Designing for Civil Society

New UK initiative for web-enabled social innovation starts in the pub

A new UK initiative for web-enabled social innovation was born yesterday evening in the time honoured way: some inspiration from our friends in the US, mixed with beer and sandwiches in the upstairs room of a London pub.

The result was a decision to set up Netsquared in the UK, loosely based on the US Netsquared conference and community, which has now led to a host of meetups and other activities through which geeks and activists find common cause and do good stuff for social benefit.

As I wrote earlier, there has been quite a bit of activity in recent months in the UK on social media for nonprofits. Last night's event stemmed from Dan McQuillan's ideas for a European Netsquared, and matching enthusiasm from the chief executive of the Charity Technology Trust William Hoyle, who had also been to the States and met the N2 folk.
William took Dan's earlier call to action one step further by offering us free refreshments in the Newham Arms, Fitzrovia. Among familiar faces were bloggers Nick Booth, Steve Bridger, Steve Moore,  Michael Ambjorn, Paul Miller and Simon Berry - remarkably fresh after his recent 1230-mile ride. So no shortage of ideas. We talked about organisating an event, running competitions to stimulate innovative projects, informal meetups and much more.
After a futile attempt to capture conversation in the hubbub of the room, I pulled William off to the pub kitchen, where he provided a very coherent summary.

Click To Play or view here

The focus of discussion  was not just about how nonprofits could use Web 2.0: in fact Dan - who has recently left an international charity - went so far as to say "the Third Sector is broken" ... I think. I'm sure he'll correct me if that's an overstatement.  While some people felt social media could help in fixing, others of us were more interested in the new set of values and ways of doing things bubbling up around social media, unbounded by historic notions of public, private and nonprofit sectors. We talked about whether the focus should be on enabling organisations, supporting causes, promoting new methods and processes of innovation. Hopefully all of them.
The gender-balance was a bit better than my initial list of bloggers suggests. I'm looking forward to finding more about Nathalie McDermott's Onroadmedia - a social enterprise that "delivers training in podcasting, video blogging and social networks to marginalised groups and organisations so that they can have their say about the issues at the heart of their communities", but there's some way to go on balance. Why is it different in the US - where Beth Kanter, Michele Martin, Britt Bravo - to mention only a few - do such wonderful stuff? Maybe Devon-based Laura Whitehead, who wrote recently on this, would have been along if she were in town. (Which raises another point ... how not to be London-centric. We came around to "N2 in the UK" as a working name - a sort of initial convening brand - to suggest N2-ish activities could pop up anywhere in the UK and and hopefully elsewhere in Europe. Just like the Web - these days people and organisations are seldom just in one place.)
Notwithstanding the desire not to be too London, there was a feeling that this is a hot place for technology innovation at the moment. Paul Miller was lyrical about the experience of the School of Everything crew at Seedcamp. Steve Moore reckoned we could stage something next year in London to equal or better the Reboot or Lift conferences.
I got the feeling that N2 in the UK has legs ... not just because of the ideas developed, but because of the style and spirit emerging from those present ... open, generous, and unbounded. William's beer and sandwiches helped a lot. I particularly liked the fact that he chose the Newman Arms because that was where, some years back, he met his wife when she was supporting her studies by working behind the bar. A bit of real life rooting.
When I left, discussion about next steps was focussed around what the Facebook group will be called. I'll post an update ... but if you are in FB with any friends in the field, I've little doubt you'll get an invite. Do find me there. Otherwise I'm sure William would be glad to hear from you at CTT. There's also an earlier n2eu wiki with more background on Dan's ideas, and a mailing list.
Update: There's now a Facebook group Netsquared - Newman Arms

Technorati Tags: innovation, n2eu, n2uk, netsquared, nptechuk

Reaching out to bloggers? Admit limited transliteracy

I wrote recently about how large organisations may be able to reach out to bloggers to promote conversations in the public interest, and the sensitivites involved. Here's some news of a project along those lines that I and colleagues been working on recently for the BBC Trust.
It has given me some insights into what may be involved to make this type of blogger engagement work. Actually it could better be described as organisational engagement. More later on that, and the new-to-me idea of transliteracy which may be the space within which the engagement takes place.
The project also brought home to me what an extraordinary resource we have in BBC online - bbc.co.uk - and how very difficult it is to judge whether we are getting good value for the two per cent of our licence fee (£74 million) that goes on it. (Note to non-UK readers - each household pays more than £130 a year for BBC TV, radio and other services .... and bbc.co.uk costs about 36p a month of that according to this Wikipedia round-up).
No, that's not quite right. I've personally no doubt at all about paying that amount for the wealth of goodies on offer ... what's much more challenging is helping licence payers provide feedback via the Trust on just what mix the service should offer.
The Trust has taken over from the BBC governors as the body responsible for standing on the side of the licence payers, making sure we get a good deal, and that the people who make the programmes and run online services - the executive - stay on track to provide a splendid public service. But just what should that public service be?
The Trust - and the BBC - has recently been very taken up with staff cuts and other savings brought about because the licence fee isn't going up as much as the BBC wanted.
At the same time the Trust has been running the first of a long series of service reviews, during which the public (licence payers) will be consulted on the contractual agreements between the Trust and the BBC executive who provide the services. Before the Trust came on the scene no such explicit agreements were in place, so it is very new territory.
The first review is of bbc.co.uk, which the Trust started a few months back. There is an online questionnaire which takes us step-by-step through the issues the Trust is examining. (I'll return later to the work Lizzie Jackson, Ed Mitchell and I have been doing.)
The BBC's purpose is  " To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain" with a vision " To be the most creative organisation in the world." It aims to create public value in six main ways:

• Sustaining citizenship and civil society: the BBC supports civic life and national debate by providing trusted and impartial news and information that helps citizens make sense of the world and encourages them to engage with it.
• Promoting education and learning: by offering audiences of every age a world of formal and informal educational opportunity in every medium, the BBC helps build a society strong in knowledge and skills.
• Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence: the BBC enriches the UK's cultural life by bringing talent and audiences together to break new ground, to celebrate our cultural heritage, and to broaden the national conversation.
• Reflecting the UK's nations, regions and communities: by enabling the UK's many communities to see what they hold in common and how they differ, the BBC seeks to build social cohesion and tolerance through greater understanding.
• Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK: the BBC supports the UK's global role by being the world's most trusted provider of international news and information, and by showcasing the best of British culture to a global audience.

