Summer is fast approaching. Have you kept that New Years Resolution to get that beach body you’ve always wanted? If not, that’s okay. There’s still plenty of time to do just that, and there are many Ning communities out there to help you reach your goal!

Health and fitness sites are nothing new, but finding a place that motivates and connects us to others with the same fitness goals is something of a foreign concept for many people. After all, we can’t all be on the The Biggest Loser and who wants to publicly share their weight loss goals?

The beauty is that people naturally feel more comfortable sharing this type of thing with like-minded people around them. We see this extending to the online world. In many ways, Ning Communities serve as the social lubricant, getting people to open up and share their story — for support, motivation and to highlight their successes to encourage others. With that in mind, we wanted to point out a few Ning communities making an impact on people’s health:

Move Nourish Believe

iAmTRI

Runners For Life

Strength Performance Network

Adelaide Cyclists

Russian Kettlebells UK – Helping Fellow Kettlebellers Come Together. Learn, Connect and Grow.

30 Bananas a Day!

NJ Hiking: Connect – A Social Network for New Jersey Hiking Enthusiasts

www.DiscGolfersR.Us – The Community of Disc Golfers and About All Things Disc Golf

Richmond Road Runners – Supporting running in the metro Richmond area

Outdoor Baby Network – An information sharing site for families who enjoy the outdoors!

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, bulk up, or simply interested in mixing up your dietary habits, there’s likely a Ning community filled with people aspiring to achieve the same results as you. And if there’s not, create your own community today and you can help improve the lives and health for thousands of people out there seeking the same fitness and health goals as yourself.

Beach-goers worldwide will thank you.

If you’re like me, you might be at a loss what to get your mom for Mother’s Day. This year, skip the flowers and cheesy greeting cards and instead find a great Ning community for her to join. Does she have a love for knitting or is she a compulsive runner? Addicted to coffee or a travel buff? There’s likely a Ning community out there just for her! With over 100 million people part of Ning communities today, she might already be a part of a Ning community and not even know it!

To find a Ning site for your mom, head to Google and type in the hobby or interest you’d like to find, and add “site:ning.com” to the end of the search. This will search content and topics from Ning communities. For instance, here’s a Google search result for skiing — each result is a Ning community. We also highlight a lot of great Ning sites through our blog, the Ning Resource Center, Customer Spotlight and Inspiration pages.

Better yet, if the Ning site she joins has social sign-in enabled, she’ll be able to use her social identity from services like Facebook, Yahoo!, Google and Windows Live to sign up and sign-in, meaning 1 less screen name or password for her to remember or write down.

Here are a few Ning communities Mom might like:

The arts
My Modern Metropolis
MyGraficO Arts & Crafts Community
The Crafter’s Cafe – A place for women to come together, support one another, and build friendships
crafthaus – PARTICIPATORY SPORT FOR CRAFT ARTISTS
Knitting Community
The Peachy Keen Connection
The Cookery Network – The place for passionate cooks

Travel
The Hive

Celebrity
Smart Girls at the Party – CHANGE THE WORLD BY BEING YOURSELF
moonfrye

Causes
Navy For Moms
Women on the Road to Rio20

Working moms & mompreneurs
Professional Leaders of Women and Girls – Providing Quality Products, Services, and Support
Role Mommy
Pregnant Bloggers Club – Where pregnant bloggers converge
Executive Moms
Women Advisors Forum

Local communities
Chippewa Valley Moms – A Local Resource For Moms
ParentingNH – Events, features and things to do for families in NH
santarosamom – Conversation, ideas and events for parents in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County
Spartanburg Moms – A gathering place for moms in Upstate South Carolina
Des Moines Families – The 411 on 515.

Health & family
Babble Playground
National Movement for America’s Children – The Time to Awaken is Now.

Why else would you want to find a community for your mom? Hint, it benefits you…

It wasn’t so long ago that Facebook was only available to college students. But how times have changed. If you’ve tempted online fate by accepting a Facebook friend request from your parents, you know the online run-ins that can inevitably happen. Choice examples include awkward comments made by your dad for a party photo posted by your friends, or that check-in you didn’t get the chance to de-tag before your mom wondered what you were doing out at 4 AM. Find your mom a Ning site that’ll excite and get her engaged, and you might find a bit of refuge for your Facebook account.

Does your mom want a place to share family photos or does she have friends that share the same hobbies as her but aren’t sharing with each other online? Take her Mother’s Day gift 1 step further and create a Ning community for her! This is a great way to connect your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends. All in a safe and private place, too.

Better yet, make her an admin of the community so she can take ownership and pride in keeping family and friends together through her Ning site.

Happy Mothers Day, Mom!

