10 for 2010: #3 People of the E-Book

Last week’s launch of the iPad signaled Apple’s entrance into the digital world’s growing market for the “third device.” While personal computers and cell phones are two distinct devices, some are calling for a gadget to fill the space in between the two. Whether that device is going to be more like the do-all netbook/tablet iPad or a dedicated reader like Amazon’s Kindle is yet to be seen.

What can be said though is that these new devices are not a passing fad. Some hopeful analysts claim that the iPad and Kindle, by offering new format possibilities for books, newspapers and magazines, might just save the media industry. E-books, for example, are currently available for 125,000 titles on Amazon and make up 6 percent of the site’s total sales in books, including 48 percent of all titles available in both formats.But forecasters project sales to grow exponentially in the near future to the point that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has proclaimed that after a successful 500-year run, the book’s time has come.

For the People of the Book, a people not generally known for its early entrance into new technology opportunities, it’s time to start envisioning how things will change as we become the People of the E-book.

  • How might the Jewish community increase Jewish literacy as more religious and educational resources become digitized in e-formats, and thus become more easily disseminated and accessed?
  • Will prayer become more individualized as siddurs (prayer books) become available to everyone and can be carried without adding any extra bulk to a briefcase or book bag?
  • Will learning of Jewish texts attract new students as Torah and Talmud become available in new formats?
  • Will Jewish life become less expensive by saving on the purchase of books at religious schools and day schools?
  • How might synagogues and JCCs build relationships beyond their walls as sermons, newsletters and blog entries are sent to the palm of constituents’ hands?
  • Will all Jews need a handheld device, like new students at some universities, in order to fully participate in all the community has to offer?

We want to hear from you! How else might the Jewish world change as it enters the digital realm? What’s your organization or community doing to interact in the digital world?

10 for 2010: #2 UNFRIENDING and UNFOLLOWING

Anyone remember the Burger King campaign last year — defriend (or unfriend) 10 people on Facebook and we’ll give you a burger? Regardless of what you think of the campaign or Whoppers, their ad agency jumped on the beginning of a trend that is really coming to fruition in 2010. The Oxford English Dictionary even named “unfriend” a 2009 word of the year (along with “tweetup”).

As Facebook and Twitter have become so mainstream, and friending so casual, our rolls of friends and followers have grown extensive. Maybe too extensive. Just at that time when we’re trying to manage our precious time and sort through reams of content to find the gems, it is our own “friends” weighing us down. Dunbar proposed that any individual could really only have 150 stable social relationships at any given time. Others propose that with tools such as Facebook we can manage higher numbers. In a recent update, Facebook set the number of people to show up in your news feed to 250 (which you can change). While it may be true that our maximum number is far over Dunbar’s 150, many people are starting to approach their limit and are pruning their social network gardens.

There are two things you should be thinking about:

  1. How should I pare my friends and people I’m following to get the most bang for my social-media-hour-buck?
  2. How are other people making decisions about paring their lists, and how should I position myself to stay on the friends list of those I care about? (note: you may not care about all of them)

How you answer these questions will depend on your business, your brand, your audience, your goals, and how you have been using these tools. People want value (which can be information, insight, humor, etc.). People also want to be talked with, not talked at.

One of the challenges is that when you’ve mixed company in your friend or follower list, there’s not one clear value proposition. For example, family wants pics of your kids, college friends want to know what you’re reading, business colleagues want professional insights, customers/clients/members want meaty information and connection. You cannot please all of the people all of the time.

Some people have dealt with this by creating multiple profiles — in some cases with hard lines (members of the congregation can befriend a staff person here but not there), and in some cases much softer lines (e.g. I tweet about Jewish social media and innovation at @darimonline, and I tweet personally about kids, chickens, music and other things at @lisacolton) where you’re welcome to friend or follow in both places, but at least you know what you’re getting (or as the writer, what you’re giving) with greater specificity.

I predict that the next waves of functionality and privacy updates from Facebook and Twitter will offer greater control over sorting these groups (they’ve already begun), targeting content to this group or that, and being able to hide or categorize friends and followers with greater ease to create customized feeds (how cool would it be to login to Facebook at work and see only updates from professional colleagues, and get home and login to see updates only from friends and family?).

