Wigley and Associates » Presentations

Social Media: Engaging Democracy and Communities Online

Griff Wigley — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:36:29 +0000

Steve Clift, founder and Executive Director, E-Democracy.org has asked me to do a presentation tonight for a class he’s teaching at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs titled Social Media: Engaging Democracy and Communities Online.

He’s asked me to talk about my civic leadership blogging coaching, as well as my current citizen engagement consulting work. I plan to take the class on a web tour while I speak to them about both.

Civic leadership blogging

July, 2004: UK e-gov delegation visits Northfield
Feb, 2005: Trip to the UK
July, 2005: field trip to Northfield for the International Symposium on Local E-Democracy
Fall, 2005: Guide to Civic Leadership Blogging (U.K. edition) How to use blogs as an effective local leadership tool
Oct. 2008: UK CivicSurf booklet
Featured civic leadership bloggers

Citizen Engagement Online

Northfield.org (since 1994)

Blogosphere aggregator

Locally Grown Northfield (since 2006)

3,400 blog posts
40,700 comments

Webinar on social media use by local government (Nov. 2010)
Edina Citizen Engagement (since May, 2011)

Roundtable discussion on social media at the MASA/MASE 2011 spring conference

Griff Wigley — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:48:00 +0000

I hosted a roundtable discussion this morning at the MASA/MASE 2011 spring conference, The Art & Science of Leadership (PDF) at the Northland Inn in Brooklyn Park, MN.

Using social media for leadership: A discussion about how blogs, Twitter, YouTube and other social media technologies can be used to leverage one’s influence as a leader.

I got to meet some of the other MASA staff (besides Charlie!):

L to R: Jeanna Quinn, Charlie Kyte, Aimee Ranallo, Deb Larson

Minnesota Women in Marketing and Communications: Social networking panel

Griff Wigley — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:46:51 +0000

Last night I was part of a social networking panel at St. Kate’s that presented to the Seasoned Professionals special interest group for the Minnesota Women in Marketing and Communications (MWMC). Fellow Northfielder Elizabeth Child (on the right in right photo above) put the panel together.

I was joined by Lynsey Struthers, Interactive Strategist with The Lawlor Group, and Michael Wells, Digital Communications Manager at St. Catherine University. It turned out to be quite a fun evening. We didn’t do presentations at all (no PowerPoint!) but rather just engaged in conversation with a very smart audience who had lots of great questions.

Some of themes I tried to address in my comments can be traced back to these blog posts in the past year:

Hey WordPress fans: WordCamp comes to Minnesota next week

Griff Wigley — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:36:01 +0000

WordCamp Minneapolis-St. Paul is next Saturday, Nov. 13.

WordCamp is finally coming to Minnesota and will be hosted in the Twin Cities, Fall 2010! This interactive conference is your opportunity to share ideas and learn from the Pro’s. At WordCamp MSP, there is literally something for everyone: from first time bloggers to web developers, spend a few hours connecting with people who share your passion.

I signed up as an attendee ($30 for all day, including lunch). But since it’s an Unconference, I volunteered to be a WordCamp MSP speaker. I’m now presenting early in the morning and late in the day on:

Leadership blogging tour wraps up in Grand Rapids, MN

Griff Wigley — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:21:24 +0000

I finished my leadership blogging tour for Northern Community Internet on Friday with a presentation to a full-house of 30-40 people at the Grand Rapids Area Library, a very cool-looking library with a giant red chair outside. (Click any of the photo thumbnails to enlarge and the scroll through the images.)

Afterwards, I had lunch next door with the staff at KAXE, Northern Community Radio, and lucked out to be there for volunteer chef Charlie Lano’s catered home-made lunch. (That’s Charlie standing to the right of Maggie Montgomery, KAXE General Manager.)

A tip-of-the-blogger hat to Ross Williams, one of the planners/project managers for Northern Community Internet, who handled all the arrangements for my visit. (Photo is from the MN Voices UnConference, courtesy of Marc Osten, original here.)

Heading up north: presentations on leadership blogging

Griff Wigley — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:08:38 +0000

I’ll be in the northern Minnesota cities of Bemidji, Brainerd, and Grand Rapids later this week, doing presentations on leadership blogging for the Northern Community Internet, “a network of northern Minnesota communities using the internet to connect to our neighbors and with one another.” It’s a project of KAXE Northern Community Radio and funded by the Blandin Foundation. My invitation came from Ross Williams who I first met two years ago during an all-day visit to Blandin when the project was just being conceived.

