David Wilcox on social media, engagement, collaboration
ABOUT
Mainly about engagement and collaboration using social media and events, with some asides on living in London. More about David Wilcox and also how the blog started.
I've come upon a couple of interesting projects and jobs ... the Cass Business School in London has spent the last three years putting together plans and funding for an innovative programme to provide online learning for people in community and voluntary organisations who might not go down the route of the usual courses. Details here, including a chief exec post at £50,000.
We are looking for a dynamic individual to lead and direct the entire project, working closely with the Trust and Project Board to create a commercially viable and well-used e-knowledge network.
Your knowledge of the voluntary sector, social networking, e-knowledge transfer and experience of successfully developing and implementing start-up projects will give you the expertise needed to ensure the project’s success and to lead and motivate a team of people working with you. In addition, you will manage all marketing and advertising activities associated with the project.
Over at NCVO they are looking for a Sustainable Funding Enterprise and Innovation Officer.
You will lead on developing a programme of work to enable voluntary and community organisations to identify, develop, and value innovation. You will lead on establishing links and forming relationships with organisations that work around innovation and enterprise.
With a strong understanding of funding and finance issues in the voluntary and community sector, you should have experience in enterprise and innovation, and the ability to plan, manage and deliver projects. This post is a one year contract.
There is always a certain amount of bureaucratic overhead in these situations. Each job, in different ways, should test out how far it is possible to deploy new ways of doing things in the third sector. good to see those opportunities emerging.
Blogging about the voluntary and community sector in the UK can be rather unrewarding because few senior figures write about their work - or, I suspect, read blogs. There's not much blogosphere buzz. Maybe that's going to change now that Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the organisation for nonprofit chief executives acevo has got going with Bubb's blog.
Governance magazine can't resist a rather patronising piece highlighting the sectoral politics that it perceives between the lines:
In the olden days, before the internet was born, even Very Important People generally had to wait to be invited by editors for the opportunity to tell their public what they were thinking.
Not so today. With the advent of Web 2.0, anybody can set up a blog and share their innermost with the world. Which seems to suit Stephen Bubb, chief executive of acevo (pictured), to a T.
On Bubb’s new blog, at http://www.bloggerbubb.blogspot.com/, the chief executives’ chief executive promises readers will be treated to “the inside track of a third sector leader influencing in Whitehall, championing professionalism and causing a stir”.
He then goes on to treat readers to an intimate rundown of his week, complete with namechecks of Ed Miliband, Phil Hope, John Hutton, and even The Queen. It also contains a couple of glimpses into his private life.
He makes thinly-veiled digs at the NCVO (“Whilst others are debating whether to broaden out to civil society, acevo has always recruited members from housing associations, unions, and political parties”) and at Richard Gutch’s Futurebuilders, of which he is soon to become chair (“I need to do a good job steering Futurebuilders back on to track in supporting service delivery through the third sector”).
He congratulates Miliband and Hope on the work they did behind the scenes on gift aid to secure “a good Budget” for charities, and advises: “I do hope the sector will show appreciation for this instead of what we often do – whinge. Whinging has its place. However, so does thanks for a job well done.”
And on a personal note, he reveals that he is thinking of getting a dog, and that he has just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Because of this (the diabetes, not the dog), he has to “get a grip on a proper diet and do some exercise”. How this will affect his notoriously busy networking schedule remains to be seen. What is certain, though, is that thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s marvellous invention, we shall undoubtedly be kept informed.
Governance say of their print magazine that it is:
.... the essential resource for charity trustees. It provides comprehensive yet concise coverage of all the issues trustees need to be aware of, and offers practical advice to help boards implement clear, well thought-out strategies that will ensure their charity’s success.
No blog or feeds on their site, or commenting. Old-style come to us, we speak, you listen.
So I think that it is splendid that Stephen has taken the plunge, and in doing so is able to speak directly to others in the sector. Can it be long before Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, feels he should join in?
If Stephen is looking for some blogger friends, there's a list of blogs and wikis in the non profit social media field on the social media wiki.
Meanwhile let's pop over to his place with a welcome to the blogosphere and a few encouraging tips. Every blogger needs an audience: let's start building one for Stephen.
