introNetworks

Social Networking Platform for Private Online Communities

Alumni Revolution creates MentorMatch

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ar banner It’s a little bit early to be sounding the clarion bells, but we are just so excited to working with these folks that we couldn’t help writing about them. Alumni Revolution is the next step after Democracy Prep, a network of open-enrollment, high performing, “no excuses” public charter schools operating in Harlem, New York and Camden, New Jersey. The mission of Democracy Prep is to educate responsible citizen-scholars for success in the college of their choice and a life of active citizenship. A simple philosophy guides Democracy Prep staff, students, and alumni alike:
Work Hard. Go to College. Change the World!
The Alumni Revolution is designed to take graduates from Democracy Prep and provide them with mentors to help guide them through the challenges of College life. When the founder, Seth Andrew, of AR first talked to us we felt like we were a perfect fit – and figured that out in less than ten minutes. That conversation led to the creation of MentorMatch, launching in February 2014. Over the past few weeks we have been working diligently with Seth and his team to fine tune our Visual Matching Engine to accurately capture the aspirational dreams, experiences, skills and hobbies of the scholars (They call them Revolutionaries) and mentors that are being recruited to help in this effort. The site will take advantage of two powerful capabilities of the platform. First, it will capture information in multiple dimensions that will assist in automating the matching process itself. Second, the network will allow for any mentor or Revolutionary to be placed at the center of the network so that Alumni Revolution can broker the very best pairing for both people. By way of background information, Seth showed me his TEDx talk where he described the mission that Democracy Prep is all about. After watching it, I became one of their newest fans and this project instantly became one of the jewels in the crown, as the impact it will make won’t be measured for years to come, yet, the potential to help them find and match perfect mentor/mentee pairs is amazing. Take a look at his talk and you will see how much passion he has and how this project has become so successful. We are proud to be working with Alumni Revolution and look forward to the launch of their site in February.

CASE STUDY: How Do You Connect the most Connected Educators in the Nation?

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Skinny_edconnectr

The National Education Technology Plan, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, calls for applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement.

Watch Tutorial Videos created for edConnectr’s users. Created by @snbeach and @MarkSylvester

The 2010 National Education Technology Plan demonstrates the importance of educators becoming more connected to resources, tools, colleagues, experts, and learning activities, both within and beyond schools. Participation in online communities of practice is a key way educators connect. Robust online participation contributes both to individual excellence and to the vitality of the profession as a whole. The Connected Online Communities of Practice project has stewarded a scalable, sustainable ecology of online communities in education to improve teacher and leader effectiveness, enhance student learning and increase productivity. [Read more…]

CASE STUDY: SIGGRAPH Business Symposium chooses introNetworks eventNet for conference

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SIGGRAPH Business SymposiumWe are thrilled to be working with SIGGRAPH to provide a platform for an initiative that is now in it’s third year, the SIGGRAPH Business Symposium. The event is held the first day of the annual SIGGRAPH conference and draws executives from the various businesses that attend this tradeshow and educational conference dedicated to Computer Graphics. This year there will be a focus on mentoring and collaboratively working to address key industry issues that are affecting all of the attendees. The organizing committee was looking for a platform that would assist them in the matching of mentors and decided that introNetworks Visual Matching Engine inside of the eventNet would work.
“As the leaders in the Computer Graphics industry, our attendees have either ‘made it’ or ‘seen it’ so they demand the highest level of production values and functionality.  The introNetworks way of visualizing connections is unique and something we believe will engage, delight and encourage them to make connections that will last long after the Symposium.” – Evan Hirsch, SIGGRAPH Business Symposium Chair.
We worked with the organizers to fine-tune the Visual Matching Engine to address the need for matches that would be tailored to business and issues related to the enterprises represented as opposed to computer graphic related terms. The community will be up after the conference to serve as a reference and area for conversation related to topics that are kicked off at the day long Symposium. Ironically it was just over ten years ago that we attended SIGGRAPH (our first one was in 1984) and it will feel good to be back around people that are passionate about the business of computer graphics. Our focus now is on information visualization as it serves real humans as opposed to creating tools to build virtual humans. Note: Before introNetworks, I co-founded Wavefront Technologies, which became Alias|Wavefront which is now owned by our good friends Autodesk, who continue to innovate the software now called Maya. Video sent to the attendees:  

