Winnipeg non-profit Siloam Mission connects with the community through social media

Siloam Mission, a Winnipeg non-profit offering services to people experiencing homelessness, has done an amazing job reaching out to the community through social media.

Blair Barkeley, Siloam’s Website and Social Media Coordinator, has been a “connecting point between the compassionate and Winnipeg’s less fortunate”, and I chatted with him about his experience.

Unfortunately Blair, along with 17 other staff at Siloam, was laid off “due to a 15 to 25 percent decrease in donations and public support”. Today is his last day, and I’m sorry to see this channel of public outreach temporarily lost.

You can donate to Siloam Mission right here.

Q. Siloam Mission is using many social media channels (Larry Updike’s blog, Facebook, Twitter, Twestival, YouTube). Where did that social media savvy come from? Was a it a directive from management that resulted in a social engagement hire, or did a young person with a digital skill set come on board and bring the idea to the CEO? Was there an identified need to engage with Winnipeggers (either in the online space, or just in general)?

Blair Barkeley: Siloam’s social media savvy actually came from both. A web & social media position was created by management for the very purpose to get into the whole social media world and start connecting with new people and new possible supporters. And then I was hired to fill the position.

My job and goal was to engage with people online and starting entering the new social media phenomenon so that Siloam Mission could capture a whole new rage of supporters. read more

Interactive TV! One Ocean, Tactica’s ecosystem-saving convergent transmedia production

Something unique is happening to stories in the age of participation.

Have you heard the term “convergent media”? How about “transmedia“? Transmedia is “storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different “entry points” in the story”. It’s a richer experience, an interactive  narrative backchannel, that lets you learn and participate in what were once one-way broadcast media: film and tv.

Tactica Interactive, working with CBC and Winnipeg’s Merit Motion Pictures, has built a deep (ha ha) interactive world in support of  The Nature of Things with David Suzuki’s One Ocean HD documentary series. Watching the series is a wonderful way to spark an interest in ocean ecology, and One Ocean Online gives viewers the opportunity to become doers.

You can pledge several easy, real-life ways to save the ocean, educate yourself with beautiful exploratory tours, examine the history of the ocean and its creatures, and play games in your own undersea biosphere. Logging in with Facebook lets you challenge your friends and share your passion for the environment.

Expect these kinds of experiences to become more common, as tv and film producers explore transmedia in extending and enhancing the worlds they create. The conversation, participation, and deeper understanding fostered by new media in co-production with classic media brings everybody a bigger, better experience of the story.

The Nature of Things One Ocean airs Thursday nights in March on CBC.

Calling all groovy Winnipeg web people: Tactica is hiring.

Tactica Interactive Communications is looking for some brilliant interactive folks to come collaborate in the new Exchange district office space. There are some exciting (seriously) new media convergence projects afoot, including a partnership with CBC and Merit Motion Pictures to develop an interactive experience for The Nature of Things with David Suzuki‘s One Ocean documentary series (check out the development blog).

Tactica’s looking for an interactive developer who hearts Flash or Unity, and a senior web developer willing to bust some funky Droople moves. If you’d like to get busy building creative online stuff, check out these career opportunities and blast your resume over here.