How do you get your students to take pride in their creative endeavors and make them feel like a million bucks on a budget? By showcasing their work to the world through a digital art show. One school district is doing just that, and they’re using Ning as the epicenter for their digital art show. In partnership with local high schools, the San Mateo County Office of Education is unveiling its student art show today, called the SMartwork Online Show.

The show brings together student works from 9 high schools within various districts, 18 teachers and their classrooms, 1,300 students, and guest galleries from additional school districts across the country.

“SMartWorkShow highlights student work from the media, entertainment, engineering, video gaming, graphic arts, digital photography and web design high school courses in several different schools in our county,” said Lauren Sneed, a school counselor for the San Mateo County Office of Education, Regional Occupational Program.

With Ning, the show is set up to allow participating teachers to upload student work directly to the site. Work is checked by the art show curators and each piece is categorized by media type so similar works can be grouped together. Many of the teachers did not know each other prior to this project, and are coming together to help organize the exhibition across the various participating schools. These teachers now share lesson plans and projects, communicate via email to solve problems, ask questions and work together with the show’s marketing team. As an offline marketing component, the teachers turned student works into postcards (pictured below) and held a design contest for its posters (pictured at bottom).

“This is the 3rd year for the show. We first proposed the concept of an online art show to help bring teachers within these pathways together and highlight their students’ work by leveraging resources and working in a supportive professional learning community,” said Sneed. “By creating the show with Ning, the focus is to promote career and technical education and merge these rigorous courses to also meet the California common core standards, utilizing 21st century skills in hopes of providing students with information about viable careers.”

As a Bay Area-based company, we’re really excited to see a local school district using our technology to enrich students’ lives by promoting proficiency in technology. The show is available through September 21 and you can check it out through their Ning community here.

Clockwise from the top: Ning‘s Jason Rand attended an April meeting with San Mateo county teachers to prepare for the SMartwork Online Art Show. Lauren Sneed helped to organize the SMartwork Online Art Show. A SMartwork Online Art Show poster made with students’ works. A screenshot of the digital photography gallery for the SMartwork Online Art Show.

As Major League Baseball kicks into high gear for its 2012 season, Ning communities are showing their excitement for America’s favorite pastime.

Baseball.net made its debut as this season got started. Though the site is a rookie in terms of tenure on Ning, they’ve scored an A-list custom domain name. According to Arbel Arif, owner of Baseball.net, they built their site to support a “vast community of baseball enthusiasts who gather to ‘talk baseball’.” We’re looking forward to following their growth as the season progresses.

Opposite Baseball.net, The World Baseball Network and CheckSwing have been using Ning for 3+ years, amassing nearly 9,000 members and aspiring baseball players.

On Netflix Movie Fans, the community answers the question “What are some of your favorite baseball movies” (A League of Their Own or The Sandlot, anyone?):

For sports memorabilia collectors, the Sports Collectors Social Network provides a taste of retail therapy. The Ning community connects like-minded collectors, and provides useful tools to help in their search for elusive and rare baseball cards and other must-have goodies.

On MyTown Colorado, community member Alyson Miller recently publicized an event inviting children from all around Boulder County to gather to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and be recorded for the soundtrack of Labragirl Pictures’ film 6-4-3. The title refers to how a double play happens between players on the field: six is the shortstop, 4 is the second baseman and 3 is the first baseman.

The Hawai’i Chamber of Commerce of Northern California is using their Ning site to bring together members and non-members of the organization to a real-world meet-up for an upcoming San Francisco Giants game against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 4. They’ll be rooting for Tim Lincecum and Brian Wilson, for sure!

Meanwhile, as anyone who’s played on a club sports team knows, having a great looking uniform adds to team morale and pride. San Francisco-based Fog City Athletics & Apparel is a company specializing in athletic team uniforms and casual wear, ensuring teams are looking sharp. Their site lives on Ning, where they show their portfolio of custom print graphics and designs available for creation. From their site, they recently Tweeted a shot of custom designed baseball caps made by the company. Lookin’ good, guys!

In the same vein, members of the Kreg Jig Owners Community are learning how to build a baseball storage center with their Kreg tools to organize the likes of little league gear:

From spectating and playing, collecting memorabilia, and making apparel and equipment accessories, bringing a community together to highlight the love of baseball is a home run on Ning.

Everyday, there’s billions of happenings around the world, spanning momentous occasions like the birth of a child or the start of a new job, or seemingly insignificant chores like walking the dog and taking out the trash. But how do you tell the world’s stories, through the world’s eyes?

It’s a challenge that Kyle Ruddick and Brandon Litman are tackling and showing through their film project, One Day on Earth. The film is making its worldwide premier on Earth Day, this Sunday, April 22, 2012.