In the meantime, put these on your to-do list:

  1. Be educated about privacy and friend list categorization opportunities on Facebook. There’s more control there than you probably realize or use.
  2. Set up friend lists, and each time you accept a new friend, add them to a list. When you use your settings you’ll be able to count on knowing who’s getting what info. See a tutorial here.
  3. Be aware that the functionality, policies, and culture of these tools will continue to adapt and change, so adopt a nimble stance (modern “sea legs”) and keep educating yourself.
  4. Think about how you can talk with your community, not just talk at them. Experts suggest a ratio of 1:12 (or even 1:20) — for every one self-promoting post (“come to our young adults event Tues evening…”) you should add value 12 times. What value can you offer? What questions can you ask to tap into your community? What conversations are happening related to your work and how can you participate? And don’t forget to LISTEN.
  5. Discuss among staff how people are managing these issues. There may be creative ideas, and you may or may not want to have everyone on the same page and taking the same approach. Either way, staff should be aware of expectations as employees if they are engaging with members, prospects, board members or donors. You should consider drafting a social media policy or guidelines, or revisiting to existing policies. See info here from Wild Apricot and info here from Beth Kanter and sample policies here.

How are you identifying what your target audiences want to hear, learn and discuss? How are you thinking about what to post and/or tweet? Where are you adding value and growing your online community? How will you know if people and dropping out and why?

10 Blips On Your Radar for 2010: #1 MOBILE

In the coming days and weeks we’ll be sharing 10 things you should have on your radar screen for 2010. If you’re already on top of them – mazel tov. Share with us what you’re doing in the comments. If not, time to get hip to the new decade. Don’t put it off. This isn’t the future, it’s the present, so pay attention.

To kick us off, mobile mobile mobile. Everybody’s got a phone in their pocket, and increasingly it’s a pretty intelligent one. The iPhone, Blackberry, Android and others are taking over the market, and shaking up the status quo. Assume that people are looking for and engaging with you while on the go, not just while sitting at their desk.

Some things to know:

  1. Compose your emails for easy reading on a mobile device. Send a test and check it out on a Blackberry and iPhone. Some Blackberry users are reporting a lack of patience with graphic emails because it takes too much time to wade through. “Give me the bullet points and important information straight up and in brief” seems to be the attitude.
  2. Start learning about fundraising via mobile. I just made my first donation by text message to a radio show I love, This American Life, when I saw a tweet. $5 went on my AT&T bill. So easy! Check out http://www.mobilegiving.org/ to see how they do it. Sophist Productions has been hosting events (a UJA Young Leadership cocktail party, for example) where people “text to pledge” their donation, and pledges are projected on the wall. Yes, it is a new world. And it works. Read more here on text-to-give programs.
  3. Redesigning or tuning up your website? Make sure you’ve got a mobile friendly version. Check out a Google tool here to see what your web site can look like on a mobile browser. Beth Kanter iPhone-ized her blog with an easy $200 IPhone app tool. Learn about it here.
  4. Twitter was conceived of, and largely used as a mobile tool. Thus, don’t neglect this community when you are putting together a mobile strategy.

Want to learn more?

http://mobileactive.org/ is a great org with useful resources and a discussion list on how nonprofits are using mobile in their work.

http://www.mobilecommons.com/ offers services for marketing, advocacy and fundraising via mobile (and thanks to Mobile Commons for donating their services for our Boot Camps)

http://www.mobilecitizen.org/ has excellent resources for mobile use in education and nonprofits.

Great resources from Wild Apricot: Is Your Nonprofit Website Mobile-Friendly?

Examples of cool, mission-centric mobile uses from nonprofits, on Beth Kanter’s Blog

Hot off the JTA Press: Synagogues and Social Media

Read all about it: “Synagogues Blogging and Tweeting their Way to New Kinds of Communication,” by Sue Fishkoff on JTA!

The article describes how congregations around the country are taking advantage of resources such as webcasts, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and video. Darim’s Lisa Colton notes that synagogues and religious schools are using social media to foster new models of community participation and engagement.

Props to our Darim Online members and friends – including Ellen Dietrick @cbipreschool; Gabby Volodarsky, Temple Sinai Oakland; Rabbi Alan Lucas and Rabbi Jeni Friedman at Temple Beth Sholom, Roslyn; Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Westchester Reform Temple; @Sixth & I; and, Congregation Ner Tamid – for diving into social media territory and sharing their stories!

How is your synagogue or religious community tapping into social media? Share YOUR stories!

