Rob Paterson mentioned his plan to use Ning for a project in the comments, and now he’s posted in great detail on how he and KETC, and a larger community of public media folks (myself included) are using Ning to track an important initiative that KETC is undertaking to address the sub-prime mortgage crisis. This project is one to watch.

So, you have everyone at KETC, you have Rob, you have other partners, and you have a small group of public media “advisors” around the country – how do you keep everyone on the same page? Rob’s screenshots shows the power of Ning’s platform – you can see how they’re making use of internal blogs, asking questions and fomenting discussion in the forums, embedding clips of content as it’s created.

This is exciting stuff. You can do it with Basecamp and other tools, but Ning adds a social wrapper the project management that’s going on here.

I’m not a paid Ning spokesperson, nor do I wish to be, but I’m enthusiastic about the potential uses for this tool.

It looks like they’re calling the concept 9Network (I love the name). This is a multi-layered initiative that draws on the strength of the television operation (and 9 STL is doing pretty well) and weaves into the strengths of the community. The result is a network mobilized to serve the community: public media.

This is an initiative to watch and to shamelessly copy.

Beyond Broadcast used it for yesterday’s conference; WAMU also uses it for its forum called “The Conversation.” Check out the sites. They look great. They have all kinds of functionality – profiles, discussions, groups, among other things.

The set up is just familiar enough that attendees won’t be scared off by it, and can interact with that at whatever level they prefer. Beyond Broadcast has always made great use of these tools – essentially handing them over to conference-goers and letting them make their own online/offline groups, enter their information, etc.

The first two years, the conference relied on a wiki. Using a social network is a step forward: some people are afraid of the arcane wiki markup language, and products like Ning have more versatility.

IMA used a wiki for its last Public Media Conference; for the next one, they might want to try a social network. PRPD is always looking for ways to keep members connected – hmm… I’m just saying…

You can explore all kinds of stuff tagged by attendees here.

UPDATE: Rob Paterson says KETC is going to use Ning for its Mortgage Project.