If your goal is to build a local community organization – like Transition Ferndale, for instance – then you need to have some idea how to go about it. On Wednesday, June 18, we’ll meet at 7:00 pm to explore a relatively new possibility in the “how to” category – Twitter. It may be that most people who have Twitter accounts use it for the most trivial of purposes, but that is already changing.

As usual for the third Wednesday of the month, we’ll meet in the Ferndale Library, 222 East Nine Mile Road, Ferndale, MI.

Often for these meetings, we have a relevant video to show and discuss. Less often (though we should do it more often), we have a presentation by a local person with some useful knowledge to share.

In this case, the local person will be Sean Yalda, a graphic and web site designer who has some experience running a Twitter account. Better yet, he has put in some time studying the possibilities and the effects of a well-run Twitter account, and he is willing to discuss his conclusions. Of course, tweets (the correct term for the product) do not exist in isolation from other social media such as Facebook and Pinterest. Neither are they isolated from older media – websites, television, radio, print publications and even billboards.

Here at Transition Ferndale, we have been using printed flyers, our own blog/website and an e-mail announcements list as complements to monthly face-to-face meetings. Twitter is something that we’ve never really considered. However, it turns out that a Twitter account is free, and you don’t even need a smartphone to have an account or to send and receive tweets. Apparently, we have something to learn in this area.

You don’t need to be a supporter of the Transition Towns movement to attend, or to find this a useful meeting. It doesn’t matter whether your interest is the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, the Alliance to Halt Fermi 3’s efforts to prevent Detroit Edison from constructing a new nuclear reactor, recruiting people to your local Time Bank, getting out the vote for a particular candidate in this fall’s election, or perhaps something completely different.

Sean is going to discuss how a local organization might use Twitter. It’s a tool. What purpose you have for the tool is up to you. The meeting is free, and open to the public. Some light refreshments will be available.

The library has a free internet connection. You’ll get the most out of the meeting if you bring your device – laptop, tablet or smartphone – and try doing some things with Twitter during the meeting, while Sean is available to answer questions.

If you are planning to attend, please send an RSVP note to almyatt@outlook.com.

Note this is not my normal email address. I hope to have RSVPs and only RSVPs at this outlook address. That will make it easier to for me to see how many people will attend, and to reply to them if the number happens to be larger than the room will handle. Please do not send an “I will attend” message to my normal email.

Thanks,

Art Myatt