fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Launching #ImAnExpert Contest
By: - The Crypto Experts
Tags: Creativity, N1ce, Bounty Program, Cryptocurrency, Community Engagement

Hello N1CE Community,

while we are pretty busy creating our community-based platform, we want to give credits to your creativity.

We are pleased to introduce our #ImAnExpert Video Contest on Twitter, which will award 50 people with a total of 30.000 N1CE tokens.

Here are the rules to participate in the contest:

Post a short video (up to 30 seconds) on any social media (you can use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok or anything else) showing what you are good at doing, but doing it in a funny way.

For example, if you’re good at cooking, you can record yourself doing some recipe. If you’re good at playing guitar, record yourself playing your favorite song. If you’re good at developing software, record yourself while you code, etc.

Remember to be the more creative creative and funny you can be, because it will increase your chances of winning.

(up to 30 seconds) (you can use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok or anything else) showing what you are good at doing, but doing it in a funny way. For example, if you’re good at cooking, you can record yourself doing some recipe. If you’re good at playing guitar, record yourself playing your favorite song. If you’re good at developing software, record yourself while you code, etc. Remember to be the more creative creative and funny you can be, because it will increase your chances of winning. Follow N1CE - The Crypto Experts on Twitter

Join our Telegram Community Group

Like and retweet the pinned post here

Create a Tweet on Twitter with the link to your video adding the #ImAnExpert hashtag and tagging our page @n1ceofficial (N1CE - The Crypto Experts)

on Twitter adding the hashtag and tagging our page @n1ceofficial (N1CE - The Crypto Experts) Your Twitter profile must be active since at least 2 months ago, with a profile pic and at least 20 followers

Posting multiple videos is allowed, but keep in mind you can only be selected once, no matter how many videos you post

The N1CE Team and Ambassadors will select the best 50 videos, and we will create a dedicated post for the community to enjoy all of them.

Rewards

Winner — 5000 N1CE + An exclusive surprise from the N1CE team

2nd place — 3250 N1CE

3rd place — 2500 N1CE

4th and 5th place — 1500 N1CE each

6th to 10th place — 750 N1CE each

11th to 20th place — 500 N1CE each

21st to 50th place — 250 N1CE each

Contest Deadline

You can post your videos until 06th June 2021 at 15:00 UTC.

The N1CE Team will take some time to watch and validate all the videos. The winners will be announced shortly after.

Winners will be contacted on Twitter for their BEP-20 wallet address.
Webinar Registration — 22nd April 2021
By: Ethnolink Language Services
Tags: Multicultural, Webinar, Australia Immigration, Community Engagement, Webinar Training

Topic: Inside the minds of Australia’s multicultural youth

with Jahin Tanvir, Policy Advisor, Youth Advocate and Board Member

Description: Young multicultural Australians have felt the full force of the pandemic and face many barriers to prosperity and inclusion. But how can we go about addressing these systemic issues and engaging with Australia’s future leaders?

In this free webinar, hosted by EthnoLink, Australia’s leading translation specialist, our CEO and founder, Costa Vasili will be joined by Jahin Tanvir, a young Australian, a policy advisor, youth advocate and board member.

Costa and Jahin will explore the challenges faced by multicultural youth in Australia.

Some of the topics that will be covered include:

* what it is like to grow up as a migrant in Australia

* challenges faced in accessing government and community services

* barriers to employment opportunities

* the role of multicultural youth in an intergenerational household

* tips for developing in-language resources for multicultural youth

This free webinar is suitable for:

✅ organisations who want to engage better with multicultural youth in Australia

✅ communications professionals in Government and Not-for-Profit sectors

✅ those who work in the Health and Community services sector

Spaces are limited, so register today to secure your seat!

Speakers

Costa Vasili

Founder & CEO @ EthnoLink Language Services

Costa Vasili is a global thought leader in the translation industry and has been working in the community translation sector for 10 years. With a wealth of experience in community translation project management, Costa is relentless in pursuing EthnoLink’s mission, “to connect Australia through language”.

Jahin Tanvir

Jahin’s resume is a long and interesting one; he’s a policy advisor for the Consumers Health Forum of Australia, a founding member of the Health Literacy Advisory Council for Youth Action NSW, an engagement committee member for the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations, a research commissioner for Wellbeing Health & Youth, a member of the Youth Advisory Committee for the Australian Red Cross, a Youth Health Representative for the South Western Sydney Health Advisory Group AND a member of the University of Sydney Stakeholder Advisory Panel. What’s more, Jahin is a Youth Ambassador for World Vision and the Multicultural Youth Affairs Network NSW, an emerging leaders mentee for Global Shapers Community, and a seasoned public speaker, presenting with Headspace and for the Centre for Australian Progress. Jahin brings all of this experience, his passion improved accessibility for multicultural youth and his personal experiences to our webinar.
Cosmos Video Contest Winners
Tags: Announcements, Cosmos Network, Cosmos, Community Engagement, Video Contest

Cosmos Video Contest Winners

The Prop 34/46 Video Contest — Discover Cosmos (June 12-August 31, 2021) invited Cosmonauts to use creativity and talent to produce high-quality educational videos aimed at new members of the community and beyond! Your response and submissions exceeded our expectations to bring high-quality content to the Cosmos community.

