One night in Paris with WiserTuesdays

Since WiserEarth’s vision is to support networking and collaboration among nonprofits and social change organizations, we knew we needed to walk the talk by joining an existing series of events. As a result, WiserTuesdays were launched as a collaboration between NetSquared and WiserEarth. They are based on NetTuesday events which take place in more than 50 cities around the world. Here is an update on our first meeting.

Taking the plunge

Thanks to Joe Solomon’s research and with help from the folk at NetSquared, WiserEarth excitedly put our first toe in the water as organizers of WiserTuesdays (NetTuesday events for ‘wiser’ folk). WiserTuesdays are about using web technology for social change. They are informal monthly gatherings for anyone working for or interested in environmental and social change (people working for or with nonprofits, consultants, associations, coalitions, social entrepreneurs, web experts, IT gurus, students, professors…)

First night in Paris

Our first WiserTuesday gathering saw 20 people coming together at La Ruche in Paris to exchange ideas and share stories around the subject of online community building. Participants included everyone from people representing technology solutions such as SAP and CyberLocus to online and nonprofit communities such as Tinkuy, Babyloan and Nearbee.

La Ruche is a collaborative workspace for social entrepreneurs in Paris which hosts WiserTuesdays monthly gatherings.

We decided to use the open space format to test out how this might work out. I was a bit reticent at first about using this unconferenced format as we only had a couple of hours during an evening to sort out our agenda and have our discussions. However, everyone who came seemed happy to throw themselves in the deep end as agenda organizers by scribbling down ideas and posting them up on our empty gridboard.

Camilla Burg talks about the first WiserTuesday event

We ended up having seven sessions during two different time slots with each set of discussions lasting about 30 minutes (although our second round of discussions probably went on for nearer than 50 minutes!). I wish we could have had more summing up time, but you live and learn from your experiences n’est-ce pas!

Some of the questions and ideas we discussed

How communities are creating an alternative to public/private structures? – How to use collective intelligence to create CSR? – What is the relationship between real life impact and online community activity? – Collaborative work – Facilitating community activity – How to encourage community participation – Using information to communicate and engage public – Sharing best practices…

Our discussions around these topics are continuing on the wiki that we created on the WiserEarth site: WiserTuesdays @LaRuche. Please feel free to drop by and add your comments to the discussion forum there (in French or English) or take a look at the videos and photos we took of the evening.

Our next Paris WiserTuesday event is taking place on Tuesday 3rd November. If you can make it, you can RSVP here. If you are interested in setting up your own WiserTuesday gathering, let me know (camilla [at] wiserearth.org).

Some questions that we are now asking ourselves for future events

What is the definition of success for the WiserTuesday events?
Can we create a common collaborative force behind these events?
How do WiserTuesdays interconnect with other NetTuesday events taking place worldwide and other events organized by ‘wiser’ folk?
How do we use social media to spread the word about this event and to launch similar events around the world?
What is the ‘real life impact’ of WiserTuesday events?