Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Guest Post by Kira Marchenese: What Happened When We Introduced 350 Staff to Social Media

Find more photos like this on So You Think You Can Do Social Media

Note From Beth:  Since 2007,  I've been using, adapting, and remixing the Social Media Gamesocial media workshops for nonprofits.  In fact, just last month, I took it to India.  Last year, I facilitated a version of the Social Media Game for Packard Grantees as part of a convening on Network Effectiveness in Washington, DC.   Dave Witzel was a participant in the workshop and thought the game could be adapted as apart of training on social media at the staff retreat.  The big challenge with training is the challenge of transfer - after people go through a training - do they actually put the knowledge and skills into practice?  

Also, the game is licensed under creative commons - which means folks are welcomed to use as long as share and share like (with attribution).   EDF has embraced the spirit of this sharing - not only remixing a version of the game for their organization,but also sharing back the materials and what worked!  

That's why I invited Kira Marchenese, to write a guest post about has happened since the training last year.

Last fall, we marched all 350 or so Environmental Defense Fund staff through two days of a social media challenge.  Looking back, I’m happy to report that the experiment paid off.

Why did we do this?

We know that very soon, social media will no longer be optional. Already, some of our advocacy work is progressing in large part because of savvy use of social media (see our blog about chemicals and toxics).

We have a mix of staff who dived into social media long ago (see our business innovation blog and green business twitter feed), and others who have maybe sort of heard of Twitter. We wanted to give everyone a chance to get more familiar with the tools, and, more importantly, understand how social media is relevant to their goals.

What did we do?

We went all-out. EDF periodically brings our entire staff together for an in-person retreat. This year, the retreat theme was social media. We crafted a two-day challenge, mixing all-staff sessions with smaller group time. Here’s the overview:

EDF Staff Retreat - Intro to Social Media

View more presentations from Eric Schwartzman.

• Everyone attended a 90-minute presentation by Eric Schwartzman on what social media is and why we should pay attention. He’s energetic and knows his stuff, so it was a good start.

• A few EDF staffers joined Eric on stage to share what they’ve done with social media. This was really important – hearing colleagues talk about their posts being read by EPA officials or members of international negotiating teams made the point in a way no consultant could.

Then the hands-on part started:

• We broke into teams of 40 to 70 people, based on the type of work we do. For example, everyone who works on ocean issues was on the same team. Each team received a challenge in their field that they had to meet through social media.

• Each of the six large teams divided again into tables of 10. At the small tables, we played an EDF version of the social media game developed by Beth Kanter and David Wilcox.

• After each table developed a strategy, the large teams picked one strategy each to develop a pitch around. They spent the next 24 hours refining the pitch. And then the fun really started!

Each team pitched their idea to the full EDF staff. The pitches included costumes, music, video filmed on-site, mock-ups, and social media demos.

We all voted, and the winning team got budget money to fund their social media plan. How did it go?

People were extremely engaged. Every EDF staffer had to do this. Our biggest worry was that people would find it irrelevant to their work and would check out. Breaking up into small tables worked – I saw table after table of people leaning in, standing up, gathered around flip charts. I didn’t see anyone checking their Blackberry, which was pretty amazing. And people from assistants to VPs poured energy into crafting the pitches, you can see from the scene at t-minus 3 hours and t-minus 30 minutes.

And that made the presentations really good. Teams took ownership of their ideas and were revved up to show them off. They threw themselves into writing scripts and filming, gathering costume pieces, and otherwise doing much more in 24 hours than I would have thought possible. Even the teams that spent the least time preparing gave polished overviews.

The “game show” conceit made it all more fun. Our host, Rachel “Seacrest”, and the judges did a great job of moving things along and lacing the presentations with some clever silliness. The audio-visual crew did a top-notch job juggling all the video, countdown clocks, slides, props and miking, adding to the sense that this social media stuff is really big-time.

We could have refined the structure of the two days. Even with the tailored materials, and a dry run, there were many things I’d do differently next time. If you’re considering running this game yourself, definitely check out what we learned!

Lots of great ideas. EDF staff came up with some really interesting ideas. Not every table had a social media plan ready to execute (”handing out flyers” wasn’t one of the social media tools we encouraged!) but several of them are already being executed.

Did it make a difference?

Three months later, what do we have to show for it? Or, in other words, should other organizations consider doing this? Here’s what we’re seeing.

An explosion of EDF bloggers. We have a new transportation blog, Way2Go, and new participants in our international climate talks blog. The contributors to our blog about Texas energy re-tooled how they write and edit posts to make it more flexible and inclusive. And two more new blogs are on the way.

But I’m most pleased that EDF staff are evaluating how blogging will help achieve their goals, not just blogging for the sake of it. One of the best conversations we’ve had is with a department that decided to put off blogging for now, since it made sense to invest in other tactics first. I love seeing our staff make smart, well-informed choices.

Not just the usual suspects. We’ve always had a small but energetic group experimenting with social media. We’re now seeing both interest and confidence about social media from people who were never part of that experimental vanguard. Lauren Guite, our online team’s outreach coordinator, says that not only are these “unusual suspects” truly interested, but she’s impressed with their understanding of why the tools are important.

Plans to re-run the game. Three different groups have come to me asking for help re-running the game to generate ideas for specific projects. I can’t think of a better indicator that people found it useful.

(See more details on these results from EDF’s Social media challenge on my own blog.)

Biggest challenge now: How to find the time?

We had to cut staff last year, the economy remains rough, and the planet needs a lot of saving. When staff choose to engage in social media, they spend less time on something else. We’re seeing this play out in a cycle of enthusiasm and guilt. People get excited about something — tweeting, setting up Google Reader, signing up for Facebook. But other priorities get in the way, and it becomes just something else that’s still on their to-do list the next week. They feel bad when we check in with them and they haven’t gotten to it yet.

In the big picture, if people see results from social media, they’ll keep engaging, and if they don’t see results, they shouldn’t feel bad about stopping. But getting started requires a leap of faith that time spent trying social media is time well spent. And when there’s so much going on, it’s hard to make that leap.

The time we spent on this at the retreat definitely helped amp up the enthusiasm part of the cycle, pushing more people into making the leap of faith.

Kira Marchense is the Online communications director at Environmental Defense Fund.
 

Social Media in the Board Room

Photo by Beth

A few months ago,  I wrote about a report from Charlene Li that discovered that deep engagement with social media correlates with financial performance.  The report suggests that in order to scale this engagement, social media needs to be part of everyone's job, making the argument that a few minutes each day spent by every employee adds up to a wealth of customer touch points.

In order to scale, nonprofits will need to develop a social media policy as well as operational guidelines.   The Red Cross is one of the better nonprofit examples.  Their handbook provides a good blueprint for staff, affiliates and volunteer to serve as ambassadors for the organization on social networks. 

If we're talking about scaling engagement of a nonprofit by allowing all staff and volunteers to participate, why should the board be exempt?  And let's take that a step further, why not use social media as part of the governing process.  

Networked governance or peer-to-peer governance has worked well in the development of open source software projects.  (You can learn more about that in a new book from O'Reilly, called "The Art of Community:  Building the New Age of Participation" by Jono Bacon.

Social media is blurring boundaries for all functions within an organization, and eventually it will impact governance.  Networked governance was of one of the chapters in the book, The Networked Nonprofit, that Allison Fine and I have been working on. It was difficult to write because live tweeting their board meeting minutes or nominating committees looking for a slate of officers on LinkedIN or getting feedback for strategic plans isn't necessarily a common practice in our sector. Sounds like science fiction doesn't it?

I think you have to crawl before you fly.  So, maybe the first thing you would do is education and training, maybe a live demo showing how social media works and why it is important.   The OnLine blog published an intriguing post called "Social Media and Accountability" where Zachary Wales imagined a couple examples where social media might be injected into governance of a nonprofit.

How can boards effectively incorporate the use of the social networks and social media to govern?

Guest Post by Celeste Wroblewski: Seth Godin, Want Nonprofits to Embrace Squidoo? Give Us Case Studies on the ROI

Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hauntedpalace/ / CC BY 2.0

Note from Beth:   Celeste Wroblewski writes the studio 501c blog.  We have been reading each other's blogs for a couple of years since we are both passionately interested in nonprofits and social media effective use.    Yesterday, Celeste left a comment about the Seth Godin outburst about nonprofits on my roundup post.   She refined the comment as a post on her blog and she kindly gave me permission to republish it here.   If you have thoughts, comments, or questions, let's discuss this over in the comments at the original post.

In response to this post by Seth Godin on nonprofits and social media, I repeat what I said three years ago over at the Netsquared Community.

It's what I wrote in 2006, when Godin slammed nonprofits for not using his Web service, Squidoo.

Given the episode in 2006, plus Godin's response to Tom Watson about Squidoo, one can't help but wonder if the nonprofit execs that Godin cites in this week's post were rejecting Squidoo, rather than online fundraising and social media in general.

In fact, a friend from a large nonprofit told me his nonprofit was treated arrogantly by Seth's Company when they refused to get involved with Squidoo -- the nonprofit leaders were made to feel stupid.

And if we're talking about blowing people away, as Seth suggests, you know what would blow me away?  Seth publishing a detailed report showing exact amounts raised by each nonprofit in the Squidoo program, along with case studies of the time and resources they expended. To my knowledge, detailed figures have never been published -- there are only vague statements about thousands raised.

If Seth wants nonprofits to change, and if he wants them to use his product, he should start with a thorough, transparent report on the uses and results of Squidoo.

Seth Godin's Non Post About Nonprofits: Deers in the Headlights?

 
Photo by THall

Seth Godin took a swing at nonprofits today in a blog post “The problem with non," saying that nonprofits are afraid of change and that many are lacking in social media adoption.   Many nonprofit pundits took issue with the logic and metrics he used to make his case:

Take a look at the top 100 twitter users in terms of followers. Remember, this is a free tool, one that people use to focus attention and galvanize action. What? None of them are non-profits. Not one as far as I can tell. Is the work you're doing not important enough to follow, or is it (and I'm betting it is) paralysis in decision making in the face of change? Is there too much bureaucracy or too much fear to tell a compelling story in a transparent way?

The Chroncile had a post swinging right back saying that Seth was slacking.

Is a celebrity-marketing expert right when he chides the nonprofit world for being “paralyzed by fear” when it comes to the use of social-media tools such as Twitter and Facebook?

Or did he fail to do his homework?

