What were the 4 projects the sessions of which you moderated ?

When I read that FamilyFarmed.org was one of the four groups assigned to me I was disappointed because the goals of having people eat locally-produced organic food seemed a bit precious when people in many parts of the world are going hungry.

"FamilyFarmed.org is a revolutionary system connecting consumers and trade buyers with a network of organic farmers and artisanal food producers. Consumers meet their farmers and re-establish connections with their food, community, and the land."

But I remembered a couple of people I've worked with are fanatics about this issue. And as I took a closer look, it turned out this was the one I had the most suggestions for.

Here's one thing they were looking for:

"As part of our strategic planning process we need to develop a communications plan that addresses branding, media outreach, search engine access, and many other key needs to help build web traffic, newsletter subscriptions, and regular use."

Jean Russel was at the session and I got a chance to embarrass her by quoting from her post in the earlier thread:

Jean Russell - "What will motivate users to participate in the online community? Do they have a sense that community around them wants this type of tool or are they just following the latest fad in development?"

Here are my ideas for them to build a community around their goals:

Martín Rizzi * Mexico said:

What were the 4 projects the sessions of which you moderated ?

Thanks Martn. Here are the projects -

FamilyFarmed - FamilyFarmed.org is a revolutionary system connecting consumers and trade buyers with a network of organic farmers and artisanal food producers. Consumers meet their farmers and re-establish connections with their food, community, and the land.

Grassroots - The Grassroots.org Toolbox will empower nonprofit organizations by granting free access to a suite of fully configured & hosted online tools, including content management, online event registration software, and CRM.

Maps 2.0 - Geospatial Tools for Nonprofits and Humanitarian Relief - Maps 2.0, a collaboration already under way, will launch the first online resource for nonprofit and humanitarian organizations to share best practices in geographic information systems (GIS) and digital mapping tools.

Taking IT Global - What if youth everywhere came together to inspire each other, get informed about social issues, and involved in their communities? TakingITGlobal evolved from this idea to a Social Network for Social Good, inspiring youth to create a better world.

Right now I'm listening to a panel grilling the leaders of WiserEarth. Each seems like a wonderful platform to create a catalog of non-profit orgs.

Please check it out, sign up and let me know what you think - http://wiserearth.org/

I'm sitting next to John Berger of TEN and peeked over to see he has is signing up.

I tend to be filtering what I am hearing from different groups with collaboration/community-building. I have seen Ivan from Genocide Intervention Network speak on three instances now, and I have to say that they have some great ideas and practices for doing collaboration and community-building. I wish that we could gather here to say what is the best idea or behavior that each project has--likely part of what was so compelling to get them here in the first place--and how can they share that with others. There are innovative ideas here that could help many others. Some of those ideas are tool based as you might expect from a nonprofit and technology event...and some of those are practices around those tools or beyond.

Then I think there is an undercurrent here of nonprofit/technology veterans sick of buzz words directing projects where they need not go. Let's have a session on trimming down--what is the essence of what the project is about--cut the buzz. What has to be there? And how can we leverage resources best to make that happen.

>>Please check it out, sign up and let me know what you think - http://wiserearth.org/ I'm sitting next to John Berger of TEN and peeked over to see he has is signing up.<<

John/Haney, if you now go to my user profile on WiserEarth and click visualize network you will see both your WE profile names/connections there.

its interesting haney - in some ways, the ideas you offer reinforce the idea that local food is somehow "precious." in vermont, where this is perhaps more of a way of life, the emphasis is on not feeding and catering to the interests of the converts but getting more fresh food into places where less healthy product is more available.

so groups like foodworks are working to educate students about the benefits of eating local to influence school lunch options. farmers markets are working with low-income groups to find ways to accept WIC vouchers. foodbanks are seeking ways to access supplies of fresh - not just canned and packaged foods. i think its these kinds of efforts that will ultimately help to redefine the "eat local" movement away from a yuppie gourmet preoccupation. the vermont fresh network is working to influence the purchasing behaviours of chefs in a range of restaurant settings.

what do you think?

