Just a quick note to mention that Eventbrite, a popular event organising web application, has announced discount pricing for non-profits and charities – Eventbrite for causes.
The blog post makes mention of the U.S. requirements, but the pricing extends to non-profits in other countries as well.
As I mentioned in my last post, I presented at the Essential Media Communications Summer School last Thursday. My topic was social media for social change – looking at the principles of engagement with a specific emphasis on achieving social outcomes.
As happens with most presentations I do I was tweaking my slide deck right up until the last minute. The Summer School last week was no exception, so the version of my slides that was distributed to attendees at the conference is slightly out of sync with my actual presentation.
Thus here’s a PDF of the slides (6.24 MB) with my associated notes (which are also updated slightly from the distributed version).
From the conversations after my talk, there seemed to be a lot of interest in the diagram about different participation levels. While all this is included in my slide notes, I thought it worth noting that the diagram was conceived by Nicholas Street in response to a couple of reports, most notably the Participate Online research report (PDF 815 KB). It seems the diagram is no longer published on Nicholas’s blog – so I’m reposting it below for reference:
Around the time I came across Nicholas’s post I documented my thoughts, with an emphasis on my experience of Earth Hour 2007 – but have since expanded on them based on conversations with the Social Tech group.
While I still think the concepts are useful to consider, the Participate study is getting a bit long in the tooth now, which is why I didn’t spend a lot of time on that slide in my presentation. Seggr’s post on What social technographic are you? provides some more recent commentary to Forrester’s updated Social Technographics Ladder – both worthwhile references for those of you that are considering different types of participation.
The Pyschology of Influence and Sharing came across my Twitter stream while the Summer School was transpiring, which adds another perspective.
Thanks to everyone who attended the presentation, for the challenging questions at the end of the talk and for the kind words some of you shared with me afterwards. And thanks to EMC for inviting me to talk.
Just a quick note to mention a few up-coming events that I’ll be attending.
I’ll be presenting at EMC’s “Summer School” program this coming Thursday 18 February. The two-day event is mostly a hands-on practical event, exploring campaigning tactics on a demonstrative campaign. (Disclosure: EMC is one of Zumio’s clients)
My keynote will kick off the event looking at how participatory activism (including social networks etc.) presents great opportunities, but requires a different perspective to traditional tactics to make the most of it.
This is an invite only event, but Gemma at EMC, who is co-ordinating the event, tells me that there are some spare spaces for participants from NGOs and non-profits – so get in touch with Gemma if you are interested: gemma AT essentialmedia DOT com DOT au.
The team at the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX) recently announced the successful ideas that will be developed at the up-coming Social Innovation Camp being held in Sydney 5-7 March.
I’ll be attending the event which I hope will be a great couple of days. Zumio is also providing consulting services as part of the prize for the winning idea at the camp – more to come on that front soon.
In July I’ll be attending and presenting a short talk at the Enviro 2010 conference in Melbourne.
I’ll post more about the topic a little closer to the date, but in essence my talk, which is scheduled for 22 July, will be looking at how applying the principles and tools of design practice and social networking to sustainability challenges presents opportunities for innovation, along with other benefits.
Via cheiftech:
Enterprise 2.0 for Breakfast – January 2010Thursday January 21, 2010 at 8:00amThis is our second Enterprise 2.0 for Breakfast in Sydney.
James Dellow aka Chieftech (from Headshift) and Alex Manchester (from Step Two Designs) invite you to join them for breakfast to chat informally about Enterprise 2.0 and related topics like Knowledge Management, Intranet 2.0 and Collaboration.
Come along to ask questions and share your experiences of introducing social computing to the enterprise!
I’ll be attending – hope to see you there…
I’ve just finished reading Convergence: How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector (PDF direct link – 856KB), a report released earlier this year by La Piana Consulting that looks at emerging trends in the nonprofit sector.
The report examines a number of key trends, including:
It suggests that current funding models need to be revisited, that a strong sense of core values and differentiation is important (I call this values-based branding), that organisational and partnering models may need to be considered, and that technology will play a key role in the nonprofits of the future.
These are the types of organisational challenges that social business design seeks to address. And the all, perhaps to different degrees, require a certain approach that relies heavily on an open and trusting culture. A difficult task for organisations that don’t already have these things in place.
