Association Viewpoint

Sense of Community

Members of PRISM International received a special holiday gift as the new PRISM Community made its debut. The Web site conversion and the community launch began Dec. 17. The association hosted three webinars in December to teach members how to use the new tool. Additional webinars were scheduled for January and February 2010.

The PRISM Community is a social networking platform that allows members to make connections, share information, discuss important events and filter information from various sources to their own personal Web page.

"The PRISM Community is a lot like Facebook," says Chris Pearson of Vanguard Archives and vice president of PRISM International who has been working with PRISM staff on the rollout. "Inside the community you are able to match yourself with other members who have similar interests, review the profiles of other members, make connections with others, flag terms that may be discussed in the community so that alerts are generated, filter and collect news feeds from various sources and create groups around particular areas of interest. One of the most powerful areas of the site is the group area where resources can be shared among members and threaded discussions can be actively monitored like a listserver, but are also preserved and searchable like a forum."

PRISM International’s 2010 President Dave Heric, DataSite Northwest, agrees. "One of the main areas of focus of my presidential year is to build and refine the capabilities of the PRISM Community. This represents completely new capabilities in empowering members to interact with one another in order to share information and build relationships much more efficiently. PRISM International is known for having a culture of sharing among members. The PRISM Community takes this well-developed face-to-face networking culture into an online sphere. Members who have been unable to attend meetings in the past or who would like to involve deeper layers of employees in PRISM International now have the capabilities to engage more deeply through the PRISM Community."

Most features of the PRISM Community are only available to PRISM International members. Some networking features can be experienced by guests to the site. All other areas of the new PRISM International Web site are open to the public.

Particular attention has been paid to develop PRISM International’s capability to share information with media outlets, government representatives and potential customers of PRISM International members. "We want to be able to provide a much more robust central point of contact for potential customers looking for services from the industry. This includes circulating RFPs among PRISM International members at the request of potential clients of members," Heric says.

The PRISM International Community can be accessed directly at http://my.prismintl.org or through the public Web site at www.prismintl.org or www.prisminternational.org. More information about the PRISM International Community is available by contacting the PRISM International staff at staff@prismintl.org.