This tweet from Patty Campbell caught my eye. After reading a list of corporate social media strategists and community mangers compiled by Jeremiah Owyang, she wondered if there was a nonprofit list?
Yes, there is! Over at the WeAreMedia Wiki, we have a "Expertise Map" where people self-selected to add their names and in a number of cases share their expertise by contributing to the wiki. This list is evolving and has grown overtime and is not curated. It includes a lot of consultants, bloggers, and service organizations.
I'd like to see a list of people who work as social media strategists as part of their job at a nonprofit or a community manager. I'd like to see the list organized by different segments. So, I've set up a google form on the WeAreMedia Wiki where you can add your name to the list and see the whole list.
I've been playing in a sand box to explore online collaboration/social media tools and how they support network weaving. The big ah ha for me during our reflection that was that effective online collaboration tools for working in a networked way can't have top-down control interaction design. This gets in the way of everyone being able to do a little bit of work. It isn't just about tool features, you have to understand how working in a networked way is embedded in the interaction design of the tool.
I think it is more than just having self-organizing values embedded in the way the tool works. I think these are four qualities to look for:
Network: This is a collection of people and organizations that linked together. It's your professional social network or a network of organizations or typically both.
Self-Organizing: The ability for people to work together without a centralized or top down coordinator. It means letting go of control and letting others help you.
Location: We are no longer tethered to our desktops or offices, but with mobile phones, GPS, and other "where" technology, location is important.
Data Visualization: Given the volume of information and our ability to connect with more people, in order to manage our work visualization is now critical. This comes in the form of maps or other creative ways to see our networks.
It's funny how you discover an insight and then apply that lens to what you're seeing and patterns emerge. I've come across three different tools that embed these principles. These ideas are going to have an impact on the way nonprofits use the Web in 2010 and into the next couple of years.
Lucy Bernholz tipped me off to Groundcrew is a web/mobile software that organizes groups of people in real time in real life to work on projects and allows for complex coordination of tasks and communities. As the name implies, it is a way to turn the crowd into a crew. Network members can see who is available to help at any moment and can quickly communicate assignments to help people work together. This is a synthesis of real time tracking with real time coordination.
I am particularly impressed by the self-organizing qualities of
Groundcrew, around 'participation design', where the volunteers are
handed more control about how their involvement should be applied in
some project or activity, instead of just being told what to do.
I haven't played with it because the tool isn't free (after 30 day trial). I don't want to fall into the "if you build they will come" trap. This tool might work best for organizations that have already built a network on Twitter or Facebook - and could import their friends into the system or have a way to identify people in a geographic area who have an interest in their project or work.
This tools like a good match for organizations that have the networked mindeset - value self-organizing and open participation. I'm thinking about organizations such as 350 or Moms Rising. For more traditional institutions that have worked in a particular way, embracing this tool might require addressing some cultural/change management issues first.
My Plancast for SXSW Session: Crowdsourcing Social Change
I recently came across a tool called "Plan Cast" which incorporates these concepts but in a different way. It is a social network where you share your future plans with your friends. You can also follow other people's plans. It easily allows you to share that information with your networks on Facebook or Twitter. It is a little bit more flexible than the social travel applications like TripIt because you enter any type of event. I've been noticing that in the comments a little bit of self-organizing on going.
Christine Egger shared an interesting presentation tool called Prezi that allows you to bust out of the linear powerpoint trap and present in a more flexible way. This might be a useful application if you're doing a session where you want to avoid talking at people, but want to integrate some visuals. Or, if you're presenting complex ideas - to be able to provide a macro, micro view.
How do you see the ideas of network, self-organizing, location, and data visualization impacting your nonprofit's work? What tools have you been using that incorporate these concepts?
I participated in a meeting today at the Packard Foundation facilitated by the good folks at Monitor Institute to reflect on the work they've been doing over the past 18 months on network effectiveness. Over lunch, we had a conversation about what I have learned about working within an institutional setting and how it differs from working in the "social media cloud" or in a networked way.
Working in an institutional setting is far more structured, formal, more face-to-face meetings, slower paced, and less porosity. Working in a networked way is more non-linear, faster paced, informal, and very porous. I'm not making value judgement that one is better the other, but recoginizing they are different.
These are different cultures, different languages, different ways and styles of working. The technology to support the work is very different. I think one of the keys to transformation and adopting social media or a networked mindset is recognizing how to simultaneously have a foot in both worlds or learn how to shift between the two.
It is difficult to switch from one mode of working to the other, particularly if the different mode of working is not familiar or part of your routine. And, the first experience can be very uncomfortable. What happens a lot is that someone might try it, experience discomfort and immediately stop. The problem is that it takes doing it more than once.
I think it is really important to have a sand box where you can practice using the tools or techniques of working in a networked way in a low risk, safe environment. And, sand boxes are social. You need to be with other people because there is an element of social learning. And, the sand box needs to be more play than formal instruction.
Recently, a colleague who knows a lot about network weaving mentioned wanting to learn more about some social media tools. I wanted to learn more about network weaving. So, we decided to set aside an hour a week for sand box time.
Making time - even just an hour week on your schedule where you aren't checking something off the to do list is hard. But it has been very a rich and rewarding learning experience.
A few design principles for a good sand box:
No formal agenda
Exploratory and creative
FUN!
Invite someone new to the sandbox
Reflection at the end to harvest learnings
Another important element in the sand box is what Rachel Happe calls orchestrated serendipity. She says that serendipity is supposed to be a happy accident and that actually planning it may not seem possible. She says that you can't define actually what will happen, but you need to set up an environment and processes that facilitate serendipity happen. She points a post by Christopher Penn and an article in Fast Company called How to Make Your Own Luck that also talk about this principle.
Rachel offers five tips for making this happen:
Include room in your time and budget for cultivating topics, people, and events that will not have a direct correlated return but fall into your general range of business
Understand what type of happy accidents you would be able to take advantage of and gear your cultivation in that general direction - whether it is topical, geographic, or specific types of people
Listen, probe, and listen some more
Be useful to people in your 'zone', they will return the favor in unexpected, serendipitous ways
Assume you will achieve your goals in a slightly different way than you might think and leave room in your planning for it
How have you used sand boxes for informal learning? How do you encourage serendipty?
I was in Washington, DC on Tuesday and Wednesday for a two-day workshop is designed for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Justice Leaders, who lead and manage networks or accomplish much of their work through networks. The workshop was hosted by the Packard Foundation and Monitor Institute. You can find the workshop materials here.
The workshop will be an opportunity for social change leaders to step back from their day-to-day responsibilities and develop strategic insight about their networks. Specifically, the workshop will be focused on:
Introducing and applying network tools, frameworks, and case studies that can help network leaders assess their effectiveness and increase their impact
Facilitating peer-learning and exchange
Exploring what it means to work with a network mindset
An interactive presentation on best practices for using social media for external communications
Peer discussion on use of online tools for collaboration for bounded networks, exploring some of the concepts in Digital Habits (each participant got a copy)
Half-Day Session: Social Media Strategy Game which included small group work for participants to come up with a strategy for both external communications and an internal learning network to share best practices.
Some reflections on the game:
Many the networks in the room had a track record of working together and a number had deep social media expertise. This made for a rich session for me because participants were sharing their wisdom. The strategy presentations were some of the most detailed and creative I have heard to date - and after doing this workshop many times. I got a glimpse of what doing this workshop with a room full of social media rock stars would be like.
For the small group work to be an optimal learning exerpeince, it requires having at least one person with hands-on experience at each table. I incorporated a human spectragram using very comfortable with social media and not very comfortable. This gave me a visual of who had experience and asked them not to all sit at the same table.
Since there was a strong sense of community and connection in the room, the spectragram discussion was really rich. I asked the "very comfortable" people the following question:
What was your ah ha moment with social media, when you understood its power and benefit to your movement/network?
Participants offered anecdotes from personal use.
"I was able to organize my high school reunion in a half hour because I was friends with everyone on Facebook."
