Note from Beth: As visiting scholar at the Packard Foundation, I'm connecting with other people who are studying and learning about how networks work. A lot of the ideas resonate with using online social networks and social media effectively for nonprofits, especially in the larger frame of movement building. This week at the Packard Foundation, I had the opportunity to meet Steve Waddell whose research focuses on Global Action Networks.
One of the tools for better understanding networks are visual diagnostics and mapping techniques. This another area of Steve's interest and expertise. He co-authored a paper called "Visual Diagnostics and Mapping for Scaling Change" and we had an opportunity to discuss it. He agreed to write a four-part primer on a visual diagnostics, mapping, and social networking analysis primer and how nonprofits might use these tools for social change.
We can easily be overwhelmed by the complexity of our work. Every non-profit works with “systems” – internal ones relating to how work gets done, issue systems relating to the topic that the NGO is working to address, and mental model systems about strategy. Clearly “seeing” those systems is important for success. There are new forms of “mapping”, including social network analysis, which can vastly enhance and speed understanding of the systems. They are diagrams of arrows and nodes that can communicate tremendous amounts of information visually much more easily than volumes of text.
Within a system are stakeholders that can include individuals, organizations, networks of organizations, the range of their actions, their ways of thinking vis-à-vis the issue, and the natural and man-created environmental factors that influence the system. Stakeholders may or may not identify themselves as participants in the system. One of the challenges of developing an issue system is to build participants’ identity with it; this is critical to creating effective action to realize opportunities, address needs and respond to challenges.
A core concept in systems mapping is “purpose”. Generally there are three types of purposes that are priorities for non-profits to understand.
Production System: The purpose here is the non-profit’s itself, and the maps describe
relationships and roles in realizing the purpose; this commonly models
how the organization does its work.
Issue System: This system is where the non-profit is one of many entities that are working to
address an issue such as health care, deforestation, peace, and
community development.
Mental Models: These visuals describe how people (individuals, groups) think the world works, such as theories of change, power structures, and cause-effect models in general.
Each type of mapping has specific benefits. The production system maps aid an organization to understand how work actually gets done, in comparison to formal org charts. This analysis can assist in bringing greater alignment between the two, which in turn reduces conflict and enhances productivity.
Issue mapping allows a non-profit to understand key leverage points in the bigger system it is trying to influence. These are points that, when focused upon, have a large ratio of amount-of-effort to desired-change. The focus can involve application of resources, or actually reducing resources.
The mental model mapping can uncover conflict, make it discussable, and enhance effectiveness. People can understand why someone else is doing what they are doing. Often this helps people understand that their mental model may be important, but incomplete vis-à-vis the change goal – and therefore help people’s respective efforts connect much more effectively.
These maps can include literally hundreds of nodes and arrows, or very few. Experience working with people around the world proves that even relatively complex systems with even a couple of hundred nodes can be understood by people with very limited education. Key is a participatory development process. The map illustrating this post was developed by a couple of dozen people in Guatemala from their mental models, to support CARE to vastly enhance its impact. An evaluation a year later showed that the process was transformational from two perspectives: people had significantly changed their relationships (who they were working with), and they had significantly changed how they understood their work vis-à-vis others’.
This is part 1 of a series of social networking analysis techniques. The next installment will explain two types of social networking analysis techniques, web crawling and inter-personal/inter-organizational ties.
What are your questions about system mapping and how you might use this in organization's strategy for movement building?
As Principal of Networking Action, Steve Waddell applies his 20+ years of experience in multi-stakeholder network development to address complex issues regionally and globally.
My son, Harry, who some of you have watched grow up on this blog celebrated his 10th Birthday! It seems like just yesterday when Harry's tooth was loose and Wanna, a Cambodian blogger, taught us about the Cambodian tooth fairy.
As we were singing happy birthday, I realized that Harry is growing up with having social networks and generosity in his life. This is not limited to external trends, but we're trying to model philanthropic behavior in this house. He has watched his mother celebrate her birthday and use it as an excuse to raise money for the Sharing Foundation, a charity that cares for kids in Cambodia.
He's too young to set up a birthday campaign on Facebook Causes and asked me to donate $10 to the Sharing Foundation. He hopes that you too will consider donating $10 to the Sharing Foundation in honor of his birthday.
The Sharing Foundation's core volunteers are, like me, parents of adopted children from Cambodia. And, like our family, they want to encourage their children to give back to Cambodia. Whether it is cash donations or in-kind contributions, part of the holiday season, as a birthdway wish or just because it is important for us to support work that takes care of children in his birth country. Harry is not the only Cambodian adoptee who supports the Sharing Foundation. Kanaha S, also adopted from Cambodia, asked her guests to donate new underwear for Roteang Orphanage children in lieu of gifts at her 8th birthday!
This year, I'm sitting out the America's Giving Challenge, but this group volunteers, parents of Cambodian adopted children, and board members took the plunge into Facebook. I'm doing a little coaching from the sidelines. They don't expect to win the grand prize, but have doubled the number of people and dollars in the TSF Facebook Cause!
So make a donation of $10 or more between before the Challenge ends on November 7th, help Harry's birthday wish come true.
You can contribute to the Sharing Foundation here.
Note from Beth:As I listened to the NPR story this week about online privacy, it is becoming very important for us to understand the implications.I really wanted to attend the "Social Networks Friend for Foe?"at UC Berkeley earlier this month, but unfortunately had a conflict. Fortunately, my colleague, Aspen Baker, was attending. Even better, she agreed to share a blog post about what she learned on this blog.
Barely a week goes by that I don’t see at least one status update or tweet from a nonprofit colleague lamenting a hacked personal account, including email, Twitter and Facebook. According to John Carlin, the Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel to the Director of the F.B.I, who gave the keynote speech at UC Berkeley’s conference on law, ethics and technology, “Social Networks: Friends or Foes?,” complaints of hijacked accounts increased by one-third from 2007 to 2008. Yikes. Organized crime, Mr. Carlin, says is selling our information and making some very serious money.
Of course, as soon as you have a couple of big time FBI guys and former federal prosecutors who worked on cyber-crimes speaking, there is going to be plenty of information to scare you away from ever posting anything remotely interesting about yourself online. And for good reason. Only a very small amount of data is needed to produce quite a lot of information about each and every one of us and the law is so far behind the times that according to Facebook’s Deputy General Counselor, Mark Howitson, the social networking website aggressively invites litigation because they need new case law to set precedent. The conference, according to Jason Schultz, Co-Director of the Samuelson Clinic for Law, Technology and Public Policy, was designed as “a chance to address the ramifications of what happens when people write permanently to a giant network.”
As nonprofit organizations increase their use of social media tools, including social networking, to spread their message, gain new supporters and serve clients, it’s important for us to understand – and address - the risks we’re taking on organizationally, as well as the risks of our people, from employees and volunteers to donors and clients. I’m not a lawyer. I’m the Executive Director of Exhale and I attended the conference to increase my own knowledge and awareness about how these legal and ethical issues around social networking may affect our work online with women who have had abortions.
Here is what I found to be the most relevant and interesting to the nonprofit sector:
Collecting Evidence Online
Is it ethical for a prosecutor to “friend” a defendant (with a real or fake profile) to find out potentially incriminating evidence about their whereabouts, friends, or behaviors? Can the lawyer of an accused rapist subpoena the private network of the accuser for evidence to place doubt on her story? Can a judge and a lawyer be “friends” and do they need to “un-friend” each other if they’re working the same case? What if the government created a third-party widget that asked people a range of personal questions that they then data-mined and used to find criminals or criminal behavior?
While the overwhelming consensus was that such behavior isn’t right, there are few laws on the books to address these scenarios. Lawyers’ associations, such as state bars, attempt to address such behavior through Codes of Ethics, however government officials are not bound by these rules. Government officials may use deception in undercover work and such practices have been ruled acceptable in cases related to intellectual property infringement (where investigators act as members of the general public seeking to make a purchase) and discrimination cases (housing discrimination against people of color, for example).
Thinking about all the potential ways the legal system already has to blame rape survivors for the crime perpetrated against them, its hard to stomach the idea of defense lawyers legally snooping around a victim’s private networks to gain personal information to use against them. These questions remain undecided and any group that works with victims of violence or communities targeted by law enforcement will pay close attention.
Privacy
There were a lot of big questions around what defines “content.” Is “content” what you write on your wall or post on your friends page, or is it also “transactional,” the information collected about your use of the social network: what did you search for? What pages did you visit? Most of the panelists thought everything should be deemed content and should therefore be considered, and protected, as private communications.
It was also noted that social context is incredibly important to our ideas of privacy and that privacy has a lot to do with expectations. We may not expect what we post on a friend’s wall to be private, but we probably expect that sending a private message will. However, according to Paul Ohm, Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School, email services such as Gmail are changing our expectations of privacy, as we find tailored advertisements in our internet browsers. If we are comfortable with getting advertisements for running shoes after emailing a friend about our trail run, what legal implication does this have for future expectations of privacy?
The issue of privacy is of huge importance to my field of sexual and reproductive health as well as anti-violence work. Will people be more or less likely to visit an online social network for domestic violence survivors, and who will find out if they do? It’s not too hard to think ahead and realize that if domestic violence is a pre-existing condition for health insurance that somehow an insurance company will find a way to gain access to this type of information. Now does this issue of what is private content online not only affect a woman’s personal privacy, but her rights and access to health care?
The Buyer Beware Argument
One of the more interesting debates that took place throughout the day and over several panels has to do with a question of Informed Consent. The Buyer Beware Argument basically posits that social networking is about sharing and if you don’t want to share, then you shouldn’t. Sharing, it should then be assumed, is necessary for building trust and real relationships, online or offline, and like in the real world, there are reasonable and unreasonable expectations for your information staying private. If you tell your friend known for gossiping a secret, you can expect that your secret might get around. Same with social networking, you should expect that your private information may end up somewhere you didn’t intend. Therefore, this argument goes that “buyer beware” and it is not the responsibility of each social network to defend or protect your privacy. It is the individual’s responsibility to understand the risks of participation and make personal choices about when and how to participate.
Not to mention that writing something online provides a permanent record that can be stored indefinitely is incredibly different than a known gossip’s spoken word, this argument did not fly with me on two levels:
1. Social networking will soon no longer be a choice, it will be a requirement to participation in modern life. Strangely, Mr. Howitson from Facebook used the telephone as an analogy to Facebook (you expect your telephone calls to be private and there is a clear process to follow if the government seeks to listen in) several times and yet repeatedly said things like “if you don’t want to share, then you don’t go on there.” If Facebook and other social networking sites are like the telephone, then I argue that very soon it will become a critical part of how people communicate and it will cease to be a choice. You could easily refuse a telephone in 1949 and not be too crazy, but this is not true by 2009. And, as we all know, technology is moving much faster now so the idea that you could refuse to participate in social networking without having any real personal or economic consequences will be unrealistic in the near future. If this is the case, then we, the users, not only need to beware of the consequences of our participation, but most importantly, we need to be consumer advocates who fight for our own protections and demand legal, and wide-ranging respect for our privacy online.
