OnTheTable2016 participation map

I asked Marc Smith to create a Node XL map showing participation in May 10th OnTheTable2016 which I wrote about yesterday.

This Tweet was created about 4pm on May 10 showing participation up to that point.

@tutormentorteam #onthetable2016 #yourvoicematters > NodeXL https://t.co/xemJCBqAlp@chitrust@dregan@cherylhughes20@danoash@evanstonlive

— Nodexl Project (@nodexl) May 10, 2016

This tweet includes the map produced mid-afternoon, May 11.

#onthetable2016 by NodeXL https://t.co/J8AtW4WU1V@chitrust@danoash@dregan@cherylhughes20@tomdart@evanstonlive@chipublib@jeanwestrick

— Marc Smith (@marc_smith) May 11, 2016

Compare the two maps and see the increased participation resulting from another 24 hours of gatherings and social media reporting.  To help leaders learn to use network analysis maps, I created this blog article as a tutorial for using NodeXL.

It will take quite a bit of work on the part of volunteers, interns or staff to draw information out of this map and make sense of it. However, my goal in sharing this is to encourage event organizers to find ways to engage people over and over for many years, so there is deeper engagement and more commitment to providing time, talent and dollars to solve complex problems.  The graphic below is from this page on my web site where I talk about network building and network analysis.

I've been focusing on network building for over 20 years. I started writing this blog in 2005, so if you look at the tags to the left, you can find categories like network building, network analysis, learning, complex problems, etc.

In many articles I read about education reform and poverty fighting, as well as challenges facing non-profits, I see a frequent criticism that resources are not applied long enough for an idea to take root and have impact. In my 35 year leadership of a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program I realized that it takes many years for a program to recruit and build an army of volunteers and a tradition and learning culture. It takes eight years of continuous support for a youth in 3rd grade today to be finishing high school eight years later, or finishing college and/or entering the workforce, 4 to 6 years after that.  

Few donors, media or other public figures support single organizations for that length of years, and if you look at the map of the Chicago region, or the large numbers of youth living in poverty, you'll realize that the city needs hundreds of programs providing long-term support, spread throughout the region. 

Thus, I write articles focused on building and sustaining public will. 

I write other articles focused on building and sustaining funding support for programs in different poverty neighborhoods....because this needs to be part of any conversation about reducing violence, poverty and inequality.  

My efforts for over 20 years, since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection, have been to provide information that leaders could use to make the commitment shown in the strategy map below, then sustain that commitment for a decade or longer.

 
When you look at one of the NodeXL maps in the future, you should be able to click into web sites for a growing percent of people, representing all parts of the region, and everyone who we consider "part of the village" and see a version of this map, indicating their commitment to the strategy.

I can't make that happen by myself, but leadership from The Chicago Community Trust, a series of mayors, and leaders of business, sports and media, could, if they focused part of their weekly attention and resources on this goal.

If you spend time reading the articles on my blog and web sites, and using the ideas in your own efforts, perhaps we will see evidence of network mapping and network building being applied in 2017 and beyond.

Understanding participation in movement building

This is a graphic I've used since 1990s to show how I and everyone else can help draw people to the information available in web libraries, or in face-to-face conferences, that focus on helping youth in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs that enable them to raise their own kids free from poverty.

I do this almost every day, using social media, my blogs, my websites and email newsletter. In the 1990s I also had a printed newsletter and a PR firm helping generate media stories.

Yet, the big questions always have been a) who is attending?; b) what networks are they part of? and c) what geography do they represent?.  

I've posted many articles about network building and network analysis on this blog.  Please review some to understand how I've struggled with this for so many years.

 

In some of these I've pointed to NodeXL, which is a tool that can be used to understand who's participating in a Twitter or Facebook conversation that takes place within a defined period of time. 

Today I saw the Tweet below.

Many thanks to @marc_smith for sharing this map of tweets and retweets using #RCGPAC hashtag (from NodeXL interaction map shared earlier today)
Featuring the following & many others@shaunlintern@emahase_@zubhaque@rcgpac@cmo_england@devisridhar@martinrcgp@rcgp@drgandalf52 pic.twitter.com/1351UMyUiP

— Dr Graham Mackenzie🇪🇺 (@gmacscotland) October 16, 2021

What's exciting about this is that it looks like NodeXL has added a spatial analysis feature to their tool. Thus, you can not only create the traditional network analysis map showing who's connected to who in a conversation, now you can create geographic maps showing where participants come from. 