Judging the videos has been a difficult task. There were 96 entries in total to the video contest. Each Cosmonaut that invested the time to make a video for submissions has clearly put in a lot of effort. Some video ideas were quite creative, and certainly accuracy of information, originality, and ease of access were very heavy indicators of quality submissions.

📝 Criteria

There were six video categories and based on specific criteria two winners were selected from each category. Joe Dirtay, one of the multi-sigs from the Prop 46 team mentions, “There were so many good contributions that it was very hard to narrow down each category down to two winners. The submissions were very heavy on some categories and extremely light on others, for that reason, we expanded the number of honorable mentions to reward all Cosmonauts that put in valiant efforts. We appreciate everyone that made a submission.”

All video submissions were judged based on the following criteria:

Content of video (in line with any of the six categories and overall theme)

Creativity of video and accuracy of information

Originality and entertainment value

Effectiveness in reaching the target audience

Overall video quality: video + sound + lighting + graphics

Immediately and easily understandable

Concise (no longer than 10 minutes)

Valid entry meets guidelines

Does not include copyrighted music or imagery

Language: English with multi-language subtitles (natively translated) for bonus points

With that in mind, these criteria were followed to make sure the videos were of the highest quality for each category.

💰 Prizes

Total prize pool: 5,000 ATOM

1st Place for each category — 6 prizes x 500 ATOM = 3,000 ATOM

2nd Place for each category — 6 prizes x 200 ATOM = 1,200 ATOM

Most watched video: 1 prize of 80 ATOM will be awarded for the most-watched video on a streaming platform.

Honorable mentions:

21 prizes x 60 ATOM = 720 ATOM

⚛︎ Attention all winners: Proposal 34/46 signers have announced that all prizes will be paid today, Sept 11th, so make sure you check your Cosmos wallets for your ATOM ⚛︎

🥇🥈 Winners of Each Category

Each 1st place winner for each category will win a prize of 500 ATOM.

Each 2nd place winner for each category receives 200 ATOM.

⚛️ Explaining Cosmos Network and the Cosmos Hub

First Place for this category is @ConeyDaddy!

Second Place for this category is @saeedanwar007!

Fun fact, this was the shortest video that won a reward in the contest!
Aeon Community Giveaway 2 Winner!
By: Aeon Community
Tags: Aeon, Giveaway, Cryptocurrency, Community Engagement, Raspberry Pi

Well, the results are in and a winner has been chosen. Thank you to everyone who entered into the drawing this time. Let’s hope that maybe this community member can give back to the community and get an Aeon Node running on their Pi???? Until Next time: Happy Mining!

Aeon Community Links

GitHub: https://github.com/aeonix

Aeon Community Webpage: https://aeoncommunity.github.io

Email Subscription: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSci2UitA67N0W_xgSPLlGj6acGnTOtTdDR_ODZwXTHXZsWnCQ/viewform

Block Explorer AeonBlocks: https://aeonblocks.com/

Block Explorer Aeon.lol: http://www.aeon.lol

BitcoinTalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=641696.0

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AeonCoin

Twitter Aeon Community: https://twitter.com/AeonCommunity

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/aeon

Aeon Wiki: https://coinwik.org/Aeon

Discord: https://discord.gg/xWZ2z78

Funding System: https://www.aeonfunding.com

Aeon Community GitHub repo: https://github.com/AEONCommunity

Medium: https://www.medium.com/@Aeon_Community/

Telegram: https://telegram.me/AEONgroup

Aeon Branding Pack

COLOR 1: #5fbcd3ff

COLOR 2: #2c89a0ff

COLOR 3: #164450ff

COLOR 4: #444444ff

COLOR 5: #ffffffff

TYPESET: Ebrima (Bold)
Introduction to Blockhives
Tags: Blockchain Technology, Ecosystem, Community, Blockchain, Community Engagement

The Blockchain Ecosystem

Every one of the blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been used to the chatting environment of Telegram, Discord, Kakao among others. But is chatting everything you seek in this evolving ecosystem? If it is, then this article or the project discussed here isn’t meant for you. But if it’s not or you are a little curious of what lies ahead in this revolutionary environment, then please read on to have your mind blown away.

What will you give to have an environment that will enable you to not only chat, but also create image and video posts and share? An environment that doesn’t only facilitate communications in one-to-one or group chat but also gives you the opportunity to listen to online broadcasts from various channels while at it. Perhaps, just chatting in those exchanges segregated chat boxes is only your thing, wouldn’t you rather prefer a platform that enables you to do that in the same interface as your trading without having switch or close one for another? What will be your impression to have a platform that combines everything you can ever need in the evolving ecosystem all in one? A blockchain and cryptocurrency planet where you truly belong.

