Designing for Civil Society

Explaining engaging

Stakeholders, networking, engagement, conversations, social media all go together in my mind, but it can be hard to explain to other people without falling into technobabble. Fortunately a new round of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, organised by Nancy Schwartz helps by addressing the issue of how to engage audiences who are saturated by marketing messages and images. I think it has relevance for public and for-profit organisations too. First a bit of head-clearing.
Stakeholder engagement is one of the phases that has crept across fields from participative democracy to public relations, marketing and supermarket corporate responsibility. It means mapping who you serve, who supplies and supports you, who you influence, and who influences you ... then working out what sort of relationship you want with them, and how to achieve that. The jargon is a bit off-putting, but the basic idea of two-way communication, listening and responding, seems good to me whatever the area. Of course, there's lots more to it than that, and it only works effectively if you develop some trust with your stakeholders over time. As many an organisation has found, there's nothing worse than creating an expectation that ideas or complaints will be listened to, and then failing to deliver.
Now networking. These days a lot of nonprofit organisations like to say they are networks because it sounds open, welcoming, connecting. Unfortunately too often the reality is that the so-called network is no more than a mailing list, and communication is mainly one-way: telling, selling, with a bit of consulting. There's little recognition that in networks people talk to each other, and that's a good thing if they have good things to say about you ... not if they don't. So take networking seriously.
Social media can be more engaging, as Beth Kanter and I talked about in a recent workshop, because blogs and other tools are conversational and potentially collaborative. Beth's great presentation is here.
Too often I end up in meetings where terms like stakeholder engagement and social media are punted around, but it is pretty clear that the underlying ethos is still internal command and control, external tell and sell. The emphasis is on targetting, positioning, demonstrating ... with stakeholders seen as mainly passive recipients of messages. I tentatively say things like ... umm, isn't this about starting some conversations that help build new relationships, and develop more trust in doing things together? Isn't it about talking to each other? There's the occasional nod, but unless the boss follows up no-one is going to stick their necks out in those sort of meetings.
What I need, in order to make the point better, are examples of people who are recasting marketing, PR as engagement, with some of their good stories. That's what Nancy's Carnival offers this month. R. Craig Lefebvre sums it up: It's no longer about getting attention, it's about earning it.
From here in the UK Whitewater's Anna Crofton stresses the importance of integrity and authenticity and messages that are simple and compelling, and  Steve Bridger recommends the power of storytelling, especially when it's visual. There's lots more in the Carnival which is, it seems to me, a small demonstration of the power of networking, social media and stakeholder engagement. The bloggers who contributed to Nancy's call for posts do so because they believe passionately in a different way of doing things, and also, I guess, because it helps rise their profiles in an authentic way that no amount of straight selling could do. I don't think there was a budget (beyond people's time of course). I'll remember to mention that in the next meeting ... throwing up the main issue: are you ready to make the effort to engage?

[[wiki:designingforcivilsociety:explaining engaging]]

Local activists - take to your blogs

Recently Labour party activist and former councillor Andrew Brown tossed in a gem of a comment on this blog celebrating the role of political parties at local level. He said they should: 

stop believing the press they get and recognise the strengths they have in being a persuader for better civic cultures. It’s members of political parties that a big part of the civic glue, serving on school governing bodies and health boards, active in local charities, and of course the people who put themselves forward for elections to councils, regional bodies and parliament.

I emailed Andrew asking if he might expand, and so he does over on his blog with a plea for activists to match their on-the-ground civic commitments with more engaging activity online.

These thoughts come from looking at the online presence of the local parties here in Lewisham. None of the sites are absolutely dreadful (although the West Lewisham Tories old site was close to it) but none of them make any real attempt to go beyond a fairly basic description of who they are.
In part I expect the reason why these sites are as uninspiring as they are is because no one is really thinking like a visitor to the site.
I’d like to see us try to do things differently, I’d like to show you the range of people who have joined the Labour Party and why they think that by doing this they are helping create a better Lewisham and a better Britain.
I’d like to try and explain a bit more what being an active member of the party means to me and the hundreds of other Labour Party members across Lewisham; what inspires us to join, to become active and to stand for positions.  How we contribute to our communities in all sorts of ways that are all but invisible in the mainstream debate about Lewisham, but which mean that our schools, hospitals and charities are rooted in the communities they serve.
I’d like to show you just how hard our representatives work on your behalf, and some of the successes they have.
And I’d like to have a better debate about policy.
I think that some of the new ways of using the web would help do that, but we need to believe that we have a message that is worth telling and that the public might be interested in hearing it.
And while the web is not the primary place for this to happen, it should be part of a strategy of trying to describe who we are, what we believe and why we think you might want to help out.