I've connected with Dr. Graham MacKenzie in the past and feel he's doing some of the best work in showing an analysis of the NodeXL maps, helping me and others make sense of what the maps are showing.  Today  he shared with me this link, which points to a collection of articles that he has written.

I have been reaching out to universities for many years with the goal of creating a Tutor/Mentor Connection research/action program on various campuses where students would do everything I have been trying to do, to support the growth of mentor-rich youth programs in the area surrounding each campus.  While I've had help from many interns I've never been able to form a long-term partnership.

Here's another graphic I've used often. It shows that teams of people with a wide range of talents and networks are needed at the program level, neighborhood level and city, state and federal level, to build and sustain mentor rich programs in all the places where they are needed.

These teams need to be involved in an on-going planning/action cycle that builds public will and the flow of resources needed to power all of the youth and family serving organizations that are needed.  

Learning to use NodeXL and other network analysis tools to understand how well leaders are able to attract needed talent, and keep people involved and the network growing over many years, would be a valuable skill.  It's one that students working in a university T/MC could be learning.

I encourage you to follow NodeXL, Mark Smith and Graham MacKenzie on Twitter so you can see the work they do as they do it.   I hope you'll also follow me, @tutormentorteam.

Use NodeXL data to build network focused on common goals

Last September I saw a post on Twitter and followed it to a NodeXL map, that created a visual history of conversation around specific Twitter hashtags, over a defined period of time. I created a map, then wrote a tutorial on how to  use NodeXL in this blog article. 

Last week the National Mentoring Summit was held in Washington, DC, with nearly 1000 people from around the country participating. While I've attended these in the past (see articles here and here), I didn't have the money to attend this year. So I participated by following some of the sessions via a live feed, and by interacting using the #mentoringsummit2016 hash tag.

If you've read any of the articles on this blog you'll know that my goal is to connect the entire "village" of people who need to be involved making needed tutoring, mentoring and learning organizations available in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.  To do that, thousands of people need to be connected to each other, to information the can use, and to individual locations where youth and volunteers connect in organized programs.

Intermediaries, such as the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, can help establish these connections. That's why I'm writing this article. It's what I do every day.

While conferences that gather a thousand people are great, and offer dozens of workshops to learn from, the reality is that you can only attend one workshop in each time frame, and in a big group, you only meet a few people, and get to ask one question...at the most.

Thus, I'm committed to online learning and network building as a way to connect with more people, and dig deeper into information that's available.  See articles I'ved tagged as MOOC and Learning. 

Thus, my work last week intended to build my own list of Twitter followers, and visitors to my own web sites, but to help others build their own networks at the same time.

Last week I asked Marc Smith, of NodeXL if he'd create a map using #mentoringsummit2016, which he did. Here's the link to the graphic shown below.

I encourage you to read the tutorial article I referred to above.  However, if you open the link, you can enlarge the graphic to the point where you can run your mouse over the nodes and see the Twitter name of each node. On this map you see four major clusters and several minor. The lines represent ties connecting people on the map with each other.  If you scroll down below the map you can find the top 10 influences, you can find web sites referred to most often, and as you scroll further down you can find more people who were most active in Tweeting, reTweeting and commenting.  

If you're trying to build your Twitter network, you would want to follow the people who were most active. If you want to build your influence network, you'd want to reach out and connect to these people throughout the year, while following the links they point to in their own Twitter posts, and reTweeting these to your own network.

When I started using the Internet in 1998 there was great optimism that this was a low-cost way for people without big advertising dollars to reach out and build a network of people who shared a common purpose, and who might help each other.  As we head into 2016 the optimism is somewhat reduced as Facebook, Google and others install controls on their platforms that make each message you post visible to only a small fraction of your followers and people who care about the same issues. 

Finding ways to use network analysis tools like NodeXL to help you find and connect with others who share your own goals is a strategy any of us could deploy on a regular basis to help build our network and our own visibility and influence.

I hope to hear stories from some of the tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities of how they might be doing this, and how they may be engaging their own students, volunteers, staff and supporters in on-line learning, network building and program support efforts.

Jan 12, 2018 update. Here's a link to a NodeXL map of the National Mentoring Month #Promise Chat, held on Jan 11, 2018. 

Know the Network. Nudge the Network.

I started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in 1975 while starting an advertising career with the Montgomery Ward Corporation in Chicago.  What I learned over the next 15 years was that leaders constantly need to be reaching out to people with different talents and networks to help them do the work needed to sustain and grow the organization.