CASE STUDY: NPRN – The Non-Profit Resource Network

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Non Profit Resource Center

There are over 350 non-profits in Santa Barbara County with hundreds of Executive Directors, Board Members, Staff and Volunteers yet there was no private, secure way to make connections between each other easily. The Hutton Parker Foundation wanted to create an online resource to replace the physical building that was used to provide help to local non-profits. In addition, they wanted to focus on capacity building and helping all aspects of the non-profit community. Board members are frequently civilians and don’t know what’s expected of them. Staffers need to find peers in other organizations to be able to solve problems quickly. Executive Directors need a place where they can ask questions and find help with specific challenges. Volunteers use the site to build profiles of what they are interested in, so that the organizations can search for specific people to place on working groups and committees. introNetworks worked closely with a strategic team to tune the Visual Matching Engine to meet the exact requirements of this unique community. The four dimensions that the Community is matched on are: Passions/Focus (Things like Youth, Family Care, The Arts) My Interests (Concepts like Big idea, Fitness, Learning….) , How I can Help (Specifics such as Team Player, Critical Thinking, Idea Generation), and I need Help With (Areas of Focus include: Grant Writing. Building a Board, Marketing Strategy and other concerns). With NPRN the non-profits are able to:
  • Learn about non-profit news & opportunities
  • Community Calendar, by Group and Organization in one view
  • Connect with fellow staff, executives & board members and volunteers
  • Find valuable resources & information
  • Share knowledge to raise the level of competency across all organizations
  • Discover the people, the passion & purpose of the local nonprofit community
This Community has the advantage of a dedicated outside Community Awareness and Marketing firm that specializes in non-profits. LOAcom produces a weekly newsletter, encourages and stimulates engaging conversations and works closely with the foundation to call attention to trending topics, areas of interest and places when the foundation can help the community. There is a complete back-end reporting capability of the Community that is used on a regular basis to assess the needs (I Need Help With) and where the experts are (I Can Help With) as the Foundation and others in the Community are planning educational outreach programs, seminars and workshops. LOAcom created a landing page for NPRN so that community members could easily find the site and tell their friends and colleagues about it.
The Non-Profit Resource Network Overview Guide

The Non-Profit Resource Network Overview Guide

The local online newspaper, Noozhawk, covered the launch of the site here and one of the funding partners, the Santa Barbara Foundation featured it in this story.

Videos Created for the NPRN Users

Getting Started with NPRN

Navigating inside the Community

Creating an awesome profile

Forums, Groups and Resources

Using Your Google+ ID To Login

 

CASE STUDY: TEDxMidwest Event Community

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tedx-color     introNetworks started in 2003 as a project to connect the attendees at the then very private TED Conference. Since those lofty beginnings the platform has been extended to the world of TEDx and is used to connect attendees at a local level in communities that want to make smarter connections and share “Ideas Worth Spreading”

TEDx Event Community Goals

  • Find other attendees based on I Am, I Seek, I Value and What’s Relevant
  • Create meaningful conversations before, during and after the event
  • Learn from others that share similar values and reasons for attending
  • Find like-minded attendees and start special interest groups
TEDxMidwest eventNet front page

TEDxMidwest – Front page of their site

Connecting Attendees in Advance of the Event

One of the challenges for TEDx is connecting a very disparate group of people who come from different parts of the local Community. They all share a common passion of learning and new experiences and celebrate the diversity of opinion and thought that is typical of a TEDx event. Being invited to create a fun and interesting profile extends the TEDx experience right at the time attendees’ register and helps to get them even more excited about the upcoming event.

Working with the Organizing Committee

As TEDx is independently organized and run entirely by volunteers, it is critical that there is a very easy to understand way to design, launch and grow the Community. We worked with the TEDxMidwest team two years in a row to understand the unique aspects of their event, it’s one of the largest in the US, and draws a large percentage of CEO’s, business leaders and influential citizens from the region. This means that the design needed to be very engaging so that attendees didn’t feel like they were wasting their time on yet another social network. Designing the Profile to be relevant to what they want to get out of the event was a prime consideration for the committee.

Using the network to gather insights on the attendees

One of the things that the event organizers appreciated after their first year as they went into planning the second year was the metrics the platform reported. Being able to understand deeply what people were seeking, how they described themselves, what values were predominant among attendees was critical as they reimagined the community the following year.
“We are extremely happy with the introNetworks system for both tracking milestones, info, and communicating with attendees and more importantly getting people who do not know each other to meet long before our event.” – Mike Hettwer, Executive Producer, TEDxMidwest and TEDxMidwestYouth

CASE STUDY: NASA Educators Online Network

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NASA Educators Online Forum NEON was created in conjunction with Penn State’s Aerospace Education Services Project (AESP) under contract to NASA to provide a place to help teachers and professionals in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Teachers want to stay informed about ongoing advances in STEM education and seek resources for their classroom. They also want to share and discuss innovations in educational approaches. NEON has become an ideal place to find educators interested in the same fields of study as well as specific content that can be easily located. For collaboration and shared learning, Groups have been designed to accommodate a diverse set of interests in all areas of STEM education. To date there are over 250 Groups that are sorted by geography, area of interest, specific programs and events. Resources, lesson plans, peer-to-peer discussions are all readily available on NEON. [Read more…]

Case Study:

Nasa_103

NEON Educators Online Network

For collaboration and shared learning, Groups have been designed to accommodate a diverse set of interests in all areas of STEM education. To date there are over 250 Groups that are sorted by geography, area of interest, specific programs and events. Resources, lesson plans, peer-to-peer discussions are all readily available on NEON. >>> Learn More

Case Study:

TEDx_103

TEDxMidwest Event Community

introNetworks started ten years ago as a project to connect the attendees at the then very private TED Conference. Since those lofty beginnings the platform has been extended to the world of TEDx and is used to connect attendees at a local level in communities that want to make smarter connections and share “Ideas Worth Spreading” >>> Learn More