National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC)

Location:
San Francisco, CA

NAMAC fosters and fortifies the culture and business of independent media arts. Through dialogue, collaboration, research and advocacy, we connect, organize and develop organizations.

Project Description: 

For the 2009-2010 Online Community Management and Membership Engagement Plan we are looking for a a VISTA volunteer to:
1. Manage and contribute to the 2009-10 Technology Infrastructure plan, which will continue to build the capacity of our members’ to connect and work with each other more fully.
2. Work in collaboration with program staff to create new content and interactive areas of the NAMAC website; edit and post web content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant; maintain the website and its technical needs.
3. Work with staff to set a social media strategy, and build out NAMAC’s capacity to reach members and the public through social media tools.
4. Work with NAMAC staff to pilot a series of webinars on the use of social media tools.
5. Expand and publish NAMAC’s web-based toolkits and guides to build capacity of our members’ organizations.
6. Work with staff to engage and reach out to members by communicating with them regularly through social media platforms; and develop metrics for NAMAC-based website and social networking usage.

NAMAC’s 300 member organizations serve the needs of low income communities around the country by providing access to technologies in community media centers, teaching members from these communities digital literacies and instructing at-risk youth in media production technologies; broadcasting with and distributing to underserved populations (such as new immigrants); and advocating on behalf of low-income communities in the telecommunications policy area. Many of our member organizations provide technology workforce development programs. Because we are a national organization, we estimate that more than 5 million people people will be affected by the work that we and our members create and take part in; from more that 400,000 media professionals to audiences and media users numbering in the millions.

This project will strengthen both our capacity to deliver services to our member organizations and simultaneously encourage them to share knowledge and best practices among themselves by connecting them, encouraging collaboration, and disseminating content and analyses through social media tools and technologies. Now, more than ever, it is critical to build strong community ties among disparate members found at all points around the country – from small startups to venerable institutions. NAMAC brings them together to create a media democracy and commons open to everyone.

This project is both timely and necessary because it will build upon the work done by our first CTC VISTA staffer, Morgan Sully, who remodeled the NAMAC website in 2007-08, in its first iteration as an online community space. The next VISTA staffer will further develop our social networking capabilities, broadening and deepening our engagement with people through these interfaces. They are absolutely crucial to keep the organization lively and useful, and draw new members in. Social media is rapidly becoming a core demand that people want and need as part of a membership of a national network that seeks to bring organizations together.

NAMAC serves the media arts, and is extending its reach to offer services to the broader arts sector. We are here to ensure that our member organizations meet and work with their own communities through 21st century technologies. Our members expect us to provide a continuing stream of virtual connections, personal experiences and value-added knowledge. Online platforms now offer an advantageous way for NAMAC to reach, engage with and ask members to participate in our knowledge network. Social media platforms also give us a degree of customization, which means we can target programs and services to members in a specialized and targeted manner.

In addition, we plan to develop workshops and webinars that can also help members to productively use online social media to strengthen their real life engagement with their communities and supporters.

NAMAC has had a strong web-based presence since 1997, when we adopted a plan to offer a majority of our programs through our emerging knowledge network. It has grown and evolved through the years as tools and technologies have been refined. This next online phase is part of our strategic planning, and a way to deepen and broaden our relevancy to members, allies and supporters. And from our experience, we find that in order to be successful, the online community management must be undertaken by a real person who is there paying attention and responding continuously to the needs of the constituency.

Supported Projects



Online Community Manager

Rachel Allen
9/20109/2011

The Corps member will layout the foundation for a strong and robust social media network, where NAMAC can model behaviors and techniques, and then, in turn teach them to NAMAC’s membership. The Corps member would be able to help create the social media plan, implement and refine it, and develop it further through the duration of service. The overreaching goal is to connect real people to people, and to develop long-lasting professional relationships that can enhance the capabilities of NAMAC’s nonprofit members.






Online Community Manager

Donna Choi
7/20097/2010

This project will strengthen both our capacity to deliver services to our member organizations and simultaneously encourage them to share knowledge and best practices among themselves by connecting them, encouraging collaboration, and disseminating content and analyses through social media tools and technologies. The VISTA staffer will further develop our social networking capabilities, broadening and deepening our engagement with people through these interfaces. They are absolutely crucial to keep the organization lively and useful, and draw new members in. Social media is rapidly becoming a core demand that people want and need as part of a membership of a national network that seeks to bring organizations together.

