Designing for Civil Society

Clay Shirky today at the RSA

Clay Shirky gave a great presentation today on his book Here Comes Everybody. I was sitting in the second row of the RSA Great Room, so shot some video. The RSA will be putting the pro version up on its site sometime in the future ... but I know a number of people who were keen to hear Clay couldn't make it, so here's a taste.
Clay spent the first part of his talk giving three examples filling out what he says in the book:

Everywhere you look, groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action. For the first time in history, we have tools that truly allow for this.
In the same way the printing press amplified the individual mind and the telephone amplified two-way conversation, now a host of new tools, from instant messages and mobile phones to weblogs and wikis, amplify group communication. And because we are natively good at working in groups, this amplification of group effort will change more than business models: it will change society.

The examples were of students organising through Facebook against the bank HSBC when it withdrew a free overdraft offer; young people in Belarus organising an ice-cream social in a square where gatherings were banned; Sicilian businesses organising online against the Mafia.
After the examples Clay provided some analysis, which is what I've captured in the video. He started by assuring us he wasn't going to promise a post-hierarchical paradise in which organiastions wither away; that story had been around for 10 years ... with a constant promise that it would happen sometime. Rather we are at the beginning of experimenting with the way that power shifts because of the ability of goups to communicate, and then to come together to take action.  There's a 40 minute video here from a talk Clay gave at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Update: Kevin Anderson has blogged an excellent paraphrase of Clay's presentation and the  Q and A.

Technorati Tags: collaboration

Insider gets Innovation Exchange job

I'm really pleased to hear that John Craig has been appointed to head up the Government-funded Innovation Exchange that "will find new ways to connect innovators in the third sector with public service commissioners and other investors and help them to work together to develop their work".
Until recently John was head of innovation at the Cabinet Office, and handled the tendering procedure for the Innovation Exchange ... where he's now got the job. I was part of a group that made a fairly innovative bid, produced by writing everything except the budgets on an open web site, inviting anyone interested to join in. We were short listed, but didn't win. Instead it went to a consortium centred around the Government-funded Innovation Unit.  We thought that was a bit inward-looking, and I wrote at the time:

I don't want to sound a note of sour grapes here. This is clearly a very strong and competent consortium. However,  I feel that innovation among nonprofit organisations (and elsewhere, as I wrote here) is most likely to come from open, collaborative processes, not just from inside. Of course, the innovation unit may well be planning something really innovative here. Maybe they could now post their winning bid.

Public sector Forums reported the story as Whitehall innovation: Proving the oxymoron.
It would be easy to see John's appointment as another inward-facing step.  However ... one of the best things about dealing with Cabinet Office during the tendering process was the great encouragement we got from John. He wasn't a career civil servant, having previously worked at the think tank Demos. While being scrupulously fair he gave us every encouragement and help in what must have seemed a pretty whacky bid to his colleagues. We felt he really saw us having a chance, and I guess the short-listing reflected that.
So my overwhelming feeling is delight that someone with real sympathy for innovative processes has got the job. Parent, midwife and now a good start in life thanks to the initial work on the exchange that's been guided by interim executive director Jonathan Robinson.
Here's the standard stuff from the press release:

The Chair of the Innovation Exchange, Baroness Thornton, said that John Craig’s appointment was “excellent news. John’s blend of skills will ensure that the Innovation Exchange gets the best possible start.”
Valerie Hannon, Director of Strategy at The Innovation Unit, said the role was a challenging one. She went on to say: “The Exchange is in uncharted territory. It is seeking to create new forms of collaboration across the sector. John Craig is returning to his roots in the third sector, but his experience in policy and government will be invaluable in ensuring that the lessons from the Exchange reach the widest possible audience.

John starts on January 1, and says:

I am delighted to be leading the Innovation Exchange and relish the chance to help the collective wisdom of the third sector to tackle social injustice in England. Between us I believe we can make a real difference for excluded young people and for those struggling to live independent lives – charities and social enterprises have the insight and the commitment to help make radical improvements in the services they receive.

