Next week we will look at how “the trinity of digital comms tools” can be used together!
When we are new to tools like this we can understand them by making parallels to what we already do face to face.
For instance, Swedish non-profit organisations are world champions of meeting face to face and having a “fika”. A fika is a break with something to drink (often coffee) and often a pastry. The fika can have the function of an informal meeting, which we find the parallel to in the “Realtime” section of the picture. The digital chat is just like the fika informal and has a sociable atmosphere. As you see above in the thread we have digital realtime fikas for Civic Tech Sweden on Fridays.
Non-profits also do a lot of collaborative decision-making, when we talk about things we want to do and add on each other’s thoughts. Common practise is to combine thinking by yourself, reflecting in a smaller group and bringing reflections to a larger group. These things are not simultaneous (that would be chaotic). The parallel in the picture are “Asynchronous tools”. Trying asynchronous tools such as the digital forum you’re in right now is a great practice during the pandemic so it can be weaved into the face to face practices when we get back to that.
Lastly, documents. Documents are “the organisational memory”, as stated in the picture. This part is probably what most non-profits already have digitized. But are the documents accessible and part of a collective memory, or locked away? To make parallels again; remember the small physical and collaborative libraries some non-profits still have? Imagine that, as a digital tool.
Next week we will look closer at all of this, and how to use the tools based on what you’re doing. Maybe the fika is not the same place as where you make decisions? 
Thanks to The Hum for the picture.