Topics covered:

1. Meeting and flaking on an interview with the fabulous Wendy Cohen.
2. The intersection of on and offline establishment of trust and how one works off the other.

Meet Wendy Cohen, the interviewee I neglected to record.

Like the technical genius that I am, I talked with Wendy Cohen of Participant Media and Screening Liberally for nearly an hour, and I did it all having forgotten to hit the record button.

We discussed our love for Jay Rosen, adoration for Larry Lessig, and talked about how she organized the first Screening Liberally event, organized around the film Thank You For Smoking, back in New York. We talked about her time as a community manager at the Huffington Post (she was their first), where she worked on increasing the volume of user participation and on-site chatter. We discussed her present role at Participant, where she has the same title but works in a capacity that is not focused strictly Internet community development. How does she keep up with the demands of a job that doesn’t necessarily have a consistent, set-in-stone job description? She says that she’s had great mentor and consistently reads up what’s being said about the subject online

Based on her contrasting experiences, I asked if an increase of tangible, face-to-face social capital better facilitates online action? Are you, Wendy Cohen, more willing to sign onto an Internet protest or fundraising campaign I am organizing than you were before we met face-to-face and only knew me via email? And if so, do you think that this is the case for most people

Wendy suggested that yes, she would be more interested in participating in some sort of online action that I initiate after having actually met me, but that the dynamics of getting to know people are becoming so much more multifaceted that it is becoming easier to feel like know know someone that you have never met face-to-face. Perhaps this is closing the gap between the need-to-meet-to-trust people and those who give/participate more freely than others.

Nice to meet (/trust) you.

We discussed Wendy’s efforts with Screening Liberally, a social event she co-created that organizes folks online to get together and watch socially liberal independent films offline. We discussed the conversation the meetings breed and bonding that face-to-face meetings facilitate. Screening Liberally stemmed from Drinking Liberally, a similarly structured event that Cohen had been attending for a few years. She also organizes Net Tuesdays in L.A., a NetSquared event that organizes in a similar way to the “Liberally” events (bringing folks face-to-face using Internet technologies), though it concentrates on non-profit and tech issues. Part of the bonus of both events is camaraderie and networking built around an issue as well as the educational component. The strengthening of trust, based wholly on meeting someone face-to-face, can be beneficial when eventually trying to mobilize someone to act online.

Internet-organizer communities continue to rhetorically treat the off and online as binaries — as if they don’t overlap each other as one: When I am my offline self, I am not my online self. When I am my online self, I am not my offline self. However, social transactions are based upon perceived loss and gain on the parts of each participant. For some, getting a person to act online may require little more than a compelling cause and an easy avenue for action. For others, it may require a level of trust unachievable by a call for action alone. In the past week, of the past ten people I have asked who have given money to a cause online in the past year, every one said that they are more likely to give to someone that they know. Even though my ask went out to friends and Internet associates alike, with the exception of one donor, every person who gave me money for a Point campaign aimed at helping my cousin who had lost her home in a fire, a seemingly compelling cause, is someone I have met, if only briefly, in person. Even Warren Buffett has been known to work to restore trust with his fellow company-folk by meeting with them face-to-face.

We chat, We vlog, We tweet.

While the ways with which we are able to get to know each other online are becoming more and more diversified in both their depth and distribution apparatuses, thus transforming the ways we build and assess trust, for some, the willingness to give time, money, or action is contingent on getting to know that the face on the other side of the screen indeed belongs to a human being. The Internet is special in its ability to accelerate the speed of our message, the mechanics of our campaigns, and the depth of our ability to organize. Meetings, connection, and person-to-person resonance, while absolutely possible for many to achieve online, is still a more-quickly absorbed process off. By adapting our off and online behaviors to embrace all tools — by focusing on building social capital in both spheres — we strengthen our leverage in both worlds, both as individuals and part of a greater social wholes, as well as leaders of movements architected in this digital world we’re finally starting to get a grasp of.

The next time you have time to do so, head on over to a gathering of the like (or differently) minded, be it at a Screening (or Drinking or Living) Liberally event, or a gathering of Net Tuesday organizers. While your online fundraising prowess might be in competition with rock stars like Beth Kanter (thanks to her suggestions for successful community maintenance and fundraising), it can’t hurt to connect with those who might potentially participate in a future something, if only they know who you were.

[Edit // 10:30 pm EST] Here, a few hours after posting this, I just came across this blog post. It discusses this study [doc]. While it doesn’t necessarily drive home my point, it does discuss the importance of offline shared experience, online connectivity, and to The Point’s point, fostering “a feeling of ’strength in numbers”:

There is great potential for the youth activists to build a Global Potential alumni network, one grounded in the offline shared experience of activism and action, on Facebook that will help”connect one another online and in person,…[fostering] a feeling of ’strength in numbers’ a common space in which to [feel] comfortable and supported in their activist work”.

For tomorrow: I’ll discuss the pros and cons of providing incentive for group participation, and take a look at what can happen when added incentive brings more participation than productivity.

For the comments: In your experience, how does face-to-face, offline networking and participation augment your online organization?

-Filed in Ideas, People