Tom Watson wrote a post "Why Seth Godin in Wrong" that could be best summarized in his tweet:

Seth Godin uses the Ashton Kutcher Metric of Social Change - not yet proven, only a theory!

Tom goes on to say:

I preach digital change to nonprofits every day. Change ain’t easy when the world keeps moving and you have the keep the lights on – ask the President.

Besides, nonprofits are way, way down the list of sectors that really abhor change. Wall Street, big insurance, government – now they really hate change. More nonprofits need to adapt, to experiment, to take risks, to embrace change. But they need to keep on providing services while they’re doing it.

I think the “non” in Seth’s post relates to its own currency frankly – it’s an old bromide that’s getting kinda stale.

Nick Temple from the UK left a comment on the link I shared on Facebook:

It smacks of someone who knows the marketing and internet world very well, and the non-profit world barely. Diss non-profits for their marketing strategies by all means, but not for their lack of featuring in the top 100 on Twitter. Is that how we measure social impact now? Twitter & Digg? Seriously?

One final thing; the post also tars all non-profits with the same brush, ignoring huge amounts of innovative work with web 2.0 and social media. See http://www.socialbysocial.com or countless other examples catalogued by Beth and others.

And one (other!) final thing: if he's that upset, I'd say focus that anger on helping solve it: help a non-profit achieve what he's talking about. Put the weight of his reputation and networks behind it. Create the marketing phenomenon he's talking of. It's easy to carp and point; less easy to make that change.

Godin replies on the comments of Tom Watson's post:

Sorry to hear it didn’t resonate with you.

I was actually overwhelmed with mail (about ten times more than I usually get) and every single piece from a frustrated person inside of a non-profit.

Here’s a simple example from my day job: on a regular basis, Squidoo writes $10,000 checks to charities. And yet, virtually no “major” causes have sent their volunteers over to use it as a fundraising or attention raising or action generating tool. I never said (re-read it) that we should turn over “service sector into a crowd-sourced cyberlibertarian throw of the dice at utopia.”

Again, sorry that I’m stale. I’ll try to do better!

Here’s another example: the non-profits I’ve given money to in the past (and you’ve heard of many of them) continue to spam me with direct mail tactics that are 40 years old.

My point about VCs wasn’t that non profits should be raising money from them. It’s that we expect ‘real’ companies to be innovative risk takers, but somewhere along the way, the status quo for non profits has become to be boring.

Change is hard for people and for people who work in nonprofits. Social media can also inspire timidness.  Seth's painted a untrue picture of ALL nonprofits as deer frozen in the headlights. While there are many examples of nonprofits embracing social media and getting results with only a fraction of Ashton Kutcher's Twitter followers - there are organizations that are not engaging.  If anything, Godin has got the attention of those who work in the nonprofit sector and are engaged in the social media conversation.  Whether or not that is only a small percentage of the nonprofit field or not remains to be seen. 

Certainly the nonprofit field has made progress since 2006 - when Godin ranted about nonprofits being clueless.

What do you think? 

How can you create a safe place for hands-on learning from social media pilots?

 
Touching A Starfish at Monterey Bay Aquarium: Source Flickr Photo by Beth

A few weeks ago, we drove down to Monterey for a visit to the Aquarium.  The kids loved, especially the hands-on exhibits.   What better way to learn about a starfish than to pick up and hold it in your hands.  My daughter was scared at first, but after learning that the starfish would not bite, she tentatively dipped her hand in the pool and picked it up.    She had a safe place for hands-on learning.

This morning I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion at the Community Roundtable  hosted by Rachel Happe and Jim Storer.  The participants were from corporations, but the issues are creating a culture that isn't afraid to fail are the same for many nonprofits, particularly larger organizations.

One of the key takeaways was the importance of hands-on learning through pilots and careful experimentation.  What makes people nervous or creates a kind of "stage fright" is the learning in public.  Participants suggested the need for providing a safe place for hands-on learning and that the experience is scaffolded.    It is important both as an organization and for one-on-one coaching.

I thought about the discovery pools and hands-on learning exhibits at the Aquarium.

How is your organization providing a safe place for piloting social media strategies?

How do you create a culture that is not afraid to fail (or be more receptive to social media?)

Several months ago, my colleague Rachel Happe from the Community Roundtable invited me to facilitate a discussion with members about the issues that swirl around organizational adoption of social media.   I told her I wanted to talk about the "f" word (failure).   

So, we came up with this topic:  "Creating a Culture that is not Afraid to Fail."    I thought this would be a great opportunity to reflect on some of my recent blog posts on this topic as well as gain new insights from others who work on social media in a corporate (and nonprofit) setting as well as my network.

I'm defining failure as a social media strategy or program implementation that wasn't perfect or didn't work as well as you expected especially the first few times you did it.   This happens quite frequently with social media, especially in the early stages. 

We set unrealistic outcomes, don't have a methodology for learning or sloppy strategy implementation.  We get poor results.  We're quick to proclaim that social media doesn't work, feel some shame, and drop it.  We look at the wrong measures or unrealistic outcomes. We don't value the learning and use that insight to improve the social media strategy the second or third or fourth time around. 

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Michael Quinn Patton, an evaluation guru, speak at the Packard Foundation.  I captured his talk in this blog post "What do Maori Creation Stories Have in Common With Social Media?"

He described the challenges of adapting evaluation methods to non-Western systems in developing countries because evaluation has traditionally been deeply rooted in the Western ways of thinking.  He started to collect "creation stories" to explain the difference between traditional approaches (you create a program, implement it, and collect data to measure its success) versus developmental evaluation (an evaluation that gathers information to help you improve the program.)

He shared the creation story of Maori people.  

In the beginning, father sky and mother earth - embraced.  Such a fierce embrace - only darkness was in between them.  Children were born into this space but they became unhappy and plotted to push the parents apart.  It became clear that they would have to join together and need the strength of the oldest.  A lot of bickering followed and failed attempts by the younger siblings.   Having observed failed attempts, the oldest said said they would have to put their backs into it - back against father sky and feet against mother earth.  The push the parents apart.  Father sky was crying - and that became rain.   Pushing apart parents, had exposed the nakedness of his mother.  He began to plant trees to hide her body.  They had never planted a tree before.  First they tried roots in the air, leaves in ground.  It failed.  They tried laying them on the ground.  Finally they succeeded by planting the roots in the ground.   They then grew forests and the eldest child became the god of the Forrest. 

Patton points out that they were not sure what they were trying to get to or the result. They had a general sense, but had some learning before getting it right.   This is the essence of developmental evaluation.  I see this as very similar to the listen, learn, and adapt process that you need to use for social media strategy.

A big question is how do you get people in your organization to value this learning versus viewing it as a failure or waste?  How do get past the fear of failure?  To prepare for this discussion, I posed this question on my Facebook status and Twitter: "How do you create an organizational culture that is not afraid to fail?   It was one of the most commented status alerts and responded to questions on Twitter that I've had a while.

Here's what I learned:

(1) Must come from the top: reward learning

Don Bartholomew points out that culture must come from the top and that leadership needs to reward taking risks versus punishing failure.  As Roger Carr says reward innovation regardless of the outcome. Danny Blue suggests that leaders create opportunities to work on experimental projects and hindsight everything.  From every failure there is something to learn. You take the learning from the last failure and you build something awesome out of it. Scott Bechtler-Levin said on Twitter in less than 140 characters: "Change happens when the desire for gain is greater than the fear of loss."

(2)   Unpack the fear of failure through internal discussions

I recently came across an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (no relation) from the Harvard Business School called "To Master Change, First Dread It"   She describes the stress and feelings of lost control that change in organizations engenders.   She goes on to say that the stress leads to paralysis.   She offers a counter-intuitive tip for moving past it:

A counter-intuitive tip for mastering change is to start by wallowing in the feelings of dread it arouses. The sheer nail-biting horror of it all. Get in touch with every negative aspect, all the things that could go wrong. Then figure out a way to get that negative force on your side. In short, "Dream your worst nightmare and invest in it."

I think this is the key to adoption and social media success.  To create your social media guidelines, examine the worst possible scenario, ask what if questions, wallow in all your fears, etc.  I call this putting a smiley face on the screamer.   One of the best methods to remove fear is to encourage social media literacy through personal use.

Holly Hight has a good case study on how her organization got past the fear through discussion in this post "When Controlling the Message Stifles Community"

(3)  Make learning the norm

Anne Yurasek says "You need to create a set of agreed upon norms around how failure is viewed and experienced by your organization and then it's about monitoring if the norms are reflective of behavior. "  Steve Heye asks, "What is the reaction is to a failure? Is it blame or a reflection to see what could have been done differently?."   As Margaret Egan notes, it is important that leadership creates a culture of questioning, where learning is paramount and failure will be a given and Christine Lu says it is all about having people in your organization that the personality trait of enables them to take risks and learn.

(4) Emphasize what works

Jeff Jackson pointed to examples from healthcare and airline industries which have implemented culture changes around failure for years, with varying degrees of success.  In healthcare, terms are used like blamefree environment, failure analysis, and responsible reporting.  He also points to a growing trend to adopt appreciative inquiry which focuses on creating more of what works best (failure is fully accepted, but not searched out, nor studied). 

(5) Start small, early, and reiterate

Claire Murray suggests starting small, as in one division or group.  It   helps lay the overall groundwork, iron out some of the wrinkles, and provide a model to follow. As in any venture like this, it requires managers who can accept the word from the ground, criticism, and who are not afraid to share.   In this morning's email, Chris Brogan suggested that getting past the fear of failure means starting small, fail fast, and start again. 

Here's an interview about culture change from Planned Parenthood that I posted in July.   Allison Fine catches up with Tom Subak from Planned Parenthood to discuss culture change in this podcast.

Tom gives an example of real life resistance in his organization. 

How has your organization gotten past the fear of failure that effective social media strategy requires?

Guest Post by Holly Hight: When Controlling the Message Stifles Community (and Staff Morale)

Photo by Solarnu

Note from Beth:  Several weeks ago, I published a guest post by Geoff Livingston called "Creating Movements."  where he discussed the crossroads of movements and campaigns and the need for an open culture.   The post and ideas resonated with Holly Hight, a field organizer for Bread for the World. We got into a discussion in the comments and she agreed to share some of her experience addressing this issue within her nonprofit organization.

