I am a long-time E-Democracy volunteer. The traditional way to grow a list is through existing social networks. In other words, I ask two friends to join, they ask two friends and so on. It grows a list – but it also means you get folks who run in the same circles. In the last couple of years, E-Democracy has made concerted effort to encourage greater diversity in forum participation. This report explains what they have done successfully.

I think this work will be valuable for community leaders who are also struggling with how to make their programs more inclusive.

Here’s a quick description from the report itself…

Through this work, E-Democracy hopes to debunk assumptions that people in poverty, of color, new immigrants, and others historically disenfranchised are digitally disconnected or less interested in connecting with their neighbors online than those in homogeneous, wealthy neighborhoods – and instead demonstrate that they in fact bring assets, capacities, information, and agenda-setting value to online civic participation.

And here’s an abbreviated/paraphrased list of what has worked…

In Outreach:

• Face-to-face connections, paper signup sheets, and a personal approach are by far the most successful recruiting methods.
• Building trust is essential. Knowing that “someone like me” is on the forum makes a difference. Personal invitations and direct support help people get started.
• Understanding people’s needs and then helping them find ways for those needs to be addressed through the forum smooths the path for their participation and continued involvement.
• Partnering with respected neighbors and event organizers creates opportunities to participate in community activities and offer people the chance to sign up for our forums

Content Management

• Seeding stories that are of interest to diverse populations
• Maintaining cultural awareness and proficiency in posts and outreach

The report is full of stories and practical advice – and again suggested reading for leaders in any community effort that would benefit from increasing diversity. (I have to think that’s just about any effort.) You can also learn more about the project on a special online event with the authors and others involved with the project will speak.

Last night the Minnesota Opera Twitter account was hijacked by their “hipster usher” who Tweeted throughout the opera (Madame Butterfly) describing the action on stage and doling out great advice such as…

Yo grl: warning sign! Back back back it up! “my heart’s on fire for her, I must possess her even if her wings are torn and broken”

Or

NTS: When you go to visit your abandoned wife, don’t bring your new one along for the ride. #awkwardencounters

Now there’s a lot of talk in the Twitter/Blogosphere about whether the experiment was a great success or a great failure – but as someone who follows online marketing, I have to point out that I’ve never talked about opera on this blog before. It’s getting people’s attention – and that’s the first step. I’d love to see other Minnesota arts groups (and/or communities) would take note. It would be great to see Grandpa Joe live Tweeting for the Minneapolis Groundbreakers Battle (of Break Dancers) this summer!

Cash mobs are descending on Twin Cities stores. Unlike flash mobs, cash mobs are not spontaneous or disruptive. The group democratically selects a local business and, on a given day and time, participants visit the store, aiming to spend around $20 each. Cash mobs are a form of social activism, encouraging support for small businesses such as St. Paul Corner Drug, Harriet Brewing,Moss Envy, and Goddess of Glass. In addition to spurring local shopping, the group encourages socialization.

There’s an organization in Minneapolis that’s behind the group do-gooding, called Cash Mob Minneapolis. It sure seems to me like the kind of thing that might work in a smaller town too. You can visit the Cash Mob website. The steps are easy. It sounds like fun. And it would be a great boost to a local shop. It might even encourage some ongoing social media activity in your area.

The Nerdery blog estimates the value of the volunteer time as about half-a-million dollars…

During more normal business hours the more than 4,200 hours of pro bono services freely given would have a real-world street value of about half-a-million dollars. The 18 nonprofits were chosen from a field of more than 80 applicants, and the 18 teams were picked from a field of 34.

Wondering how a day like that goes? Here’s the schedule from their website:

7:00 a.m. – Registration, set up work stations. Volunteers: You are welcome to come as early as 6:30 am to set up; please be there by at least 8:00.
8:45 a.m. – Welcome, get ready to rumble, announce team assignments
9:00 a.m. – Countdown begins. Nonprofits meet their team of volunteers and get to work.
Noonish - Lunch from Gyropolis
6:00 p.m. – Dinner from Bacio and Zelo
Midnight – Second dinner from Pizza Luce
6:00 a.m. – The most important meal of the day. Meanwhile, judges make the rounds between 6-9 a.m., spending 10 minutes assessing each team’s work.
9:00 a.m. – Final presentations
10:00 a.m. – Winner announced. Good night, and good luck.