The second-phase Innovation Exchange web site is being developed by Headshift, who won an award for their development of the Demos web site as a very conversational blog-based affair ... so we can hope that Innovation Exchange language will become a bit more, well, innovative. Here's John's posts on the Demos site.
There's already some discussion on the Innovation Exchange temporary site around the key themes of Supporting independent living, and Young people: the excluded, marginalised and the at-risk.
Previously: Innovation Exchange and the RSA develop networks for social change

Technorati Tags: innovation, knowledgesharing, open, openinex

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.

The power of online-offline convening

A combination of Facebook, meeting room, pub and light-touch hosting last night demonstrated the social networking power of online-offline convening. A dozen of us gathered to talk about the potential for social media to help re-invent the RSA, sparked by my earlier post. We ended up with a micro-demo of how that might happen.
Ian Delaney, who hosted the event on behalf of NMK, has provided an excellent roundup of conversations that started online in Facebook, moved to Ian's workplace at the University of Westminster, and then to a pub around the corner.
As Ian explains, the RSA - Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce - is, on the face of it, doing well:

Established 250 years ago, it currently has about 26,500 Fellows. They can attend a very full and well-attended events schedule; they get the letters FRSA after their name; there’s no shortage of applications for its paid membership. Business is booming. And yet there’s a little bit of a problem.
The Society’s problem is that times have changed. Fellows are apparently expressing some degree of disgruntlement that they don’t feel involved with the programme or the Society. While in the past, a programme of well-planned lectures from eminent persons, nice premises on the Strand and a learned journal several times a year seemed satisfactory, that’s no longer enough. Today’s younger members want projects they can join, causes they can work with and more of a say, arguably, in what’s happening at the Society. There’s a feeling of empty hands that want to be filled.

As I wrote here,  organisations may well face challenges as their members find they can get benefits more cheaply and readily online. The RSA has seen that coming, and led by its chief executive Matthew Taylor is currently engaged internally in thinking through how social media and other changes can really harness the potential of its membership for both social action and personal learning and development.
Ian reports some of our ideas from last night, including a network in Facebook, and a sort of RSA version of Yahoo Answers, where Fellows could answer each others' questions. I think my friends at Ruralnet could offer some expertise from their development of Experts Online. Another idea was a really good searchable directory.
We heard from Anshuman Rane - who is Web and New Media Manager at RSA - that he and other staff are thinking along these lines, with plenty more ideas bubbling up for a wider discussion later in the year with Fellows. I hope we provided additional encouragement.
I was particularly interested by our discussion around the RSA's role as convenor, which Ian summarises:

Further discussion picked up around what the RSA’s brand values might be. One example of that was as an ‘excellent convener’. That it draws very brilliant and interesting people together. However, the RSA is keen that the Society was not just viewed a place or a publication, but also as an actor. That it allows for the creation of brilliant ideas and then also acts upon them. How to decide among those ideas for the ones to publically support is one problem (maybe the case for a prediction market). Another is the extent to which the Society might rightly claim some sort of part-ownership for creating that chemistry - not in a commercial sense, but in a branding sense.

Some Fellows - as I reported earlier - feel the RSA can seem rather smug and paternalistic .... a bit top-down, epitomised by the lectures in its Great Room. You have to put your hand up to ask  a question of the experts on the stage. If the RSA stays mainly in this mode, we can expect a "place" for discussion among Fellows behind a login. I agree with Ian:

In my own opinion, social media policy from the RSA can’t work on the basis of containing discussion within a particular forum or blog or social network. Nor can it claim ownership of ideas created through its auspices. Those discussions and ideas, as with any brand or grouping, cannot be contained or owned. They are and will happen anyway. What the Society might work to is the idea that having your ideas and business connected to it in some way earns kudos. Yeah, we came up with it/ met them at the RSA network/bar/forum mentioned a few times in business interviews and conversations as a point of pride, the same way certain members’ clubs and restaurants are spoken about, would do a great deal for the current and future value of membership. Like MySpace members adopting brands as friends, new and existing companies that friend the RSA in some way in the social media space may well be a way forward.
So they it needs a widget. And it needs a way to get people to adopt that widget. That’s the tricky bit, I expect.