As I was learning this by running a volunteer base program I was also learning this from how we used weekly national advertising to attract customers to our 400 retail stories located in 40 different states. The graphic above visualizes the idea that it takes teams of people with different talents to help youth tutor, mentor and learning programs thrive. In a big city like Chicago, it takes many of these programs to reach just a fraction of the 200,000 or so kids who could benefit.

Talent needed - click here

At the right is a concept map that visualizes the talent needed to help an organization thrive.  Each of these nodes should link to social media or Linkedin profiles of people who are providing that talent in support of the organization's mission.

In the blue box at the top of this cMap is a link pointing to a similar map, which shows networks, rather than skills.   You need a mix of talent representing different networks.

Finding and recruiting people to fill these roles is an on-going challenge, that is especially difficult for smaller organizations who don't have major civic and/or business support.

I participated in two Twitter chats today which were in support of events held in Chicago which each attracted at least 200 civic and business leaders.  One was hosted by the Metropolitan Planning Council, with the Raj Chetty (see my July article) as keynote speaker. I show one Tweet from that event,  using #MPCLuncheon as the hashtag.

Opportinity (defined as upward mobility) is distributed unevenly across the US. Lessons from Raj Chetty @OppInsights at #MPCLuncheon @Metroplanners pic.twitter.com/QiAjCbYp8b

— Juan Sebastian Arias (@_jsarias) September 19, 2019

The second, held during the same time frame, was live streamed by the City Club of Chicago.  Here's a Tweet that announced the event.

Live at 12:20PM with our panelists @MaryAnnAhernNBC , Fr. Michael Caruso & Tony Harris on "A discussion of 150 years of @StIgnatius College Prep in Chicago" at https://t.co/7VWvNaDpx4 #watchnow pic.twitter.com/UD8GBztms2

— City Club of Chicago (@CityClubChicago) September 19, 2019

For several years I've been encouraging event organizers to be more active in encouraging participants to connect on Twitter using a common hashtag.  At the same time I've also encouraged them to use network analysis tools like NodeXL to create a graphic showing who did participate and how they are connected to each other.

Today I posted a Tweet at the start of the event encouraging Metropolitan Planning Council organizers to do this.

Looking forward to Tweeting #MPCLuncheon #MakingPositiveChange w/ keynote from Raj Chetty today.

With so many in attendance at your event I'd hope to find 100 or more also Tweeting. Will you encourage that? A SNA map by @NodeXL could show participation.

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 19, 2019

Then later this afternoon I received a message from NodeXL with a map that they created showing participants in the #MPCLuncheon event. I show it below.

You can see this actual map, and view an interactive version, at this link.   

I think there are 25 nodes (Twitter users) on this map. That's far short of the 150-200 who were at the actual lunch event, or the potential audience who could have been following on line.  To make a comparison, visit the NodeXL gallery and view their collection of maps. Many with several hundred nodes. 

Update:  Here's an updated NodeXL map, from 9-20-2019 showing 43 users.  click here

I've posted several articles in the past showing how network analysis can help community organizers build a better understanding of who is participating in their events, and thus, also a better understanding of who is missing.

Connect those who can help
with those who need help.

Using this information I feel organizers can nudge the network to do learning, network building, donating, volunteering, voting, etc. and other things needed to build and sustain an effective organization.

They can also reach out to add new people based on what talents and networks are missing from their ecosystem.  Furthermore, they can use these maps to demonstrate a growing (or shrinking) participation over months and years.

I'll share this article on social media with the goal that some of the people who see it will a) embrace the idea and build it into future activities; or b) show me blog posts that illustrate how they are already doing this type of work.

Maybe some will even add me as a consultant to their planning teams to help them think through network building and engagement strategies like this.

Thanks to Valdis Krebs for the "Know the network. Nudge the Network." phrase.

If you've found value in this article please consider a contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Click here to learn more. 

Talking about social capital

I was invited to participate in a chat on Twitter this week, hosted by the Christensen Institute, using the hashtags #SoCapChat_CI  and #EconomicMobility.  Their goal was "to help connect the people/organizations who are discussing social capital and economic mobility".  Click on the links and scroll through the Tweets that were posted and you'll gain an understanding of what was discussed. 

As I participated, I shared ideas from my own collection of social capital articles on this blog. Below is one example.

It would have been great if someone from the campaign teams of #Chicago #Mayor candidates had been in this chat. Maybe they will build long-term solutions to problems city faces. #SoCapChat_CI #EconomicMobility https://t.co/Hu5CDIXZaD

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) March 22, 2023

During the chat I posted a Tweet to my friends at @NodeXL and asked if they would create a graph showing participation.  Below was the result. You can view the graph as this link. 