One of the other people running a workshop at the recent Circuit Riders conference was US-based consultant John Kenyon, who wrote afterwards:
It was exciting to hear about the different experiences of these consultants with nonprofit/charity organizations. As always when meeting with nonprofit consultants I am struck by the thread of commonality that connects us all. We all face similar challenges in communicating and marketing our services, creating work agreements, doing investigations, collecting data, determining the best intervention and helping organizations with managing change. Our clients also face similar challenges with internal capacity, improving their capabilities and especially in getting funding for technology initiatives.
During a break, I asked John about some of the US-UK differences he found. He explained that while there is less Government funding for nonprofits in the US, there are more foundations. Increasingly these are not responding to funding proposals, but going out and finding organisations that they wish to choose to support. That make online presence even more important.
John says you have to be up to date, with good content. That could be strong stories from those the organisation aims to serve. However, content is not enough ... you need to have a personal presence as well.
People don't just relate to content, people relate to people.
Previously: Reality checks on using Web 2.0 for social change
Is the potential for social media to change the world over-hyped, or are social change organisations too slow in seeing the potential? If change is coming, will nonprofits be by-passed as we start to organise without old-style organisations? Does it all depend upon context?
A new book, and recent conference sessions, raised these questions for me yet again.
Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody leaves us in no doubt about his view of the potential for Web 2.0 to change the world:
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.
It's another step on from Charles Leadbeater's We-Think ... We-Act together, differently. I've been reading the book, and Clay's blog, at the same time that I'm editing some video from the recent Circuit Riders conference. There's a big gap between Clay's vision for the future, and what I heard from people who are currently providing front line technology support to nonprofits that are in the business of social change. Who is more realistic? There's a video of Clay speaking recently here, and you can see him in person at the RSA on March 18.
Here's the videos from the opening session of the conference, where Circuit Riders talk about the reality of using new technology tools on the front line. The session were skillfully facilitated by Marc Osten from Summit Collaborative, and I asked him to provide me with a recap on the two questions he posed... firstly about whether Web 2.0 tools are available to change the world, and then whether Circuit Riders have the skills to satisfy the organisations they serve.
If you have problems with video play back, they are on YouTube here
Here then is video of the first session, where the question was whether tools are available. Some people felt they were, and were being used - giving as an example the recent Parliament roof protest where protestors used a mobile phone to talk to the world directly via news media. Others were more sceptical.
We then moved on to the second question - whether Circuit Riders had the skills needed to satisfy their client organisations.
This second question brought a rich discussion about the need for both technology skills and those necessary to help organisations plan and change. I think the discussion gives us some insights into ways we can address the questions I posed at the beginning - and consider whether they are the right questions.
Much of Clay's book is about how people who may not not have operated together before can use the Net for a whole range of purposes. Almost all the Circuit Riders discussion was about how to help existing groups adopt technology which is often unfamilar to them and may not have immediately obvious benefits.
I'm sure we will see more and more of the organising without organisations that Clay describes. At the same time, people will continue to organise by meeting and working together using a range of old and new communication tools. The issue is perhaps what works for whom, and in what circumstances.
I also ran a workshop at the conference with Laura Whitehead and Nick Booth. There's an excellent conference round-up from Laura here, and reports on the workshop from Paul Henderson and Beth Kanter, who joined us by video from Boston.
I also posted an item to The Membership Project, where I'm developing a new site, with others, to explore how the social web and other factors are changing the ways in which we may belong to groups and organisations. My posted was triggered by hearing at the conference one Circuit Rider say, a little ruefully, "The committee won't go for it". I guess the key issue then is whether you think we will continue to need committees or not. Even The Tuttle Club, where Lloyd Davis is organically growing a social media cafe, is getting a bit more formal with a move towards incorporation. Will there be virtual Board meetings?
Just what to call yourself if you are organising to do good stuff for social benefit is quite confusing these days ... but at least we know what challenges and opportunities lie ahead thanks to a summary from NCVO Third Sector Foresight. Pestilence, famine and war are there in various guises, but so too are the potentially positive uses of technology, and different ways of organising. More on those later.
First to what doing good should be called. The other day Stuart Etherington, the chief executive of NCVO, the umbrella organisation for UK nonprofits, was musing about a change of name for what is currently known as the voluntary and community sector. These organisations may also be known as the third sector (as in not public or private). Some are charities (about the only term widely recognised by those not in the business), and the more entrepreneurial are social enterprises. It can be difficult to spot the difference between charities that have an entrepeneurial trading arm, and socially responsible businesses that may have an associated charity.