Our nonprofit is not unique.  Over the past five years, we’ve stumbled our way into social media.  We’ve listened to our supporters online and attempted authentic engagement with various social media platforms.  While a large percentage of our organization can articulate the importance of being on Facebook, very few staff can grasp how these tools will help to achieve our goals: greater awareness and involvement in the broader movement to address hunger.  Our use of social networking has exposed many cultural differences within our organization.

I am part of a large group of staff within our nonprofit that interacts with our supporters on a daily basis.  It’s my job to listen to our members and empower them to get involved. Naturally, my colleagues and I have taken the lead in establishing our organizational presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Ning and posting to our blog.  It is obvious that our skills directly translate into establishing an online presence.  We know what our supporters like, need and want. 

In contrast, a large segment of our organization rarely interacts with our supporters.  They are tasked with the important work of research, creating our policy agenda and providing strategy for legislative campaigns.  Despite their distance from activists, their work is why our organization is trusted and respected in our field.  Policy and research staff have a different culture than those of us who work directly with individuals on the group.  These two differing cultures recently came to head over social networking.

For an entire month, our organization was working to move forward a bill in Congress.  We called on our network to take action with emailed action alerts, phone calls and posting messages on Twitter and Facebook.  The response was positive, but near the end of the month many of our supporters were getting very tired.  They had made a phone call, written a letter, sent an email, blogged about it and, in some cases; they had even met with their local representative.  A companion bill was introduced around the end of the month and in large part because of the efforts of our advocates.

I was excited to inform our supporters about the bill, so I, along with a few other folks on staff, posted message to our Facebook and Twitter pages asking people to take action on the bill. Our supporters even picked up the message for themselves, particularly the people who worked hard for this bill to get introduced.  Unfortunately, we were reprimanded for not being “on message” with our policy agenda.  (The person who scolded us is not even on Facebook!)  I was asked to “control the message” of our supporters online, who were already spreading the message virally. 

My initial reaction was one of anger.  But I calmly responded with an email that lifted up the excitement of our advocates on sites like Facebook.  Hearing about the bill from us first increased our legitimacy and built the relationship with our network.  I argued that it’s important for us to offer multiple paths of engagement and thank our supporter when their actions have a result.  For our tired supporters who had tried everything on our other piece of legislation, this news was a breath of fresh air!

After this incident, we started to reflect on how our organization can move beyond its greatest fear of losing control and embrace social media? First, we need to move beyond the false dichotomy of message control vs. conversation.   There’s a prevailing belief that you can’t foster conversation and get a message out.  Social media teaches us that the best way to get the message out is to foster conversation.  Conversation leads to ownership; ownership leads to creativity, and creativity leads to collective action. 

We are taking a few steps in this direction, primarily by challenging our internal culture of message control and creating space for conversation across departments.  We’ve formed an eCommunications Taskforce that includes representatives from every department.  The group will discuss our overall strategy with our online presence and establish guidelines for social media.  My department will facilitate a workshop about creative uses of social media to achieve our organizational goals.  Adopting social media goes beyond getting your organization to be active on Facebook or Twitter.  It starts by transforming a top-down culture into collaborative environment that listens, engages and involves its supporters.

How are you changing the culture of your organization to embrace social media?

Holly Hight is the California Field Organizer with Bread for the World.

Social Media Adoption and Deconstructing the Scare House on Santa Cruz Boardwalk with Nina Simon

On the way to taking my kids to the Montery Bay Aquarium a few weekends ago, we stopped in Santa Cruz to have some fun on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.   My colleague, Nina Simon, who writes the Museum2.0 Blog and is a Santa Cruz local, joined us.

We know that social media inspires fear.  What's out there in the darkness that might catch us off guard?   The way to get past fear of uncertainty is to deconstruct it.  So, what better metaphor for this is to deconstruct the scare house by riding it with an expert in participatory exhibit design?

The first part of the video is the actual ride through the scare house which lasted all of two minutes.  After we finished, I interviewed Nina about what was and what was not scary.  

So, why not take that same approach to deconstructing social media concerns?

But don't take my word for it.  I recently came across an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (no relation) from the Harvard Business School called "To Master Change, First Dread It"   She describes the stress and feelings of lost control that change in organizations engenders.   She goes on to say that the stress leads to paralysis.   She offers a counter-intuitive tip for moving past it:

A counter-intuitive tip for mastering change is to start by wallowing in the feelings of dread it arouses. The sheer nail-biting horror of it all. Get in touch with every negative aspect, all the things that could go wrong. Then figure out a way to get that negative force on your side. In short, "Dream your worst nightmare and invest in it."

I think this is the key to adoption and social media success.  To create your social media guidelines, examine the worst possible scenario, ask what if questions, wallow in all your fears, etc.  I call this putting a smiley face on the screamer.

How has your organization worked past fear of social media?

The Fine Line Between Personal and Personality: Is Being A Human Unprofessional?

Today was the first day of school in a new school for my kids. What's new can be scary, very scary.  I know my kids were a little nervous as they waited in the school yard ready to start their first day. 

It's new territory.  This is a new routine, new teachers, new friends, and new bicycles!   We're close enough to ride bicycles to school - and so almost every day for the past few weeks we've been rehearsing the ride.   This morning was the big day!

I'm sure many nonprofits (and foundations) who enter into the waters of social media for the first time feel this nervousness and perhaps fear.    Here's a new fear:

Reputation for accuracy, quality, and professionalism will be damaged if the organizations shows its human side. 

There's a fine line between personal and personality and being human and being professional.  This seems to be the theme that is happening the comment thread over at Sean's Tactical Philanthropy blog in the comments about his Learning From Foundation Tweets post.

I asked Sean, why are we so scared of showing our human side?

Sean felt that the definition of professional in our culture is about stripping out our individual personalities.  He feels that it is mistake.  Kivi Leroux Miller, in the comments, thinks that being human engenders trust. "If you think about knowledge or wisdom coming from looking at information and experiences from a certain perspective, then I think we need to see some of that human side to really appreciate that perspective and to trust it – if that makes sense."

It is also important not to set too many rules about "personality" or we risk becoming Stepford Wives or unauthentic.  It does help to have a general philosophy and guidelines might help. And, aside from Wendy Harman's "Don't embarrass your mother rule," there the balancing act. You don't just want to blog about your pets and children all the time.

My rule for blending in personality is to always link it back in a way to my professional areas of interest.   It's funny, one of my most popular and highly rated posts was about celebrating my 22nd wedding anniversary and sharing advice about blogger cultivation.

So, like the first day of school at a new school and new routine, blending in personality might be a little uncomfortable or scary, but it can also make your social media strategy more effective. Agree?

How has your organization grappled with the fine line between personal and personality?

Does Social Media Help You Be Human Through Your Computer?

Photo by Chris John Beckett

Sean Stannard-Stockton wrote a reflection on my analysis of the list of “foundations that tweet” on the Philanthropy411 blog.  I look at what was being tweeted and the voice used (institutional versus personal versus a blend).

Sean takes a point of view:

I think that technology and social media in particular is best used when it helps us more fully express those things that make us uniquely human.

So he feels that Twitter profiles that are all organizational brand or all personal are boring and that a co-mingled approach (Institutional Profile with Personality or Employee with Institutional Association) work best because:

I think the lesson to be drawn here is that in the search for how best to share knowledge, the key thing is to put humans at the center. Knowledge is not some sort of physical element that we can stack in a room somewhere and index easily. Knowledge is a concept that is rooted in the very fact that we are human.

As we strive to build a more effective philanthropy, to share knowledge and support what works, let’s not become disconnected from the human element that drives philanthropy.

Using social media to be authentically human seems to be pattern today in my reading.   Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Blog has a summary of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's book, Trust Agents.   Kivi describes the central theme of the book as how to be human through your computer.  Kivi goes on to summarize four principles in the book that apply to nonprofits.

And finally, Dana Boyd debunks a study that found "Twitter is 40% of Useless Babble."   She goes on to say that conversations on Twitter are, well, human.

I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of people who are joining its ranks are there to be social. We like the fact that humans are social. It's good for society. And what they're doing online is fundamentally a mix of social grooming and maintaining peripheral social awareness. They want to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn't viable. They want to share their state of mind and status so that others who care about them feel connected. It's a back-and-forth that makes sense if only we didn't look down at it from outter space. Of course it looks alien. Walk into any typical social encounter between people you don't know and it's bound to look a wee bit alien, especially if those people are demographically different than you.

Why is it that we're afraid of being human in our social media channels?   Sean alluded to an article in the WSJ that suggests it is because we don't equate being human with being professional.  

What do you think?

Do Social Media Nightmares Encourage Adoption? The Answer Might Surprise You!

 
Photo by TCMHitchHiker

At last weekend's Transparency Camp West,  Ellen Miller from the Sunlight Foundation asked me a great question.   "What are the characteristics of nonprofits that have successfully adopted social media?"  

I think it is culture.  But what is in the DNA of these nonprofit organizations that allows for them to embrace social media and use it successfully?

Perhaps it looks like this:

Leadership

• Organizational leaders are curious, not scared by social media
• Organizational leaders are willing to be uncomfortable in order to understand why and then invest

Style of Working

• Departments do not work in silos, systems, policies, and work processes support this
• Organization can easily collaborate, connect, and reach out to others beyond the firewall
• There is trust that employees and stakeholders will represent the organization without creating command and control policies and policing them

(The work style comes from developing social media guidelines/policy)

Learning Culture

• Culture of learning through making mistakes or taking calculated risks, not a Martha Stewart culture of perfection
• Ability to slay organizational myths – “We’ve always done it this way” by having discussion
• Does not equate informality or personality with a lack of quality
• Not always moving forward faster than the speed of light, driven by deadlines, but also reflects
• Takes a try it, fix it approach
• Has a culture of rapid response – can address problems or complaints quickly without getting bogged down by endless approval process.
• Evaluates current processes and systems on a regular basis and updates them as needed on an incremental basis

Am I missing anything?

So, what if these qualities don't describe your organization's culture?  How do you change?

I came across an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (no relation) from the Harvard Business School called "To Master Change, First Dread It"   She describes the stress and feelings of lost control that change in organizations engenders.   She goes on to say that the stress leads to paralysis.   She offers a counter-intuitive tip for moving past it:

A counter-intuitive tip for mastering change is to start by wallowing in the feelings of dread it arouses. The sheer nail-biting horror of it all. Get in touch with every negative aspect, all the things that could go wrong. Then figure out a way to get that negative force on your side. In short, "Dream your worst nightmare and invest in it."