As Matthew Taylor argued at the recent e-democracy '06 conference, much political blogging just reflects the negative, snide, gossipy slanging match between traditional media and politicians. He called for more thoughtful deliberation - as does Andrew. He certainly leads the way on his blog, being prepared, for example, to argue the benefits of a directly elected mayor when others are mounting a campaign to "bring back democracy". What's particularly democratic about having councillors, rather than electors, choose the Mayor, asks Andrew. I also like the way that Andrew offers a round up of what's happening in Lewisham.
I hope Andrew is successful in further encouraging more civic online activity in Lewisham. I suspect this is going to come from individual activist bloggers rather than a speedy transformation in the way that the main parties present themselves. Individual voices online are easier to develop than collective ones.  But then, that's another example of how individuals and social media can show how to do things differently... and as this little blog-comment-email-blog-blog exchange shows it's easy to start a conversation.

Peer assist towards action learning

Last year I worked with a Government client to help develop action learning groups, so that public officials could work together to understand more about public engagement, and how to run engagement programmes. It didn't work out as planned, and I wonder if things might have been easier if I been able to show the Flash tutorial on Peer Assists, created by a partnership between Bellanet and the University of Ottawa. It was spotted (like so much other good stuff) by Nancy White.
The idea of action learning groups is that people come together in small groups to work on a real problem raised by one of the members. They share ideas, take action, bring results back to the group, and reflect on what's happened, as described here. It's a powerful method and the Peer Assists Flash tutorial sets out a similar approach.
In practice the programme I worked on was problematic because we had little time, people were at different stages of understanding, in different departments, very busy, and with different preferences for learning. Some liked courses, others manuals, and a few liked tackling practical problems in groups. Although the groups didn't work too well, we and the client learned a lot from the experience - not least that it is a mistake to start with a given method. You need to look at circumstances, learning preferences and much more. Maybe discussion around a Flash tutorial would have raised those issues earlier.
I understand that a cross-government community of practice on public engagement is now emerging, following our recommendations and review work undertaken by our client. A community of practice video would be a challenge to make.

Government culls old web sites ... limited blogging promised

While Dissident consultant Anthony Beaver notes with relish BBC news that the Government culls web sites ...

Hundreds of government websites are to be shut down "to make access to information easier" for people. Of 951 sites, only 26 will definitely stay, 551 will definitely close and hundreds more are expected to follow.

... the Hansard Society lets me know that their Interim report on the Government's Digital Dialogues initiative is available assessing pilots about how technology can support central government consultation. The report evaluated blogs, forums, surveys and webchats, and has lots of good sense on how to promote interaction online, as well as sensible conclusions:

- Online engagement activity is not a replacement for conventional offline methods. It should be used as a complement and is best placed with a multichannel engagement campaign;
- Blogs are suitable where engagement is ongoing over a long-term period. Forums are good for periodic, structured deliberation with large groups.
- Webchats are useful as one-off real-time events (but may be combined in a series or with other applications);
- Participant bases created around one exercise should be maintained and encouraged to take part in an ongoing dialogue at appropriate junctures around the policy cycle;
- Online engagement exercises should start small and should be scaled-up in response to demand;

The report treads carefully around issues of commitment and culture:

Over the course of this phase of Digital Dialogues, we have seen that a wide-range of policy areas is suitable for taking online. Policy teams have demonstrated their ability to adapt their public participation methods to an online medium. During the initiative they were able to interact closely with participants compared to before the exercises, when some were more used to a ‘stand-back and watch’ approach where participants were left to their own devices, or responsibility for engagement was handled externally. Nevertheless, confidence and desire do not equate to actual deliverable capacity, and it is clear that experience is needed when it comes to sustained participation and greater interaction with the public, particularly online.

... although it is fairly forthright about the blog of the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It recognises the challenges of the experiment:

There are aspects of David Miliband’s blogging that have justified the criticism. The most important is that for reasons of inexperience and lack of time Miliband has not adequately established his blog’s presence online. There are very few links to other relevant blogs – either in the permanent ‘blog roll’ or in the posts. The Minister rarely interacts with the comments made in response to his posts, and does not visit other blogs to comment. Therefore, the Minister’s blog fails to exploit its potential as a node in the communicative network that blogging has created. It stands out because of its establishment associations and looks awkward next to its peers.
Redressing the inefficiencies presents the most pressing challenge to David Miliband and his fledgling blog. Success may bring a greater acceptance by bloggers and generate more general traffic amongst those who are not regular participants in the political process. However, this will require a team effort by the Minister and his departmental communications team, and it will be interesting to see how this will be viewed by evangelical bloggers and political opponents.

