In a time when the limits and boundaries in between us vaporize in a constant conversation and connectivety carried and enabled by the social web, and geographic dependency for “being in the flow” is equal to have “access to the cloud”, wherever may be, maybe it’s time to challenge the old presumption of “Think Global, Act Local”. The time you go flowing into the streams online, by definition you are “global” wherever there is a Web Window.
Still, the offline “meat-world” aspect of knowledge and attitude transformation, in contrast to “virtual-world” in one dimension, specifically, should not be underestimated. Where there is no or little motivation to “get it” – there is one thing unparallelled – the face to face, spirit to spirit inspiration. With the power of replacing fear and prejudice with joy and curiosity.
With this insight in the core, and with a spirit to in the end create a flow where we educate-the-educators-who-educate-the-educators as my earlier triplet of articles on Global Digital Participation landed in, breathing the same message with different aspects, a truly “glocal” initiative will be introduced next week for real, offline.
Online, it’s already there, for a week or so.
Hereby introducing.
The Social Web Guide.
In short, it aims to be developed in five steps, creating global waves of understanding and engagement, beginning with a vibrant locality of Norrköping.
It’s a collaboration in between the local chapter Social Media Club Östergötland and the local district of the people’s education institution Sensus – Sensus Östergötland-Norra Småland (you can read about Sensus in general/in English here), in a joint venture to create and facilitate learning processes of the social web.
Three web spots:
- On http://socweb.info
- On Facebook – http://on.fb.me/socwebinfo
- On Twitter – http://twitter.com/socwebinfo
And a fourth – signifying the way to get leverage in the first phase:
- On the newly founded crowdfunding platform Funded By Me – http://bit.ly/socwebinfo-fundedbyme
In short, what we try to accomplish,
- Run a pilot program of courses aimed at educating small business owners with low web presence and long-term unemployed as target groups during spring 2011 – planned are classes on Facebook, WordPress.com, Twitter and “Media on the Net” (images, video, audio, docs)
- In parallel with these classes, the study material that will be produced for the learning will be creative-commons shared, with the publishing of Social Web Guides on the dedicated web
- When these guides have been developed, tried and tested on the pilot classes during the spring, in the next step we plan to educate educational leaders in other municipalities in Östergötland during the Fall of 2011, in Finspång, Mjölby, Motala and Linköping, where the same classes will be offered
- Beyond this, with greater funding, we plan to transfer the model to be implemented in as many districts in Sweden as possible, with local collaborations with other Sensus departments across the country
- And along the line – with the web hub in the middle of the process – we aim to develop a full-fledged, globally accessible learning resource finding its spirit and inspiration from Wikibooks, the Wikimedia Foundation project on producing textbooks for global learning, paired with a vibrant virtual community sharing knowledge and experiences in the learning missions
Yes, we aim to create a multi-translated Social Web Guide for global learning on Social Software/Media/Web!
Meeting the core of the Social Media Club mission – to promote media literacy and sharing best practices in a global learning process.
But we start with a local meetup Monday, April 4, at Sensus Norrköping, co-hosted by Social Media Club Östergötland – see the monthly update/newsletter from SMC Östergötland, in Swedish, here.
A formal part of the national campaign “Digital Delaktighet” – Digital Participation
Next week, the national campaign on Digital Participation @digidel2013 / http://digidel.se that was prequelled with a sign for a call to action in December, launches in a bigger format next week, April 5. SMC Östergötland and Sensus are formal partners of the campaign, together with me as an “Eldsjäl” (in Swedish, literally, “fire spirit”, or driving spirit), one of three pioneering Eldsjälar on stage, together with Anders Sporring and newly joined Pernilla Näsfors – all three board members of the interim board of Social Media Club – Chapter Support Association – Sweden as well! And in the office of the campaign, in the management, we also have another newly recruited board member of SMC CSA Sweden – Linda Sandberg. So all is set to have the missions leveraged with these collaborations!
Your help is needed!
And yes, you can contribute and help out, as an individual, organization or company. Go check the crowdfunding platform on http://bit.ly/socwebinfo-fundedbyme-en (Google Translated – and talking about translation, we need translators too, of course 🙂 !
We’re all getting better when everyone’s included.
What do you want to do to make it happen?
[image credits: http://socweb.info & http://digidel.se]