Just finished watching Richard Buchanan’s keynote at the Service Design Conference 2011 (via @pennyhagen).

There were lots of points that were interesting to me, but a couple stood out. One was the purpose of an organisation not being profit, but instead the delivery of goods and services. The second was three key areas that he highlights where service design is of particular interest: health care, community design and public services design. The third was the need to extend service design into the culture of an organisation.

Overall a thought provoking talk very much aligned with my perspective of service design and Zumio’s approach/purpose.

In mid-2009 we had the pleasure of working with the VicRoads team on a series of workshops for staff from across the organisation as an introduction to social media and networking.

The workshops were in part presenting these tools to staff, as at the time they were still quite new, and in part to inform and generate ideas for a broader social media strategy for the organisation.

So I was delighted to see that one of the folks involved in that initial strategy, Jonathan Roper (at the time with Paris First, now running Briarbird) has posted a series of video interviews talking about a recent social media initiative using an internal blog to gather feedback and generate dialogue for organisational improvement.

There’s some great stuff in there for anyone considering how to apply social media in a government organisation — well worth checking out. It seems that some of the ideas we were talking about in those early workshops are really starting to take shape within VicRoads, which is fantastic to see.

A few weeks back I received this invite via email from colleague Duncan Rintoul, of the Institute for Innovation in Business and Social Research (IIBSOR) at University of Wollongong. Given the topic, I thought it was worthwhile sharing here also:

AES tech-eval: A new SIG focused on the intersection between evaluation and technology

These days it is no surprise to see mainstream and niche programs making use of tech-based platforms: web-based self-help tools, mobile applications, SMS-based reminder systems, viral videos, conversations on social media… the list is much longer than this, and ever growing.

We need to develop capacity among evaluators to work confidently in this environment, designing and executing sound evaluations that understand what these technologies are, how they can be used and how their impact can be measured.

There are also great opportunities for using technology in our evaluations — wikis, online forums, online surveys, social media monitoring… again the list is long and growing.

Spilling over from one of the parallel sessions at the 2011 AES conference, a crew of around 15 people has started pulling together a new AES Special Interest Group around this intersection between evaluation and technology: AES tech-eval.

It’s early days yet, but two things you can do for now:

• Join the email listserv
• Check out v1.0 of their resource library of conference papers, published evaluations and other resources for evaluating tech-based programs and program elements.

Go on, join them! If technology freaks you out, swap fear of the unknown with curiosity and see where it takes you. If you’re already working comfortably in this space, help lead your colleagues forward.

I’ve just finished reading Ignorance (of social media) is risk, a great post by Craig Thomler exploring the lack of social media engagement by public servants.

I think the issues that Craig raises reflect a lack of perceived relevance (and therefore importance) of social media by professionals in their own context. My experience has been that a lot of people working in a professional context (be it government or corporate) find it hard to determine how social media applies in this context. While many have Facebook accounts that they use for personal use, they are unable (or in some cases don’t want to, as social media is seen as, well, social) to connect this personal use into their work. While they see major brands operating in the space, given the differences in approach/context — e.g. between consumer brands and say public service — it’s difficult to translate this into their own sphere.

Also, they are often unaware of the “non-Facebook/Twitter” options that are available — such as Yammer, LinkedIn, wikis, blogs etc. This is understandable — we all have a tough time keeping up with the things that are directly relevant to our professional sphere, and if social media is not a high priority (either by mandate, crisis, or personal interest) it’s even harder to keep across all these different tools.

This, of course, creates a vicious cycle — they don’t understand how it might apply professionally, therefore they don’t engage, which means they don’t get experience, which makes it difficult to understand how it might apply… This is especially the case, I think, with tools like Twitter, where IMO you have to actively use the tool, and connect with others, to “get it”. Trying to make a decision on the basis of signing up for an account and looking at a couple of suggested feeds means you’re unlikely to truly understand the service. (The number of people I’ve spoken to that reflect this pattern of usage is pretty significant.)

I also suspect that some professionals and senior managers mistakenly see the “social media crisis” as a result of engagement — so “if we don’t engage, we reduce our risk” — “wilful ignorance” if I put it bluntly. This is problematic on a number of levels — not least of which is the fact that many crisis moments emerge because of lack of engagement, or similarly because of a lack of experience in dealing with crisis moments caused by lack of exposure. If this is the case and this kind of perception is bubbling beneath the surface, it might explain some of this lack of engagement.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a workshop organised by the wonderful Dr Zoë Sofoulis and Justine Humphry of University of Western Sydney. Zoë and Justine have been working as part of the National Water Commission Fellowship for 2010-11 on the Cross-connections: Linking Urban Water Managers with Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Researchers (PDF 311 KB) project.

As the title of the programme suggests, the focus of the workshop was on how to connect social researchers with the water industry. It was a very interesting discussion, looking at the challenge from a variety of perspectives. For me it was an invaluable insight into the challenges of bringing the social sciences into a field that is largely driven by a more quantitative and engineering focused approach.

As part of the days proceedings, Zoë invited me to present a short segment on the use of design research methods for communicating and engaging with ethnographic and qualitative research. My presentation looked at mobile diaries (for which I recommend Penny Hagen and Natalie Rowland’s excellent Johnny Holland article as a backgrounder), personas, infographics and visualisations, customer journey mapping, storyboards. I also used Smart Design’s wonderful work for the FastCompany Biomimicry Challenge (embedded below) as an example of envisioning using video/animation, of particular relevance given the focus on urban water.

IBM Biomimicry Challenge from Smart Design on Vimeo.