This graph shows that 116 Twitter users participated in the chat. If you zoom in you can see who these people are and who they connected with. 

I think expanding networks of adults supporting youth in high poverty areas is important and that organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are one strategy for doing this. I created the graphic below in the 1990s to visualize the type of support network that such programs might provide.

Unfortunately too few people who lead youth programs include the idea of expanding social capital in the information they share on their websites.  Too few youth program representatives were in this week's chat, and too few donors, policy-makers and/or business representatives were participating.  

Hopefully a chat like this will be repeated every few months and more people from the ecosystem will show up on NodeXL maps.  I'll try to help make that happen.

Below is one of my concept maps, showing intermediaries who support youth serving programs in Chicago. 

Each node on the top half of this concept map includes links to the organizations shown.  I follow all of them on social media and participate in virtual events that they host.  I try to generate deeper conversations, such as one I had yesterday with a team from Northwestern and the Chicago STEM Co-op.  

Ideally there would be on-going chats hosted by these groups on Twitter and NodeXL type maps would show participation of multiple organizations from my concept map in each of these chats.  In addition, while many are now hosting face-to-face meetings, I urge them to add virtual components.  One reason is that COVID is not over for many of us. A second, is that I feel each participant in a virtual meeting has a closer connection to the speakers and to other participants.  In a room of 100 or more that is not happening. 

Chicago will have a new Mayor after the April election.  I've been sharing posts on Twitter, inviting the two candidates to look at strategies I've been sharing and incorporate those ideas in their own plans. 

#Chicago's going to have a new #Mayor. I don't know who it will be. So I invite both candidates to take a look at this article I wrote in 2007 titled "After the Election". https://t.co/scxioDZljq pic.twitter.com/99gMBDiK0o

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) March 21, 2023

I have been sharing these ideas since the mid 90s.  Maybe in the coming months and years we will see evidence that staff from the new mayor are looking at this blog and borrowing the ideas.

One piece of evidence would be chats about "how to help kids in Chicago" on Twitter, with NodeXL maps showing participation from a broad section of city leaders and citizens.

I'm available to help mentor that process.  Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Mastodon (or all of them). See links here. 

If you want to help me continue this work, visit this page and use PayPal to send a small contribution.

Thank you for reading. 

7-19-2023 update - read this new research report about mentoring, social capital and philanthropy. Download report at this site. 

Building Networks - Understanding Who Is Involved

On Nov. 3 and 4 I participated in a two day event called City/Cité: A Transatlantic Exchange, that was an exploration of inequality, race and the state of Urban Democracy in the United States, France and beyond. Speakers were from both sides of the Atlantic. As the event unfolded attendees were encouraged to use Twitter to share what was happening in one small Chicago space to others in Chicago and throughout the world who are concerned with the same issues.

A couple of months ago I learned of a network analysis mapping tool called NodeXL, which enables mapping of Twitter and Facebook hashtags, to create a visualization showing participation over a defined time-frame. I posted a tutorial on the MappingforJustice blog so that I could learn more about this, and so others could do their own learning.

This morning I asked Mark Smith, from NodeXL to create a map using "#citycite_Chicago OR #urbandemocracy", the two main hashtags for the event. That map is shown below and at this link.

Because of the small number of Tweeters, there are no dense clusters on this map. However, you can see how some people were the center of larger groups, who retweeted or commented on their own Tweets. Lines from one node to another, and from one cluster to another, show connectivity between different people. Since this is a small group, and I was active, you can see @tutormentorteam in the upper right cluster on the map.

Below is another NodeXL map, showing Twitter activity during the Independent Sector conference, which was held in Florida, attracting a huge crowd of participants. Some sessions were live streamed (and archived), meaning people who could not make it to the conference could still participate. Independent Sector(@indsector) promoted the conference via Twitter and encouraged active Tweeting the day of the event, using "#ISEmbarks OR #embarkstream" hashtags. The map of Twitter activity is shown below. The link is here.

This graph "represents a network of 1,451 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained "#ISEmbarks OR #embarkstream", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets, taken from a data set limited to a maximum of 18,000 tweets. The network was obtained from Twitter on Wednesday, 28 October 2015 at 21:00 UTC."

This is a much larger group of users than who participated in the City/Cité event. The map shows a few large clusters connected to each other, and many smaller groups.

I'm part of the big cluster at the lower left part of this graph, toward the right side of the main cluster. This graphic illustrates how you can enlarge the graphic to view different sections, and shows my @tutormentorteam node.

