more thoughts on Web 2.0
With all the talk about Web 2.0 these days, web technology users in all walks of life are learning many of the same lesson. One of the most important of these is how important it is to let an organization’s mission drive its use of this technology rather than vice versa.
Corporate users simply are usually a bit out ahead of non-profits in their experience with the Web — they are both earlier-adopters of technology, but also ahead of nonprofits in what they are learning about being effective adopters, as well.
Anne van Dusen, my colleague at Congregational Resource Guide, just sent me a post from searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com — a blog for Chief Information Officers in business settings. Although it’s actually two years old, she sent it as a graphic reminder that nonprofits still need to learn in 2008 what corporate Web users were realizing already in 2006, that “the real … value” in Web 2.0 “lies in what the technology enables: better collaboration among users.”
It’s one thing to add Web 2.0 interactivity to an organization’s Web-presence. It’s another to “know how to … encourage the social interaction that is integral to the concept” of Web 2.0, by both attracting users and encouraging them to contribute content, and thus “to build intellectual capital.”
Here at Alban, for example, we’re currently experimenting with Ning, an inexpensive online site that allows virtually anyone to build a simple FaceBook-type social network that is either open to anyone or protected by login-procedures that allow users to decide who can and cannot take part in ongoing collaboration and conversation on a subject. For more about the possibilities, check out the comment on the NingBlog.
What we must not forget is that the point in going to the effort to learn how to use something like Ning is that our mission as a learning organization pushes us towards finding ever more effective ways not just to deliver information but also to encourage interaction among the very people who depend on Alban’s online presence to put them in touch with the best available resources for sustaining congregational vitality and leadership-excellence.
We hope you will join the conversation about the very best in online learning for the leaders of today’s and tomorrow’s congregations.
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