2. The Buyer Beware Argument is victim-blaming instead of proactively protecting. Mr. Carlin began his keynote speech by taking us back to a pre-Giuliani New York City where people were told not to look strangers in the eye as they walked by them on the street. If someone was attacked, the first question they were asked was typically, “well, did you look them in the eye?” suggesting, only half-joking, that it was their fault. Of course, anti-rape advocates know this line of questioning all too well (was your skirt too short? Did you have a drink?), and we also know that while certainly there are things each of us can do to protect ourselves, it is not our fault if we are attacked – the attacker is the one who bears responsibility. Ashkan Soltani, a Masters of Information student at UC Berkeley’s School of Information brought up the important point that there are real limits to what most users can understand about the full scope of risk they are taking on with their online participation. It’s almost impossible to decide for ourselves when the true extent of what websites are collecting about our participation is hidden and/or when websites don’t give users full access to control what is collected about our individual use.
Lessons for the Nonprofit Sector:
Social media and social networking are amazing tools for mission-minded organizations to spread our message, gain new supporters and serve our clients in innovative ways. We can be simultaneously inspired by its potential and feel challenged by the need to not only integrate these strategies into our traditional fundraising and communications strategies, but also to adapt the way we work in this modern, digital, ever-evolving age. We need to see the benefits of what these tools can provide, and we must also educate ourselves about the potential consequences of participation for our employees, volunteers, board members, donors, members and clients, especially for those of us who work on stigmatized, marginalized or taboo issues. On the Exhale talkline, we often hear from women whose privacy was violated in some way and the information that they have had an abortion has been used to target or harass them in their workplace, church, or with their own family members. If it takes very little data to reveal quite a lot of information about any given person, we must understand how data-collecting and online privacy may impact our supporters and potential supporters.
Most of the conferences and workshops I attend about nonprofits and social media address the digital divide, but mostly I hear it referred to in regards to who has access to technology. Rarely have I heard these discussions to include the digital divide between those who know the risks of online participation and can protect themselves and those who cannot. This seems like an incredibly important part of how we think about the cost and benefits of social networking in our organizations, communities and towards our social change missions.
To stay updated on how the legal landscape develops, follow the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic blog at UC Berkeley Law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a nonprofit legal organization which defends free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights. TechSoup works with nonprofits to increase their access to, use of, and knowledge about technology and ZeroDivide knows that access to technology is just the starting point, and education and knowledge are critical to effective, informed use.
Aspen Baker is executive director and founder of Bay Area-based Exhale, the nation's only pro-voice organization dedicated to
promoting post-abortion health and well-being.
Note from Beth:Michael Hoffman recently presented a webinar filled with useful information for nonprofits about how to make the most of their YouTube presence. I'm honored to republish his post which includes his slide deck. It's packed with lots of practical information and tips.
Here's my webinar about how nonprofits can use
YouTube effectively. This issue has become much more important than it
once was. When YouTube first started, all of 4 years ago, the quality
of the video was bad, the audience wasn’t so huge and messages about
changing the world just seemed totally out of place amid the poor
amateur video that was appearing on the site.
My, how the world changes quickly. YouTube has improved so much in
the past few years that looking at the early version would be hardly
recognizable. The changes are too numerous to mention but the quality
has improved, user control has improved and what people expect to find
on YouTube and how they interact with it has also changed.
I have pasted my entire 1-hour webinar below. It has both audio and
the slidedeck and I was told it was quite packed with useful info.
If I had to choose a few key takeaways, this is what I would tell you:
1. Search is critical. Not only are YouTube videos showing up in
Google first-page results, but YouTube itself has become a top
destination for searches. So if you don’t have YouTube videos for your
key search terms you are missing out. YouTube is now a CENTRAL part of
an effective SEO strategy.
2. The YouTube Nonprofit Program is The Bomb. If you are a US or UK
registered nonprofit, and you are not religious or political in nature,
apply for the YouTube Nonprofit Program, today. Right now. It gives amazing benefits to nonprofits in terms of branding and functionality.
3. The best part of the YouTube Nonprofit Program is linkable
annotations—the ability to put links, anywhere in a video, that
actually go to your website. “Donate Now”, or “Sign the Petition”
become links that really work. Finally, YouTube has the potential to
drive engagement. (You can watch how this works here).
4. No excuses. Even if you don’t have a budget and are stressed for
time you can create a channel on YouTube and put videos in it. You can
use existing video assets, repurposed video assets and make simple
videos using a Flip Video camera or other low-cost consumer product.
5. Spend some time browsing nonprofit videos for ideas about what
you can do. Most likely you will come across something with a style or
tone that you think is perfectly appropriate for your message. Flatter
them and copy their approach.
6. Fill your YouTube Channel with Favorites from complimentary
organizations. There are great videos already online that speak to your
message. Leverage those also. With the new YouTube channel designs, you
can use these as a playlist on your channel.
I encounter a lot of social media skeptics who ask me pointed questions. I can answer most, but sometimes I get hit with a question that I can't answer (adequately) on the spot. I love those questions - they are a real gift.
Recently, I've been getting a question like that goes something like this, "All this social media stuff is great if you're fund raising or selling something or running a grassroots advocacy campaign, but what if you're focusing on carefully vetted scientific research or want to impact policy? What if your goal is large scale systemic change, why bother with social media?"
A few weeks back I met Melinda Venable, Associate Director Digital and Ethnic Media at Resource Media who told me about the ClimateChangeUS Twitter strategy.
The Twitter account was started with a focused goal of raising awareness about the release of the Global Climate Impacts in the United States report last June. A few weeks after the release, they decided to broaden it's goal to sharing the latest peer-reviewed climate science that highlights immediate, near-term threats from human-caused warming. The goal is to be a trust agent for climate change scientific information.
They are building a following of journalists and others who are looking for carefully vetted scientific information. What's interesting about this Twitter account is that it isn't an automatic feed that streams links to their own reports. They share the latest, and best peer-reviewed science through Twitter conversations.
They also tweet about real-time impacts, which usually is extreme weather and how that fits within the pattern of global warming. They rely only on credible sources. They do offer our opinions or promote any one policy or get into politics.
They are using Twitter and a Facebook Fan Page to grow an audience interested in carefully vetted research. They've become a trusted resource for educators, journalists, and others. I'd like to know more about the specific results and how they are measuring the success of their social media strategy - as well as what they are tracking to improve what they are doing.
The use of social media is part of a larger strategy to inform the public about the impacts of climate change, not just at the North Pole, but in their backyards. They are co-producing video spots, which air on television and on the Web. They also engage directly with weather casters, a group uniquely positioned to inform the general public, by instructing them about how to incorporate the science of climate change into their daily broadcasts.
In early 2009, the Compete Blog posted its media trends for 2008, suggesting that publisher media continue to integrate social media.
I'm writing this post from 30,000 feet aboard Virgin America as I fly back to California from a whirlwind week on the East Coast. I started off in Camden, Maine to teach at the PopTech Fellows program, New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts for a session with arts marketers, and finally to Washington, DC to attend a briefing at the White House and to keynote the last BlogPotomac conference.
Geoff Livingston invited me to keynote the conference along with Shel Israel, author of Twitterville.
You don't necessarily see women keynote at technology conferences
(well accept for women focused technology conferences like blogher), but Geoff was trying hard ensure a gender balanced program and succeeded.
What I loved about this BlogPotomac is that it was a small and intimate event that allowed for a conversation between the speakers and the audience. The format was ten minutes of speaking (no Powerpoint allowed!), followed by 20-30 minutes of discussion with the audience facilitated by the hosts. The audience consisted mostly of social media early adopters who shared terrific insights that come from having a sense of context. We had the time to dig into a topic and come out with a deeper understanding. That's rare in a conference setting.
It reminded more of a saloon than a conference. more like the Berkman Center Thursday evening blogger meetups I used to attend from 2005-2007. The venue, a historic theater with small table seating, made it feel more like a cafe except everyone in the audience had a laptop or hand held device for blogging, taking notes, and tweeting. There were also long breaks so energy and learning from the formal part of the program could infuse the informal networking of the roughly 200 attendees.
The strong community vibe in the room was inspiring and comfortable. I credit that to the organizer, Geoff Livingston. Since this was the last BlogPotomac (read this insightful post about why), the community self-organized a wake after the conference. There was food and drink and then everyone got to say a few words about why the people, conference, and community mattered to them. Rising from the ashes, will be nonprofit2.0 conference in 2010.
While this was my first blogpotomac, I was not new to this community. I knew many of the people in the room face-to-face, some for many years, or I knew them from online, having exchanged tweets or blog comments with them. Here's a few examples:
Shireen Mitchell who I had never met face-to-face but who generously provided information about people of color and the social web via Twitter while I doing a workshop demo. It helped me write this post - "What Color is the Social Web?"
Andy Carvin who I known probably for ten years since his early work in educational technology when he lived in Boston and through the years have connected with him in various communities from Global Voices and beyond. I'm very grateful to Andy for teaching about how to podcast without electricity so I could share that with Cambodian bloggers.
Chris Abraham who I met online in 1992 through MetaNetwork (a site similar to the Well but in DC) and Arts Wire. We've been in and out of touch over the years, but always virtually. This was the first time we met face-to-face!
Shonali Burke is one of those people I met through an Twitter introduction by social media metrics guru KDPaine last October when I presented at the e-metrics conference.
Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer who I've meet before face-to-face through attending NTEN NTC conferences, although we first encountered each other via leaving comments on each other's blogs.
This is just a sampling. It reminds of the thread on trust and knowing people that we got into after Andy Carvin's talk. He was talking about Citizen Journalism on Twitter during the Mumbai crisis and how to trust the information you're getting. He mentioned that he picked out the tweets of the people he knew and who they were retweeting. This made think of whether trust is only built from knowing someone offline or not. I think the above example shows it might go both ways.
As an early adopter of social media, in the early days of blogging (circa 2003) it was fairly easy to connect and maintain relationships with people you online and later connected at a blogging conference or meet up offline. It was also easy in the early days of Twitter when it was more like a village and huge city. With our ability to connect to some many people or "looser ties", it gets harder to sustain deeper connections. In conversation, someone used the term "Dunbarred Out" - and I'm still noodling with it but perhaps what Chris Brogan is describing in "How To Be Human A Distance" has some answers.
I'm doing a couple of notes for myself about ideas that some of the discussions raised for me.
Tools: Jane Quiqley talked about the up and coming applications and where the tools were leading up. One point she made captured by searchengine sage blog.
