Social Media

We are very glad to learn that Dorothy Parvaz is safe!

Her participation in a focus group that CityClub held to imagine new partnerships we could initiate with journalists to tell community stories was memorable. She spoke vibrantly, enthusiastically, creatively and warmly.  Her ideas inspired our work and we are very glad that she can continue to do so today.

On the Huffington Post site she speaks of her experience in Syria:

Have you had a chance to see the results of our 2010 Community Matters Campaign (CMC)? Throughout CMC we heard calls for strengthened trust in government, media, neighborhoods, and more.

A key piece of strengthening trust became very clear  -  people want to hear the positive stories of elected officials and others, not just the negative stories they feel like they hear all the time. This recent opinion article from David Brook and The New York Times does just that. We invite you to read David’s positive story of effective government action on the housing crisis within the messy realities and limitations of over-lapping barriers to housing for veterans.

But don’t stop there! Read the article and then join us on Monday, May 9^th  to get engaged with this issue! CityClub hosts an intimate conversation with Seattle native, General Peter W. Chiarelli, current Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army at the Washington Atheletic Club in Downtown Seattle. Find out directly from the General what is being done for the nearly 13% of Washingtonians that are veterans and bring your questions. Stay after the event and get connected with our Co-presenting partners to get involved and take action on a variety of veterans issues.  Register today and join us! 

 

Panelists from Left: Abdullahi Jama, Mike Fancher, Henk Campher, Tim Burgess, and host C.R. Douglas. 

 

Thank you to our speakers, guests, friends, and volunteers for partnering with us on the 2010 Community Matters Campaign on public trust. On Friday, April 22, 2011 we were pleased to release the CMC Final Report at a forum event that covered public trust topics including: media, government, business, and more. See more on public trust in the Puget Sound in the 2010 Community Matters Campaign Final Report.    

 

Washington News Council Reported: "Diane Douglas, executive director of CityClub, opened the program with a summary of CityClub's 'Community Matters Campaign' which this year focused on how much people trust government, police, neighborhoods, other individuals, and the media. 'In all areas, there is a call for greater trust,' she said...

 

...In the Q&A session, I noted that all the panelists had used the words transparency, accountability and openness as keys to trust in government, business, police and other institutions." -John Hamer (read full article here).  

 

A special thanks to all of our -

 

Co-presenting organizations:  Alliance for Education; Center for Communication & Civic Engagement, University of Washington; Journalism that Matters - Pacific Northwest; Knowledge as Power; Public Eye Northwest; Public Health - Seattle & King County; University of Washington Department of Communication and Washington Lawyers for Sustainability; and Washington News Council. 

 

Click here to see our live tweets from the event!

 

Video coming soon click here to Watch!

Did you know CityClub updates Twitter live from our programs?

If you're interested in a program but unable to attend, you can follow the conversation at CityClubLive - our Twitter feed dedicated to real-time information about what's being discussed by our panels. (Our other feed, SeattleCityClub, is where you'll find daily updates - and reminders of when we're live-tweeting from CityClubLive!)

Visit today to see our tweets from today's program, "Redesigning the Delivery of Care: A Conversation with Health Care CEOs".

Both The Seattle Channel and TVW were at today's program - so full video of the entire discussion will be available soon!

This guest blog post on the blog of the Case Foundation, "What is a nonprofit network builder?", has made the round in our office, and it's quite interesting. The post talks about a discussion among network builders for large national nonprofits, and lays out a basic list of what they do - and how they do it.

It's a great read for anyone in a nonprofit - but especially for those directly working with social networking within the nonprofit. While it only briefly touches on some of the topics the group discussed, it raises some great questions about the potential challenges of workplace social networking: How do you deal with pushback from legal or communications departments/staff? How do you manage being the voice/face of an organization? How do you manage expectations regarding social networking, when it's such an exciting new medium for many people?

Read the whole thing here, and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Well, I have to say, sometimes it's hard not knowing much about sports - especially when the first Year in Review prediction to come true is very much about sports!


On Friday at our Year in Review program, Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna predicted that UW football player Jake Locker would return for his senior year with the Huskies. In that moment, I had the opportunity to put that prediction out on our Twitter stream - which would enable me, now, to point that stream and say "You heard it here first, folks!" Instead, I tweeted this: "McKenna - by the latter part of 2010 we'll see actual economy growth, and something about sports? (Sorry, I know nothing about sports!)"

