Using new media technologies to help build stronger real-world communities
“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”
– Frederick Buechner
Belonging to a community in a connected age affords us additional options to develop ourselves and to affect others. We can actively participate in a wider range of groups than ever before, spanning all types of interests. They may have geographically dispersed memberships, yet we can participate in them irrespective of time zones and distances. New communications and digital media services have profoundly transformed how we meet and interact with others and in turn, how we spend our time and fulfill ourselves.
Over the last few years, there has been an explosion in new online services that help us form and organize communities. The noted author and futurist Howard Rheingold describes the evolution and impact of these “technologies of cooperation”, including mobile phones, SMS, voice over IP, instant messaging, e-mail, blogging, wikis, shared calendars, mobile blogging, social networks, social bookmarking, Internet relay chat (IRC), RSS feeds, photosharing, online videos, multiplayer online games, virtual worlds like Second Life, and so on. These communications technologies make it easier for us to organize into groups, to produce and to consume information, and to take action. In a continuous give-and-take where we actively publish and share our thoughts, opinions, expertise, bookmarks, photos, and so on, we participate, contribute and enhance the groups we belong to, touching those we know as well as those we don’t.
As existing communities become aware and familiar with new digital communications and media technologies, they will learn how to attract, recruit and build closer ties with members in other locations. Such technologies allow links and bridges between people to be created more quickly and allow for a more efficient spread of information, knowledge, creativity, motivation and a sense of purpose between members.
It is my hope that by attending the We Media conference, I will learn more about the implications of new media technologies on communities, about how to build stronger groups and about how to get “from here to there,” in other words, how to evangelize organizations and corporations in the use of new digital media. I believe that communities thrive through the passion and shared interest of their members, and I would like to learn from case studies and conference participants, new effective strategies and applications that help foster these interests.
Alex de Carvalho
President, Social Object
Co-Author, Refresh Miami
Blogger, www.tapio.com
