A combination of Facebook, meeting room, pub and light-touch hosting last night demonstrated the social networking power of online-offline convening. A dozen of us gathered to talk about the potential for social media to help re-invent the RSA, sparked by my earlier post. We ended up with a micro-demo of how that might happen.
Ian Delaney, who hosted the event on behalf of NMK, has provided an excellent roundup of conversations that started online in Facebook, moved to Ian's workplace at the University of Westminster, and then to a pub around the corner.
As Ian explains, the RSA - Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce - is, on the face of it, doing well:
Established 250 years ago, it currently has about 26,500 Fellows. They can attend a very full and well-attended events schedule; they get the letters FRSA after their name; there’s no shortage of applications for its paid membership. Business is booming. And yet there’s a little bit of a problem.
The Society’s problem is that times have changed. Fellows are apparently expressing some degree of disgruntlement that they don’t feel involved with the programme or the Society. While in the past, a programme of well-planned lectures from eminent persons, nice premises on the Strand and a learned journal several times a year seemed satisfactory, that’s no longer enough. Today’s younger members want projects they can join, causes they can work with and more of a say, arguably, in what’s happening at the Society. There’s a feeling of empty hands that want to be filled.
As I wrote here, organisations may well face challenges as their members find they can get benefits more cheaply and readily online. The RSA has seen that coming, and led by its chief executive Matthew Taylor is currently engaged internally in thinking through how social media and other changes can really harness the potential of its membership for both social action and personal learning and development.
Ian reports some of our ideas from last night, including a network in Facebook, and a sort of RSA version of Yahoo Answers, where Fellows could answer each others' questions. I think my friends at Ruralnet could offer some expertise from their development of Experts Online. Another idea was a really good searchable directory.
We heard from Anshuman Rane - who is Web and New Media Manager at RSA - that he and other staff are thinking along these lines, with plenty more ideas bubbling up for a wider discussion later in the year with Fellows. I hope we provided additional encouragement.
I was particularly interested by our discussion around the RSA's role as convenor, which Ian summarises:
Further discussion picked up around what the RSA’s brand values might be. One example of that was as an ‘excellent convener’. That it draws very brilliant and interesting people together. However, the RSA is keen that the Society was not just viewed a place or a publication, but also as an actor. That it allows for the creation of brilliant ideas and then also acts upon them. How to decide among those ideas for the ones to publically support is one problem (maybe the case for a prediction market). Another is the extent to which the Society might rightly claim some sort of part-ownership for creating that chemistry - not in a commercial sense, but in a branding sense.
Some Fellows - as I reported earlier - feel the RSA can seem rather smug and paternalistic .... a bit top-down, epitomised by the lectures in its Great Room. You have to put your hand up to ask a question of the experts on the stage. If the RSA stays mainly in this mode, we can expect a "place" for discussion among Fellows behind a login. I agree with Ian:
In my own opinion, social media policy from the RSA can’t work on the basis of containing discussion within a particular forum or blog or social network. Nor can it claim ownership of ideas created through its auspices. Those discussions and ideas, as with any brand or grouping, cannot be contained or owned. They are and will happen anyway. What the Society might work to is the idea that having your ideas and business connected to it in some way earns kudos. Yeah, we came up with it/ met them at the RSA network/bar/forum mentioned a few times in business interviews and conversations as a point of pride, the same way certain members’ clubs and restaurants are spoken about, would do a great deal for the current and future value of membership. Like MySpace members adopting brands as friends, new and existing companies that friend the RSA in some way in the social media space may well be a way forward.
So they it needs a widget. And it needs a way to get people to adopt that widget. That’s the tricky bit, I expect.
What's equally important, I think, is the offline equivalent ... a recognition that anyone can pull together a group of people to start a conversation, in the spirit of the origins of the RSA in a Covent Garden coffee house.
What makes that possible is the more democratic, bottom-up convening power that mixing online and offline now provides.
A blog gave me the chance to air some thoughts on the RSA - gathered here - but Facebook provided the means to pull together a group online for a quick discussion. Ian then offered the offline convening capacity of NMK, more often deployed for larger industry-related events like the annual forum. What really made it work was the great mix of talents we had in the room. I thought we might need some "facilitation". Get into groups, write some post-it notes, prioritise topics. Nahh. We had a good chat - aided by NMK wine - went to the pub, and formed some groups there.
If RSA will provide the hospitality next time - with a similarly light touch - I'm sure we'll get another great flowering of ideas.
What I'm not quite sure about, for the moment, is what happens in between, and where we'll talk about it. However, I am pretty confident that one of the group will have a suggestion within a day or so ... and can easily set that up as a virtual coffee house, pub ... choose your metaphor. Your place or mine ... it doesn't really matter.
Technorati Tags: nptech, rsa, socialnetworking
Thank you for your kind words, David, although I suspect I should not have let my enthusiasm allow me to publish a blog post quite so late at night.
Good points about how combining on and offline methods can spur and deepen debate.
Posted by: Ian Delaney | July 10, 2007 at 01:40 PM
Ian - I think my original call to action on Facebook was one of those late night efforts, so maybe it works in this sociable context ...
Posted by: David Wilcox | July 10, 2007 at 01:53 PM
Sorry I couldn't make it, the discussion sounds like it would have been very stimulating.
Posted by: Andrew Brown | July 10, 2007 at 05:31 PM