Nonprofits/Web2.0, Role of Technology Steward, and Connections

Photo from Photocappy in flickr - a cc "by" license.

I'm headed to the UK in January for the Lasa conference and will be presenting with David Wilcox.  (I'm hoping to also meet Nick Booth and maybe Steve Bridger too!)  The theme for the 2006 Circuit Rider Conference is  Principles and Practice: The Middle Ground.  Our session is:

Demystifying Web 2.0 Tools for VolCom Groups: Blogs, RSS, Tagging, Wikis and Beyond

You may have heard the words, but what do they really mean for nonprofit organizations? This session introduces the concepts and tools behind the next generation of internet technologies or what has been dubbed "Web.20" or "Social Media."  We’ll do some live demos of these tools, discuss their potential to enhance our work, along with some of the concerns they raise.  You’ll come away with a basic understanding of and context for the words that are buzzing around us, along with references for continued exploration.

David and I had our first skype call to begin to design the session.  One of the ideas we want to start with is technology steward concept that Nancy White, John Smith, and Etienne Wenger have been shaping in their Technologies for Communities report. This session is NOT going to be a web2.0 rah rah session - it is going to provide an introduction and conversation starters to help the people in the room decide whether or not Web2.0 tools are the right fit for their organizational goals and if so some first steps to have a conversation and not get seduced by the hype.  The point is the conversation is important!   

In the comments of Nancy's post, she has teased out a definition:

Technology Steward
The person or persons who take active leadership in the selection, configuration, support and maintenance of technologies to support the ongoing activities of their community along with developing and nurturing the practices for using those technologies. (I don't like the repeated use of support, but at the moment am lacking good alternatives).

This sent me to flickr to search by the tag steward to see if there was visual and found the above, plus some religious references from google.

So, how does a technology steward strike a balance between being seduced by the tools versus total rejection of the tools? What is the middle ground? Well, they don't think about the tools first.  They think of about the practices or outcomes first.  Then there is a point where they need to at least do a little action learning to know whether or not to push back or push forward.  They need to know what questions to ask and what conversations to start. 

 

And that's a hard job in a nonprofit where there are so few resources and so little time to think, reflect, and discuss.

We talked about some of the core themes of Web2.0 - one of which is the ability to onnect with kindred spirits.   The story of how David and "met" perhaps illustrates this theme.  It is also a story about blogging improvisation, cross-blog conversations, listening, and entries into online collaborative writing and informal learning with professional colleagues. 

We're both bloggers, read other blogs, and tag resources.  We are also interested in a lot of the same content areas -- nonprofits, collaboration, online communication, facilitation, social media,  social networking, web2.0, etc.

I'm not quite sure, but I think it might have been Nancy White's blog where I first followed a link to David's blog and subscribed.  Then, for a few months I kept on "bumping" into his blog via links on other blogs I read regularly or on other blog posts where he had posted a comment. At one point over the summer, we discovered that we were both obssessing about the same topic, live blogging from conferences and social media reporting.

One of the reason's I learned that David was writing about this topic was that I also follow an ego feed. An ego feed lets you easily track who links to you so you can read the post and respond ... This is another example of a Web2.0 theme - listening - and an excellent first point of entry activity into Web2.0 for nonprofits.

So, as a result of discovering each other's writing about a topic of interest, we engaged in a cross-blog conversation.   A cross-blog conversation is where two or more bloggers post about a topic, but are directly quoting and summarizing and commenting on each other's blogs.  Sometimes this will escalate into a collaboration -- an article, faq, how to piece written on a wiki or elsewhere.  In this case, it esclated into a working a conference panel presentation.

And now comes another theme of Web2.0 - introduce ideas and concepts idea early.  So, here we are using a wiki to map out the presentation in a way that others could join the conversation.  (Now, I'm wondering aloud the best way to have a "cross-wiki" conversation with this wiki -- mental note - Andy Robert's wiki on wiki facilitation.)

Comments

[Steve Bridger]

We most certainly will meet in Janaury, Beth! I'll (re)join this conversation, too...

[Jeremy Stratton]

Maybe this is not the most relevant place to post this, but I wanted to tell you about Conduit(if you haven't already seen it-I guess it was recently featured on Techcrunch). They have an article about helping non-profits at http://www.conduit.com/News/PressReleases/NPWDec2006.aspx

I found Conduit months ago, and really don't know why I've waited so long to post about them.

-Jeremy

[Maccs]

Hi Beth,

How strange that i should find a blog covering Web2.0 and non-profits.

Im part of the UK charity sector as a founder and CTO for a national childrens charity.

Ive just started to blog about how web2.0 is effecting our organisation and about my views on web2.0 in general.

Feel free to stop by I will be following your blog from here on so hope to be able to comment and debate with you on the subject.

Best wishes Maccs

[Steve Bridger]

Maccs... I blog from the UK and am a fan of Beth! I visited your blog and was left asking "who is Maccs?"

Can you tell us more?

Steve

[Maccs]

Hi Steve

For now im keeping my identity and that of the charity secret i want to be able to talk freely about concepts and ideas without having to worry about letting the cat out of the bag as it were.

But of course as i get to know people i will happly talk on a personal level about myself and the charity i would just rather not broadcast it to the blogsphere

Hope that helps stop by and drop me a comment if you like.

Maccs

[Maccs]

Updated my URL
http://futurewebnet.blogspot.com/
so you can find it again Steve ive even added a post about me that might help you.

Maccs

[Miles Maier]

Hi Beth,

Big fan of your blog and looking forward to seeing you at the Lasa UK circuit rider conference next week!

I've been following the debate about 'technology stewards' between Nancy White, David Wilcox, Steve Bridger, and yourself - and how this fits in with my newly created role as an "ICT Champion" or evangelist for ICT in the non-profit sector in London.

I think there's a very useful debate to be started about what such a role might do and be most effective.

At the moment my role is focussing on (i) championing non-profits using ICT in interesting and exciting ways, and (ii) promoting web 2.0 apps as a sustainable solution for small non-profits.

Even Microsoft seems to have got in on the idea of technology evangelists! http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2007/01/new_beginnings_.html

Still early days for the ICT Champion, so keep dropping by: www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion/

[John D. Smith]

There be a lot of Technology Stewards there, although their angle is more about supporting technology users. Interesting connection with the folks in the Netherlands who are working in NGOs (mostly in the development sector):

http://icollaborate.blogspot.com/