I was joking with Lars that the conference would be much more useful if they outlawed the word "community" - so that instead of throwing it out in every sentence, speakers would actually have to think about what they mean by it.

yeah, there's alot of funny lingo here - ie refering to freecycle as part of a "gift" economy. jessica (margolin) and i were riffing on that for a while before jean (russell) got us going on currencies :)

Mark Grimes said:

John/Haney, if you now go to my user profile on WiserEarth and click visualize network you will see both your WE profile names/connections there.

check out my profile if you ever wondered what I look like - http://www.wiserearth.org/user/h aneyarmstrong/

Mark - I just added the full Emancipation Network to wiser - I did not know TEN Charities was there until I saw it in your profile.

RE family farmed. I think it is one of the few projects here that can be econimicaly self sustaining, but I dont really see the social impact. It seems like a good busiess tool - really a traditional b-b exchange for a niche market.

>>Mark - I just added the full Emancipation Network to wiser -I did not know TEN Charities was there until I saw it in your profile.<<

I'll add Emancipation Network too.

>>RE family farmed. I think it is one of the few projects here that can be econimicaly self sustaining, but I dont really see the social impact. It seems like a good busiess tool - really a traditional b-b exchange for a niche market.<<

The social impact might be local farmer support, less travel/energy for food, more nutrients in local foods, better velocity of money thru the community. The question could then be...how to they measure any of that?

Lucy Bernholtz is the moderator of the current social Impact panel - Her blog PHILANTHROPY 2173 is really great - http://philanthropy.blogspot.com /

• current project under review is Freecycle

Im starting to think about my 3 votes. I was pretty sure from the beginning I would vote for GI net, because I hope TEN can collaborate with them as we are working on a similar project. So call that my self-interest vote.

I have been very positively surprised by Stop Family Violence. I have had several side conversations with the founder and she seems like a remarkable woman with a very solid plan. Her plan also fits my view that the rush to generic "one site for all issues" websites is a dead end. I think that for many issues there needs to be dedicated, topic specific locations and she makes a good case for how she can build such a site. (same goes for GI net)¬¬

Vote #3 I am not so sure about yet.

John wrote:

RE family farmed. I think it is one of the few projects here that can be econimicaly self sustaining, but I dont really see the social impact.

This is where it gets interesting doesn't it: is stopping the closure of family farms a social impact of benefit? in a state like vermont, family dairy farms for example have been closing at a steady rate of about 100/year.

the closures free up land for another kind of development: planned "communities" (monotonous tracts of housing) and big box stores on the periphery of towns and cities.

clearly one person's social benefit is another's loss of landscape.

many would argue that a pattern of landscape across which small landownership is spread is much more beneficial for the health of that region. there's a "grow and get rich" school that says "bollocks!"

Lars Hasselblad Torres said:

its interesting haney - in some ways, the ideas you offer reinforce the idea that local food is somehow "precious."

Yeek! I think local food is a good thing, if not the most important thing for me. But I respect that others think its extremely important.

Do you think the tactics I suggested might turn more people off than on?

I see your part Lars. It certainly is hard to compare social impact. My personal bias is to favor impact on people in deep poverty or suffering abuse, and I favor programs that make deep and lasting impact - as opposed to broadspread but not necessarily life changing impact.

The types of programs that I have a harder time evaluating are those that exist to support other non-profits. I value their work and don’t doubt the derivative impact of their impact as they help others succeed. Im just not sure how to compare them to direct service impact.

Haney asked:

Do you think the tactics I suggested might turn more people off than on?

I'm not sure its a win-lose. Your suggestions are great: i just think they reward the converted more than reach out to unconverted. Make sense?

What about reaching out to places of worship and trying to hook them up with fresh, local food options for their socials?

what i am trying to get at is reducing the (ironic) level or degree of "exotic-nes" of local produce, what family farmed calls "artisenal" - which most local food probably isn't. i don't know any local farmers growing heirloom varietals for example as a staple crop.

how can we make "local" "vernacular" again?