What's equally important, I think, is the offline equivalent ... a recognition that anyone can pull together a group of people to start a conversation, in the spirit of the origins of the RSA in a Covent Garden coffee house.
What makes that possible is the more democratic, bottom-up convening power that mixing online and offline now provides.
A blog gave me the chance to air some thoughts on the RSA - gathered here - but Facebook provided the means to pull together a group online for a quick discussion. Ian then offered the offline convening capacity of NMK, more often deployed for larger industry-related events like the annual forum. What really made it work was the great mix of talents we had in the room. I thought we might need some "facilitation". Get into groups, write some post-it notes, prioritise topics. Nahh. We had a good chat - aided by NMK wine - went to the pub, and formed some groups there.
If RSA will provide the hospitality next time - with a similarly light touch - I'm sure we'll get another great flowering of ideas.
What I'm not quite sure about, for the moment, is what happens in between, and where we'll talk about it. However, I am pretty confident that one of the group will have a suggestion within a day or so ... and can easily set that up as a virtual coffee house, pub ... choose your metaphor. Your place or mine ... it doesn't really matter.

Technorati Tags: nptech, rsa, socialnetworking

Butterfly thoughts on innovation, engagement, open source and co-creation

Work and thoughts about open innovation, workshops games,  mixing face-to-face and online, Web 2.0 for non profits,  have led me into a lot of interesting conversations recently, and I think that they are joining up.
They include designing personal learning environments, re-inventing membership organisations, judging new media awards, open sourcing politics, building systems using free web apps from Google.
I wish I could say these are now paying jobs or viable projects, but it's more that I read a lot of blogs and can't resist free invites to events or a chat over coffee.  Anyway, I'm hopeful there's value in there somewhere, and was greatly cheered by a call from Leon Cych of Learn 4 Life asking me to do a podcast about Web 2.0 and learning.
I find it isn't until I have to do a presentation, interview, or article that I really pull some ideas together, so it was a good opportunity to extract some common strands from the above, and then continue reflection afterwards.
Leon gives his contributors a chance to talk a bit about their past as a lead in to the topic ... their learning journey ... which reminded me I did serve a spell as education correspondent of the Reading Evening Post many years ago before moving through more journalism, regeneration and public engagement consultancy before focussing on (well, wandering about) designing collaborations for social benefit. I hope.
At the heart of my conversation with Leon was the piece I wrote about a workshop at a London college with Roy Charles of Policy Unplugged. We ran a game to help staff think about moving from teacher-driven virtual learning environments to Web 2.0-based personal learning environments. That also led to reflections about journeys of discovery, planning and implementation, and how these are often best done openly and collaboratively. Leon and I talked about the unsuccessful but highly instructive process of writing an "open source" tender bid to Government for the Open Innovation Exchange.
I'll link to the podcast when it's up. Meanwhile here's some thoughts the interview helped trigger, and which are likely to be recurring themes in future postings. It's a bit link-heavy, and referencing will be easier when I get around to organising past posts on proper topic pages. Meanwhile please try the tags in the right sidebar for other topics. Here goes.
Be cautious (and then innovative) when asked for a proposal or an answer. It's always flattering when someone asks for advice, or a proposal. Fire off some wisdom, write the bid. But how often do we have "the answer?". Producing the bid for the Open Innovation Exchange with Simon Berry and many others showed how much more productive and fun it is to work collaborative, and to do that openly. You even end up in Society Guardian.
Help people design solutions for themselves. An extension or counterpart to open sourcing proposals is to offer those with the problem some simple tools that help them design their own solutions. That's the aim of the useful games that Drew Mackie and I have developed over the years. They show that getting people together for a few hours with some simple props produces rich conversations and ideas likely to be carried forward because everyone has some ownership. There are, of course, lots of ways of doing this, and Chris Corrigan offers us a list of the facilitation methods he uses.
Turn engagement and participation into collaboration. Another fascinating conversation I had recently was with the director of an organisation promoting public engagement processes through research, advice to government and consultancy. We agreed that a lot of the programmes aren't working because agencies don't listen, or can't deliver. As my colleague Drew wrote a few years back, we are Dancing While Standing Still. We are still. I wrote awhile back with Lee Bryant about the ways that new media may help us re-think engagement, and we have even played that through with civil servants. It now seems blindingly obvious to me that engagement doesn't work without collaboration - that is, the power-holding agencies or others managing the processes have to be prepared to commit to action. I think that's far more likely in (as above) an open process where people have been involved in designing the solution. Which leads to ...
Co-design engagement processes. As I've written here, the 250-year-old RSA is trying to re-invent itself with the involvement of 26,000 Fellows (members). It will - I believe - work much better when they get to the stage of bringing the Fellows in to the process. This is planned through a big event in November, but why not tell people what is going on, and involve some champions openly now in designing the process? Dialogue by Design have an online tool for that which complements our engagement game.
Think open source thinking. Remix. My friend Beth Kanter, who blogs about nonprofit technology from a US base, is a terrific advocate of open source thinking, which she describes like this:

Open source thinking is sharing and remixing. You've got to set your ideas free, you can't  control your content. It is a different mindset: "Ah darn, someone  else has got there first" versus "Great, don't have to do that, I can  build it on it!" For me, it's been the ability to think out loud with  colleagues on ideas and topics, share presentations, etc.

Beth is encouraging just that with a social media game we developed, and I'm delighted. Latest remix is from Italy.
Try paper prototyping before rapid prototyping. I recently chatted at some length to a company that wants to create an online community related to its business. They have a long list of functions ... news, forums, chat, profiling, buddies etc. I argued strongly for the sort of approach advocated by our friends at Delib during the Open Innovation Exchange process ... look to the Internet as your platform, be prepared to build a prototype and rapidly revise. Even better, before that, try it out on paper as we did with the e-learning game mentioned above. Either way, don't start with the tools, start with the people and the problem you are trying to solve. 

Go to other people's places as well as creating your own. Related to the above is the now fairly standard advice (unless you are desperate to sell a system) that it is often better online to find where people are gathered and start conversations there. Bill Thompson explains here what's happening on Facebook. This also applies in the face-to-face world: before planning a stand-alone seminar find out if you can run a workshop at someone else's conference. It is much easier to go where people are, than get them to come to you.
Experiment with free web tools before building new. My son Dan and I have done quite a bit over the past year with the open source content management system Drupal. It has lots of different modules for blogs, forums, calendars, static pages and so on that you can mix and match for your particularly needs. It worked well for the Open Innovation Exchange. However, it does take quite a bit of maintenance to ensure modules are updated, and functions tweaked, and some effort to help users understand what's possible. These days I'm becoming more interested in what you can do using the many free or low-cost Web 2.0 tools, as Techsoup shows. (Thanks again Chris). I've recently been developing a set of linked free tools matched by a design game, and should be able to write about that soon.
Look over the (virtual) fence. One of the strong themes to emerge from my chat with Leon was that similar ideas bubble up in different disciplines, professions and sectors, but it still takes us time to recognise that because of different vocabularies and networks. This came through strongly to me at the recent launch of NESTA Connect, with the chance to hear about the 30-year history of user-based innovation from Professor Eric von Hippel. Leon gave me further inspiration during our chat, with references to what is happening in education and his work in Second Life. I'm constantly refreshed by contact with Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff who have produced an open sauce manifesto of co-creation for a marketing audience. Then there's David Gurteen in knowledge management, Michele Martin on scarcity thinking and the problems this bring for change (and much more), Simon Collister on PR in the Web 2.0 world .. but these are just a few of the inspirations available if you use blogs and the Net to look across at what others are doing and thinking.
But why bother to blog about it? For me because it is how I learn, meet people, kick start ideas and conversations, do some cross-fertilising, find some clients. I think in this game you have to be a butterfly as well as a bee.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, engagement, innovation, open source, openinex, socialmedia, socialnetworking

