Tag Archives: Social networks

Like many nonprofits, we are tentatively playing with social networks and other Web 2.0 tools.

Those of us who are comfortable with technology tend to dive right in to new tools like social networks, play around and learn as we go. We see possibilities, become enthusiastic and want to bring what we’ve learned to our “real-life” networks, whether that’s our family or where we work or some other group we belong to.

But the problem is that not everyone is so comfortable with using these technologies or learning them as they go. They need to understand the value before they begin, and that can be very difficult to communicate if you haven’t experienced it. In the nonprofit where I work, for years I heard about how much more effective we would be if everyone could communicate easily across offices dispersed worldwide, tap into one another’s expertise and learn from one another’s experiences. Of course, I saw how technology could help make this happen. But getting people to use the technology effectively was a challenge I did not foresee.

The Bamboo Project has an article on this subject, which I found helpful, especially the comments.