Just a quick note to say that I’ll be attending the Communities and Technology conference happening in Brisbane next week. In addition to attending the Friday and Saturday presentations, I’ll be participating in the Food(ing): Between Human-Computer and Human-Food-Experience workshop on Wednesday.

I’m particularly looking forward to the workshop as an opportunity to learn from others working in this area, and to share my experience from both my masters studies work and the learnings from the FlavourCrusader initiative. In related news, my participation in the workshop stems from a proposed book chapter that my friend and colleague Penny Hagen and I proposed to the Urban Informatics folks at QUT, that hopefully will be going ahead soon, but I’ll have more on that in the coming months.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to attend the first (and hopefully not the last!) Service Design conference in Sydney. It was great to have the opportunity to connect with so many familiar faces and like-minded folks to explore the emerging field of service design.

I’m not wired to live-blog these kind of things, but I noticed Mal Booth was doing a fantastic job if you’re after a blow-by-blow description (or just check out the #sd2011 hash tag).

The day was great overall (all but one presentation was excellent from my perspective), and over the fold I want to outline three of my highlights from the day.

Highlights

Tim Fife, In the service of…

This high-level review + a brief case study really resonated with me. Tim outlined a perspective on Buchanan’s “4 orders of design”, ranging from visual communications (2D design), object design (3D design, industrial design etc.), interaction design, and organisation design.

I am particularly interested in the shift towards 4th order design (organisational design) and the challenges of bottom-up vs. top-down approaches, and how service designers might play a role at this level of an organisation.

He also emphasised the importance of balancing organisational intent (which we refer to as purpose in our framework) with human-centred design, but also the importance of supporting systems and operational considerations.

All of this was very familiar from our own practice, but it was great to see it pulled together into such a well presented communication.

Melis Senova, Service design for corporates vs NGOs – is there a difference?

Melis presented some, by her own admission “generalised”, learnings from working with NGOs and comparing these to corporate projects.

I get the sense that a lot of the work/case studies that Melis was drawing upon were donor focused (e.g. working with fundraising teams on donation forms etc.), though I may be wrong there. One piece that I think was missing from the presentation (and I recognise that presentations like this can’t cover everything!) was the role of service design in engaging constituents and stakeholders in the delivery of the “service” — from an NGO perspective, the societal change that is intended.

There are a couple of aspects to this: the use of social networks to achieve/promote change (e.g. the 350.org model), the use of tools to sway decision makers (something Melis touched upon in response to my question/suggestion during the talk), but also the achieving of behavioural change within the stakeholder base (which may not necessarily mean “supporters” per se — for example, campaigns for sustainability or public health that aim to change or challenge people’s behaviours — Hello Sunday Morning being one example that comes to mind.

While in a general sense I think Melis’ points were valid, I do question how much NGOs maintain a sense of empathy with their supporters (especially where NGOs are positioned as “experts” within their area of interest/activity), and also while I agree NGOs typically have a much tighter connection to overall purpose, my experience suggests that often the purpose/objectives can sometimes be a bit broad and require clarification to be really powerful and actionable in a service design context.

I make these observations not as a criticism of Melis’ talk — I actually found it very thought provoking as it challenged me to examine my own experience in non-profit contexts, which is exactly what I was looking for from the day.

Siobhan Toohill and Adrian Wiggins, Creating better places to be

I was really looking forward to this preso and it didn’t disappoint. It was awesome to see Ezio Manzini’s work mentioned, along with Collaborative Consumption and a raft of other thinkers (many of whom I’d not heard of — plenty to follow up!)

It really resonated to see the ideas of creating the pre-conditions for communities and value to form presented in a context such as the conference. I also had so many questions — about shared value (especially in a retail context, an important part of Stockland’s business), but also in terms of the role of Stockland in community support after a development has been sold etc. But unfortunately was not able to connect with Siobhan or Adrian after the conference — something I’ll have to follow-up on.

Final thoughts

There seemed to be a couple of themes across the day, but the one that really caught my attention was the connection between service design and “change management”. This is something I’ve identified in our practice — whether it be looking at social media, sustainability, agile management, or design thinking/service design, that a lot of the work is in supporting and enabling change within the organisations we serve to support the implementation of solutions, as much as determining the shape of those solutions.

Having recognised this, I’ve undertaken an elective as part of my Masters study in leading and managing change, and it has been very helpful in understanding different schools of thoughts, frameworks and approaches to change management. I’m positive that this is going to help inform our future work in a service design context.

