Gathering stories and measuring the impact of a online community

This is a something that I have used in the past to help with measuring the impact of a CoP which I picked up via KM4Dev

It was pretty successful and we got lots of little anecdotes back.   I’ll have to plan in some time to do it again.

This is what I sent out.  Well with a few amendments

Hello everyone, please keep on sending your short profiles to me; I’ve been getting nice feedback from people who are pleased to find out who other Communities of Practice members are.

It’s also been great for me to see what a diverse group we are (especially geographically) and to find out how you are using XXXX Communities experiences and info in your work.

Regards, XXXX

What is your name, organisation and title? e.g. .Joe Bloggs, Madeup International Inc., Resource Centre Manager

1. Where is your organisation based? e.g.West Midlands
2. What “brought” you to CoP facilitators CoP? e.g.  I found The XXXX Community when I was researching KM initiatives in international development organisations.
3. Has being a member of this community assisted you in any way? How? Do you have a brief story about how it did? e.g. This community has been a big help. Working as one of only a handful of folks concerned with KM in an organization, I value CoP Facilitator CoP because the community provides practical guidance and reassurance, and in some ways “virtual mentorship.”

Could Jackanory sell the story of Social Media?

Last week I attended the London leg of localgovcamp. You can find the tweets at #localgovcamp

And a big thank you goes out to Steve Dale, Ingrid Koehler Dave Briggs, Anke Holst, Hadley Beeman and Charlotte Hayes for the great organisation of the day.

Considering I’ve been talking about the concept of the unconference for probably 3 or 4 years it’s the first one I have attended.  And it’s a great experience.  It’s a pity most of them take place on a Saturday.

Throughout the day I heard some great stories of how local authorities are trying out social media and there are some great success stories out there.  One example from Sarah Lay at Derbyshire CC about the use of social media to promote and share the results of the election.  Here the link to the story.

There so many stories out there they just need to be shared to a wider audience.  We need to break the fear factor of social media Local Government.

Another great story was about the use of Twitter during the snow over the last couple of months.

Walsall used twitter to update the public when the trucks where going out and members of the public where suggestion ideas of where the gritting needed to go, especially after a water main burst in the early hours of the morning. Check out Dan Slee’s blog Twitter Gritter

With the Knowledge Hub project moving forward, check out Steve Dale’s video for more info.

One of the key aspects of the knowledge Hub is changing the knowledge ecology of local government. A really tough task!  But I believe that we can do it and the telling of stories should be at the heart of it.

So if you have a story about how you have used social media or social networking to help you in your work, I would be interested in hearing from you.

Ingrid Koehler has started the process off with her blog Crying out for examples

So if you do have examples please contact me or Ingrid and we will get the ball rolling.