"My personal blog was getting more hits than our organization's web site."
"We also heard a couple of examples of organizational use that described mobilizing activists quickly on Facebook."
Then I asked the people who were standing at the other side of the room, what was it about social media that made them uncomfortable. I also pointed out that they were showing network leadership because they were comfortable with their discomfort. One person shared that social media made them uncomfortable because they were an introverted and being 'out there' did not feel natural.
Then, I asked the people on the comfortable side of the room if they ever felt this way when they first started to use social media. Many did and shared their transition.
I asked the comfortable group if everyone in their organization was a comfortable as them or more like the other side of the room. This prompted some great insights into adoption strategies.
This was the first time I was able to weave the external communications piece with the internal bounded networks piece. It worked well. Aside from the brainstorm about tools, we heard some wonderful techniques that some participants were already using "blogging behind the firewall." This points to how the social media strategist also functions as a network weaver or technology steward internally.
This group was one that was comfortable learning in public and modeled it. I decided to model it and take advantage to learn in public from talented co-facilitators to keep the energy up during the small group activity. I learned some nuances in the share pair technique as well as a quick energizer when the level dropped during the small group.
I revised the cards for the first time in a while to reflect some of the new content. I also got a great idea: a set of cards for the facilitators of each group.
Stephanie McAuliffe inspired to start keeping trainer's notes that focused on the process and now am adding these to the reflections.
Yesterday at the Packard Foundation, as part of a series of "deeper dives" to learn about networks and social media, Eugene Eric Kim of Blue Oxen Associates gave a talk about "Networks in an International Context."
I've gotten into the habit of asking if there will be confidential information shared and what is or isn't bloggable. This makes me more comfortable for me to open my laptop and take notes. Eugene said at the beginning that he would not be sharing any confidential information and that everything is open. I asked if I could live tweet to bring others into the conversation which I did using the tag #packfound.
More than one third of Packard Foundation’s grantees are networks and many more get their work done through networks. The Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness program has long supported projects to help Foundation grantees improve management, governance, and leadership. But over the past two years, the program has expanded its work to include a focus on how grantees can improve the strength and use of these networks.
Since 2000, the Institute of International Education has worked on leadership development with the goal of building and sustaining networks of leaders who would improve the delivery of family planning and reproductive health outcomes through improved services and policies. There are now 990 actively engaged Fellows—across the five focal countries of Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines—regularly participating in the Leadership Development for Mobilizing Reproductive Health network activities.
The focus of Eugene's work with this network was to better understand its community, the most promising group practices, and have an open discussion that would facilitate learning and interaction among these leaders who were miles apart, spoke different languages, and had Internet access challenges. With the entire network engaged, the leaders worked together to create a report to document the lessons they were learning from implementing leadership programs for reproductive health, through a new wiki.
This session was particularly exciting for me because I got to meet Eugene Eric Kim face-to-face. I've known him through his "Twitter ant trails" (I'll explain that in a bit).
We began the session by filing out of the conference room to the parking lot outside for an interactive exercise called "The Dance Floor and the Balcony." The intent of the exercise (besides getting us to move around) was to help reflect and learn about self-organizing group collaboration. The instructions for the exercise are:
Get in a circle. ask each member of the circle to pick two people, but don't tell them. When facilitator says go, everyone moves so that they are always equidistant between those two people who they chose.
Repeat the exercise, this time with the goal of moving one person to the opposite side of the room. One person is identified to move to the other side. Everyone again has two persons with whom to remain equidistant. By moving others move - the aim is to impact the person who needs to be moved to the other side.
Debrief:
What happened? (Let participants describe what actually happened as they tried to maintain equidistance and in the second half of the exercise too)
What was our learning? (Checklist: our influence is interconnected, often we can influence events which may not be in our direct sphere of influence. It is not always easy to keep control of events.)
I had attempted to use my FLIP camera to document us doing the exercise, but I found myself so engaged in the learning versus the documenting, that I only got one clip at the beginining and it was so great. On Eugene's site, you can see a much better video of the exercise with participants in Africa.
We had some rich learnings in the reflection of what happened in the group. Some takeaways about emergent collaboration:
Having a shared goal can really catalyzed the group, without it you get interesting random behavior.
Self-organizing is difficult without communication
Trying to accomplish our personal goals the first time we did the exercise was playful, but chaotic. We decided to ask each other who we were following, we quickly were able to fall in line.
The second time, with a sense of purpose and goal, the exercise easier to do
We had different strategies for accomplishing our personal goal and the group goal.
Some of us experience goal conflict between individual and the group
Some abandoned group goal for personal goals, while some abandoned the personal goal for group goal
Doing the exercise two times gave a sense of confidence the second we did it. We knew what was coming.
The first time open-ended, playful like being on a social network. The second-time was more directed
Getting involved in a movement exercise that includes having people reflect on their individual and the group behavior was really valuable - this relates to the title of the exercise - that network leaders have to be on the dancefloor (or in the weeds) and then get up on the balcony and observe the patterns.
We came back in side and Eugene Eric Kim did a fantastic presentation offering up excellent principles. His slides and my notes and reflections follow.
As a prelude to his talk, he asked to think about to take a moment to think about the best experience you ever had collaborating with other people. He asked us, "If you think about the best experience, imagine a world that all your collaborations is at least as good as the best experience you ever had?" That's the vision for his company and work.
He has deep experience with emergent communities, groups of people that have a loose network that come together to form their own groups, not meeting face-to-face but doing amazing things. This is the way I've described the Nptech Tagging community and other ad-hoc communities where people come ogether first through social media tools.
His focus is on emergent collaboration and understanding what the how to create the conditions to inspire action and learning. He talked about the importance of individuals having a "learning attitude" - that is someone who thinks about things and takes lessons away - regardless of the teacher. (I might also add regardless of whether or not the experience was a "success"). He also talked about collective intelligence as the group ability to learn and improve.
He then gave us Five Principles to Think about Networks. What I loved about his frameworks is these can applied to social media work for external communications plans and even inward facing work. These are particularly important for International Networks made of people speaking different languages and having different cultural norms.
(1) Everybody is People
Eugene shared his experience going to a developing country for the first time. He mentioned that he ad done a great deal of research. He was asking his local guide a lot of questions about what was and what wasn't appropriate. He shared that he was not only jetlagged, but "freaked out" because didn't want to make a mistake and break etiquette. His guide in country turned to him and said, "Be yourself. You'll make mistakes, but you'll learn. People will understand."
He mentioned that he did, in fact, make a mistake. He didn't bring a long sleeve short in the dessert because it over 100 degrees. However, the local culture was to cover your body up. Eugene related this to working with international networks, "There is a chance to screw up in the projects, but you can't go in with that mindset. You're going in with good intentions, be self-aware, and people will accept that. Do your due dilligence, but go as a learner."
Everyone is people. That's a challenging notion for thinking about networks. "We visualize networks in a different way. Critical to remember that networks are piles of people who have a relationship with each other. When you talk about catalyzing learning, action, or collaboration - what makes networks is the relationships between humans. What makes it hard is that our assumptions about people isn't always correct."
Technology is a dehumanizing. Our interaction with technology makes us reorient ourselves around the tools, not the tools serving us and bulding relationships. Online network work in general is people work. We can't forget about our basic humaness when interacting with other people.
He talked about how culture manifests itself in online collaborations. He pointed to the Japanese wikipedia page noting that in Japan, the cultural norm is for the group to discuss the page in the discussion area before developing the content together. In Western countries, people dive into collaborating writing first and then use the discussion area to settle differences of opinion.
With international networks, it is important to recognize cultural norms both online and offline.
(2) TRUST: Trust is Everything
He emphasized the importance of actions to garner trust. It made me think of Chris Brogan's "Trust Agents." He talked about how in Nigeria everyone has a "money guy" who can exchange your currency. The reason is that the banks usually rip people off. He asked his guide how they find a money guy who told him that they get referrals from friends and family and based on how your treated. You have good faith upfront and then it depends on how you're treated. Kim said it is very important to understand the trust norms in different cultures and how these translate to an online context.