Google social search
was another thing she said to look out for. Google Wave, however,
wasn’t highly praised, as it’s confusing, distracting and might not
scale well. There are only select people using it now which make it
less helpful. However, she said it might work really well for home
schooled children and citizen journalism, but in the workplace, Jane
said, for her it provides too much interruption.
Slacktivism: This term came up during the discussion. In a post on Foreign Policy and the term "slacktivism" triggered a flurry of e-mail on Progressive Exchange. Here's a summary of the different viewpoints in the nonprofit sector about it. Slacktivism, if you don't know, is the pejorative term describing, in the words of Barbara Mikkelson,
"...the desire people have to do something good without getting out of
their chair".
The context at Blogpotomac was the question, "Did turning your Twitter avatar green in support of the Iraniian protests" really mean anything. Debbas who was in Iran at the time, risking his life said, "It helped because I didn't want to die anonymously and we can discredit raising awareness."
Lethal Generosity: During Shel's time on stage, he was asked if what his next book will be. He said that he was negotiations. He also shared some of the ideas he thinking about, but will not write a book. I got very excited about this one "Lethal Generosity"
Shel defines the concept of lethal generosity as the most generous members of any social media company
are the most credible and influential and as such, they can devastate
their competition in the marketplace.
I think the concept is even bigger and we connect it to using social media for cause related marketing. Here's an example that just crossed my inbox from Microsoft and Windows 7
This morning I gave a presentation for a group of senior marketing people from performing arts centers around the country on social media. I've done a number of presentations and workshops for arts organizations over the years and have even created a wiki "Social Media for Arts People" with stories, links, and other resources, but haven't spoken to arts organizations recently. It was a good opportunity to see how things have changed.
Every time I present, I like to customize the content as much as possible by looking at participant's social media presence (ant trails) or examples from the particular field. Last week, I sent a tweet asking folks to add their best examples into the wiki which helped me create the presentation.
The questions I got:
How do know that our social media strategy can help sell tickets?
How do we track and monitor our social media strategy?
How do explain to senior management that we need to do this?
What can we effectively with limited time?
What are the best strategies for engaging people on Twitter/Facebook?
What makes a good influencer strategy?
What is the best way to work with interns?
What are the steps to incorporating a social content strategy into our web presence strategy?
My big takeaway: A successful social media strategy with arts audiences is more like an audience development or education program, not a straight ticket sales strategy.
Last night as I was preparing my presentation, I did a couple of deep diving analyzing a couple of twitters to look at the nuances of good practice for engagement.
I followed the ant trails of the San Francisco Symphony Twitter stream - they are doing a particularly good job of conversational, relationship building tweets - not "BUY TICKETS NOW!" I screen captured a few as illustrations. It was one of the first examples I've seen of customer service for an arts organization. customer service,
I dm the Sf Symphony to ask if their tweeting sold tickets.
If you go back look at the tweeting from "Tweet An Opera" project, you can learn a lot. Also, it is a good illustration of how engagement might lead to butts in seats, the holy grail of performing arts centers marketing directors.
One of the participants was from the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and they shared the story of how their tweet ups have grown in popularity. They did a lot of listening and searching for local Twitter users. They found some influencers who they cultivated. They hosted a meet up and gave people a back stage tour of the facility.
advice
A big topic of discussion was influencer strategies. I presented a framework to think about this. It's not all about numbers. Social Influence is about reach (number of
people an influencer can easily activate a channel to), but there's
also another fundamental aspect: affinity. Affinity represents the impact an influencer can make on the audience and it's defined by strong interpersonal ties. I think you need both kinds of influencers.
We had a very productive conversation about the best and more effective ways to work with interns. Much of Jeremiah Owyang's advice is spot on. If you think you can just shovel social media over the fence onto the lap of intern with out some mutual guiding, than it won't be successful.
If you know of interesting examples of arts organizations using social media, please drop a note in the comments.
I was humbled to join the illustrious list of faculty members who have talents and wisdom in content areas that I only dance around of the edges of. This includes leadership, social innovation, communications, branding, graphic facilitation, financial and funding models. Even more inspiring was to learn more about the work that PopTech Fellows are doing to change the world.
I learned a lot about how to begin to adapt the game process for people with a program orientation. Here are some thoughts about tweaking the instructional design:
Game Length and Instructional Context
Lately, I've had the experience of running the game as a 3-hour workshop as part of a second day of peer learning workshops on Network Effectiveness. The social media strategy game is focused on how social media tools can be used for external communications. All of the instruction is aligned to a network frame.
In comparison, this was a shorter time amount of time, different instructional styles across faculty, and the overall frame was social innovation. The game needs more time and if there is no time on the agenda, then a different design is needed.
Having graphic notes during the workshop was an asset. Peter Durand did the graphic recording (read his blog for more information about the process - AlphaChimp Studio)
One of the things that I do before I teach this workshop is look at the participant's social media ant trails by looking at their web sites, twitter streams, Facebook and YouTube. I look for examples that match the principles for effective use and incorporate them into the presentation. This gives an opportunity for the audience to share their story and their knowledge.
One of the benefits of taking this approach is that it shifts the instructional design from sage on the stage to learning in the community. It also helped me discover an authentic example of social media for social good - WildlifeDirect. Through online diaries
and blogs, WildlifeDirect brings supporters and conservationists
together and enables individual donors around the world to communicate
directly with the people that they are funding. The goal: a movement
powerful enough to respond to any conservation emergency anywhere
swiftly and efficiently, reverse the catastrophic loss of habitats and
species and secure the future of wildlife in Africa, Asia and around
the world.
Social Media Strategy As Design Process
Executive Creative Director of frog design,
Robert Fabricant, leads multidisciplinary design teams, teaches at
NYU’s Tisch School. He taught a session on social design right before
the social media strategy game at the end of the day. A lot of his
ideas connect to social media strategy best practices - for example the
reiteration process and listen, learn, and adapt.
Adapting the Game from A Communications Lens to A Program Lens
Ideally this would happen from collaborating with social innovation subject matter experts to adapt and redesign the game cards and the simulation so that it matched a social innovation or social design framework. The quick and dirty design framework might be a place to start - to examine how or where to incorporate the use of social media for each step.
I need to remind myself that when I bring social media instruction into a different context, I need to also learn as much as I can about the instructional content of other people on the team.
In putting people into small groups to collaborate on a strategy, I've always made sure that there was at least one person in each group who had a lot of hands-on social media tool experience. When you have a room with more people with a program lens, it is also important to spread the communications expertise as well. Being comfortable or having experience using social media tools and communications expertise are two different mindsets.
The cards include a set of "people cards" which includes snippets of market research. People with communications orientations work with research in different ways than program people.
Social Media Skepticism is Healthy
I hear a lot of social media skepticism. It is important to have the conversation to unpack it. Otherwise, attitudes don't change. What I have done in many workshops, is the spectragram where people line up according how their experience with social media tools and we have a conversation. With more time, would have done a set of three looking experience/skill, comfort, and communications/program.
Making New Connections, Reinforcing Old Ones
It was great to see some familiar faces and make new connections. Kristen Taylor is the Digital Content/Community Manager and writes the blog. Poptech is lucky to have a talented social media guru on staff. It was great to connect with Ory Okolloh – Ushahidi , who I have known for many years. She is a lawyer, activist and blogger, and the co-founder and executive director of Ushahidi, a free, open
source, Web mobile-based platform capable of crowd-sourcing, sharing
and mapping information in near real time.
I appreciated the facilitation provided by Mukara Meredith who integrates universal principles of healing into a new model of leadership called Matrixworks. She created a wonderful closing ritual that helped the community form.
Finally, I would like to thank Andrew Zolli and the fellows staff Leetha Filderman and Ollie Wilder for all the hard work they did to create a world class training program.
Last week, as part of my work at the Packard Foundation as visiting scholar I had the opportunity to participate in a face-to-face convening of the "Network of Network Funders," facilitated by the Monitor Institute. The most exciting moment for me was to meet June Holley face-to-face - the guru of network weaving.
Network weavers are people who intentionally and informally - and often serendipitously - weave new and richer connections between and among people, groups, and entities in networks. They also weave new and richer connections between among networks.
Note that the definition uses the plural form, network weavers versus network weaver. That was one of my ah ha moments from June's presentation and subsequent discussion. You want everyone in your network to do network weaving on different levels. Take a look at June Holley's list of characteristics and you'll quickly see that network weavers wear a variety hats - networkers, project coordinators, facilitators, and guardians. I might also add "technology stewards."
June urged us not to think narrowly about Network Weaving as a specific job description, but rather as a role. "You don't hire someone to be a network weaver. You want someone who is open to learning and a good listener and can teach others network weaving skills. You want to spread the capacity throughout the network." You extend networking weaving skills by using a peer learning model not a traditional training model.
June Holley used the metaphor of "Being Rhizomatic" and explains it as where every bud contains the nourishment for other buds. She used an image of a single tree. A single tree can be cut down or die from lack of water. But in a bamboo forest (a unique rhizome) -- the trees are connected through the roots and if one tree gets nutrients and supports others.
The image that came to mind for me was from the movie Fantasia and the scene in The Sorcerer's Apprentice when many brooms come to life from the one chopped up broom. (Go 5:49 in the clip)
June Holley emphasized the importance of self-organizing, she said "Network weavers catalyze small joint actions between groups of two or three people. She talked about the importance of online collaboration and project management tools as a way to support those self-organized actions. (My single next action step is to set up a sand box with June and others to explore some of these tools in the context of network weaving.)
She also introduced a new (to me) concept: Network Guardian. This is someone who isn't doing the day-to-day work, but thinks about how the network could be more than it is. They think about the network structure, evaluation, communication, training, opportunities, and reflection.
June also described some of the tasks that network weaving may include. One might be drawing the map of the network's connections and facilitating a discussion about what the network looks like. Angus Parker from Wiser Earth recently blogged about this in "How To Weave A Tighter Network."
One connection I made is that nonprofit social media strategists like Carie Lewis from the Human Society, Danielle Brigida, NWF, Wendy Harman from the Red Cross, Apollo Gonzalez from NDRC, Constance DeCherney from Planned Parenthood, and others are doing some form of network weaving - whether it be their Facebook or Twitter networks or possibly internally between departments. It also made me wonder whether there might be a hunger for a professional peer group of social media network weavers.
I took that idea into a small peer assist session. My question: Is there a network of peers who do network weaving for nonprofits to support external communications? For starters, I'm going to ask Holly Ross at NTEN that we have a birds of a feather table at the NTC10 or if I get ambitious I will sign up to lead an affinity group meeting. As we discussed this, I realized that perhaps the frame was too small.
Maybe we need to do some field building for nonprofit network weavers in general as well as consultants who work with Network weavers. And while this would include those who work for nonprofits on social media strategy for external communications, it would include network weavers more broadly. There might be a sub-group or interest area on technology. Maybe this conversations could take place on an existing community of practice (Iscale).
