Small World Labs Blog

Small World Labs headed to DC for Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits

smallworldlabs — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:36:04 -0700

It's a busy time for Small World Labs. Right after our successful showing at the Texas Nonprofit Summit, we're getting ready to head to Washington DC for @Blackbaud's BBCon to be held at the Gaylord Convention Center from Sep. 30-Oct. 2. Small World Labs is a proud bronze-level sponsor of the event and a Blackbaud partner, and we're looking forward to networking with other nonprofit professionals, attending sessions, and meeting new people in the nonprofit technology field.

If you're attending, please stop by and say hello! We'll be exhibiting in booth #207, and we're also excited to be hosting a happy hour on Monday October 1st, from 5:30-7:30, at the Public House. The Public House is located at 199 Fleet Street just a few steps away from the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center; see the attached flyer for the official invite. Come enjoy drinks and appetizers on us! For Twitter updates throughout the conference, follow us at @smallworldlabs.

See you at BBCon!

Back from the Texas Nonprofit Summit!

smallworldlabs — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:41:40 -0700

Last Thursday and Friday, the Small World Labs team enjoyed the exciting two-day Texas Nonprofit Summit, sponsored by Greenlights for Nonprofit Success and held at the AT&T Conference center right here in Austin. It was a great event filled with interesting speakers, including Dr. Tererai Trent, Dr. Peter Bishop, and our very own Michael Wilson. We were proud of the success of the Greenlights 501(c)ommunity, the network for nonprofit professionals, which we happily gave demonstrations of. Members of the SWL were also able to sneak out of the booth to attend sessions on fundraising and strategies for nonprofits. All in all, SWL was thrilled to be part of this event and we're looking forward to next year!

Announcing the mobile release of our community platform!

smallworldlabs — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:44:53 -0700

We are very excited to announce Mobile Optimization functionality as part of the Small World Labs Platform! Along with other platform updates and improvements, such as improved Site Messages formatting, soon you’ll be able to optimize your community for all major mobile devices. The mobile version of our platform is currently in development and testing stage, and the full release will be available next Wednesday September 5 at 3 pm CST.

As this functionality is new, we’ll be working with you and all of our clients to establish configuration best practices.

Stay tuned,
The Small World Labs Team

Catalyst Launches Community to Advance Women’s Equality at Gala Event Using Small World Labs Online Community Platform

Fernando Labastida — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 07:06:56 -0700

Catalyst, the leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business, launched their new Small World Labs–powered community at a two-day conference at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City attended by over 1,000 global business leaders and CEOs.

The new online community, MARC (ontheMARC.org), or Men Advocating Real Change, was introduced by Catalyst’s President and CEO Ilene H. Lang to over 2,000 event participants at Catalyst’s 50th Anniversary Gala Awards Dinner.

With ontheMARC.org, Catalyst has created a meeting place for men to connect with and educate other men about the importance of equality in the workplace. Catalyst recruited eight prominent bloggers from across the globe—including Michael Kimmel (USA), Lars Einar Engström (Sweden), and Amitabh Kumar (India), among others—to contribute articles about how men can empower one another and partner with women in achieving gender parity in the business world. Many prominent executives have already become members of the community, including Fortune 500 CEOs, chief diversity officers, and vice presidents.

Mike Otterman, Catalyst's
Social Media Manager

“With MARC, Catalyst has created a one-of-a-kind community of men devoted to fostering workplace equality,” said Mike Otterman, Catalyst’s Social Media Manager and one of the leaders of the MARC initiative. “It’s not enough for guys to simply believe in equality privately – they need to take a public stance. MARC is amplifying public role models on equality, one man at a time.”

Michael Wilson, Small World Labs CEO, said: “We’re excited to become part of this important initiative in advancing diversity in the workplace. By building a community of committed and passionate individuals we feel that more men will be encouraged to learn about how they can help this cause, and will recruit other men to join as well.”

To support the cause and join MARC, go to www.onthemarc.org and click “Join Now”.

About Catalyst, Inc.

Founded in 1962, Catalyst is the leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business. With offices in the United States, Canada, Europe, and India, and more than 500 preeminent corporations as members, Catalyst is the trusted resource for research, information, and advice about women at work. Catalyst annually honors exemplary organizational initiatives that promote women's advancement with the Catalyst Award.

About Small World Labs

Small World Labs was founded in 2005 as a social networking platform to help organizations increase online engagement with their supporters and members. Small World Labs takes a hands-on approach to community building, providing a robust social-networking architecture and best practices gained through years of experience, so that customers are best positioned to build a successful and vibrant community.