The review of bbc.co.uk is looking at how that service serves the public purposes and, in particular, the citizenship and educational purposes. It is also looking - among other things - at how far it is distinctive and innovative, whether it extends the range of BBC's broadcast services, whether it enables users to search easily, leading users beyond BBC content, and whether it makes the BBC more accountable to licence fee payers.
The questionnaire takes you through these issues, with examples of what it would take to fulfil these requirements. There have already been several hundred responses, and consultation has been extended to mid-December.
Lizzie, Ed and I became involved because the Trust wanted to extend engagement further online ... to encourage more conversations as well as formal responses. It is difficult for the Trust to do that up front because it must be strictly neutral, so we spent some time with the Trust team working from broad ideas of what might be possible, towards a workshop with bloggers leading to wider online engagement.
We ran the workshop last week, and you can see how some noted bloggers picked up the challenge.

Charlie Beckett, the director of the new journalism and society think-tank POLIS, highlighted the difficulties of the consultation process, while wishing the Trust well in the process.
Simon Dickson, a new media consultant specialising in news and government work,  suggested the Trust had its own blog pulling together conversations from different places, acting as a neutral moderator.
Sunny Hundal, who is editor of Asians in Media magazine, and runs the Pickled Politcs site, raised the issue of how satisfactory, or not, the management of interaction is on bbc.co.uk.
Sue Thomas, professor of new media at De Montfort University, questioned whether the BBC is transliterate ... which is a term I'm ashamed to say I hadn't met before. It means the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. Very relevant.

Although the number of posts is so far small, they have started discussion ... with for example 20 comments on Sunny's site, and eight on Sue's.
We made suggestions to the Trust about how to carry the process forward, and already our client Anna Coghen has joined in the discussion on the blogs. On Sunny's site, Anna says she hopes that the Trust will run a bigger event later in the process with a wider invitee list.
The bloggers are also sharing ideas on how to collaborate between themselves, and with the BBC, so I'm hopeful we'll get a second wave of activity soon.
The process so far has reminded me yet again how far engagement is a process, not an event. I think the workshop went well, but in a few hours we barely had time to get to know each other and start some conversations. I hope more of those who attended post their thoughts, that Anna can find time to respond, and there may be further stimuli to discussion.
But maybe the main lesson is that it is possible for an organisation like the BBC Trust - which by its constitution is rather cautious and "official" - to get together with bloggers and do two things. First, invite involvement in topics of public concern and hopefully mutual interest, and secondly to say, in effect "we aren't entirely sure how to engage online. Can you give us some ideas and share your experience?" I think that admitting you aren't yet transliterate is lesson one for effective online organisational engagement.
More here in Wikipedia on transliteracy. Meanwhile, do please take a look at the questionnaire, and add your own views.
Update:
Anthony Mayfield writes on Citizen regulators: BBC Trust reaches out through blogs in its review of bbc.co.uk

Nico Macdonald writes on In the BBC we Trust

Technorati Tags: bbc, bbctrust, socialmedia

Foresight site offers strategic insight

I've always found Karl Wilding and Megan Griffith at the NCVO Third Sector Foresight unit full of wisdom about UK nonprofits - insightful about the here-and-now, as well as thoughtful about the future**. I was impressed when they let me know about their new website which provides a very understandable route into strategic planning for nonprofits, offering among other things a database of the main drivers for change likely to impact on organisations.  It's a pretty comprehensive list of everything from multiculturalism and multinationals, to human rights, the rise of radicalism, the long tail, work/life balance, climate change, volunteering ... Umm. A bit daunting on second look.
What's needed in these circumstances, of course, is some interpretation ... a bit of news, chat, comment ... just the sort of thing a blog can provide. And, surprise! it's there. Karl and Megan profess to be reluctant techies, so I didn't expect a lot of activity when I revisited the news section. But not only are they busy adding to content produced by Natalie Williams (whose main job it is), they've also pulled in Veronique Jochum with an item on "Is the information society a community catalyst or community liability?" This picks up on a publication by Edward Andersson of Involve on ICT and localism, and particularly the issue of bridging online and offline participation.
In case this seems a bit "welcome to the blogosphere" patronising, I'd say that I think it is really quite tough to be motivated to blog in the UK nonprofit sector. It's probably not seen as a priority by senior staff, and there aren't many general purpose nonprofit blogs out there yet, so you don't get much attention and reward from comments or links.
So how appropriate for the Foresight team to be exploring how to use social media in practice, as well as in their excellent publications on the subject.
** Disclosure: the Foresight team did fund me to write an A-Z of social media, but I'd say it anyway.

Technorati Tags: foresight

Engagement is all the rage ... at least in theory

The push towards a new politics of greater citizen engagement and volunteering get a strong nudge from Sophia Parker in the current edition of the RSA journal. She notes that politicians are increasingly arguing that our social wellbeing cannot be delivered solely from the centre:

We, the people, are all the rage. In a passionate speech to the NCVO, Gordon Brown argued that “it is people who are engaged in changing the world that will be the next momentum for change”. But it’s not just Brown who is trailing this agenda. The day after Brown promised a series of citizens’ juries to open up policy processes, David Cameron launched a proposal for a ‘national citizen service’ for young people, to help them “feel that British society is something they want to be part of".

Sophia offers an historical perspective on the current enthusiasm for more bottom-up action, from Beveridge to Blair, through Margaret Thatcher's declaration: “There is no such thing as society…too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it.”
We started with a post-war 1940s belief in the State, moved through the consumerist look-out-for-yourself phase, into a world of top-down performance targets for public services mixed with requirements on agencies to engage, consult and empower. It's now time to work out what can be "delivered" and what depends on people's involvement for lasting solutions and wellbeing. As Sophia points out:

Whether it’s managing long-term conditions, living sustainably or tackling gun crime — all issues dominating the press recently — these are not things that can be delivered to passive citizens by formal services alone. Their ‘solution’ relies as much on how we as individuals behave, and how we interact with the world around us, as it does on how the government responds. In other words, this new-found interest in the role of citizens in change is not only ideologically led, but deeply pragmatic too.