Online networks and collaboration happen if participants have some sense of trust through previous relationships, play, or past experience. "To catalyze the network, you have to invest in relationships." He pointed out this plays out differently depending upon the life cycle of the network. For example, networks just getting started, need to build social lubrican of trust and this happens through relationship building. "Relationships are built over food and drink."
He also said that we can't go into using social networks thinking we're going to see the tangible results because the first focus has to be on this relationship building. "If we want to do something amazing, we have to start with building relationships first.
(3) Be what you want to see
Eugene talked about the importance of modeling to create. "You have to set an example and it only takes a few people to do that and it seeps into the group." He suggested that a biggest value of my participation at Packard as visiting scholar, was modeling how to be connect with professional networks via social media - the blogging and twittering that I'm doing. He used the example of the recent NetFlix prize as an example.
Simple rule for collaboration: Just get a few people to establish the collaboration norm, those people will establish the norm. Modeling the norm. The way it is implemented - it can be intentional. One of the things that technology gives you the opportunity to do - to see things in an open and transparent way Observation - see the whole - allowed us to shift the behavior. To create an environment where the network can learn from each other requires intentional modeling.
(4) Simplicity Scales
He used the metaphor of the ants. They do two things leave and follow trails and haul things. They basically leave a trail that says "I was here." That way others can find them and connect. He applied the metaphor to Twitter. Twitter is simply an ant trail. We can leave a pulse, it is simple and easy. It keeps the connections going.
Eugene said not to focus on the content. Leave a trail and emergence to happen.
(5) Peturb the Ecosystem
This was all about giving up control - networks work when you give up control. How much are you giving up control and seeing what happens?
I left this session with some new insights about the networks and social media tools. Networks can exist as part of your external communications strategy, your outward facing work. That's a lot of what I write about on this blog -- crowds, groundswells, and movements. Emergent collaboration takes place when your supporters remix your content and share with their friends.
There are also networks that are very bounded - where the people are known and the work they are doing together is confidential. These principles apply to their work, but it doesn't happen out in the open where anyone on the Internet can see it. There is controlled access. The group can use some of the social media, if appropriate, to do its work.
And then there are the networks - that are coming together for learning and improving and do their work out in the open. The goal is not an external communications strategy.
What I wonder is how and when a network that is coming together to learn and improve decides whether it can open or needs to have a gate or password protected space. What are the cultural shifts that need to occur? When does being completely open disrupt or impair the learning and improving part?
Michael Quinn Patton, an evaluation guru, visited the Packard Foundation yesterday. I participated in a lively exploratory conversation about "How do you evaluate network effectiveness?" along with others on the Packard Foundation organizational effectiveness team. I also had an opportunity to hear his thoughts on the state of the
evaluation field, how it has changed and get a deeper understanding of developmental evaluation.
Michael Quinn Patton uses metaphors and stories to talk about evaluation in everyday language. He is a genius at connecting evaluation to other people's contexts. As a result, I had several "ah ha" moments and found a couple of connections for thinking about social media strategy - especially how we address culture change, social media measurement, ROI and the whole larger question of social media for social good.
By way of this post and video, I'm sharing some of Michael Quinn Patton's thinking about evaluation. I invite you to share your thoughts and reactions in the comments.
But first, some context.
Patton has written several books on the art and science of program evaluation, including Utilization-Focused Evaluation (4th ed., 2008), in which he emphasizes the importance of designing evaluations to insure their usefulness, rather than simply creating long reports that may never get read or never result in any practical changes.
He is also the author of a book called "Getting to Maybe" about social change. The big idea in the book is described below:
Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world’s hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes – an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary people on the couch. But extraordinary leaders such as Gandhi and even unlikely social activists such as Bob Geldof most often see themselves as harnessing the forces around them, rather than singlehandedly setting those forces in motion. The trick in any great social project – from the global fight against AIDS to working to eradicate poverty in a single Canadian city – is to stop looking at the discrete elements and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them. By studying fascinating real-life examples of social change through this systems-and-relationships lens, the authors of Getting to Maybe tease out the rules of engagement between volunteers, leaders, organizations and circumstance – between individuals and what Shakespeare called “the tide in the affairs of men.”
This is one to definitely add to the plane reading list and a theme of my talk at Mashable Conference on Friday.
I'm not an evaluation practitioner, so I wasn't sure exactly whether there would be any connection to my work in social media. What I discovered, is that through his engaging storytelling, I got inspired by evaluation.
As Patton shared with us, the field of evaluation is dynamic. When he approached updating the fourth edition of his book, he thought it would be just about updating the stories. In the course of writing the book, he realized the field had changed. Most noticeably in the rise of cross-cultural, international evaluation program work. The question of how to adapt evaluation methods to other political and cultural systems in developing countries was big challenge because evaluation, over the past three decades, has been deeply rooted in the Western ways of thinking.
He then launched into a series of "creation stories" or "beginning" stories to explain the difference between traditional evaluation approaches and "developmental evaluation" (an evaluation of a program that helps you improve it.)
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. God saw everything. Everything is good. So the 7th day he rested. How do you know what you created is very good? What are you criteria? What are the outcomes? Aren't you a little close to the situation to make an objective assessment? His rest was greatly disturbed by these questions. So, on the 8th day he got up and created evaluation (hell.)
The above story is a metaphor for the traditional summative approach to evaluation - create something, then evaluate it's impact, but don't change the program.
He pointed out that this was very difficult to apply to programs in
developing countries. He realized it when started to look at creation
stories in different cultures.
Maori in New Zealand Creation Story
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 too. They didn't know what a forest looked like. They had a general sense, but had to go through a listen, learn, and adapt process before getting it right. This is the essence of developmental evaluation.
A group of people like Adam and Eve were there in the beginning. In the mist, a grass hut appears with no doors or windows. They surround the grass hut. There are noises and they are frightened by it. They spend the day debating - and end up not doing anything because they can't decide. Frozen by fear, they go to sleep. The next morning, the hut is there. The noises continue. The uncertainty is making them crazy. They love the place where they are and they don't want to leave. They decide they have to open up the hut. They cut a door. Out comes the clan, the medicine people who have knowledge. They thank them and share their wisdom.
Developmental evaluation involves asking a lot questions. This story is about the scariness of asking questions, looking at a program, campaign, activity and ask are we prepared to learn about it? Do we stay in that place believing it is okay? The story is a metaphor about the fear of asking questions and the knowledge that comes with it.
I also see this as a metaphor for the fear of engaging from social media. What if we get a negative comment? What if we loose control? That fear keeps nonprofits from engaging.
Some other takeaways from his talk about evaluation:
Evaluation needs to be relevant and meaningful. It isn't a horrible alien thing that punishes people and makes judgments.
Need a culture of inquiry, sharing what works, what doesn't. A willingness to engage about what to do to make your program better.
Evaluation is not about getting to a best practice that can be spread around the world in a standardized way and to answer the question, "Is everyone following the recipe?"
Program development has to be ongoing, emergent. It isn't a pharmacy metaphor of finding a pill to solve the problem.
Real-Time Feedback/Evaluation is different from development evaluation which is directed towards a purpose to do something. Police use real-time evaluation to allocate their resources. For example, if crime increases in a neighborhood, they know how to allocate patrols.
Developmental evaluation speeds up the feedback loop.
The other conversation I participated in was focused on network effectiveness and how to evaluate it. Stephanie McAuliffe captures is must better than I did, so go read her post. Patton observed that thinking about networks has changed. He shared one framework that describes what the network does:
Networking/information sharing/learning
Coordination
Collaboration
Partnerships
The framework assumes that networks can move up or down through these phases. The question is when do the networks move to these other levels? He talked a lot about ebb and flow - that a network could be doing "information sharing/networking" and that you can measure it by looking at how people are connecting and their trust.