I'm just learning to use this, and don't have a lot of time to focus on the tool, or to create maps to analyze, and create map stories, about individual events. Thus, I encourage you to read the tutorial I posted to learn ways to use NodeXL and similar network analysis tools.

One way that I feel is really important is for event and movement organizers to build an understanding of how many people are connecting to each other as a result of the event and its on-line conversations. While the issues of race and poverty and inequality are really important, the City/Cité event this week did not draw nearly the number of Twitter participants as did the Independent Sector's focus on philanthropy.

However, these are connected issues. In my own opinion, there should be some evidence of people who focus on race, poverty and inequality being involved in both of these events.

Another way anyone can use these graphs is to look at who the main influencers are. These might be people you'd want to follow on Twitter, and build a relationship with. You can enlarge the graph, and move your mouse over each node, or each cluster, to identify more participants, and find more people you'd want to connect with.

In yesterday's discussion of race, poverty and inequality one speaker ended his comments saying "The real challenge is making more people care". I agree. However, part of that challenge is attracting people to conversations that focus on these issues, and then mapping participation so you know who is there, and who is missing.

The graphic below visualizes this challenge. How do a few of us multiply, over and over, to the point where we have a critical mass of people who are giving time, talent and dollars to reduce inequity, reduce poverty, improve opportunity, reduce racism and violence, etc.? How do we engage people who don't live with these issues every day, who live in areas of wealth, privileged and affluence, and deal with their own problems every day, giving very little consistent attention to the problems of others. Once we get someone's attention, how do we connect them with the vast amounts of information they could use to support growing involvement? How do we keep them involved, and expanding their knowledge and commitment, for decades?

Social network analysis maps, Geographic Maps, and concept maps could begin to show who is involved, and provide paths that connect people with each other, and with ideas.

I've been trying to do this since 2010. This graphic is from a set of blog articles showing participation in 2008 and 2009 Tutor/Mentor Conferences. In this article you can see work done by students who were part of a 2015 Information Visualization MOOC hosted by Indiana University. Each of these were short term projects. This type of work requires on-going involvement, mapping lots of events, not just the ones I've hosted.

Every day someone in Chicago, or in other parts of the world, is hosting an event focused on issues that are important to me and others. Many of these are beginning to have an on-line component. If organizers of face-to-face events think of network-building as a goal, and focus on strategies that keep people connected to each other after an event ends, more might begin to add online activities into their strategies, and use hashtags, network analysis and mapping tools, and newer technologies to know the network, nudge the network, and build the network so it reaches a scale that can solve some of the complex problems that bring us together in the first place.

Read Network Analysis articles on Scribed. Here, Here and Here

Using Celebrity Power More Effectively

This week the 2019 Obama Summit was held in Chicago. I was not invited to attend but followed on Twitter. Many sessions were live streamed so I and others could have been almost in the room. In addition, we could have been Tweeting and interacting using the #ObamaSummit hashtag.

If you did, you would be included on this map created by NodeXL, which is a product of the SMR Foundation. This represents Tweets of 6,463 Twitter users using #ObamaSummit between October 21 and October 30, 2019.

to view map, click here

The map is interactive so you can zoom in and click on any of the nodes to see who was Tweeting. In the information provided below the map you can see who the most influential Tweeters were, which included President Obama, Michelle Obama, Ava DuVernay, and many other high visibility people.

click to enlarge

I created a few screenshots to illustrate this.

This graphic shows the cluster at the far left of the NodeXL map.

I used my marker to point to the node that is President Obama's Twitter account (#1).  If you zoom in closer you can click on any icon to see who that person is. Double click and open that person's Twitter profile. You can then follow them, add them to a list, or just scroll through their posts to see what they are saying on Twitter.

click to enlarge

The middle cluster (3-1) features Michelle Obama's Twitter account in the middle.  At the bottom of this cluster (2-1) are Twitter accounts of Oprah Winfrey,  FLOTUS44 (Michelle Obama) and Kerry Washington.

The cluster to the far right features Ava DuVernay @ava in the middle. There are many, many other highly visible people within these clusters, plus far less visible people like myself.

Unfortunately there are also some "haters" who are using the hashtag to post their own views.

I'm not an expert in doing an analysis of these maps so invite any who do have that skill to do their own analysis of this map, then post it to Twitter. I'll update this article with a link to your analysis (more than one would be welcome). I would really love to see one by the Obama Foundation!