Further pilots are planned in the second phase, around more forums, chat and blogs, including one by the Food Standards Agency Chief Scientist Andrew Wadge. That could be interesting, with a dip the other day into Organics: what's the fuss about?

There was lots of weekend media coverage about organic food, promoted by Environment Secretary David Miliband’s comments about it being a ‘lifestyle choice’ with no hard evidence that it’s better.
The Agency's advice on organic food is often cited. Basically we’re neither for nor against it, and we're guided very much by what the science says. We recognise the important role it plays in providing choice for consumers, but the balance of current scientific evidence doesn’t support the view that it’s more nutritious or safer than conventional foods.

More please. On the other hand, Dissident Anthony is quite clear about cull of conventional sites:

For anyone even remotely connected to the public sector, as well as ordinary citizens, this can only be good news. The proliferation of webs sites across central government is a consequence of an entrenched attitude that every project or initiative should have a web site - in fact this was usually the first thing that project teams did once they had been handed funding. No thought was ever given to what would happen to the site once the project had completed and funding no longer available.This 'silo thinking' is endemic across the public sector, and created huge problems in being able to find relevant information - that could well be split across several sites. The fact that it's easy in web-land to provide links between sites and content hasn't occurred to many of the site owners. Removing out of date or irrelevant content is clearly a step in the right direction, and should remove some of the clutter from search engine results.

One would love to believe that the clutter of non-interactive sites being culled will be replaced by other more interactive projects informed by the Digital Dialogues initiatives. But somehow the style still seems out of sync with the field.  The Digital Dialogues report is a pdf download which makes it difficult to  quote, and impossible to comment. There is a foreword from the politician responsible, Bridget Prentice, MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, with fine words:

The Digital Dialogues interim report illustrates how public involvement in the policy development process can influence policy outcomes. I am encouraged by the positive findings of the report and I strongly support the continued practice of using digital means to promote public participation in policy development.

... but if you look at Bridget's own site you find on the front page an invitation to see the winners of her Xmas card competition. Christmas 2005 that is. We know our elected members are hard pressed, and we all lapse a bit in our blogging, but April 2006 seems a while for the last update.
Oh dear, slap my virtual wrist. Don't be critical without being constructive ... so here goes. How about a project blog for Digital Dialogues so we are kept up to date with developments and can, well, get involved. It can't be easy promoting interactive online Government projects when - as Anthony Beaver says - the tradition has been broadcast-mode.  I think Hansard Society and the DCA should get as much encouragement as possible from friends outside Government -  but to do that we need a way of joining in.
Update: the ruralalnet|uk I-See-T Project has just spent a year investigating the use of technology for collaboration in the voluntary and community sector - and now presents the findings on a blog, in sections with opportunities for commenting.  More later on the findings.

Bristol shows how to collaborate to compete

What strikes me about Connecting Bristol is not so much the content - probably of limited interest to those outside the City - but the fact that it is there at all. The blog is being run in conjunction with Bristol's bid to win the UK Government's Digital Challenge, under which 10 finalists, led by local councils, are competing for several million pounds worth of Government funding, matched by private investors.
In one sense it is a pretty obvious idea to have a blog ... the aim of the challenge is to improve public services, promote inclusion of those not so far benefiting from social media and other technologies, and share experience.
However, as far as I can see none of the other competitors - except Manchester - has anything interactive. One has a a page with a form saying fill this in if you are interested .... Maybe they don't want to give away their best ideas.
Bristol, on the other hand, is not only reporting what it is doing towards its bid, but is also opening the blog up to non-council people who want to contribute. It's part of the bottom-up approach explained in a recent interview with Bristol e-democracy project manager Carol Hayward and in line with other projects.
I met up with Clare Reddington and some of the other bloggers yesterday when they ran a skills exchange to introduce new contributors, share ideas on how to work together well, learn from other bloggers ... and of course, socialise. Stephen Hilton, Kevin O'Malley and Steve Parry were there from the Digital Challenge team chipping in with everyone else. They do have the advantage of an excellent venue in the Watershed Media Centre which has free wifi, great bars, cafes, cinemas and so on ... plus committed staff to help drive the blogging forward. Sometimes out-of-London seems particularly attractive.
I know there are lots of other collaborations between councils and other local interests - as I reported from Newham the other day. But it is particularly interesting to see in the context of a national competition, and blogged.
The ten finalists have said they are all collaborating so there is no one "winner" - but actions speak louder etc.
I'll be back in Bristol next week with Drew Mackie helping run a Digital Challenge game, funded by the central challenge team to help further involve local interests. Invitation here.
Then in the New Year we'll be running a workshop In Manchester with Dave Carter of the Manchester Digital Development Agency, and Gary Copitch of the Manchester Community Information Network who both have enviable track records in community tech.
Hmm - checking into their blog I find they are being pretty open about developments too. I've no doubt I'll find wonderful things happening in Manchester when I visit. That's the great thing about this social technology - you meet such interest people.

