[p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

Hi Gary. The Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR) has both a Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Great-Lakes-Regional-Pollution-Prevention-Roundtable-GLRPPR/101044918640?ref=s) and a Twitter (http://twitter.com/GLRPPR) page. Neither is hugely popular yet. We only recently put "follow us on" buttons on the GLRPPR home page near the news (www.glrppr.org). They're in relative infancy, so I think it's too early to tell whether they're having much of an impact. I'm not sure how we would gauge their impact really.

I do know that both of these pages have subscribers/followers who are not GLRPPR members or environmental professionals. GLRPPR staff have promoted the pages to their friends and family, and some of them have decided to follow the pages in a show of support or to learn more about what their loved ones do for a living. I know some of my friends who are nature-lovers or environmentally-minded have joined because they find the information on the pages interesting, and they might not otherwise have used or been aware of the GLRPPR web site or RSS feeds. To me, that has value--not just reaching perceived customers, but also reaching new customers. Some other environmental organizations (WWF, NWF, Nature Conservancy, regional organizations, etc.) are following the Twitter page. So, while we can't tell whether these efforts are making much of an impact on behavior at this time, can virtually guarantee that whatever impact isn't much because of the low number of followers currently,!
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nd we may never be able to really characterize that impact [even when each page has thousands of followers, which I'm sure is only a matter of time :)], I can say that in some small way it serves to get GLRPPR's message and services out to more people than received them previously. Given that setting these things up and maintaining them takes minimal effort (the Twitter page populates itself from various RSS feeds with only an occasional "extra" non-RSS tweet from staff members), my personal opinion (not an official GLRPPR opinion) is that the whole thing is worth it. Now if I had to make a decision about expending lots of limited time and resources on this versus some other task, I might not think so. But that hasn't been an issue so far. So far using these venues has just been a relatively painless extra way to put our information out into the world. 

I use both Facebook and Twitter personally as well, and like Thomas said in another response, I see some value in colleagues getting to know me a little better personally and vice versa. I also use my personal pages to share P2 information and some of my environmental philosophies with friends and family, because I know some of them are like-minded or sometimes because I want to point out things to people that they might not have considered before.

To address some of Scott's questions--I'm on Facebook daily and Twitter pretty frequently. I consume so many sources of information as part of my job (email, RSS feeds, etc.) that I don't even bother checking some of them very often anymore (my Google reader misses me, I think) because I don't have the time to read everything that comes in through those channels. Things like Facebook and Twitter let me get a manageable dose of work-related stuff while I'm making time to interact with friends and family--to kill two birds with one stone, I suppose. More people will read my Facebook page than most blog posts I ever write or RSS feeds that I contribute to for my job, because everyone else is busy too and more apt to pay attention to information offered in a setting that serves more than one purpose--as both entertainment and information source. Efficiency is part of P2; I suppose you could see social networking and Web 2.0 as a means to efficiently offer and consume information!
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n a world where we all receive more information in various formats than we could ever hope to process. Laura Barnes (my colleague and friend on both Facebook and Twitter) has talked about these tools as a way to deal with information overload, and I think she's right. The trick is to figure out how to present and get information in a way that is manageable and isn't just one more site or list of resources to check for the day. I think learning how to use these tools is a way for information and assistance providers to avoid being consigned to the pile of "more information than I can deal with right now." Get on the radar screen of the person with information overload, and then maybe they'll be interested enough to want to go to your web site or read your fact sheets, etc. Something to consider.

Joy Scrogum


Joy Scrogum
Information Specialist
Illinois Sustainable Technology Center
(Formerly WMRC)
Institute of Natural Resources Sustainability
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
One Hazelwood Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 333-8948

www.istc.illinois.edu
www.glrppr.org
www.greeningschools.org
www.pneac.org