My friend Dawn over at This Woman’s Work has just posted up an article about how she is using WordPress in the most unusual of ways – as a presentation package.

Sure, conceptually every website we create is a presentation; however, Dawn has taken it one step further and actually created a presentation platform out of some tweaks to a solid, low key WordPress theme (here’s the presentation). Think Powerpoint with a more useful type of overhead.

I’ve used WordPress for a wide variety of website formats and I’ve got more ideas in the works but what Dawn’s presentation idea has done for me is to open my mind up to even more possibilities. All I can ask is that you go and check out her site right now and learn more about what she created by clicking here.

What innovative ways are you repurposing technologies? Have you asked your staff or your supporters how they are actually using the tools you’ve provided them? If not then now is the time to have that conversation.

Contact Andrew Miller Consulting for a free brainstorming session to discuss these possibilities and more.

I want to thank Helene Blowers for sharing this link from her website Library Bytes. In this case Helene is my new media information broker.

Ms. Boyd discusses how we are living in information streams now and how this changes the way we interact in society. I found her following points most revolutionary:

• We are no longer looking at information as a destination.
• The “Law of 2 Feet” is now culturally pervasive.
• The internet is not inherently democratizing.
• Current media consumption has the same risk as over-consumption of fatty or sweet foods; our minds desire “junk food media” more than “health food media”.
• The business model of a restaurant or bar is essentially what we need to monetize online socialization.

If you would rather read the paper than watch the talk you can find it here: “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information Through Social Media”

Last week I had the opportunity to speak to a few groups of people about social media. What I found however was that I talked a lot more about community than I did specifically about social media.

I like that because I see social media as just one other way to develop, build and grow community; and, I look to community as the producer of innovation.

Community produces innovation

When I consider a healthy community I think of a diverse group of people bound together by one (or many) commonalities. In regards to the work I do at the State of Ohio the commonality is related to IT procurement, at least within the group I am working with.

Many of the staff have commonalities beyond just that but it is the work around IT procurement that pulls them together. When the group sits down as equals, as a community, they manage to brainstorm really innovative ideas to the problems facing the State in this current economy. Being a part of this, even just witnessing it, is really spectacular.

This week I witnessed many innovative ideas bubble to the top thanks to this very process. (I would tell you more but you’ll have to wait until the ideas are farther along and can be released into the wild.)

Why then do we so often choose to build frameworks that remove this equality, this community?

When an organization chooses to strictly hold a command and control hierarchy they have effectively chosen to forgo innovation.

Innovation is free

The funny thing about innovation is that it rarely happens in a vacuum. The most useful innovation comes when groups of people who share a common experience and mission are empowered to solve their own problems and determine their own mission. Simply by empowering groups you invite innovation to find you freely, you just have to be brave enough to let it happen.

So I want to ask you:

Is your organization brave enough to invite innovation? Are you brave enough to be an equal member of an innovative community?