Talking social media at an unsocial event

Tonight's  meeting of the London Social Media Club, convened "to discuss the latest in tools, technologies and success stories" was a ... ***?!**

Whoa! Pause there.  The social reporter is meant to be collaborative and celebratory rather than critical, and I'm feeling a bit challenged on how to do that.
Start again.
The second Club meeting was hosted by PR company Fleishman Hillard London, and they did us proud in the board room with a table laden with beer, wine and nibbles.  Our hostess kicked off the conversations with some challenging questions about the role of blogs and other tools in the world of PR, and the 20 plus people there all had a chance to chip in their stories.
That's all true, but am I being honest? No. Here's another attempt.
Architecture is important in buildings, on the web, and at events. Board rooms, cafes and bars are designed for different purposes. Blog communities and web forums offer different types of conversations and relationships. Pre-programmed conferences, with slots for Powerpoint presentations, offer a very different experience from social conferences - or unconferences as some people call them.
Styles of hosting and/or facilitation are hugely important too, whether as dictator, conductor, or chameleon.
Among the most interesting facets of social media and things Web 2.0 are self-publishing through blogs, the development of self-organising networks through feeds and links, together with a willingness to be open and informal. You can choose who you talk to, how you do that - text, audio, video - and what relationships you foster. It's a very bottom-up sort of online club in which the participants evolve the rules and set the agenda ... leading to a participation culture.
For those reasons I had high hopes of the Social Media Club as a place to chat face-to-face with other people on topics of our choosing ... with an architecture of flexible space, and light-touch hosting. Maybe a mini version of the open space conferences I've been involved in with Policy Unplugged.
It wasn't like that. We had a board room with seats tightly arranged around the table, and facilitation as gentle inquisition. Our hostess asked questions and we responded. OK, it was all pretty informal, but we had one conversation at a time instead of maybe half a dozen in parallel. The initial introductions round the table gave me three or four people I would have loved to talk to ... but there was no way I could get to them.
I tried asking why we were talking about Web 2.0 using an Event 0 format, and got the offer of another drink. I clearly didn't explain myself well ... which is why I'm blogging it here. Maybe everyone else was happy? No - several others left for the pub after an hour. Maybe it all changed before the end? If so, I'm glad, and hope to read about it.
However, if future meetings are going to be run the same way, I suggest calling them round tables or something similar. Alternatively try something like the excellent Gurteen Knowledge Cafes.
Of course, it could be me - and Groucho Marx.  I shouldn't try and join any club that would have someone like me for a member.
Tomorrow I'm conference videoblogger at e-Democracy '06 with my son Dan, and on best behaviour.
Update: the more clubable social reporter Lloyd Davis comments below that it did all get more social a bit later ... so I hope Jackie won't take my comments to hard. I just couldn't resist the analogies.

Participation culture: yes! But do tech and non-tech mean the same thing?