Blockhives can be perceived to be an environment where all crypto enthusiast converge to discuss, share information and influence the growth and realization of the blockchain dream. The idea was originally developed from the Poloniex trollbox back in the days as it was a place for all to engage, share knowledge and of course attempt to influence the prices of other markets by providing useful information. But, most importantly, it was a gathering of all crypto believers who wish to see the dream more widely shared and realized. It creates an environment where traders can easily decide which path to follow and what to do, even at the expense of prevailing bad news.

View from the blockhives

This unique blockchain ecosystem presents you the various opportunities and entertainment embedded in its several columns, ranging from the unique chat environment, to the podcast/internet radio broadcasts, the amazing cryptube (a specialized social media for blockchain and cryptocurrency), no to forget the jobs and services uniquely merging employers with job seekers, among others such as survey, voting, article writing among others. Blockhives’s mission is to be everything an existing or new member of the cryptocurrency ecosystem will ever need.

Subscribe to: www.blockhives.io

Email us at: info@blockhives.io for more information and partnership opportunities.
Investing in Kosovo’s Youth: A Peace Activist’s Perspective
Tags: Youth, Pve, Sdg16, Kosovo, Community Engagement

Ms Valdete Idrizi is an advisor to the speaker of Kosovo’s National Assembly, a peace activist, and the winner of numerous awards, including the International Women of Courage Award, the Soroptimist Peace Prize, and the WIFTS Peace Award. She is currently serving as a volunteer mentor for youth in a GCERF-funded programme in Mitrovica. This programme provides youth with civic education to enhance critical thinking, and boost participation in civic activism and volunteerism — all essential bulwarks against vulnerability to violent extremism.

Ms. Valdete Idrizi. Photo credit: GCERF Secretariat staff

At a Youth Mentor training, Valdete explained,

“Youth in Kosovo feel small and powerless to change anything in their lives; they feel they lack capacity to maximise their potential as citizens, and these challenges lead them to be easily instrumentalised.”

She emphasised,

“Youth matter, because they constitute the highest percentage of the population, and if we don’t invest in them, what kind of future do we expect? We have to invest in them, because youth are not only our future; youth are our present.”

Valdete and youth mentors in GCERF-funded programmes believe that, to build resilience to violent extremism, it is critical for youth to voice concerns at all levels of society. Youth must have confidence in their ability to effect change through peaceful means — this is what Valdete wants to see happen.

To this end, she believes GCERF-funded programmes give opportunities to her and other community leaders to know more about the needs and concerns of youth, and to make these voices heard across platforms and levels of society, especially with government authorities and the business community. This way, she is certain, the youth of Kosovo can feel represented, and can renew their optimism for the future of their country.

A teacher involved in the informal educational programs (civic education schools and digital development program) works with youth in Mitrovica, Kosovo. Photo credit: GCERF Secretariat staff

Follow GCERF’s work and updates on Twitter: @theGCERF
Skycoin Rewards Levels
Tags: Skycoin, Art, Competition, Blockchain, Community Engagement

Skycoin Rewards Levels

( This document was last updated on the 26th of June 2019)

The team behind the Skycoin Rewards Program are building a levelling system to gamify participation, and incite some healthy competition and bragging rights among the Skyfleet!

This article is a working document following the development and eventual launch of what’s becoming known as the SkyCred system.

Now, this isn’t just for fun… although it certainly has been fun for us to brainstorm and start creating! Apart from extravagant and sometimes silly names for banners, you’ll also work your way up a personal rewards ladder containing prizes such as Skycoin, hardware and emotional prizes like a date with Daken (Joking!! Unless you’re into it…?)

Work your way off Moronic Acid (Level 1) all the way to a Zany Gogmagog (Level 33) whatever that is… Yes, we had a little bit too much fun naming these (And possibly one too many beers) But it’s supposed to be fun, not serious!

The underlying reasons behind why blockchain technology, Bitcoin and Skycoin came about was to ‘stick it to the man’ and their hierarchical society. So… When it came to a discussion of adding “Ranks” we decided ‘Nah let’s award people a Smutty Flying Buttocks instead! (Before becoming Smutty, it was actually a real animal… No joke, look it up!)

Ok, I’ll reach into my backpack and put on my serious face for a moment!

We’re leaving it up to all you talented artists to create these banners!

In return, you’ll be awarded upto 20 tickets per banner, with an additional 20 added if we select your banner for the program.

Successful submissions MUST follow these guidelines:

Use the templates

Use the level names as inspiration

Include Some form of Skycoin branding

Add the banner number using roman numerals (XI etc.)

Post the banner on Twitter with #SkycoinRewards then /submit the link in the Skycoin Rewards Telegram room

Finally, the source file sent to @MacSkyver or @ProfessorKubyashi on Telegram. (Preferably .psd or .ai)

Content must be your own, no plagiarised artwork!

DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATES HERE:

This document will be updated monthly with which levels are required and which have been completed, so make sure to bookmark the page.

Level 26: Limpid Cyclops (Example)

Levels Required:

Tier 1: Molecular / Cellular:

9: Foolish Neuron

Neuron 10: Beefy Protein

Protein 11: Erotic Acid

Tier 2: Creatures

12: Smutty Flying Buttocks

Flying Buttocks 13: Glamorous Tasselled Wobbegong

Tasselled Wobbegong 14: Self-Conscious Red-Lipped Batfish

Red-Lipped Batfish 15: Fabulous Sparklemuffin

Tier 3: Mythical Creatures

24: Spasmodic Troll

Troll 25: Minatory Minotaur

Minotaur 26: Limpid Cyclops

Cyclops 27: Callous Chimera

Chimera 28: Nefarious Cerberus

Cerberus 29: Insidious Ouroboros

Ouroboros 30: Cataclysmic Kraken

Kraken 31: Draconian Camazotz

Camazotz 32: Erratic Erymanthian Boar

Erymanthian Boar 33: Zany Gogmagog

DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATES HERE:

JOIN HERE FOR MORE INFO:

Completed Levels:

Tier 1: Molecular / Cellular:
Token Sale Thank You Letter from CEO Kaufman Chang
By: Oleksandra Zavertailo
Tags: Community, Community Engagement, Simplybrand

Dear All,

The last few months have been a 24/7 non-stop operation at simplyBrand as we have never done anything more challenging and exciting than our token sale. We made a tough decision to go ahead with the token sale during the bearish market when some people decide to wait and postpone.

I am delighted that we have successfully completed our goals and simplyBrand was listed on COBINHOOD Exchange on the 31stMarch.

Firstly, I want to thank the simplyBrand community for their support and encouragement during the journey. Your support encouraged the team to work harder each day. To the investors and partners, a big thank you for your confidence in us. You believed and shared the same vision as us to develop the world’s first online verification platform to fight counterfeits. To the simplyBrand team, who worked hard to make this possible. Your commitment to using blockchain technology with human intelligence to help artificial intelligence is the future for brand protection. I am confident that we as a team can achieve the goals we set up to do.

This is not the end but the beginning of our road to eliminate online counterfeits. The road is long but the future is bright. We will work even harder to accomplish our vision because Every Purchase Matters.

We will be making update regularly to tell you about our progress. As always, your feedback is important and please continue to support and share with us.

Once again, thank you all!

Yours sincerely,

Kaufman Chang

Co-founder and CEO
Ellen Pearlman Presents at U.S. Fulbright Alumni Exchange Seminar
By: The Thoughtworks Arts Team
Tags: Fulbright, Community Engagement, Artist, New Media Arts

The Exchange Seminar took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico on December 10th — 14th, bringing together Fulbright alumni to share initiatives supporting social change and transforming conflict through the arts.

The four-day event connected participants, fostered opportunities for project collaborations, and helped develop and implement action plans to complete goals. The seminar reflected on issues of regional importance and included a wide range of expert speakers whose work is powered by creating positive change in their communities.

Ellen Pearlman presenting at Alumni TIES in Santa Fe, NM, photo by Matt Bikoff

Ellen presented “Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Arts”, highlighting ThoughtWorks Arts based programs that have promoted social change through their artistic and technology incubations.

In 2017 Ellen Pearlman received a Fulbright World Learning Specialist Grant. The Fulbright World Learning program connects exceptionally qualified U.S. academics and professionals with institutions abroad to develop programs and share their knowledge.

With this grant, Ellen was able to collaborate with Liepaja University in Liepaja, Latvia and RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia using Art-A-Hack and its intensive art and technology methods. Now, as part of the expansive network of Fulbright Alumni TIES, Ellen will continue to take part in World Learning’s exchange seminars implementing initiatives both locally and globally.

The Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminars (Alumni TIES) program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by World Learning.
working from home — Is there a future for remote working??
By: Kukatree Automated Employee Referral Platform
Tags: Work From Home, Employment, Remote Work, Community Engagement

Due to the current events with the Coronavirus, companies worldwide have set up their employees working remotely from home and implemented many technical tools to facilitate communication and workload organization.

With working from home possibly being the standard for the next months, employees and employers need to adapt to the new circumstances and adapt to the new landscape.

While we need to keep in mind that the ideal work environment varies from individual to individual, some feel comfortable to work full time from home and others rather have it equally split between home and office.

Working from home has many advantages:

Custom personalised schedule: Employees can mix work with personal life, having the right balance can increase the motivation and engagement at work.

Efficiency and focus: Working from home limits the distractions (colleagues, kitchen, internal meetings) that exist in an office, in fewer working hours more can be achieved with a higher productivity.

Mental health booster: Working from home means feeling comfortable in your personal environment, being able to have short breaks and follow a sport/hobby can help to maintain a positive mental health.