The connection here for me about social media is the notion that it isn't just a "campaign" - where you flip on or off switch. It's about this ongoing building of relationships with the people in your network. What you measure is engagement and trust.
Also, there is a catalytic moment when the network needs to scale into coordination or collaboration to take action. He describe how some networks work while in the "networking" phase - they imagine different scenarios or "fire drills." Another metaphor was disease - going from chronic to acute.
He also mentioned the importance of someone playing the role of being a network weaver who captures the lessons/stories in real-time. Someone who doesn't own the purpose.
Evaluating network effectiveness looks at two different criteria. Outcomes as related to purpose. Is the network focused on problem-solving, networking, connecting fragmenting programs, a campaign, sensing network, etc. The other criteria is process - what are the tasks and processes.
What connections are you making between social media and the thinking of Michael Quinn Patton?
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.
Over the weekend, I took my kids to the movie, Night of Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. They thoroughly enjoyed watching the exhibits come to life. (My kids especially liked the Einstein bobbing heads). Now the Smithsonian Institution, in a flash of cloud like behavior, is coming to life on the social web.
The Smithsonian Institution is in the midst of a huge strategic planning effort, with new media as one of the focal points for its future. It looks like their strategic planning process is being extended by the social web, going beyond the traditional flip charts and chocolate chip cookies of all-day planning retreats. While they may be also be doing focus groups and surveys, it looks like they've added a research channel: YouTube.
They're doing some crowdsourcing via their YouTube Channel. The Smithsonian has opened the conversation up to the world and is inviting people to submit a one-minute video sharing their vision for the Institution's future. The question they're asking:
Given the news ways of acquiring and sharing knowledge through
technology: the internet, social networking, video
sharing, and cell phones—where do you see the Smithsonian's museums and
websites going in the future? How can we make education more relevant
to you in a digital age?
There's a handful of videos already submitted and just gotta love this one with the baby.
The text of the invitation on YouTube is as follows:
We're looking for a few friends and fans from around the world to help
us form the future Smithsonian experience. A revolutionary Web and New
Media Strategy project is underway, and we invite you to collaborate
with us as we envision a rich new media future for the Institution.
They're asking folks to join this YouTube group and submit a one-minute video by June 30th. I wonder who they are reaching out to, why they selected YouTube (are there other places where people who are interested in the future of the Smithsonian gather?), are they reaching out to new media professionals as well as others?
It will be interesting to see how they summarizing the feedback and illustrate how they plan to incorporate it into their strategic planning.
Update: Found some additional materials from Nina Simond at Museum 2.0
Video of her lecture here.
Conversation about this on the WestMuse Blog in the comments. There was a response from someone at the Smithsonian who answered Dave Cormier's query about why they are doing it and how to nurture the conversation.
Mike Edson is really the guy to address this, as the Web & New Media Strategy is his: http://Smithsonian20.si.edu but since I’m here:
The Voice Your Vision Project is just one more facet of the overall
info gathering process. Video contribution seemed like a potentially
engaging way to gather some public input, and YouTube was an easy place
to set it up. This wasn’t a heavily analyzed endeavor, just another
little piece of the puzzle.
The process has been designed to be very wide open within the
Institution, so this seemed a easy and fun way to gather some input
from the outside using New Media.
Nothing cynical, and no worry about losing funding. The Secretary is
a Social Media booster. However, getting an institution as large as
ours to undertake an integrated approach to New and Social Media is a
big task. Building our systems from the ground up to both meet the
internal needs of our researchers and other specialists while still
filtering up to meet the needs of our constituents via our websites and
our presence on an ever widening array of external social sites is
going to take a lot of resources. We need begin to get a view from a
lot of perspectives, and this is just one more slice of the pie.
So, not only are they opening up a two-way conversation, they are using social media best practices: listening and experimenting. Also being very transparent.
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?
When users participate in high engagement activities, connecting with
one another, a different kind of value is being created. But my core
point isn't just the difference between these forms of group
intelligence -- but actually how the co-exist in the best communities.
Last August, I saw the impact of Twitter's velocity first-hand with a fundraising experiment. I was able to raise $2,500 in 90 minutes at Gnomedex using offline/online tactics. I wondered whether or not those results would be replicable? Rightbefore Thanksgiving, the TweetsGiving effort helped Epic Change raise over $10,000 in 48 hours to build a classroom in Tanzania seeking $10 donations. As Lucy Bernholz noted, this might be one more example that fundraising on Twitter is less marginal and moving to the middle.
Back in November, I wrote a post "Twitter As Charitable Giving Spreader: A Brief History and Meta Analysis of Fundraising With Twitter." Almost all the fundraising campaigns using Twitter at that point were organized by a single person or organization and used Twitter to spread the solicitation, but directed the actual donation off of Twitter to complete it. Most were using Twitter as one channel in a multi-channel campaign and asked for small donations ($10), although gave incentives for larger gifts.
Laura Fitton's idea for the campaign marked a departure from current online philanthropic behavior which takes several steps from receiving a solicitation "ask" to typing in your credit card number and clicking on a donate button. Her campaign structure condensed those steps, perhaps making Twitter's velocity possible for charities or individuals working on behalf of charities to raise money at even faster speeds that we've already seen. And, she has also challenged the notion of the size of a "small donation." She asked her 12,500 followers to donate just $2.
Does the future of online fundraising lie in mobile social networks that have an easy built-in payment system for in-the-moment charitable giving of very small amounts by thousands and thousands of people? As Laura noted in a comment, "Imagine it for public radio: hear something great on the drive to work? What if you could effortlessly tip a dollar or two in appreciation? Or tweeting your order & payment ahead to your coffee shop? Or donating to a cause during a presentation or speech that motivated the giver? In tough economic times anything that can spread the load more evenly, reduce friction and make giving more spontaneous could go a long way towards making up some of the pinch nonprofits are feeling in this downturn."
Look out, the next reiteration of micro fundraising on Twitter is coming on February 12, 2009 and will combine online twitter fundraising with a groundswell of offline self organizing events. Called Twestival, Twitter users will meet up in over 100 plus cities to socialize offline, meet other Twitter users, enjoy some fun, have a few drinks, and raise money for charity: water. This event combines the lessons learned from previous fundraising activities on Twitter:
A local, face-to-face component based on the popular "Tweet Ups" or "Net2Tuesday" meetups
The charity isn't the central organizer of the event - it appears that they are letting their stakeholders run with it and not imposing "branding and messaging" standards. Each localized event is putting its own unique flair to the event.
Micro donations using TipJoy
Focus 24 hour event with broadcasts and all local partners participating to raise awareness (a sort of Blog Action Day on steroids)
According to the web site, the event will unfold in three phases:
Phase one: Launch the homepage with a list of cities which have already registered. Over the next day, organizers will be given a password and instruction to upload information to their own city site (start thinking about a first blog post). Please have a bit of patience as we are working as quickly as we can.
Phase two: All of the cities should be linked up to the homepage. Features to donate, bid on an auction, raffle and other fundraising projects will come online as buttons as they are completed.
Phase three: On 12 February 2009, Twestival will be working with partners to have live broadcasts of the events around the world.
This event will certainly make fundraising on Twitter move front and center as well as demonstrate how the age of connectedness and social media is continuing to have a profound influence in changing the way charities raise money. I suspect the amount raised will be impressive.
Now we have the Working Wikily Blog which is exploring making sense of networks and social change. The contributors are the dream team from the Monitor Institute.
This is part of series of reflections on what I've learned about working wikily through working on NTEN's WeAreMedia wiki - not so much the content, but the community curriculum development and knowledge sharing process. In past posts, I've talked about:
Getting out of the way: How to encourage participation in the beginning - moderating with a light touch to encourage and grow community responsibility.
At the beginning of the project, Dave Cormier agreed to be my "critical friend." (Here are a few resources defining critical friends - here, here and here). But the short definition is: "A critical friend is someone who is independent of the project who asks
provocative questions, offers an alternative view, and helps facilitate
fresh insights or alternative sources of information or expertise." This has been invaluable learning process because Dave's insights have sparked the above reflections.