Are you practicing network weaving skills in your nonprofit or network?
What are you learning about network weaving?
What inspires you about network weaving potential?
Even
at 4 p.m. on a gray day with drinks just 30 minutes away, philanthropic
communicators enjoyed the social media game (photo by Thom Clark)
Note from Beth: I'm at Pop!Tech in Maine where I did the beta version of the social media strategy game for Pop!Tech Fellows. (Reflections coming soon!) Last week, Gordon used a version of the game at a conference in NYC. His reflections below. One thing I haven't been doing over the years is documenting the instructional design or lesson plan. It's been in my head. Some of the issues that Gordon describes below I've found creative ways to address those. (Ever hear of make it up as you go along?) Another trainer is adapting the game for use in a large environmental organization will be creating a train the trainers guide and template and it will be added to the site.
At
noon Friday with the annual conference over and done till next fall’s
event (slated for Los Angeles, BTW), someone from the Boston-based Barr
Foundation who participated in the Communications Network
social media game tracked me down–to return the cards his group used
during the game. “No, you keep them–if you want, take them back to your
organization and try this at your office,” I said.
He was one of eight folks who left with sets of the game cards. (the presentation and handouts can be downloaded here and more on the game as originally conceived and developed by Beth and David Wilcox is here).
One of my main reflections on presenting the social media game at
the conference is about diffusion of ideas across the nonprofit sector:
given especially that we are somewhat limited in the channels available
to communicate new ideas and practices across nonprofits and
philanthropy, the generosity of Beth and David Wilcox in sharing this
method and the key role of Creative Commons in providing a way to structure that kind of sharing is truly helping to build the sector.
We played with 6 groups of about 7 people each. Each group chose s
scenario from a range of options. We started at 4 p.m., I made my way
through about 25 minutes of introductory “teach” (ie, “talk” with some
q and a) and then, right around the time that thoughts are usually
turning to the bar… the crowd really got into it! All about the genius
of the game and the value of learning from, or maybe that should be
with, each other (see Beth’s post on social learning from last week).
A couple thoughts on how the game works, what appeared to be key
learning moments for the group at the CommNetwork conference, and, per
Christine Mulvin, 1 thing you’ve got to have to play it well:
It’s about strategy
One nice learning moment for the CommNet folks came when two groups
chose to be an international arts organization. As the first of these
groups presented their strategy, the people in the second group started
laughing—they had made exactly the same choices. The fact that two
groups with the same goal independently came to essentially the same
strategy helped people to understand there could actually be, if not
exactly right and wrong solutions, at least some solutions to a problem
that are more effective than others.
We know how to make choices, even when we don’t have all the data:
Here was another learning moment and it’s one of the reasons why I like
the social media game so much. Most people do not know about every
single Web 2.0 tool out there. Let me rephrase that. Probably no human
being knows about every Web 2.0 tool out there. Just too darn many.
That’s overwhelming and intimidating, and it causes us to forget that
what we’re really good at is not being walking encyclopedias, but
making good choices.
The game throws people into a situation where they are forced to
make choices. By the end, they are asking questions that really have
nothing to do with the tools, but rather surface some of the other key
barriers to greater social media implementation.
For example someone asked, during the debrief of the game, what
policy to follow on using images of people, such as photographs of
children. We discussed creative commons, of course, and some policy
options and release forms and so forth—but then went on to point out
that release forms is not a social media problem—it’s more human
relations and logistical in nature.
A lot of the hidden barriers to social media adoption (hidden in the
sense that they are not in the top 10 challenges list most folks reel
off, but are laying in wait just one step ahead, after the workshop is
over are just these kinds of problems. But helping people practice
making choices with social media helps to ground all the new
opportunities in what we already know and understand.
The Social Media Game Makes Us Draw on Our Experiences
As a side note, it’s wonderful how when people get into the game they
bring their own experiences into it. After the session wrapped up, one
of the participants added that his wife works at an arts organization;
he told me he drew on what he knew about her work to help fill in the
gaps in the story the objective cards had left. It’s another reason the
game works—because it allows people to draw on their experiences of
making choices in the past, tallying with what they already know how to
do.
Social Media Game Note
That brings me to my last point, one that was raised by Christine
Mulvin of Cincinnati. She noted that the game may not work for total
beginners: if no-one at the table has any experience with social media
tools, the short blurbs about each tool that are included on the cards
just won’t be enough information to make good choices. So she
recommends and I think she’s right that at least one person in each
team has to be at least a bit conversant with Web 2.0. (no, that’s not
a contradiction: you need to know something about Web 2.0 to be
overwhelmed by the variety of tools out there, no?)
Hopefully many of the 40-odd folks at the workshop last week will go
out and play more social media games, and those who participate in
those sessions will lead the game on their own, after which the people
in those workshops will play the game with still others, after which… well you get the idea!
Gordon Mayer is vice president of Community Media Workshop, a nonprofit that coaches and trains mostly Midwestern volunteer and staff nonprofit communicators on communications strategy, social media, media relations, and related topics. His hobbies inlcude playing with his kids and wondering what the hell will happen next to the news business.
This video is from a local site in Louisville, part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Making Connections" initiative Part of the Making Connections core approach uses (offline) social networks. You can read more in this series of five reports that looks at the definitions, research, power, practices, and insights relating the impact of social networks on family strengthening and community change.
Last week, as part of my work at the Packard Foundation as visiting scholar I had the opportunity to participate in a face-to-face convening of the "Network of Network Funders," a community of practice facilitated by the Monitor Institute. The focus was on learning about "Network Effectiveness" and the specific topics included strategies for network impact, approaches to evaluating networks and tools for accelerating and assessing network impact.
A peer learning environment requires creating a safe space for conversation. This is why the session started with a discussion defining confidentiality. I'd sum up the confidentiality rule as sensitive information shared in the room should not be shared outside of the room. It is a "What happens Vegas, stays in Vegas" rule if any internal politics or grantees names are mentioned.
I wondered whether the more general learnings about network effectiveness and evaluating networks would be considered confidential? I've been exploring the line between open/closed networks or communities, particularly online learning communities. It isn't black and white. There are definitely some shades of gray.
I asked if I had permission to blog or tweet general insights? We had a brief discussion clarifying what was "bloggable" and what was not. I was asked a fabulous "skeptic" question, "What is the value that 'live tweeting' offers? My perspective:
Live Tweeting forces you to be succinct so when I tweet, it is a form of notetaking and it alters the way I listen. It makes my listening and learning more effective because I'm looking for synthesized bits of wisdom to share.
Live Tweeting allows other people who may not be in the room to respond to questions or share resources. It may deepen and enrich the discussion.
I welcome skeptical questions about social media because it gives the opportunity to openly discuss concerns. This leads to better understanding of networks and social media and more effective adoption of the tools and network practice.
The "live tweeting" use the had tag #netfunders and I was not the only person in the room contributing tweeting from the convening.
My key learnings:
Bill Traynor's rule that you need to mandate that every network meeting have someone new join the meeting. This is important to keep the network fresh and growing.
Networks have different purposes. Some identified include:
-Build Community -Engage People -Advocate for Policy Change -Coordinate resources and services -Learning Networks - Develop and share best practices -Innovate -Get to Scale
Network purposes adds another layer of clarity. It helps a network get more specific with the work flow which maps to different online collaboration and social media tools. This can help you make better decisions about use of tools. One factor that is important to consider is how a network introduces online tools that can support self-organizing - whether the network does it work behind a password protected area or openly on the web or someplace in between.
We worked in small groups by network purpose. I gravitated to the learning network discussion. My three ah-ha insights:
When thinking about learning networks, keep in mind that there are different stages of network: ignition, connection, alignment, and production (See Peter Platrik's thinking)
The pork chop factor and the potluck supper. The pork chop factor has to do with the motivations of individuals who participate. Why are they motivated? It is important to know the individual value proposition. The pot luck supper is a wink and node to what I learned from Eugune Eric Kim a few weeks ago It is the idea that trust building and relationship building is important to informal learning networks. As @eekim said, "Relationships are built over meals."
Open/Closed and how it impacts the learning. How, where, and when do you move the fence to bring in new people to the learning network without disrupting the safe shared place and trust.
As part of a presentation about the Making Connections program, I watched the above video documenting the work of the Making Connection sites in Louisville and its social networks approach. This slide show demonstrates the powerful outcomes that a social network offers and how/why relationships are important. Using visuals to document a network's outcomes - whether photos or videos - is incredibly powerful. Sometimes written words and numbers simply can not not describe the transformative effect.
A new (to me) concept: "Network Vibrancy" a term that Sanjeev Khagram from Iscale introduced. I think it means that things you don't expect to happen take hold. There is a deep quality, reciprocity, and self-organizing. Network Vibrancy adds to the many challenges of measuring the social impact of networks. Real time monitoring and rapid learning opportunities are key to creating vibrancy. I want to take a deeper dive into the techniques for real-time monitoring and see if there are methods for rapid learning opportunities.
I had the opportunity to finally meet June Holley face-to-face. June is the guru of network weaving and I finally had an opportunity to deepen my learning about the art of network weaving from the person who invented it. (I will share this in a separate blog post in a bit as I'm savoring the learning like sipping a fine wine.) This is yet another example of a person that I have followed through their blog or Twitter ant trails, but had never met in person. Yet, through reading and interacting with her online through Twitter I trust and respect her.
The discussion on evaluation of networks was illuminating. There are many challenges to assessing the impact of networks. There are different measures for different types of networks and stages of work. One big challenge is that we don't have the tools for assessing emergent, complex, non-linear, rapidly changing systems. "It's like changing a tire on a moving car."
Network assessment happens at three inter-related levels (and this is part of what makes it challenging). The three levels include:
Connectivity: What is the nature of relationships? Is everyone connected who needs to be? What is the quality of these connections? Does the network effectively bridge differences? Is the network becoming more interconnected? Wat is the network's reach?
Network Health: How healthy or vibrant is th enetwork along multiple dimensions (participation, network form, leadership, capacity, communications (technology), etc)
Outcomes: What progress is the network making on achieving its intended social impact? (e.g. policy outcomes, innovative products, etc) How do you know? (Put another way, Network X made Y happen)
Network evaluation should be part of an ongoing process of rapid learning and adaptation. Learning from evaluation needs to be shared and used by network, but not end up on a shelf. The network needs to conduct self-evaluation that helps it improve the way it works.
As part of this gathering, I had the opportunity to facilitate a small group and test some frameworks for thinking about how to incorporate social media and online collaboration tools for closed networks. I came away feeling that it is important for people to touch the tools. I also came away with an interest in more direct learning about online collaboration and project management tools that allow for self-organization and getting things done in smaller groups. I also came away with a sand box learning plan with some colleagues.