Upcoming Conferences - NTC, AFP, and PARN

smallworldlabs — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:58:17 -0700

We are doing a bit of travel and conference attending! In April, several members of Small World Labs will be at the following conferences:

NonProfit Technology Conference - by the NonProfit Technology Network – April 3-5 in San Francisco

International Conference on Fundraising - by the Association of Fundraising Professionals – April 1-3 in Vancouver

Fit for Purpose Professionals (we will be speaking) – by the Professional Association of Researchers Network – April 25 in London

If you are going to be there, let us know in the comments. We’d love to meet up. We'll also be live tweeting at @SmallWorldLabs and will be producing a summary of the highlights of what we hear and learn. If you want a copy, let us know below.

Small World Labs Featured in Communication World Article About Social Intranets

Fernando Labastida — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:00:09 -0700

Social networking software has come a long way. It wasn’t long ago that news sources reported on millions of dollars in lost productivity because employees were spending company time on social networks.

Now social networks are becoming an essential part of everyday life at many leading organizations. In the March Communication World article “Take It Inside – Seven steps to creating vibrant online collaborative communities,” author Kay Corry Aubrey outlines the productivity benefits of internal employee social networks, and lays out the strategies organizations must follow for their successful implementation.

We received an advanced copy of the article, which is available in print and will be available online shortly. In the meantime, here are the key takeaways for the article that was based on the IABC Research Foundation’s study on internal online collaboration:

While online collaborative communities can bring significant benefits to an organization, they can be quite challenging to launch and even more challenging to see through to success.
Many fail, in spite of large investments, usually due to the human element—they require attitudinal, behavioral and cultural changes.
The study research included five in-depth interviews with internationally known experts in online mass collaboration, followed by a multiday online bulletin board with 10 hands-on community managers of large-scale, employee-led online communities (we were included in this.

The “human element” mentioned in the article, as noted in the second bullet above, is often ignored during ill-fated attempts to implement internal collaborative communities with a technology-only solution. At Small World Labs we’ve learned that for communities to be successful, it’s necessary to implement:

An upfront strategy component (streamlined, so it doesn’t kill the project, but enough to make sure the community configuration is purpose driven), and
A community engagement program that is designed to ensure that all of the human factors are addressed to ensure users come, are engaged, and come back.

We’ve found that many organizations initially treat online communities as software only. We spend much of our time educating organizations on the importance of what you do with the software to build community and engagement.

The study also found that online collaborative communities within organizations will likely become more commonplace in the business world. Many forces are driving the trend, such as the globalization and virtualization of the workforce, the need for employees to share information and best practices, and the workforce’s growing familiarity and reliance on social media as a primary communication channel.

However, the process of setting up and running these communities requires careful planning so that they work with the organization’s unique culture and politics. Business communicators need to have a thorough understanding of how they can add online communities to their toolbox.

Additionally, community initiatives often face skepticism from management who fear that the loss of control when implementing internal communities might carry negative consequences.

Michael Wilson, Small World Labs’ CEO, who is quoted several times in the article, stated: “You need to let go of control at one level to empower people, but the benefits far outweigh the risks. With online communities you are able to connect a bigger set of people to a greater set of information in a discoverable, engaging, yet non-intrusive manner.”

Wilson also stated: “Just because you’ve moved employee communication online does not mean the old rules go out the door. Any sort of community needs to have guidelines on how people can communicate [and] what is acceptable.”

The article highlights a growing trend in the workplace that we, at Small World Labs, have experienced directly. We’ve seen the positive results of internally facing, as well as external communities.

We believe the steps to creating a vibrant online collaborative community as outlined in the article are spot on. These are the steps we take our customers through every day, and we’ve built a solid methodology based on these experiences.

Why Non-Profits and Associations Need To Lead a Tribe

Fernando Labastida — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:42:00 -0700

In his book “Tribes,” Seth Godin describes how tribes are defining the new economy. We have moved away from a world of mass advertising, where huge marketing budgets determined whether you owned a market or not. The plunging cost of technology has democratized the tools of communication. They are now within everybody’s reach. We can no longer force consumers to pay attention to us.

But we can host a purpose-driven tribe.

The Power of Tribes for Non-Profits and Associations

Non-profit organizations and membership associations who form tribes of like-minded supporters and constituents have tapped into a primordial human instinct that stretches back tens of thousands of years. Humans have a need to connect with each other, especially if they can connect around a common purpose and build a sort of “battlefield camaraderie.”

Connect

Years ago humans lived in small tribes organized around a single purpose: to survive. They hunted together, gathered together, and protected their tribe from saber tooth tigers. Tribalism is built into our genetic code.

Somewhere along the line, technology enabled us to build huge cities, work in large factories, and travel large distances. We left our farms, our communities, our tribes, and became part of civilization.

We lost the connection to our tribe.

Now that technology has leveled the playing field, we can again form tribes. But these are tribes that are not bound by geography; they are communities formed around mutual interest.

