Here are the slides from my presentation/conversation hybrid that I hosted last weekend at the Digital Media in a Social World OSU event. All in all the event was good and I believe that my session went fairly well. Unfortunately I don’t believe I did as good of a job engaging the room as I’d hoped for but that is the risk you take when you try something new.

The topic was basically about making your offline presence (particularly as an organization) much more responsive and flexible to the needs of your supporters and community – the way it is with your online presence. Here are the slides:

[reposted from my ElephantsOnBicycles.com site]

I wanted to push up a quick post about various projects I’m working on right now that may be something you’d like to get in on as well. Of course if you don’t see something of interest here you can bet that this list is always evolving so check-in with me if you’re looking for some work.

WOSU Projects

I am currently engaged in a couple of WOSU projects that are going to need greater community involvement as we move forward. Whether you would like to help on the front end, be a participant in the event itself or just be a cheerleader passing along project information as you will we (myself and WOSU) would appreciate the help.

• WOSU Columbus Neighborhoods Program

The first WOSU television program about the Short North is due to air on March 8, 2010. Currently WOSU has funding to create television content about six neighborhoods in Columbus along with a companion website (this is where I come in).

ColumbusNeighborhoods.org (not yet live) will be a place to document stories about your Columbus neighborhood (or suburb) using video/audio/photos/text. Some of the area historical societies have agreed to work with us to get some of their archives uploaded. We’re looking for interested residents to join in and share their content as a way of building the story of Columbus, its neighborhoods and people, in an easily accessible online format.

Hopefully this will lead to enough interest that WOSU will receive further funding to do more of the neighborhood programs including programs about the suburbs that make up Central Ohio.

• WOSU Public Media Camp

Currently this event is scheduled for Saturday May 8, 2010 and will center around the question of: “Using collaborative project opportunities, how do we strengthen the relationship that WOSU has with the community?”

I was honored to attend the first national Public Media Camp with WOSU last year and this local camp will be an extension of what began in Washington, DC. WOSU has three core opportunities that they want to explore for collaborating more closely with creative and informed residents. This event will be a chance to discover what innovative ways we can turn those opportunities into real life collaborative efforts.

Upper Arlington Centric Projects

• Leadership UA Website

I’m currently working on a redesign of the Leadership UA website. The current site is at http://leadershipua.org and I would be happy to get some feedback from people about what they might find useful but is lacking on that old site. I hope to launch the new site in the next couple of weeks (there’s a deadline to this one so it has to happen sooner rather than later).

Some features of the new site that are in the works will be an RSS feed, monthly leadership notes and more multi-media content.

• Conversation Arlington

A very select few of you may remember that a few years ago I was a class member of the Leadership UA program and helped to develop the Conversation Arlington format for hosting conversations in UA about civic opportunities and issues. This has transformed into a few different outreach projects for Leadership UA (which I’m now a board member of) along with helping to bring together an Upper Arlington Art of Hosting Community of Practice.

Under Leadership UA I, along with some of my fellow board members, are looking to expand our conversations to help sustain productive dialogue in our community. Look for more on this once the new website is in place.

• Upper Arlington Family Bicycle Tour

This came about late last fall when I had a conversation with Tim Maloney (UA Parks & Rec) about an idea for a bike ride to help foster greater family bicycling in UA. After a meeting with James Gant (UA Parks & Rec) and word that UA would soon be home to 2 bicycle stores, both sitting pretty on Lane Ave (Trek store and Roll:), we are planning for a first event to happen late spring/early summer with two other events to follow.

The idea is to hold three events: one tour of the northern UA parks and schools, one tour of the southern UA parks and schools and then a longer ride that connects all of them. If you’d like to help out or just make sure that you’re alerted ahead of time as to when the events will be held then let me know!

• UA Bicycle Route Map

I’ve heard rumor of the existence of a general outline of a bike plan in UA that came about around 2001 or so during the transportation planning phase of the UA Master Plan. I have verification that some of these plans exist so I’m working to develop a nicely packaged version of this that will hopefully inspire even more families to get out and pedal instead.

A component of this will be a project that I want to propose building a bicycle boulevard that connects UA to Marble Cliff to Grandview to Downtown Columbus. Are you in? Let’s get to work on it then!

Columbus Projects

• Casino Free Columbus

Contrary to what some of the groups out there would have you believe our organization (http://cfcolumbus.com) is opposed to any casino in Columbus. We are of the opinion that casino’s are exploitative and that we, as a community, should be looking at innovation to solve our problems instead of exploitation. We aren’t taking a particular stand on the amendment to move the casino location because for us it really is about the fact that we don’t want a casino at all. This isn’t a NIMBY issue for us. If you agree then please show your support on the website or at the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/?act=24621824#/casinofreecolumbus.

• Our Optimal Health

This is another website project that I’m working on and hope to at least do a soft-launch of in the near future. For the time being there isn’t much that I can ask you for in terms of outside help but just be aware that it will eventually surface and you’ll be invited to give feedback.