The 2 filmmakers have amassed 3,000 hours of video footage captured and added by members and supporters of their site and Ning community, aptly called One Day on Earth. And the footage was, fittingly, captured during 1 day on earth: October 10, 2010 (10.10.10).

On Sunday, the film’s premier will recognize the worldwide collaboration and shared vision of thousands of people, from every country in the world, and we couldn’t be more excited to see One Day on Earth, and Ning’s impact in telling the world’s story through this film. Many of us from Ning will be attending the San Francisco screening of One Day on Earth. We’d love to see you there, or hope you can make it to a screening location worldwide.

Simon Cantlon is on a mission to document the power and allure of the American open road. And he’s using Ning as the community hub for the project. He’s producing an interactive documentary film and book called The Motels of Route 66. The project will explore the stories of the motel owners, the architecture, the travelers and the road itself, which runs between Los Angeles and Chicago.

For funding and publicity, he’s built a Ning community centered around the project and ties it closely together with his Kickstarter project, a funding platform for creative projects. By June 9, he’s looking for $30,000 in backing for the project. The funding will cover the month-long journey down Route 66 with a full four-man film crew (director, cameraman, photographer, lighting & sound), vehicle rental, equipment, gas, food, lodging and supplies.

It’s an ambitious goal, for sure, and we’re excited to follow Simon and his crew on their documentary-road trip across one of America’s most historic thoroughfares.

“We’ll be out on the road meeting travelers, the people who live in the towns, mom and pop businesses and the owners of the motels along the way, all the way down Route 66. We’ll be bringing them into the story, and letting them be a part of it. As the story unfolds step by step, it will be documented on our Ning community,” said Cantlon. “That’s awesome.”

You can back his project on his Kickstarter page and follow the endeavor through his Ning community, The Motels of Route 66.

As a company based in the heart of the tech industry in California, it can be easy to lose sight of how Ning as a product is used worldwide. We recently announced Ning’s official launch in Germany, and with 100,000 Ning communities, and a new community created every 10 minutes, we wanted to take a step back and do a round-up of Ning communities from around the world we think are stellar:

We also highlight some amazing communities on the Ning homepage for our various markets:

Germany (Deutsch)
United Kingdom (English)
Canada (English)
France (Français)
Brazil (Português)

Have a Ning community that should be on our list? Let us know about it!

©2010 Obert Houser

In March 2007, we started TuDiabetes because we saw that too many people with diabetes were feeling isolated instead of benefiting from the shared experience they could have by connecting to other people touched by diabetes.

Today, Diabetes Hands Foundation‘s networks allow members to find support locally and globally. Our more than 23,000 members describe the TuDiabetes family as a lifeline, a source of guidance, a sanctuary, and even a college education! We proudly connect advocates, artists, dreamers, thinkers, and people touched by diabetes of all types so that all of us may live a more expansive life with diabetes.

I sit back and reflect on where we were 5 years ago and where we are now:

• I have learned to stay flexible, both about my diabetes (not pretending to be perfect) and in the way we do things on TuDiabetes and the Diabetes Hands Foundation (adapting to changing circumstances, challenges, and signals along the way).
• I am more hopeful than ever: I have had the opportunity to talk with (and share the conversations on video) with some of the world’s most brilliant minds working to make our lives better and one day have diabetes be a thing of the past.
• I have witnessed the power of social media beyond socializing: seeing how connected people touched by diabetes now feel better understood and more empowered. Who would have imagined this when MySpace was the big thing?

On our fifth birthday, please help us keep going strong in our mission to improve the lives of people living with diabetes worldwide.

If all members of TuDiabetes donate $5, we will raise more than $100,000. Our goal is less ambitious: we are seeking to raise $20,000 before the end of March. So we ask you to give us 5 dollars, or more if you can.

Thank you for your support! And here’s to another 5 years!

-Manny

Do you remember the anxiety and stress of the college admissions process? Many questions loom: When will I find out? Is this the right school for me? How can I hear from current students? How can I afford this education? What will my life be like there?

These are just some of the questions top of mind for high school seniors (and parents) as they wait to hear from schools and decide where to attend for the next chapter in their lives. This got us thinking. How are colleges and universities using Ning to build community around their prospective students and what are schools doing to make a student’s decision on matriculation more informed and less stressful?

We came across Providence College’s Ning Network, PC Perspectives. Based in Rhode Island, Providence College (PC) is a small liberal arts college that decided to build their community with Ning to supplement their presence on Facebook and Twitter. Their goal was to share a true PC student-perspective to high schoolers. “We wanted prospective students to have a space to learn about PC that was a step beyond the packaged marketing materials,” said Scott Seseske, PC’s Assistant Dean of Admission. “We wanted a place where these students could come and hear from PC students, and ask them questions directly.”

