I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to participate in NTEN’s Online conference this morning.  I strayed from my normal social media talks to advocate that organizations actively work to change the way that their communities access information.  I tried to make three main points:

1. Nonprofits must provide internet access — through shared broadband and computers or other devices — to their constituency.  This doesn’t need to be different from the work they do every day. In fact, it shouldn’t. It should augment it.
2. Access isn’t enough — training also needs to be provided.  I’m not talking about “here’s how to use Word” or “html will get you a job.”  I’m talking about digital literacy and training so your constituency can contribute their voice and stories to the conversation that is, increasingly, happening online.
3. Provide a wealth of context.  Lots of people are access data over the internet.  They are mashing it up with tools like DataMasher or sharing it with applications like This We Know.  The insights that you gain day-to-day in your work on the ground is what provides the connective tissue between all these different chunks of data or tweets of info.  You have to be contributing to that conversation so that people have context and can get insight out of the information that’s available to them.

Here’s the deck that I used in this talk.  Honestly, it’s the first time that I’ve given this particular talk and I can see some ways to clarify and improve it. If you’ve any suggestions, let me know.