The Reform Movement Should Make the Most of this Moment

As far as Rabbi Eric Yoffie is concerned, Reform congregations need to get with the program, technologically speaking, and they need to do so now. At the recent URJ Biennial in Toronto, the movements head delivered his annual sermon and used the opportunity to encourage every congregation to think seriously about harnessing the power of the internet to enhance their communities:

[T]he web potentially at least empowers our members and democratizes our synagogues. The synagogue is the grassroots address of the Jewish world, and the web gives us an instrument to involve and include Jews as never before. Are our synagogues doing great things in this area? Absolutely. Are we making the most of this potential? Not even close.

Yoffies challenge to congregations is to be applauded. Too many synagogues and Jewish schools have an attitude towards tech thats generations (a relative term, I know) behind their congregants and students who all have Facebook accounts, use Twitter, and are never more than an arms length from their Blackberries and iPhones. But the movements approach to addressing this issue an organized program to train lay leaders to create and maintain congregational blogs is only a first step. The Reform movement has an incredible opportunity on its hands, a chance to take the next steps and to get a lot more serious about using technology to build and strengthen communities.

Four suggestions for maximizing this moment:

1. Congregations should form committees (or task forces) to develop thoughtful strategies for using technology to increase the efficacy of communication. Rabbi Yoffie is right that blogs are a great way for synagogue members to connect online. But there are lots of other technologies social networking, microblogging, podcasting, mass texting that also might be useful to synagogues. And there are those congregations for whom blogging might not be the best fit. Every synagogue should gather their most technologically savvy members (and some socially savvy connectors, if were going to take Malcolm Gladwells advice) to make these sort of decisions for the community. Should the temple have a Facebook page, and if so what kinds of things should be posted there? If the synagogue has a Twitter account, who should be charged with maintaining it? And how often should they tweet? The URJ could be indispensible in providing consultants and experts to help congregations get on this path.

2. Technology can help Reform congregations do an even better job of running organizations that live up to the highest values of the movement. Imagine if a synagogue lived up to its commitment to environmentalism by going totally paper-free. The synagogue staff uses Google Docs to collaborate on projects. Rabbis project Temple announcements (and other administrivia) up on a screen during services so that programs dont need to be printed every week. Instead of spending lots of paper and money on a newsletter, members receive a monthly email newsletter, as well as frequent updates on Facebook and Twitter. Lots of congregations are using all these technologies, and theyre preventing lots of paper waste in the process. The Union can support congregations new to these technologies by teaching professionals to use these tools, empowering congregants with tech skills to be leaders in their communities, and by pairing temples at the beginning of this journey with those whove already found success.

3. Technology is an important part of the future of Jewish education. Im not talking about educational video games. Im talking about using tools to help learners connect deeply to Jewish text, about helping schools better communicate with parents, about using inexpensive video conferencing to bring diverse teachers to isolated Jewish communities. Education is a central part of a synagogues mission, and we need to be asking new questions about how learning is changing. How can we utilize new technologies like Google Wave, Twitter, and YouTube to allow for collaborative (hevruta for the new generation!) learning? How can the internet help us engage (and empower!) parents and families in new ways? How can we use technology to open up the world of Jewish education to better integrate the arts, science, and communication?

Thirty years ago, innovative Jewish educators were using filmstrips, slideshows, and video to bring Torah to life. Now, equally innovative educators are using Flash animation, social media, and hypertextuality to accomplish those same goals. The URJ should nurture and support these sorts of projects and help to bring those tools to congregations and their learners.

4. Technology is an excellent opportunity for collaboration. In the few days before the URJ Biennial, a group of educators gathered for a pre-conference symposium on Jewish identity. One of the teachers at that gathering was Professor Ari Kelman who shared research that suggests that the current generation of young, involved Jews (many of whom are digital natives, if you dont mind sweeping generalizations) are redefining affiliation by resisting joining a single organization, and rather participating in lots of diverse parts of Jewish life. For these Jews, no single institution is the center of Jewish life.

Institutions that pay attention to thinkers like Kelman realize that successful Jewish organizations of the future will be marked by cooperation and collaboration. They also know that efficient and financially responsible Jewish organizations are the ones that dont insist on re-inventing the wheel but rather seek out partner organizations with different types of expertise. To truly move forward to empower member congregations to embrace a 21st-Century social-media-savvy technologically-engaged existence, the Union should seek out organizations, educators, clergy, innovators, experts, academics and thinkers who can help congregations do their best work.