The evening session included an interview with me by Diana Scearce from Monitor Institute about some of the ideas in the book I'm co-writing with Allison Fine. (Some notes here)
Yesterday, Twitter announced its first corporate social responsibility effort on its blog:
We're just getting started as a company, but we believe thinking long
term about making a positive impact will allow us to grow in the right
direction to make a difference as both a technology and a business.
For
Twitter to be at its peak in utility, people who would have never had
access to the world's information need to be able to not only receive
it but engage with it, too. Room to Read,
a San Francisco based non-profit, will help us make that happen by
bringing libraries and literacy to the world's poorest regions.
Together we'll be making some awesome wine over the course of a year to benefit @roomtoread, and with each case sold they'll be able to supply about 60 local language children's books to educate the 300 million kids around the world who can't read.
You
can follow us throughout this initiative and even participate in barrel
tastings and other activities along the way thanks to the folks at Crushpad. If you want to get a bottle of our limited Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, visit the Fledgling Initiative and contribute. Good wine has never been better!
Based on my experience with the Sharing Foundation in Cambodia, I know how important it is for children in developing countries to have books to read in their own language.
And, with a donation - you get a bottle of wine too!
Real-time information delivery is fast emerging as one of the most
important elements of our online experience. No more waiting for the
Pony Express to deliver a parcel cross-country, no more waiting for web
services to communicate from one polling instance to another. This is
information being available to you at nearly the moment it's produced,
whether you're watching for it or not.
My colleague, Marshall Kirkpatrick, who works with Read/Write Web, had invited me to participate, but I was at another convening about network strategy and evaluation scheduled at the same time.
With Real Time Web, you could possibly be in two places at the same time, maybe not physically. I could have sat in the convening on network strategy and evaluation, but also have dipped into Real Time Web Summit live stream. There are trade-offs. This multitasking would have robbed me of deep learning of anything about either topic. That's why I decided not to follow RTWS in, well real time.
There is value in "almost real time." that is circling back to the real time information shortly after the event to pick out some ideas to chew on.
Reading the "ant trails" of information coming from a conference or event when you're not actually in th eroom doesn't provide you with the optimal learning experience. It's partly because you can't make the face-to-face connection and that deeper understanding you'd have from being the room and getting the full context. It's a mediated experience.
Also, coming back to ant trails if you were not participating in real time can be really overwhelming to make meaning of the information (unless you are already an expert on the topic.) Of course, I could save a huge amount of time and information overload and just order Read/Write Web's Report on Real Time Web, print a hard copy, and read it.
I probably shouldn't get too much further in this blog post without asking myself why I'm interested in this topic at all and raise a skeptic question:
Does Real Time Web have any value or benefit to nonprofits?
I'm not sure why this topic caught my attention. Yes, there is a delicious list of tools to explore which include some of my favorite types of tools - aggregation, analytics, monitoring, collaboration, blogging, microblogging, and more!
My interest just isn't in the tools. I think there are some definite social implications that interest me:
Speed and quality of information
Constant stream of information - where do get a chance to reflect? Or does that happen in real time?
How does having a shorter time for reflection change learning?
How does this change our brains and the way we process information or even learn? Is it good or bad for humans?
It adds more choices, how do we filter, prioritize, etc.
What are the implications for security and privacy?
I don't think these are necessarily evil. What interests me is if this is the next evolution of the social web - what is the culture shift that needs to happen within a nonprofit to embrace it? Of course, I want to also know what the value or benefit is to nonprofits? Real Time Web for nonprofits is early adopter land right now .. just saying.
Rob Cottingham, one of my favorite stand up comics, cartoon artists, and social media/nonprofit gurus, got to attend the Real Time Web Summit. He "cartoon blogged" the event. Here's some links:
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. I've been participating in this event for the past few years and I just registered my blog to the almost 10,000 participating blogs from 150 countries. British PM Gordon Brown unexpectedly kicked off the event with a blog post himself earlier this morning and the event was just covered by CNN.
Dozens of nonprofits are also involved, including the UN Foundation, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, CARE, 350.org, 1Sky, and The Nature Conservancy.
To participate, write
a single post about the event or the topic of climate change sometime
today, and it will appear in the live feed on the www.blogactionday.org homepage with thousands of others around the globe.
If you have a blog, I hope you will participate this year too. If you don't have a blog, you can participate by adding your name to this petition about taking action on climate change.
This past week was a busy one for leading workshops. I was in Washington, DC where I did a session on social media strategy for a convening of Packard Grantees.
My participation included:
An interactive presentation on best practices for using social media for external communications
Peer discussion on use of online tools for collaboration for bounded networks, exploring some of the concepts in Digital Habits (each participant got a copy)
Half-Day Session: Social Media Strategy Game which included small group work for participants to come up with a strategy for both external communications and an internal learning network to share best practices.
I also lead a workshop on social media strategy for communications professionals who work with networks, nonprofits, and foundations. My reflections are here.
My reflections have mostly that has been around the subject matter of how nonprofits and foundations are thinking about and using social media. But, I'm also interested in improving my skills as a trainer - especially facilitating social learning or learning in public.
I've heard that phrase "learning in public" a few times this week and I'm also seeing how social media accelerates this - especially at conferences and other places where we have typically gone for our professional development and opportunities for adult learning.
What is Social Learning or Learning in Public?
Learning in private is what most of us did in school. You wrote your essay, studied your spelling words, took tests (without looking at anyone else's answers). Learning was an individual, often solitary activity. for many of us, that learning style carried over to our work culture where we are rewarded for our expertise and to keep private what we don't know.
Many people call me an expert in social media - and when you've been given that label there is a certain pressure about having to know everything. It may also happen when you have the word "scholar" in your title too. But, I think that social media is unleashing a new opportunity for social learning or learning in public for adults. (Thanks to Jeris to sending me the link)
And that can be fun too! Certainly less exhausting than having to know everything.
Creating an environment for learning in public means that it is okay to say “I don’t know” about an issue or problem and to ask others what they think. When professionals acknowledge not knowing and reach out to a colleague, it not only opens us to learning, but it signals to others that they can acknowledge that there are things they don’t know - it begins to change the culture - whether that be the training room or within an organization or at a conference. I find myself doing this on Twitter more and more. Retweeting is boring. I want to know what you think.
We are also learning in public when we engage in in-depth conversation whether it is offline or online, for example in the comments of a blog post or asking questions on Twitter. Conversation is a “learning in public” tool – maybe one of the best. Social media is a conversation engine.
Using social media and social networks successfully requires a culture shift away from learning in private to learning public or what Nancy White has called "Over the Shoulder Learning." How do you do this? How do create an environment where it is okay to learn in public? This environment can be a training workshop or it can be in an organization. The answer comes from Eugene Eric Kim in a recent presentation he did about networks, "Be the Change You Want To See" - it's about modeling.
Putting It Into PracticeAs a Facilitator
As social media becomes more and more present at conferences as way to capture, document and share what is happening at conferences, presenters will need to become more comfortable with public learning and integrate a social strategy. Jeremiah Owyang has a terrific post with some advice on how to do this. He suggests:
Prepare More Than Ever
Know Your Audience’s Social Technology Adoption.
Monitor the Backchannel While Speaking
Develop Backup Resources to Monitor
Interact with the Audience
Practice Two-Fisted Speaking
I've thought about this pretty deeply for the past few years - how can you make your presentation as responsive and interactive with the audience. During the panel I organized at SXSW last year, I incorporated audience interaction without having to do the two-fisted speaking which is distracting for me. Here's what I did:
Created a unique #hashtag for the session and encouraged the audience to use it
Designated back channel moderators in the room to answer questions, throw links in the discussion while it was happening. Also, I introduced the back channel moderators to the audience at the beginning and at appropriate times ask them to verbalize what they were reading in the Twitter stream and we addressed.
For the preparation piece, I spend more time researching the audience than anything else. If follow their social media ant trails and screen capture examples that show up in my presentations. I even ask them to twitter their answers or provide more insights for the audience via the back channel. I tell the audience up front that they might be part of the presentation.
Many conferences have an intentional, overall social strategy to raise the profile of the conference or document the learning. Next week the Communications Network Conference will unleash a Gorilla Capture Team who live twitter, use FLIP cameras, digital cameras, and blogs to cover the conference. They've set up some fabulous training materials and guidelines for the capture team.
I love the way they've made fun for the capture team to document the conference and their evaluation questionnaire. What I wonder about is the next step of engaging people or sharing the learning with people who are not in the room?
I know as part of my social strategy for presenting, I'm live tweeting to people who aren't in the room but could add to the conversation.
David Wilcox shared the above diagram from Carl Haggerty that illustrates this point.
Over the summer, Holly Minch, who is an expert at helping nonprofits and philanthropies unlock the potential of strategic communications for social change, suggested that I facilitate a workshop on social media strategy with a group of nonprofit and philanthropy communications folks.
I'm so glad she did because for a while I've been wanting to better understand how a social media strategy can best align with overall communications strategies and where the nuances of implementation may different. How does designing (and implementing) a social media strategy easily support and enhance the overall communications mix? And where are the tensions? How to resolve those?
Last week, Holly's suggestion turned into a reality. I had the honor of working with a group of really smart communications practitioners who have decades of experience working with nonprofits and/or foundations. I learned a lot in terms of the content but also as a facilitator.
Aligning Social Media Strategy With Communications Strategy
I've facilitated many versions of the social media strategy game that I first co-taught with David Wilcox in the UK in January, 2007 and decided to create a new version for this group to get specific feedback on how to align the social strategy thinking process with the communications thinking process.
Some overall observations and insights from the participants:
Focus on audience, messaging, and theory of change. The strategy discussions during the small group sessions were rich and focused on objectives. There was, however, the tension between the tactical versus keeping it at higher level. What's clear is the need for a very clear theory of change.
Planning Time Frames Differ: I kept reminding people that the strategy they came up didn't have to be finished or perfect. That the learning was in the discussion, not necessarily the finished product. This group shared that they usually have many meetings to focus on the message, objective, audience, and research. I wondered about the Clay Shirky quote, "We spend more time trying to make something perfect, than we do if we just tried it and fixed it." Social media requires a little bit of micro planning - those small tests and this could be a tension point for social media strategy mixing with communications.
Listening is more than free market research: With traditional communications planning, research is very important and there is a lot done on the front end. With social media, listening needs to incorporated into the research phase at the beginning but must also be used as the social media strategy unfolds (real time monitoring) and as ongoing evaluation.
Fluidity of the social media implementation process is a benefit: The overall communications planning approach requires a lot of structure and discipline. As one participant said, "You have your communications plan but it sometimes can prevent you from jumping on opportunities. On the other hand, you need to have some framework to be able to jump on opportunities. This causes a lot of anxiety. But your social media strategy has this flexibility to react to issues and be adaptive."
