Designing for Civil Society

Guides to make sure You Can Do

What are the important issues when you try and change your life, your neighbourhood, or help other people do that? Today the Scarman Trust launched a set of Can Do guides around just those topics ... but instead of the Powerpoint presentation we got a collaborative mindmap develop by everyone at the launch. (click above to enlarge)

We started off on tables discussing the practicalities of change, called out our conclusions, and saw the mindmap grow on a wall and on-screen with branches for vision, support, training, will power, understanding power, and so on. Then we all went and stuck some dots on the lines of greatest energy ... as volunteer activists, community or voluntary organisation workers, or agency staff.
Shirley Mason, from the Polar Bear Community gave me her personal guided tour through the map, as you can see here.

Click To Play or go to blip.tv

No surprises perhaps, but It was a great way to get everyone talking and achieve some shared understanding before moving on to the rest of the day.
The guides are based on years of work in local communities, and cover nine topics including Asset Based Community Development (think what you are good at), through community business, keeping going, training and technology. Shane McCracken of Gallomanor has done a great job on the marketing side, including a splendidly simple yet effective web site using Wordpress, so there's plenty of scope for commenting.
On the Scarman side, south west regional development director Jayne Hathway has been driving things forward, and she explained to me that the Trust are determined the guides won't end up as yet-another-toolkit. 

Click To Play or go to blip.tv

Each guide is made up of activity sheets, presentations, facilitator manuals and feedback forms. The guides are linked to training and support, and come with Creative Commons licenses so they can be used and developed by anyone.
No excuses now, You Can Do It. Not sure what IT is? Try the What You Really Want guide.

Technorati Tags: empowerment, mindmap

TrustedPlaces offers lessons on community: it's all about passion or problems

I went to NMKForum 2007 yesterday to get a full blast of Web 2.0 stuff from the commercial end, and it felt like a day off. No pressure to blog because so many people like Robin Hamman, Simon Collister, Bobbie Johnson and Jemima Kiss  were doing it.
The opening keynote was from Jason Calacanis, who has launched the web search Mahalo.  This has real people (not mechanical "spiders") researching links, so you get a few good ones instead of pages and pages. The big news yesterday was that through Mahalo Greenhouse they are going to open up the job of doing this to anyone who can show appropriate skills, paying $10 - $15 a link. The bad news for us is that the current focus is US, and the general researcher profile is out of work actor/screen writer in LA. Bobbie was sceptical:

Right now I remain unconvinced by Mahalo - which not only seems like portal listing 2.0, but must also be acutely labour-intensive and inherently problematic - but then again, he's got a big bunch of investors behind him, so perhaps I'm missing out on something.

Too right. Jason says he doesn't have to worry for a couple of years whether it makes money ... he just has to concentrate on building volume. Hmm, different world.
Looking for something a bit more real than virtual, I ended up sitting next to the charming Walidd Al Saqqaf, co-founder of TrustedPlaces, who only had a modest £500,000 start up ... but seems to be doing pretty well with it.

Click To Play

His site enables you to search for and review restaurants, cafes, pubs, and clubs. When you join up you whizz through a little quiz on what sort of food, music, people and places you like. That enables you to see whether your tastes are likely to be similar to those of the reviewer. You can also check what your friends are recommending, and use the site to reach a collaborative decision with a group on where to go.
You will soon be able to interview your waiter or waitress (if they are willing) and load that to the site.
It all looks rather addictive, so I shot some video in which Walid explains it all much better than I can. We had to adjourn to the stairs for some quiet, and I'm not sure my over-the-shoulder screen shots are very informative, but I think you will catch the enthusiasm.
Walid had one line with, I felt, wider application than his current project. There are two things, he said, that pull people together into online communities: sharing passions, and resolving common problems. That was a good enough learning point from the day. Trusted reviews may have to wait till the weekend.