Perfect example: Darim Online has lots of experience helping Jewish organizations effectively utilize social media technology (including blogs!), and that expertise could really help (and in fact already is helping) Reform congregations look at new ways of communicating. Instead of trying to invent their own wheel, the URJ should seek out partners whove already invented pretty good wheels.

Lets be clear: The Reform movement is taking unprecedented steps forward. Rabbi Yoffies sermon and the related URJ initiatives launched this week mark the first time a major movement is encouraging and supporting member congregations to take this trend seriously. This is an important moment, and it would be a shame to waste it.

Josh Mason-Barkin, director of school services at Torah Aura Productions, is a member of a Reform congregation and a graduate of HUC-JIR. He blogs at tapbb.com. You can find his twitter feed at www.twitter.com/barkinj. He frequently contributes to a conversation about Jewish Education in the 21st century on Twitter under the hashtag #jed21

A Rose is Not Just as Sweet in the Information Age: Choosing a Facebook Page Name

(This is the second of five posts on creating a Fan Page for your Jewish Organization. The first part can be found here. Subsequent posts will cover your Page’s picture, what information to include, what content to create and which applications to use.)

Unlike Abraham, Moses and Madonna, our organizations cannot simply go by just a one-word name. With all of the information on the Internet, it is helpful to be more exact.

In the organized Jewish community in particular, in which names often include similar terms, such as United, Jewish, American, Israel, Friends and Community, it is easy for organizations to be confused with one another.

For example, check out this search for “Temple Sinai” on Facebook:

Between Fan Pages, People and Groups, Temple Sinai yields more than 200 results! Imagine a member or prospect looking for you on Facebookthey are not going to sort through 500 possibilities hunting for the right one, so plan your name so they can find you with ease. Take a look at the results for groups with Temple Sinai in the name:

Screen shot 2009-10-12 at 5.56.06 PM

Try “Jewish, Boston.” Again, there are more than 200 results.

American, Jewish” yields more than 2,000 results!

Because so many people and institutions are on Facebook, it is so sticky and thus so useful. But you have to be strategic to be successful in this crowded space. Choosing the right name is a critical first step.

Tips for Choosing a Name

Keep it Simple, Sorta

A name should be specific, but it should also be simple. When picking the name for your Page, make sure to balance the simple (Temple Sinai) with the specific (Temple Sinai of Brookline).

Acronyms and the ABCs of Jewish Organizations

Sometimes when you are working at your organization, things seem really obvious, like going by your acronym. Do people know you by your acronym or by your full name? Consider how people might search for you. Perhaps using your full name, followed by your acronym after a dash or in parentheses. This way the organization can be found by name and by acronym.

For example:

  • The Jewish National Fund, popularly known as JNF, goes by “Jewish National Fund” on its Page.
  • BBYO goes only by its acronym on its Page. Notice that regional affiliates of BBYO each have a more specific name; for instance, Boulder BBYO.
  • AIPAC goes by both its acronym and its full name, “AIPAC – The American Israel Public Affairs Committee,” on its Page.

Let Your Fans Know What You Are Doing

Even with a specific name, you will want to make sure your name reflects who your Page is for. If your Page is a hub for all your members, then a simple name followed by the community name might be perfect. But if your Page is for a specific aspect of your organization, like the social action division or the young leadership committee, you may want to incorporate that into the name as well.

Examples of Pages with specific names:

Broadcasting Your Name in Big, Shining Light

Bonus! Facebook now allows you to have a distinct URL for your Page. For example, www.facebook.com/darimonline will take you directly to Darims Page. After you have your Page set up, you can register your direct address under the settings. Direct URLs for Pages, however, is limited to Pages with at least 100 fans. When you create your page, you cannot transfer ownership, and you can only post as the PAGE, not as YOU personally. Read more here at Tech for Luddites.
What did you decide to name your Page? Leave us a comment with a link to your Page as an example for the JewPoint0 community.

From Place to Space: I Live in a Virtual Community

I live in a virtual Jewish community:

My life-cycle rabbi is in Columbus, Ohio.

My education rabbi is in Los Angeles.

My close friends are in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, St. Louis and Charlotte.

I am enrolled in a Jewish professional graduate school in Boston, my family is in the Southeast, and I intern at a Jewish non-profit headquartered in Charlottesville, Va.

