Collaboration

This is the third in a series on online collaboration for grantmakers posts. In part one, we looked at determing the value of creating a collaboration community. The second part explored challenges in facilitating collaboration. This post discusses the importance of understanding your users and the user community.

This is part two of a series on online collaboration for grantmakers. In part one, we looked at determing the value of creating a collaboration community. In part three, we discuss the importance of understanding your users and the user community.

Forum One hosted a webinar on June 23 on online collaboration for philanthropic organizations. You can follow the one-hour archived session (or the slides on Slideshare) to get a nice slice of perspective from Amy Gipson of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Melissa Schoen of the California Healthcare Foundation.

This is part one of the a five part series on Collaboration for Funders. Part two talks about understanding the challenges.

It was refreshing to attend a web communications conference where the moderator of the first panel discussion wasn't someone like me: a member of generation X or Y with an English degree who can passionately argue on behalf of his favorite Twitter client, but can't program a lick. In this case, it was the decorated computer scientist Bill Wulf. 

When President Obama took the stage in Cairo, Egypt last year, millions tuned in to hear his approach for improved U.S.-Muslim relations.

As a relative newbie here at Forum One, I wasn't sure what to expect when as I headed to my very first "unconference." The event, Participation Camp, was organized by volunteers recently and sponsored, in part, by Forum One.

Ning, the leading free social media platform provider has recently lost not only its CEO, but also about 40 percent of its workforce. For its nearly 20 million monthly visitors, this means a rate increase.

I'm speaking this weekend at the Global Health & Innovation conference in New Haven, Conn. The event is sponsored by Unite for Sight, a dynamic young organization that has restored vision in nearly 32,000 people in developing countries. The audience will be a mix of students and professionals, many of whom are traveling from New York and D.C. like me.

While pulling my thoughts together, I asked myself, why should we create better online professional networks? I think there are at least five good reasons:

We've written previously about the Obama Administration's Open Government Directive. Among other things, the Directive has led to a proliferation of innovative "ideas sites" across the federal agencies.