Ouch! Today, The Seattle Times reports it's true.

Technically, if you were at Year in Review or have seen the video, you did still hear it here first. With no help from our Twitter feed, alas! (Now, if that prediction has been about the Rat City Rollergirls, then we would have been in business!)

Stay tuned for more possible prediction fulfillment as 2010 progresses. In the meantime, we'll have video and more photos from Year in Review up soon!

- Sara @ CityClub

We recently moved our live-tweeting from events over to a new Twitter feed, @CityClubLive. We'd gotten some feedback that having event-tweets in our main feed could be a bit spammy, but we still wanted to make that kind of live feed available for people who were interested in the topic but unable to attend. Because of the potential spam factor, we understand that we may not have a ton of official followers over @CityClubLive - but we're curious to see how many folks are tuning into those tweets. Have you ever "watched" our @CityClubLive feed? Answer the insta-poll here!

Have ideas or tips on how we could improve our Twitter presence? Please leave them in the comments - we're all ears!

In other blog-housekeeping news, you may notice CityBlog has moved up in the world! As of today, blog posts will be featured on the front page of CityClub's website. Here's to putting our best foot forward!

Yes, the rumor is true: our Youth Violence program with Seattle Channel at Town Hall tonight is sold out. The interactivity of the event involves electronic voting machines - and there are only so many to go around.

However, not being in the live audience does not mean you can't participate. We've heard of several "viewing parties" - organizations getting youth together in a place where they can participate online.

All of the questions our host, C.R. Douglas, asks our live audience, will also be posed to online participants as well. This program is being broadcast live and online - meaning you can stream it real-time at www.SeattleChannel.org or on Cable 21.

This program is called "Seattle Speaks" for a reason. Your thought counts! We want to know what you think about youth violence in Seattle. The Seattle Channel can also take questions from online participants - check their website to find out how. ("Youth Violence" is on the front page of their website.) Please join us! (And, since it'll probably be raining, you can go home, snuggle up in your pajamas with a hot beverage, and still be engaged online!)

7:00 p.m. is our start time, and as always, we'll see what we can tweet over at @CityClubLive.

Considering the nature of Twitter - that it provides a way to be the most updated to-the-second source of information and is constantly changing - it can be a great place to watch the election returns roll in.

If you're not sure who to follow, we recommend checking out the Seattle News and Government&Politics listing's in The Big Blog's working list of Who's on Twitter in Seattle. If not Twitter - where will you be going for your election day information?

When we first started talking about using Twitter at CityClub, much of our conversation was about tweeting from events. We'd been brainstorming ideas about how to reach more people, how to extend program content and impact beyond those folks who could actually physically attend the program.

It was also a response to the common question of whether we accepted questions for panelists in advance, or just in absentia. With the technology for livestreaming not quite available to us just yet, Twitter seemed like a good option: we could tweet snippets and quotes from the programs, and if people following the stream had questions, we could try to sneak them into the audience question period.

As our group of followers grew, we realized via feedback from followers that the tweeting from events was a little too much - it was a bit spammy. "There's a limit to what you can say in a 140 character bursts," one user responded. And it's true. I was trying to catch everything - not only the question but all of the panelist responses. It's actually an extension of a difficulty I've always had - I think everything is important. In school, the most excruciating part of a paper for me was cutting parts out. I get long-winded.

We also realized that people were following our stream for different reasons - some want info about events, links to online video, etc. Others did want that live stream from events. We tried taking some of the Twitter-from-events content and doing a sort of liveblog, but weren't happy driving traffic away from Twitter. We started to suggest Twitter Snooze so that people who didn't want our event tweets could just turn us off temporarily instead of un-following us. 

Now, we're trying something new. During yesterday's "Education Series: Getting Ahead - Educating for Today's Job Market" program, we transmitted our event tweets from a new account: @CityClubLive. I peppered our original Twitter feed with just the occasional quote and a link to the new account. It has a handful of followers now (although because of our name I'm never quite sure if they think we are a rock club or a health club or civic engagement club).

Social networking is very new, and as it keeps shifting, we'll keep trying to adapt. We'd love to hear from you: How are you feeling about Twitter? In lieu of livestreaming video (we'll get there someday) how do you prefer to remotely participate? Is a liveblog a better option? Will you follow both CityClub Twitter accounts? Or will you only access it when the topic is of interest to you? If the live tweets are from a different account, do we still need to cut down on the amount of tweeting?

You tell us! Read more