Thats why I need a network that works where I worka place I like to call “Charstonashingtonatloges.”

(Remember this AT&T ad?)

This is how my community works:

I study Jewish texts with my rabbi on the phone.

I keep in touch with my friends through constant texting, playing in a fantasy football league, talking on the phone while driving, reading Gmail and Twitter status updates and viewing new pictures as they are posted on Facebook or Google’s Picasa.

For work, I use a VOIP (voice over IP) phone with a Charlottesville area code to take calls, and a combination of Google Docs, Wikispaces, Ning, Jing, Skype, Delicious and other Web 2.0 tools to coordinate my work with my colleagues.

When one of my friends gets married, I am there in suit and tie, and our rabbi whom we know from college flies in to be with us for the weekend to officiate, dance, talk and reconnect.

I am extremely lucky. My community is amazing. The community I feel closest to only exists in its connections among its members. While we face serious geographical challenges, physical space or proximity is just not as important as the right people or the best connections.

This is a trend that Jewish communal leaders need to understand exists and is very real for many in my generation. We are becoming increasingly globally oriented and are no longer willing to compromise quality of friendships or experiences just because we may be far away.

We are in constant pursuit of personal meaning, and where we find it is where we will be. Social media not only allows me to create community when we’re not physically together, it empowers me to continue to add to it nationally and globally.

Many of the newest and most innovative Jewish start-up organizations are prospering, having transcended the idea of physical space. JDub Records creates a Jewish space on your car’s stereo, Storahtelling takes the tradition of Jewish storytelling into nightclubs and Reboot helps launch Jewish-themed creative projects into the public sphere.

Moishe House, a start-up creating physical places for young Jews to gather and create community, recognizes the need for a physical space but creates it by leasing living rooms, rather than building all-out community centers.

The Jewish community having long ago moved into the suburbs to build beautiful synagogues and create long-standing institutions, however, is very invested in physical space. And for good reason. In these spaces is where much of the Jewish activities, traditions and culture exist. But these building-centered Jewish organizations might benefit by dipping their toes into the water by creating new spaces outside the synagogue building.

For example, the Riverway Project at Temple Israel of Boston brings synagogue activities into the homes of young Jews and into other spaces in the community.

Shabbat Connections at Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, VA, funded by the Legacy Heritage Innovation Grant, creates small havurot within a Charlottesville congregation, and encourages groups of families to meet in one another’s homes once a month for Shabbat experiences.

As we happen upon Sukkot, a holiday that reminds us of our wandering ways and encourages us to build temporary houses, it is important to remember that the most important place for Judaism is the one place that we take with us wherever we go: our neshama, the place inside us all.

With all the new technologies flying around us, we should take a step back to see how they help each of us connect with our communitiesboth physical and virtualand with ourselves. The communication revolution is here, and its transforming not only the way we talk, but the way we relate to everything around us.

To some, social media means loss of face-to-face connection. To me, social media is the saving grace of my life in Charstonashingtonatloges, the virtual, and in Boston, the physical. It is the tool that enriches my connections and makes my face-to-face time all the more meaningful.

Do you have examples of programs in your community that are redefining traditional space boundaries? Please share them in the comments section.

Where Do You Take Your Pulse?

We all compare ourselves to others. It’s natural. How do we measure up compared to that person, that organization, that company. We often compare ourselves to the competition, because we need to stay just an inch ahead in order to compete. In the Jewish community, that often means looking at the other synagogue or school just down the street. We take the pulse of our immediate surroundings.

We’re taking the wrong pulse.

The people we’re trying to reach are comparing their experience with our Jewish communal organizations against every other organization and company they are dealing with in their day-to-day lives. We don’t get a free pass to have mediocre customer service or out of date information on our web site, or poorly formatted e-newsletters.

In today’s marketplace, we’re competing for attention. People don’t allocate 10% of their attention for Jewish causes, they put their attention where they find quality, value, social capital, and authenticity.

Thus staff and board members of Jewish organizations would be wise to expand their gaze, and learn from examples in other nonprofit organizations and the for-profit world. Even the trends that big corporations are responding to are applicable to local Jewish organizations, and today can be accomplished with no additional out-of-pocket dollars, and little (sometimes saved) staff time.