I think this is the key to adoption and social media success.  To create your social media guidelines, examine the worst possible scenario, ask what if questions, wallow in all your fears, etc.  I call this putting a smiley face on the screamer.

What's your nonprofit's worst social media nightmare? 

Nonprofits That Adopt Social Media Share One Characteristic: Vertigo Tolerance

Photo by Sifter

Last week, I had a fantastic conversation with the folks at EDF Innovation Exchange about transparency and social media adoption.  Specifically around the question, "What it is in the culture of organizations that are able to make the shift that is different from organizations that cannot?"  Also last week, Stephanie McAuliffe shared an article by Bill Traynor called "Vertigo and the Intentional Inhabitant: Leadership in a Connected World" and here's an attempt to weave these ideas together.

The leaders of the nonprofits that can embrace social media can tolerate vertigo.  Another way to put this is:  the c-suite is comfortable with discomfort.  Openness and transparency are hallmarks of the networked mindset and a successful social meda strategy.   Leaders at EDF specifically brought Dave in because he thinks differently, he has that mindset.  As Dave notes,  "I often hear "everything you say makes me uncomfortable - but go do it."    The leadership of the organization understands that social media and connectedness has an impact on the organization and they need to embrace it. 

Traynor's piece is a reflection on how network leadership is different from more traditional leadership skills for leading organizations.  He describes the discomfort that many of us feel when we shift from working in traditional environments (in organizations) to working within a network or working in the clouds.  The phrase working in the clouds is a nod to Marc Pesce's essay, "The Tower and the Clouds." 

Traynor talks about the discomfort between the two different modes of working.  He says it feels like vertigo:

Vertigo is a state caused by being out of balance in relation to your environment. Moving from a traditional environment to a network or connected environment can cause a kind of vertigo, because the environment is so radically different. It operates by different rules and responds to different stimuli. Armed only with the perspectives and skills honed in traditional settings, one who tries to lead in a network environment can find the task unsettling and disorienting.

He talks about the issues of scaling:

First, it is important to keep moving the creative, adaptive edge of the network outward so that the universe of the network expands in three dimensions, even as it populates with forms. The principal challenge here is capacity, as an ever-expanding network requires ever-expanding resources.

He goes to describe ways that a network can scale, but be efficient.   He made some points that  resonated with me:

shrink or contract routine and recurring actions to their simplest and most efficient forms—everything from operating systems to routine functions, such as providing food for meetings and creating newsletters. These things should be efficient but are not, mostly because of human problems, such as poor communication, resistance to compliance, forgetfulness and so on. Because of this, “efficiency” in these areas is less a system-building challenge than a habit-building one. One management tool we have developed to help us is FOLKS Protocols. These binders for staff and key leaders break down all the network’s routine and predictable functions into a simple one-page description of what the task is, how to do it, whose role it is to do what, and so on. This tool is designed to help us make progress in the third way of creating and preserving space: by shrinking routines. FOLKS is our network management motto and stands for the following:

• F (form follows function): We want to build only the level of structure and formality that we need to do the job—no more and no less. If we overbuild, it will require more resources to support and be that much harder to deconstruct.
• O (open architecture is best): We try to build forms (i.e., committees, teams, and processes) that are flexible, informal, provisional, have provisional leadership, and are always open to new people. These forms are more in sync with a network environment.
• L (let it go): If it isn’t working or if there is no demand, you have to let it go and let it go quickly. That goes for an idea you might have and for which you can’t get interest or for a program you have run for five years that no longer sells.
• K (keep it simple): We need to keep simple things simple so that we have the time and energy for the complicated stuff. Anything that can be routine should be. A five-minute problem shouldn’t take 15 minutes.
• S (solve the problem): In a flexible environment, we need to move through stuck places a hundred times a day. Everyone needs to make “solving the problem” the most important rule of engagement with one another.

It struck me that taking a FOLKS approach to implementing social media strategy experiments could be very beneficial.

The Internal is the new External: EDF Business Innovation Exchange

David Witzel, Director, Innovation Exchange, EDF

Today at the Packard Foundation, I had opportunity to have a conversation with Environmental Defense Fund's David Witzel, Director, Innovation Exchange and two colleagues , Beth Trask, West Coast office and Julie Stoffer, the person overseeing EDF's social media strategy (she introduced herself as blog czar and chief twitter officer as she's the person behind their EDF's branded Twittering).   Along with Kathy Reich and Stephanie McAuliffe, we got to ask many questions about their network.

Environmental Defense Fund tackles the most serious environmental problems with four pronged approach:  sound science, economic incentives,  corporate partnerships , and getting the law right.  (If you want to learn more about the organization, their CEO, Fred Krupp, is on Twitter and does his own tweets!)  The Environmental Defense Fund or EDF is a grantee organization and also attended the Packard Foundation's recent Network Effectiveness Convening by the Monitor Institute in Washington, DC in May.

For more context, see Networks and Philanthropy Exploration and the most recent release of the Working Wikily paper from Monitor Institute.

The objective of the The Innovation Exchange is to facilitate rapid and widespread adoption of environmental innovation in business.  They hope to improve both the environmental impact of business (improve operations) and the business impact of the environment (improve products).   They are in the process of building and growing a 'problem solving' network by convening thoughtful people inside and outside of EDF to review their thinking and then comment, critique, and contribute new information so they can improve their impact.

The network grows out of their ground-breaking work in partnering with businesses.  Over twenty years ago, they partnered with McDonalds to test new packaging materials. (You can read more here)
Later, they worked with Fedex to develop the first hybrid truck.   These groundbreaking partnerships with business continue, but EDF has established a network approach to scaling behavior change in businesses.  As David Witzel observed during our conversation,  "A problem-solving network is the only way we scale rapidly and effect change with limited resources."

This is an open and transparent network.  For example, they have a Climate Corps program.  Where together with their partner, Net Impact, EDF embeds trained MBA students who identify energy efficiency improvements that can cut costs and reduce emissions.   The Fellows are blogging about their experience and learnings on The Innovation Exchange blog.

Introduction to the EDF Innovation Exchange

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As Witzel observes, our strategy for scaling the network includes sharing of the learnings, modeling transparent behavior ourselves, collecting and diseminating results, trainings, and scaling the fellows programs who can infiltrate companies to acquire a green lens.

• Blurring the lines between internal/external:  What does modeling transparent behavior actually look like on the ground?   For one thing, the line between internal and external discussions is thin.  Anyone can participate or contribute to their Network strategy planning discussions which are also shared on the program's blog.  The Innovation program shared a draft of its elevator pitch.   A college professor discovered it, and had the class review it as a project.  Says Witzel, "Their input vastly improved it - and if we kept it locked up and under wraps until it was done, we would have the lost the opportunity for improvement." 

Witzel says other transparent behavior includes:

• Creative commons licenses on the web site
• Sharing internal presentations on slideshare
• Strategy documents are put in google documents or blogged, they ask for feedback via Twitter
• Holding unconferences to invite individuals and busineses beyond their staff and partners to participate - and this serves as a important research/feedback mechanism
• Open conference callsWe are a laboratory for the organization - to pilot - we're first movers

This is thoughtful, authentic, and strategic transparency.  As Witzel notes,  "But it doesn't mean that we don't protect our relationships.  So, we're very careful about making sure our conversations are respectful.  We don't want to hurt our partners.  That's not to say that constructive criticism is not offered."

What allows an organization or network to work in this way?  Leadership and culture are important.  To embrace transparency, it is important that:

• Leadership is Comfortable with Discomfort:  Openness and transparency are hallmarks of the networked mindset.  Leaders at EDF specifically brought Dave in because he thinks differently, he has a networked mindset.  As Dave notes,  "I often hear "everything you say makes me uncomfortable - but go do it."    The leadership of the organization understands that social media and connectedness has an impact on the organization and they need to embrace it.
  
• A Learning By Doing Organizational Culture:   Witzel says that there organization's DNA incorporates learning by doing.  The culture allows the experimentation  On the ground, Witzel says, his program group is experimentating.  The method is simple - they test their ideas, if it works they build on it and if it doesn't they remix.  Witzel notes, we don't have the barrier of "paralysis by analysis."

How is your network or organization embracing transparency and opennness?  Have a story, please sign up for a guest post here or let us know in the comments.

Guest Post by Michael Sola: A Day of the Life of NWF's Social Media Outreach Coordinator Danielle Brigida

Danielle Brigida, NWF Social Media Outreach Coordinator (@starfocus on Twitter)

Note from Beth:  In the coming weeks, we're peeking over the shoulder of nonprofit social media practitioners to learn about their work flow and techniques.  We know that success in social media depends on deep engagement as Charlene Li's research has uncovered.  For nonprofits, that means moving from the transactional to the constant relationships.  Further, we also know that to scale, it requires all staff to include social media.  

As we discovered last week from looking at movement building, relationship building skills are really important.  As Valera Maltoni wrote in her post about ten tips for  building movements, “make advocates feel like rock stars - give people your attention. Period. That is what they crave and appreciate the most. Being heard, counting, being recognized. Ordinary people can and do have extraordinary stories and ideas to share.”  I asked Tom Subak, VP of Online Services at Planned Parenthood, during our conversation, what does that look like on the ground?  His answer, "There are many ways, but we do spend a great deal of time sending virtual birthday cards to folks."

I got curious ... what does this type of relationship building look like in the weeds?  What's it like behind the firewall facilitating everyone in the organization to embrace social media?

If you work for a nonprofit and are responsible for some or all of the social media implementation and would like to share "A Day in the Life of" post about your work flow, how you build relationships with stakeholders, how your organization embraces social media, please sign up for a guest post here.

A Day in the Life of @Starfocus At Work by Michael Sola

Who is this social butterfly?  At barely a quarter of a century this remarkable dare I say trend setting young woman has become a role model, an example of how to connect and interact with legions of people in all walks of life.  But who is she really?  What is the toll of such devotion to cause, to mission, to sharing her passion?  What is a day in the life of Danielle Brigida, Social Media Outreach Coordinator at the National Wildlife Federation, all about?

I have had the rare and distinct honor of riding shot gun with @Starfocus, as she is known in the social media world, on a 3 city “Good Tech Tour 09” ( #GTT09 ) to some of National Wildlife Federations larger field offices.  During the past 8 days the two of us have wandered this great land of ours, bouncing around from Reston Va, to Ann Arbor Mi, a stop in Boulder Co, a quick hop over the Rocky’s to Seattle Wa and finally coming home to Washington DC.  It was an exhausting trip but one that would not have been possible if not for the energy and spunk that Danielle brings to her everyday approach to spreading the joy that Social Networking can be.

