Josh Hart at mademedia (a Birmingham based web agency) alerted me to a potent combination of community, marketing and technology.
Josh is exercising more because of a heady cocktail of connections. Two brands – Nike and Apple; two desirable products – the right running shoes and the right mp3 player; the internet and music al tastes; personal achievement and support for celebrity sponsored charities.
Here’s how it works…
A few months ago Podnosh and b:cen were able to offer some support to the pupils at King’s Norton Boys’ School in Birmingham. We helped them set up their own podcast channel which they christened Podminions and hosted here on the Podnosh site.
Having opened the door the first group of podminions are now rushing through it. They are finding their voice in the programmes, passing knowledge and skills onto other boys in the school and have also established a website specifically for this project at www.podminions.co.uk.
It looks great, works well and has the capacity to expand into a perfect place for a school to converse with itself and the ‘outside’ world.
If you visit and have a rootle around please fire off an e-mail to let them know what you think. A little encouragement etc….
I just want to make reference to a couple of other bloggers.
Steve Bridger has recently posted about the value of story telling for the voluntary sector and Ingrid Koehler responded on the IDeA blog. Their worlds overlap with mine through a shared interest in the NCVO ICT Foresight programme.
I wont quote what they are saying in any great depth, but encourage you to click through and read. One point Ingrid made about the value of stories grabbed my attention.
In my work, I’d love to have more of these stories, but they are notoriously difficult to gather and sometimes to articulate.
The Grassroots Channel podcast is entirely based on gathering stories of active citizens. I won’t pretend it is a doddle, and encouraging others to gather stories and share them with the channel has been difficult. However I would say that Ingrid overstates the problem. Read more
I had a friend at University who moved back home to America once we had all graduated. She was a good friend, and regularly wrote to me. They were good letters, full of news and interesting ideas, thoughtfully composed. I loved receiving them and from time to time would pen a few short sentences and post them. More often than not though I set the letter aside – promising to reply tomorrow.
Finally a letter popped through my door. In essence it said: “I’ve been reviewing some of the things in my life and I’ve decided to edit you out.” Once I was over the shock I realised I wasn’t surprised – why keep talking to someone who’s “too busy” to reply?What was remarkable was that she had the courtesy to tell me, after all most us just let relationships wither and go looking for more rewarding conversation.
So why am I telling you this? Yesterday I spent a stimulating few hours with a group of people exploring web 2.0 technologies and their value to the voluntary sector. We had been brought together by Megan Griffith at the ICT hub of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Our aim is to help the NCVO set out some key strategic thoughts for voluntary organisations on the risk and opportuntities that come from IT and social networking.
As I digest what I’m learning it I’ll share more thoughts.
But my first is about vol orgs, the capacity to communicate and the willingness to share. If people are telling you they want to be in your club, but you lack the will, resources, culture or even manners to maintain a conversation , then the relationship will wither. That is true whether you communicate by phone, online or letter.
If you don’t intend to attend to the relationship why start in the first place? The other side will eventually turn away and find someone who will talk.
And you’ll be very lucky if they write to you tell you why.