Teresa Crawford is in Kiev doing a workshop on Web2.0 for NGOs there. She used the Social Media game developed by David Wilcox. We had a few Skype conversations about this week.
She's also just started a blog called the "A Spot" with colleague Matthew DeGroot. They work for the Institute for Sustainable Communities.
Her first post is about her experience leading a social media workshop for staff from NGOs in Ukraine. This was part two of a series of workshops sponsored by the Ukrainian Citizen Action Network which is a USAID funded program based in Kiev but serving all of Ukraine. Her organization, Institute for Sustainable Communities, is the parent organization to UCAN. The first workshop was an all day event introducing the basic tools and concepts of social media. For this second workshop they focused on strategies for using these tools.
On her post, she describes the scenarios that the groups identified. Here's an example:
In this case a loose group of NGOs and individual activists wanted to launch a campaign about the Right to Freedom of Movement with a goal of reforming the process for receiving passports. To do this they would build a small team, connect them with an e-mail discussion list and an ICQ network, arm them with digital cameras (every cell phone has one) and digital video cameras (many cell phones have them) and send them out to film the long queues for passports, these would be posted to youtube and a video/photoblog. Once they built up a set of resources and developed a common set of demands they would enlist the citizen journalism community to blog about the issue. They would use a website forum to field questions and complaints from citizens about this issue and compile a top 10 list of issues related to freedom of movement which would form the basis of an online which would be physically to submitted to the Ministry. Using crowdsourcing and flashmob technologies they would bring people together for demonstrations, protests and community actions to draw attention to the issue.
Teresa notes that the game was effective in helping participants move away from focusing on the tools or what has been dubbed "fondling the hammer" and focusing on strategy.
I've done the game in different ways -- sometimes have left up to the small groups to come up with a scenario or have give them a scenario (an organization, mission, goal, and context). Either works. With the groups are charged with identifying a scenario, often there is the starting with a blank page panic. What happens sometimes is that a member of the group offers up their organization and the rest of the group provides peer assistance.
Giving the groups scenarios also works, particularly in all-day workshops and if groups also do work on the metrics and how they might measure success along with a strategy. This is harder to do when you are introducing social media for the first time.
Here's Teresa's presentation.
I love the way that the game is spreading! Here's how we used it for development of Ruralnetonline recently http://tinyurl.com/2crosa . I've uploaded a set of cards there.
Here's one way of running game that I find works well:
* Split into groups of 4-6 (if you have a large number of people) and have each group invent a tough scenario, maybe giving then a headline to get them started. Encourage challenges ... "you won't be solving this, the other group will!" Then the catch - the groups exchange scenarios.
* Offer groups the cards and tell them they can write their own. Cards have a budget of 1,2,3 resource points. Give the group a budget of, say, 15 so they can't choose all the cards.
* Ask the groups to organise the cards into a project plan and present this back to their "client" group.
* Once the client groups have their plans, ask them to invent a couple of characters - who may be system managers, or system user/contributors of various types. Then tell the story of how what happens over the next few months/years. If the action flags, thrown in a few crises!
I find that the greatest interest comes from moving into storytelling mode ... that sparks the best conversations.
There other examples of game developed by Drew Mackie and I over here. http://www.usefulgames.co.uk.
Posted by: David Wilcox | February 26, 2008 at 12:37 PM
Thanks Beth and David. We had a great time playing the game here and I am sure we will play it again. It has prompted us to translate Web2.0 terms into Ukrainian which I will post soon and share the link. If we do it again I really need to localize the cards with more Ukrainian/Russian language resources. I learned alot about which blogging, social networking, RSS are used here.
Posted by: Teresa | February 26, 2008 at 02:39 PM
Hi! My friend Amy Sample tells me you're in Ukraine...I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ochakov, Nikolaevska Oblast, down south...we should meet up sometime! Hope all is well!
Posted by: Thomas | February 27, 2008 at 07:57 AM
Hi Guys:
I will be in the Ukraine in October. I lecture widly on web2.0 as well. Is there anyway I can help out with your work? I can spend a few days in Keiv...
Please drop a line. I'd love to chat....
Howard Oliver
CEO
What If What Next - Web2.0 PR
Posted by: Howard | February 28, 2008 at 08:54 PM