You can learn more about the project, the volunteers and the nonprofits on The Nerdery website.

I think it’s important to note that Akeley has been working with Extension as part of the Horizons program. One goal of Horizons was to build rural leadership today to reduce poverty tomorrow. Often the communities chosen were in flux. Akeley moved from the Horizons project to MIRC, which focuses on building strong communities through broadband.

The short story in Akeley is that the e-business workshops have been very successful. One unintended consequence has been the development of weekly meetings, aka the Akeley Area Breakfast Club. As the meetings caught on even people who hadn’t attended the workshops were able to learn what the attendees learned through peer-to-peer sharing and collaborating.

The breakfast club heard that the area Chamber was running into issues and was thinking about closing shop. So they all met, inspired each other and the Chamber is now thriving. It went from 4 members to 30. The businesses are using the skills they learned to grow their own businesses online but also to bring people into the community. An effort that redoubles as the  community promotion brings more people through the doors of the local businesses.

MIRC Coordinator, Susanne Hinrichs spoke about the progress in the community, “The MIRC project has provided knowledge and a place for people to come together. The folks in Akeley are realizing their assets, which includes natural resources and a whole host of artisans. Community-wide change is happening. It’s happening right now and it will be visible to the whole world through the eyes of the internet. Plans are being made to unveil a new website for the chamber soon. The website will include a shopping cart for local businesses and artisans.”

MIRC has contributed to the community wide change happening in Akeley, however it’s the folks in Akeley who are living this and making it happen.

University of Minnesota Extension is offering free sample classes for all communities if you are an interested community leader.

Itasca Community Television has earned the prestigious Pegasus Awards of Excellence for its website www.watchictv.org. This is the second such award for ICTV’s website in recent years. ICTV staff is especially pleased with this award coming on heels of the complete rebuilding of the site in 2011.

“This award is especially grand because it goes not only to the ICTV staff but also to the community members working with the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) funds. ICTV received an MIRC grant to improve this website, hosting, and video upload and storage technologies. The funding was matched by the ICTV Board of Directors. The resulting web site, focusing on local video, is proving to be a good tool in keeping Itasca area citizens informed about our region and our governments,” said Executive Director Beth George. “We take our hats off to Blandin Foundation for securing these funds, plus the Grand Rapids Economic Development Authority and local Broadband Committee to allow us to put them to good work.”

The website was judged by three independent national judges on content, design, navigation and overall impression. The comment that stood out above the rest from the judges said: “The web site gives an immediate impression that there’s a team of folks that care passionately about ICTV.”

“It is great to get an external recognition of our work,” George added. “We will be using the judges’ comments and community input to constantly improve on the web site.”

Pegasus Awards were designed to applaud producers of corporate communications, commercials, special event and public access producers.

ICTV, founded in 1983, has been serving the Itasca area for nearly 30 years. Go to www.watchictv.org for online access to government meetings and community information.

In an interview with USA Today, General Mills Chief Marketing Officer Mark Addicks points out that the cereal box is one of most read items today. On the average three people per household read the box up to twelve times. Now they can be providing more content – to those folks who have smartphones. They are also looking at apps.

Apparently we can expect to start seeing these tech treats later this year. Addicks didn’t want to get in too much details, in case competitors might be reading, but he did offer this…

“You point to a logo and things start to appear,” he says. “Maybe some functional content will pop up on a cake-mix box, or you might see entertainment and games coming from a cereal box. What I’m hoping for is pure entertainment.”

It’s fun but I think it also speaks to the growing ubiquity of smartphones. Brands generally do not shoot for attracting the bleeding edge of customers – they want the critical mass.

Thanks to a grant from the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities Program (MIRC), WGTN-TV 3, formerly only accessible for cable subscribers in Worthington, can now be accessed through the Internet.

Available at www.wgtntv3.com, anyone with an Internet connection can watch live coverage of local sports games, community meetings and other events covered by WGTN-TV 3.

The events will also be archived for viewing at anytime.

The benefit for snow birds and other seasonal or past residents is easy to imagine. And although it’s tough to imagine that we’ll ever see snow in Minnesota – it will come. And when it does it will be more difficult for many people to get around; viewing programs at home is more reasonable for folks with any mobility issues.