BBC helps start local blog communities

My first interest in social technology came from seeing in the mid 1990s the Freenets and community networks developed in North America, and for a few years it seemed that "getting local communities online" through a mix of access provision, training, support and portals might take off. There are still good example around of these projects, but a couple of years ago it became evident that the growing use of personal media and social networking was taking us in a different direction.
I was reminded of this the other day by a comment from Ingrid Koehler, responding to an item about blog communities. She wrote:

I think there's at least one other kind of blog community...and it's geographical - based around a city or a state, with people who really act as a community - sometimes meeting up, sometimes not. I don't think I've seen this in the UK (yet) but I've certainly seen it in the US. Sometimes these were started around an influential individual - but have carried on.

I don't know of any UK examples either - but it now looks as if the BBC might be helping create something on these line in Manchester. Robert Paterson reports via an item by Jake Shapiro:

Here is the summary  of what got my eye:-

Robin Hamman, senior community producer for BBC English Regions New Media, explained the initiative in an interview with paidContent.org: “We aren’t sure if it’s aggregator, a citizen journalism project or a media literacy campaign - it probably cuts across all three.”
This is a three-month trial launched last week by BBC New Media Central and BBC Manchester:
* Between 10 and 20 volunteers are being recruited across the city.
* Through workshops, participants will be guided through the BBC’s editorial guidelines and production values and then referred to commercial blogging platforms to start their own sites.
* The BBC will monitor RSS feeds from these blogs and highlight the best content.
* Pre-existing local bloggers/Flickr contributors are also invited to submit work or tag content “bbcmanchesterblog” so it can be picked up.
…As for the workload, Hamman optimistically envisages this as a one or two hour job each day for BBC staff — skimming the RSS feeds and wrapping editorial around the best. The rest of the task is to promote the blog to BBC journalists as an efficient source of content about Manchester.

Robert then follows up with more detail through an interview with Robin, which reveals that the idea stemmed from "digital citizens" sending  their content to the BBC:

So after the Tube bombing there were 7,000 emails and pictures coming over the transom into the news room at the BBC. After the Fuel Depot explosion there were 25,000 by noon! There was a staff of 7 who were overwhelmed by this.
The infinite scale and the infinite Noise created by having an open door was becoming apparent to the Innocents who then asked - how much will this cost to keep this type of interaction going? Can we in reality sift through all the noise to find the diamonds? Is this really participation? How could we find the quality as the noise builds?
These were the questions that Robin's team asked when they asked for permission to try a different track. By asking this type of question - they got the green light. They had exposed the unsustainable nature of and open door and no filters in a world where content was going to reach for infinite.
So what are they doing? They are creating a Space where they will have a Host.
The Host will select what goes into the space. Really a new kind of editor - see the link to the old?
So who are the contributors? They have gone into the local community (This is regional BBC) and found the best bloggers. They have met with them several times. Beer has been drunk. They have an offer for them. If they want to be picked up in this space by the host, they have access to a wide range of training - first of all about what is the BBC way for journalism ethics etc and secondly they offer all sorts of technical training. If you want to make a better video - we will help you etc.
All keep their own blogs but offer an RSS feed. There is a static hosted BBC site that filters this content. When the host is running with a story, the Host will not run a full story from any source but will use a number of excerpts as most bloggers do now. So the etiquette of the 'sphere applies and the work of finding material mainly defaults mainly to the aggregator. The material includes of course, text, stills, video and music. The offer includes help in all areas. So not only does this build community but also competency.

This experiment seems to me highly significant because it is exploring several issues:

• The changing role of big media (BBC) in relation to small media (digital citizens) ... in this case actually amplifying and empowering them. Would it were always so.
• Creating a community space by aggregating individual spaces (the blogs)
• The relationship between physicially-defined community (Manchester) and its online citizens
• The new facilitator-editor roles this demands.

