The Communication Initiative Network: Update and Sustainable Growth

Dear CI Network Participant,

Many thanks for being part of The Communication Initiative Network including being subscribed to The Drum Beat, Soul Beat, and/or Son de Tambora e-magazine. We very much value your participation and engagement and we are honoured to support your very important work.

Below I wish to outline both some recent CI developments and some ways that you can support this process if you and your organisation find it to have added value for your work. We have strived to outline support that both helps you to advance your own mission whilst at the same time enhances the sustainability of The CI process.

It is great to have you as part of this growing social network and community of practice focused on some of the key issues facing the planet, a network that is now over 85,000 people who have subscribed, 35,000plus knowledge summaries shared and used, 2,500,000 individual user sessions in the past 12 months, and an ever-changing, modern, technical platform (look for some new developments very soon!) to support you getting what you want when you want it!.

One area we are really trying to help with is the "information overload" issue! By taking often complex and long documents, papers, programme descriptions, research results, etc. and summarising them to a few paragraphs with links to contact people and the full materials, we try to help you to efficiently review and choose the knowledge, people and networks most relevant and valuable to your work in your context.

For effective progress on all local, national, and international development priority issues it is vitally important that we harness the potential added value of social networking and shared, summarised knowledge. Though there are many challenges (and we are working to turn as many challenges as possible into opportunities!), The Communication Initiative seeks to harness these capacities, provide this access, and create these spaces.

Of course, this needs funding and support! Like you and your organisations, we at The Communication Initiative need to keep an eagle eye on issues of sustainability.

For us that means increasingly spreading the financial load for this effort across a larger number of organisations that: derive value from The CI process; are replacing previous expenditure costs with access to "free" online processes; share their work and ideas through common portals such as The CI; and/or wish to use the capacities of The Communication Initiative to help advance their organisational goals and strategy.

More insights on this are provided below. But first, a quick summary of ways in which you can both derive value from The Communication Initiative process and contribute to our sustainability:

1. Become a Communication Initiative PARTNER (if your organisation is not already)

2. Become a Communication Initiative ASSOCIATE (if your organisation, office or department is not already)

3. Advertise your VACANT JOB POSTS through The Communication Initiative Classifieds

4. Advertise your FEE-BASED TRAINING EVENTS and CONFERENCES through The Communication Initiative Classifieds

5. Advertise your FOR SALE PUBLICATIONS through The Communication Initiative Classifieds

6. Have The Communication Initiative build your own, branded SOCIAL NETWORKING space using core CI functionality

7. If you are a CONSULTANCY ORGANISATION or INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT, share information on your services and skills

8. Become your own real-time NEWS PUBLISHER - Integrate your own customised NEWS SERVICE specific to your organisation and the interests of your readers within your site. [Organising over 15,000 international news services & blogs]

9. Click on a Google ad - sorry - some are not the best, but not much we can do - many are appropriate - every little click helps!

Brief details, examples, and further insights on each of these follow my signature below; on any one of these items, please also feel free to contact me for more information - email wfeek@comminit.com

But can I ask you to please also raise the 9 possibilities above with the relevant people in your organisation (if you are not the relevant person!) - for example: senior management concerning CI Partnership, Associates, and News aggregation; Human Resources re job advertising; and, Programme managers re conference and training event promotion and customised/branded social networking. I am sure you will know who to go to: many thanks for raising these possibilities and opportunities within your organisation.

Specifically related to PARTNERS and ASSOCIATES, please visit the website and check the status of your organisation. Many thanks to all who are engaged in one of these processes.

We are approaching you to consider your organisation, office, or programme being part of the resourcing options highlighted above (with more details below) for two core reasons:

A. SHARING THE FINANCIAL LOAD:

Though many organisations derive value from The Communication Initiative process - as indicated by the numbers of people subscribing, knowledge submitted for sharing, CI site users sent to other organisational websites through links in The CI process and the "impact" and "added value" data highlighted in the regular network surveys - only a few organisations presently carry the financial costs of this process.

There are many comparatively large organisations that have: over 150 staff who have subscribed; over 100 knowledge summaries submitted, edited and shared within this community; and whose websites we feed with 5,000plus user sessions per annum, for example. Likewise, there are a large number of Universities where students are encouraged to join The CI process. If you want usage and access details specific to your organisation, please let me know.

It is vitally important that those who derive such added value, and have financial resources to contribute, help to cover some of the costs - that these costs are not left to others to cover indefinitely. This is particularly important as costs are saved elsewhere within organisations - for example, research consultancies, printed publications - and replaced by easy and free access to processes to such as The Communication Initiative.

B. FREE and OPEN ACCESS

We need to keep the whole of The CI process open and free - no paywalls here! This is vitally important as a key operational principle for The Communication Initiative and, more importantly, as a core principle for international development. In the case of The CI, this is heightened because two of our biggest growth areas are (a) local and national organisations within the economically poorest countries - "The South" - obviously a vitally important group for development progress; and (b) policy makers, funders, researchers, and technical experts in other areas of development action – e.g., economists and epidemiologists - a vitally important group for the communication and media community to engage.

