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 spent much of last weekend at the London Social Innovation Camp, and as I have written over at Socialreporter, I think we need more of these events that bring together social activists and techies to brew up bright ideas ... and carry them through to action. Using new stuff to do good stuff, in new ways.
The win by Enabled by Design was very well deserved. I experimented with live steaming video from my phone using Qik, and will be doing more of that tomorrow at the Ruralnet|UK Collaborate2008 event. You'll see what I and other produce here.
If you have a Nokia S60 phone you can try qik for yourself ... it is still in alpha, but I'm finding it works well and the Qik folk are really helpful in encouraging us to try their free service and report back.
A few weeks back I posted a lengthy piece about possible BBC plans to fulfill its public service remit for "sustaining citizenship and civil society", after hearing of a preview by Controller of BBC English Regions Andy Griffee. His demonstration provoked strong criticism from regional media interests, but promised some benefits for citizen journalists and others producing their own content.
Now confirmation of the closure of the BBC Action Network - which I first wrote about last October - has produced more details from the BBC. They say they will ..
.... launch a new service which will give people access to all the BBC’s content across tv, radio and online on a range of topical issues. Many of these topic pages will reflect the same issues that have been central to Action Network, from healthcare and schools, to public transport and policing.
Each topic page will offer the latest news stories on an issue, including TV and radio programmes, while linking to the wider debate through people’s blogs, campaigns and websites.
I'm now writing about networked journalism and related topics over on a new blog: socialreporter.com. You'll find more on this story over there, plus some discussion of what might be the values of networked journalism.
Designing for Civil Society has worked well for nearly five years, but doesn't seem such a great blog title in the networked world. May be time for closure and moving house here too. What do you think?
Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
The challenge is for elected representatives to follow their customers and electors into this brave new world. Some of us have already taken that leap. As well as blogs, there are many more MPs using Facebook and Yahoo Groups to communicate their ideas and listen to other.
Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least.
But we need to make it easier for others too.
After declaring his belief in the power of mass collaboration, and support for initiatives like Netmums, Tom adds:
The power of information taskforce will work to support the endeavours of collaborative communities in the UK and beyond. New tools and ways of working are going to allow us to apply our collective intellectual capital to the seemingly impossible challenges of the modern age. I look forward to collaborating with them and you on this exciting agenda.
One of the strong themes in the Power of Information report - as covered by the BBC here - was that Govenment should collaborate with existing initiatives rather than setting up its own ... and it seems as if that approach is being adopted.
The BBC is following the same line, confirming on the site, as I reported earlier, that the Action Network is going to close after five years partly because so much else is now happening online.
It's a friendly place, the blogosphere. Following news here that that Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the organisation for nonprofit chief executives acevo has started blogging at Bubb's blog, a couple of more established bloggers have launched a support group.
First of all Shane McCracken set up a Facebook group, now Paul Caplan has a public page on his blog inviting more nominations and offering a badge.
I've pointed Paul over to Matthew Taylor at the RSA, and Andrew Brown's suggestion of Eric Carlin.
All good fun - with the very important underlying purpose, as Paul points out, of helping encourage the non-bosses to believe they can speak up too:
Some heros are breaking free and we salute them. There are brave men and women bearing the title CEO or Director of this, that or the other who are stepping up and talking as the passionate and interesting men and women they are. They are brave and forward thinking and they make it easier for those of us who are talking to the frontline troops in the public sector and saying: “Yes it’s OK to get out there and have conversations. Yes it’s OK to talk like a human being and tell stories.” Because now we can add: “… because look, your Boss is doing it!”
When people are unenthusiastic about social media and other Web 2.0 stuff it is tempting to be a bit sneery and say they don't "get it". Who can fail to see the benefits of publishing without publishers, and organising without organisations? The tools may take a little getting used to, but surely they are worth trying in pursuit of a better world?
Maybe for you, but not necessarily for them. It could be people do get it and don't like what they see, because your world view isn't theirs.
If they say We can't do that - and they mustn't do it either, it may be a reflection of organisational culture - or something deeper about the way thing work.
