Wanna walk the talk? Join our social media team

An ad hoc discussion group at the 2009 Sharefair in Rome

I have been preaching good social media practices for nonprofit organisations for quite a while. Now I was offered the chance to “walk my talk”, a chance to I also want to extend to you “out there”.

Lemme explain.

In October this year, there will be an event, dubbed “AgKnowledge Africa”. It is participatory conference, a sharefair. Hundreds of attendees will not just ‘attend’, but actively contribute in show-casing, sharing, teaching and learning ways in which African agricultural and rural knowledge is created, shared, communicated, and put to use.

I have been challenged to coordinate the social media team, a team at the heart of this sharefair. These loosely-knit-together bunch of volunteers will use social media:

to advocate the causes of the event
to experiment with new ways to integrate off-site participants (not everyone can afford to travel to Ethiopia) into the on-site discussions and fora
to report live from the event, and propagate its content
to reflect on the process how to organise a social media team, and social reporting team for similar events, and to condense it into a reference document
to explore the limits of the impossible, the dark edge of space, where new technologies and tools fade into the ‘nearly impossible’.
to have fun

All volunteers will be either onsite or offsite, their business coordinated via discussion groups and wiki’s. Social media enthusiasts or wannabe enthusiasts all contributing in the preparation of the sharefair, and during the happening itself.

And We Want You! Walk your talk too, and join our volunteering team.

Read more about it in my guestpost on the ICT-KM blog.

Picture courtesy Gauri Salokhe