ROSNF Delivers Rotary in WA Training Seminar

In November 2011, the then district governors of 9455 and 9465, the two Rotary Districts in the Australian state of Western Australia, decided to offer a joint Facebook training seminar to all Western Australian Rotarians and Rotaractors. The task of designing and delivering the seminar was assigned to Simone Carot Collins, founding Chair of ROSNF and an assistant governor in District 9455 and Kero O’Shea, ROSNF board member and social media coordinator for District 9465. Simone was chair of the ROSNF Training Committee and Kero a committee member.

The task of designing what became the Rotary in WA Facebook Seminar addressed a number of challenges. Foremost among these was a realisation that many of the participants in the course had very significant concerns about privacy issues relative to Facebook. The four-hour seminar was designed to deal with this issue first, to reassure participants and allow them to focus fully on learning how to operate Facebook safely and effectively.   The seminar planning, marketing, delivery and follow-up saw the use of seven different social networking tools in an intensive exercise that streamlined the entire process and virtually eliminated double-handling and rework.

The Rotary in WA Facebook seminar, held on 12 February 2012, was attended by more than 150 Rotarians and Rotaractors, with representatives from almost all metropolitan clubs and several country attendees. The success of this seminar led to a second course being held in the southwest of WA in March. Together these programs and other courses conducted by Kero and Simone provided Facebook training to more than 400 attendees and underpinned the development of a significant network of Facebook pages in Western Australia. District 9465 alone has more than 50 pages with a combined page following of over 6000.  Another success story for ROSNF!

Prepared by

Kero O’Shea

21 January 2013