This recent blog post from Rootwork discusses the role of community organizers, and the new spirit of organizational collectives made possible by social media. Rootwork is an informational site that provides tools and services for grassroots organizations.
Gurus are Not Enough: A Call for Organizers and Organizing in Social Media
Gurus, mavens and experts convey information — they tell you the way things are.
Organizers, conversely, cultivate leadership and facilitate a community's exploration of its vision — they offer a way to see how things could be.
Naturally, we need an accurate picture of how things are before we can strategize ways to improve them, and so it's important to continually listen to and learn from the experts, taking from them relevant information and measuring it against our own experience and knowledge. But folks involved in social change — online or offline — can't stay there. We have to be willing to step up and do the difficult organizing work that leverages our knowledge and experts' data into something larger: a movement.
Everybody Organizing Everybody
Community organizers are a natural fit for "web 2.0" — the movement from one-way broadcasting on the web to two-way coversation and connection. I want to expand the definition a little bit, however, and suggest that online organizing goes far beyond the professional, experienced organizers.
One of the defining aspects of web 2.0 is social organization. People are constantly presented with their social circles in visual media: Facebook news feeds, MySpace top friends, Twitter updates, etc. In short, more people can see their network, in a much more literal way. This is especially true for young adults (currently Millennials) who might have social networks scattered across wide geographic areas and are less firmly rooted to a specific place through vocational, familial or other commitments.
Continue reading this post on Rootwork
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