The day started first flying from Dulles Virginia where it was necessary to tranquilize Danielle – let’s get that out there, she quite simply does not fly well.  This is rather amusing as she is in such demand to speak at so many conferences regarding the Social Networking program at NWF.  This past year alone she has been a presenter at NTEN's NTC (in San Francisco),  Blackbaud User Conference in Charleston, SxSw in Austin, the list goes on. 

Upon arrival at our first stop it was clear the level of excitement to engage, train and actually consult with staff far out weighed any fears of travel and within an hour of being on the ground we were visiting with staff at our Ann Arbor office.

When Danielle speaks about social networking it’s clear the passion and desire to communicate her love of nature and wildlife with vast amounts of like minded people comes shining through.  When Danielle speaks it’s from the heart.  As we wrapped up our session at our second stop with the NWF office staff we went for a quick trip up to one of the impressive peaks that loomed over Boulder.  We weren’t in the car for more than 20 min on the climb up when she got all excited, made me pull over and like a lioness stalking its prey bolted from the car and went off into this field to film a family of deer, a doe and two tiny fawns that had worked their way past this wooded ravine into a hip high pasture. 

She was like a little kid in a candy store snapping pictures, then turning to her iPhone and Tweeting about how she spotted Wildlife with the #NWF hash tag to share with the Wildlife Watch program what she had seen.  The girl is a nut when it comes to using technology to connect people with wildlife and the importance in protecting it. 

When Danielle isn’t running after deer up in the Rocky Mountains she is typically up till 2am answering Tweets, sharing links, responding to messages, and connecting with some of the 7,500 followers she has on her personal Twitter account, the 13,000 that follow NWF Twitter programs because of her efforts, the 1,200 friends she has on Facebook.

I have to share that Danielle does have one failing, she is addicted to caffeine, to get through a typical day coffee appears to be a vice.  I’ve seen her start off her day calm, quiet, reserved – on the first day of our #GTT09  I would ask: “do you want breakfast”,  “no” she replies, “can we stop and get Starbucks?” she asks – I tell her “coffee doesn’t count as breakfast”.  She looks at me with this most intense stare, her eyes boring into me and says with a little more force, “Starbucks, please” – hard to say no after that stare.

What I really enjoyed watching throughout a typical “Danielle day” during our tour was how she not only would take great glee in showing the staff who were hungry to know and learn how to use these marketing / networking tools but how she approached those staff who were afraid to learn.  How she would slowly bring them around as if she had some Jedi mind power that convinced them using Social Networking was good. 

One such convert who swore she would never use Facebook, that it had “no purpose” and had “no time” was singing her praises when we hit Colorado.  Within a few short months of Danielle convincing, cajoling and finally helping her set up a page, she not only was finding ways to grow a network of followers but was using the service to track and keep a record of news posts, stories, comments and events.  Learning from Danielle ended up enhancing and streamlining the workload of a fellow staff member in spreading the love for Wildlife and this made Danielle’s day.

Danielle truly walks the walk.  The world is a better place because of @Starfocus and I am proud, indeed honored to call her my friend.  Rock on sister! and for the love of God, please find some time to sleep! 

Michael Sola is a 20+ year technology vet having started in the hospitality industry. He has a mix of "for" and "non profit" experience with ten years at the mid-Atlantic environmental advocates Chesapeake Bay Foundation while recently moving into the role of Senior Technologist with the National Wildlife Federation, who have become leaders in implementing social networking strategies. He is an active blogger, Twitterer and speaker at conferences and workshops related to the non profit tech environment.  He is a member of the national CIO 4 Good and Green IT Consortium Groups in DC.

If you work for a nonprofit and are responsible for some or all of the social media implementation and would like to share "A Day in the Life of" post about your work flow, how you build relationships with stakeholders, how your organization embraces social media, please sign up for a guest post here or let us know in the comments.

Becoming A Social Media Savvy Nonprofit, Nurturing A Social Culture Through Personal Use

 
Photo by Dietrich

I love the Red Cross's approach to scaling its engagement strategy by involving the whole organization - it is spelled out in their strategy handbook and policy guidelines.  The first steps are simple once you have policy/philosophy in place and the right mix of bottom up/top down adoption or acceptance of social media.

Here's how the Red Cross handbook states it:

Step 1: Get Social Media Savvy

• Initiate personal social media use:
• Explore the tools you’d like to adopt by using them in your personal life first. It’s easier to understand the culture behind tools like Facebook and Twitter when you spend some time posting your own pictures and experiences.
• Follow the personal online communications guidelines

Using social media as part of getting your job done is easier to imagine and put into practice if you're in the communications, marketing, outreach, or fundraising departments.   The listening as a first step is familiar - it's free market research, it's brand monitoring, it's an analysis of press mentions. 

Using social media listening is somewhat more difficult to imagine, perhaps, if you're managing programs or at the policy/funding level.

One of the approaches I've been thinking about lately is how professional learning through social media channels can be put into practice by using listening (and engaging techniques) for program development.  Before this can happen, there are a couple of culture shifts:

• Professional learning is and should be a part of your job and honored by the culture. That you feel it is okay to spend some of your work day investing in your knowledge and you gather wisdom from your professional networks, including via social media channels.
• The importance of carving out time for this type of learning.  It is difficult because you have shift gears from your Outlook calendar, answering emails, getting tasks done mind shift.  It's a shift from a getting things done sort of productivity to social productivity.  Or rather it is finding your social productivity sweet spot.
• Using social media is an enhancement to your offline professional networking and relationship building.  That you may use it to extend relationships with people you've met at conferences.  The shift is the comfort level in using these tools to develop or initiate new connections.  For me, personally, I've found that social media has connected me with people who are thinking deeply about a lot of the same topics and that by connecting via social media it has enriched my learning.  I think there are some generational differences as well as industry differences in comfort level of using social media tools to leverage your personal networks.
• The concern about information overload and too much unstructured information.  Attending to your professional learning using social media and networks requires making sense out of the leaves rather than being presented a knowledge tree.  The initial dip into the leaves can be overwhelming and unpleasant at first.

Beth's Monitor

Paying Yourself First

Jeremiah Owyang wrote a great post two years ago called "Pay Yourself First."   In a nutshell:

Every morning, for about 2 hours, I pay myself first by researching, reading, and writing blog posts...before I dive into email hell]

In the comment thread, there was a suggestion about putting a sticky note on your monitor.  I needed to do that for myself!

Getting Started: You Don't Have To Be Joey Chestnut

The photo above is Joey Chestnut who won the Nathan's hot dog eating contest in 2008.   His total for the day was 64 hot dogs.    In 2009, he won again, beating his own record by consuming 68 hot dogs. The thought of consuming 68 hot dogs makes me feel a little uncomfortable. No downright sick in the stomach. It's the same sort of discomfort that some people feel about approaching the task of listening for learning using the social web.

Doesn't listening require plowing through mountains and mountains of unstructured information?   Won't it make you dizzy and uncomfortable?  Don't you have to be Joey Chestnut to be successful?  NO!

To get started, think about just eating one small pig in a blanket!

Ask yourself how time you can allocate to listening for professional learning.  Is it a half-hour a day, an hour a day, or is an hour or two a week?   The point is to get started, block out that time, and start paying yourself.

Here are some steps to get started with listening for professional learning via social media.  The bigger questions is - are you ready make the shift?

How do you carve out time for professional learning via social media?  Has it been valuable?  If you're a leader in your organization, how to encourage professional learning?

The Interpretive Dance of Social Media Adoption

I've been designing and delivering technology trainings for nonprofit organizations for the past 15 years,   I try to find fun ways for people to understand and feel comfortable with the technology.  Not so much how to use it, but how to use effectively.  Humor helps. 

Over the past five years, I've been focusing on social media.  In the early days, the big hurdle was getting to shared understanding of what social media really means.  In 2007, Michael Wesch, a digital anthropologist, created this striking video called  The Machine is Us/ing Us, to explain in five minutes what the Web 2.0 or social media was all about.  

In workshops, I'd play the video and have folks jot down words or themes.  I'd aggregate the responses to create a shared mental map.  Over the years,  I used this exercise for different audiences, from filmmakers to university professionals.  This exercise is most appropriate for people who want to know the what/why versus the best practices of how to do it.

Social media is all about the linkages to people versus content and the ability to self-organize and co-creative.   Its the power of being about to work in a networked way with a group that isn't predefined.  

I was delighted to discover the above remix of Wesch's video, "The Machine is Us/ing Us Dance Remix" via Elsua who helped me get to the Cambodian bloggers conference back in 2007. The remix epitomizes the era of social relationships (see Jeremiah Owyang's Five Eras of Social Web). 

I started thinking about interpretive dance and social media adoption challenges after listening to Stowe Boyd's interview with Dion Hinchcliffe about Open Enterprise.   (Dion is one of my favorite visual thinkers, well after David Armano)

Interpretive dance, is when a dancer (or dancers) often improvising (though sometimes it is choreographed) a dance to another medium.  Technology adoption is part choreographed, part improvisation.  The point of that Hinchliffe makes about best practices for adoption of Enterprise 2.0 (or social media for inward facing work) is that there aren't any best practices.  You have to improvise!

According to Hinchcliffe "Organizations are unique, and operate in very different ways and therefore what may work for one business may not work for another."   And if you're talking about organizations working together with other organizations, that is also unique.

So, we should try to avoid at all costs asking this question first "What tool should we use?"  Stop thinking that adopting social media or social software or online collaboration tools is a matter of selecting a tool off a menu.  There is a process that requires understanding the space between the tools and the people and having someone who knows that space so well they can an interpretive dance between the technology and the users.  

Elusa has a great summary of the Dion's interview here

Who in your organization, community, or network serves as the intepretive dancer?  What style of dancing?

What lies beneath social media stress, fear, and barriers to adoption in nonprofits?

Understanding Techno Stress

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If you witnessed how Web 1.0 was adopted (or not) in the nonprofit workplace over the past 10-15 years, you'll notice that fear and silo culture are nothing new or unique as barriers to adoption. 

Steve MacLaughlin recently pointed this in an email.  He often uses the metaphor of not having your web strategy or data be an island.   Steve said silo culture has been a barrier to effective web strategy for years. "The Web is still its own silo in many organizations. It isn't used as part of an overarching strategy.  When nonprofits started using the web, it was largely disconnected from what the rest of the org was doing. It started out as something done by communications or marketing or "owned" by IT. That makes sense, but it created a silo."