I used to find terms like participation and engagement used mainly by people in community development and public programmes. Their practice was - and still is - substantially around workshops and offline media, as I covered in a couple of guides a few years back. Even now, I find few of the practitioners are active online.  Trying to enthuse them about the potential of new tools and ways of working is difficult - though Lee Bryant and I had a go in our chapter for Involve's book on Post Party Politics.
Over the past few months, however, I've found a lot of online use of the terms. It's coming from technology enthusiasts promoting the role of new tools and open approaches in creating participatory, collaborative environments. There have been reports from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Cooperation Commons, and the MacArthur Foundation (pdf download), to mention only a few.
I find the reports by searches and reading blogs. Seldom do they find me - until now.
No sooner had I posted my piece today about facilitation, with a link back to one about participation as culture not tools, than I get an email from Steve Borsch at Connecting the Dots, saying that in view of those items I might be interested in a free online report his company has produced on the Rise of the Participation Culture.
As it happened, I've been reading Steve's blog for a few weeks and had bookmarked the report as something I must mention. If you wonder why people are excited about blogs, wikis, social networking, Web 2.0, Flickr, YouTube and so on it covers the whole lot, and explains "Web as the new normal".
The content is excellent, but in responding to Steve's email I did say I found the format - long web pages, no download - a bit challenging on a laptop. I don't print much, but I would like to print this one (and I suspect less-online participation practitioners certainy will. Some of my best friends print emails ... and file them)
Steve responded saying the format was much debated, but they went for the only-online in part to make sure there was "a single version of the truth". It is, in itself, an interesting conversation starter with less-online friends. Me: Look - free, always up-to-date, links to other resources, easy to expand, use it to start online discussion. Friend: but I can't read it on the train. Me: well, with wifi and a laptop ... Friend: wasn't all this meant to make life easier?
Next report: engaging the techno sceptics. The Bamboo Project has made a great start in their piece on Engaging Nonprofits in the Tech, or as I put it Moving from Wow to how, sparked by Nancy White's piece on Second Wave Adoption.
That's enough. I can hear my less-tech friend in the background asking ... this participation culture is all very well, but do you have time to do anything else except write about it? Of course. I'm just off to talk about it with others at the first meeting of the London Social Media Club. Then I can blog about that, and link to all the other people blogging about it. That's participation, isn't it?
Update: Steve Borsch e-mails to say that folllowing prompts from a few dozen others, a pdf version of the Rise of the Participation Culture is now available as a pdf (6M download). Much appreciated ... that's service!

Dictator, conductor, chameleon ... facilitator

Just as participation is about culture as much as tools, I believe facilitation is about style as much as technique. But like culture, that's difficult to explain. Andrew Rixon of Anecdote has given us an excellent start in What kind of facilitator are you?. Andrew writes:

At the upcoming Australian Facilitators conference I’m looking forward to the “Facilitator Archetypes” workshop that I’m running alongside a great cartoonist, Simon Kneebone. This workshop was inspired from some work we did earlier this year exploring language in facilitation. When I asked “what metaphor describes your style of facilitation” I had no idea it would result in such an interesting collection of characters. Characters like; The invisible facilitator. Facilitator as chameleon. Facilitator as dictator. Facilitator as conductor. Thanks to Simon, we have translated our initial findings into some great cartoons that capture these characters. I can’t wait to see what characters emerge from our workshop!

You can  see the rest of the cartoons here ... I'm looking forward to more.

The cartoons reminded me of an excellent workshop that Johnnie Moore ran earlier in the year on authentic facilitation. There's another in January. Johnnie says:

Being open to the unexpected, and resourceful in responding, is a key skill for facilitators. Some of our best work comes when we have to drop our original plans and respond in the moment to what happens before us. Authentic facilitation is a great way to increase the ability to improvise.

During our workshop Johnnie encouraged conversations and some collaborative storytelling. We were strongly focussed on talking to each other. He then moved to the flip chart , started talking. What happens? The facilitator becomes the focus and we lose contact with each other. If one of us had stepped up, it would have been a different dynamic again. I don't think Johnnie was saying right-wrong - just encouraging us to reflect on how different styles and behaviours make an enormous difference, and may be appropriate in different circumstances. I grabbed a quick picture (sorry about the quality). If only there was a cartoonist on hand...

250-year-old think tank ripe for relaunch

Collaboration and collective intelligence are much talked about in tackling issues both global and local, and were recently further endorsed by the launch of a new centre at MIT. We'll certainly need all the wisdom we can manage to rise to the challenge of climate change. Fair enough, but how do you muster your fellow thinkers and doers? We may be seamlessly connected by the Net, but experience suggests that collaboration online does not come naturally.