Charity Finance reported:
NCVO chief executive Stuart Etherington has ambitions to augment the power of the voluntary sector voice by harnessing the whole of civil society, not just charities and social enterprises.
In an interview with Charity News Alert, Etherington outlined his future agenda for the organisation and the sector – “I would hope they are parallel” – and signalled his desire to boost the sector’s influence over public policy by widening its net to include all of civil society and by establishing a 50-member civil society assembly.
Etherington refused to be drawn on whether he could foresee a day when the NCVO would rename itself the ‘National Council of Civil Society Organisations’, but confirmed the organisation was “keen to encourage a debate about how the sector defines itself”.
“I prefer the term civil society because it is more inclusive and defines us in relation to those we work with and for, rather than to government or business.”
He also admitted to seeing merit in recasting the Office of the Third Sector as the Office for Civil Society, an idea first proposed by the Conservatives as long ago as 2001.
An early indication of the new agenda has emerged in the name of the 2008 Almanac – the NCVO’s annual study of the state of the third sector. Instead of ‘Voluntary Sector Almanac’, this year’s edition is to be renamed the ‘Civil Society Almanac’, and will for the first time include data from organisations such as trade unions, universities, housing associations and political parties.
The NCVO also plans to establish a 50-member assembly that will debate civil society’s response to pressing public policy issues. The assembly will mostly comprise representatives from within the voluntary sector, nominated and then elected by NCVO members, but provision has been made for ten of the 50 to be co-opted.
I believe that the idea of an assembly is a response to NCVO-member pressure more involvement in policy and direction, and I'll be interested in how it turns out. It's a fairly old-style mechanism of representation which might lead to the usual problems of uncertain governance, where people aren't sure whether the assembly, forum, council or whatever it may be called is the focus, or the board of trustees. Maybe it will be OK if Stuart and NCVO staff see their organisation as a network which is permeable rather than closely-bounded, and encourage continual conversations between members, staff, assembly-members and others as well as having some formal meetings.
As I mentioned above, the challenges and opportunities facing whatever we may be called have been highlighted by the foresight unit at NCVO. Megan Griffith reports on a seminar at the NCVO annual conference where a panel of speakers debated the ‘burning issues’ of climate change, bridging communities and the ways in which young people are associating.The session began with a presentation from Lenka Setkova, who took everyone through the findings of the Carnegie UK Trust’s Inquiry into the future of civil society in the UK and Ireland. You can download the report here. It is a terrific piece of work, but unfortunately only available, a far as I can see, as pdfs, which rather stifles online conversation because it is difficult to link or quote.
All the more useful then that Stuart Etherington invited seminar participants to discuss the presentation, and then assemble their own set of messages as risks/challenges/threats, opportunities, questions, and calls to action. You can see the whole list here, but here's the interesting calls to action:
Civil society should define and exemplify new models and patterns of growth. Growth is not always good. Extra extra extra is neither equitable or sustainable – let’s look for ‘infragrowth’. The negawatt (energy saved) rather than megawatt (energy generated).
Civil society needs to embrace online spaces more effectively, more often, mainstream it.
VCS must revisit history and become the advocates for our liberties.
If we could make growing older a positive experience we would at the same time find universal solutions for social coherence.
I'm glad to see a potentially positive role for technology and the online world in there, and I'm look forward to exploring that further with Megan and colleagues, who I've worked with before. I'm also taking some comfort from Stuart's renaming process that this blog's title may have increasing relevance. It was all a bit of an accident, as you can see here.
Previously
Paul Miller, Dan McQuillan and Christian Albert have given us first news of their plans for Social Innovation Camp in London, when ideas people, geeks, mentors and sponsors will gather for a weekend of intensive co-creation on April 4-6:
Innovation happens when diverse groups of people get together - individuals who can bring something different to the mix and help each other to look at problems in a new light.
We’re interested in creating unexpected collaborations between people, organizations and networks. The Social Innovation Camp will be an opportunity for all participants to meet people who think about things differently to them.
The weekend will be designed with this principle in mind. Social Innovation Camp will bring some of the best of the UK’s web designers and developers together with those at the sharp end of social problems. Throw in some people with the business and organisational knowledge needed to make things happen and we’re hoping to come out with some innovative solutions to enable social change.