The most frequent website referred to in all of these Tweets was The Obama Foundation.  I've visited the web site and in the Mission section are a few featured initiatives.  That means any who were motivated by this year's Obama Summit, who visited the website, might be motivated to click into any of these initiatives and learn ways they could use their own time, talent or dollars to help, or find ideas and resources that enable them to help a similar organization in another place.

As far as that goes, it's good.  It does not go far enough.  As former Commander-in-Chief I hope President Obama has a basic understanding of the value of maps, as used by military commanders to put troops and supplies in all places where an enemy is concentrated.

Thus, I'd want to find a map on his web site, or maybe even a collection of maps, such as I show in the concept map below (from my collection).  If you look at the 2019 Obama Summit page, you see a theme of "Places Reveal our Purpose" but not one map! Maybe maps are embedded in some of the presentations. I don't know.

Click here to open and view map. Open the links at the bottom of each node.

This concept map shows a) work the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC has been doing since 1993 to draw resources (attention, volunteers, dollars, ideas, etc) to youth tutor, mentor and learning programs in the Chicago area); b) work others do to collect and share information that shows where people throughout the US need extra help; and c) the United Nations Global Goals, which point to places throughout the world where extra help is needed.

The data map could be just one link, or story, in a resource section on the Obama website. Including this would enable the site to serve more as an intermediary, connecting everyone who was paying attention to #ObamaSummit this week, or in future weeks, to places throughout the world where those people can get involved.  A narration of this data map could have been one of the featured presentation at the ObamaSummit. 

Now look at the graphic I show below.  I created this several years ago when Mr. Obama was President.  The photo shows him when he was a speaker at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago in 1999....which the Tutor/Mentor Connection organized.

Attention needs to be continued throughout year to increase flow of resources.

This graphic was created when the I had the resources to organize May and November conferences and an Aug/September volunteer recruitment campaign in the Chicago region, and when I had more resources to collect and share information about youth tutor/mentor programs in the region. You can read about the quarterly event strategy in this PDF and in this Collaboration Strategy PDF.

In addition, the graphic illustrates that if highly visible people use their websites, social media and personal appearances to point to web sites with maps and information about every youth program in a geographic region, volunteers and donors will be more motivated to provide the on-going time, talent and dollars each program needs to constantly improve and become great at helping kids through school and into adult lives.

By using a map this strategy aims to distribute needed resources to all poverty areas, not just highly visible programs, or highly visible places. 

Anyone can be the YOU

President Obama emphasized the power of telling stories during this year's #ObamaSummit and on his web site.  I want to emphasize that if those stories point to maps of Chicago (or other places) that show where poverty is concentrated and were youth programs are located they can serve as advertising to draw volunteers and donors to all of those places....if they are repeated throughout the year.

That's really important. Calling attention to a program or place just one or two times a year is not what traditional marketers do to draw customers to their products, services and retail stores.  

Furthermore, you don't need to be the President or a movie star to be the YOU in the above graphic.  Anyone can use the resources I point to to support stories they tell every day that show where help is needed, why help is  needed, and who needs help...and to call for actions that deliver needed support to those places.

If the #ObamaSummit organizers post weekly stories on their blog that point to these ideas, then share them on Twitter, they could also ask NodeXL or any other network analysis expert to create maps showing how many people are engaging with them, who those people are, and how they are connecting to each other.

I've been sharing ideas like this on this blog since 2005 and on the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net web site since the late 1990s. They are now available for anyone who wants to expand their thinking on ways to help youth in poverty move through school and into adult lives, and to draw people together to solve any of the complex problems we're facing.

I hope you'll take a look. I'll look forward to connecting with you on Twitter, Facebook and/or Linkedin.

I'm trying to scare up some resources to support Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Click here if you want to help.

10-16-21 update - I pointed to NodeXL in this any several other articles on my blogs. Dr Graham Mackenzie, GPST3, Edinburgh, Scotland, has been doing some interesting work using NodeXL to understand participation in events. Here's a link pointing to a collection of his articles.   

Connecting with the world and the powerful - via Twitter

I've included versions of this graphic often in my blog articles to show my role in connecting people who can help, to information they can use to support decisions they make about who they will help and what type of help they will provide.

I've never had much (any) money for advertising so have used blogs, my web sites, email newsletters and social media to try to connect with others.  Below are a few Tweets from the past few weeks that illustrate how I am doing this.

I posted this on Sept. 17 as I listened to a webinar hosted by the Forum for Youth Investment  The archive of that event is here. 