Knowledge sharing over a burger

I'm a great fan of David Gurteen's series of knowledge cafes, and the opportunities they provide to chat with people from many different background about what works in knowledge sharing and technology - and what doesn't. An invitation to a free knowledge barbecue in what used to be the Royal Naval College in Greenwich was therefore irresistible. Part of the college is now the University of Greenwich Business School, and thanks to Martyn Lacock and others working there we had  great food and chats.
Since the next cafe on July 11 is on the use of video, I couldn't resist pulling out my camera and catching David recalling why he started running cafes, and explaining how they are spreading.
Click To Play  Also on blip.tv
We chatted afterwards about how different settings help conversations - and how DIY technology helps you capture and replay conversations in different formats. David was rightly rather pleased he had recently learned how to turn his videos into a podcast. So having done that, he tells us how to do it. Overall it was another demonstration that knowledge management and sharing is much easier if you are prepared to be generous and sociable.
Previously: Need some knowledge sharing? Bring on the reintermediators!

Tough questions please about our open bid

After the delight at being shortlisted for the Innovation Exchange, our team is rehearsing for an interview at the Cabinet Office next Tuesday. We wondered how best to do that. Meet, of course - and we are doing that tomorrow thanks to the hospitality of Warwick Business School.
But do we keep our best final ideas to our ourselves? Nope. We've got this far by developing proposals in public - so why stop now?
We are developing a Q and A page on the Open Innovation Exchange site, and would really welcome some more tough questions, comments - or indeed answers. This is still co-creation.

Technorati Tags: innovation, openinex

Reinventing the RSA together

The venerable Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (est 1754) has a good chance of becoming one of the few membership bodies that combines a great range of face-to-face events and lectures with sociability and knowledge-sharing online, harnessing both to make-a-difference external projects.
Last week's RSA seminar about the social impact of the web - reported by Robin Hamman, Simon Dickson, Andrew Brown - was interesting in its own right. Just as interesting for me was confirmation from chief executive Matthew Taylor that the RSA is launching a major programme to network the 26,000 members (known as Fellows), as I trailed last year.
The head of marketing and communication, Susan Butler, is leading an exploration into how best to do this, including a major event in October when the whole of the RSA HQ will be used by staff, Fellows and well-wishers for creative sessions to help design what's appropriate.
I believe my friend Steve Moore, at Policy Unplugged, is involved, so I'm confident it will be fun and productive. I met Susan for a chat and enthused about the scope for using workshop games to play through possible online systems, as described here.
However, what really made me feel it could all be rather special was the number of smart online people I met at the seminar who were saying ... the RSA seems to be an interesting place .... I was thinking of joining up. That's in addition to those who are already Fellows. Subscriptions are fairly modest at £135 a year.
If Matthew, Susan and others involved are prepared to make this a fairly open process, drawing on expertise of current and new Fellows, the RSA could fulfil its promise of becoming a real collective-intelligence think tank.
I do have one slight reservation. As I understand it, at present the aim is to network the Fellows somewhat independently of the staff. That's probably with the best of intentions, so we feel some independence from the institution, and ability to develop new ideas and projects. However, I think that assumption - if correct - should be reviewed. Instead of an old-style staff-volunteers-members mentality, how about thinking of the RSA - and its wider relationships - as one big system of knowledge and creativity, within which people can mix and match around their interests and activities. Matthew's Blog is called "The view from the 4th floor ..." while Fellows are most frequently found socialising or studying in the bar and library in the basement. I think it's time we all met up in the same space.

Technorati Tags: knowledgesharing, rsa, socialnetworking, socialtech

Proved again: being open gathers supporters

One of the main principles for getting people engaged in a project, programme, online community - whatever - is that early involvement  creates a sense of ownership and commitment. So I shouldn't really be surprised that the New Media Awards nomination for the Open Innovation Exchange has attracted a string of supportive comments.
Of course, some of these are among the scores of people who collaborated to develop, in public, a £1.2 million bid to Cabinet Office. In this case support from friends and collaborators is exactly what it is about, since the project we are bidding for is an innovation exchange.
In particular, I think the support is a bit different from the self-nomination and promotion criticised by The Register in the modernising government section ... isn't it?
Since all comments are public, I've taken the slight liberty of copying below. As I've written here, I'm one of the judges, but not for this section. You can still comment here. Judges meet for the  awards July 2, but interviews for the tender are June 12 ... so we might know before judging whether or not we have the contract. End of promo ... over to the commenters:

The Open Innovation Exchange bid process was really interesting to be involved in - and for me has already sparked off many new ideas and actions... hopefully it will have the chance to be put in place and to spark many more for many more...
Submitted by Tim Davies, 18 May 2007

Even playing a small role and exchanging ideas with one or two other participants was an interesting and stimulating exercise which allowed new connections to be made and other ideas to be generated. This is an approach I will use elsewhere.
Submitted by Paul Nash, 19 May 2007

At last - the opportunity to create without bending to the preconceptions of fund holders
Submitted by Barrie Duke, 19 May 2007

It was a brave step to take, and pleasing to see that it actually arrived at a result, with an open-ness of process that was both astonishing, rapid, and productive!
Submitted by Roger Greenhalgh, 19 May 2007

It was really good to be able to just challenge ideas and feed into improving the bid, without the requirement to 'carve out a slice' for my institution.
I could dip in and engage in the ideas, without devoting 5 days full time to bid writing. Great experiment. Deserves support. And what is an innovation exchange for if it's not about SHARING ideas.
Submitted by Andy Dearden, 21 May 2007

Whether or not the team win the bid or not, they’ve done something genuinely new. It’s one of the neatest institutional hacks I’ve seen in a long time.
Submitted by Paul Miller, 22 May 2007

A completely refreshing and original approach to writing a bid. They totally deserve to win!!
Submitted by Matt Stevenson-Dodd, 22 May 2007

A very innovative approach that encouraged reflection on the drivers of innovation
Submitted by Kerry McCarthy, 22 May 2007

It will be very interesting to see what results from this revolutionary idea. It deserves to succeed if only to embarrass all past and present bidders for not seeing that this is a way forward.
Submitted by Keyham Books - Rural Enterprise, 22 May 2007

If anyone wants to understand capacity building in it's real sense look no further.
The service development model that's been developed here turns current thinking on it's head. At last an opportunity for the sector to learn from itself through doing and developing new services. Much better than being trained to do by others.
Submitted by Simon Marshall - What's Your Point ?, 23 May 2007

An example of what can be done by people who are not afraid to try something different. Open Source in action and a worthy winner of the category.
Submitted by alex stobart, 23 May 2007

A model which, if widely adopted, has the potential to produce real change and save the time wasted in writing "failed bids"
Submitted by Peter Gray, 24 May 2007

Technorati Tags: innovation, openinex

Open Innovation Exchange starts to buzz

Since starting the Open Innovation Exchange a couple of days ago we've had a really gratifying response to our experiment in developing an open source bid for a £1.2 million Government contract. The aim is two-fold: first, to create an exception proposal for ways in which nonprofit can share knowledge, and improve public service delivery. Secondly, to demonstrate that it is possible to collaborate in a competitive situation, and so improve upon public procure processes. As I wrote previously:

The difficulty in tendering for complex and challenging projects is that you know your proposals may well turn out to be inadequate because there's no way of figuring out in advance  what will work. Ideally the solutions have to be worked out with those who are "the problem". But if you do go in with a proposal full of co-creation workshops with stakeholders, there's a danger you will be seen as fuzzy. It's all too easy to end up either in tacit collusion between consultants and funders to do something rather inadequate, or acrimonious disputes about failure to "deliver".

Quite a few people seems to agree, and are blogging and commenting on the site with enthusiasm. If you have a moment, do take a look, and join in. Simon Berry has put together a first model for our proposal, and will shortly be posting the work packages that will deliver this. We are exploring collaboration with a number of people and organisation, and would welcome more.  The site seems to be providing a further benefit - a space to talk about the general issues of collaboration, knowledge sharing, process evaluation and more. That's another lesson - if you open up, good stuff happens.

Technorati Tags: innovation, knowledgesharing, nonprofit, openinex