Saturday was the Independents’ Day Festival in downtown Columbus. I hosted a discussion at the Ideas space about building community using online tools. There were about 10 of us engaged in the round table and I felt like several interesting points came to light.
- Location isn’t automatically removed from social media; in fact it is often a core component. In this way we can effectively engage our social media tools in local outreach.
- There is a real need for more community interaction on a face to face level. Using tools the way that the organizers of Independents’ Day can create opportunities for these face to face meetings to occur. Maximize tools such as Google Apps and interfacing social media so that volunteer efforts can be coordinated at a minimum expense of time and money.
- Lastly, it’s fun to predict the future; we did some of that too.
I really appreciate everyone who had a chance to come out and participate. I think this years Idea space afforded everyone involved an opportunity to get a feel for what can happen there in the future. I’ve mentioned that this event could and should be the foundation for the desires I’ve laid out in my Convergence Columbus idea. I beleive that this first event reassured me of the ability for that kind of conversion. A foundation has been laid so now we need to begin the building process.
Now if only I had had some spare duckets with me to buy art – god there was some great art going on there!