I remember a few years back reading an excellent piece by Jack Martin Leith about worldviews, and writing, in the context of participation and e-democracy:
He suggests it is important to understand whether we - and others - are seeing our world (organisation, neighbourhood, group) as a mechanism, a set of changing relationships, a system, or something even more organic and inherently messy. As he shows, that influences the sort of techniques professionals may use when they intervene.
So when knowledge management guru David Gurteen sent out a World 2.0 newsletter the other day I had Jack in mind.
David wrote:
Most of us understand what Web 2.0 is all about as we move from a read-only web to a read-write or participatory web.
And we are starting to come to grips with so called Enterprise 2.0 where the concept and technologies and social tools of Web 2.0 are moving from the open web into organizations.
It is still early days and there are many issues to be grappled with as we try to balance the structure and stability of the old world with the more fluid and complex nature of the new.
But the "2.0 meme" is starting to affect everything. In a talk in Kuala Lumpur I was asked how you implement Enterprise 2.0 and I was talking about some of the barriers when someone spoke up and said "We will never have Enterprise 2.0 until we have Managers 2.0!” In other words it was managers and their out-dated mind sets that was a major barrier to change,
And a few days later while giving another talk at the National Library in Singapore I found us talking about Libraries 2.0 and Learning 2.0. It then hit me that “2.0” thinking was permeating everything. People were also taking about Business 2.0 and Education 2.0.
So what does this mean in its broadest sense? Well, we are no longer consumers: of goods, services or education - we are all prosumers - we all have the opportunity to create and consume. For the first time we are participants in everything and not the “victims”. Fundamentally it is about "freedom".
We are moving from a world where we were told to do things and where things were structured or planned for us to one where we get to decide what works best for us. We are moving from a mono-culture to a highly diverse ecology.
We are moving from a simple world to a rich, complex, diverse one. One where power is less centralized and more distributed. We are moving from a command and control world to a world where people can do as they please within the boundaries of responsibility.
David offers a neat little World 1.0/World 2.0 chart.
And while I'm thinking about this I see that Jack has spotted it as well, and blogged his own piece, paying tribute in the process to David's excellent knowledge cafes and generous knowledge sharing. Very definitely a World 2.0 person.
Perhaps nudged by David's piece Jack has updated his own mid-1990s Worldviews, 1, 2, and 3 article which is now here. As a taster, here's Worldview 2.0:
Worldview 2 is the emerging worldview. In this scheme of things the world is seen as an ecosystem. These are some of the main features of W2:
* Effective when the environment is complex, turbulent, unpredictable
* Organisational life is governed by democracy and self-management
* Plan-do-review
* Adult-adult relationships (interdependence)
* “Create what you want” mindset
* Innovation through creating value for the whole system
* Beyond the metaphor of “the future is a place, change is
a journey”
The W2 worldview is based largely on complexity science and the various branches of systems theory, including the cybernetics of Gregory Bateson.
This is in contrast to Worldview 1:
Worldview 1, in which the world is seen as a huge machine, has been the dominant worldview for the last 300 years. These are some of the main features of W1:
* Effective when the environment is relatively simple, stable and predictable
* Organisational life is governed by bureaucracy and command-and-control
* Plan then implement
* Parent-child relationships (dependence)
* “Problem solving” mindset
* Innovation through tools and techniques
The W1 worldview is based largely on reductionism (attempting to understand reality by studying its constituent parts), a mechanistic view of the world and a limited, linear model of cause and effect.
Jack is a terrific Open Space expert, committed to helping people come together face-to-face and ...
.... discuss issues of heartfelt concern, share ideas, pool knowledge, reach agreement on the best way forward, and develop plans for collaborative action.
He - and others using similar methods - demonstrate that you don't need Web 2.0 to develop World 2.0 - though it does extend what you can do out of the room, and a bit more. What you do need for World 2.0 is people who are prepared to be open, collaborative - and recognise that life is messy. If you wish to explore:
The realities of introducing social media into organisations was brought home to me again yesterday at a conference in Cardiff for people in housing associations with responsibility for PR and communications. We had some fine presentations about developing the brand, dealing with media, using storytelling. These days tenants are customers, housing stock is homes - and quite rightly so.