As Shel Israel writes in his new book Twitterville, companies like Dell and Comcast have pulled their reputations out of the gutter by putting real people out on the front lines of Twitter to listen and respond. Innovative companies like Zappos have made this culture of “paying attention” part of their company ethos. There’s a lot to learn from these guys.

Want to learn more? We’ll be giving away a copy of Twitterville soon. Next week we’ll be asking you about how you listen and pay attention to your community, and how you’re using social media to do so. Start thinking …

What other companies or organizations do you see as useful models for us to learn from? How have they inspired you?

Jewish Supplementary Schools That Work:ADCA Webinar Hosted by JESNA

What do we know about the makings of good Jewish supplementary education? What are noteworthy characteristics of schools that work? What factors enable successful learning communities? What are emerging policy recommendations toward creating and sustaining effective, vibrant complementary education?

These questions are addressed in the report, Schools That Work: What We Can Learn From Good Jewish Supplementary Schools, authored by Dr. Jack Wertheimer on behalf of the AVI CHAI Foundation, March 2009. In conjunction with the release of the report, JESNA recently hosted an ADCA webinar with Jack Wertheimer to discuss the report and the role of central agencies for Jewish education. The webinar is available at JESNAs Sosland Resource Center. ADCA is the Association of Directors of Central Agencies for Jewish Education.

We wrote about other resources on complementary and congregational education published by JESNA – be sure to take a look at them as well.

What are some of the most powerful characteristics of success in your school? What would you add to the report’s list of policy recommendations? What else do you want to know about successful complementary education?

The Innovation Ecosystem: Emergence of a New Jewish Landscape

In their recently published op-ed in JTA titled “Invest in Innovation”, Felicia Herman and Dana Raucher disagree that at a time of economic downturn we should follow the “calls for greater consolidation and a return to the more centralized infrastructure of yesteryear.” These two brilliant women (Felicia Herman is the executive director of the Natan Fund, and Dana Raucher is the executive director of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation) are not looking backwards for solutions, but looking forward. They write:

We believe that the young, and often small, nonprofits that have emerged in the past decade, and the very de-centralization they reflect, are here to stay. We believe that this interconnected network of smaller, niche-based organizations reflects the organizational transformation now under way in American culture: a revolution in the way that people connect, organize and affiliate, brought about by technological advancements that have dramatically shaped our ways of looking at the world. That revolution already has utterly transformed so much of our lives — the way we shop, network, share information, learn and teach. We dont believe theres any going back.

I completely agree with their observations. In addition to encouraging you to read the new report, The Innovation Ecosystem, that they developed with JumpStart, I want to reinforce their de-centralized vision, and encouage us to questions our assumptions and the status quo of how we go about doing our business. The top down models that have worked in the past are no longer the only solution. Self-motivated, creative and empowered individuals and groups now have the ability to self-organize, creating the programs and organizations that embody the bottom-up culture that is so attractive.

Investments in innovative organizations are important, because we do need to evolve our Jewish community to continue to be relevant to its participants. Furthermore, we need to invest in helping more traditional organizations also make this shift to realign themselves with a rapidly changing paradigm. The “revolution” which Felicia and Dana refer to is in fact a tectonic shift, largely empowered by social media, that we cannot ignore. So where to begin? While the strategic questions may feel overwhelming and insurrmountable, dipping our toes in the water to begin to understand the evolving culture and the potential of the technology tools is a fruitful (and dare I say FUN) place to start.

Often I hear staff say “but where are we going to find the time to do this social media stuff? I don’t have even 10 minutes a day to spare.” While that may be true, we are spending a tremendous amount of time and energy (and dollars) in our “business as usual” routine, the products of which may or may not be the most efficient and effective way to achieve our goals and mission.

Take for example the synagogue newsletter. This 12 or 24 page monthly publication takes thousands of dollars per year in paper, labels and stamps, plus who know how many hours to write, edit, layout, photocopy, stamp and send 500, 1000, or 1500 copies each month. Can you tell me how many people read it cover to cover? What’s the most popular column? How many throw it in the recycling without even a glance? Even those who do read it cover to cover — what’s the impact on their participation, education, engagement, identity or support?

Now, can we borrow just 10 minutes a day from the team of people who put countless hours into that newsletter? I’ll help you measure the return on your 10 minutes. My guess is you’ll find it worthwhile.

There is no looking back. So we might as well start looking forward. How do you spend your 10 minutes of social media per day? What are the outcomes?