Helping dispersed groups communicate

Reaching Out with ICT
How ICT can help dispersed groups communicate
Simon Davey, preponderate.net

Intro
If you’re 50 miles from your nearest source of help, you can’t pop round for a quick chat. ICT, used properly, can be a great asset to dispersed groups communicating. It can also enable you to reach out to those who wouldn’t normally come together and to help maintain communication in between meetings.

Dispersed groups could mean either people (or organisations) who meet infrequently or not at all, or simply individuals who have relationships with a community outside their local area.

The tools of the trade
ICT offers a number of tools, the benefits and resources being dependent on how they are used. All of the following are dependent on both you and the recipient having access to the internet.

Email
The simplest tool of all. It’s great for keeping in contact, enables you to share simple information or large documents and is quick and easy to use. It’s great for those who are less comfortable talking or meeting up and you can also set up email lists (broadcast or groups) to support more effective communication between groups.

Email newsletters
Email newsletters make sense says Sue Fidler (http://www.suefidler.com/). A great way of communicating one to many but make sure you use the right tools – you don’t want to end up as a spammer.

Website
How simple can your website be? Developing a few pages in WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) or similar takes only a couple of hours from scratch. The tool offers you the opportunity to create new pages as well as blog entries and because content management is all online it means many users can contribute.

Websites have another advantage – supporting the socially excluded. Whatever the merits of MySpace and Facebook, channels such as TheSite.org (http://www.thesite.org/) a resource for 16-24 year olds to ask questions and get trusted meaningful advice and MindBloggling (http://www.icthub.org.uk/caseStudies/Mind_Blogging.html) giving a voice to people experiencing the effects of mental ill health show what can be done.

Blogging
Blogging is increasingly common – a cheap and quick way of publishing whatever you want (to whoever you want) and keeping others informed. There are blogs popping up all over the voluntary sector, from simple commentaries to interactive live reporting from events. Just make sure you’re saying something meaningful!

Forums
A great idea for helping to share information and expertise. The biggest drawback is the need to moderate. They will take more time than you expect.

RSS
RSS (really simple syndication) is just another way for websites to publish their content. If you regularly produce information for a website, an RSS feed may be a great way to get that information on front of more sets of eyes.

e-Campaigning through computer games
There are many ways to use ICT for campaigning but using computer games to help deliver complex messages is still a fairly new idea. It works well though…

Phone calls over the internet
VOIP (voice over internet protocol) offers the opportunity for free phone calls.

Text messaging
Reducing teenage pregnancies and text messaging aren’t obvious partners but an innovative project in Durham has done just that. Accepting that the very teenage girls in need of help didn’t necessarily come walking through the door, Durham and Chester-le-Street primary care trust developed a textback system to provide advice and support to girls in need.

Great web office experiment
Could you use office tools online to collaborate? Although not as feature rich as Microsoft and Open office, Google Docs and similar help people collaborate via an internet connection.

Browser-based conferencing and online meetings
Web browser-based conferencing and collaboration platforms support real-time visual communication without the need to download or install additional software. In addition to allowing shared viewing of presentations, files, photos and even a participant’s desktop in real-time, there are also tools for whiteboarding, annotating, text chatting, and phone conferencing.

Online collaboration tools
The Internet can be a useful way to collaborate on projects, especially when partners in the project are spread over a wide geographical area. LASA detail their experience of using some of these tools in the development of the ICT Hub Suppliers directory.

Conclusion
ICT offers some very powerful tools to communicate, build relationships and share information. We hope this article has given you a taste and inspired you to try a few new ideas for your own community.

Feedback
Why not discuss this in the ICT Hub café? http://forums.icthub.org.uk/list.php?28

Key resources

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Contact details
Simon Davey
www.preponderate.net
simon@preponderate.net

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