No matter how good a community, its ideas, its positioning, there
are almost always a couple of people working their tails off to keep it
what it is.
Community participation is almost entirely about the responsibility of the participant.
He goes on to say:
I’m going to be working with george siemens on a course starting
(omg… next week) and will definitely be using the wearemedia project as
a resource… we should, as good members of a community, update the part
of the content that need updating as a manner of ‘responsibility’ or
payment if you like, for using the material. I worry, however, about
potentially adding confusing information while beth et al. are
designing their delivery methods… something to think about.
This kind of relationship, though, seems like a good one. A couple
of courses decide to use the same repository/ies for their work and
that keeps the work uptodate as well as avoiding the duplication of
effort. I wonder if something like this with wearemedia and alec’s 831
course would make a nice balance between two excellent resources. mmm…
community.
If you look at the work plan, the content development part of the project is coming to a close (there's one module left to build on experimentation) and "instructional" part of the project is ramping up.
The wiki serves as a companion to the face-to-face workshops and Dave asks a very good question: How does one keep content this changeable uptodate?
Here's what lies ahead -- a division and then a bridge between online/offline learning and community/content. The problem is how to accomplish that without it being too confusing.
Community Driven Content The Wiki/Community generated material will be the place to keep less static, more changing information. Where "responsible" community members and the wiki gardener (me) will add. These sections are:
As drill you down into the sections, you'll see links to blog posts that people contributed to this effort as well as links and text/bullet points on the wiki itself.
The challenge is how to keep the community engaged? We've worked rather intensely - perhaps this becomes a slower community.
Workshop Companion Content At the very beginning of the project, people wanted to see "edited instructional content" - and Michele Martin wrote a great post about this. The next task is going to be transform the Community Driven Content into a more instructional and static format intended as a companion for workshop participants. I also see them eventually contributing to the wiki. This will happen over the next 6 weeks.
This is part of series of reflections on what I am learning about working wikily through the WeAreMedia wiki. In my last reflection, I talked about balancing participation on home base and outposts. In this post, I'm going to take a deeper dive into the actual work tasks of a wiki gardener - it is a bit more than simply weeding.
I created a 4 minute screencast with Jingproject that will give you a sense of the workflow. I started to think about the gardening tasks using the metaphor of, well, gardening.
1. Prepare your garden bed: The garden bed is the actual page or section on the wiki where you want to get people to contribute content or where you'll place it after you scoop it from the outposts. I create a page and it is a balancing act. You need to avoid filling it up with too much content because people will think the page is complete and they have nothing to contribute or get overwhelmed. On the other hand, if you give them a "naked" page - they won't have enough context to contribute easily - unless they are subject matter experts on the topic, have lots of time, and are highly motivated to contribute.
I'm still learning that balance. But I usually start with a very short paragraph for context and leave questions or tables for people to fill-in. The stuff that people like to contribute are: their own links and brief descriptions, resources, and quick tips. (Earlier in the project, I wrote about the different levels of contributions and engagement)
2. Plant your seeds: This is asking people to contribute. I do this in several ways. First, on the wiki's top page, I have include a "What We're Working On Right Now" (see here). This stays fluid and try to point people to specific holes in the context or highlight good contributions. In addition, this is how we let people know about new places to contribute:
Blog Posts: I do an overview post giving context and the questions. I may follow up with a summary of what's been posted and point to specific holes. The NTEN Blog also does a post. In addition, folks who have signed onto the "Expertise Map" may also contribute a blog post to the module - which has turned out to be a superb way to build original content for the curriculum.
Twitter: I also use twitter to asks for specifics content chunks. For example, yesterday, I asked for nonprofit examples of telling stories social media style. I don't just ask questions, but eat my own dog food - engage people in conversations about it. Take for example this, this, and that.
3. Tend To Your Garden - Water, Fertilize, and Weed: After you do the first two steps, your content will start to grow and not very neatly. You need to spend time in the garden walking the rows and observing. So, for example after I asked for examples, I went back to the page and looked at it:
I added "you can add more than one example" because someone asked me
I noticed that the simple structure I created was not the right container and reorganized it.
I noticed that people may be having trouble knowing how to add rows to the table, so I made a screencast.
4. Harvest and Enjoy: The next step with this is to summarize the content that has been added on my blog - as reward and ask for more - but try to get people to add it in the right spot and fill in the description. Also, I flesh out the examples suggested via twitter. This might be good candidates for case studies. So, I put them on a separate page and am trying to get folks to add their stories.
So, that's a sneak peek into the secret life of a wiki gardener. What's your best wiki gardening tip? How do you make this work flow more efficient?
The WeAreMedia project is housed on a wiki, but the conversations and contributions don't always take place on homebase (the wiki), sometimes they happen at outposts like people's blogs, in the comments, and other places. So, one role of the wiki gardener is to not only make sure homebase is neat and tidy, but to scoop up the distributed content and make sure it is linked in the right place.
Listening in both locations
That's why it is really important to set up listening posts in both locations. Luckily, the wiki application we're using has the ability to track every page and every discussion area either through email or RSS. I've found myself doing a combination - setting email alerts on important pages - for example so I welcome new people who join the expertise map which now has 47 people on it or swarm list.
To listen in the outposts, I have set up google alerts (URL and phrase), technorati, and summize (search on Twitter). When someone mentions the project or has gone the extra mile to contribute content on their own blog, I try to thank them and then incorporate that into the appropriate wiki page.
Participation in both locations
In facilitating this community discussion to get at the curriculum, I've used blog posts that point people to the wiki page, one-on-one emails to specific people who self-identify, tweets, FriendFeed NpTech Room posts, and a little on Facebook. I'm not trying to control where the conversation takes place - I want it to be as easy as possible for someone to make a contribution and if that happens off the wiki, that's okay. As the wiki gardener, I just need to be able to gather up these valuable nuggets of insights from nonprofit technology professionals, and add them to the wiki curriculum or do some light editing of what's there. The challenge is to extend this editorial or curatorial role to wiki participants which is a little daunting.
The Listening Module: An Example
I don't have a set recipe yet for facilitating a discussion/brainstorm for the development of a curriculum and weaving community knowledge on a wiki yet. So, every now and then, I deconstruct what I did - to examine what worked and what didn't.
Last week after a brief pause, we launched the first of the tactical modules
to brainstorm on the wiki and these included - listen, participate,
content, generating buzz, and social networking. What's nice about these modules compared to the strategic ones, is that they are very concrete.
The first module of this series was titled "Why Listening Is the First Step." I have been setting up the pages with a few questions, leaving blank space, and filling in just a small amount. I was delighted and surprised to see that a wiki participant, Robin Browne had, on their own, filled out this module.
Next, I started the conversation with this blog post, giving an overview of the content and asking for nonprofit stories and resources. These types of items seem to be the easiest for people to contribute because it doesn't take a lot of time if they have the experience or know of a link or two to add.
Some people added the questions over the wiki, while others left comments on the blog posts. For those who left comments, I asked some follow up questions out in the comments and pinged them via email. This was like doing a quick distributed interview for a mini-case study right there on the comments. It became clear that people needed to see an example of what a mini-case study might look like, so I wrote another blog post giving an example and asking for stories. I mentioned this post on Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook - and got into conversations with people who responded. Then, I scooped up the various stories, made screen captures, hunted down names and links, and incorporated them into the module.
But, there's also been some deeper reflections, ideas, and converation happening on the outposts.
Gordon Meyer, who writes the Nonprofit Communicator Blog, wrote a thoughtful post called "Way Beyond News Alerts" that is a terrific addition to the WeAreMedia Listening Module. He makes a good point about why listening is important and also points a cool new listening tool - Boardreader.
So, I'm hoping as we move forward through the tactical modules as well as the play with the tools week we're planning later this month, I hope we'll see both blog posts like those identified above as well as the continued level of participation - from the typo swatting to the listing of links to quick interviews in the comments -- all contributions are very much appreciated and valued.