Experimentation and Metrics: Experimenting and tweaking and refining social media must be pegged to particular metrics and it is helpful to have some method for experimentation to reap all the learning. The important question is to ask, "to what end?
Tool mastery may belong to younger people, but .. Experience and seasoned communications people can provide guidance on strategy, time management, and other values.
Importance of Fast Failure: That's a difficult one to negotiate because staff members (or consultants) don't get paid to fail. It is important to define expectations, put mitigation plans into place, and embrace failures that will no doubt happen.
Some reflections I had on the materials:
Situation: This is the description of the organization or network the same group is developing a strategy for. I've experimented with having very realistic and detailed scenarios, just a few sentences (the group makes up the rest), fictional scenarios that were fun, and not so detailed realistic scenarios. I think key is to keep it simple, if a group gets stuck because some detail is missing, encourage them to make it up.
Point System: I need to rethink the point system based on the changes I've made the social media framework, especially some of the assumptions about social content. I need to revise the scoring system so it encourages the best social media strategic thinking.
Cards: Some really good suggestions about having a sub header on the cards that describes an outcome. Also, include tip sheet that provides these tool is good for xyz, but not good for abc. Right now the cards have questions and this group was asking for experiential advice on the cards. I'm thinking a handout might work best because those evolving best practices tend to change quickly.
Purpose Check: The last part of the exercise should circle back to the objective and discussion that asks does the strategy we created help us reach our strategic goal or not? List three reasons why this tool or tactic helps us reach our goal. There was a request for another set of cards that might have some metrics.
Next Modules: This would include going in more depth on how to use the tools. I see this as the perfect design, similar to the WeAreMedia workshops. For example, deeper dives on the mechanics of listening, engaging, social networks, or social content.
Next week at the Communications Network Conference, my colleague Gordon Meyer from Community Media Workshop in Chicago is doing a 90 minute version of the "Social Media Strategy Game." I'll be curious to find out what they discover as I'll be doing a two-hour version of the game the week after next at PopTech.
Peter Plastrik and Madeleine Taylor co-wrote "Net Gains," one of the first practical handbooks on building and working in networks for social change. Whether it is a network of organizations or individuals, this handbook provides a wealth of theory and practice on build, manage, and fine tune a network.
Peter is a president and co-founder of nuPOLIS is the Internet presence of the Innovation Network for Communities (INC), a national non-profit helping to develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems such as education, energy, land use, transportation and workforce development.
Madeleine is co-founder and principal of Arbor Consulting Partners, a research and consulting group led by senior social scientists.
We talked a lot about network practices. It was a fantastic opportunity to identify similarities and differences between building networks of organizations as well as individuals - and of course how to weave together the two. There are many parallels to the use of social networks like Facebook.
I was particularly interested in hearing their views on how to ignite a network - how it to get it started. For those who are working on social networks and looking at how to catalyze their crowds on places like Facebook or Twitter - the advice resonated. Do you know what the group's value proposition is? Do you know what the individual value propositions are? (What's the pork chop factor?) It's all about building trust and relationships. It reminds me of Eugene Eric Kim's point about networks - everybody is people.
Peter and Madeleine describe networks as "platforms for relationships." And the goal of those relationships can be learning, collaboration, policy, service delivery, advocacy, mobilizing or action. Peter is one of those people who likes to draw his ideas and at one point he got up and drew a grid on the whiteboard about the different types of networks and what interventions are needed for success. Later, I found the chart in Net Gains.
We also discussed the whole issue of network evaluation and the difficulty of measuring those relationships versus a specific impact. Also, the idea of faster tools like social network analysis that give us real time information and the need for someone who is embedded in the network as a real time evaluator. And, of course, what metrics to use.
Madeleine shared a copy of the network health scorecard, a diagnostic tool that networks can use to reflect on how to improve. She also discusses it in the video above.
During lunch, we discussed the field of network building for social change - what's needed to build this field? This is the drawing on the napkin that is described by Peter in the video.
Peter and Madeleine raised some interesting questions about the use of social media and support of network's work in a brief outline and I've pulled a couple of questions to chew on:
What are the hypotheses about the differences social media can make for achieving a network's goals - learning goals, policy advocacy goals, innovation goals, and others?
What patterns can social media use reveal that provide strategic insight for network?
How can social media be used to build high-quality connections, a motivating relationship between members and build trust and reciprocity?
One of the topics we discussed was about the skills and practices of
network weavers - whether they are working with networks of
organizations or supporting an organization's network of supporters on
Facebook. As Madeleine points out in the video above, a network weaver is looking at how people are connected and what value they are getting from being connected. A key skill of the network weaver is to pull out threads and pull people together.
As Madeleine notes, "it isn't about everyone being connected to everybody all the time."
A big part of the network weaver's job is pattern recognition and that requires a sort of scanning and watching - that takes time. I also pointed out that it uses a different part of your brain and there is a need to shift mindsets to get other types of work done.
I tend to map my "working the clouds" work in short, time boxed bursts. I tend to do it when my concentration is at a lower point. But, when I have to write or blog or think about something, I find more and more that I need to stop being social - not do Twitter, Facebook, or email. I also need to put classical music on my Ipod and concentrate in a different way. I've also found that I need to do something physical to transition between the two - like take a walk or simply walk around my desk.
Peter described an interesting framework for thinking about this use of time:
Activities that can be done while doing multiple tasks
Activities that require quiet and doing that one task
Activities that require several days of concentrating, creative immersion, and laser focus on that task
I was in Washington, DC on Tuesday and Wednesday for a two-day workshop is designed for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Justice Leaders, who lead and manage networks or accomplish much of their work through networks. The workshop was hosted by the Packard Foundation and Monitor Institute. You can find the workshop materials here.
The workshop will be an opportunity for social change leaders to step back from their day-to-day responsibilities and develop strategic insight about their networks. Specifically, the workshop will be focused on:
Introducing and applying network tools, frameworks, and case studies that can help network leaders assess their effectiveness and increase their impact
Facilitating peer-learning and exchange
Exploring what it means to work with a network mindset
An interactive presentation on best practices for using social media for external communications
Peer discussion on use of online tools for collaboration for bounded networks, exploring some of the concepts in Digital Habits (each participant got a copy)
Half-Day Session: Social Media Strategy Game which included small group work for participants to come up with a strategy for both external communications and an internal learning network to share best practices.
Some reflections on the game:
Many the networks in the room had a track record of working together and a number had deep social media expertise. This made for a rich session for me because participants were sharing their wisdom. The strategy presentations were some of the most detailed and creative I have heard to date - and after doing this workshop many times. I got a glimpse of what doing this workshop with a room full of social media rock stars would be like.
For the small group work to be an optimal learning exerpeince, it requires having at least one person with hands-on experience at each table. I incorporated a human spectragram using very comfortable with social media and not very comfortable. This gave me a visual of who had experience and asked them not to all sit at the same table.
Since there was a strong sense of community and connection in the room, the spectragram discussion was really rich. I asked the "very comfortable" people the following question:
What was your ah ha moment with social media, when you understood its power and benefit to your movement/network?
Participants offered anecdotes from personal use.
"I was able to organize my high school reunion in a half hour because I was friends with everyone on Facebook."
"My personal blog was getting more hits than our organization's web site."
"We also heard a couple of examples of organizational use that described mobilizing activists quickly on Facebook."
Then I asked the people who were standing at the other side of the room, what was it about social media that made them uncomfortable. I also pointed out that they were showing network leadership because they were comfortable with their discomfort. One person shared that social media made them uncomfortable because they were an introverted and being 'out there' did not feel natural.
Then, I asked the people on the comfortable side of the room if they ever felt this way when they first started to use social media. Many did and shared their transition.
I asked the comfortable group if everyone in their organization was a comfortable as them or more like the other side of the room. This prompted some great insights into adoption strategies.
This was the first time I was able to weave the external communications piece with the internal bounded networks piece. It worked well. Aside from the brainstorm about tools, we heard some wonderful techniques that some participants were already using "blogging behind the firewall." This points to how the social media strategist also functions as a network weaver or technology steward internally.
This group was one that was comfortable learning in public and modeled it. I decided to model it and take advantage to learn in public from talented co-facilitators to keep the energy up during the small group activity. I learned some nuances in the share pair technique as well as a quick energizer when the level dropped during the small group.
I revised the cards for the first time in a while to reflect some of the new content. I also got a great idea: a set of cards for the facilitators of each group.
Stephanie McAuliffe inspired to start keeping trainer's notes that focused on the process and now am adding these to the reflections.
The success of your blog, or any social media effort, depends on your willingness to solicit feedback and take corrective action when necessary. If you want to have a successful blog that supports your organization’s goals and adds value, improvement should be continuous. You need to pick the right hard data points, or metrics, that will help you harvest insights and improve your blog.
Analyzing your blog content First, you need to set overall goals for your blog and understand your audience. Next, you need to know the right metrics to use, and employ the proper tools to collect the data. Most important, you need a strategy—either for yourself or for a team—to gather insights from your metrics. Remember, it isn’t about the numbers alone.
Avoid Analytophilia Alexandra Samuel coined that phrase in a post on social media analytics and metrics about the greatest peril of social media: analytophilia. It's about obsessing on raw numbers and constantly checking the number of Twitter followers or retweets or Facebook insight clicks. She recommends that you don't go into your analytics or stats program without composing a specific question first. I've been advocating this approach for a long time and offer you a set of data points and questions.
Here are seven tips to help you start measuring social media efforts.
1. Readership growth This means content consumption. There are two different kinds of web viewers: subscribers and visitors. Subscribers have made a commitment to regularly receive (and hopefully read or at least scan) your blog. Visitors are people who occasionally visit your blog. You should pay attention to monthly trends of content consumption over time. This will tell you a lot about your readers’ satisfaction with your content.
Gathering insights: Is the number of visitors and subscribers increasing? If not, why? If yes, why? Think about your publishing frequency, the length of posts and the mix of topics.
I get a notice when someone unsubscribes to my blog. I send them a personal follow-up e-mail asking why. I’ve received excellent feedback from my inquiries about how to improve the blog’s publishing schedule, topics and more
2. Reader engagement index This looks at how much your readers are interacting with you and your content, as well as how they are sharing your content with others.
Hard data points: For this, I use the PostRank tool, which ranks your blog posts with a number from 1 to 10. I pick out all posts that score a perfect 10. The scores are based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting and clicking. You should understand how this model works, but don’t get distracted by trying to find flaws in how engagement measures are constructed.
Gathering insights: What topics do the posts that receive high scores cover? Are these posts longer and more in-depth, or short and focused on one topic? Do they include information from a lot of outside resources? What’s the tone—formal or informal? Do they include tips? What is the quality of the conversation in the comments section? What did you learn from the conversation your readers started? If you have a group blog, are there differences between authors? Why? Did anything surprise you?