• Columbus Art of Hosting Community of Practice

Columbus has a rapidly growing community of practice that is growing the use of hosting techniques at an exponential rate. We’re all thinking about good ways to capture this story and this is something at the front of my mind. With any project that just feels colossal it is often beneficial to get feedback from people who are outside of the process. Any takers?

Writing Projects

• Social Knowledge: Using Social Media to Know What You Know

I’ve gone through a review round with this and am awaiting the latest revisions from the editors. The book should publish later this year (2010) as I believe we are still on track for that but we’ll see. If you’d like to get a sneak peak so as to give me some constructive criticism let me know.

• This Week Upper Arlington

As you will have noticed I picked up another freelance gig writing editorials for This Week Upper Arlington. Is there a community story that you feel needs some focus? I’ve got 5000 characters a month to tell it in.

• WOSU 820

I’m happy to say that I’m still on the air about once a month or so. Now, that doesn’t mean that Columbus is happy about that. As with my This Week UA articles I’ve come to find the truth in an old reporter friend of mine who used to say, “If you aren’t pissing off everyone then you aren’t doing it right.” Cheers to me I suppose! 500 words isn’t much but it’s the three minutes of airtime I get. Do you have a story you think I’d be interested in?

• Capital City Radio

I’ve been set loose on the Capital City Radio blog (http://capitalcityradio.org/) as another outlet for my unique musical tastes. Capital City Radio would like to focus more on local musicians and I’d be glad to help out with that if you have someone to send my way. Let me know if you’ve got some tunes online that we can link up!

Speaking Engagements

• OSU Digital Media in a Social World Conference, Mendenhall Lab Columbus, OH Presentation “Bridging the Gap Between Offline Engagement and Online Social Networking” February 20, 2010

What strategies are there for bridging the gap between traditional offline engagement and using social media and online collaboration tools? Using local examples of success and failure I will show that while the face-to-face meeting is still king, digital media is making those meetings much more productive than ever before.

• Flagler College Communications Week Presenter, St. Augustine, FL March 25, 2010

I don’t have all of the information yet as to who all I’ll be addressing at this talk but I know I’ll be speaking to a classroom of students as a part of this which will surely be about taking advantage of having your own keys to mass communication. Let’s see if I can inspire them to do something with those keys!

• Columbus State Community College Communications Conference, Columbus, OH May 1, 2010

How do you open your own doors of opportunity? Would you like to make your passion your career? Let me show you how by using social media and new technologies as a way of launching brand YOU. In this session you’ll learn best practices for expanding your online outreach and landing those all important face‐to‐face meetings with potential clients and employers.

Where to find me…

Of course I’m always accessible via my blogs at ElephantsOnBicycles.com and Andrew-Miller.com as well as at Twitter.com/Digitalocracy and other points in-between.

There are any number of online, pre-made, free-to-use software options. From the big ones like Youtube and Twitter to the more obscure resources like Brightkite and Vocalo you can create  content with ease and share it as is necessary.

The problem with all of these thousands of options is figuring out what will work best for your application, or even just narrowing down what exists that will fit your needs.

I don’t want to make it my life’s work to list every social media application or collaboration tool available online so I won’t; instead I’ll give you some tips on how I develop my strategy around these sorts of things. Then you’ll be ready to do some Googling to find your way to the perfect application.

Need: I am looking for a way to spread my message to as broad of an audience as possible.

Response: Use the most popular of the current social media sites with a website or blog as a “home base” for my central messaging.

Example: Twitter is extraordinarily popular right now so growing a large following on Twitter allows for an opportunity to really broadcast your message. I may combine that with Facebook and then tie everything back to a more in-depth static website. However, there are so many social networks that have more focused followings that you may find you receive better response by focusing on those niche sites than you will get from broadcasting. In that case Google around for more focused Ning sites.

Need: I am looking for a way to build and share multimedia content across my social networking platforms and on my “home base” site.

Response: Find an application that allows you easy sharing and mostly gets out of the way when you embed it in other sites.

Example: Vimeo for video is very easy to use, flexible and looks extremely nice when embedded while Youtube currently has advertising that can make content feel a little cluttered. I like the clean interface because it fits in with the image I like to portray – non commercial and minimalist. However, the trade off is that Youtube works on more devices so you have to determine who your audience is.

Need: I want to collaborate with friends using online project documents.

Response: If it is a small group and everyone is willing to (or already has) access to a Google account then Google Docs is pretty much a no-brainer.

Example: I’ve got to pull together an event for a product launch and I need my co-conspirators to make sure the check list of to-do’s is up to date and getting done. I might setup either a Google Document or Spreadsheet and give access to everyone. However, if I want to invite broader community involvement in the planning I might embed access to that document in a blog. For that though I’d probably be even better off just utilizing a wiki page to do the documentation as it is easier to review and access for a large audience.

What are your strategies for using online social media applications and collaboration tools? Are you having trouble synthesizing a strategy that works for you? If you are then contact Andrew Miller Consulting and let us customize a strategy for you!