Tag: Leadership

5 things Beth Kanter has taught me…..

Beth Speaking from elstudio on Flickr (click on the picture to go to the original)
Beth Speaking from elstudio on Flickr (click on the picture to go to the original)

Beth Kanter is the social media expert for non profit organisations. Last year I made this promise to pay more attention to her prolific blog output.

Today is her 53rd birthday, and in keeping with a small tradition built up over the last 3 years, she is again using her birthday as an excuse to show how social media and trusted networks can combine to help charities. She is raising funds for her favourite charity, the Sharing Foundation.

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Stuff I've seen December 6th through to December 13th

These are my links for December 6th through December 13th:

  • When 1000s of Spaniards Rallied in Defence of Online Rights (I): A Chronicle | Personal Democracy Forum – Well worth a read: “An online fire is burning in Europe. It was set by what appears to be a designed campaign to transform the European intellectual property regime, towards a more restrictive set of rules directly affecting the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and information. We’re seeing its implementation in Sweden, France, Italy, UK or at the EU level in Brussels.”
  • The Ernest Marples Blog › The blog for Ernest Marples’ Postcodes – There have been some pretty exciting announcements during the last few weeks. Alongside those, we’ve also met with the Royal Mail to have a talk about finding a way forward.A couple of weeks ago, we had a great meeting with the Royal Mail. They explained in some detail the background to these datasets: how they’re maintained, where the data comes from and where money changes hands. It’s all a bit complicated!
  • Lee Bryant on leadership – I keep returning to this post by Headshift’s Lee Bryant, on leadership in the networked society. It’s big, meaty and good.My starting point was the myth that leadership is somehow less important in new, networked organisations. Not so. If anything, it is more important than ever, but the focus and practice of leadership is changing; and if we are to engage leaders and involve them in the development of social business structures, then we need to be able to understand and address their challenges and issues using language that resonates with them.He provides some slides from a talk he recently gave on the topic, which give a nice overview – though I really do recommend you read – and re-read – the whole thing:
  • https://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/post/2009/12/07/Local-Government-Data.aspx – “The Government will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton has been asked to head up a panel of experts to oversee the release of local public data and ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the Local Government Association, government departments and agencies.”
  • Countdown to oneplace « Audit Commission blogs | Michael Newbury – If knowledge really is power then we’re truly putting an awful lot of power into the hands of the ordinary citizen. The person who uses and pays for public services. In times of extraordinary pressure on public finances this seems absolutely the right thing to be doing.

Four problems facing student unions and how to solve them

It is the first day of the Association for Managers in Student Unions and a number of leading heads from universities across the UK came to together to discuss problems facing student unions.

The group divided up into four teams to tackle the following major issues student unions face, and how best to solve them using social media:

  • Membership
  • Democracy
  • Brand
  • Reach

The blue team looked at the problem of reaching students:

Click here to watch the video.

The red team – Brand:

The Yellow team – Membership:

See the video here

The green team – Democracy:

How to solve a problem like a student union

How can student unions use social media to help what they do?

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This is the question those who run student unions up and down the country have gathered at Fazeley Studios, Birmingham to discuss.

General managers, marketing officers, heads of communications, events coordinators and web developers have gathered to put their heads together with a couple of social media experts in the form of Nick Booth from Podnosh and Jon Bounds.

The two-day conference began with delegates voicing the points and problems which they want to discuss and talk about solving some of these issues using social media.

Some suggestions posted at the beginning of the session
Some suggestions posted at the beginning of the session

Some of the problems were:

  • Getting students to tell us what they want their student union to look like
  • Drawing out students’ stories
  • Knowing which social media to use for certain situations
  • How to do more with less resources
  • Getting the message across about what we do
  • How can we keep our finger on the pulse
  • How can we increase our membership using social media?
  • How can we continue to engage using social media with students bored with Facebook?