With many thanks for your consideration of becoming a CI Partner or Associate organisation, using The CI's Classifieds processes for your vacancy jobs and fee-based training events, conferences and for sale publications, appropriating and branding The CI's social networking processes for your organisation, developing a custom news scraping and aggregation process, or - at minimum - clicking on a few Google ads of interest!

More details follow - just drop me a reply email with any queries, questions , observations, or ideas – thanks - Warren

Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative
http://www.comminit.com
wfeek@comminit.com
1-250-658-6372 - work
1-250-588-8795 - mobile
1-250-658-1728 - fax

SUMMARY DETAILS on EACH REVENUE POSSIBILITY

For any of these possibilities, to become involved or ask questions please email Warren at wfeek@comminit.com

1. PARTNER: Become a Communication Initiative Partner

The CI Partners (a) collectively provide the strategic guidance and direction for The Communication Initiative - ensuring that it meets the overall development priorities and needs of the communication and media community and (b) provide significant resources to support this overall initiative. Those resources are often linked to theme sites that match the development priorities of the Partner in question - for example HIV/AIDS; Fragile Contexts; Early Child Development; Media Development. By building a series of theme sites we build the overall process.

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2. ASSOCIATES: Become a Communication Initiative Associate

The CI Associates are organisations that recognise the added value of The Communication Initiative toward their work priorities - which may be focused on a development issue, geographic location, and/or population group. They may also make a judgment that The CI has helped to replace or diminish expenditures incurred. For those and maybe other reasons, the organisation or individual has chosen to provide financial support to this initiative. There are a range of possible payment levels from USD 500 for very small organisations or offices to USD 5,000 for larger organisations, programmes, or offices, with a special rate for Universities. The payment level is at the discretion of the Associate. The package includes a number of free job ads. A list of present Associates can be seen online here - if you are not there now, please join them! Thanks.

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3. VACANT JOB ADVERTISING: Advertise your vacant job posts through The Communication Initiative’s Development Classifieds

Attracting good staff is very important (obviously!). The CI provides immediate access to the 85,000 in the network and these peopleoften pass job opportunities around their networks and contacts. You can immediately post your jobs (with an online payment system) here or drop Warren a note at wfeek@comminit.com and he will get you into the right hands.

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4. PROMOTE TRAINING EVENTS and CONFERENCES: Advertise your fee-based training events and conferences through The Communication Initiative’s Development Classifieds

Many organisations, as part of their programmes, provide training events and conferences for people pay to attend. Given that this is revenue to these organisations, and all organisations are interested in expanding attendance, we provide an opportunity to promote your events and training opportunities through The CI process. They appear on the site and in The CI’s regular Development Classifieds e-magazine. You can directly post online here or send Warren an email at wfeek@comminit.com

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5. Advertise your FOR SALE PUBLICATIONS through The Communication Initiative’s Development Classifieds

There is a similar situation related to for sale publications. If your organisation produces publications for which it charges a price, then please consider marketing your publications online and through the Development Classifieds e-magazine. The direct submission form is here or, as always, just email Warren at wfeek@comminit.com

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6. Have The Communication Initiative build your own, branded SOCIAL NETWORKING space using core CI functionality
Example: ICT for Education

Many organisations are interested in forming and facilitating social networks that are: branded to their organisations or networks; under their facilitation; can be linked to knowledge they wish to share; have a calendar that can be shared; provide profiles of participants; have a section for key documents; where posts are received by email; and so on. It is not possible to build such a tailored, controlled, branded, and customised process through Facebook or similar. The Communication Initiative can build such a process for you using its Organic Groups social networking platform. You can see a customised example here (You will have to join and log in to see all functionality.) There are other examples, but they are private processes. This social networking process can be linked to your own websites. Please contact Warren if you would like more information - wfeek@comminit.com

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7. If you are a CONSULTANCY ORGANISATION or INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT , share information on your services and skills

We are aware that there is a reasonably large group of people in the network who are part of consultancy organisations and/or work as individual consultants. If you wish to further position your services and skills, please consider an entry in the Consultants section of the Development Classifieds website and e-magazine. You can directly submit here or...contact Warren at wfeek@comminit.com

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8. Become your own real time NEWS PUBLISHER

The NEWS and MEDIA business has changed considerably in the past 5 years. It is now possible to become YOUR OWN PUBLISHER without incorporating the full editorial resources typically required. Using sophisticated technology which gathers, analyzes and organizes the worlds media , your service can now present current news about any subject specific to your organization; perhaps on your priority issues, or overall themes related to your focus; featuring your content together along with the latest related news, posts, connections, photo galleries, timelines, Twitter feeds, and video.

The Communication Initiative works together with the leading international provider of this new form of content creation, giving you complete editorial control over the sources & presentation of this content on your site. As a result you can lower your costs of content creation while increasing your user discovery and engagement.

See some examples in the CI frame for Malaria and World Bank. Contact Warren for more details.

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9. Click on a Google ad - sorry - some are not the best but not much we can do - many are appropriate - every little click helps!

Hey - please - give it a go!