I think there are some issues in common with the development of blog-based communities in relation to face-to-face events that I raised earlier. I'll be watching Robin's blog to see if he offers us more.
Then I wonder - why do I need to pick up news of what's happening in Manchester from Robert blogging from Prince Edward Island, Canada. But then, why not. And why not post something about this in the discussion about Nancy White's(Seattle) paper on blog communities, hosted in Australia. What's local, what's global these days?

Campaigning with good cheer

Inspiration, challenge and good cheer are not experiences I always associate with the annual general meetings of nonprofits, however worthy - but I found them all at last night's London Citizens event. It helped that we were hosted by the American University of Notre Dame, in their fine building just off Trafalgar Square. Some of the University's law students are volunteers - or interns as the Americans say - with London Citizens projects.
It was these projects that provide the inspiration. They ranged from a campaign for a living wage that persuaded Mayor Ken Livingstone to set the London level at £6.70; an ethical framework for the Olympics; and a review of the procedures of the immigration service at Lunar House, Croydon, that engaged the attention of senior civil servants and the Minister. The fight to keep the traditional feel of Queen's market, Newham, in the face of development pressures is ongoing, with a Citizens' inquiry unpicking the planning issues.
London Citizens operates by reviving techniques of broad based organising pioneered in Chicago in the 1930s by Saul Alinsky, and building its strength through coalitions of local institutions. Last night faith groups and trade unions were strongly represented, with schools and residents groups also involved. London Citizens staff organisers, working with leaders of the local institutions, can parade a membership of thousands in their campaigning - and when necessary get them on the streets or in front of County Hall. They can claim to be "the capital's largest and most diverse alliance of active citizens and community leaders".

CampaignCreator site goes live

The CampaignCreator site and campaigning tools being developed by Bristol council with £395,000 of government funding is now live. Login accounts may be limited during the pilot phase, but meanwhile the site does offer a some excellent general advice developed with Friends of the Earth. You can download guidance on starting a campaign, developing your case, building support, raising funds and other aspects of campaigning useful whether or not you are using online tools. As I wrote earlier, e-democracy guru Steven Clift is working with the advisory group to review development. I couldn't make it to the group's meeting last week, but hope to see more about what happened on the project blog.
Once piloting starts, it will be interesting to compare the site with others spotted by advisory groups members, including Citizenspeak and Campaignwindow. Although these are far more modest, the Bristol project should be able to offer more value in the guidance and support provided for groups. I've been sceptical about how far councils will go in supporting potential critics in their communities, but piloting may well prove me wrong. The task then will be for Bristol to sell the idea to other councils, or bodies prepared to host and support more local CampaignCreators.

CampaignCreator brings Clift to advise the advisors

The Bristol project team developing the CampaignCreator tool - see Can a council host community campaigns? - has now recruited US-based e-democracy evangelist Steven Clift to help with their work. Steven will facilitate advisory group discussions, share draft guidebook content, and also invite others with community campaigning or online advocacy experience to join in the discussions. Stephen Hilton has already extended an open invitation to the group on his blog, so things should get interesting shortly.
One of the issues that I and others have raised, is whether a council can be expected to host discussions that may well be critical of politicians and officers. As Paul Hilder points out in a comment to my item:

There is a simple fix: the campaign portal should be owned not by the council, but by local civil society. In some areas there are community coalitions or CENs which could lead on this, and LSPs or councils could endorse or "dual key" this use of the technology without needing to sit atop it and control it in a way which will inevitably quell civic action.

I'm looking forward to discussion on whether Bristol council is prepared to give up control of the platform. Meanwhile you can keep up with Steven's other international assignments on his blog. I think he should bring a useful perspective to CampaignCreator.

