Using Technology to Communicate Your Message

Editor's Note: Ok, so our plan to live blog at the National Main Street Conference didn't go according to plan. Our apologies. However, the conference will still be serving as inspiration for our next few blogs, starting with this week's. A special "thank you" to the several presenters who highlighted our humble little blog as "a Main Street coordinating program who is doing it well." Recognition from our peers and people in our industry is always appreciated. Thank you. On with the Blog.... -JB



By Jamie Schriner-Hooper
Organization Specialist
Michigan Main Street
Michigan State Housing Development Authority


The Michigan Main Street staff just returned from the National Main Street Conference. This was my third time in attendance and as in the past, I came away from the conference with plenty of useful information and good ideas for our Michigan Main Street communities. This year’s conference focused in on Web 2.0. What I heard over and over again is that regardless of one’s field, everyone needs to be on the front end of technology, even just for simple communications.

While this year’s conference focused in on technology, ironically enough, our hotel did not have free wifi, and access at surrounding restaurants was difficult at best. I’m sure that conference attendees without a laptop were in the minority. While only a few years ago, it was fine to simply turn on your out-of-office assistant and change your voicemail to state that you were out of contact until your return date, in today’s world, that is no longer acceptable. While we still turn on that email notice, people still expect a response before you return home. More and more, we are required to remain constantly connected via some sort of means. I felt completely disconnected from the world without a wifi connection for my laptop – even though it was only for four days.

I’m a fairly new Blackberry owner. Prior to that, I had a flip phone for less than a year. I thought that I was an innovator by simply having a cell phone. Granted it was an old one with a battery that wouldn’t stay connected, but people could contact me regardless of where I was. Less than a year and a half after getting rid of that old phone, I now have constant access to the internet, my email, a large contact list, Facebook, Twitter and more with my cell phone. In fact, if I don’t have my phone with me, I panic, wondering what I would do if my car were to break down or I needed to call someone or I had to check who was doing what on Facebook. I’m sure that most of you are now the same way.

This is also the case in the wide world of Main Street. More and more, our communities are expected to not only have a website, but to also have a social media presence. It isn’t enough to have a website that has event dates and contact information; people want to know what the Main Street program is doing throughout the day. People expect to see Twitter “tweets,” Facebook or LinkedIn status updates, MySpace information, blogs, etc. If you’re not connected via a number of social media mechanisms, you’re only reaching a fraction of the audience that could become valuable volunteers, board members, supporters and more. In fact, Main Streets are now using virtual volunteers with great luck. That is, volunteers are recruited online and complete online projects. The Main Street managers often never even meet these folks. All communication is done via the internet and the final project is sent electronically to the Main Street program. Ten years ago, this would never even have been considered.

While the telephone or face-to-face used to be the preferred means of contact, we can’t expect this to continue to be the norm. This week, I sent my first text message to a colleague who was sitting two chairs away in a session. If someone told me even a month ago that I would communicate with someone two feet away via my cell phone, I would have told them that they were crazy. I guess the lesson here is that we need to constantly be readdressing our means of communicating our message. Regardless of your age, or background, if you’re not constantly changing your methods of communication and trying to stay up-to-date, you’ll be placed in the same group with your grandparents trying to figure out how to program the VCR.
We at the Michigan Main Street Center are trying to constantly stay on the front lines of today’s technology and social media. We’re creating a Ning page and are learning about things like Digg and Google Apps. But, we know that we can’t remain stagnant and rely on what we have now. We’ll continue to seek out the best way to communicate all that is going on in the wonderful worlds of our Michigan Main Street communities. As always, if you see a way that we can improve and a site on which we should have a presence, please be sure to let us know. I look forward to seeing you on web!