The journal article is in support of the vision of  RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor for an  organisation where the 27,000 members - called Fellows - develop a network for civic innovation. Sophia, who has previously worked at Demos, is now busy on the programme to engage Fellows, focussed initially around an event on November 22. Previous posts on that indexed here.
Fortunately for those interested in the "how to" of engagement, my friends over at Involve have just launched a very splendid new web site People and participation.net. It has been designed by social media specialists Headshift, with funding from a couple of Government departments, and includes an interactive tool which helps you select appropriate participatory methods depending on your circumstances. That's a bit like the Dialogue Designer I wrote about here. As well as a database of methods, case studies and resources, there's a section where you can post a question to Involve experts and so get specialist advice.
The site was launched by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears as part of the Government's 'Empowerment Action Plan', which Involve says:

... sets out how the Government will deliver on its commitment to empower communities through a range of activities, including more community power to trigger petitions, citizens' juries and an increased say for local communities over local budgets....

A few years back I would have been whooping for joy at all this official support for public and community engagement ... and I do believe it is essential whether within membership organisations like the RSA, or programmes for community regeneration. And yes, it is brilliant that Involve has pulled together so much excellent advice.
My reservation is that it's one thing to talk about engagement, and an entirely different matter to make it work ... because change depends not just on methods but on attitudes. I rambled on about that here and here, arguing that not only do power-holding organisation have to be prepared to listen and deliver their side, they have to start early in the process of engagement. They need to open up, form new relationships, and work things out with key interests from the start. Engagement doesn't work unless it is collaborative. I hope Involve are already working on a sister site: organanisationsandparticipation.net ... and that the RSA will prove a good case study.

Technorati Tags: engagement, rsa

Reaching out to bloggers - acceptably

It's commonplace these days to say that the best of blogging is about promoting conversations rather than solo soap-boxing ... but how can this be done to foster a cloud and not just a hub and spokes effect? How might these conversations filter across into face-to-face, Facebook, and MSM (main stream media)? It's a great idea, but it isn't easy.
I'm particularly interested in these issues at the moment because of a couple of projects I'm working on - as well, of course, as a personal interest in seeing my modest ideas occasionally spread. I'm sure I've seen a study somewhere saying that any response to an item on a blog or forum - positive or negative - hugely increases the likelihood of the person contributing again. It certainly does for me - so thanks, commenters.
Marketing and PR people have, of course, caught on to this and may seek out prominent bloggers to try and get them to write about their products. This can backfire seriously if you try it with someone like Tom Coates, who responded with a picture on Flickr titled "This is not a brothel". As well as the discussion under the picture, there's more here and here. Anthony Mayfield muses that "blogger relations" may do more harm than good, and wonders Can marketers ever start conversations?.

The conversations I'm keen to promote myself, and on behalf of clients, are generally about worthy issues of social policy and public engagement, so I hope I'll escape any charges of unsavoury practices if the promotion of ideas and conversations is done in an open fashion. A couple of items I saw over the weekend have crystalised my thoughts. The first, by Michelle Martin, is about promoting comenter-to-commenter conversations, the second, which I've already mentioned, is the launch of http://www.journa-list.com/. This allows you to track which MSM journalists are writing about what.

First, of course, you need a topic of interest to bloggers, and then - in my emerging model - a client or other interested party prepared to host a get-together with suitable refreshments.
You then need to be able to contact a group of bloggers who will both be interested in the topic, the convenor, and the chance for a chat. Fortunately Facebook is making this much easier, because bloggers are befriending each other, joining groups, meeting up, and generally getting to know each other outside the blogosphere.
At the get-together there will be two areas of discussion (well, lots, but two I would like to see). One around the topics that brought us together, and the other around how to spread blog conversations - hopefully to everyone's benefit.
The discussion about spreading conversations might touch on Michelle's ideas, on how to create buzz, maybe trigger cross-overs into Facebook - and also into MSM now it is easy to see which journalists might be interested. Incidently, there's another new Facebook campaign launched by NSPCC on combating cruelty to children.
None of these ideas is new, and with a bit more research I'm sure I'll find a more sophisticated approach described and tried.
However, what's important in my mind is not so much the particular methods that might be used, but the acceptability of "blogger outreach". Colin McKay offers some social media outreach maxims for civil servants who might be considering engaging with bloggers:

• Know your strategy - your strategy for policy development as well as communications. Your contact and discussion with bloggers and social media must fit into your overall strategy for outreach, consultation and legislative action.
• Build a detailed outreach list. Make sure you’re speaking to influencers and bloggers well-versed in your issues and concerns.
• What does it take to win? Agree on your organization’s goals for your outreach.
• Explain how your outreach program can go wrong. Map out for others how a comment stream can go negative.
• Be thoroughly aware of the “state of play” in your issue or program. What are you trying to say? What are the limits to what you can say?
• What is the logical next step? Be ready to continue the conversation or debate.
• Be straightforward about your limitations. Don’t just drop a conversation or comment thread - explain your reasons for disengaging and identify how your organization may pursue the subject in other ways.
• ALWAYS be clear about your identity and level of authority. Communications staff shouldn’t wade knee deep into a technical conversation.
• Link and Point - don’t just restrict the conversation to your own knowledge. Point to other sources of information and commentary, especially if its buried deep inside the site map of your own organization, partners or international organizations.

These days, if you want to make an impact, you can't be solely a blogger, journalist, event organiser, or producer of press releases - you have to blend your media ... and be open about it.

BBC "drops Action Network": time for a new campaigning model?

I haven't seen this elsewhere, but the BBC's Action Network is going to close,  according to the International Centre of Excellence for Local Democracy (ICELE). This may be yet another example of how centralised initiatives to support campaigning and democracy will have to adapt to the new publishing and campaign power of individuals on the Net, and in social networks. One click politics is spreading.

