity for Minnesota Broadband Coalition

April 5, 2009

logownameAt the MVO unconference the need for broadband came up – often. There was a blogger there who doesn’t have Internet access at home. She drives 10 miles to the library to get access. As she said, she could get dialup but feels like they ought to pay her to use it.

People recognized the need to make info available for tech lovers and tech-challenged (challenged by access, experience, cost…). People also recognized the need to help bridge the gap with training, improving tools and broadband.

I was thrilled when Jeff Narabrook form Minnesota Council for Nonprofits offered up his topic to talk about building capacity for the Minnesota Broadband Coalition. We talked about the tools we have created for the Coalition (web site, email newsletter, LinkedIn group). We talked about what we wanted from folks: ideas for the Broadband Task Force and ideas for the stimulus funding.

We talked about the need for the Coalition to help people understand why and how broadband does matter to them. The conversations that the Task Force are having (symmetrical speeds anyone?) do not necessarily capture the imagination of your average bear. But stories of how broadband means a better job, how broadband means a way to talk to a grandson in the army … they can capture the imagination.

So we’ve been trying to gather those stories (Got one? please let me know). Now we need to get those to a wider audience. One thought was to create a widget of sort (maybe a logo linked to an RSS feed) to share with folks like the Minnesota Council for Nonprofits to help us spread the word.

I had/have wanted to capture some stories in video – the biggest barrier for me is getting to people to get their stories. So I’m going to throw that out there too in case there’s someone in the field who’s looking for a story idea.

So that’s my lucky take-away and assignment from the conference. I also have a laundry list of tasks for me on more of a professional development level – like learn about Plurk (thanks Chuck Olsen for that) – so I feel like the support for the Minnesota Broadband Coalition is a complete bonus.

But before I do any of that – I’m spending the day in sunny Duluth with my family.

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Posted by Ann Treacy

Unconference – developing topics for the day

April 5, 2009

We all met. Attendees were invited to submit topics for the day. People used post-it notes to vote for the topics that interested them most. I have videos that I hope outline that process:

Getting instructions:

OK this stinking video is coming soon. I have waited long enough and held the other posts. I will add the video when I can.

Learning about the topics:

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Posted by Ann Treacy

MVO Unconference Fishbowl

April 4, 2009

The unconference started out with a fishbowl. Half a dozen of us sat in a circle in the middle of the room and discussed potentially controversial topics. Audience members were able to chime in to some degree.

Because I was in the fishbowl, it’s harder for me to talk about what happened – but I can say that it wsa fun to hear about differences of opinion. I’ll track down video of the event later.

Topics that came up include:

  1. How much structure do you need for online discussion? How strongly do you need to enforce structure?
  2. Do the growing online communities leave the real world community weakened?
  3. Will newspapers be around in 10 years?

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Posted by Ann Treacy

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