This sent me back into my archives from over ten years ago when Web 1.0 was going mainstream in nonprofit workplaces, along with the need to develop technology plans.    Similar adoption issues and themes surfaced as I identified in my recent post on social media policy. 

When I facilitated technology and web workshops for nonprofits in the 1990's, I did a lot of workshops on TechnoStress where small groups would identify their concerns and then literally draw a picture of them.  These are some drawings and reflections from nonprofit staff members in the early to mid-1990's about using the web, email, etc. Today, they might not view these now mainstreamed web tools in that way. But would some of the same fears surface about social media? 

Yes.

The term "TechnoStress" was coined by Michelle Weil and Larry Rosen title of a wonderful book.  TechnoStress is the stress we feel both personally and organizationally when a new technology is introduced into our work lives.  This book was written in 1997 just as Web 1.0 started to cross the chasm.

The authors were concerned about people who were not using the Internet and being excluded from the benefits.  They estimate that about 10-15 of the population are eager to adopt new technologies, another 50% need to have the value proven, and the rest are fearful of new technology. If you are one of the 10-15% of early adopters in social media, it is important to understand how to provide assistance to help others cross the chasm, whether individually or as an organization.

Amy Sample Ward shared a collection of links recently pointing to my post about silo culture.  In a follow up email, she asked what might be different about the adoption issues for social media?

What makes this different is that the technology that is driving this change - the "social graph" or the map of connectedness that we're creating through participation in online social networks.  This technology impacts us personally first before it enters the workplace.  In the past, adoption of technologies like Web 1.0 and the personal computer were driven by the workplace. 

What lies beneath the use of these social media tools?  Whether you're using them to support your organization's marketing and fundraising, for activism, or collaboration across organizations.   It's working in a networked way.   It can mean:

• Leveraging personal networks of individuals:    These tools allow us as individuals to build powerful networks and social capital - and this can be used to help our organization's achieve goals.  The tools make the line between personal/organizational is quite squishy and that's a change management issue.

• Moving from .org to more networked organizations:   Can nonprofits continue to be silos in and of themselves - not to mention continue to work internally as silos in an age of social media?    As my colleague Allison Fine says it is the need to move to network speak and think about the nonprofit staff, volunteers, board, and funders as nodes within their network which is only part of a much larger network of people and resources.

What change management process is needed to move away from organizational silos or islands to fully leverage the social graph and power of social media for nonprofits? What are the consequences of ignoring the need to make this shift?  Do all organizations need to adopt social media or not - or at least this new way of working?

Resource List:

Dave Cormier, Rhizomatic Education: Community As Curriculum
Joitske Huslebosch, Can You Shift Your Organization's Culture By Introducing Social Media?
Steve MacLaughlin, No Constituent Is An Island
Amy Sample Ward, Moving Away from Organizations To What?
Michael Gilbert, The Permeable Organization
Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger,  Cluetrain Manifesto, Chapter 5 The Hyperlinked Organization
Ton Zijlstra, How We Might View Organizations
David Wilcox, Social Media Supports the Shadow
Ori Brafman and Rod A Beckstrom, The Starfish and The Spider
Memetricbrand, A Networked Mindset
Working Wikily - Resources for Network Effectiveness
and paper "Working Wikily"

Noodling Around Change Management and Social Media Adoption

Recently, I reconnected with colleague, Joitske Hulsebosch, who I met in 2005 through Nancy White's Online Community workshop.  I interviewed Joitske about her work way back in 2006.   I asked for some recommendations on Twitter for the best practical sources for change management.   Joitske recommend  Learning To Change.

She also pointed me to an older post on her blog about one of theories of change in the book based on thinking styles.  I did a mashup with social media framing.  Now, have to get my hands on that survey and see if there my noodling holds water.

From the English book review:

"In the third chapter, "Thinking about change in five different colors", Caluwé and Vermaak introduce their color model. They start this chapter by stating the word "change" has five different meanings. The five ways of thinking addressed by the model include different views on what the authors say, "why and how people or things change" (p. 42). The different colors include:

* Yellow-print thinking. People change their standpoints only if their own interests are taken into account.
* Blue-print thinking. People or things change if a clearly specified result is laid down beforehand.
* Red-print thinking. People change if things are appealing and inspiring to them.
* Green-print thinking. People change if they learn. They are motivated to discover their limits.
* White-print thinking. Everything changes autonomously, of its own accord. "

The book, written in 2002, does not address social media and change management or even technology. That lead me to the above noodling.

I also wondered about the historical context of change management and technology tool adoption, asking on Twitter if there case studies about the adoption of the typewriter in the workplace.  Lucy Bernholz, who shares my interest in contextualization, pointed me to this essay about artifacts and change describing the change brought about by the introduction of the typewriter into the workplace.

Think about some of the changes reflected by this typewriter, manufactured by E. Remington & Sons around 1875. It tells a story of innovations in technology and manufacturing. The adoption of the typewriter, at just the same time that women began to work in offices, reflected changes in women's roles, new ideas about the organization of work, and the rapidly growing corporations of the day. In turn, the typewriter brought about and helped to accelerate social change, opening up new jobs for women in the office. Changes in Business and the Workplace. The typewriter, by reducing the time and expense involved in creating documents, encouraged the spread of systematic management. It allowed a system of communications that shaped the business world.

Another Twitter follower, Holger Nauheimer, pointed me to his blog on change management which has lots of resources.  I was struck by his reflections of the Web2.0 Expo:

The growing awareness that there is a need for change management to accompany Web 2.0 projects in organizations. I arrived with my concept of Web 2.0 being a tool for change facilitation - which it is. But I had to realize that introducing social media as a tool for better collaboration, either across an organization or with outside stakeholders needs to be facilitated. It's like the introduction of personal computers 20 years ago into offices, or a big ERP project. And it seems that as long as the netgen generation hasn't entirely taken over all positions within organizations, there will be resistance to implementation of Web 2.0. For a couple of reasons: IT departments want to protect the security of the company's system, Boards fear that will not be able to contain openness and transparency once people are encouraged to write blogs, collaborate on wikis, etc. And putting customers into the driving seat of product development actually means turning how many companies work upside down.

Joitske poses a good question when she asks, "Can you shift your organization's culture by introducing social media?"Joitske observes that the power of social media is more about the culture of openly sharing knowledge, collaboration, and engaging in co-creation.  She points out that having  the tools does not mean you have improved the collaboration between your professionals.   It reminded of the questions we discussed in the early 1990's about using online collaboration tools for nonprofits.  For example, if an organization does work online with board can it be effective or I used to say, "a dysfunctional board offline is dysfunctional online."

She goes to pose a great chicken or egg question:

• Is your organizational culture ready for social media or do you want to shift the culture by introducing social media?
• What is the actual change you are envisioning?
• Can social media play a role in this?
• What are the other inventions that are needed to help change the organizational culture?

Joitske says you to begin with assessing the culture of the organization and see whether there is a match or a mismatch with social media cultures.

Some other change management resources mentioned by Twitter followers

@hnauheimer suggested:

http://twitter.com/snowded
http://www.cognitive-edge.com/
http://www.presencing.com/index.shtml
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/index.php

Some more resources from Facebook Friends:

Paul DiPerna

Definitely agree that Esther Dyson is a leader on tech adoption.

Clayton Christensen/Michael Horn's disruptive innovation writings (most recently about education)..

In the social sciences, I'd recommend Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations. It's considered a classic.

A couple years ago I interviewed Christine Beckman (Cal-Irvine), who has done some interesting organizational research about how methods and technologies are adopted by different types of firms.

James Wu

How about Chris Hughes? Facebook and My.BarackObama.com - highly thoughtful and articulate

Scarlett Swerdlow

Well, I'm not sure about technology adoption, but Ben Cameron is an amazing thinker on change management. You can check out his remarks at our recent members' meeting

Mark Hulse

What are your best resources of change management?  I'm looking for practical sources mostly.

Social Media Behind the Firewall: The Tire, Tower, or Hub and Spoke?

Photo by Stitch

I've been reflecting on the ideas shared at a panel called "Why Corporate Social Media Marketing Fails and How To Fix It" presented at the Web2.0 Expo by Peter Kim, Charlene Li, and Jeremiah Owyang.  The discussion was organized around four points of social media failure:

• How can I get my culture to adapt?
• How can I make my campaigns work?
• What am I supposed to measure?
• Does social media even matter?

For this post, I wanted to focus on the first issue - the mismatch between organizational culture and social media adoption.  To be successful, the organizational culture needs to be a learning culture, willing to experiment and learn.  

As Charlene Li pointed out, "Change management processes take years - you don't change over night. You need to start small and get comfortable with the technology.  You need to get the big guns involved and the only way to do that is to find the sweet spot between outcomes or goals and demonstrate how the social media strategy supports that."  Take for example, the steps outlined in this "Twitter for the Workplace" article.

Translation for nonprofits:  Explain your social media strategy and how it supports your organization's key outcomes. 

They also warned against having social media be one person's responsibility or that it is a younger person's game.  Social media is about engaging with your stakeholders - whose responsibility is that?

Jeremiah Owyang shared three different models for how corporations organize and deploy social media:

1. THE TIRE

Photo by SamDiablo

The Tire: Social media forms at the edges of the company. No clear leader. Upside: appears very authentic. Downside: one side has no idea what the other is doing.

I've seen this model with nonprofits and I'd add that the other downside is that the implementation isn't strategic.

2. THE TOWER

 

Flickr Photo by MR+G

The Tower: Led by corporate communications, by executive mandate. The upside: Lots of resources. The downside? Not authentic, which saps participation and buy-in.

I've also seen this model in nonprofits and it isn't effective when silo culture gets in the way.  Here's another anecdote, shared anonymously from a reader via email.

At my nonprofit, I work in the web department and we have been tasked by the executive director and director of communications to implement and oversee our social media presence. Implement and oversee, that is, without input from any other departments. There are 250 employees, so to task one group--a group that has no contact with members at all--with handling social media is a little weird to me. At the same time, I'm grateful that they're open to using social media in the first place, so I don't want to complain too much.
 
