thegroupery

Our guest writer, Jenny Ambrozek, SageNet, LLC helps organizations create value by facilitating strategic knowledge sharing inside, and beyond, the enterprise. The following is an excerpt from Jenny’s recent contribution to The Vine. The Vine is a guided learning and...

Slow growing? Have you ever had an experience whether it’s on your urban back balcony or in a corn field that goes on for miles? Well, either situation you can still often find growing lonely. The urban jungle is often...

I have heard it said that individuals come to a social media space for the content, but stay for the relationships. We recognize the need to deliver quick, tangible value to capture the attention of our target audience. But then...

Thanks to Care2 for the blog post about how Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sanberg fired up the death of email debate at the Nielsen’s Consumer 360 Consumer Conference. Maybe she will be correct with her forecast? What do you think? We...

Today a few of us from the Groupvine are at the #ocu10 conference at the Community History Museum in Mountain View, California. It feels like we are in a community therapy session as we are amongst old and new friends...

Functional requirements, lists upon lists and endless one off meetings can get old. What I’ve found that can work well is to be open, transparent and honest with all parties involved with what you are finding. Whether you work for...

People of the Link One of our advisors, Estee Solomon Gray will be in San Francisco tonight connecting and exploring, as an example of one of her many gifts through a People of the Link lecture. @Estee will be inviting...

How do you bring your supporters into a more personal reach with your organization, with your mission and with each other? Bring them on a journey, through a virtual or physical visit, but let them in. Be open, don’t have...

The keynote at the NTC conference this week was by Andrew Sullivan, blogger extraordinaire, who gets one million readers a month on his blog, The Daily Dish. Many of us felt it lacked a lot of relevant candy for the...

I provided blog advisory services with Carol Thompson, Executive Director of Heritage Sandy Springs during the NTEN Day of Service project. Heritage Sandy Springs have an AMAZING story. Can you believe over 25 years ago, they started as a grass...

People will often ask me questions about which communication methods are the best and there is no size that fits all! Why, do you ask? Because relationships have to been created, earned and cultivated. They aren’t just something you can...

  Much has been written about building trust in social networks.  June Holley and Valdis Krebs wrote what I consider a seminal paper on Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving.  Beth Kanter's blog is a treasure chest of concepts and wisdom about building networks and using social...

  This may sound like belaboring the obvious.  Of course the network is not a person; yet how many of us have heard people say things like, "The community is passionate about XYZ," or "our network needs to be in closer communication," or "we can mobilize the network/commu...

  Social media is simple, like water, right?  Simple interfaces, low barrier to entry?  Kids in elementary schools are using them – so why all the confusion?   Because at the end of the day you still need to have some strategic conversations around your vision, mission and market segment.I propo...

What happens to nonprofits when the funding disappears?   How can they help the needy when they are, themselves, growingweaker?A February 2 article on WSJ.com positions nonprofits as a severecasualty of the economic downturn. The article, Once-RobustCharity Sector Hit With Merge...

 This past Saturday, my daughter and I participated in alocal run to raise money for an open space preservation group.  The morning started dark and gray andby the time the first wave of runners took off through the redwoods it waspouring rain.  No matter!  This was a dete...

   Today we are being pulled into swarms of new styles of communications and sometimes it feels like we are in the eye of a twister.  I propose that we live not in the culture of dread, but take the time to allow the winds to gust, but keep ourselves ‘focused’ and allow our philosophy, mission,...

Last night Jeremiah Owyangand panelists: Rob Fuggetta (Zuberance), Ed Terpening, (Wells Fargo), MariaPoveromo (Adobe) and Jeanette Gibson (Cisco) held a great discussion on “SocialMedia Trends for 2010.”  Owyang cited that one of themajor challenges companies and organizations face is speed...

Pulling the community into the action At Grand View Elementary in Manhattan Beach, CA eNewsletters are nothing new --  Grand View’s weekly “Gator Gazette” has been distributed electronically for years.  But as any leader/publisher will attest, traditional newsletters (whether electronic or hard c...

Moving from Audience to Engaged CommunityEvery presenter knows the value of popping a few quick questions prior to deliverying the message to see which “direction” will best engage their particular audience.   This ability to tailor the content and ensure relevance is lost in traditio...

  This week during a webinar with NTEN, I had the honor of learning from Dahna Goldstein and Victoria M. Grady, PhD during their webinar titled, “Technology Meets Psychology in Your Organization”.  In the consulting field, we talk about this as change management – like a new sno...

Last night at the Ambassador in San Francisco, Citizen Effect held its Launch Event.  Previously called 1 Well, Citizen Effect goes way beyond water & sanitation in its collaborative effort to "change the world, one community at a time."  Not only does the organization ask everyday ...

  Are you left wondering how you can possibly embrace another technology that supports communication with all you currently have on your plate?    Does it feel like you are trying to find that unique piece of "food" that may have washed up on the shore?  It...

In the back of my head is a little voice saying "this is obvious", but I'm going to tune it out and share some thoughts that have been seeded by a couple forums today.  The two forums are Beth Kanter's Can Small Nonprofits Reap Success With Social Media? blog post and NTEN...

Last evening's Government and Non-Profits 2.0:Social Media-Best Practices event moderated by Alan Silberberg, and including Debra Bowen, Beth Kanter, and Gwyneth Galbraith covered a lot of ground in one hour.  But Lynne and I found the discussion surrounding how to get nonprofits to tak...

Last evening's Government and Non-Profits 2.0:Social Media-Best Practices event moderated by Alan Silberberg, and including Debra Bowen, Beth Kanter, and Gwyneth Galbraith covered a lot of ground in one hour. But Lynne and I found the discussion surrounding how to...

    Alexandra Samuel, the CEO of Social Signal is onto something with her recent blog post.  We too at thegroupery are seeing great passion amongst volunteer leaders and non profits who today are primarily in synchronous client relationships h...