The ability to view anytime may be at least as valuable. People lead busy lives and attending local community meetings can be impractical – but imagine being able to view at your leisure. Suddenly it is possible to keep up on the Nobles County Board or Worthington City Council. And once you’re informed, it’s easier and makes more sense to get involved.

It’s also now easier to get involved on the other side of the camera – the article indicates that there may be more opportunity for local programming – and I suspect the incentive may be higher when you know there’s a chance for a greater audience. The Daily Globe reports..

“As time goes on, we’ll try to further develop other programs within the community,” Reeves said.

“We’re hoping that this will also encourage and help people become more involved with how to film,” Schnieder said. “Staff-wise, the station is limited, but maybe we can get something going with community education classes. There are a lot of talented people in the area, and we’d like to get them involved.”

It will be interesting to hear if there is an increase in civic participation and community engagement.

Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites.

I guess I’m a little surprised that 5 percent of those surveyed weren’t online. The teen and preteen in my house would have a lot of extra time on their hands if they were in that demographic. The report doesn’t focus on who is and isn’t online as much as what’s happening online.

The not so surprising news is that sometimes kids are mean online – and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they ignore the meanness, sometimes they step up and defend each other. Here are the numbers:

• 88 percent of social media using teens have seen people been mean online
• 15 percent felt that they had been the target of online cruelty.
• The most popular reaction to witnessing online meanness was to ignore the situation (95 percent)
• 84 percent reported having seen people come to the defense of the targets of meanness
• 80 percent that they themselves have defended folks online.
• 78 percent report at least one good outcome from using social media
• 41 percent report at least one negative outcome
• 44 percent of the teem social media users lie about their age to access social media sites. (Which would indicate to me that 44 percent were under 13, since that’s the stated required age for Facebook users.)

Facebook was overwhelming the most popular social media network. Twitter was one of the fastest growing. Google Plus was too new to really rank, though Google Buzz (now defunct or near defunct) was not popular.

I scan my kids’ social media use daily – so I wasn’t so surprised by most what I found. I was a little surprised at where kids were learning about how to use social media – but I was surprised in a good way. Here is what Pew reports…

For general advice and influence, parents are still the top source for teen internet and cell phone users. However, teens receive advice from a wide array of sources.

• 86% of online and cell phone-using teens say they have received general advice about how to use the internet responsibly and safely from their parents.
• 70% of online and cell-using teens say they have gotten advice about internet safety from teachers or another adult at school.
• 45% have received advice from friends or classmates, 45% have received general advice from an older relative, and 46% have received internet safety advice from a brother, sister, or cousin.
• 58% of teen internet and cell phone users say their parents have been the biggest influence on what they think is appropriate or inappropriate when using the internet or a cell phone.
• 18% of teens say their friends have been their biggest influence on appropriate internet or cell phone behavior.
• 18% say “no one” has influenced them.

I’m surprised because so many parents tell me they are lost when it comes to many of the details – but I think parents get the big picture. I was just having a conversation about kids and social media with colleagues. First – kids don’t always understand the details as well as we think. Second – I think they very often miss that big picture – like a strange is a stranger. So in the end I think the Pew Report demonstrates that kids are still kids and parents still have a role to play in helping them become responsible adults (online).

On a personal note – it’s super helpful to know the details of social media with young teens. My new best threat is tagging my preteen in Facebook posts in embarrassing places, which would be anywhere with me these days. Stops her from complaining instantly.

Got Broadband? Building Businesses on Rural Broadband Investments
December 14, 2011 11:30 a.m. ET
About the Webcast
USDA invites you to join us on Wednesday, December 14, to learn more about the opportunities presented by new broadband investments made through USDA Rural Development’s broadband programs in rural communities across the country. You will hear from several USDA representatives as well as representatives from innovative companies that are taking advantage of broadband to attract and develop businesses in rural America. (Get details)

And the Minnesota event…

Creating a Business Facebook Page
December 15, 2011 noon (to 1:00)
There are more than 800 million active users on Facebook and more than half log into Facebook every day. It’s a place to connect with existing customer or make connections to potential new customers. But there’s definitely a right way to do it – both in terms of Facebook policies and to make the most of the different types of connection. Join us for an introduction to the different types of Facebook accounts (user, group, page, event…) and instruction on how to create a page. (Get details)