In BBC backs out of changing the world  ICELE report:

A spokesperson for the BBC at the World eDemocracy Forum announced that the acclaimed campaigning site, 'Action Network' is to close its doors.
The power of the network over council-led initiatives was the faith that citizens had in the independence of the broadcaster.
The closure is expected within the next three months in favour of a more news driven service which has a greater emphasis on aggregation of bottom-up content, including issue related blogs.
BBC Action Network had a boost when it changed its name from 'iCan' but has been struggling with active content despite around 1 million hits per month.  Momentum was also lost with the departure of long-term project leader Martin Vogel.

The BBC site had been honoured as the top politics and Internet "world changer" of 2005, and in previous years.
Searching revealed a mention of the Action Network ("It seemed to disappear in the haze of BBC Online") on the blog of Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust,  who reported an afternoon talking to BBC journalists a few weeks back. Reflecting on the revolution in media currently taking place, he wrote:

Central to this - and where the BBC plays a critical role - is the reconstitution of what's traditionally been known as the 'Fourth Estate'. What I mean by this is the massive explosion in the number of people doing what they consider journalism, but who don't call themselves journalists. Maybe they take the occasional photo and send it to the BBC, or write a blog about an event they go to, or do some digging about some local scandal.
The exciting bit, and the bit I hope the BBC will play a big part in, is harnessing this amazing explosion by giving people the tools and advice to help them become informal constituents of this new Fourth Estate. This occurred to me when on the way back I was reading excerpts from Demos' study about the 'Pro-Am Revolution':
"...in the last two decades" Demos writes, "a new breed of amateur has emerged: the Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards. These are not the gentlemanly amateurs of old - George Orwell's blimpocracy, the men in blazers who sustained amateur cricket and athletics clubs. The Pro-Ams are knowledgeable, educated, committed and networked by new technology. The twentieth century was shaped by large hierarchical organisations with professionals at the top. Pro-Ams are creating new, distributed organisational models that will be innovative, adaptive, and low cost"
Imagine if the BBC built the tools to enable these 'Pro-Ams' to do some of the jobs journalists would like to do but just don't have time: to search through health statistics, to look at local councillors records, to look at public sector budgets. Many might use them just for their own benefit, but in doing so they could turn up things no single journalist would have time to look for. MySociety have built tools like this to enable people to scrutinize MPs (TheyWorkForYou), and more recently on to report local problems - FixMyStreet (broken drains, cracked pavements).
Isn't this something the BBC could do too? And, if it did, wouldn't it harness the power of an army of local and specialist journalists?

This is a fascinating observation at a time that the BBC Trust is carrying out a review of the online service bbc.co.uk. I'm doing some work on the consultation process, and should be able to write more about that shortly. I hope Martin submits his ideas.
Meanwhile Martin's organisation, the Media Standards Trust, has just launched an extremely interesting site - http://www.journa-list.com -that enables you to look at news articles by journalist rather than by news organisation.

You can see what articles a journalist has written, what subjects he/she writes most about, and who else has written about the same subject. More usefully still, you can build your own newsroom of favourite journalists and have their articles gathered together and automatically emailed to you every morning.
The site works by looking up the RSS feeds of the various national newspapers and BBC news online, then indexing the articles by journalist (if you want any more technical details you'll need to talk to Ben - the internet whizz whose been building the site from his cottage in the wilds of north Wales).

It's still in beta, but already fascinating ... and not just to journalists looking for their rankings. As part of my work with the Trust, I've been looking at blogs, and also for journalists writing about the BBC. Here they all are.  Hat-tip to William Davies, who is a trustee of the Media Standards Trust.

Engagement isn't marketing, members are more than customers

I believe much fresh thinking and innovation emerges from cross-overs between sectors, disciplines and cultures, and so I was fascinated to sit in on a presentation last week about engaging and expanding membership of a charity, given by a team from a major retailer. (Is there such a big difference these days? I'll come back to that).
The challenge given to the retail team was to help the RSA in its re-invention process towards a network for civic innovation (previous RSA postings here). They interviewed staff and members (Fellows), and looked at other organisations (possible competitors for members). They came up with an engagement plan, shown here, starting before the big event planned by the RSA for Fellows on November 22**, following through to further activities. There was a lot of emphasis on promoting the vision of the chief executive, Matthew Taylor.

My immediate reaction to the presentation was "you've got it wrong - this is just marketing", moderated to "you've got some of it right", through to something about "it depends where you are sitting, and your view of the world".
The retail team were presumably chosen as advisers because their stores suffered a potentially catastrophic downturn in business a couple of years back,  and are now on the way up thanks to the drive and vision of a new chief exec. Matthew Taylor is trying for major changes at RSA, including expansion of membership from 26,000 to 100,000 in a few years. He wants Fellows (customers?) to be at the heart of the organisation, not the edge. You can see the video here.
The retailers offered eight principles of good engagement:

1. From the horses mouth
2. Timely, transparent and full disclosure
3. A concept you can pass on
4. One big idea
5. Delivered with energy and personality
6. Dialogue and discussion
7. Hand over ownership to the audience
8. Next steps, easy, clear and booked in

They said that their new chief executive was brilliant at achieving this in big events with managers, sending them back to their stores to enthuse staff. They said it was very important to give managers clear guidelines on how to do this. They had tried leaving it to managers to choose their own methods, but it hadn't been too successful. The implication - for me anyway - was that on November 22 Fellows need to leave the event fired up with missionary zeal to put Matthew's vision into practice.
Maybe I misunderstood the detail - but I started to feel uncomfortable because it seemed a pretty top-down approach, and didn't fit well with the idea of Fellows creating networks for action using social media and other distinctly peer-to-peer models. In the spectrum of engagement, is seemed to sit up the inform and consult end rather than collaborate and empower ... which is where the RSA narrative is.