I have discovered a number of patterns in my highest ranked posts—for example, length, titles, the number of ideas covered in a post, the tone, style and so forth. This has been the single best source of improving the quality of the content on my blog.
3. Reader bookmarking This measures whether readers are bookmarking your content for later retrieval which provides some indication of how much they value it.
Hard data points: You can find out about bookmark saves from PostRank numbers, although the program doesn’t make it efficient to grab data over time. Remember bookmarked items can also positively influence your blog traffic.
Gathering insights: What was the topic of the post that was bookmarked? Are the posts focused on providing tips, resource roundups or other formats? Are there patterns? And if so, what are they?
4. Conversation rate: This is the amount of commenting and conversation that is happening on your blog.
Hard data points: You can get a list of the most commented on posts from PostRank. If you use Wordpress, Joost Blog Metrics will give you a post-to-comment ratio.
Gathering insights: What is the style of the writing? Do posts with more questions in the title and questions in the end generate more comments? Did you do any outreach to encourage commenting? Is there a conversation happening between people who comment? What do you do to facilitate it? What’s the quality of the commenting—are you learning? Are the comments positive or negative?
5. Authority This is the number of links to a post. This metric gives you an indication of the value of the content by showing you how many people are linking to your content. It can also influence traffic.
Gathering insights: Pull out the top 25 linked posts on your blog. Analyze the types of posts (content and format) that get linked and the impact of that linking in referrals using Google Analytics. Are there any patterns?
6. Page views This is the number of times a page (unit of content) was viewed. I’m not sure how much this will tell you about your content quality, but it could give you some insights about your outreach.
Hard data points: You can get these metrics from Google Analytics.
Gathering insights: Why are certain blog posts getting higher page views than others? Look at the referral traffic (including which sites visitors to your site click from or what keywords they searched to get to your site or blog). What was your outreach strategy?
7. Industry index This metric involves evaluating your performance in relation to other blogs in your space using the same metrics.
Hard data points: I use the List of Change, which indexes several hundred nonprofit blogs across different metrics.
Gathering insights: I review other blogs on the list to see if there are ideas that I can incorporate into my own blogging. Where is my blog on the index—high or low? What are the qualities that the top five blogs have in common? How do they compare to my blog?
This may seem like a lot of work, but it takes me about an hour every month to gather up the numbers into a spreadsheet and then set aside some time for reflection on how I can improve my blog. It is an essential part of my blogging process and success.
This article was originally posted at CW Bulletin.
I just finished the first day of a training on Network Effectiveness for Packard Grantees facilitated by the good folks at Monitor Institute. I wanted to capture some reflections around my burning question:
How do you think about using social media effectively along the continuum of open/closed networks?
Most of my recent explorations have been focused around the effective use of social media for external communications. But many networks need a private place or password protected place to have conversations online. This need isn't about being 'scared of social media" but rather a need for a safe place online to have conversations around very sensitive topics to build trust and relationships.
Charlene Li talks about this with a frame of "open leadership." She advises asking 'How open do you want to be?"
Today, I had an opportunity to present and discuss "8 Principles for Effectively Using Social Media for External Communications." But the question still remains - where do you discuss issues or share learnings related to your Network's work that might be sensitive. Where and how do you think about privacy and security in this context?
Before we dive into that, let's talk about ant trails. Eugene Eric Kim used this metaphor to describe how social media presence (in open networks) is like an trail. Ants do two things: leave and follow trails and haul things. They
basically leave a trail that says "I was here." That way others can
find them and connect. He applied the metaphor to Twitter. Twitter is
simply an ant trail. We can leave a pulse, it is simple and easy. It
keeps the connections going.
Eugene said not to focus on the content. Leave a trail and emergence to happen.
In fact, Eugene was watching the ant trails from the training session - we used the hashtag #packfound.
What do ants do when fall comes? I'm not sure. But when autumn comes to the East Coast - there is a chill in the air in the evening. There's a slight breeze that causes the leaves on the trees to make a distinctive rustling sound. It makes me think of poet Robert Frost and the opening lines of his Mending Wall poem comes to mind:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
What I'm talking about is the place where networks need to have conversations online - that are a sensitive in nature and access must be controlled because of physical safety. We've been calling this space where bounded networks share sensitive learning online. It's usually behind a pass-protected, secure area. There's good reasons for that.
How do you reconcile this in an age of transparency and open networks? It's clear where openness belongs in the context of an external communications strategy that embraces social media. And, it is also clear where the fence or password protection belongs when the conversations needs to be internal. But, where to put that fence when the boundary is unclear?
The benefits to being open, "naked as angels" as Esther Dyson might say. Innovation, creativity, momentum. But how do you think about where to draw that line? And, when does that line move or creep?
For this training, each participant was given a copy of the book Digital Habitats written by John Smith, Nancy White, and Etienne Wenger. During an 'open space" discussion on online tools for bounded networks, we used some of the frameworks to discuss this issue. We focused on how you manage security and privacy when that is essential to the conversation. Some quick learnings:
There is a distinction between privacy and security. Security is mostly technical issue, privacy is human behavior. (I'm hoping Peter Campbell or Michele Murrain might write a blog post explaining security protocols for non-techies)
User or community guidelines are important. Guidelines should be articulated to participants in community guidelines. (Information shared behind this password protected area should not be shared with the mainstream media.)
If community guidelines are formally articulated, they need to be enforced.
Modeling community norms can be incredibly valuable. (See Eugene Eric Kim's thoughts here and here)
If there are toxic people behind the fence, there's an art to removing them.
It still leaves me with a question that Robert Frost raised in the Mending Wall about the placement of fences that could be applied to the placement of password protected areas online:
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him
I have no answers to this question, but I do have an extra copy of Digital Habitats to give away. Leave a comment!
Chris Brogan's Archimedes Effect is from his book Trust Agents (co-authored with Julien Smith). The principle is about leverage. I've been asking myself how can we leverage the addition of nonprofits and charities on the Twitter Suggested User List?
I got up really early this morning PST time to fly to the East Coast for some trainings I'm doing. While waiting for my plane this morning before dawn, I scanned my Twitter stream thinking that a jolt of caffeine and Twitter would wake me up while I did my morning 20 minute information grazing routine, finding good stuff, retweeting, bookmarking and sharing. I came across this tweet from @socialcitizen
Sean also described a wonderful example of the Chris Brogan's leverage principle by Social Edge which immediately sent out a message to all their new users pointing them to a list of 100 other social entrepreneur focused Twitter users.
There's been a lot of discussion about the Twitter suggested user list which includes a wide mix of celebrities, news outlets, and more. Sean points out the value of being on the list:
In June the New York Times wrote about the “suggested user” list
saying that Twitter was now a “king maker”. They said being listed
could add 500,000 followers and pointed out that social media titan
Jason Calacanis offered $250,000 to be listed.
I was going to write something about it because I was reminded of the discussion that we had not two weeks ago in response to Seth Godin's post about the non in nonprofits
Godin used (as Tom Watson said it), "the Ashton Kutcher Metric of Social Change - not yet proven, only a theory!" I am assuming Tom was talking about the number of followers on Twitter as a measure of impact. If you look in the comments, there was a lot of discussion and on nonprofit blogs about whether number of followers is a meaningful indicator or can be translated into value for nonprofits. There was a comment about how a smaller number of passionate followers might be worth more to a nonprofit than millions who select them off a general list.
As I was waiting for my plane, I discovered a fantastic and funny post by Alexandra Samuel on social media analytics and metrics about the greatest peril of social media:
analytophilia. It's about obsessing on raw numbers and constantly checking the number of Twitter followers or retweets or Facebook insight clicks. She recommends that you don't just look at numbers, but ask questions. I've been advocating this approach for a long time and in many different blog posts. Take for example, "Using Metrics to Harvest Insights About Your Social Media Strategy."
They started to board my plane and I glanced down at my Twitter account and noticed that something strange happened. My followers had doubled since the last time I looked! I had to wait until I could get on the Virgin America wifi to follow the ant trails. I discovered that I was on the Twitter suggested users list! So, this sent me over to my new typepad metrics dashboard to see what the impact might be. I think I'm going to have to track this over a couple of months and set something up on google analytics.
If I was one of the nonprofits on the list, I'd be tracking conversions via a Twitter landing page. That's what I plan to do.
The Chronicle has been crowdsourcing suggestions of nonprofits to be added to the suggested list. I'm going to take a slightly different approach. I'd like to provide a list of lists to nonprofit twitter users and charities. I'm adding these to my Twitter landing page. If you have a list of nonprofit twitter accounts you'd like to add, please leave a comment.
And metrics geeks, how should I track this?
And, to bring this post full circle, I'm giving a way a copy of Chris Brogan's Trust Agents. Leave a comment!
The 2009 NMC Symposium for the Future, the fourteenth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia (October 27-29th), will explore actual and potential applications of technology that could impact issues of global importance over the next five years and beyond. My colleague, NMC's VP Alan Levine (aka Cogdog Blog) invited to give one of the keynotes in their 3D virtual space.
The 3D space where this virtual symposium will take place is a
private version of the Second Life platform that Linden Labs and NMC
have created, called the Hakone Project. I've
been having a lot of fun researching some metaphors for the future and
of course, I went straight to the Jetsons. In fact, I'll be arriving
in a Jetson like transportation and my avatar will probably look a
lot like Jane Jetson.
If you'd like to participate, I have 10 FREE PASSES to give away. So, leave a comment and you might one of the passes.
The Symposium grows from the NMC’s Emerging Technologies Initiative,
which seeks to answer the question of how to keep abreast of emerging
technologies that may be important for educators. I get the
question, "What's next after Twitter?" a lot, so it is really helpful
to have a peek the annual series of Horizon Reports that have also flowed out of NMC's Emerging Technologies initiative.
My marching orders were: pull out a crystal ball and gaze five, ten or even twenty years into the future to answer these questions:
What role will social media play in the future for the nonprofit, social change sector?
What do non-profits need to do to thrive?
Is this a shiny future or a dire future?
What will be different about nonprofits?
The fun part is figuring out how to effectively deliver a 3D presentation in a 3D space. Aside from the Jetson metaphors, I have to start to thinking about content. So this post, is my first pass at that and hopefully you'll suggest lots of ideas in the comments.
After watching almost all the Jetson's episodes on YouTube, I thought I better start to dig into the content.
The Symposium has several brief white papers about future techologies and education to jump start the discussion:
It's Easy To Fall in Love with Technology by Danah Boyd. This is a rant and warning against shiny object syndrome and a remember that technology does not drive practice. That technology, in and of itself, can solve the ills of the world. This made think about focusing less on the tools, but more on the implications for nonprofits. Some of the future has already arrived, so may be talk about those examples.
