Yippeeee - one Nuffield Scholar back on the road again. I am in New York City, and really looking forward to two events - Blogher and Blogger Social. I am looking forward to meeting friends that I have met online and new social media enthusiasts. In particular I am looking to hear about any experiences of how rural organisations and communities are using social media to benefit their members.
In the UK as the farming community has declined in numbers a lot of the member organisations are finding it difficult to keep going and their websites do not deliver. Many farmers have yet to see the relevance to their business of web based communication...
and yet
In The Economist
"More than 90% of marketing departments will launch a social media campaign such as a blog in 2008,according to Lewis PR, a United State based global agency. By 2009 two thirds of marketers will set aside up to 25% of their budgets for online social media."
Not one to ignore me thinks.....
Our rural--very rural and isolated--community is beginning to do more and more with Social Networking. Lately a committee I'm on launched a forum to get farmers together-- http://www.sjcarc.org/phorum/index.php --on topics related to the local area, markets, land use, labor, and such. It's early days yet as I don't think many people have caught on. But word is spreading. I will be pushing to use the forum as a way for smaller farmers to have input on issue that our committee is discussing at our monthly meetings.
In a group of island farming communities such as ours where meetings are hard to schedule and hold for all to attend, many are held via email. I will be trying to get people up to speed with Skype. The last conference call we had via land-line was torturous. I've tried to get a wiki going for our latest hot topic issue on raising small grains for marketing locally, but I've been slow to start and getting the right format has been a difficult choice.
Check out the San Juan Islands Argicultural Resource Committee here: http://sjcarc.org/
Posted by: Podchef | April 03, 2008 at 07:14 AM
Thanks Podchef for the links. I have been asking for sometime now on isolated communities using Social Networks - and it seems to be that the physical isolation has prohibited keeping up with how technology can benefit. Chicken and egg syndrome.
Posted by: Heather Gorringe | April 06, 2008 at 06:34 AM