Valuable and trusted: Working remotely gives a feeling of trust and integrity from management believing their employee can perform and be productive even when working at home which leads to a higher employee retention rate.

This situation is also beneficial for organization as they save about $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

The retention rate increases as Employees are less likely to quit their job while it allows them to work from home. Employees are 50% less likely to quit.

https://www.business.com/articles/remote-workers-more-engaged/

The total engagement of employees is growing: According to a two-year study by Stanford University, remote workers are, on average 9% more engaged in their jobs and 13.5% more productive than their office-based counterparts.

Less sick leaves: Employees who are feeling unwell are already at the comfort of their home and can remain active while working from home.

Working from home is likely to show an increase in popularity in the long run. Organizations need to do their best to help in the transition of their employees and make sure productivity, engagement and motivation is not lost.

When we get back to “normality” some employees might be really interested to remain 100% from home while others will really miss going daily to the office. This period has showed us the strength and sense of adaptation we all have inside of us but it only works when we stick together as a community.
Stony Brook University Theta Tau Uses Glimpse for Virtual Rush Events
By: Joyce Huang
Tags: College Life, Fraternities, Virtual Events, Greek Life, Community Engagement

Since the closing of colleges across the country last March, college administrators have been hard at work finding ways for students to continue their education remotely. Meanwhile, college students in leadership positions have also been hard at work reimagining what college extracurriculars will look like for their peers during this largely virtual academic year.

For members of the executive team at Stony Brook University’s Theta Tau chapter, this means finding creative ways to conduct their fraternity rush process in a completely virtual format. Theta Tau is a co-ed engineering professional fraternity and in order to make their virtual rush process more fun, they are planning on using Glimpse.

Glimpse is a platform that allows people in a virtual room to engage in one-on-one, time-boxed video calls. Once one video call is done, people are automatically matched with another person in the room to chat with. Glimpse comes with fun features perfect for rush events such as icebreaker questions, mini-games, and the ability to easily share documents and links in the call (ex. a resume).

“We still want to have a really engaging rush process,” says Kaitlyn Chua, Co-Recruitment Chair of Theta Tau. “Some platforms we tried were less engaging because they were large group conversations, but now we’re looking at Glimpse because it really easily matches people up one-to-one.”

If you are looking to organize virtual recruiting events, here are our best tips and tricks for using Glimpse :

Check out our Hosting Guide for general advice on how to get started!

Decide on a match time length, extension length, and amount of extensions that makes sense for your event

Personalize your event by adding your organization’s logo to the home page

Customize the match types so members can choose who they want to meet
How the P4 community selected the new Popup solution
By: Andrada Radu
Tags: Popups, Improvement, Community, Community Engagement, Digital Transformation

The requirement analysis

What we did first was to look at which tools and solutions were already being used by the different offices of the Greenpeace network, to come up with a big list, matching what was already used with other solutions.

While quickly discarding the 3rd option (developing a plugin just for popups would have been a massive undertaking, for a non-core feature), we focused on the first two approaches: the plugin-based ones and the 3rd party tools. From an initial list of 17 tools, 10 were shortlisted and 4 ultimately evaluated.

There was a list of criteria we took into consideration which included:

Features

Pricing

Integrations

Account structure

We then listed all the requirements and established priorities that the ideal solution must or could have.

Some examples from the requirements list we used to analyse the list

The shortlist of solutions that covered most of the requirements included two Wordpress Plugins and two 3rd-party tools. After spending some time in testing, running demos and speaking with vendors, the Planet 4 team also made a recommendation for the best solution for each category.
YMCA Reaches out to Children from Underserved Communities
By: Constantine Toumbis
Tags: Community, Community Engagement

An MD graduate of the Wayne State University School of Medicine and a PhD graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. Constantine Toumbis serves as a spinal surgeon at Citrus Spine Institute in Crystal River, Florida. Outside of his work, Dr. Constantine Toumbis gives back to his community through longtime support of the YMCA.

In recognition of the hurdles that children from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds face in accessing recreation opportunities, YMCA and the Partnership for a Healthier America recently announced a joint initiative to remove those barriers. Through the program, YMCA will focus on three aspects of physical activity and recreation: water safety/instruction, outdoor recreation, and walking/biking.

YMCA will provide 425 small grants to centers across the United States that provide free swimming lessons, expand water safety programs, and provide entry points to swimming for children of differing physical abilities. YMCA will also provide funding to the National Park Service with the goal of reaching at least 5,000 children from underserved backgrounds and introducing them to summer camp and National Park experiences.
Community building is as old as humanity — let’s remember, not invent
By: Fabian Pfortmüller
Tags: Collaboration, Community Engagement, Community, Network, Tradition

A few weeks back I saw Ants Cabraal from Enspiral present at AIME 2019 in Melbourne. He gave a fabulous talk about how community can transform the ways we work together. One of his opening slides showed a big bonfire with people sitting around it and he reminded us that community and community building is as old as humanity. Ever since we learned about the power of the fire, we have been sitting around it, telling stories, building relationships, making sense of the world around us. And that while we will continue to go through deep technological transformations in the coming decades, community will always continue to be part of the human experience.

