Organizers' Collaborative

Most OC workshops on New Media involve non-profit leaders and staff well into their thirties (and, eh, beyond). On Wednesday, however, I was fortunate enough to facilitate our workshop with a regional planning class at Tufts. This made for a great conversation: instead of spending about half the time describing Facebook and even YouTube, we had a chance to talk about how they are using the technology and its relevance to their work.

Their interests and work spans a wide range--from thinking about the built environment and management of water front space through to non-profit networks serving low-income communities. Despite this range, the following concerns seemed to be shared across the group:

• From print to video! Web 2.0 may promote community building within groups by facilitating horizontal communication. Straightforward observation, but they were concerned that it may not permit a rich enough dialogue: 140 character tweets don't cut it! But we wondered about the positive promise of the depth possible with YouTube and other video-sharing platforms. Just as writing requires a certain amount of training, maybe training and increased "literacy" in video production can help community building. Thinking about such innovative projects as Press Pass TV I'm inclined to agree. Tomorrow's civic discourses will be on video first!
• Turnaround time! Web 2.0 allows for really quick responses to issues, the non-profits that act with alacrity in responding to queries, gifts, etc. are likely to be more appreciated
• Raised expectations! One person pointed out that too few people who invite her to events actually follow up. Even where she had declined a Facebook invitation to a meeting, she expected that the same medium would be used to report on what happened during that event. This observation is consistent with our workshop's claim that events are no longer discrete phenomena... instead they continue long after the stage has come down, continuing their lives in the blogs, posts and tweets of attendees (and in the minds of those who declined to attend, it seems). Of course, this is consistent with the organizers' creed: "it's all about follow up!"
• Tech generations! There seems to be increased segregation by tech generation: so some people are comfortable with "older" social technologies--things like MySpace and Facebook[!]--but just don't get "newer" technologies like Twitter, etc.

More observations tomorrow as we do a workshop with a group that promises to bring together younger peace and justice activists with veterans of the movement.