I'll be listening to the #readyyouth webinar for next hour. My focus for past 25 years has been to learn what youth #tutor #mentor & learning orgs were operating in different parts of #Chicago and to try to connect them with each other and with needed operating resources. https://t.co/kxIFEGalL7

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 17, 2019

Then on Sept 19 I participated in this #MPCLuncheon, hosted by The Metropolitan Planning Council, with Tweets like this,

Looking forward to Tweeting #MPCLuncheon #MakingPositiveChange w/ keynote from Raj Chetty today.

With so many in attendance at your event I'd hope to find 100 or more also Tweeting. Will you encourage that? A SNA map by @NodeXL could show participation.

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 19, 2019

Here's another Tweet that I posted, using #MPCLuncheon hashtag.

These #maps are great. How do we get dramatically more people to care about this enough to devote time, talent, dollars, taxes and votes to solutions that reach into all high poverty areas for many years? #MPCLuncheon https://t.co/mN0KvisUrp

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 19, 2019

At the same time I was watching the September 19 City Club of Chicago lunch speaker and posted the Tweet shown below.  The City Club of Chicago hosts weekly lunches and livestreams them so people like myself can engage, just as I'm demonstrating.

In late 2000s we created a series of maps showing faith groups in Chicago as overlays on a maps showing poverty. Can @StIgnatius create a map showing where alumni are involved with youth orgs in the region? Might be a student project. @cityclubchicago https://t.co/WhZDdETG3p pic.twitter.com/c0lAAXIWqb

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 19, 2019

Because I mentioned #NodeXL, a network analysis tool, in my #MPCLuncheon Tweet, they created a network analysis map showing who was connecting on September 19.

My friends at @nodeXL saw this Tweet and created the map below which shows 25 people engaging around the #MPCLuncheon yesterday. I included it in this article on my #tutor #mentor blog. https://t.co/RQWk8WwtX8 pic.twitter.com/rXhhEXaU6z

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 20, 2019

On Sept. 21 I shared this with Raymond Lopez, Chicago's 15th Ward Alderman

I created this slide share following shootings in #Chicago a few years ago. It shows a use of #maps that could be adopted by community activists. Different layers of gov't are responsible for same places. Hold them all accountable for solutions. https://t.co/NQfeLX6ubd

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 21, 2019

Then I posted this as I followed some Tweets from the Rockefeller Foundation who hosted a major gathering in New York City this week, to discuss ways to achieve the UN Global Goals by 2030.  There are 17 Goals, so their event was organized into #17Rooms.

Anyone can fill the blue box on this graphic, connecting people "who can help" to information such as shared via the #GlobalGoals, @RockefellerFdn , etc. websites, and to places shown on #maps where people, and organizations, need help. I do this at https://t.co/BA3aEUgLgB pic.twitter.com/7vl3GHgx7B

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 22, 2019

On Tuesday, Sept. 23, I responded to an email invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation to share #myglobalvision

This graphic shows #myglobalvision for 2030. Such #maps should be available in every city/country, w icons representing groups of people working toward achieving one or more of #GlobalGoals. All connected. All drawing from common base of information. pic.twitter.com/R9GXgCMFpV

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 23, 2019

Also on Tuesday I posted this Tweet, from The Green Living Room in the Woodlawn area of Chicago, just South of Hyde Park.

Enjoyed opportunity today to share work I have piloted since 1993 w owner of #TheGreenLivingRoom at 6432-335 Cottage Grove in Chicago. Anyone can apply these ideas in area as small as a few blocks, or as big as a city. Learn at https://t.co/85UGitcYDB pic.twitter.com/8lw5Sendwk

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 24, 2019

Today I shared this Tweet, pointing to an article written by the President of IFF (International Finance Fund?).

This article describes how Tutor/Mentor Connection datamaps were intended to be used, starting in 1993. "Using data to drive investment and impact" | IFF https://t.co/6YEtjZ22Cl

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 26, 2019

I've included hashtags and links in describing each of these Tweets, so you can go back and review each of these conversation threads. You can reTweet, LIKE, or even post your own comment, sharing information about your work the way I do.

You can also visit @tutormentorteam and scroll through Tweets I've posted over the past few weeks.  What I've shared in this article are just a small sample of the wide range of people I've reached out to via multiple Tweets. I've been doing this for the past 10 years!

I received some ReTweets, some LIKES, and a few followers from these. Over the past few years I've developed some pretty strong relationships, and cultivated a few new contributors who help fund my work. 

That's the goal.  I want people to use the ideas I share, even if I never hear from them.  