Ideas for your innovative project have to be in by March 7, and you are told by March 17 whether you are successful. These projects are then developed collaboratively over the weekend:
Pitch your prototype. We’re hoping that by the end of the weekend you’ll be part of a group with a basic working model for a new venture. The event will close with a pitching process which will include some prizes for the winning pitches.
Start your venture. Social Innovation Camp is all about creating the relationships needed to start new projects and we hope your ideas won’t end with the weekend. We’re currently thinking about the best way to help you pursue your venture – or if it’s more appropriate, find someone to take it on for you. More on how this will work coming soon.
I think we are now seeing several different approaches emerging on how nonprofit organisations may use social technology (building on old structures) ... or how we can collaborate to do good stuff using new stuff (which is likely to mean developing new structures).
These different - maybe complementary - approaches were evident last year at the Newman Arms get together which I reported here. Some people were interested in enhancing the capability of existing community and voluntary sector organisations, others felt a new direction was needed. Dan McQillan - of the social innovation camp team - made it clear he felt charities are broken and later trailed the innovation camp idea.
Meanwhile there's still a lot to do helping existing organisation deal with the basics of computer and internet use. I'll be hearing more about that when I run a workshop with Laura Whitehead, Nick Booth and others at the UK Circuits Riders conference at the end of this month. Circuit Riders provide tech support to small organisations.
Earlier this week I went to a new Forum for Circuit Riders in London organised by London Champion Miles Maier. Unfortunately I couldn't stay for the whole session, but from the interesting stories of what life is like on the front line I got confirmation that there is a big stretch between the visions emerging from Web 2.0 social innovators, and groups still struggling to network their office computers. Are they left to struggle on their own as funding for technical support from Circuit Riders becomes more problematic - as seems likely? Should they just budget tech costs in with phones, print, rent and other overheads - and concentrate on convincing funders of the need for this in core costs? Should Circuit Riders pitch some innovative ideas to social innovation camp? Maybe time for a Newman Arms session.
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.
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
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.
The Cabinet Office has chosen a Government-funded unit to lead development on the Third Sector Innovation Exchange. This is the project where a group of us tried to be innovative by running an open process to develop the project, and were shortlisted for plans for an Open Innovation Exchange.
Work on the £1.2 million project will now be led by the Innovation Unit. Press release and advert for the £60,00 a year job of director here.
The Unit was set up in 2002 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair to promote innovation in education, and is now funded by the Department for Education and Skills. Their partners are the voluntary sector chief executives' body ACEVO and social software developers Headshift, who created the award-winning site for Demos.
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. You can see our (failed) one here, as well as the process by which we developed it.
We haven't given up on open source innovation, and will now be developing an exchange focussing on new media. I do sincerely offer congratulations to the winning consortium, and have no doubt my friends at Headshift will do them another whizzy site ... so we'll certainly be able to see what's happening.
The new Minister for the Third Sector, Phil Hope, got off to a good start with his constituency of voluntary organisations tonight when he urged them to campaign more strongly - without fear that it might jeopardise their grants.
He was speaking a couple of weeks into his new job at a reception on the eve of a conference on Futures for Civil Society, organised by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Carnegie UK Trust.
The Minister said that the message from the new Government, under Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was that community and voluntary organisations should not only help provide a voice for the most disadvantaged, but aim to change the policies of local and central government where necessary.
"People should not be worried whether they should campaign or not if they receive some sort of grant, or have some sort of contract with the State in all its various forms. The reason why we give grants and contracts to people in the Third sector is to give that voice ... is to say those words ... is to have that campaigning zeal."
After Stuart Etherington introduced Phil Hope, I shot some video of the Minister's speech, which you can see above: warning - it is about 14 minutes long. You can find the campaigning quote about eight minutes in. However, the video is a bit dark and shaky, and fortunately Mr Hope was very happy to come out on to the the balcony and give me a short version below.
Afterwards I spoke to Liz Cleverley, Performance Improvement and Information Manager at Community Matters, the national federation for community organisations.
Click To Play Also at Blip.tv Liz had no doubt that encouragement for campaigning in the speech was welcome. Groups often felt inhibited when they were receiving a grant ... and local councils could feel challenged when groups spoke up.
Phil Hope once worked at NCVO, and has been a consultant in the voluntary sector - so people felt he knew what he was talking about. It also helped that he sounded as if he had written the speech himself ... or rather, didn't need to write it because it clearly came from the heart. I hope he can campaign successfully in central and local government to create the more open culture he is advocating.
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