My big question is how to make the tasks and job of a wiki gardener - the listening, summarizing, and tracking a bit more efficient. Ideas?
Dipity is a timeline tool that let's you edit a timeline collaboratively or pop in an RSS feed. More here.
I put the RSS feed for the WeAreMedia wiki in - and it displays the changes in a timeline. I wish I had known about dipity from the beginning -- gives you a sense of participation. It only captured the last couple of days of changes.
While putting together the list of "Twenty Something and Gen Y Social Change and Nonprofit Bloggers" I couldn't help but reflect back on when I was a twenty something. I wanted to be a professional classical flutist. I was lucky to study with Marcel Moyse, a famous French flutist who was living twenty miles down the road from me in Vermont.
His house/studio was on the top of a small mountain. I climbed the mountain, knocked on his door and asked if he would take me on as student. He turned me down three times before he said yes. (He was in his 80's and retired) For my first lesson, he asked me to prepare a solo Bach sonata.
For my first lesson, I played the piece for him. After about two minutes, he waved his hand and yelled "Stop!"
In a thick French accent, he said,"You cannot play Bach well unless you make yourself like a baby - approach this piece with fresh eyes, like you are playing it for the first time."
That's also an important principle for working wikily. Let me try to explain.
Vicky Davis (CoolCat Teacher) wrote a post two years ago called "Power of the Newbie" (Nancy White had us reflect on it for one of her online community workshops) The term newbie is slang for a newcomer to an Internet activity. It can have derogatory connotations, but
is also often used for descriptive purposes only, without a value
judgment. Vicky says:
When you are a newbie, you have something that tech-experts do not have: the perspective of a new user.
The "Power of the Newbie" came to life for me yesterday as part of the WeAreMedia Wiki Project when I got a message from a new participant:
Finding the project confusing; not sure what I am looking at or where to
begin--can you point me the way; not sure what I am looking at?
I had thought about the newcomer experience when we started the project and had created some orientation screencasts using JingProject. However, that was at the beginning of the project when there was less content and fewer people on the expertise map -- so the screencast was confusing because it didn't match the reality of what was there. And, to make matters worse, the screencast, created with the JingProject is in a flash format and the user didn't have the flash plugin installed on their browser!
The subject-matter on the wiki is changing as Qui Diaz points out. But the user support
items need to change as the community changes too! As the "wiki gardener," that is an something that should be part of the regular maintenance -- putting on your newbie glasses and revising the support documents.
Seth Godin asks, Should You Ignore the Noobs? I like how he frames confusion in a positive way and I think Seth's suggestion here is also very important. But I don't think we should ignore noobs.
Why not consider making it easy for the confused to ask for help? And
treat them with respect when they do. If you don't create a little
confusion, it's unlikely you've built something remarkable.
That leads me to questions about how to make it easy for people to jump in mid-stream once there has already been content added. How to make newcomers and others who may be lurking feel comfortable enough to contribute.
I wrote a reflection on the use of incentives for the community engagement module and asked participants to reflect on why they participated. This yielded some excellent insights about wiki participation over time.
People are really busy."I am constantly bombarded with
to-do's: things I have to do for my job, blog posts I want to read and
comment on, new tools I want to try out and research, etc. What the book incentive did for me was to spur me to immediate
action, rather than making a mental note to contribute later. Sometimes
"later" becomes "never" when the list gets too long."
Keeping the format open and messy. "The open registration implied that you would be cleaning up
the formatting at a later date which for me at least, helped overcome
the concern that I was adding content where it didn't belong, toying
with the structure in a way different than what you'd requested."
Desire to belong to community."Contribution was made out of sense
of wanting to belong to community and desire to contribute to work that
benefits me/my work. Potential prize was only a bonus"
Amy Sample Ward wrote an entire blog post about the challenges of the facilitating a collaborative project and offering some excellent guidance on facilitation techniques. She writes about the challenges:
If you have ever worked on a collaborative project, especially in a
wiki, you may have noticed participants that only lurk in the shadows,
contributors who burn out, conversations that get abandoned, or even
just an overall loss of momentum as people revert to sending individual
emails or not participating at all.
Up to 3% will be creators, providing original content. They can be advocates that promote products and services.
Between 3% and 10% will be contributors who add to
the conversation, but don’t initiate it. They can recommend products
and services as customers move through a buying process, looking for
purchasing advice.
Between 10% and 20% will be opportunists, who can
further contributions regarding purchasing decisions. Opportunists can
add value to a conversation that’s taking place while walking through a
considered purchase.
Approximately 80% will be lurkers, essentially
spectators, who reap the rewards of online community input but absorb
only what is being communicated. They can still implicitly contribute
and indirectly validate value from the rest of the community. All users
start out as lurkers.
This might be an interesting benchmark to gauge participation - or at least give you some realistic expectations for participation.
Amy points out the challenges from the point of view of the organizer or facilitator:
Managing participation of topic-related experts as the list of
participants grows over time (and perhaps after the most applicable
topic for him or her passes): As more attention is given to the
project across the blogosphere and elsewhere, more people who want to
contribute sign on to the wiki. It’s great to get more people
involved, but it can be difficult for an organizer to be managing so
many different areas of interest and expertise once the project modules
are underway.
Maintaining a natural flow or progression of topics within the
wiki: Working wikily can sometimes mean that too many side
conversations and tangents turn into stranded pages or that pages get
started for a topic that seems important but folks lose track of it.
Maintaining an orderly flow of information has really kept this project
wiki to a manageable and navigable resource.
Making it easy for very busy people to contribute beneficial
information and knowledge efficiently: If you create it, they won’t
necessarily come. Or, if they do, they may not hang out long and
contribute. People, even if they are the ‘experts’ in the topic, are
busy. A very effective approach is to send an email or Twitter message
(or any other tool you are using to ping the participants) that asks a
specific question and links to the exact area where you want the
information entered. Basically, think of ways to make it hard for your
participants to NOT contribute!
The early idea for the project included just two tracks - strategic and tactical, with the latter including a lot of information about specific social media tools. I separated the tools from tactical, but wonder now about combining them. (I'm thinking about something like this and wonder if it would lend itself to what Michelle Martin suggests here?) When we started the idea was the roll out a module at a time and work on it for a week. This is has been good for the first six - but I wonder how to sustain it.
All this to end with some reflection questions:
How to harness the power of the newbie as a community?
How to balance quantity with quality of participation?
How to deepen the level of community participation - moving adding small snippets or points to collaborative writing. Dave Cormier touches on the issue of community responsibility.
How to sustain collaborative participation over time?
I thought about that story when I saw Dave Cormier's Connectivism Wiki or MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses). The philosophy is:
I'd suggest we follow the ADD DON'T TAKE AWAY model of wiki building.
Just keep adding sections... if you don't agree with the content, mark
your objections in the discussion area or underneath of the
disagreeable topic with your opinion.
So, I asked Dave via Twitter "Wow do you build a giving culture on a wiki?" He said that policy gives people a sense of freedom. He also pointed me to this reflection. I think it was point 3 that connects: Community learning, so that is what you call it!
Dave Cormier has been my critical friend as I write personal reflections on the community as curriculum process we're using to develop the content through the WeAreMedia Project. Dave shared his most recent observations through some reflections of his project. For the past two weeks, he has been teaching “educational technology and the adult learner." The course had no existing
curriculum and it provided a real life laboratory for him to have the curriculum come out of the community interactions that were
happening in the classroom. So, while we have different learners and different contexts, we are playing with the idea that the community is the curriculum.
He had three goals - all of which were to change the focus from ‘the material’ to the ‘experience’. I'd say that our goals are similar in that we're not just building content together, but informally learning together.
Dave goes on to explain the concept of "Reverse Curriculum"
Reverse curriculum tends to develop out of the interests that the students show during the
course and they get to record and create the material as part of their
daily practice. It is part creative zone, part class note record and
part review space. The constant revisitation of the material for
sorting, upkeep and improvement also serves to reinforce the material.
