Your People Network and the Greater Good
- Posted December 16th, 2008
- Filed under: Community, Customer Service, Events/Presentation, How We Do It, Our Users are So Smart, Social Media, Using BatchBook
Once again, social media has collided my worlds in an interesting (and hopefully beneficial) way. Last week, I was lamenting on my personal Twitter account how many children and families were going to be impacted by all of the recent lay-offs across the country. My friend responded with a story about a single mom in Providence who didn’t have enough money to buy her hungry kids snacks. Within minutes another friend, T.J. Sondermann, had proposed that we use the next Providence Geeks meeting as a venue where we could collect food for our local food bank.
I contacted Jack Templin, who with Brian Jepson runs the monthly Providence Geeks meeting, and pitched the idea via email. Always supportive of local efforts, Jack and Brian were quickly on-board. BatchBlue president Pamela O’Hara then contacted a friend who works at the Rhode Island Food Bank and worked out the logistics of what was most needed and how we would collect it.
Jack requested an image for the newsletter he was sending out announcing the event, so Adam and I decided to have a little fun with it. We spent some time working up a couple quick logo ideas, then posted the results on Flickr and asked people on Twitter to vote for their favorites. We got a lot of great feedback and ended up combining two designs for the final logo used on the webpage announcing the first offical Geeks for Good project: tomorrow’s food drive at Providence Geeks. Thanks largely to social media and our people network, this was all organized in about three days.
Here are a few of the takeaways from this experience:
- Your social network is filled with people who are ready, willing and able to pitch in.
- Don’t be afraid to propose your ideas to folks who can help. They just might say yes!
- Try and do good where and when you can. The world can benefit for your unique skills and talents, whatever they may be.
We look forward to Providence Geeks tomorrow night, where our friends from Tizra are presenting and we’ll also be helping out some folks in need. Hope to see some of you there!