My presentation is based on my 2005 U.K. Civic Leadership Blogging Guide (25-page PDF). Last fall, I collaborated with Gallomanor, colleagues in the U.K.. to produce an updated version of that, a 32-page booklet (PDF) called CivicSurf. It’s primarily oriented towards elected councilors but applicable for anyone in a leadership position.

If you’re looking for something that’ll give you a taste of what I’ll be covering in the presentation, the CivicSurf booklet would be your best bet.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a generic leadership blogging presentation, so I’m in the middle of updating it to include new examples from a variety of bloggers, many based here in Minnesota and a few from afar.

Video on civic leadership blogging premiers in the UK

Griff Wigley — Sat, 31 May 2008 04:54:10 +0000

The city of Northfield’s civic blogosphere got a boost in the summer of 2004 when a group of government leaders from the U.K. visited Northfield. It encouraged more local citizens and leaders to try blogging, and it helped me get the first of several contracts to work with local councilors in the UK to learn blogging.

As I blogged here back in Feb., my latest project with the UK involved working with Gallomanor Communications Ltd on the creation of the CivicSurf project video/DVD. From the About page:

CivicSurf aims to inspire and inform civic leadersabout the benefits of blogging. We’ve filmed 3 Norfolk County Councillors as they’ve learnt the basics of blogging and used their sites to initiate conversations in and around their communities. The eight minute film also includes the views from expert bloggers such as Tom Watson MP, Steve Webb MP and Cllr Mary Reid. It will be distributed on DVD to 1,000 public bodies including councils, emergency services and NHS Trusts along with copies of a 32pp booklet that informs readers of the basics of blogging.

I coached the three councilors over several months and wrote much of the documentation for the booklet.

A week ago, Shane McCracken of Gallomanor Communications Ltd, premiered the video at a conference in London. Here are two video clips that show Shane presenting it, with a little Q&A afterwards. The third videoclip is the trailer.

Presentation Part 1. Click play to watch. 5 min 39 sec.

Presentation Part 1, Q & A. Click play to watch. 6 min 42 sec.

The trailer for the DVD/video. Click play to watch. 1 minute.

Blogging panel at Himle Horner

Griff Wigley — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:28:24 +0000

The staff at Himle Horner, a Twin Cities-based public relations/public affairs group, had a little inservice training this morning about blogging. (Click photo to enlarge.)

Colin Cox, one of their account executives (lower left front in photo), invited me, WCCO-TV reporter/blogger Jason DeRusha (right), and Ed Kohler (left, blue shirt), blogger and producer of TechnologyEvangelist.com and author of the Jucy Lucy Restaurants (spelling explanation here) and Shoefiti blogs, to hit them over their collective heads with as much blog-related info as they could handle. They lasted at least 90 minutes.

One topic I don’t ordinarily cover when first talking about leadership blogging is the role it can play in crisis management. I did today, however, since A) it’s one of the services that Himle Horner offers to its clients; and B) I heard the news reports on the drive to their offices about the shootings at Delaware State University, wondering if the school’s administration would be using a blog as part of the crisis response. (Not. Press release only.)

The Global PR Blog Week (now defunct?) had a post back in July, 2004 on blogging in a crisis that, along with the attached comments, seems to hit all the reasons for using a blog as a complementary crisis management tool.

Video conference presentation on citizen journalism

Griff Wigley — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 03:13:02 +0000

I did a video tele-conference presentation on community/citizen journalism this morning for the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Initiative program. Audience members were primarily coordinators in rural Minnesota whose communities had recently gotten broadband internet access with Blandin’s help.

A handful of people gathered at the Northern Dakota County Chambers of Commerce office in Eagan where I did the presentation. Another two dozen or so were scattered about the state in a half-dozen locations. Click photos above to enlarge. The photos were taken by Gregg Scott, CTO for InfraSupport, who handled the tech setup for the video conference.

My presentation focused on the history of Northfield Citizens Online (the nonprofit) and its website, Northfield.org.

See the PDF of my Powerpoint presentation (41 slides). Or view this slideshow.