Non-profits and associations are tapping into the tremendous power of Internet technologies to host online tribes. They are providing their supporters and constituents a home base where they can connect with each other over what made them passionate about your organization in the first place.

Purpose

Humans need to feel they have a purpose. Non-profits and associations that are successful are adept at tapping into people’s need to contribute to a cause.

Tribes that form around non-profits and associations provide human connectivity while sharing a common cause. This provides an extra dimension that gives meaning to engagement.

Though engagement and networking by itself is fine (and people attend professional networking events or online professional communities all the time), adding purpose to their engagement fulfills this other primordial human need.

Battlefield camaraderie

Soldiers who have experienced intense battlefield experiences often forge stronger bonds with their comrades-in-arms than the family relationships and friendships they left at home. This feeling has also been experienced, albeit to a lesser extent, by participants in weekend retreats, intense 3-day long workshops, and overseas mission trips.

When non-profits or associations provide a community platform for their constituents and supporters, they are able to replicate this battlefield camaraderie. Members of your tribe connect with others who are passionate about your cause, and often accomplish more towards your cause than they would outside the tribe. They form partnerships, lead mini-initiatives, organize fund-raising events, and start groups. They work together towards your cause.

Battlefield camaraderie strengthens your tribes’ connection with each other, and perpetuates their commitment to your cause.

How to host your own tribe

How do you host your own tribe? Provide them with a venue, a home base on the internet where they can get together and share their experiences supporting your cause. This is best done by providing your supporters with an online community that is independent of public social networks that water down the tribe concept.

An online community that nurtures a thriving tribe needs several elements to be successful:

· A blogging platform so you and other top members can educate members about developments related to your cause

· Photo and video sharing to engage the visual and auditory senses around your cause

· Discussion forums to facilitate many-to-many communication, sharing and brainstorming

· An Activity Stream so members can catch up on the latest developments related to your cause in a central spot

· Micro-Community Group capabilities to allow your members to create sub-tribes around initiatives or interests that forward your cause and their particular piece of it

· File sharing to share valuable content around your cause

A Tribal Community is Different from Social Media

The popularity of Facebook (800 million + members as of the writing of this post) is often a stumbling block for organizations considering building their own community. Why re-invent the wheel when all our supporters and constituents are already on the most popular social network in the world?

There are several reasons:

1. Social Media is all about them. When we log in to Facebook, our first impulse is to check the little red numbers on the upper left hand corner to see who has messaged us or commented on our latest photos or status updates. We also want to see what everybody else is doing because we don’t want to miss out on anything. A private purpose-driven community, on the other hand, is all about your organization. Your cause won’t get lost in the endless stream of comments and shares about pets, politics and people.

2. Company pages don’t allow interaction with each other. Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn have created the concept of company pages. They are primarily broadcast vehicles that allow you to communicate a message out to your supporters. It’s inadequate for allowing your supporters to communicate or truly collaborate with each other about your cause. Even when they do, the conversation gets lost in the general activity stream. Cause-driven conversations are drowned out.

3. You don’t own your own data. Private cause-driven communities are great venues for brainstorming and creating ideas to help your cause. The ideas and content generated by forum posts, blog posts, videos and photo uploads, are yours to analyze and integrate into the rest of your organization’s web and CRM systems; this content allows you to improve your user’s experience. Facebook, on the other hand, owns all the information created by your supporters. This is a problem not only for you, but for your user’s privacy concerns as well.

Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn and Twitter are great vehicles for social marketing, but they won’t replace your own community as a tool for creating and nurturing a purpose-driven tribe.

The benefits of a tribe for your organization

By creating a community platform to host a tribe that’s passionate about your cause, you’re not only providing value to your tribe - you’re building value for your organization.

Community members are more loyal, more engaged and more committed to your cause.

A third party analyzed one of our client’s communities (at that client’s request) and found that the client’s community had the following impact:

· Increased new referrals by 78%

· Increased time spent on related web properties by 300% and

· Increased financial contributions by 437%

In other words, providing a platform for your tribe produces real results.

How would you see tribe concept working in your organization? Do you have multiple constituents (tribes)? Do you have a single tribe? How could you see them working together online?

Small World Labs Increasing Its Commitment to the UK Market

Fernando Labastida — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:13:32 -0700

London is one of the most important centers for non-profits and membership associations outside of the United States. It’s also the destination this week for Small World Labs’ Andy Jones, a native Londoner and our VP of New Business, in a trade mission organized by the City of Austin, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), and the Tech City Investment Organization (TCIO).

Small World Labs one of only a few companies selected

Small World Labs is one of a small group of companies selected to attend, and the only company focused on social networking platforms, non-profits and membership associations.

Andy will be joining representatives of eight other Austin companies, as well as Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, to tour the burgeoning Tech City technology hub and to forge relationships with potential partners.