In one way, our processes slightly differ here in that community isn't necessarily revisiting and resorting the materials. Or at least that was not the formal expectation for participation. Some participants, like Jocelyn Harmon, have done so on their own initiative. Take for example this summary of the first module.
Another point about goals:
Community Literacies esp. Community commitment
Maybe the most important part of the of a course like this are the
community literacies that are accumulated through a community enquiry
into new material. The learners found that they could work together and
rely on each other. They wrote nightly reflections and commented and
helped each other with their work and reactions to the course. the
sense of ‘competition’ between students evaporated. A sense of
responsibility to the work at hand became stronger as the students
found less and less direct guidance coming from the front of the room.
Our project is not organized as a "course" or learning experience for participants -- and there is much reflection -- sometimes that occurs in the comments or in the sharing of words of wisdom around links added to the wiki. Again, this is related to the difference in project intentions.
How to encourage a culture of giving and contributing on a deeper level beyond fixing typos or adding a link? How to engage people more deeply and deepen some of the community learning literacies? How to create a culture of giving? That may well be a question for a different project or a different community, but something that I'm curious about.
After I gave the keynote in Australia at the ConnectingUp08 Conference, we opened it up for Q&A. I always get a question somewhere along the lines of, "Do you ever unplug or go off line?" Someone asked that and then suggested I check out the Slow Food Movement.
I had forgotten about it until I saw Nancy White's most recent slideshow above about this post.
What is Nancy talking about when she says "slow community"
A community that does not only place value on rapid response and
participation, which can continue to exist even if the pace of passing
messages/signals slows down...
A community that is aware of/reflects upon its own processes in order to ... learn? Enjoy?
Some sense of quality, not just quantity of participation (how do we define quality?)
This is more than "information overload, right?
This resonates with the NTEN WeAreMedia -- not quite sure how to articulate it - but how this community participate over time and the intensity of it ... Is slow community a phase of maturation?
I also came across this article by FutureLab titled "Working With Online Learning Communities" by Ken Allan summarizes some key factors important to growing successful online learning communities and provides some relevant strategies for this in educational online communities. Much of the principles can be applied to wiki facilitation and communities.
I particularly like this bit from Caleb Clark:
online learning communities are grown, not built
online learning communities need leaders
personal narrative is vital to online learning communities.
Clark identifies that “online learning communities grow best when
there is value to being part of them”. He further elaborates that, “one
of the hardest things to do in any online community is to get people to
give information. One reason is that people just don't naturally think
their way of doing things has value, when in fact it is the very heart
of a community's value! This is especially true in online learning
communities where the exchange of information is key to keeping
students coming back.”
Clark
contends that “leaders are needed to define the environment, keep it
safe, give it purpose, identity and keep it growing”. He gives a set of
mantras for teacher/leaders in any online community:
all you need is love
control the environment, not the group
lead by example
let lurkers lurk
short leading questions get conversations going
be personally congratulatory and inquisitive
route information in all directions
care about the people in the community; this cannot be faked
understand
consensus and how to build it, and sense when it's been built and just
not recognised, and when you have to make a decision despite all the
talking.
I'm very interested in learning how different types of networks or communities work in a networked way - this whole notion of working wikily. The NTEN project WeAreMedia project is an excellent personal learning laboratory for reflection and insights about this topic.
One of the most valuable experiences I've had in my professional work is having critical friends (You can see what that means here, here and here). "A critical friend is someone who is independent of a project who asks
provocative questions, offers an alternative view, and helps facilitate
fresh insights or alternative sources of information or expertise."
Dave Cormier signed up to be a critical friend soon after the project launched and posted a reflection here. He has a context for what may work and what may
not for a community building process for a
new media curriculum. I wrote a response and Michele Martin added her thoughts too.
My big question is when, as the facilitator, to get out of the way?
Levels of Participation
Dave wrote about levels of responsibility and in my mind I connected it to the activism ladders of engagement for activism. Based on looking at examples of participation for the past two weeks, here are the categories and some examples:
(1) Bystander: Reads only
These are people who may read about the project or be invited to participate, click through to the url, and browse a few pages, but do not add or contribute. Why don't they contribute? Some reasons why may be:
Not enough time
Don't have knowledge to contribute or not interested in the topic
For some reason, don't feel they are allowed to edit
Not sure where to jump in because of the way information is structured
Not sure how to use the wiki software and may feel too difficult or time consuming to figure out
That's why I've been trying to use the top page to guide people to where the general activity and individually point people to place where they feel comfortable contributing.
(2) Gives Feedback:
These are users who add to existing knowledge.
One of the design decisions in setting up the wiki was registration. Should we require registration before people can jump in and edit? We decided to make it easy as possible. I'm noticing a lot of "edited by guest" changes coming through - so as long we don't get spam or mischief I think this good to encourage participation. The downside is that we don't always know who made what edit.
I also set it so anyone could post a comment on the wikispace discussion threads, although there doesn't seem to be a lot of spontaneous discussion on the wikispaces feature except for the name change which had 54 responses. The wikispaces discussion feature on each page is great for brainstorming ideas, problem solving, or pre-writing.
There are two ways to give feedback - onshore and off shore. Participants can give feedback on the wiki itself or respond away from the wiki - for example leaving a comment on a blog post, responding to a request on Twitter, or sending an email to the project organizer. This creates question in my mind about the balance between allowing easy access anywhere, anytime or focus participation on the wiki itself.
What does feedback look like?
Correct typos - I'm really happy to see this happening. We have a lot of copy editors filling in dropped words, correcting bad grammar, etc.
Edit existing copy for phrasing - We used to call this word smithing.
Adding content - adding links, phrases, bullet points, or whole paragraphs. This has to be set up in the right way - for example.
Some people jump and give feedback on the wiki without being nudged - others have been nudged.
(3) Joins the community
This is defined as someone who has taken the extra step to opt into taking ownership or responsibility for contributing content and possibly be contacted by the project. There are multiple ways for people to opt into the community.
Register for wikispaces - this means that if they are logged into their wikispace account we know what they edited. Right now we're up to 30 members in less than 30 days!
Join Expertise Map - I set this up as a community directory - so people could see who was here and know their expertise. There is a question in the template that asks them to identify a module they might take the lead on. You have to register for wikispaces in order to add yourself. And, to avoid any technical barriers, I added a screencast on how to add yourself.
Join Swarm List - This was envision as a way to get people opt-in for participation that was very light. We have 24 people signed up.
What are some others ways to encourage opt into the community and deeper level of engagement beyond feedback?
Levels of Collaboration
What does collaboration work by community members look like? Again, it is
scaffolded ... runs from coordination to engaging in the writing,
contributing, and editing, and finally creating from scratch. There are different ways that people are organizing to work together - facilitated and spontaneous.
An Individual Takes Leadership
Elements of a Social Media Plan: The call to participate came as a "let's remix this idea for nonprofits" and Scarlett Swerdlow took leadership and suggested a refinement of categories. What made it easy for the facilitator was the swarm lists and expertise maps to match people to content to facilitate participation.
The Don't Drink the Koolaid Worksheet:
The inspiration for this questionnaire came from John Kenyon in a comment here and follow up comments from several others. A discussion was started and this group quickly put together a questionnaire. It grew organically. I pointed people at one another and then got out of the way.
Facilitated
I've been experimenting with setting up pages with a question - and getting people to add their experience. I set up two slightly different experiments. For the first one, I set up a page with a question, blogged it, and added an example that someone had mentioned on another page. Other people added some others. The second experiment, I set up a page, added the question, but also put in some content - links to resources and slide show and blogged it. No one added anything.
Walking the Line Between Supporting and Getting out of the Way
Members of a community of
practice are practitioners. They develop collective resources including
stories, experiences and ways of addressing recurring problems – in
short they develop a shared practice. Etienne has been particularly
influential in promoting the concept that deliberately fostering people
to learn in this way can be a useful management practice.