Anyway, I didn't write about the event straight away, but let the ideas ferment for a few days. That led me to think that maybe the retailers had got some of it right - perhaps the part that they would understand best. The RSA does need to improve and market its services to Fellows - the bar, library, restaurant and so on. Otherwise people will start to wonder whether they are just foot-soldiers in Matthew's New Army of civic volunteers ... and why are they paying £130 or so a year for that? The other thing they got right is that any telling-selling-engaging process shouldn't stand or fall on one big event. It is a long process ... so November 22 is just one milestone.
What didn't seem right was the overall emphasis on "selling" a vision ... when anyone in the nonprofit sector knows that ultimately volunteer activists do what volunteer activists want to do, so it is important to get some alignment of interests. Ideally you should co-design programmes with them.
It was at this point of musing that I reminded myself how important the culture, context and background is in understanding, quite literally, where people are coming from. The retailers had been through a few scary/energising years of decline and resurrection, and their presentation featured lots of press cuttings about "slide goes on" ... "faces more storms ahead" ... then ... "stunning sales" and "eight year peak". Of course they would draw upon this experience when faced with the challenge of re-inventing the RSA.
Similarly, Matthew Taylor must have in mind some of his experience in the Labour Party. As Simon Dickson points out, there's a passage in the video I did of Matthew where he talks about his idea for a network of civic for innovation. He says:

Part of the reason I was enthused by this idea is that I tried to do it at the Labour Party for ten years - and it was totally impossible. I spent ten years saying ‘can’t we turn our members into civic entrepreneurs? can’t we actually look like we believe in progressive change on the ground, rather than just knocking on people’s doors?’ The party leadership and party stakeholders were utterly resistant to this idea.

I certainly don't think that replaying that experience more successfully is the main motivation behind the vision ... but I guess you can't spend 10 years or so in the service of the New Labour modernising machine without being touched by its less-than-empowering culture. It's a great tribute to Matthew's versatility that, if there, it isn't too evident.
In order to put all this into the context of engagement theory, I cast my mind back to some excellent work undertaken by Jack Martin Leith a few years back when he charted engagement and ideas generation methods against worldview - you can find it here.
Put simply, within Worldview 1, the world is a machine and methods you are drawn to  are fairly mechanistic. Under Worldview 2 the world is a system, while in Worldview 3 it is a field of energy and consciousness ... and undoubtedly a lot messier, as I've touched on here and here.
I suspect that part of the difficulty the RSA faces is that the different interests involved have different worldviews, and don't have a way to talk about this. I hope that NESTA Connect - who are funding the current exercise - have work-in-progress monitoring in place to see how things play out, because process is as interesting as outcomes in engagement. There may be lessons for that from Diane Warburton's work on evaluation of public participation.

Phew. I didn't expect to spend quite as long on this piece as I have. It shows (for me) how interesting the RSA is at present. I'll hang in as long as it gives me stuff to write about. I suspect many other Fellows have their own rather diverse interests and motivations as well.
Perhaps the most telling exchange during the RSA-retailer event was when someone pointed out that most of the engagement processes discussed were aimed at managers. How did they know whether their customers were engaged or not? "Well, if they don't like us, they don't come to the stores" was the reply.
Not a bad lesson - if you remember members of charities aren't just buying, they are contributing ... so they require even more care and attention. It is interesting to listen in to the re-invention process ... it would be even more motivating to play a more active part.
** The part that Fellows can play in the process has been un-clarified by a message to those who signed up following the November 22 event invitation, believing that would ensure a place. Unfortunately this isn't so, and Matthew now tells us "we will be making our final selection of registrants shortly to ensure that we have as representative a group of Fellows as possible here on the day".
However, all is not lost for those who may be disappointed. An earlier mailing to those interested inadvertently displayed some 260 e-mail addresses, thus giving any Fellow the opportunity, for the first time, to contact directly others interested in the re-invention process. Nobody has yet, which suggests either a high degree of satisfaction with the way things or going, or a generally low-level of social media awareness ... or maybe a feeling of "let's see how it goes, don't rock the boat". Just in case that changes, I suggest the event organisers take a look at Communities Dominate Brands, by Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen. As I reported here, Alan has a compelling metaphor, warning brands about complacency once their customers can find each online:  "once you have stormed the Bastille, you don't really want to go back to your boring day job."
The retailers didn't mention that one.

Now libraries are lending people

Librarians have been working hard to keep ahead in the Internet age, but it was only yesterday I learned that some will now help you borrow a person as well as a book or other information container. It turns out this is a smart way of re-introducing those ancient forms of knowledge transfer: conversation and storytelling.
My chum Kevin Harris passed on news of the Living Library seminar, on October 24. It's being held at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, so it is serious stuff. The flyer says:

‘Living Library’ gives direct access to someone else’s experience, by allowing people to ‘borrow’ someone who is an expert in their field, has significant experience to share, or is passionate about a hobby.
‘Loans’ take the form of a conversation, and can last for half an hour, a morning or an afternoon. The Living Library has been developed in a  number of countries and this seminar has been organised to share experiences from Australia and Belgium, which clearly illustrate the contribution that library, museum and archive services can make to community cohesion

Among the questions to be explored are:

• What ways can be found to link the topic ‘borrowed’ with existing, more permanent, resources?
• Should Living Library be mainstreamed?
• Is the MLA (Museum, Libraries Archives Council) sector the appropriate place for such initiatives?

Ah, not on offer in your local library yet, then. A little Googling leads me to a report in the Australian Daily Telegraph about a Living Library pilot in Lismore, which illuminates the reference to community cohesion:

Another living book is Aboriginal artist Albert "Digby" Moran who took part because he wanted to break down the barriers between "white and black". As he is a storyteller through his art, the 59-year-old finds it easy to tell people about his life including what it was like to grow up as an Aboriginal in a white school.
"Everyone has a story to tell, people just need to take more time to listen," Mr Moran said.

One of my favourite blogs is by the Australian consultancy Anecdote, who apply storytelling techniques to knowledge management and much else. They also favour mud maps, as I reported here. My friend Larry Stillman is over here from Melbourne in December, so I hope to learn more of innovations down under. Apparently colleagues have been adapting some of our games for information and knowledge management.
Meanwhile I commend Kevin's closer-to-home blog on neighbourhoods and community, where he manages his own blend of policy analysis and chat. I particularly like the frog sheltering from climate change.