I get a sense throughout the report that La Piana seem to be suggesting an approach not dissimilar to the “integrated flow” approach I advocate in the increasing surface area post from the other day.
It recognises and clearly places social media and network engagement in context and does a good job of expressing some of the challenges associated with it, as well as recognising the benefits including the low-cost nature of the tools themselves.
It also does a great job of presenting mini-case studies of nonprofits and social sector organisations that have successfully embraced some or all of these trends.
I would highly recommend the report to anyone working in nonprofits and NGOs, especially those in leadership/management positions, as I think it highlights many of the challenges nonprofits currently face, trends that are likely to increase in influence into the future.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been using the phrase “increase the surface area of an organisation to it’s constituents and stakeholders”. In doing so, the idea is, the two-way flows and interactions between the organisation and the community in which they participate provide two-way benefits and, ultimately, positive returns for the organisation.
One method to achieve this is to create a larger “front-line”:
This is the model that some larger organisations (for example, Telstra) seem to be taking – essentially adding headcount to their customer service team with a specific focus on interaction within social networking spaces. This may include hiring someone into a community manager or similar role, or in some cases outsourcing this to a PR or marketing/design agency.
An alternative is to institute a more open policy that encourages interaction at all levels of the organisation. People within the organisation determine the most appropriate ways to open communications with those outside the organisation in ways that are aligned with the organisation’s priorities and objectives.
This may also mean opening up channels of engagement within the organisation – classic “silo busting” – by using social technologies and more nimble forms of organisation.
Broadly speaking, this is the model that Zappos have adopted (esp. for Twitter) but is also demonstrated by Microsoft’s and Sun’s blogging efforts. The aim is to empower all your people (if they choose) to participate to the degree and with the communities that make sense to them.
While social technologies act in some ways as “facilitating tools” in this process, the change is as much (if not more) about cultural shift as it is about technology. In fact, simply using existing tools like email in more effective ways may be an appropriate option.
It is not just about opening channels, it’s also about putting the right structures in place managerially to act on the learnings, in line with strategic goals. What that means will differ from organisation to organisation, but is essential to actually harness the energy of constituent and stakeholder engagement, rather than get battered by it.
Over Thursday and Friday last week I attended the Media140 conference held at the ABC in Sydney. The focus of the conference was on how journalists can create value through engagement within social networks.
For someone who’s been following the citizen journalism/”new media” space for some time, there wasn’t a whole lot of new insights from the conference. I wanted to attend in part to see Jay Rosen speak on Friday morning, but also to get a better sense of where the journalism profession is at in relation to this space – especially in Australia – and to contribute positively to the conversations that would no doubt occur in between sessions.
What seems apparent from the discussion, even before Julie Posetti made the point explicit in her closing remarks, was that Twitter seems to have resulted in a bit of a tipping point with journalists entering and making sense of this space. This is undoubtedly a good thing, and while I too found it slightly tedious how much emphasis was put on Twitter overall it didn’t bother me as much as it did other attendees (judging by the Twitter backchannel) – it’s a conversation that needs to happen. If Twitter is the entry point, that’s great…
What I found promising is that most of the presenters and panelists seemed to “get it” – so a lot of the conversation (though not all) was demonstrating positive examples of these tools being used to great effect.
These concepts are not new, of course. Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen and many others have been writing about it for some time. Even in the “old media” analogue form of printed books ;) The discussion really kicked off almost 10 years ago when blogs started to gain traction and the “journalist vs. blogger” debates started raging.
While a lot of the focus was on the non-monetary value of networks – a healthy and positive progression IMO – the “who will pay” theme was certainly bubbling under much of the discussion. The Thursday afternoon “How social media is changing political reporting” in particular was railroaded into a discssion of “you’ll be sorry when journalistic institutions fail.”
It was implied that people “wouldn’t pay” for journalism, and that we’d all be left worse off without publications like the Sydney Morning Herald if they failed. I think this is a reflection of a failure of the imagination and a reflection of the (not entirely unfounded) fear within elements of the industry about the uncertainty around models.
Two asides: No surprise that the most vocal was a News Limited journalist – such a coincidence that just prior to the session I read VisceralBusiness’ post on News Limited needing a “higher purpose” to be successful. I also think that the SMH is doing far more damage to it’s own reputation and readership through ridiculously intrusive advertising than social media is doing – in fact I would suspect social media sharing has increased readership of the SMH (not that I have the facts to back that up).
