Resources for Social Networking

One of the things I really like about Folksy.com (the UK-based crafts marketplace) is the cool stuff they make to promote the site. Looking through their Flickr stream, there are plenty of other examples of them getting involved with the community of people who make and sell stuff through the site.

There's lots of inspiration there for us at School of Everything - and for any other startup that's trying to find playful ways to spread the word about a useful service.

An old observation of mine that seems to be becoming more and more significant - as anyone who has had to add their boss as a Facebook friend will be all too aware...

Here's the presentation I gave at the NCVO yesterday, now with added Zappa.

Excellent 300 page up to date report, much of it international comparisons including emerging markets, of a wide range of communications technologies. Not happy with the definition of Web 2.0 in the glossary, though.

Great 'world 1.0 -> world 2.0' post from Euan Semple. Best line:

"It is not about technology but about a shift in behaviours from a command and control mentality to an instigate and nurture one."

I've just had a very interesting e-mail exchange with Rowena Young at NESTA about social innovation and social technologies, and particularly the need to reach out beyond the normal early adopter communities into the much larger community of 'non-webbies'. In Rowena's words:

"We are concerned most with the application of innovation to social change and impact, so novelty gets tempered by what difference it's actually making."

Nice paper by Luke Razzell about Twitter, how it's being used and what it's really useful for. (Thanks Euan!)

great range of material covered

Good presentation; instructions for game right at the end

Here's an old post of mine about controlling conversations in web 2.0 projects. Key message: 'get out of the way'!

Nice piece by respected VC Fred Wilson on how the web is giving 'power to the people' and what this could mean for education.

In a representative democracy, I think people will cede authority to a leader if they think they won't lose their power. But in social media projects, they will only allow someone to lead them if their power will increase.

The more active and engaged the population becomes, or needs to become, the more the task of leading them becomes about enabling and serving, and not setting directions or crushing dissent. Those dissenting energies are still valuable energies, and the direction is chosen by the crowd.

Just stumbled on 8Notes, a UK-based social network for musicians. You can upload your own music, share and download sheet music, and talk to other musicians via a lively forum.

They have a good-sized collection of not very printable musician jokes too. When I was learning classical violin many, many moons ago it was always viola jokes - from a quick glance round it looks like nothing much has changed...

http://www.8notes.com/

I've been chatting to Pearl Blay, a beading craftswoman and teacher, about her passion for beads and how she uses the Web to pursue this.

http://schoolofeverything.com/blog/beading-gem-how-web-transforming-crafts

I've been blogging for a while now, and I now have four blogs:
http://sociablism.blogspot.com
http://sociability.org.uk
http://mindapples.org
http://schoolofeverything.com

So between that and Twitter I'm pretty busy online, and the prospect of posting lots of content here on my School of Everything Scrapbook felt a little daunting at first.