I ran a couple of workshops on what blogs, wikis, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the like might bring to the mix, and how organisations could use lots of free tools from Google and other sources. I tried to focus on what this meant for organisations, as people become more able to find their voice to contribute ideas, experience - and of course complain if they were not happy with services.
New media tools can give housing associations better ways to provide information, and support communication and collaboration within and outside the organisation. However, if the tools are in the hands of the resident/customers, that changes power relationships. Things shift from "take it from us" to "we'll take it from each other".
That's where the difficulties arose. While many people in the workshop were excited by the possibilities, they foresaw difficulties which were summed up in two phrases. The first was "we can't do that" - which meant the IT department and senior staff won't let us look at certain sites, or use free tools. The second was "we can't let them do that" - which meant that within the culture of the organisation it would not be conceivable to help customers develop their own voice, except within quite tightly controlled circumstances.
These constraints did not apply to everyone, and of course there are ways to work these things through in organisations, as Colin McKay sets out in his excellent Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organisations. However, what struck me was the number of glum nods to these observations, rather than the number of challenges.
The consensus in the workshops was that significant change was a few years off, not least because the customers of housing associations were (as a whole) older, poorer and less media literate than the rest of the population. Introducing social media would not be a high priority in addressing their needs.
On the other hand the PR and communications people in the workshop did feel that they should, personally, be exploring what social media could offer. Problem is, will that be seen as a priority by their bosses?
As well as a presentation and discussion, at one of the sessions we played a new version of the social media game, which I think worked pretty well. I've put all the instructions and cards up on the social media wiki. Please feel free to download and try the game for yourself.
Any examples of organisations - housing or otherwise - that are prepared to help their customers or members find a voice would be welcome. We are now exploring those issues over on a new site for The Membership Project.
I'm off to hear Clay Shirkytalk at the RSA about his book Here Comes Everybody, which explains how people are organising without organisations. Landlords beware.
I've rather stalled in the exploration, started here, of how the BBC might be developing its new local multi-media services to fulfill its Charter remit of "sustaining citizenship and civil society". BBC people I bump into say I know as much as they do .... but then it is a big place.
I floated the idea of an event as part of RSA Networks, but was told staff were already working on something - please wait. Maybe not much will happen until the BBC Trust has completed its review of bbc.co.uk, leaving the way open for new ideas on local news.
Meanwhile Lucy Hooberman opens the window on work she has started at BBC Future Media and Technology, provisionally called Behind the Scenes. The project was announced last September by Director General Mark Thompson, when people were more focussed on editorial breaches in competitions and voting:
The Director-General informed the Trust that he has commissioned a major new online project which will enable the public to explore how contemporary media content is produced. The BBC believes this will be a major contribution to media literacy in Britain. Roly Keating, the Controller of BBC Two, and Chris Burns, Executive Editor, Factual Programmes, BBC Audio and Music, have been asked to lead this work. Both are senior programme makers with substantial and distinguished experience.
Lucy explains how she is looking at what other organisations are doing, tagging her researches on del.icio.us, and monitoring what others are saying about the BBC and its Internet blogging. She adds:
But I’d love to hear about what else is going on in this area. Who’s doing what? And any ideas about what you’d like to know about too.
This seems to be another good example of BBC staff reaching out directly to what used to be known as audience (now including content producers) to find out what we want, and what we can contribute. Will BBC Trustees - until now absent from the blogosphere - feel the need to join in?
Previously: What's the role of trustees now we are networked?
While at the February 2008 Circuit Rider conference in the UK, I introduced Matthew Edmonson to Nick Booth on the basis that both of them had an interest in open collaboration. To capture the conversation I gave Matthew the camera - and after a shaky hand-over it worked really well.
I came back to find Matthew and Nick having a fascinating conversation about how capturing conference archive material, and making it available for editing, could create a new non-hierarchical experience for participants and others who couldn't attend. Of course, not all organisers will go for it ... because they want to protect and assert their brand.
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?
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