The Stars Our Destination by Gardner Campbell. This post is an inspirational message and reminder that stubborn visionary optimism drives accomplishments and that half measures and incremental steps just don’t seem to get us very far when it comes to education. For nonprofits taking their foray into social media, incremental steps are what is in order. But, how to make that big leap across a chasm that isn't scary.
Tactics and Haptics and A Future That Is Now by Holly Willis. This post describes several projects that represent the future of technology and education because they meld tools and needs. Described as situational technologies, they strike a balance between needs and possibilities and letting users determine uses and creative desire.
Last year, I heard Jerry Michalski use the metaphor of the global brain in talk about the future. He mentioned that we were halfway through a transition process where we are renegotiating social contracts and connecting with people in a way that we haven't before. Jerry talked one benefit of this connectedness and openness is innovation.
So, the folks at NMC who build objects on Hakone might be creating a
big, huge, global brain that when clicked will open up web links of
some of the best crowdsourcing on the future technologies and how they
will impact the nonprofit sector. I've identified some key resources or inspiration below (if
there are others let me know) where discussions about the future and
nonprofits are taking place.
For example, you can in a couple clicks go onto a site like Slideshare and see ideas on a topic from some of the best thinkers on that topic and recreate your own meaning of it. I had joked with Jerry that one downside is the inability to remember our calendar - and that with this socialness will our friends eventually collaborately remind us of our appointments. (It was funny at the time).
Source: Charlene Li - How Leaders Win By Letting Go
For nonprofits, perhaps this means a new sort of openness or degree of openness as Charlene Li outlines in her recent presentation called "How Leaders Win by Letting Go." Peter Deitz unpacked this part of the equation in a conversation over at Social Edge called "Collaboration or Competition" and in a subsequent guest post on my blog shared some learnings about open standards. (Using a futuristic body parts metaphor I might add)
As part of this, we have to face the question of the degree of openness that a nonprofit organization will embrace. As Esther Dyson said during the summer at Transparency Camp West, that there was still in 2009 a place for private discussion. "We could all go around naked and look
like angels, but in the real world that doesn't happen." Transparency
has its benefits, but so does privacy. As Esther Dyson said, "There is
a need for respect - of relationships, to get trust, and further
understandings. You can't be fully transparent all the time because
you need to give people a safe place to have the discussion without
disrespecting others."
The point is that there are different
levels of transparency for nonprofits and it is knowing where that line
is and how transparency can make the organization more effective. I wonder if in 2020, whether nonprofit
boards/governance will be totally transparent?
But the point is that knowledge is now externalized in our global brain of connections with colleagues and other organizations. I think that this connectedness will thread together both individuals and make the boundaries of nonprofit organizations very porous - so that we'll have colonies of organizations working together on issues/causes versus isolated islands. This melting of boundaries will happen from inside out through individuals working in nonprofits using social networks to connect across silos and organizations.
This is already happening to some nonprofits as a by-product of their participation on social networks and using simplicity. Take for example, what David Venn had to say in this recent guest post about how the use of social networks has opened the door to new partnerships.
Will nonprofits in the future:
1. Identify the essential 2. Network the rest
This is happening by design in some newer nonprofits. In a recent post by Scott Henderson offers up charity:water as an example. Ever since last year’s Twestival, the nonprofit charity:water and its founder, Scott Harrison have demonstrated the power of simplicity.
Harrison is building a non-profit capable of
breaking thru the cynicism his generation (he’s 34) has for large,
bureaucratic non-profits. To do so, he knew he had to take a different
approach that was more transparent, lean & hungry, and leveraged
its inherent strengths
Two things surprise most people who about
charity:water. First, charity:water didn’t conceive and run Twestival.
Second, charity:water doesn’t drill the wells themselves. The former
was led by volunteers and the latter is done by partner organizations
with decades of experience.
Wait a minute! Isn’t that scandalous? Actually, it’s quite smart.
Scott knows his team’s strength is in telling the story and making it
easy for others to raise the money.
Why only equip paid staff to raise money when you have a growing
army of champions? Or, why build up a large implementation team from
scratch when you can contract with organizations that have been around
20-30 years and are quite familiar with each country and culture they
help? Of course, they have professional fundraisers on staff. Of
course, they also send their operational staff into the field to work
with their partners and keep them accountable.
In case you were wondering, all of their marketing is done in house.
Scott and his team travel with digital still and video cameras
everywhere they go. Most of the stunning visuals are shot by Scott
himself (he says if anyone shoots 1,000 photos, at least one will be a
powerful image). At the controls of the charity:water marketing
dynamo is his new bride, who designs all their digital and print
collateral, including their website.
One of the benefits that connectedness offers us that we no longer a vertical monopoly on a program, cause, or fundraiswer. Not one organization needs to do all the heavy lifting. This is called working in a networked way.
Crowdsourcing is another example of working in a networked way. Lucy Bernholz who writes the Philanthropy 2173 blog is a master of that - and is currently crowdsourcing trends and predictions for 2010. What will the social sector look like in 2010?
The institution as we know it is dead. Collaboration between and within
organizations will be paramount to creating REAL change. -- @ntenhross
Yes,
the institution as we know it is dead. The illusion of institution
boundaries is crumbling - collaboration proves more useful. Remix. --
@NurtureGirl
Foundations leveraging unrestricted funds to
"challenge" people to engage in philanthropy (S.A. Comm. foundation
match days trending upward.) The role of movement-building in
philanthropy and the social sector as a whole. The closing doors of
non-profit organizations due, a.k.a. the final wave of impact from the
recession and the "new normal" that will emerge. -- @ChangeEvnglst
Movements,
for all kinds of issues & sectors - movements any organization can
join, and anyone can be a part of, and more sustained than campaigns.
-- @engagejoe
The big story will
(should) be the shift from serving causes to solving them. Audiences
won't stick with nonprofits that don't make progress on issues and
won't donate to groups that aren't having MAJOR impact. Note that MAJOR
impact is not to be confused with activities that get attention or
build lists. The whole way nonprofits operate will change in 2010. It
won't be viewed that way; people will say the economy is still
struggling, etc. But make no mistake, the shift will be in approach and
strategy. Non-profits must operate with a new mindset and focus, or
lose audience. -- @BrianReich"
There is another effort underway to look at what the nonprofit sector will be like in the year 2020. It is described here on the Case Foundation blog by Kari Dunn Saratovsky.
The Independent Sector is engaging individuals and organizations the spectrum in a dialogue to
address social isues and problems that nonprofit sector has been addressing for a
long time. The themes include the role of technology in social change, the
power of cross sector partnerships, and the importance of building
greater diversity that brings new voices to the field. The initiative is called FutureLab, an Online Challenge for the Nonprofit Community to Chart a Vibrant 2020
and is a national conversation to generate, develop, and share ideas to
dramatically increase the impact of nonprofits and foundations over the
next 10 years.
Behind the password, is a conversation taking place about many issues. I was most curious about those related to technology. They challenges are presented.
To date, we have failed to maximize the potential of technology as a
powerful force to effect transformational social change, to improve
people’s lives, and to mobilize our collective power. How can we assist
organizations in moving from using technology to increase internal
productivity to using it to fuel social change?
The transformative power of technology has been successfully leveraged
in the business community and has produced “game changing” models such
as eBay and Google. How can we support innovation, invention, and
adoption of transformative technology for the public good?
The barriers preventing the nonprofit community from
harnessing the power of technology include lack of understanding and
know-how, privacy concerns, institutional resistance, and real or
perceived start-up costs. How can we overcome these, and other,
barriers?
A few of the emerging solutions presented:
Create a technology boot camp for CEOs to gain a quick understanding of
how technology and social media can increase the effectiveness of their
organizations. Technically-literate leaders are more apt to invest in
human capital through technical assistance, certification, and on-going
training thus mobilizing our collective power and adding velocity to
social change.
We as humans like to use tools that are Easy, Fun and Mean something to
us personally....that give us a personal benefit. It explains
Facebook's success...all of us desire to publish (some of us less, some
of us more) personal facets of our lives. But the magic is that it is
easy....for everyone...it operates on all levels of bandwidth...and it
is FUN.
What's your take on the future of nonprofits and how social networks are causing disruptive and far ranging change?
Note from Beth: The Lance Armstrong Foundation, known by its nickname
“Livestrong”, provides a network of support for people
diagnosed with cancer and their families. The foundation's mission is to “inspire and
empower people affected by cancer” by helping find
the information, support, and strength they need to fight cancer.
An early adopter of social media, the Lance Armstrong Foundation
leverages social media to engage, connect, and celebrate its
community. The LAF goes beyond a mere presence on social networks, it
has taken a maven approach, engaging deeply with supporters with a
regularly updated blog, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter presences.
The LAF uses its Facebook fan page and Twitter profile as a way to directly connect with cancer
survivors on a personal basis and animate the community. I asked Brooke McMillan, Online Community Evangelist, for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, to share some examples of how they engage with their community.
October 2nd is LIVESTRONG Day- a day we set aside each year to focus on cancer survivors, advocacy efforts and community participation. October 2nd is also the anniversary of our founder’s, Lance Armstrong, cancer diagnosis. The foundation used social media heavily to promote this day.
Here are a few examples of how we engage with our community to make this day a success:
1. Encourage your community's creativity and creative expression
Buca Di Beppo signed on to host LIVESTRONG Day events. We, in turn, gave them heavy publicity. Radio Shack is on board as well as Nike and our other corporate partners.
3. Let the community give to the cause in different ways
We asked people to dedicate their Facebook statues to mark the date and give suggested "tweets" to share their followers.
4. Provide a platform for people in the community to support one another
We try to provide as many opportunities for our community members to provide support to one another by telling their stories on our Facebook Fan Page wall and sharing their cancer experiences. This bonding and sharing creates a stronger connection to the LAF.
5. Offer ways for the community to create something together
We designed an interactive map function on our website that shows where all the events are taking place. It has allowed me to proactively reply to folks that may not necessarily want to host an event, but would like to attend one in their area. It has also allowed me to highlight some of the really hot areas of the map—like the UK, India, China, US, etc. We had 1000+ events on all 7 continents (yes including Antarctica) and in all 50 states.
6. Create opportunities for the community to create social content for your web site
We asked our supporters to upload photos from their events to Flickr and videos to Youtube. We ask our supporters to tag their photos in a special way so we can easily pull and republish this content on together on the organization’s Supporter’s page.
7. Create opportunities for activism
On LIVESTRONG Day we ask our US based supporters to take action and show their support for healthcare reform. We will be sending out an email to our constituents, Facebook blasts, Facebook ads, tweets and more to sign the petition for healthcare reform. The petition will be on our advocacy website LIVESTRONGAction.org
Brooke McMillan is the Online Community Evangelist for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
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