We actually have developed a pretty robust social media presence. We even have a staff person dedicated to social media implementation--me! But they didn't tell anyone on staff about it! So, weirdly, my whole job description is to work with other departments to develop and implement their social media stuff--but nobody knows my position exists unless they personally know me (which most people don't). I do work with people in other departments a bit, but on a totally individual basis--usually I approach them with an idea and work with them to implement it. But as far as, say, having a team drafting the social media strategy, I've suggested it and been told that no, we'll draft it then others can comment. The result is that I feel like I'm sneaking around behind other department's backs drafting a social media strategy that they're not even aware of, and know that when we finally present them with this completed strategy for their approval, heads are going to roll.
 
I'm constantly having to field complaints from staff "how come when our department wanted to do that we weren't allowed to but now you're allowed to?" "Why should the web team be handling this when it has nothing to do with the website?" etc.  The web team is the only team that has authority to establish a presence on social networks--that alone is a huge point of contention.
 
People in our organization are getting downright nasty about who "owns" social media? That and the fact that silo culture absolutely prevents social media strategies from succeeding so, really, what's the point if the internal communication issues aren't going to be addressed as part of the strategy?"

3.  THE HUB AND SPOKE

Flickr Photo by Colmmacc

Hub-and-Spoke: some central focus, but with clear ownership at the edges. Upside: this is the aspirational model because it combines resources and participation. Downside: the most difficult to establish.

Charlene Li shared an exercise that does with corporations that sounded very similar to the share pair exercise I created for the WeAreMedia Workshop.

-Have organizational staff list all the worst fears
-Most common fear: don't trust employees, other themes
-How do you mitigate those risks?
-What are the benefits on the other side?
-Then make the decision to begin social media experiment

When asked to identify a "successful" corporation using social media, they pointed to examples of corporations that have failed and learned and kept on going.  (Sounds like Listen, Learn, and Adapt)

Resource:

Jeremiah Owyang, What's Wrong With Corporate Social Media and How To Fix It (round up of posts)

Question:

How is social media organized within your nonprofit organization?  Does it match any of the above models?  Is it working?  Why or why not?  

What Can Location-Based Social Networks Learn from Dogs?

Photo by YIvas

You’ll have to listen to the podcast that Matt Moore (Innotecture, Engineers Without Fears), Doug Cornelius (KM Space, Goodwin Procter) and Stewart Mader (wikipatterns) recorded last week to find out!   I haven't yet listened to it so really interested in the answer. (Maybe Stewart will leave a comment with a summary of the answers ...)

A couple of teasers in the play by play that will make me definitely go and listen to the entire podcast with ear towards reflecting on any insights about working wikily:

• Training as a barrier to adoption - wikis are simple
• Wikis as a natural solution for unstructured information
• Giving and taking
• The steady curve rather than the tidal wave

And definitely as a great addition to my Cute Dog Theory personal learning space.  (Hat tip to Reed Stockman who shared with NpTech Room on FriendFeed for the link.)

Anyone listen to the podcast and know the answer?  Anyone who hasn't listened to the podcast and want to take a guess at the answer? 

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• Wikis Are Now Serious Business

Walking the Line Between Web2.0 and Old Skool in Nonprofits

Photo by Kalabird (Michaela Hackner)

Johanna Bates, an extraordinary nonprofit technologist, has launched her blog with a very thoughtful post called "Walking the Line Between Web 2.0 and Old Skool in Nonprofits"  This adds beautifully to the conversation over at  NTEN Wiki (name coming soon).  A number of insightful comments have led to the creation of How Can Your Organization Avoid Drinking the Web 2.0 Kool Aid?, a checklist helping orgs understand when they should not devote resources to Web 2.0.

Johanna's post talks about the importance of knowing your audience.  While you (staff person in the nonprofit) may be ready or getting fluent in Web 2.0, what do you do if your audience or constituents are not?  What do you do?

We survey our constituents periodically. They are not early adopters. After many years, they are now solid email users and are fairly confident using Google. But RSS? Instant messaging? YouTube? As much as we want them to be there, they are just not there yet. Some are showing signs. They are just on the slower side of the adoption curve. So does that mean that our org should not be investing time and energy in social media tools?

Is the answer  dancing in the spaces in between?  I like the way Johanna describes it - a scaffolding.

What we’re doing is taking a Web 2.0 approach, but we’ve dialed down the tools a bit. We are slowly marching out more ways for our constituents to engage online.

Do you ever need to walk the line between cutting edge social media and Old Skool in your org? If so, how do you do it?

As Gail Peterson notes in the comments of Johanna's post, "I think the answer is to try to be kind and helpful to those who fear technology and provide several ways to communicate."

What's the sweet spot between personal productivity and social productivity?

Photo by Natala007

While stuck in O'Hare on Saturday, I wrote a post about personal productivity as related to "email overload" and rounded up some tips. (Written while being stranded at O'Hare airport due to flight cancellations does not always allow neurons to connect ....)   After posting it,  I remembered the phrase - "Social Productivity" that I read in one of the final chapters of "Connect: A Guide To the New Way of Working on the Web" by Anne Zelenka.   I didn't have the book with me and couldn't quite remember exactly the details, but googled a bit and found this post from her personal blog about productive multi-tasking. 

Then I got a track back from the email dashboard blog that rounded up all posts that responded to the New York Times article about information overload.   It pointed to a post from Stowe Boyd called "Information Overload, Schmoverload" that suggested the article was another attack on connectedness and whole brain attention.

"The old school thinking is about individual productivity: but the social revolution has moved past that into network productivity, which entails connectedness and social meaning. The personal hit on productivity is real, but it's not a cost: it's an investment; and the juice is worth the squeeze."

Stowe goes on to clarify that personal productivity is not the way to measure the benefits of social tools and coins a phrase "network productivity" - perhaps better described as "network effectiveness" which in my mind consists of the Three "R's" of network weaving (relationship building, rewards, and reciprocity) -- all of which involve tasks that take time.   Stowe Boyd says much better:

As we have moved from hierarchical, top-down, centralized work -- think Henry Ford's assembly lines or the pre-Internet global corporation -- to networked, bottom-up, edgewise work personal productivity has been trumped by network productivity. Network productivity is the effectiveness of a person's entire network: contacts, contacts of contacts, and so on.

Connected people will naturally gravitate toward an ethic where they will trade personal productivity for connectedness: they will interrupt their own work to help a contact make progress. Ultimately, in a bottom-up fashion, this leads to the network as a whole making more progress than if each individual tries to optimize personal productivity. (Trust me, its provable. I studied queuing theory in graduate school.) I call this Boyd's Law, by the way.

Perhaps more importantly, the willingness to assist others leads to closer social connections, and increases the likelihood of reciprocal behavior, where an obsession with personal productivity does not.

He also talks about the value of "disconnecting" - to focus on the other tasks - but suggests that our bias should be towards being connected. 

My argument is not really about the downside of missing something flowing by the torrent of information everyday, nor is it about being a busy little bee working like mad on some sort of modern information assembly line. It is about the psychological, spiritual, and work benefits of connection. Note that for these to hold, people will have to learn to be much more judicious in the determination of who -- and how many -- they will connect with. The willingness to swap personal productivity for connection is just that: it is an ethical choice that asserts that the bonds of connection, today and over time, are more important -- not just abstractly, but in the most concrete way -- than making headway on this piece of work, right now.

He also builds an argument for multi-tasking or rather the overhead of multi-tasking. 

Yes, it is true that moving from one full brain task to a different full brain task has a high cost of participation, especially for some one who doesn't transition from task to task on a regular basis. However, learning to operate in a flow mind state, where partial attention is being paid to "partial tasks", can lead to the transitions costing less at each interruption.

 

I'm reading John Medina's Brain Rules.  There is a whole chapter on attention and it covers multi-tasking and Medina observes that multi-tasking is myth because the human brain is not capable of focusing on more than one thing.  He outlines the process that we go through when "multi-tasking" - it is more like rapid attention shifting between tasks.  (Shift Alert, Activate Task 1, Disengagement, Activate Task 2).  He says the brain does these four steps in sequence each time we shift from one task to another.  That's why people loose track in the middle - now where was I? when switching tasks.

He suggests that those who appear to be good a multi-tasking actually have good working memories, capable of paying attention to several inputs at one time.    According to the research that Medina points to - it takes longer to complete a task  -- so there in lies the meaning of what Stoww Boyd was saying about participation in his piece.

So, I'm wondering where the sweet spot between personal productivity and networked productivity comes into play?   More on this in the comments to this post.  I also twittered this question and got some thoughtful responses:

Dave Wallace said in a tweet

While I know what you are getting at, I feel connectedness and productivity needn't necessarily be at either end of a gtd continuum

PF Anderson said in a tweet

I think of it as appropriate balance between input and output.

I am wondering how nonprofits may (or may not) appreciate the value of networked productivity.  In a recent article over at NpTech News called "Twitter: Networking on the Run"

But the best "value proposition" of Twitter, one that seems to be shared by many of Twitter's early adopters, was summed up by Cloward. "I'm better at my job because of Twitter, because I have access to a wide network that I didn't before. I can ask questions, get them answered, share information, and get feedback. The reason why organizations send staff to conferences is to 1) gain knowledge, and 2) network. Twitter lets me do that every day."

All this leads me to ask:

• Does your organization value or understand the concept "networked productivity"? Why or why not?
• How do you balance networked productivity with personal productivity?
• What is the value of "disconnecting" and do you think your organization has a bias towards connectedness or disconnectedness?

Meet Nicola M. Wells: Social Media As An Online Door Knocking Campaign for Immigrant Rights

Nicola M. Wells, Blogger and Community Organizer

"We need to treat many of our social tools like door knocking, if someone comments on our site, we should take that as a hello, and use it to open a door to a potential relationship with a new leader, member, or supporter."

Nicola M. Wells is an activist for immigrant rights.  She blogs at Standing Firm for Fair Immigration Reform Movement.  She has been passionate about the issue of immigrant rights since 2002, when she worked at Casa del Migrantes in Tijuana, Mexico, a shelter for immigrants and deportees. While there she lived and worked with immigrants from throughout the US and Central America, and they shared their experiences.  That experience awakened her desire to make immigration rights her life's work. After she left Mexico she worked with refugee communities in Philadelphia and did research on migrant youth at a research center in Chicago.  She has also worked with SOS Racisme, the national immigrant rights organization in Paris, France.