However a larger goal is that someone who reads my post and digs into my blog articles and web sites will step forward to put her name on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, with a major investment that brings it into a university, or some other structure, where it can be re-built, and reach a much larger network of people than what I've been able to reach.

These articles talk about "A New T/MC". Take some time to look through them.

It's a process. It takes time. It's an investment of time on my part. 

If you want to make a difference, start reading these.  Or start following me on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

Enlisting College Fraternities - Doing Well. Doing Good.

Acacia on Ning - click here

I attended Homecoming at Illinois Wesleyan University on October 5, 2019 and spent the day with Acacia Fraternity brothers ranging from Pin Number 3, one of the founders of the IWU chapter in 1957, to new pledges who have just joined in 2019.

During the alumni/active chapter meeting held at 10:am rush (recruiting new members) was discussed, as well as the negative image of fraternities in public media.

I took the opportunity to call the group's attention to a discussion started on the Tutor/Mentor Connection Ning.com forum in 2009, and my efforts since the early 2000s to motivate the IWU chapter and the national fraternities, to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy, for the following reasons.

1 - student learning - between 2006 and 2015 interns from various colleges, including many from South Korea, spent time looking at ideas on my web sites, then creating their own interpretations. View these here. In many cases interns used this opportunity to teach themselves new communications tools. If you visit this section of the T/MC Ning forum you can see who they were and see their reflections.

If Acacia undergrads started doing this work as freshmen and continued through graduation they would learn a wide range of tools to share their understanding of complex ideas with many other people. They would learn leadership roles and the cyclical process of action research.

2) Public visibility and public image - if service-learning teams grew within each chapter, and if chapters were connected and learning from each other,  duplicating the Tutor/Mentor Connection 4-part strategy, to build greater understanding of issues, and greater involvement in solving that problem, focusing on the local community where that chapter is located, or where undergrads and alumni live, tremendous positive visibility can be generated. 

Build collection of media stories

Visit this link and view the list of media stories that I've been able to generate over many years. Then imagine a place on each chapter's web site where a similar list grows as a result of their consistent work in this focus area.  View this list of awards, with the same goal in mind.

3) Connections between alumni and undergrads, and between chapters across the country. Imagine being able to go to the web site of any chapter and finding a page with the graphic at the top of this article. In each node would be links to a sub-page, showing a group of people studying a particular issue.

Then imagine finding network analysis maps using tools like NodeXL, showing Twitter, Facebook and/or Linked in discussions of this strategy, or of any of the sub-issues on the concept map above. The nodes on the NodeXL should show numerous undergrads and alumni from different chapters talking about that issue during a specific time frame.

Over time participation in these discussions would grow as the social media strategies described at this link are learned and applied.

Many can fill leadership role.

4- Impact on Rush and Fund Raising - This graphic shows that an on-going campaign can raise visibility and draw volunteers and dollars to all youth serving organizations in the city where a fraternity is located.  This also draws attention to the Fraternity.

A strategy that focuses on issues important to a community, and that focuses on helping kids from high poverty areas come through school and into college, which generates growing public and social media awareness, has to build awareness among incoming students (and parents) and potential donors, as well as university administrators. That awareness leads to new pledges and new dollars to fund scholarships, operations at the local and national fraternity level.

It also influences what other fraternities do.

5 - Impact on careers. A network analysis map shows connections between people. In each map the growing number of undergrad and alumni nodes represents constantly expanding social capital, that can open doors to jobs and business opportunities and strengthen the ties of brotherhood, within each chapter and across the national fraternity.

6 - One Acacia in a divided America - If there are groups of undergrads and alumni in each node focusing on important issues, the on-going work builds stronger ties and reduces the social and political divides that are tearing America apart.

All of these are leadership roles that are available to Acacia. Just by sharing your interpretation of this article from the National Chapter, at Conclave, and from local chapters, you are inviting members to take time to understand it, and to take the lead in launching it.

I've created two Slideshare presentations to help communicate these ideas.

Establishing Tutor/Mentor Connection-Type Planning Teams at College Fraternities from Daniel Bassill

Creating a Tutor/Mentor Connection on a university campus:

Forming a Tutor/Mentor Connection on a College Campus from Daniel Bassill

If this strategy were in place, there might be a dozen versions of these presentations, embedded in blogs on each chapter's web site, and even on the company web site of alumni participants!

That's the goal. The Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC pages are intended to simulate and influence thinking and actions of others.   Feel free to create your own versions. Use as thought starters. Share them with me on Twitter, Facebook and/or Linkedin.

If this article has value, please consider a contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Click here to learn more.