Why can't events be more like Facebook?

Before the web became live,  offline people would chastise those online for paying too little attention to friendship, sociability, introductions and the warm feelings and relationships engendered by a good get-together. I think we may be coming full circle, and our social networking places like Facebook have lessons for those organising face-to-face events. Particularly if they are about Facebook and the use of Web 2.0 social media for campaigning.

These thoughts were prompted by a meeting last night organised by Amnesty International at their London HQ, as part of a bigger launch. As the Guardian reported earlier:

The group was launching a campaign, Unsubscribe, to highlight human rights abuses in the war on terror and reach out to websites such as Bebo and Facebook, Amnesty officials said.
The campaign is the latest step into the 21st century for Amnesty, which was set up in 1961 and has traditionally engaged in letter-writing campaigns to encourage action over human rights abuses around the world.

Appropriately enough, Amnesty used a Facebook group to invite bloggers, activists, second lifers and other networkers to the event. (Warning: what follows is going to sound a bit churlish. I think Amnesty is fantastic. They do amazing work. They are in the lead with online campaigning. I have signed up to help. You can too)
Unfortunately the evening event followed the standard pattern I've found too often with think tanks and large charities.
Generous drinks on arrival, but no hosting ... so if you don't know anyone you immediately feel not part of the network. Clearly there are amazingly interesting people here, but you aren't one of them, and you probably won't meet them unless you are brash in self-introduction. Then... the meeting has a top table. On a platform. You are with the foot-soldiers in the well of the hall, waiting your turn, theatre-style, to put you hand up. There may be free wifi (as last night) ... but that usually connects you to people outside the hall, not inside.
The panel then each do five or ten minute pieces ... some well-prepared, others (by admission) off the cuff.
Fortunately the content yesterday was fascinating. We hear from Johnny Chatteron how a Support the Monks in Burma Facebook group rapidly grew to 300,000, has been used to support protect events around the world, and prompted extensive media coverage. It it providing a tremendous news feed from inside the country.
Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students, explains how a campaign on Facebook forced the banking giant HSBC to back down on graduate overdraft fees. She also used Facebook to campaign successfully for her re-election.
Kevin Anderson, head of blogging at The Guardian, gave an insider's explanation of how individual bloggers can make an impact on traditional media, exposing human rights abuses. He cited the example of camera phone images of police brutality in Egypt posted to YouTube.
A strong theme throughout was that Facebook was a terrific way to bring people together because friends introduced friends to groups - and people trusted each other. I think some Facebook functions could provide reminders on how to run engaging - rather than just interesting - events.

• First, badges with space for your interests. That's like profiles.
• Then group hosts to make introductions to new-comers.
• The space itself can be equitable - perhaps groups on tables. That's like discussion groups.
• Activity could be a mix of set pieces - postings to the wall - and the forums.

None of this is novel. For example, David Gurteen does it very well in his knowledge cafes, and provides a set of tips for participatory events.

I think that the idea behind the Amnesty event was that the bloggers among us would spread the word about Unsubscribe ... and I think we'll see more of this "blogger outreach" among campaigning organisations. I wanted to ask whether Amnesty would be borrowing techniques from social marketers who employ specialist firms to scan the blogosphere for conversations and influencers. I confess that after a bit of half-hearted hand-raising I left early, missing out on the film.
As I left, the human touch, which is what Amnesty is all about, re-emerged. One of the organisers followed me out, asked what I had wanted to say, and even recorded it. Maybe it was played back.
I left feeling Amnesty is an organisation with a compelling cause and content (of course), run by passionate people, but on this occasion anyway locked into an old-style architecture for promoting its message. A bit like Web 1.0 really.
I'll return to Amnesty's excellent online presence later - it is stunning.
Previously:
Free conference on new media and society: old-style event
Tips for participatory conferences - first, think social
Talking social media at an unsocial event
and other events posts

No election ... so let's get on with New Politics

Now that the prospect of traditional mass participation indifference and accompanying frenzy of old-style party politics is out of the way for a bit, it could be time for Whitehall to turn its attention to implementing Gordon Brown's ideas for a New Politics of citizen engagement.
These started to surface in July with a Green Paper on The Governance of Britain:

Our constitutional arrangements underpin how we function as a nation.  The nature of the relationship between government and citizens, the accountability of our institutions, and the rights and responsibilities of everyone in Britain together determine the health of our democracy. 
The proposals published in this green paper, 'The Governance of Britain', seek to address two fundamental questions:  how should we hold power accountable, and how should we uphold and enhance the rights and responsibilities of the citizen?
As part of this, the Government wants to engage people around the country in a discussion on citizenship and British values and will be conducting a series of events around the UK to gain as much input as possible. 

This got some attention from Chris Leslie - local government specialist and self-confessed constitutional hobbyist,  the British Humanist Association (let's disentangle church and state), and the Flag Institute, who naturally enough were interested in the review of flag flying practice that was part of the package. Apparently there's some confusion about how often it is OK to fly the Union flag from government buildings. The Liberal Democrats produced their own proposals, the Policy Exchange has an event this week, but I didn't see much wider popular interest.
This changed in September when the Prime Minister promised a "a new type of politics" in a speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations.

I believe that Britain needs a new type of politics which embraces everyone in this nation, not just a few. A politics built on consensus, not division. A politics that draws on the widest range of talents and expertise, not the narrow circles of power.
Whether it is crime and gang violence, the future health of the nation or climate change, the solutions will not come simply from a narrow debate between states and markets.

He added:

So quite simply I reject the old politics of dividing people, not uniting them, of quick fixes, not the long term solutions that everybody knows we must work hard to achieve together, and it means therefore debating concerns and issues like housing, crime, the NHS, schools, community development and regeneration, debating issues that affect local communities direction, not just in the corridors of power but throughout the country.