This perspective really struck me. Over the past few months I have come to fully appreciate a truth that must seem obvious to many of you: that community building is nothing new at all. We are not inventing anything. Both the human need to connect deeply and the practices around it are ancient and have been developed over millennia. We just happen to have buried it under layers of capitalism, productivity and individualism for the past few centuries.

So as community weavers, our work is not to invent, but to remember. And it’s about honoring the work of the Elders and Ancestors, the people on whose shoulders we stand. This is informing our perspective with the Community Canvas. We’re not doing anything new, but we’re hopefully helping resurface old practices and translating them into the language and needs of the 21st century. As part of that effort, we want to put together a council of Elders, to honor their work, to uplift their experiences and to be guided by their wisdom.

But that sense of community isn’t just found in the heads and hearts of experienced Elders, but in all of us. I was reminded of the power of remembering community in Casper ter Kuile’s wonderful weekly newsletter, where he recounted a twenty-year old conversation between the late Irish poet John O’Donohue and meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg. O’Donohue said: “I can’t believe in any of this stuff about creating community. I think the whole project of trying to build community is misplaced. I think community is. It is ontologically there. So the project is more about awakening.”

This resonates deeply with me. Community doesn’t have to be “built”. It is already there in all of us. All we have to do is to awaken our shared sense of belonging and build on the practices that our Ancestors have refined for millennia. I can’t tell you how excited I get by this.

Thank you Ants and Casper for your inspiration and your continuous gifts to community awakening in this world!
Giving Back Never Tasted So Good
By: Elizabeth Barrow
Tags: Chefs, Community Engagement, Cooking, Support Charities

Restaurants are an integral part of the fabric of our communities and neighborhoods. For many, partnering with local charities is important in creating key relationships and fostering goodwill. There’s no better way to show appreciation and support for the people who support you.

Successful philanthropic endeavors start with choosing a charity that your team is passionate about. “By investing in non-profit groups, we’re taking our corporate social responsibility to the next level” according to Melissa Bach, Director of Operations for the Raleigh Marriott City Center. “Our associates are motivated to participate in community events that will benefit those closest to us, and that touch our lives personally.”

In every city, the common bond that everyone shares is the love of good food, therefore chef competitions have become popular in recent years. These events play a vital role in culinary arts, as they continually raise the standards of culinary excellence. There is no better way for chefs to perfect their craft than by putting their skills to the test in a competitive format.

“Not only are we contributing to a great cause, this is a wonderful opportunity to showcase our on-site restaurant, Rye Bar & Southern Kitchen. An event our executive chef Anthony Parise and his culinary team looks forward to each year is the Toast to the Triangle.” Now in its 33rd year, Toast to the Triangle is Raleigh’s longest running signature foodie event, benefiting the Tammy Lynn Center for Developmental Disabilities. “The hotel has been partnering with them for a few years now. Our staff really amps it up, serving Rye’s best cuisine and projecting the overall image that we’re so proud of. And the fact that we’ve won the People’s Choice award at this event is just icing on the cake!” Rye also showcases their talents at the Tammy Lynn Golf Classic in the fall.

For any restaurant, it just makes sense to incorporate charity into your business model. It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved. Whether you choose to host an event, volunteer in the community, donate food or give a monetary donation, your business support matters. And your customers will appreciate that you’re going the extra mile to make the world a better place. There are thousands of amazing charitable organizations out there, so find one that speaks to you and your team, roll up your sleeves and go make a difference!
Must-Read Book: Imagine It Forward
By: Lauren Hug
Tags: Innovation, Digital Marketing, Community Engagement, Digital, Digital Transformation

We are living in a time of rapid change. The systems and institutions that served us well in the Industrial Age no longer meet the challenges our world currently faces. In Imagine It Forward, Beth Comstock, former vice chair of General Electric, walks readers through the fascinating journey of bringing GE, one of the largest and most diversified corporations in the world, into the Digital Age.

The book is a case study in change management — emphasizing the delicate balance between respect for the practices and traditions that led to tremendous success and the ever present need to experiment, iterate, and — yes — even fail occasionally, in order to remain relevant to new customers and new market needs. It demonstrates how to embrace and foster imagination and innovation across an entire organization.

Imagine It Forward refrains from presenting a one-size-fits-all blueprint for how to re-invent organizations. Rather, it provides readers with a toolkit of practical advice, actionable suggestions, and guidelines for moving institutions forward in strategic ways. The tools and approaches are all derived from Beth’s real-world experience blending, adapting, or scrapping the top-down, rigid efficiency models of the 20th in the pursuit of more horizontal, flexible, and customized approaches designed to meet 21st century challenges.

I’ve recommended this book to at least one person (often more) every day since I first started reading it. (You can see how many pages I flagged in the photo above!)