Part of what Zoë and Justine have been working on is a Directory of Social and Cultural Research on Urban Water. Their work to date has focused on researching and collating the data for the directory, but they will soon be turning their attention to publishing it. It was during discussion on how this might be advanced that I was reminded again how valuable social technologies like wikis and rapid development frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Django can be in providing low-cost publishing methods for this kind of work.

Thanks to Zoë and Justine for the invite — I’m looking forward to continuing the dialogue into the future.

Just before the holiday break I had the pleasure of catching up with the folks at Headshift (who I think are doing great work) and during the conversation we were considering how slippery the term “social” can be.

Along with others in the Dachis Group, Headshift use the term “social business” to describe their work, which they use as a term to describe to businesses that use “social technologies to improve business performance, communication and customer engagement”.

This is quite a different definition of “social business” than is used In the non-profit and social innovation space — i.e a business at has social outcomes as a core focus.

During the conversation I mentioned that at Zumio we work at the intersection of three different worlds, all of which include “social” as a key descriptor, but where that term means something different in each instance.

Social networks: here “social” refers to the social relations and peer connections between individuals, and how social technologies are enabling these connections.

Social design: as outlined in the presentation I gave at Enviro 2010 earlier in the year, this refers to including people (both internal and external) in the process of design, but also designing for social use — including consideration of behavioural norms and social interactions in our designs.

Social innovation: here “social” refers to positive social outcomes (and environmental benefits) from our activities, often borne of social needs and actions (e.g. communities creating their own solutions).

Each of these areas of focus has a significant history and background of practice — terminology, methods, framing/perspetives etc. — and each in itself has a depth that can take some time to explain and “unpack”.  Which makes it all the more challenging to try and explain succinctly what it is that Zumio does ;)  But combined, we think these focal areas can be a very powerful force for positive change.  Hopefully, over time, they will become more widely known and accepted, making the story a little easier to tell.

And of course, if these ideas do become more “mainstream”, society will of course be reaping the benefits of each approach, which can only be a good thing.

Thanks to everyone who came to see the presentation at Web Directions South yesterday, and sorry we weren’t able to have a bit more discussion at the end of the session — some great questions and ideas came up that I would have liked to explore further.  I’ve posted the presentation to Slideshare:

Or you can download a PDF of the presentation, along with notes (PDF 14.4 MB), including pointers to the various sites and articles I mentioned in the presentation.

I’m very excited to be joining an inspiring line-up at Web Directions South in a few weeks’ time, presenting on the topic of Creating platforms for social innovation:

People are redefining the relationship they have with the organisations they interact with, empowered by social technologies.  They are seeking:

• Human-ness: as organisations have grown in size and become more and more depersonalised, people are wanting more human interactions and personal response;
• Trust: from greenwashing to the GFC, the market’s trust has been eroded — people are looking for organisations to say what they mean and mean what they say;
• Co-creation: people are taking a more active role in developing the products and services that they use.  And if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they will often create it themselves;
• Responsibility: people want to engage with organisations that are genuinely addressing the complex issues of sustainability and wellbeing.

Building a brand, service or product offering that resonates in this new “economy of meaning” requires a rethinking of an organisation’s relationship to the “market” — their customers, stakeholders and the environment.

In this presentation we will examine how innovative organisations are using social technologies and design methods to create multi-dimensional value — both for the organisational and community — and will explore the themes that underpin the examples with a view to applying them in your context.

Regular readers will note that the session is focused on a number of themes that I’ve been exploring here lately, so I’m really looking forward to connecting with other folks at the conference around these concepts.

I read Let’s hear those ideas at the Economist with great interest, to get a sense of how social innovation might be represented to a business/finance audience.  It is quite a good piece, but one aspect of it stood out for me:

However, so far the enthusiasm for social entrepreneurship has run ahead of its effects. The problem has not been a lack of good ideas… The problem is instead one of speed and scale. Successful innovations have spread only slowly, if at all. In business, entrepreneurial firms that do well grow fast; but social entrepreneurship does not yet have a Microsoft or a Google. Policymakers hope that with encouragement from the state social entrepreneurs’ best ideas can be spread faster and wider.

While I agree that we need to diffuse social innovation more widely (and as rapidly as possible), the idea of scaling, of creating the next “Microsoft or a Google” in social innovation perhaps misses part of the point.

Ezio Manzini has spoken about small, local, open and connected social innovations being an appropriate path forward for diffusing social innovations.  In his recent talk he talked about how such innovations have economies of scope, as opposed to the more traditional view of economies of scale.

Through connecting and synergising, social innovations have the potential to maintain the important local-ness and human scale while replicating the benefits to a wider group.  I’m sure I’ve read in one of his papers (though I can’t seem to find the reference) that in fact trying to increase the scale of social innovation may actually reduce the sustainability of the activity, suggesting that trying to scale such innovations is perhaps looking to solve the wrong problem.

This is not to say that social innovation doesn’t need support.  The Economist article points to some great initiatives in the US and the UK that are allocating funds to support social innovation.  More of that is definitely needed.

Something to consider, though is Ezio’s suggestion that Government needs to consider how to engage with such initiatives, leaving enough room for innovation to occur, while building the frameworks that support the longevity of initiatives.  This is a different way of working for Government agencies and I suspect it will take some adjusting for this transition to occur.

My hope is that funds are directed to create the enabling structures that support more social innovations — e.g. supporting the communities who are already innovating and encouraging further innovation — rather that taking specific ideas and trying to scale them to apply to conditions that are poorly aligned with those that saw the innovation emerge in the first place.  While the latter approach may work in some circumstances, I suspect that it may backfire if not done with care.

(I note that Raul has an alternate take on the article over at the ASIX blog.)

This video, produced by Streetfilms, is a great introduction to the potential of open data in transit systems.