He promised a series of citizens' juries, standing commissions to bring together a wide range of interests to address key issues, and a Speaker's conference to deal with the problems of the political system.
My friends over at Involve were quick off the mark with an analysis from director Richard Wilson. This urged that juries and summits must not be just opinion-gathering exercises, they must help empower citizens; events aren't enough... you need to "leave the room" and go where people are; and new media could play a big part, perhaps through media agencies including the BBC.
Involve used their blog to create pages where people could comment on what would be needed for the new politics to succeed, and offer up videos. The aim is to create a Democratic Dossier for submission to the Prime Minister in November.
One of the ideas in the Green Paper was a statement of values, and the Daily Mail had some fun with suggestions that this would be a motto to be displayed on schools and public buildings. Could be "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" ... or as one BBC website user suggested "Smile! You're on CCTV". If you are looking for a more serious discussion, Prospect magazine offers thoughts from 50 writers and intellectuals - but my Googling didn't throw up much else.
What I take from this is that there won't be much point in the Prime Minister's no doubt genuine efforts towards a Bill of Rights, or other mechanisms to engage and empower citizens, if New Politics just become Old Participation and political knock about. What's needed are ways to break out of the usual narrow media-politician dialogue, and top-down consultations.
Could new media offer at least part of the answer? Fortunately the Ministry of Justice has published a second report from the Digital Dialogues programme, under which Ross Ferguson and colleagues have studied various Government experiments in online engagement. These range from David Miliband's Ministerial blog at Defra (now transferred to the Foreign Office, where it is joined by other officials) , to a Communities and Local Government Forum, Downing Street Webchats, and a blog by the Food Standard Agency Chief Scientist).
The findings from the study, and associated recommendations, seem to me to provide guidance that could be very relevant across the New Politics/Governance of Britain programme. I think that their preceding analysis is spot-on:

The UK government has a challenge on its hands. Public trust, knowledge and efficacy in British political institutions have been consistently depressed in recent years. Whilst few would question that Britain is a democracy, it has been criticised for its lack of democratic vitality. Its citizens have been described as  ‘noisy spectators’ rather than active participants, and its politicians and  government accused of retreating into a ‘bunker mentality’ rather than facing the problem. 

The researchers suggest that there is a latent interest among citizens in being more engaged by political institutions and representatives - but that there is "a failure on the part of political institutions to take advantage of opportunities to engage the public, often by failing to address what motivates awareness and participation".
I think this is the crunch issue. People are usually interested in issues that affect their lives, if they can understand what's going on. But they are increasingly cynical about engagement processes in which power-holding agencies don't listen, or if they do listen, don't necessarily deliver much resembling the wishes of those engaged. As my friend Drew Mackie wrote a few years back, we are Dancing while standing still.
Anyway, The Digital Dialogues report argues that online methods not only offer new ways for people to engage, but also present "significant logistical, and transparency benefits that are not always present in conventional offline methods". I think that is shorthand for shake things up a bit. They should be mixed with other offline methods, and owned-by and involve Ministers. They work best where government representatives are active participants, not detached convenors.
Recommendations emphasise innovation, being ready to scale-up pilots, co-designing with users, training staff, being interactive, evaluating ... and lots more wisdom generally applicable across the whole field of engagement.
Here's conclusions after a few hours piecing this item together, and reflecting on the various reports and recommendations:

1. It is difficult, at the moment, to see what's going on, and to write about it in the spirit of online engagement. Reports are usually pdfs which you have to laboriously download, scan, copy and paste to create anything remotely usable. There are too few links on official sites - "if you are interested in this, you might like to look at that".
2. Unless I've missed it, no-one in Government is speaking or writing about this in remotely conversational terms. That - together with the inaccessibility of source material - makes it difficult to talk about - or blog. The default approach is still Ministerial speech,  press release, document. Putting a speech on YouTube helps a bit, but the message in the presentation is still "you have to understand things our way".
3. The emphasis in most of the policy proposals is still one-way: we need to do more to engage citizens. In my experience, that's not the biggest problem. What's needed is some organisational engagement and culture-change to address not-listening, not-delivery. If you can't deliver, just offering engagement makes things worse.
4. When online engagement is discussed, there's a presumption that it means simply creating another official web site, forum, blog. But a long-learned lesson of convention engagement is that few people want to come to "official" places. Don't rely on public meetings, go to the places where people are already talking. As a first step, do some scanning of the online world to find the buzz, then invite the hosts and bloggers in for a chat about how best to engage. Less scary (and risky) than walking in unannounced. Create your own place too, of course.
5. Overall, think about creating trusted places and networks within which (hopefully) more constructive discussion can take place. I had a go at explaining that here.

The final recommendation in the Digital Dialogues report is for government to start some co-ordinated internal thinking on engagement processes:

Team up. There are a number of different government networks and funding streams specialising in discrete engagement fields. This  fragmentation is leading to replication and inefficiency. Government  should establish a cross-departmental ‘community of practice’ to provide  leadership, coordination and resources in order to maximise the  effectiveness and sustainability of on- and offline engagement activity.

My suggestion: open that up beyond the civil service. There are plenty of people who would like to contribute some thinking and practice, and help create genuinely new politics. The big lesson from using new, social media is that you don't have to do it on your own: build on what's out there already, share what you create, cross boundaries, make new friends. Should be good practice for the new politics too.

The long journey from conversation to ideas to action

The first meeting of OpenRSA last week went really well, and the 20 or so people who came are now reflecting on where next in the process of helping re-invent the RSA from the outside in as well as the inside out. We were reminded again that conversations and ideas are fairly easy ... moving to action is more difficult. I'm sure that will be the challenge when 250 of the RSA members (known as Fellows) get together on November 22 for a bigger official event. Anyway, we've made a good start.

Our initial discussions confirmed the role of the RSA as a convening place for people and ideas, with a particularly strength in crossing disciplines and public, private and non-profit sectors. As you can see here, one of the groups called that an "intellectual sharecycle". Our photogallery shows some of the other flipcharts, and reflections on how our first gathering together in a Facebook group has worked.