I missed the opening session, but it seems there was some animosity towards publicly-funded news organisations such as the ABC and BBC as somehow devaluing news and undercutting commercial operators.
There seemed to be a view that institutions such as the SMH and News Limited are the only way that professional journalists will receive a paycheck. There are examples from around the world that point to new models and ideas that suggest that this is not the case. The problem is they are sometimes hard to recognise because they don’t look much like what is traditionally known – and perhaps won’t support the “big business” approach of the past (but is this really needed?).
I find it fascinating that the “industrial media”, who have built their entire model on “indirect funding” (advertising pays for the product for the most part) are really struggling to grasp the new opportunities for indirect funding in this new landscape. Note to SMH: advertising is not the only answer.
I think in part this is because a) there are still relatively few people taking the leap and trying different models and b) there isn’t necessarily single model that will save the day – it will be a variety of models applied in different ways depending on the circumstance.
All of that said, I too am concerned about how expensive investigative journalism will be paid for moving forward (I recall Jeff Jarvis raising similar concerns in the past – though he’s quick to suggest a way forward). Again, models will emerge, but there is no clear winning model at this point. NewAssignment and Newsvine are two such experiments underway. Kevin Sites’ work is another (Sites was sponsored by Yahoo! to cover zones of conflict around the world – thanks for the reminder Tobes.)
From what I can tell, a majority of what is termed “journalism” doesn’t fit the “investigative” description, but protecting this aspect of the industry is used as the justification for supporting traditional models, as though these are the only options. I think this is akin to multinational record companies using concerns for “supporting artists” as their front-line PR approach to get people to buy music. We – the public – recognise, however, that the beneficiaries are by and large the middle- to upper-management and shareholders of these companies – not the journalists themselves (who are the first to get axed in downsizing efforts). With this in mind their words ring somewhat hollow.
I think there are many potential opportunities for industrial media to play a positive role in these new spaces – to re-assert their relevance and value into the future. If they do this, and start ASAP seeking/experimenting/trialing alternative models, they will be well placed to transition. The problem is they’ve had 10 years to start seriously working on alternative models, and now time may be running out…
We also didn’t escape the “journalists fact check, social media sources don’t” arguments. Every time this point was raised I couldn’t help think two things: a) it’s often social media participants fact checking and correcting the record of mainstream media sources and b) has no-one ever heard of Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo – crowdsourcing at it’s best where the audience helps the journalist fact check and develop stories (a point alluded to by Jay Rosen). Proof that once you get past a defensive position you can actually be open to the opportunities.
I think, though, that Riyaad Minty of Al Jazeera (an organisation that clearly gets it) provided the best response to this – while making the point that it’s still important he demonstrated how it is possible, and can provide value.
One thing’s for sure – a journalist’s personal “brand” online will become more and more important moving forward, and will become somewhat disassociated from mastheads/publications. All of the speakers that seemed to be successful in this space were establishing their own brands in this space and reaping the rewards.
I am hopeful that, as a result of this growing interest (and perhaps the conference itself), the conversation might progress and that the mainstream media will advance beyond simply allowing comments on articles. But at 10 years and counting, and these same conversations having been hashed and rehashed over that time, I suspect the job is far from done…
Updated 2009-11-18: I saw that Dilbert cartoon today and thought it was a perfect illustration for this post, so I added it…
I have been catching up on some reading the past few days, and came across Joel Makower’s post introducing the Green Confidence Index.
The index is a monthly research report “tracking Americans’ attitudes about and confidence in their leaders and institutions, nationally and locally, on the subject of environmental responsibility, as well as in their own understanding of issues and their willingness to make green purchasing choices”.
Joel has often lamented the irregular survey’s on the public’s willingness to “buy green” in the past, and this seems like a concrete step towards creating a stronger data-set and getting a clearer indication of attitudes.
Two comments in Joel’s introduction stood out for me. In describing the September results of the first component of the index, “Responsibility”, he notes:
Responsibility — how well various groups and institutions are addressing environmental issues: too much, enough, or too little. The groups include the U.S. government, state and local governments, major corporations, individuals’ own employers, their neighbors, and themselves (weight: 40%).