Technorati Tags: e-democracy, Engagement 2.0

Knowing whether your community is strong or not

These days everyone seems to be in favour of community, cohesion, inclusion, engagement and so on at local level. Me too.... but how do you know if you've got it, and whether the work you may be doing is making things better or worse? Kevin Harris in Indicators of strong communities alerts us to some work published by the UK Government's Neighbourhood Renewal Unit that I think could be very significant.
The paper proposes how to measure 'community strength' against five main indicators. Interesting enough to researchers, but more generally significant, I suspect. This work may give some insights into the way government sees community development these days, and where policy and funding priorities will lie.
As Kevin reports:

There are five core indicators, which are presented as if carrying equal weight (although personally I favour the first two and am less concerned to see weight given to the last)
* Governance - percentage of residents who feel that they can influence decisions affecting their local area
* Cohesion and inclusion - percentage of residents who feel that their local area is a place where people from different backgrounds can get on well together
* Volunteering - percentage of residents who affirm that they carried out voluntary work in an organisation once a month or more in the past year
* Voluntary and community sector - percentage of VCS groups and organisations affirming growth in activity over the past year in terms of (i) financial turnover and (ii) volunteering
* Services - Proportion of services in selected public service areas delivered by VCS organisations on behalf of the local authority.
Each has additional recommended indicators, an explanation, example, and actions associated with them. Quite a lot of work has also been done on methods and questions for collecting the data, with a case study included.

Kevin goes on to question the way that some of the indicators are framed:

And does it have to be 'volunteering' and 'voluntary work'? What about ‘community activity’ (or even community involvement)? Turning up on a cold wet evening and sitting in a committee meeting, maybe without saying anything to anyone, is probably community activity to most people but not voluntary work.

I think there are a lot of other issues worth discussing. Suppose people are broadly happy with their neighbourhood, and aren't too worried about getting involved ... and most of their neighbours are from similar backgrounds. Is their neighbourhood weaker than one with greater diversity and concern about the way the council is doing things? Maybe strength has something to do with how far people an organise when necessary.
I'm personally rather sceptical about the extent to which you can measure "community strength" in quite the ways suggested. Where do the indicators come from ... are they drawn from work on the ground, reflecting people's perceptions of what matters in a community, or are a rationalisation of current government policy enthusiasms? Why is there no press release, or encouragement on the NRU site to discussion? Maybe that will come ... at least they are published and Kevin's vigilence has given us a chance to start our own discussions. That wouldn't have been so easy a few years back.

Technorati Tags: neighbourhoods

Users should be involved as public services change

I've just spent a fascinating couple of hours losing a job .... but learning a lot about the realities of how councils may (or may not) carry through policies to bring public service delivery closer to users by greater involvement of nonprofit organisations. My conclusion - great idea, but it may be the service users who lose out because of the complexity of regulations involved.
My potential job was a small piece of work to evaluate the benefits of involving users (that is 'the community') in the development and running of a highly innovative rural bus service. Users can hop on, or call up to book a ride, and expect the bus to divert to pick them up within an hour.
On the face of it, the success of the project depends quite substantially on the promotional efforts of volunteers who helped get the service started, and the commitment of users to embrace 'their' service.
However, I held off accepting the brief because recent developments made it clear that any work should take account of a change in funding within two years as the development phase ended. What was needed was some forward thinking, not just evaluation of past performance. I wanted to sit in at an advisory group meeting, without commitment or cost to the client, agree a revised brief if appropriate, withdraw if not.

Technorati Tags: engagement

Can a council host community campaigns?

Bristol City Council has been given £395,000 of UK government funding to test whether councillors and officials, often under attack from activists in their local communities, can learn not only to react positively but actually provide support to their critics.

The project is funded under the Government's e-innovations programme:

The focus of e-innovations is to encourage practical examples of new and innovative approaches to joined-up working, effective service delivery and community engagement which are sustainable in the long term.