I think I may have found an answer - or at least a testbed - in a 250-year-old institution tucked away in London's John Adam Street. It's the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, set up on on a manifesto "to embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine arts, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce". The Great Room - left - continues to host excellent lectures, but the more hidden talents of the RSA hold the greater promise, as I found the other day when I went along to an evening for new Fellows.
There are 26,000 Fellows, and I felt privileged to become one for a modest annual sub of £122 (more later on the privilege). The building is splendid, with bar, library, restaurant, meeting rooms and such like, plus lots of events and projects around five manifesto challenges: Encouraging enterprise; Moving towards a Zero-Waste Society; Developing a Capable Population; Fostering Resilient Communities; and Advancing Global Citizenship.
It certainly seemed the very model of an ancient and modern think tank, already applying itself to climate change with a challenge to Fellows and non-Fellows alike to reduce their carbon footprint to five tons. Chairman Gerry Acher confessed to 25 tons currently, and said he would be trying very hard indeed to cut back.
However, there is room for improvement at the RSA. The 24,000 Fellows in the UK, and 2000 around the world, represent a lot of intelligence ... but at the moment they aren't very collective. A couple of years ago a group of women Fellows began a bottom-up move towards greater involvement, now called FellowsVoicesRSA, but it is a limited voluntary effort (though none the worse for that).
Chatting the other evening to staff and Fellows I got the strong sense that change was due ... and possible. Matthew Taylor, former adviser to Tony Blair is taking over as chief executive. They are looking for a new head of communications. While the RSA's current web site is an admirable resource, complete with RSS feeds, it is a bit, well, institutional compared with Demos. And that's a general problem. The RSA wants to stay distinguished, but it also wants more Fellows who are younger, and more diverse in their background.
Here's where the "privileged to be a Fellow" bit comes in. Although people do tend to put FRSA after their name, and begin questions at lectures with "as a Fellow...", it isn't all THAT distinguished. You have to get a Fellow to nominate you, but I gather no-one gets turned down. Well, maybe there was that chap who had been inside for fraud ... but I think you will be in if you are a decent sort, and can pay the sub.
Note to self: must spend more time in the RSA bar library and Get Involved.
Update: as I write a charming email arrives from RSA Fellowship and Marketing Director Stephen Farrant, inviting me to one of their "lunch and learn" sessions to extend the conversation we started about blogging, Web 2.0, social networking and the like. I think I mentioned setting a social reporter loose among the Fellows. My enthusiasm to accept is only tempered by dim memory that I was one of the last to leave the Fellows evening, and generous hospitality encouraged a certain joviality on my part. Still, the staff were exceedingly good humoured on that occasion, and I'm sure lunch with emphasis on the fizzy water will put me into the correct frame of mind next time. I'll certainly be using public transport, Gerry.

Learning at lunchtime

The brief: provide a group of big-practice architects with some latest thinking on community engagement and social media. Time available 45 minutes. Budget: modest.

Solution: carefully crafted presentation and hand-outs? Not my favourite approach. Game with lots of props? Tight on time, and difficult to get right without a lot of research.
I was a bit stumped ... but the location and time-slot gave me the clue: lunchtime and a flexible corner of the office.
Time was when people in offices had enough time at lunch or coffee break to catch up on the gossip and also share some insights and news of what's going on in different areas. These days it seems to be grab a sandwich, get back to the cubicle, and keep ticking off the 15-minute slots on the timesheet.
So - why not re-invent the learning lunchtime?
Fortunately my clients, PRP architects, in the form of Alexandra Rook and Lesley Gibbs, were happy to try something different. Alexandra, in her previous post with the Civic Trust, had been a strong champion for the salon we ran there successfully ... but you can't bring in the bottles at lunchtime.
We came up with a simple formula: create the outline of an only-slightly-fictitious scenario about community engagement on a housing estate, then invite 20 people to split into groups once they had grabbed their lunch. Three people stood in for the development group: contractor, council and housing association. Others were residents, architects and evaluators.
Simple briefs explained that the residents were disgruntled after initial consultation raised expectations but didn't deliver good results - and invited each group, in slightly different ways, to think what to do next. You can download the briefing notes here, and a note about engagement methods (both pdfs). I also offer presentation notes from this item on Relationship-based engagement.
People quickly got into their groups roles, and the evaluators stirred things up with questions about how things might be improved. Alexandra, playing her real role of participation specialist , was pulled between development group, residents and architects ... which seemed fairly realistic
After half an hour we stopped to share some insights, and that sparked some stories about real-life programmes. I particularly liked the one about the team who used the talents of a cartoonist to develop big King Kong posters to advertise events and planned changes. The local kids whipped them off the notice boards and on to their bedroom walls ... parents got talking ... people turn up. The poster about the concrete-nibbling monster had crowds on the street awaiting the arrival of the demolition equipment.
I hope the modest exercise helped people make a few new connections in the office, and that other events may follow. Or alternatively, as someone who previously worked in the construction industry said: "We always had a tradition of going down to the pub at Friday lunchtime, and staying there. That way you always found out what was going on." Too simple, much too simple.