Wigley and Associates

For the past 6 weeks, I’ve been working with the Northwest Area Foundation and their Horizons Program to create something called the Horizons Community Blogging Project. Approximately 125 small communities in eight states will be learning the art of community blogging. The community bloggers will also being using their blogs to reflect and report on the changes that are happening in their communities related to poverty reduction, leadership and community-building as a result of the Horizons Program.

I teamed up with a Northfield web designer, Sean Hayford O’Leary, to create a platform for the 125 blogs using WordPress Multi-User (WPMU). (We did carefully consider its pros and cons vs. the Lyceum version of WordPress.)

Sean did all the technical tasks and also created a template with customized categories and the option for communities to select from a set of header images.

We’ve done all the project planning/collaboration via Basecamp thus far. Next steps:

• Basecamp for all the Delivery Organization leaders and the coaches who will working with the community bloggers
• I’m creating 8-10 screencasts/videos on the principles and technical aspects of community blogging

Last spring, I agreed to a long-term contract to create and manage the new FISH! Philosophy Network for ChartHouse Learning. We’ve started slowly launching the network this summer in preparation for a larger rollout this fall.

It’s an online social network for people who have seen the ChartHouse films, read their books, taken their seminars, or who are just interested in networking with others who become fans of the FISH! philosophy.

I’ve chosen the Ning social network platform for the network. We’re also creating a Facebook FISH! Philosophy group and a MySpace FISH! Philsophy Group since those networks have millions of members already.

I’m also helping ChartHouse with their internal web-based communications and project management by using Basecamp.