My conclusions are that it is pretty easy to get people into an FB group (more than 300), and to show interest in an event (maybe 80) but signing up and paying a small fee (£15) cuts that down (about 20). Great buzz at the event, and in the pub afterwards ... but even fewer people will then contribute to discussion. Is that just the one percent rule kicking in again:

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

In practice I expect a lot more activity to flourish, than this suggests. We ended up talking about some big issues (e.g. tackling social cohesion in cities) in pursuit of chief executive Matthew Taylor vision of a network for civic innovation. It dawned pretty quickly that it takes more than a few hours to work through the role of staff, funders, volunteer members, and other organisations in any new project. I think that the conversations we had last week will lead to a lot of new connections and ideas that people will join up with others things in their lives, and bring back to the group or the wider RSA when the opportunity arises.

You can see videos from the event here, including one of Matthew when he popped in to give some encouragement.

Click To Play

He subsequently blogged about a few of the big project ideas that are developing, including a debate on the Severn Barrage, and widening the attraction of Bristol's barbour area.

Like most of the other ideas we are mulling over these are only on the drawing board. But they are interesting examples of what emerges when we ask the question: "How can the RSA make a difference?" Any answers you might have are, of course, welcome. >
The challenge will be encouraging Fellows to do as much development work as possible at local level and then - when we are happy that the project is a sound one - thinking about how we can best use the RSA's resources (and particularly the wider Fellowship) to bring these ideas alive.

It's that balance between work by staff, and work by Fellows, that is a key issue in how things are moved forward. Is Matthew expecting that he and staff will develop ideas and then invite Fellows to join? Or will Fellows be encouraged to come up with ideas, and then work with staff? At this stage I expect an honest answer would be ... we don't really know. That's what we aim to explore.One other piece of very good news that we picked up was Mick Fealty will be developing a blog about the process for the RSA, starting before the November 22 event. Mick is famed for the Slugger O'Toole blog about Northern Ireland politics, and is now in residence at the Telegraph as Brassneck. As you can see here, Mick believes in playing the ball not the man, and likens a good blog to a pub.Mick's blogging is all part of the social media strategy being promoted by Matthew, and put in place by RSA web manager Anshuman Rane. You can see him here reflecting on the event with Malcolm Forbes, who convened the Facebook group.

Click To Play Both Malcolm and Anshuman emphasised the need to develop a trusted network of Fellows and staff as the dispersed place within which goods things can happen. I'm sure they will.More about OpenRSA

Join the RSA

Earlier items about RSA

Control can quench collaboration: let's talk about it

A couple of workshops I ran recently reminded me that amidst enthusiasm for the opportunities for engagement and collaboration that social media can bring, organisational culture and systems are likely to be a strong inhibitors. The first hurdle may be language.
In both workshops I was working with groups to play through different versions of the social media games I have developed with Drew Mackie. In each case we started by inventing some possible situations - scenarios - where social media could be used for engagement or collaboration, and then went on to use packs of cards to choose a mix of tech and non-tech methods.
Members of one workshop were marketing and communications specialists working in the education field, and they wanted to think through (among other things) how "chip shop mums" could be persuaded to offer their children better diets; how people could be encouraged to challenge yob/hoodie culture (is there a better word?); how children being taught at school might enter the state system.
In each instance - as far as I could see - action would depend upon parents and citizens deciding to do things differently. They would probably be more persuaded by people they knew than by official exhortation. Not only would they need to engage with the issues, they would need to collaborate.
However, the seminar framework within which the workshop discussion was taking place was "identify your audiences, clarify your messages, choose your channels, set your targets, develop a plan".
The groups were choosing social media tools like MySpace, blogs, video, identifying possible champions to use them, but perhaps not realising at first that once you go down that path you can't control what happens. You have moved from the world of media megaphones to one where "The Audiences" are no longer the receivers of content; they are the producers.
Of course, that's always been the case in situations where people can chat to each other ... whether at the school gate or in the chip shop queue. Social media increases the reach, amplifies the organisation-instruction/personal-conversation gulf.
We talked a bit about that at the wrap-up of the session, and there were lots of nodding heads, so I'm sure, as they say, it will be taken on board. I must check in and see what future social media communication plans look like.
The other workshop was with tenants and leaseholders of a large housing organisation, where the community development staff were keen to explore how social media could help people not only get better services, but also participate in forums and other activities even if they were spread across south-east England.
We had great fun a their conference this weekend inventing situations that ranged from flooding putting out all centralised systems, to online advice systems and organising childcare. Groups then had no difficulty working out what might be done - because those in a group that weren't too sure what a blog or wiki was, got help from the others.
The director of IT joined in and added some bright ideas ... but over lunch was rather more circumspect. The problem was, he said, we would need to work out how to support and manage these new systems. There would need to be some control.
Of course, that was clearly the case when the new services had to be integrated with those already provided by the organisation. But these days there's nothing to stop a group of residents setting up their own communication systems using free or low-cost web services ... and I sensed that this might initially bring furrows to some brows.
The discussions that would then be necessary within the organisation - perhaps between community development staff and service providers - would probably be a replay of others over the years about how far people should be consulted, engaged, trusted.
Again, I think things will work out. As I was leaving, and chatting to staff organising the event, I raised this possible tension. "Oh don't worry about that", they said. "We don't hang about. We just set up our own wikis for collaboration, and get on with it".
While the two workshops reminded me of the control and culture issues raised by social media, they also confirmed that a good way to start dealing with them is to get together in groups and talk about it. Nice to have clients who recognise that ... which reminds me of another point.
In an exchange of emails after the first event my client contact said she thought that the game had been really useful, and she would be using it to help plan a communications network for a group of education institutions that really needed to collaborate more effectively. My first thought was, hey, how about involving me. But then I reminded myself that I had said the games were Creative Commons licensed and could be used and remixed if then put back into the public domain. That's the thing about social media stuff, once it's out there, you can't control it.
Report of an earlier workshop on using social media for engagement, and one on social media in housing.
If you are interested in an insider view of how the UK government is grappling with social media, you can do no better than read Whitehall Webby Jeremy Gould. He reports on how the Foreign Office is embracing Web 2.0 under Ministerial blogger David Miliband. That's the other lesson, of course. A bit of old-style leader is needed if you want to cut through the barriers ... and good to see that it will be more than him with the blog in future. You can find FCO blogs here.
.