1.  Tell me about FIRM.

FIRM, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement is a national coalition of grassroots immigrant rights groups working together for immigrant justice.  FIRM is a project of the Center for Community Change, and is staffed by the Center, but it is led and all decisions are made by the Immigrant Organizing Committee, a table of grassroots groups that are the head of FIRM. A listing of these groups is also available on our website. FIRM is currently running the Building America Together Campaign, a national campaign to build the strength of immigrant rights in the US, and to work for just and humane immigration reform.

2.  What is your job at Firm?

My first job in the United States after working in France was as an intern with the Center for Community Change on their immigration team helping to create a toolkit on fighting anti-immigrant local ordinances. The immigration team supports a national coalition of grassroots immigrant rights groups, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. I quickly became integrated into the team as an Organizer for state and local rights.

3.  How do you use technology as part of your organizing work?

Though I always had a personal interest in technology and social media, I didn't know how to integrate it into my more traditional organizing portfolio. That all changed after the massive and devastating raids in New Bedford, MA in early 2007. An organizer on our team, George Goehl, went to help the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition in anyway he could.

He immediately saw the need to tell the stories of the families that had been ripped apart by the raids, of children who had lost parents, of mother who weren't sure if they could pay rent or feed their children next week. He started a blog, and asked me to continue the project. I transformed that blog into what is today  Standing FIRM  and my interest in social media as a tool for organizing skyrocketed from there.

I have spent the last year meeting folks, reading, and testing out social media tools  with other organizers. I'm currently  co- authoring a guide to these tools for organizers like myself available at the end of this month. In addition to my continued work as State and Local Organizer at FIRM, I am working with non-profits connected to the Center to help them learn about these tools and implement them in their work in effective and productive ways.

4.  What are you goals for using social media to support your organizing work?

FIRM has built a social media infrastructure that links together our blog, social network presence, listserv and static website into a coherent network of tools. This infrastructure serves three goals:

1) To generate and promote pro-migrant content, not only created by FIRM, but by our partner organizations and allies across the country; more boradly to be a productive part of the pro-migrant blogosphere that is growing stronger each day

2) To create learning tools for our partner organizations. Our partners may not be able to jumpstart using these tools on their own, and by engaging in FIRM's tools they can learn about social media, take test runs, and figure our what will eventually work best for them

3) To connect with individuals/organizations outside of our current network that are in the fight for immigrant rights- support their work, or create collaborations with them

Those are our goals for FIRM's infrastructure, but we also look to support the programs and projects of others within the immigrant rights movement. Like the new pro-migrant community blog, the Sanctuary.


5.  Some staff members who work for nonprofits say that they have difficulty
convincing people in their organizations about the value of social media.  How did you organization successfully deploy and adopt these
tools?

It's show and show. Telling people about these tools doesn't really do a lot for us. You have to build something of quality and bring results. That's the importance of goal number 2 for FIRM's social media tools. We've got to help not only our organization, but other organizations to learn about these tools, and the best way to do that is build it. Unfortunately, many people build things, and then forget to tell people how they did it. They show an organization the cool campaign or website, but don't give the organization the tools or insights needed to build their own. That's the importance of the guide I'm helping pull together. Now that FIRM has built stuff, learned stuff, we have to share that knowledge in a comprehensive and useful way.

One of the major obstacles non-profits face is convincing people these tools work. Sure that's important, but honestly in much of my work with organizers on the ground, that is not the main problem. The bigger problem is a lack of staff time. It's not that many of them don't believe, it's that they don't have the time or resources to learn enough to make an educated choice about what tools to use and how. If we really want social media tools to be integrated into our work, we need to figure out new ways to fund staffing for them. When non profits are running five programs, two actions, and leadership development trainings there often aren't resources left for this work. It's up to funders, consultants, and non-profit staff to find creative ways to get resources for social media, and to integrate the tools into our everyday work.


6. Tell me a story about how using a blog, social network, or other social networking tool was of great value to your mission or organization's program.

Social media tools allow FIRM to strengthen a network for immigrant justice, and to further our organizing goals. The key to our success is integrating offline and online  organizing  relationships. One without the other is never as effective. This lesson hit home for us last year around the vote for the DREAM Act (a bill that would allow undocumented students, brought here as children, to have access to higher education). We had about two weeks before the vote and we were being asked to do "something" using online tools. We got together with our partners at the National Immigration Law Center, and the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and approached (offline) Campus Progress, The United States Student Association, the United We Dream Coalition, and the Campus Democrats asking them to help us reach out to students around the country and get them to organize call-in days to their congressmen in support of the DREAM Act. We wanted to have campuses around the country calling-in on the same days to congress.

Now, if we had about three months of outreach we could have pulled this off, but with only two weeks, we knew we needed to use social media to make things happen big and fast. We set up a facebook group, and started the outreach with our partner organizations. The list of local and state groups that came on board to help push out this effort online is just too long to list here, but believe me there was a massive push to sign up campuses to organize call-in days that was fueled by a unique mixtures of national, state and local groups along with passionate individuals. By the end of about 8 days we had touched something like 17,000 people with our invites and we had signed up over 50 campuses in 22 states to hold call-in days. We offered trainings and materials to each of the campuses in preparation and the organizers did their best to make these days a success. We now have a list of campus organizers across the country that supported DREAM and this action.

It was the connection of our offline and online relationships that allowed this action to take off, and social media tools that greased the wheels for its growth.

7. What's your advice about getting conversation going on your organization's blog?  I noticed that you have lots of comments.

It's provocative content that hits the pulse of your audience, as well as filling a necessary niche.

I learned a lot from Think progress as a model for organizational blogging. Think Progress editorializes through interesting content, not necessarily controversial editorials. And it is independent enough from the Center for American Progress that it can cover whichever topics it needs to.

We try to do that with our blog. There are already a ton of great immigrant rights bloggers out there producing amazing content. We needed to find a way for us to fill a gap within the immigrant rights movement that was useful, not redundant. That gap was reporting from the state and local bases as well as the federal fight, and providing informative content. We focus our content on updates and news stories from our partner organizations, and we link to and support the content of other blogs that provide more opinions and editorializing around this subject. Think Progress also stays within the news cycle, by providing time-relevant content our blog remains relevant day to day.

I'm also a big believer in engaging your readers. Bloggers get this, but organizations often forget to reach out with personal emails to individuals that encourage them to post comments on their blog. We need to treat many of our social tools like door knocking, if someone comments on our site, we should take that as a hello, and use it to open a door to a potential relationship with a new leader, member, or supporter.

People that see provocative video and news stories on our blog often feel compelled to write on our blog. However, I know that they also take background information that they've learned on our site and use it in their comments and posts on other sites. For us, the most important thing is not the strength of our own blog, but rather the health and vibrancy of the pro-migrant blogosphere and the production of pro-migrant content within a larger network of allies and partners.

The Opportunity Agenda released a report last year saying that progressives dominated every progressive political issue online, except immigration. There is an aggressive anti-immigrant presence online, and we need to build partnerships with others online to fight back. Readers feel that fight, they understand the urgency of this issue, and that motivates them to join the conversation.

8. What blogs do you read by women who write about migrant rights?

Some write pro-migrant blogs, or simply cover immigration as a part of their larger scope. Two women that I've particularly been able to learn a lot from have been Liza Sabater and Marisa Trevino. I owe so much to these women and others.

At the end of the day I'm still learning about this technology right alongside my sisters, and the exciting thing is that more and more women are coming to write about migrant rights and use social media tools for justice each day. The fight continues and our strength grows and that's the reason why I love this work.

Cross-posted at BlogHer

Where do you get the time to blog? Clay Shirky Answers

One of the benefits of a long flight is that you can catch up on reading. I took my copy of Here Comes Everyone Along. Here's a video of a recent talk he did and the transcription.

Link via Dean Collins
The talk is transcribed here.

Be Your Own Filter In the Global Brain

Photo by VaxZine

Almost ten years ago, I used to teach a workshop called "Digital Information Coping Skills" for  artists and arts organizations as part of a series of workshop on the theme of how to integrate the Internet into your (arts) organization's mission.  Think Web 1.0 strategies and tools from both an individual and organizational viewpoint.  I developed the information coping skills workshop after observing the "information overload" or "techno stress" reaction to the glut of electronic information coming into email boxes.  It was the first inkling of what David Shenk wrote in his book "Data Smog: Surviving the Information Age."

That book uses the metaphor of pollution to explain the cultural impact of too much information (from the Internet) on society.  He talks about the impact of too much information on the human brain and considers how the human brain may evolve over time as the Internet matures and the amount of digital information increases. The last chapter offers some practical advice, including the "Be Your Own Filter" and "Give A Hoot Don't Data Pollute."   The book was written in 1997, so the practical nitty gritty was talking mostly about dealing with waves of email and human systems/skills - NOT automated software programs.

Some neurons in my brain made me connect back to Shenk's book I attended NDN's New Audiences, New Tools Forum.   I think about the increasing connectedness that Peter Leyden described in his overview of networked politics (he used an incredible visually rich set  of powerpoint slides that kept us engaged and this visual.)  The panel "The Evolving Model Using New Tools" where Micah Sifry, Tracy Russo, and Jerry Michalski spoke also made me think back to that book again. (BTW, Dave Witzel did an awesome job of tweeting the key points)

Jerry Michalski use the metaphor of the global brain and 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 or Cantabridgian Creativity.  The idea that 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)

But the point is that knowledge is now externalized in our global brain of connections with our friends.

Maybe that's why Robert Scoble responded to a Twitter user asking if ever experienced information overload. He said no.  I asked him, on Twitter, if he thought his brain had evolved.  He said, "no my brain has not evolved, but my network has."

And, as our networks evolve and the tools to aggregate our friends activity streams - so does the amount of noise increase.    Are we know evolving to Web2.0 version of information overload?  Perhaps called "Networked Overload?"  In this recent post from Read/Write Web called Too Many Choices, Too Much Content describes approaches to filtering your content and reducing the noise.   The bottom line:

It's hard to say. Early adopters are not going to stop playing with every new service, but it's clear that we're getting to a point where tools that centralize, aggregate, but most importantly filter our content are going to be the ones that win out. There are only so many hours in the day, and, as it stands right now, every single one of them could be filled just consuming and interacting with content, social media, and web services. There's also this little thing called "going outside" that we would like to take part in, too. Hopefully we'll see the killer web app to filter the noise someday soon to help us do so, but it's definitely not here yet.

Given there isn't yet a killer app (or maybe there is) How are your filtering your networked content?  What human skills or existing tools are you using to help you avoid networked overload?  What are your best information coping tips and techniques in an age of social media and networked digital lifestyle feeds?