This quote stuck with me:
The social value added (by communities of practice) is not based
on (prescribed) design - but is based on what emerges from co-operation
and collaboration.
This gets us back to that wonderful question of the sweet spot between networks and communities of practice? Recently, I came across this post from the DoGoodWell Blog
In terms of what a nonprofit organization can draw from a community vs.
a network, an over-simplified but still maybe useful way to think about
the difference might be “depth” vs. “breadth.”
Communities often have untapped depths of resources and assets that can
be leveraged to create social change - everything from skills and
talents to material possessions to relationships. Because members of
communities have a deeper stake in one another, nonprofits often have
the opportunity to draw more deeply from these assets. Networks, on the
other hand, are often organized around a single common experience or
goal. It seems
to me there is an opportunity to draw from a greater breadth of
individuals who organize themselves around the networks founding
principle.
So, what is the fine art of facilitating this type of learning? When do you get out of the way?
I'm very interested in learning how different types of networks or communities work in a networked way - this whole notion of working wikily. The NTEN project is an excellent learning laboratory for reflection and learning about this topic.
Dave Cormier published a paper recently entitled "Community as Curriculum" and that phrase has stuck with me as one way to think about workshop curriculum projects that are being developed in a networked way like the NTEN project. I was delighted last week to see this skype message pop up from Dave Cormier.
hey Beth... wondering if i might poke my nose into this knowledge building experiment. currently very curious about the interplay of blog (as socially contructed time based creatures) and wikis (which... uh... are not) and how knowledge transfers from one to another in 'first wave' (technologically savvy) proto-communities.
I responded with don't just poke - be a critical friend! (Dave points to a couple of resources defining critical friends - here, here and here). "A critical friend is someone who is independent of the project who asks
provocative questions, offers an alternative view, and helps facilitate fresh insights or alternative sources of information or expertise."
Dave has posted his first observation here. He brings the lens of experience of a community building process for a new media curriculum. He has a context for what may work and what may not. After reviewing the wiki documents and process so far, he has posed two questions so far ...
How are you contributing to people’s feelings of ‘responsibility’ to the knowledge creation process?
Dave is asking an question about how to encourage community participation and ownership. How do you get people to contribute their knowledge - whether it be to a wiki page, leaving a comment on a blog post, or tagging a resource?
(1) Bystander: Reads only (2) Gives Feedback: May add a comment to a blog post or add a link to a wiki page (3) Joins the community: Signs up for a swarm list (4) Joins the expertise map/advisory group: Fills out a profile and identifies a module (5) Participants in the collaborative writing
Dave notes:
This works best when people feel a clean responsibility to the
work at hand. There is a good start there with the personal profile
‘what module would you most like to contribute to’ section. I think the
transition between volunteerism there and action by the leadership team
is crucial.
Most of the participants in this project work in nonprofits that are limited in resources and time - so hoping to make participation not be labor intensive, find small - concrete chunks, and support any self-defined sub-cultures on the community.
How do you walk the line between being a supportive facilitator and
encouraging people to participate, without making it too overwhelming
or difficult or have people feel like are not welcomed to contribute? When do you as the wiki facilitator get out of the way? Does the design that allows for multiple points of access and small chunks of contributions inhibit or encourage ownership and responsibility?
What are your thoughts about the lifespan of your knowledge creation?
Dave points out that the "community as curriculum" concept suggests that "curriculum knowledge must always be emerging. It is constantly in flux
and only by aggregating and assessing the community in real time, with
constant new connections and renewed re-evaluation can the curriculum
stay ‘current." As Dave suggests, I think there will be some "products" for face-to-face training workshops - which may be longer lasting, but there will be other sections that will be updated. The question of how or if this happens beyond a grant period is up to NTEN.
I like how Dave has described this process as curation! However, we may be thinking of about it slightly different - a facilitative curator versus community driven curation. And as Dave mentions, this happens through tagging. We do have a history and context of the NpTech tagging community -- so how to encourage that?
Some Learnings on Practice
I asked Amy Sample Ward if she would share some thoughts based on her experience with launching and working on connectipedia in the process section of the wiki. Amy offered a practical tip: "I have found that emailing those involved with a recent update on
activity or content with links directly to the action and where they
should also participate help elevate the tasks on people's to-do lists." I put her advice to use a few times already, and it is an important lesson. With wikispaces, it is important to use the overall site monitoring features so you know when people make contributions.
What are your thoughts on encouraging community responsibility and ownership in working wikily?
The phrase "Working Wikily" was coined by Lucy Bernholz (I don't know how many phrases she's originated in the nonprofit, social media, and philanthropy - but this one is a gem). It is also the title of a report "Working Wikily: How Networks Are Changing Social Change" a paper Gabriel Kasper and Diana Scearce of the Monitor Institute. The paper provides concepts and specific examples. It is heavily influenced by the writings of Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody)
What does working wikily mean? The paper gives this definition:
"Wikis and other social media are engendering new, networked ways of behaving - ways of working wikily - that are characterized by principles of openness, transparency, decentralized decision-making, and distributed action."
I'm beginning a project with NTEN in the next few weeks that focuses on social media, nonprofits, and curriculum development. We'll be using a wiki to create and house the curriculum materials which will be open source. Right now I'm focused on thinking about one aspect of the project - What is the social (networked) process around curriculum development? How can we work wikily effectively? I participated in projects where we have worked wikily, but I haven't facilitated one. So, this is new area of learning that I will be sharing over the coming months.
A couple of takeaways from the report:
Basic Rules for operating in a Networked Way:
Promise, Tool, and Bargain - "The promise is the basic "why" for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the how. And the bargain sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect and what will be expected of you?
Human Elements: Trust and Fun matter. Quote from Beth Novek, "Fun matters. It's about harnessing the enthusiasm of the crowd, not just its wisdom. And you do that making things fun."
There are different types of networks or working in a networked way - it isn't just one definition or approach. These may include:
Networks of organizations
Networks of people
Peer-to-peer networks of individuals working outside of organizations
The issue of balancing control with the productivity of the network.
But, I'd love to see a range of examples that de-construct the development of a wiki in a nonprofit setting.
If you've been following social media closely over the past 3-5 years, you know that this isn't an original idea. Perhaps you most likely remember this amazing deconstruction by John Udell of the Wikipedia entry on “Heavy Metal Umlaut“.
It really helped you understand the inner workings of the
collaborative construction of content on Wikipedia.
Fast forward three years later. The use of wikis for communities of practice, behind the firewall, to support project teams, to reduce email, or whatever is becoming more common. We're seeing more nonprofits using wikis and more nonprofits wondering about how to use wikis.
One question I'm wondering myself - what does effective wiki facilitation really look like - literally ... I know there are many wiki patterns - how they evolve, are they are facilitated, what works, what doesn't -- just read Stewart Mader's book. But I'd like to see nonprofits and hear nonprofit technology practitioners take on this.
I'd like to see some wiki screenshots -- the first iteration, the second (when people added content) and the last or later when the wiki facilitator did some editing or weeding or organizing.
The screenshots below are grabbed from the podcamp.org wiki. I didn't facilitate it, but I participated. Keep in mind this is a community wiki space. I don't know exactly how large the community - but they are wiki savvy. You can see a simple example that I tried to extract myself from looking at the history.
Screenshot of podcamp Wiki. This is a page for a call for sessions. This is the first version of the page. There are two requests - a call for sessions to present and a call for sessions wanted. There is one or two examples.
A call for sessions goes out from conference organizers through many different channels - blogs, etc. The community responds by adding their proposed session name and link to them.
The Wiki moderators takes the list of sessions and starts to put it in a schedule. The event organizers did some email contact with folks to tweak scheduling and aggregate sessions, etc.
Got a wiki development/facilitation nonprofit story you'd like to share with a couple of annotated screenshots? Leave a comment and point to them. Add them to flickr with this tags: npwiki and nptech. I'll round them up and do a pattern analysis.