Given the speed at which change is happening — and the perpetually increasing speed change will continue to happen — it is vital for institutions and individuals to embrace uncertainty, make peace with never being “done,” and cultivate resiliency and adaptability. Imagine It Forward is a must-read book filled with examples and exercises to illuminate the path.

Lauren Hug, J.D., LL.M., is a speaker, author, and strategist. She is the founder of HugSpeak, a community-building and community-engagement firm that specializes in humanizing both digital and in-person interactions. She is the author of Digital Kindness: Being Human in a Hyper-Connected World. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
On to new horizons with social audio as a service
By: Angle Audio
Tags: Angleproduct, Socialaudio, SaaS, Community Engagement, Socialaudioasaservice

Connect on the platforms you love through social audio as a service.

Online shop? Talk to a consultant. News? Discuss with the journalist. Network? Connect with the community.

In early 2020, we set out to connect people in valuable and meaningful live conversations. Over the last 1.5 years, well over 10,000 users have hosted thousands of conversations, sharing knowledge, stories, and laughs with each other on Angle Audio. Lately, we have been approached by companies that want to add that social audio experience to their apps or websites. They worked closely with us to turn their vision into a reality — and it worked! This presents a way to bring social audio to many more people around the world. And that’s ultimately what we want: more people having more great conversations through Angle. So we’re super excited to now open a new chapter with social audio as a service (SAaaS).

Imagine how cool it’d be to join in on an Angle conversation on your favourite app or website?! That’s where we come in: over the last weeks, we have been building a software development kit (SDK), that — for the first time ever — allows companies to easily add the Angle Audio conversation experience to their platform (web and mobile), therefore enabling them to have as great conversations as you were having on Angle over the past months.

With our help, businesses can go live with audio rooms in a few days and engage with their community on a profoundly personal level.

Imagine journalists engaging in a conversation with readers about their newest article, language learners practicing newly acquired skills live with other users directly on a language learning app, or talking to a consultant to help you pick the right product — all at the tap of a button.

- Matthias, CEO & Co-Founder of Angle

Social audio as a service allows companies to go far beyond email and chat and add a new dimension to how they interact with their audience. The more conversations people have, the better place the world becomes. And we are dedicated to enabling more people to have great conversations through the Angle Audio experience.
Our Story
Tags: Female Founders, Community, Community Engagement, Digital Marketing

Hey Medium Family!

It’s Piyanka from Her Hustle Talk. It’s honestly really weird to write on a platform about yourself so ill be primarily focusing on our empire back at her hustle talk aka my badass community of women by women.

When I look back at high school to my time spent in college, I always asked myself something whenever I caught myself zoning out… “What's the point?”Like straight up, WHAT IS MY PURPOSE??!! I don't know if watching too many superhero movies got the best of me, but seriously felt I had a bigger purpose to accomplish in life.

Days went by and I just felt there was a problem reoccurring daily like a nightmare in front of me and everyone else was just going on with their lives. Every day, for countless hours in lockdown I caught myself binge-watching new content to Instagram reels, over and over again in a loop and coming across some whack content to a lot of content creators I related to.

But it just hit me, just like KFC has their ‘secret’ ingredient that makes their food finger-licking good. I couldn't find a page or a handle that just made it one-click easier to access a community of people that wake up the same way as you and grinding on a daily through this miserable period was in like that's straight-up RELATABLE, to hustler 101 respect! Like why not focus on building more communities like this?

I am huge on visualizing, and what I desire for any women out there hustling to somehow for WHATEVER reason stumbled upon our community whether it's our Instagram handle to the Facebook private group, can look at her phone and say “ Damn, this has been active for 2 years? Where have I been?” Like you should really feel this is your community.

Cause I don't think some women understand the formula we integrate with our community here. It's two-way street honey, as much as YOU get excited when we feature you in our content, we are at the same time doing the happy dance cause women need to understand, this isn't a facade and you're not seeing things. This community exists, and it's for you to come to be a part of it!

I guess this is my “Ted Talk” haha, Piyanka here signing out and looking forward to reading this embarrassing first blog on my laptop in our all-female team laughing at how I actually published this.

Let the #HerHustleTalk community-building begin

*, imagine us running like the Hunger Games here, lol.
You. Are. Awesome ❤️ Community management and rewards + update.
Tags: Community Management, Community Development, Community, Blockchain, Community Engagement

Community Feedback 😻

From our lovely James & Rita, 🇻🇳 Vietnamese community:

Hello everyone, James and Rita from Viet Nam. We are the people who love and support LTO from the S-shaped country. We love the cryptoworld and love real projects with impact on the real world. We support LTO with everything we can, create infographic / gif, translate articles, advertise on Vietnam tele groups. The future we intend to run a separate node and encourage members in my country to do it, now I prefer leasing.

