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LIVE: Carnegie Mellon Alumni Panel – Social Media for Change

30 October 2009 BY Haris Krijestorac and Manolis Kounelakis 602 Comments

Today the Heinz College of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting an Alumni Panel entitled Social Media for Change – A conversation about its impact on business, policy and culture.

The exponential web team will be covering this event with our live notes and streaming photos, which can both be found below.

Live Notes

Courtesy of Haris Krijestorac

Panelists -
Live
Cara Weiser Keithley, MAM 2004, Marketing and Communications Strategist and Gov 2.0 Practitioner, carakeithley.com
Stacey Monk, MAM 2000, CEO and Co-Founder, Epic Change
Darren Tome, MISM 2005, Technical Product Manager, Local Integrated Media, NBC Universal

Online
Nathaniel McNamara, SocialFeet
Glenn Pasewicz, MSPPM 1993, Public Policy Analyst, Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Darren Tome

NBC):
Target 24-44 year olds who don’t just ‘live’ in a city, but go out and experience it!
e.g., nbcnewyork.com
New social features:
So My City – Sound Off: Like a twitter for a city.
Mood of the City: Crowd-source emotion of a city. How does a story/gallery/video make you feel? There are some issues – some issues will have views that are polarized. Sometimes NBC needs to shut it down.
Overall, these social features have significantly increased the attention towards

Stacey Monk

(Founder, Epic Change)
Their goal is to amplify visibility and impact of people who are creating change in their own communities.
Company started with no money! Took part in America’s Giving Challenge by the Case Foundation. Had to work hard, reach out to every social media for change venue possible.

#tweetsgiving – share what you are thankful for. Number 1 trending topic around thanksgiving! Great example of how a small company can make a big impact through the power of the Internet. Getting ready for Tweetsgiving 2009!

Challenge of cross-culture online collaboration. It’s hard to run a democratically organized online social media event, because there are different levels of internet access around the world. Tanzanian school boy @gideon_gidori was helped find his voice through twitter!

Glenn Pasewicz

(Pennsylvania House of Representatives)
Most of his work has been in the public health sphere. Does ‘systems projects’.
House and senate have facebook pages and twitter accounts, but in the day-to-day work they are not part of what they do.
Has set up wikis for collaboration, but it is not catching on.
Why is social media not used? One thing is the generational gap. Furthermore, legislature is not a fast, real-time thing. Instead, it is more of a process. Therefore the means of communications related to it mirror this process, and communication is done largely internally and through emails and face-to-face.

Cara Keithley

(Social Media Evangelist, works for State government, professor at Franklin University)
Will discuss how to harness social media to internally foster change in higher education and government.
Both government and higher education needs leaders and innovators to help them adapt to changes of social media.
If you want to change an organization, you don’t need “permission” – you need to do your research and share your opinion intelligently. Focus on the organization’s strategic goals.
Social Media allows people to be more ‘discriminate shoppers’ when it comes to looking for a University or school. Therefore schools should join the conversation, engage potential students, answer their questions.
She claims she has identified many opportunities and fostered relationships through social media.
Tools are transient – don’t focus on them! Instead, focus on the innovations that need to take place.
(Note: all slides are on SlideShare)

Nathanial McNamara

(SocialFeet)
Social Media traffic going up 20% per month for the top 25 sites in the U.S.
It won’t just be facebook and twitter, but the overall landscape will change.
Spoke about ‘activity screen’ interfaces.

Comments from panelists on measurement of social media results:
At NBC, users are tracked throughout the entire sessions. Not just click through and page views, but resulting actions.
Measurements for a social media movement can be different than for a website. See how many mentions, who mentions you. How the people you’re working for/with respond will surely be noticed.
“Measurements can tell you whatever you want, and you can make them say whatever you want” – You’ll know if it’s working!

Live Photos

Courtesy of Manolis Kounelakis

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