Central Ohio libraries are working together to focus on resources for small businesses & entrepreneurs. Each library in Central Ohio will be offering free information and workshops throughout the day on September 16.

Part of my role in OneCommunity's BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) project (called Connect Your Community) is to figure out the curricululm for the participants. Having assisted community technology centers for so many years and seeing how each center seemed to create their own curriculum, I was certain we could keep the cost down by finding bit and pieces of existing curriclulum. I was partially correct. There is A LOT of curriculum available for free, either posted online or for the asking. The challenge we encountered is that some of what we wanted to teach was so new, either the curriculum didn't exist at the level we needed it (for beginners) or what we found was outdated. The easy ones to find were the topics that didn't change much and are super popular - such as Microsoft Word for Beginners or Keyboard Basics. Viruses and Spyware had to be created from scratch, as did Online Identity.

We discovered three libraries with particularly well thought out training materials posted online for new computer users. I contacted them and 2 of the 3 not only gave me permission to revise their materials but also emailed me original files to make the editing much easier. I promised to send them the revisions for their use. (We won't talk about the 3rd library.)

Hibbing Public Library in Minnesota - Provides lesson plans online as PDFs including slide presentations and handouts. All are available under a Creative Commons License.

Indian Prairie Public Library in Illinois - Provides lesson plans online as PDFs including slide presentations, quick reference cards and exercises.

We will be posting all the Connect Your Community training materials with a Creative Commons license. Since the funding is from the federal government (stimulus money), seems like making the materials freely available is the right thing to do.

Below is curriculum to guide social users of social networks into professional use. We've created a Participant Guide, a Facilitaor Guide and a Slide Presentation. All three work together.

We are offering all the materials freely, under a Creative Commons license welcoming others to share or remix our work, with the understanding that Shinydoor will be credited, the materials will not be used for commercial purposes, and the remixed materials will also be made available under the same or similar license.

What have we been up to the past couple of months at ShinyDoor?

Most important - we have a new ShinyDoor partner! Josephine Ann, born June 1, 2010.

Thanks to sponsorship from the Appalachian Regional Commission, Laura taught Facebook classes in Alabama to small businesses.

We created professional social networking curriculum for INROADS.

Angela assisted the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition and the New America Foundation writing a proposal for Broadband Technology Opportunities Project funds.

Angela is assisting OneCommunity and its many partners with implementation of the BTOP funded broadband adoption project Connect Your Community.

Using social media for events can increase not only attendance, but engagement from attendees during and following the event, engagement from an audience outside the event, and also followers and fans - thus promoting organization and event awareness.

Join Laura Rees of ShinyDoor as she talks about how to use social media to grow your events.

We'll discuss:

• How to encourage event discussion on Twitter
• How to set up a display to monitor the ongoing conversation
• How to use the Twitter stream to more fully engage participants
• How to use a FaceBook fan page as a resource for attendees
• How to use video tools, like Ustream, YouTube, or Skype at an event
• How to use SM tools to encourage networking

Location: Conference Center at Northpointe

Time: 7:30am Registration, 8am Presentation, 9am Open Forum/Discussion