The Ning community is completely open, meaning that anyone can see student blog posts, photos and profiles by PC’s student ambassadors (pictured below). Current students highlight everything from study abroad opportunities, roommates, sports, picking a major and their impending graduation. In total, PC Perspectives has 10 dedicated students representing the college on a regular basis through the community (and many more chiming in along the way).

Ambassadors offer their candid experiences at PC to the nearly 10,000 students applying each year. Seseske highlights that for student ambassadors, many contribute because the Ning community made an impact on them during their own college searches, and they’re paying it forward by volunteering their time within the site. Having a presence within the community also serves as a tangible portfolio as student ambassadors think about their graduation from PC and post-college employment opportunities in fields like the press and media, tech, education, advertising, and writing.

Since the group is open to everyone, PC Perspectives serves to help high school students at any stage in the admissions process — meaning that if someone wants to join as a member, and gush about how excited they are to attend PC, they can absolutely do so, or if they’re more comfortable checking out what PC is all about without becoming a full-fledged member of the site, they can do that too. By being a destination where prospective students can visit online, connect with other high schoolers, current students and the college, PC Perspectives offers students just that: an authentic perspective on what it’s like to attend Providence College. And more importantly, they’re helping high school students find the right school.

Hobbies. Whether knitting, collecting stamps, running, enjoying a good bottle of wine or indulging in foodie culture, we all have something adding layers to what makes us, well, us. And what tops a hobby? Making a business out of it.

At Ning, our team is fascinated with how we can provide you with the best social technology weaving together people with the things that you hold near and dear to your heart — no matter the hobby, business, topic or focus. One way we do this is by speaking directly with our customers about what’s worked for them, and the ways they’re leveraging Ning to turn their passions and hobbies into hyper-focused communities populated with people sharing their same excitement.

We recently spoke with filmmaker and Ning Creator, Zack Coffman about Choppertown Nation, the Ning Network he spun out after the wild success of his documentaries about custom motorcycles built from the ground up, and the people making the custom bikes.

  Directors Scott Di Lalla (left) and Zack Coffman at the Sundance Film Festival (2007)

 

Co-directed with Scott Di Lalla, the first of their documentaries came out in 2005, with follow-up documentaries released almost every year thereafter. With the films generating a worldwide cult following, Coffman’s Ning community, Choppertown Nation, began about 3 years ago under the premise that it would be neat to have a place where the fans could have a hub to celebrate the documentaries and their excitement for building custom rides. “We had a lot of friends on our MySpace and Facebook pages,” said Coffman. “And we thought, we ought to make a network with our own brand and title. We wanted pure, constant, and consistent branding with our own site.” Coffman chose to use Ning to build the community, and with that, Choppertown Nation was born.

Since its launch, nearly 4,000 people have joined Choppertown Nation, and the site has seen over 50,000 images of custom bikes uploaded directly by its members. With such a bevy of content, the result has been a lot of interested eyeballs checking out what’s being said and made by the greater community, and Coffman has leveraged the site as a way to authentically promote DVD sales for his other films. “We’re able to advertise in an organic way by offering members and visitors our DVDs and other items they’d probably like to buy. In many ways, what we’re selling is just a natural extension of what they’re already enjoying on the community.”

Building on top of a stream of great content and engaged members, Coffman also regularly offers contests and competitions to the community. In Choppertown’s latest competition, wrapping up at the end of this month, members can upload 2 pictures of their bike builds and tell everyone about what they’ve built. Top contributors have the opportunity to win apparel, accessories and other prizes from industry-known sponsors like Biltwell, Dickies, Licks Custom Cycles, Baker Drivetrain and DicE Magazine. Contests like this provide an endless loop for engagement and friendly competition, while bringing sponsors front and center to an already-active and influential biker community.

Coffman also cites that SEO (search engine optimization), where a website appears in search results like on Google and Yahoo!, remains high for his sites given that his community lives on the Ning Platform. By linking between his Ning community and his online store, this helps his business come up higher in search results as cross-linking between the sites builds relevancy for his brand. In turn, this helps as people search sites like Google for information about building custom motorcycles to come across Choppertown Nation and its online store.

For Choppertown Nation, which started out as a hobby turned documentary series turned full-fledged community combining a business, it’s a shining example for how a Ning customer is creatively and naturally driving engagement and increasing visibility on the web. As a phrase motor enthusiasts know well, we’re glad to see that the Choppertown community and Coffman live by the mantra “Run what you brung,” all day, everyday.

Have you turned your hobby into a business using Ning? Tell us your story — we’d love to hear about it.