Here are a few stories I’ve come across over the last few days that I don’t want you to miss.

1.  LinkedIn launches a program to help Nonprofits find board members

LinkedIn Board Connect: Helping Nonprofits Find Board Members on LinkedIn (LinkedIn Blog)

With the launch of LinkedIn Board Connect, we are giving nonprofit leaders the tools to help them leverage their own networks and their board members’ networks to find the right skilled professionals to join their boards. The Board Connect program includes free access to Talent Finder (one of our premium accounts focused on finding top candidates on LinkedIn), access to an exclusive educational webcast and an invitation to join the Board Connect Group on LinkedIn. To participate, you must be a registered U.S. nonprofit. We are launching in limited release to give us a chance to learn from our initial participants.

To learn more and sign up for the program, please visit our brand new LinkedIn for Nonprofits resource page.

2.  On the launch of the new Internet Association:

Why LinkedIn Joined The Internet Association (Linkedin Blog)

We’re looking forward to participating in ongoing discussions in Washington with other members of The Internet Association by providing our unique perspective as the world’s largest professional network, particularly in the areas of closing the skills gap and creating economic opportunity. By extending our efforts to educate policymakers about the innovation economy, The Internet Association will bring a strong, focused, consistent voice to the discussion of issues critical to the ongoing success of the fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy. This includes advancing public policy solutions to strengthen and protect a free Internet, foster innovation and economic growth, and to empower users.

Tech now has its own RIAA. Meesa scared! (Anil Dash)

I’m happy to see such as serious effort from companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and AOL to address our industry’s concerns through direct engagement with lawmakers. …

Yes, I hate the pernicious effect of money influencing policy for our major industries. But If Apple could spend a single day’s profit and out-lobby the entire legacy entertainment industry, it seems like it’d be a good investment. Then we can move on to fixing the broken business of government and think about the future of web protest.

So, I’m in favor of the tech industry getting more organized in talking to policy makers. But part of me is scared shitless about the Internet Association. Because industry associations that start out with benevolent intentions to protect the freedoms of innovative young industries often become instruments of regulatory capture and innovation bullying as those industries mature.

3. On my favorite topic, humanizing and social business

 HR’s Critical Role In Social Business Transformation (Michael Brito)

 HR or OD (Organizational Development) plays a critical role to the success of social business transformation for many reasons. They have the ear of company leadership.  They interact with employees at all levels and in every job function. They understand the structures of each organization they support. They are the facilitators of many organizational changes and have clear insight into the challenges that face each of their constituents.  And the truth is, they have been doing change management for years. If anyone can steer an organization to be more social, HR can and should be leading the way.

Why community management is the key weapon in your digital armory (SBOSM)

 I recommend companies go still further though and don’t limit their community building development to a single person or department, but instead to develop community-building skills within employees from across the organization, and indeed in stakeholders from outside of your company. Here are a few reasons why you can never have too many community managers.

Building a Social Business: Start with Email Changes (Community Roundtable)

If you are following, all of these steps are about getting smarter with how we share existing information. The cost of managing this information today is mostly hidden. It’s the hours each of us spends reviewing, organizing and deleting emails and the hours we spend answering the same questions over and over again. This waste is not really ‘seen’ by the organization because it’s been absorbed primarily by individuals in their ‘free’ time. The accountants – and often therefore executives – don’t really see this waste so it goes ignored. But it is making people crazy and if you can accomplish all of the above, it will get people more comfortable with social software tools and dynamics and it will give them real relief. And then, you can focus on where real, strategic changes can happen:

• Connecting people working on similar problems who don’t know each other
• Surfacing solutions and existing content faster, saving time and energy for new innovation
• Crowdsourcing ideas, gaps, risks, opportunities, messaging and advocacy

We need to fix what is currently broken for individuals before we can expect them to contribute back to our organizations in meaningful ways. Email inboxes are ground zero.

4. On the strategic importance of private communities

The future of social media influence is hidden (Christopher S. Penn)

If you’re trying to reach CEO X who’s friends with me on Path or in my private LinkedIn group, you can’t see that I’m influential to this person or his community, and thus if you rely on influence scores (which are based only on public data), you’ll never know about my level of influence with your target.

More important, there’s no way for you to enter these private settings and do any serious marketing, because they’re hidden from you. So how do you get in? How do you develop and grow your access to private networks? Let’s talk about that some more this week. In the meantime, the takeaway for today is recognizing that influence scores are worthless when it comes to private communities – and that private communities are an ever-increasing trend.

5. On social learning 

3 Ways to Change How Your Organization Shares (Mashable)

The latest learning and education innovations are blossoming, even if they have yet to gain meaningful adoption. Just take a look at the ideas, tools, and methods currently available. There’s the flipped classroom like Khan Academy, Harvard and MIT’s online education venture edX; adaptive and personalized learning fromKnewton; gamification; educational content and experiences for mobile devices like Inkling or Apple’s textbook publishing. The list goes on and on.

Yet, the way we learn in corporate environments hasn’t changed in decades. We still attend weekend training sessions, read sales manuals, and watch taped lectures. Right now, organizational knowledge sharing forces people to learn from ‘expert material’ – – the manual, the binder, and the video.

That should shift to learning from teammates and co-workers. We need to incorporate the innovation we’re seeing in education technology into the business world, and do it in a way that is designed for business use cases, not academic. Here are the principles for making that happen.

Cisco Networking Academies – A Picture of the Future (Innovation Excellence)

In the last 15 years more than 4 million students have participated in a program that leverages public-private partnerships to help students from every socioeconomic background prepare for entry-level tech jobs, further education, and career development. That’s a big impact, but what is less appreciated is that Cisco sponsored a picture of the future of education. There are at least 10 ways that U.S. K-12 education is moving toward the model represented by Cisco Networking Academy.

As I read that Cisco article I’m thinking, this is what associations should look like!!!!  Professional education is the cornerstone of many associations. We need to bring our educational programs into the 21st century.

See what you think.

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(photo credit)