John wrote:

My personal bias is to favor impact on people in deep poverty or suffering abuse, and I favor programs that make deep and lasting impact - as opposed to broadspread but not necessarily life changing impact.

I think we all need to be clear on our biases - really, they come down to some hierarchy of preferences organized around our "values." these are essential compass points as we all seek to make the world better.

the challenge might be ensuring thriving local systems while we work to influence deep structural imbalances across the globe. to some degree, our local habits might actually serve (or undermine) our larger global interests.

Kabissa up now -

"Marries power of Web 2.0 with passion of 950+ African orgs in our network. Savvy Web 2.0 Ambassadors will collaborate through the Kabissa site and face to face to develop and promote homegrown strategies for employing Web 2.0 for social change."

I took the bus with these guys and they are really impressive.

They want to hire 20 part-time web 2.0 ambassadors or mentors to increase their reach from 1000 to 5000 orgs in their African network and encourage them to use web 2.0 tools.

Part of the point is to try to make sure that local people have the ability to make their own choices rather than imposed from outside.

Someone offering the recent Barcamp in Kenya as a positive model.

In response to a question about partners, they hope that this will allow Africans to influence some of the social networking tools being built in the developed countries.

They try to stay out of the politics but hope that their tools can help defend those doing human rights work.

The conference is over and I feel very lucky to have have the chance to attend. There is something about meeting a ton of enthusiastic, smart, and committed people that makes the future seem much brighter.

It was also a kick to see all the omidyar.net members there. It's great to have a little gang.

I wanted to go ahead and post the feedback I gave to the other three groups I reviewed...

Here goes for Grassroots - The Grassroots.org Toolbox will empower nonprofit organizations by granting free access to a suite of fully configured & hosted online tools, including content management, online event registration software, and CRM.

• My main concern was that they wanted to get funded to then give away a free service. My suggestion was that non-profits who needed a substantial level of support should have to apply for it, possibly get on a matching funds. And that the best was to do that is to fund another organization to review tech grants for non-profits and then use that grant money to pay grassroots.

Their response was that they are really aiming to provide a very low level of service for a huge number of nonprofits so it didn't make sense for those people - but might make sense for larger nonprofits that needed more services.

• Consider the techsoup kind of community management where community members are recognized for answering questions – where some people who have figured it out respond to new people.

They liked this idea, (having already thought of it).

Maps 2.0 - Geospatial Tools for Nonprofits and Humanitarian Relief - Maps 2.0, a collaboration already under way, will launch the first online resource for nonprofit and humanitarian organizations to share best practices in geographic information systems (GIS) and digital mapping tools.

One of the needs they expressed was for ideas about how to encourage various sectors - like health, poverty, housing - to understand and begin to use GIS mapping.

• My suggestion was to create a contest for the best demonstration in five or ten different sectors. And set up their site so that it's focused on sectors (instead of mapping in general) so that representatives of sectors can find the information that relates to them including these demos.
• I was going to also give them the feedback that I don't think $10,000 is enough to really run an effective org but I think one of the other panelists beat me to it.

Taking IT Global - What if youth everywhere came together to inspire each other, get informed about social issues, and involved in their communities? TakingITGlobal evolved from this idea to a Social Network for Social Good, inspiring youth to create a better world.

• I told them that the name was a problem since it seemed to me to suggest that it was an IT or internet technology company. I suggested they might make the T in IT lower case.
• In respond to their question about how to extend their reach into developing countries:

• Try to make the group features strong so that local groups will adopt the platform for their own needs.
• Piggyback/ cross promote with internet training and access programs like Life in Africa.
• Can you do a deal with hardware shipping to developing countries to put a sticker on them with your url? Are there recycling projects?
• Is there a way to create a franchise of internet cafes or do a cross promotion with existing internet cafe chains?

wow