Speakers in C-U: March 23–29

You live near a major university and a community college. There are smart people that come here every week to talk to the general public about interesting topics. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that’s the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have time.

If you have a community event, speaker, or film event that you’d like to see featured on Listen Up!, send the event information to joelgillespie [at] smilepolitely [dot] com by Friday the week prior to the event. Listen Up! runs on Mondays.

WHAT: “Nanohour Seminar,” by Sara Parker and Fikile Brushett

WHEN: Wednesday, March 25 @ 3 p.m.

WHERE: Room 3269, Beckman Institute

A special spring break bonus presentation from two engineering graduate students. Ms. Parker will speak on “Direct-Write Assembly of 3D Microperiodic Hydrogel Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering Applications” and Mr. Brushett will tackle “Development & Characterization of Novel Cathode Catalysts for Fuel Cells.” Pretty heady stuff, but hey, if you’re stuck on campus over the break, why not hang out with some smart people for an hour? Or a “Nanohour,” which appears on the calendar to occupy the same time as a regular hour, but by strict definition should be one-billionth of an hour, or 0.0000036 of a second. It’s probably just a clever name for the seminar, though. Don’t be so literal.

WHAT: “Social Media, the News … and Nonprofits,” by Gordon Mayer, Community Media Workshop

WHEN: Friday, March 27 at 5:30 p.m.

WHERE: Wagner Education Center, School of Labor & Employment Relations (504 East Armory Avenue, Champaign)

From the announcement: “If the last time you read a newspaper was this morning, you
are in a shrinking minority. On the other hand, if your nonprofit has recently discussed a Facebook page, blog, revised Web site, or other enlarged online presence, welcome to the crowd.”

Mr. Mayer will deliver a short talk, followed by refreshments and networking. There are rumors that beer may be involved. Here’s a brief interview with Mr. Mayer:

Smile Politely: Is this event part of the Face & Voice of Labor conference?

Gordon Mayer: Well, sort of. I was invited to help train on how unions can develop and deliver messages that engage their audiences at Face & Voice of Labor and asked if it would be OK to add on the reception. The conference has been postponed until June 26-28, & we’ll be back to participate in that. The folks at the School of Labor Education were gracious enough to agree to host our reception Friday evening after their workshop for the day was to end, and even though the event has been postponed they are still hosting us. 

Also, we had a few conversations with other local folks who have been very helpful and enthusiastic:

• Danielle Chynoweth of the IndyMedia Center is co-sponsoring and hosting a pass-the-hat training Saturday morning in their space (she and I had met breifly at the media reform conference in Minneapolis and she has been super helpful, hopefully we will be collaborating some more after this)
• CMW is a member of Community Shares, and their office helped spread the word
• Mike Doyle from the university Y and others including Joan Dixon from the local community foundation were also helpful in spreading the word and welcoming me to come down 

Basically, since I was coming to Champaign to do the training it seemed like a no brainer to try to meet with some local nonprofit communicators and learn more about what’s going on so close by, even if it’s not top of mind.

GM: Yes. This is pretty much what we do! Community Media Workshop is celebrating its 20^th anniversary of working to diversify the voices in the news and public debates and in recent years we’ve been doing more of our work outside of Chicago. We offer communications coaching and training for nonprofits as well as connecting journalists to the communities they serve and about 2,000 nonprofit volunteers and staff access our services each year.

On the coasts, there are more nonprofits with missions similar to ours but there are few or no nonprofits with a mission to strengthen communities’ abilities to communicate in the heartland. Especially smaller nonprofits, say with budgets under $750,000, need to do most of their communications work themselves, and they need hands-on and pragmatic tips to help them plan and implement communications efforts that work.

Last week we did a pro bono workshop and consulting with Chicago Workers Collaborative and Arab-Jewish Partnership, had a free video brown bag discussion at which Bookworm Angels, a group that donates books to schools in lower income communities, presented, and organized a low-cost workshop on effective writing. We worked with small arts organizations at a mini conference sponsored by University of Chicago on the South Side and with a group of volunteers from the Advocate medical system. Groups that participated in last week’s sessions included Protestants for the Common Good, Big Picture High School, Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, Arab American Action Network. 

As part of our efforts to do more work outside of Chicago, we’ve also been funded for about a year and half to do similar work across the state of Michigan, so we’ve worked with many groups in Battle Creek, Flint, and Detroit, to name a few. 

Spokesperson and strategy workshops are still probably the most requested trainings we offer. But social media is right up there. Until a few years ago we were known as the go-to organization for training on how to speak to the media — which we’re not too thrilled about, since we actually offer a whole range of communications coaching and training. It also turns out that pitching is a lot less fun than the kinds of storytelling we can work with nonprofits on now with the advent of inexpensive online techniques. So we’re really blessed by having social media as a whole new thing to learn and teach about!

GM: First, everyone is figuring this stuff out as they go along, so the only real mistake is not making any, by not trying it out! But more specifically, here’s two:

1. Social networks require a lot of time to screw around and try things — sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to get it the way you want — and it requires a leap of faith that all the time you spend doing it is going to have some return. I have a theory — totally unsupported by evidence, BTW — that social media was developed largely by and for corporate folks who spend more time goofing off in their cubicles than by and for nonprofit folks who rush around to get all their work done. The former were able to invest work time in learning to use the new toys and tools, whereas nonprofit folks want to know exactly what they’re going to get out of an activity before they invest a huge amount of time in it. Sort of like video games — reading the rules is not a good way to know how to play or if it’s going to be fun; you have to play it. So I think a lot of times folks at small organizations hold back because they are so busy they do not want to spend time just messing with a new toy. But we really do believe that you can have fun and get results by building your network online.
2. The other is to really understand how ingrained in social networking is the idea of reciprocity. I was speaking with a friend today, Jessica Halem, a comedian, who uses her networks to get folks to vote for her in competitions, spread the word about gigs, etc. etc. and she made a great point about why she loves Twitter — “they’re a hard core supportive audience,” she said. Folks who get social media are incredibly scrupulous about social capital — do something nice for them and they are right back at you. Say, if I post something about your blog, you might want to come over and comment back at mine. (I’m always half-pleased & half frustrated when I blog about someone and get an email from them saying thank you. Comment on the blog! That helps build my traffic and raise my authority on technorati and all kinds of good things.) 

GM: On social media and news, you probably know there has been a huge amount of discussion brewing on what will be happening to local news in the near future — with the Chicago Sun-Times recently delisted from the New York Stock Excahnge and the Chicago Tribune bankrupt, plus papers on the West Coast and Denver closing or teetering on the edge, Detroit easing off home delivery — the Workshop is currently undertaking a report on the future of local news and I expect we’ll share a little bit of that Friday night, too. 

But I’m really excited to come down to Champaign. I’m hoping to learn at least as much from folks down there as they do from me.