WiserEarth Editors

WiserTuesdays Go Local! Go Live!

 

by Deborah Phelan (boatsie)

 

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Paris!

 

WiserEarth’s first official localization event, WiserTuesdays, launches in the City of Lights October 6, representing a new collaboration between WiserEarth Paris, NetSquared and Paris’ La Ruche (French for beehive). The goal?  Bringing actively engaged ‘worker bees’ together in their local hives to discuss, learn, collaborate, and promote action in their communities.

 

“We are hoping that WiserTuesdays will take more of a barcamp style rather than become formal presentations, and that they will offer the chance to network and meet other people working on the key issues of our day,” says WiserEarth’s international outreach co-coordinator Camilla Burg, who founded WiserParis and is the coordinator of WiserTuesdays.

 

NetSquared, recognized the potential of building local offline communities around the “intersection of technology and social impact,” and launched NetTuesdays in 2006. They currently host NetTuesdays in over 50 cities, with many more groups in development.

 

Joe Solomon, a leading NetSquared community organizer, initiated the idea for joint events with WiserEarth especially where NetTuesday events don't already happen.

 

“We think it is a natural fit and are happy to have a partnership with WiserEarth as it leads to more groups around the world creating more consistent opportunities for the community to come together offline, but also more ways we can support each other's work organizationally,” says Amy Sample Ward, Global Community Development Manager at NetSquared.

 

WiserTuesdays, like all NetSquared groups, are open venues for members of online groups and others to come together around creating community and using the web for social change, “This can mean representatives of nonprofit organizations or foundation staff, but it can also be innovators and social entrepreneurs, developers and designers, and more,” says Ward. “By creating open opportunities for engagement, we've found that more interesting and innovative collaborations can take place.”

 

"I'm excited about using the NetSquared organizing model for other events and sharing ideas on how best to run gatherings and invite participation from the wider community,” says Burg. “For example, we are hoping that where NetTuesday events already exist in a city, that we invite ‘wiser folk’ to attend these events or create linked events to the net2 activities, rather than recreate the wheel in these cities”.

 

The monthly Tuesday get-togethers, also promoted on Meetup.Com, take place at La Ruche, a collective workspace for social entrepreneurs. For the next event, each community member is being asked to bring 3 objects that represent their community.