1. Manage and contribute to the 2009-10 Technology Infrastructure plan, which will continue to build the capacity of our members’ to connect and work with each other more fully.
2. Work in collaboration with program staff to create new content and interactive areas of the NAMAC website; edit and post web content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant; maintain the website and its technical needs.
3. Work with staff to set a social media strategy, and build out NAMAC’s capacity to reach members and the public through social media tools.
4. Work with NAMAC staff to pilot a series of webinars on the use of social media tools.
5. Expand and publish NAMAC’s web-based toolkits and guides to build capacity of our members’ organizations.
6. Work with staff to engage and reach out to members by communicating with them regularly through social media platforms; and develop metrics for NAMAC-based website and social networking usage.

Donna completed several significant web-based graphic design and technical projects during her assignment with NAMAC. She has significantly built the capacity of NAMAC’s online interactivity and resource-sharing to reach and assist members and the public around the country and globally.

Donna’s primary focus has been on developing the interactivity of the NAMAC website, in particular the Idea Exchange. This entails identifying which actions/networks are key for building our online presence and in building strong relationships with a team of bloggers who represent a cross-section of our online community, in terms of region, discipline, generation, and other important demographic criteria.

We have received increased traffic to our website, and conduct most of our membership business via the website: from conference and event registration to promotion and marketing, to resource-sharing, news and analysis across the field. The new look and architecture that Donna instituted has branded NAMAC as a leading web presence and has integrated well with our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube social media platforms.

Not only did Donna meet our goal to redesign the website look, but she exceeded it. She gave the site a look that is striking and refined, and easy to work with by any new OCM. She worked out Drupal bugs, and brought Drupal developers in as consultants to upgrade the site to the current Drupal iteration. She interfaced with them throughout the changeover process. - Jack Walsh, VISTA Supervisor






Website Development and Online Community Management

Morgan Sully
6/200712/2008

Our Technology Infrastructure and Content Development project will focus on the next phase of developing our online suite of tools to help our members. We have begun to put the Plan in place by building a new “Mapping the Field” database; preparing for 2007

For the 2007 Technology Infrastructure/Content Development Project we ask the VISTA volunteer to:

1. Manage and contribute to NAMAC’s 2007 technology planning project which will help our membership connect and work with each other more fully across the field.

2. Develop NAMAC’s website, with special attention to building it out with Web 2.0 platforms.

3. Assist program staff in creating a variety of new content and participatory areas of the web site.

4. Contribute to helping the national media arts community to build capacity through online participatory technologies.

5. Work with program staff to upgrade our website with a new “look and feel.”

6. Work with programming staff to build out the online historical “media arts movement” timeline.

Morgan’s primary focus has been on the complete redesign of the NAMAC website – from complex technical programming to taxonomization of data and content to social networking and blogging. It launched in the end of August and is becoming the nervous system of the NAMAC offerings. We are very happy with the results and look forward to our next phase of community building online, educating our membership in social networking through the site, and extending its reach to other nonprofits, communities and the public. Morgan has been a kind, reponsive and patient staff member throughout this process, always thinking strategically about how our online offerings can benefit new members, communities and organizations.

Morgan wrote an article about the website-building process for our member newsletter and produced a short video on how to use the site to its maximum capability. Now he is transitioning into the role of online community manager. He is managing our website content, troubleshooting any technical problems, and most importantly creating an online community of dedicated users from the NAMAC membership and other nonprofits, to the public at-large.

It was a hard challenge to solve a lot of the technical problems that the transistion to a Drupal environment posed. But we were very pleased to see that not only was Morgan a problem solver, but he was a solution seeker, reaching out continuously to the technical community and his network of programmers to find ways to deal with the small to large issues that would arise.

The work accomplished by Morgan Sully will have a long lasting effect on the organization, and by extension to the field of media arts and public media. He has transformed our online presence into an interactive Web 2.0 environment. He is becoming an online “community manager” developing networks of users and supporters that will have great impact in the future of the organization and how we offer services and programs to our membership and beyond.”
- Helen DeMichiel, supervisor




Transmission Project