All in all it was a terrific day, and I’m really looking forward to future events. If yesterday was anything to go by they will be well worth the investment to attend…

Today was the first day of the Participatory Design Conference being held at UTS.  Just a reminder about the Industry Day that’s happening on Thursday, for which Zumio is a sponsor.  (I’ve been unable to attend the entire conference due to work commitments — if you attended, please drop us a comment with your thoughts!)

The programme for the day is looking great — I’m very excited to see Mariesa from Inspire is presenting the opening keynote.  In talks and conversations I’ve often singled out Inspire as a great example of involving young people in their processes across the organisation, so I’m really looking forward to hearing more about their work in the participatory design space.  And of course I always love to hear from the folks at Digital Eskimo and CollabForge, who I know are doing great work.

But I’m also very excited to hear from some new (for me) voices in this area — and there’s plenty of very interesting folks in the panel and research sessions in the afternoon.  In any case, I hope to see you there…

Just a quick note to mentioned I’ve posted the slides from my presentation today at the Enviro 2010 conference over at Slideshare. I’ve uploaded with associated notes as a document to provide a bit more context for each slide.

In the presentation I mention Clay Shirky’s concept of the “cognitive surplus” – for those that are interested, he provides a great introduction to this concept in his recent TED talk (embedded below for quick reference):

Next Wednesday is the opening of the Enviro 2010 conference at the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre.

I’m presenting there Thursday in the 4:00pm – 5:30pm session, on the topic of Social Design for Sustainability. In the presentation I’ll be looking at online social networks, the underlying trends that they represent, the importance of these networks in moving towards sustainability, and how “social design” (design thinking) provides a great toolset for organisations wanting to benefit through engagement within the context of these trends.

It’s been an interesting process pulling together the presentation, which ties together a number of the threads I’ve explored previously here in the blog, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all goes on Thursday.

It’s also perhaps serendipitous that the conference coincides with the State of Design festival which has the theme of “Change by Design”. Hopefully my contribution to the Enviro 2010 conference will provide a nice tie-in between the two events.

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.

Value for journalism

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.

Should traditional institutions survive?

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…

Fact checking is not an exclusive right

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.

Personal brand

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 read this report from the BSR 2009 conference with interest – especially “BSR’s road map for achieving success in this new world:”

1. Promote innovation for sustainability.
2. Embrace systems redesign.
3. Maximize the power of networks.

My thinking, though, is that by focusing first on point 3 organisations can better achieve points 1 and 2. Thoughts?

I’m looking forward to reading through the remainder of the session summaries from the conference – from what I’ve seen so far it seems like it was a very good event.

I can’t believe how quickly time is flying lately. Web Directions South seemed so far away when the program was announced, but now it’s just two weeks away!

Preparations are under way in camp Zumio (the recent Slideshare contest providing extra inspiration), and it seems like it’s going to be another great event this year – especially with an “new and improved” WebJam taking place on the evening of Day 1 at Bar Broadway.

If you missed out on the recent discount pricing, you can use the promo code “WDS08-GY” when you register to get $50 off the ticket price.

Anyways – I hope to see some familiar faces on the day – especially given the fact that the two other sessions scheduled during the slot I’m presenting in (11:45am on the 25th) are top quality too – I’m disappointed I’m missing them in fact!

The details of Web Directions South 08 have been announced. Having been inspired by previous years’ events, I’m excited to this year be participating as a presenter.

It’s probably little surprise that my session is entitled Strategies for social media engagement, part of the management/strategy track. The session outline:

With so many social networks blooming, all with different participants and methods of interaction, it can be hard to determine where to invest your energy, time and $$.

The session will provide ideas and a “background briefing” to help you answer the question:

• why is social media important to my organisation?
• what is the ROI for social media?
• how can I evaluate which approaches are right for me/my organisation?
• what sort of activities can/should I undertake in these spaces?

This is not a technical session and although we will briefly touch on some popular sites, the focus will be on how you and your organisation can effectively and authentically engage participants in the social media world.

I’m looking forward to attending this year – there are some great speakers and sessions in the program – Jeffrey Veen and Mark Pesce are both presenting this year, and the previous talks I’ve seen both do were excellent – and I suspect (hope) this time ’round will be just as good.

I’m also interested in catching the sessions by Gabriel White, Teale Shapcott and Kay Smoljak, among others. (The schedule hasn’t been announced yet, so hopefully there’s no clashes!)

As I was in Canberra last week I wasn’t able to attend the Connecting Up conference in Brisbane.

Luckily I have accounts from both Nigel and Priscilla to fill me in.

Update: Catching up on my reading I just spotted that Priscilla also blogged her lunch conversation with Beth.