From our boss JayJay, 🇳🇱 Dutch community:

In The Netherlands, we like to say: if it ain’t Dutch, it ain’t much! Maybe that’s why the Dutch support for LTO is so strong? Or maybe because we like to think we have a good eye for great potential tech. Our country may be small, but we initiate big movements. We strongly believe that LTO can be one of the biggest business to business blockchain platforms in the world. Our Dutch LTO community already counts almost 200 users at time of writing and there has been a lot of great conversations and initiatives from within our little sub-community. We offer the biggest node support for LTO as well, with Sander, Erwin, Patrick, Fexra, G1zm0, Jelle and jayjay running on the the first and biggest public nodes on the LTO network. Wanna get involved? Hop over to our channel and get us over the 200 members resistance!

From Joel & Ignacio 🇪🇸 Spanish community:

Hello world, here Joel and Ignacio. We are a LTO lover team from Spain. We like tech and creating communities. In Europe, data protection is one of the most important issues while doing business. We are excited about everything that needs to be done about it. We run one of the largest generator nodes of the network which was also one of the first public LTO nodes launched. Ignacio has build a friendly Telegram Bot with real time statistics and auto-withdrawals which makes the stake of yout LTOs much easier and handy for everybody. We also love memes and viralization, we are artists!!

From comrade Dima 🇷🇺 Russian community:

Greatings, my friend, I am comrade Dmitriy and I want to held a word on behalf of russian-speaking LTO community. Tho russian-speaking community is one of the biggest and strongest in crypto world — LTO group is raletevly small by number, but that is for now. You know how they say about russians? “They prepare slow and then drive really fast”. We are severe, rude, we like to ask uncomfortable questions, believe no one and call everything a scam. But when we love something — we love from our hearts and till the very end. Convince us and you get loyal follower. Not simple hodler, but spartan warrior who will fight with army of fudders till death through all telegram groups. We are small but we have talents, from genious programmers to great writers, from meme-makers to leaders of biggest channels of crypto-space. If You are friend to LTO — than You are our dear friend and guest. Join us and let’s make adoption great together!

From Ece 🇹🇷 Turkish community:
Michael,
By: Soul Surfer
Tags: Inspiration, Writing, Community, Values, Community Engagement

Michael,

Thank you for your comment. It is truly a story of it’s own. That’s what Medium’s about.

I’m really tired now, because I barely slept last night. I was busy writing about my experience of how I “met” you, read your story, Against Bullying. Stand Tall. and felt compelled to share your writing with my little corner of the world on Medium.

My little corner, my team, your team, our team is about to own some major real estate here on Medium. That’s what I’m planning. And I grew up with a mother whose direct marketing agency was in our house. I grew up reading and writing to an audience. Today, I am standing as tall as I can to create a plan for us to expand our audience, so that we go from owning a little corner, to a neighborhood, to a town, to the big city of Medium. Our team now is the core of our compass, which dictates the direction of our real estate’s values.

This is about integrity and money. And while I’m not a numbers person. I can write an outline for an article in my head, but I can’t solve an equation with numbers in it. However, there are writers on our team who are good with numbers. They know about business, tech and money. They understand things I don’t.

We are all a team, and if we stand tall together and be true to ourselves, acknowledging our gifts and the gifts of others, we will be able to collaborate together to create our dream house on Medium. All of our team, all our voices need to own an exceptionally comfortable home here on Medium.

Michael, thank you for inspiring me to stand up to be true to myself and my motto, “My goal is to help people value who they truly are.”

Soul Surfer
Test the pre-alpha version of our latest feature: web chat
By: Simon Galperin
Tags: Messaging, Community Engagement

Telling your story builds trust with your community. Being transparent about what you’re working on, why, and what you need is a great way to show your work and invite community participation that can improve your products.

At GroundSource, we’ve been hard at work for months developing the next version of our platform and we’ll be sharing more about that soon. (You will be the first to to hear about the release!) In the mean time, we’ve also been thinking about how we scale the quality of SMS engagement despite the limitations of SMS technology.

The thing that makes SMS engagement so powerful is that it is independent of social platforms. It is direct and conversational, letting your organization’s voice and content build relationships that you own.

But there is another place you own your relationships: your website. We’ve already built online sign up forms to help convert your digital audience to SMS but now we’re going further. We want to give you the ability to engage your audience in conversation where they’re at — your site — and leverage that space to develop and sustain deeper relationships.

And because we want to build with you — not just for you — we’re publicly testing the pre-alpha version of our latest feature that we’re calling web chat. Read more and check it out below. And as always, let us know what you’d like to see in GroundSourced.

Photo by Jon Tyson

Give us feedback on the pre-alpha version of our latest feature: web chat

Pre-alpha versions of product’s are “not feature-complete and not usually released to the public.” But we don’t release things to the public. Like we said above: We build with our customers, not for them.

So that’s why we’re sharing this newborn product with you. We’re building it because we want it to serve as the top of your engagement funnel. It should create opportunities to activate and engage people interacting with your digital content to convert them to SMS and other channels in a way that makes independent community building easier.

Click here to test out web chat and tell us how it can work for you. Just type “hello” to get started.

What we’re reading