Later, he reports:
Another question asked what sources of environmental information Americans use and trust. The bad news for companies: Corporate websites and blogs ranked last in a list of 13 media types in terms of their use and trust. Word of mouth was seen to be potent: Friends, family, and colleagues ranked highest as the most used and trusted, followed by consumer ratings and reviews. Green blogs and websites had the biggest trust-use gap: they are a trusted information resource, though their usage lags.
I think both of these are reflective of the power of peer networks. In the first, the proximity of a person to their peers creates a tendency to see them as more trustworthy, therefore perceived to be more likely to be doing the right thing. (One could also argue that respondents wanted to not be seen as doing the “wrong” thing.)
The second point is a reflection of the well understood trend, exemplified by Edeleman’s Trust Barometer, that peers hold much stronger influence than corporations.
While I’m clearly biased given my line of work, I can’t help but equate these things back the role that social networks have to play in advancing sustainability…
There’s a sample report available for free if you’re interested in the results of the initial surveys. The service is then charged at an introductory annual fee of USD$299 (usually USD$499).
One of the more obviously powerful things about Twitter is the ReTweet – where one user effectively “forwards” a Twitter post from another member.
If you are an organisation posting on Twitter, and you are aiming for a ReTweet, care should be taken to keep the character length of your post even shorter to allow for the “RT @<yourid>: ” at the beginning of a message, where “<yourid>” is your Twitter username.
It’s a simple thing (and reasonably obvious), but I find it’s an easy thing to forget when you aren’t used to it, or under time pressure…
(If ReTweeting is important to you, Dan Zarrella’s analysis of ReTweet trends and corresponding report.)
Over the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about “what’s next” for Zumio. Since Zumio’s inception about 18 months ago I’ve had the opportunity to work a bunch of great people on challenging and diverse projects. While I’ve enjoyed the chance to stretch myself in a variety of capacities, a few focal points of interest have emerged that I want to explore more actively.
I’ve found that when I’ve been engaged on a “social media” project, I’ve wanted to bring elements of User Experience into play. When I’ve been working on wireframes, I look to understand the social impacts of the interfaces we’re designing.
In all of this my aim has been to get a deeper understanding of the business and community priorities driving the work we do and looking for opportunities to create win-win solutions – ones where interactions provide value for both my client(s) and the communities they are participating within.
I’ve been searching for a good description for this. To me it’s a deeper engagement than just “social media” – I’ve been invited to participate in a couple of projects that could be best described as “buzz generation” campaigns and recognised that this is not what Zumio does. When I talk about “bottom-line” benefits, they are usually not directly “selling” or “marketing” oriented, in the traditional sense. It’s also not “service design” – though I love the term and think we need more of it.
When I work with an organisation my approach to their “business” (I use “business” in the broad sense of the term – e.g. the business and “bottom-line” of a non-profit organisation is achieving policy or advocacy outomes) borrows elements of User Experience (using tools such as personas and user stories, brand development techniques etc.), but it’s not just about building a tool or delivering a service – my interest is in understanding how these tools can facilitate deeper business change that can generate greater value by embracing the spirit and principles behind “Web 2.0″, rather than just using them to create a great deliverable.
When I heard James Dellow from Headshift talk at Public Sphere recently he used the term “social business design” (a reflection of both Headshift’s and their parent, Dachis Group’s focus), which really resonated with me at the time.
Having since done a series of internal workshops to refine my thinking around Zumio with my friends and colleagues Penny Hagen and Rod Smith, and having read further about what is conceived as “social business design”, I have come to realise that this where my strengths and interests lay. It is the thread that weaves through my seemingly diverse experience, clients and projects that I have undertaken over the past 10 years.
Gaining an understanding of this has been a real “light bulb” moment for me (albeit one that has taken months to formulate) – helping me to understand what it is I actually do. I’m looking forward to developing these ideas further, especially when focused on creating a more sustainable future, both environmentally and socially. I think these two society-changing ideas – social business design and sustainability – will play increasingly important roles into the future.
P.S. you may have noticed some changes on the site recently – this is a reflection of this change in focus. While not 100% right (I wonder if these things ever are?), I certainly think the site better reflects this focus and better represents the services Zumio offers. Any feedback you have would be most welcome.
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