The Campaign Pack funding is being spent on software that will provide an online home for any campaign, and ways to develop pamphlets and other materials; a guide to campaigning; a forum for campaigners to share experience; piloting; and development work to make the tool available to other local authorities. The project description says:

Falling election turnout is citied by many as evidence of the growing crisis in democracy. The Community Campaign Project starts with a different premise and an open-mind as to what might be achieved.
The Community Campaign Project’s starting point is that it is not lack of opinions or ideas which leads to this sense of disengagement. Rather it is the lack of ability that individuals and communities have to make their voices heard and a lack of trust that anyone will listen when they are.
Campaigns start with people with ideas. This project sets out to prove that by providing the right support, encouragement and access to tools, councils can help “people with ideas” to become effective community campaigners and in so doing, can show themselves to be effective community leaders.

I'm on an advisory group for the project that was recruited when most of the development work had been done, and I'm still not really sure why we are there, or whether I will stay. I'm developing a suspicion that we may be a tick box, as in "you must have an advisory group if you are getting Government funds". I hope I'm wrong.
However, I think I can say without breaking any confidences that there is some lively questioning from a few of us about how far it is realistic for councils to provide platforms for campaigners ... and whether any campaigner really trying to make a difference would use a council-hosted platform.
For me the problem is the use of the term 'campaign'. If the project aimed to create a set of tools and processes by which councils, community groups and many other interests in an area could work out when to agree and when to disagree - and then get on with it - that would make sense.
But campaigning is something different - it is about challenging, and councils don't usually like that. I've heard of quite a few situations in which councils have restricted or closed down online forums just because contributors disagreed with them. Are they really going to host and support active campaigns?
On the advisory group we are being urged to be positive, and wait until we can actually have a go with the online platform. On that basis I thought "don't get cross, get creative", and came up with a couple of ideas.
The first is that the campaign tool could provide a great learning experience to help councillors, officials and activists understand each other better. How about a mixed group gets together for a few hours to invent a possible campaign issue - not a real one, so tempers are not frayed from the outset. They work out who might be involved on council and community sides. Then they exchange roles, and start campaigning with all the support that is planned as part of the project. At the end they get together to talk about what they have learned from each other, and how the campaign tool might be improved. (I'll declare an interest here ... I would love to be hired to help on that one).
The second idea is that the project staff and advisory group reflect on the experience we are currently having in trying to share ideas. As the project proposal says " ... it is the lack of ability that individuals and communities have to make their voices heard and a lack of trust that anyone will listen when they are" (which leads to this sense of disengagement). If the advisory group starts to feel that it isn't being taken seriously, I think we have the perfect reason for raising this lack of attention strongly with the council. If they won't take seriously people who are meant to be advisers, what hope will there be for community activists?
Either way, it is an experiment, and I certainly wouldn't want to criticise Government for trying something different. I just wish they would also be prepared to provide at least some recognition to the thousands of campaign activists and community volunteers who have struggled over the past decade or so to understand online tools and make their benefits available to people in their neighbourhoods and communities of interest.
Ah, that gives me the third idea. Look more widely at what else is happening in the field, and invite others to contribute ideas through the project's online forum or blog. These days advisory groups don't have to be closed.

Technorati Tags: e-democracy, Engagement 2.0

Volunteers do jargon too.

Every day the excellent xPRESS Digest from ruralnet|uk provides 15 key items about regeneration and community development. Sometimes, I think, they like a little joke. Recently the number one news slot went to Consultation Response: Active Community Unit Strategic Funding Review quoting:

Volunteering England warmly welcomes the Active Community Unit Strategic Funding Review consultation. They are in support of the proposals it contains. They specifically appreciate, and would encourage continuing commitment, to there being read across with the activity of the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit and its current strategic funding review. As some of the questions asked by the Active Community Unit Strategic Funding Review mirror those of the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit, a copy of the response to the Volunteering and Charitable Giving Unit can be found as an appendix to this response on this webpage.

Or maybe it is just to remind us of the jargon volunteers as well as bureaucrats have to deal with these days. I tried checking with Volunteering England just what it meant, but no response so far. Their item in full here.