Increased commitment to European non-profit market

But more importantly for Small World Labs, the trip underlines our increased commitment to the European market.

“The Austin trade mission to London England’s Tech City makes perfect sense, not only because of the affinities between Austin’s tech start-up community and Tech City’s growing status as a European technology hub, but because London is a major center for non-profit and member associations, our ideal target market,” said Jones.

The agenda for the trip includes introductions to the Tech City technology hub, networking with UK technology counterparts, and participation in workshops about establishing a business presence in the United Kingdom. The group will get a chance to hear from other U.S.-based companies who have successfully established themselves in the UK.

Chance to visit current customers, meet new customers

While there Andy will visit some of our current England-based clients, as well as to network and visit with others involved in the British non-profit sector.

The trip adds an additional benefit Andy can communicate to prospective customers. Small World Labs is increasing its commitment to servicing the growing needs of our expanding client base in Europe because of the support we’re receiving from UKTI and Tech City.

The UK non-profit market is ready for social networking

We have noticed an increased interest in the UK for our social networking platform. Non-profits and membership associations are starting to see the benefits of providing an online community environment for their supporters and members.
“The key to forging a deeper relationship with your constituents, supporters and members is community. When people

Andy Jones, VP of
New Business

who are passionate about your cause can come together, consume and comment on your content, and share their thoughts, ideas and concerns with each other, they become more loyal and dedicated to your cause,” said Michael Wilson, CEO of Small World Labs.

Look for more European activity in the near future

The UK trade mission trip is not our first visit to the UK. Andy, who grew up in the London borough of Hackney (near where Tech City is based), visits regularly. And it will also not be our last.

However, the context has changed for the better.

Austin and the borough of Hackney are signing a friendship agreement. The City of Austin, UKTI and Tech City are committed to strengthening the trans-Atlantic technology pipeline. Small World Labs, the only community platform focused on the non-profit sector, is strengthening its commitment to the British and European markets. This translates into a perfect scenario for Small World Labs to show its clients in the United Kingdom that great things are coming!

Want to read more? Check out the blog post on the Tech City UK site about this.

Small World Labs among Texas' leading digital companies heading to London’s Tech City

smallworldlabs — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:09:54 -0700

The Small World Labs team is in London as part of the Tech City Investment Organization (TCIO) and the British Consulate-General in Houston, in order to fuel two- way investment and further help nurture the UK’s creative industries.

Texas' leading digital companies heading to London’s Tech City

Meet Us at the Convio Nonprofit Conference

Michael Wilson — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:26:39 -0700

The Small World Labs team will be at the Convio Nonprofit Summit in Baltimore October 3-5. We are a Gold Sponsor and happy to be helping out with the conference. Over 2,000 social media, fundraising, and advocacy technologists will be attending. We’ll also be giving two presentations. Here are the summaries:

Building Communities that Work: Client Case Studies

Description:
Tue October 4th 1:15 PM - 2:30 pm | Small World Labs online (house) communities have helped nonprofits increase online engagement with their constituents by over 300%. Using client examples, we will take you through the process of 1) developing a community strategy, 2) implementing a community that integrates with Convio, internal processes, and social media campaigns, and 3) executing best practices activities that tie community engagement to organizational goals. Learn from the examples of others.

Presented By:
Michael Wilson, Small World Labs CEO, in conjunction with the following community managers: Molly Bower from American Heart Association, Melissa Bear from CaringBridge, and Dean Alban from Scottish Rite.

Learning Outcomes:
• How and why nonprofits are integrating an online community into their web presence
• What activities and techniques nonprofits are using to build online engagement via their online community and social media
• What specific results nonprofits have achieved with their online communities

Adding Process and Repeatability. Going from Heroes to Predictable Outcomes

Description:
Tue October 4th 1:15 PM - 2:30 pm | There are many ways for large and small organizations to “get things done”. Some rely on a few experienced “heroes” to drive things forward by the strength of their will and skill. Others rely on formal processes like Agile, PMI/PMP Project Mgmt, Capability Maturity Models (CMMI) or Six Sigma or GTD… though most of us have a hard time even learning about those models. Yet we have to move things forward, so we’ll share highlights from several systems, a few tips and tricks to start building higher quality, consistent, repeatable process and communications in local and remote teams.

Presented By:
Charlie N. Browning, Small World Labs Director of Community

Learning Outcomes:
• Learn summaries of some of the popular process and productivity philosophies
• Learn some of the tips and methods that we and others have used internally and with remote teams
• Learn to look for areas in your organization’s activity that can be automated, standardized, repurposed or simplified

We’ll also be leading a session in the Expert Lab on Tuesday, October 4 2:30-4:00pm.

Are you going? If so, let us know in the comments below as well as if there is anything you’re particularly hoping to do or learn while there.