Thursday, May 01, 2008

Blog mob

Sean Stannard Stockton is organizing a team of bloggers to cover the Council on Foundations' upcoming conference. I think this is a great idea - well done, Sean.

It is a great example of crowdsourcing coverage, and I am particularly impressed that a blogger made this happen on his own. Given that COF only allowed bloggers for the first time in 2007 this is a good step forward. It all fits in with my ongoing interest in the changes in media - which I will indulge with a side trip to Newseum while I'm in DC. One thing about Newseum that I've started using from afar is its daily feed of newspaper front pages - a great way to scan headlines from hundreds of daily papers. Might there be an engineer out there interested in creating similar mashup coverage of philanthropic announcements? It would be like the Chronicle of Philanthropy's grant pages on web 2.0 steroids. (Sidebar - this week's Chronicle has interesting coverage of foundations' approaches to technology and communications (subscription required) and my former colleague Amy Luckey will be part of a conference session on this topic.)

The Blog Team gives us all one place to go for "coverage" of many sessions, from many perspectives. It is also an opportunity for those at the conference and those who miss it to participate in a conversation about the content. I'm assuming there will be a COF2008 tag so we can all follow the posts on del.ici.ous and COF has also put up a Facebook page. The next media uptakes will be video streaming, podcasts, and public access to conference materials - anyone know COF's plans regarding these tools? If there is video to be had we'll get it on the Giving Channel.

I will be blogging about the conference as well and posting those notes here, on SSIR and on Huffington Post. I'm participating in a Jewish Funders Network workshop called iJew on the Sunday before the Council conference, and will offer some thoughts on that full seminar and my panel on "measuring success." Here is the panel description:
"Can success in funding Jewish identity be measured, and should it be? How can we know if we are making a difference and achieving success? What does success look like? Among the issues the panel will address: long-term tracking, evaluating attitude verses behavior, questions to ask your grantees, and cost/benefit analysis. Hear from a variety of panelists who struggle with these questions as they develop high-impact funding strategies."
The panel is focused on Jewish identity but the questions about measurement are much broader - what matters? what can be measured? are the two one and the same or even in the same ballpark?


1 comment:

peter.panepento said...

Hi Lucy:

Sean's blogging effort should be very interesting. It is quite a feat to pull together that many people and it should provide for some lively coverage.

I wanted to let your readers know that The Chronicle of Philanthropy is planning to live blog the event, as well, for the first time. We'll have about a half-dozen reporters on hand to cover news, notes, and impressions at the conference.