Designing for Civil Society

How to design engagement

If you want to consult or engage more deeply with a local community, or range of interests, there's no shortage of methods recommended for use by facilitators and their clients.  You may think about focus groups, workshops or roadshows backed up by newsletters and other documents. Fairs can offer fun, citizens' juries foster deliberation. Then there's all the more recent web-based processes.
The problem is which method to choose, how long to take, how to ensure you can respond to people's preferences ... in short you need to design a process. While a professional facilitator may know this well, it can be difficult to convince a public agency, for example, that it's more than a matter of choosing a tool and applying it.
I'm delighted to see that engagement specialists Dialogue by Design have now produced not only a free handbook on designing engagement processes, but also a dialoguedesigner. This online system helps you choose the right method for the right situation by asking four simple questions:

• what you want to achieve;
• who you want to consult with;
• how sensitive the subject matter or relationship is; and
• how much time you have to run the consultation.

Once you have provided answers to these questions you are offered a range of possible methods, with links to detailed explanations. I like the way that the system provides gentle rebukes if you don't take engagement seriously enough. For example, if you choose "gather views or opinions" as an objective, you are told:

While gathering views and opinions from people is often an important part of a consultation process it is not, on its own, consultation. If you really only want to gather views and opinions your project is a market research or opinion polling exercise. See the supporting information link for more information on these and some of the methods most commonly used.

The rationale behind this is explained in the handbook, which offer the spectrum of engagement (information giving, information gathering, consultation, participation, collaboration, delegated authority) as a model for thinking about the degree of influence.
In the foreword, Andrew Acland - who is co-director of Dialogue by Design with Pippa Hyam - reflects on the lack of emphasis on design elsewhere.

We think it is because people tend to choose their engagement method first and then fit the process to the method rather than vice-versa, as it should be. We also think it may be because theorists of public engagement focus on purposes and results while practitioners tend to concentrate on methods. Being both, we are inclined to notice gaps and do our best to fill them.

I'm particularly impressed by the handbook and designer tool because I've tried my hand at writing a guide to effective participation, and know how difficult it is to take people through the options. Drew Mackie and I are now developing a complementary approach through engagement games, in which people working in groups develop scenarios and consider possible methods. We now know where to signpost people once their interest in process design is aroused. Dialogue by Design offer a range of consultancy services to follow through the advice in the handbook and online designer. I can't think of a better way of demonstrating the potential value of these services, while also providing such excellent free advice. Smart engagement.

Technorati Tags: engagement

After the event - YOU produce the slides

One of the challenges of buzzy events is how to capture some of the conversation in a way that adds to the experience of those involved, rather than becoming a chore, and spreads the words.  Matt O'Neill and I ran a workshop - well, more of a group conversation - at the recent NESTA Uploading Innovation conference, which was captured here on video by Lloyd Davis. No effort on our part ... but I didn't recall much immediately after. I wondered later if this might generally be a problem for unconferencing in some circumstances. My post led to some further discussion about expectations, preparation, even moving it all into Second Life.
Matt has just got in touch again to show me the results of a half day workshop that his outfit  Activ-Media ran for the 'KIN' network, a 'subsidiary' of Warwick Business School.
Participants split into four groups and addressed issues around building communities of practice, transferring tacit knowledge, the benefits of knowledge management, and the ways that people learn. You can see the results in Matt's blog post - Knowledge and Innovation Workshop: Outcomes.
However, Matt didn't leave the session with the equivalent of a set of bullet points on flip-charts - he asked the participants to produce a set of slides, with voice-over, which you can see here. Matt says it's an experiment to test his theory that if people produce something tangible together, that can be referred back to and shared with their peers, it's going to be a much better learning experience as well as a way of sharing the knowledge.
Update: Matt has more here from the Corporate Podcast Summit.

Technorati Tags: knowledgemanagement

Steward, bring me another web tool please

Since I do a bit of each of event facilitation, design of engagement processes, blogging, and online community work, I get into conversations with potential clients that go something like this:

We're running an event and want to carry things on afterwards online ... or ...
We're about to start a campaign to engage our stakeholders more effectively and want to use some of the new Internet tools ... or ...
It's time we had something more interactive on our website ...

This then starts up several internal conversation for me, and I have to stop myself saying things like:

I've been working on some really good systems recently that give everyone coming to the event their own profile, space to blog, as well as places for background content and sharing development ... or ...
What you need is a good design for the overall process starting with a workshop I could run for you ... or ...
We could add in a blog so that you have a much stronger voice for the organisation ... or ... combinations of all of these

None of these solutions is wrong, and indeed I have worked on all of them more or less successfully. But in my heart I know that they all depend on something I can't provide - and that is someone within the client prepared to understand what's involved, and champion the cause with others. It depends on someone (not necessary the same person) who has the skills to weave together facilitation and introductions of new tools. As Bev Trayner wrote the other day It keeps coming back to technology stewardship:

On Friday I did a brief session with my colleagues at ESCE (a Business School in Setúbal) about Web2.0. The feedback and the sensation I got was one of anticipation, a realisation that we are onto something here with all these tools, but where and how to begin? Like one colleague said, I'm just getting familiar with Web1.0 and you're telling me there's a Web2.0.
I am, again, reminded of the need for technology stewards - people who know both the local context and needs,  who know the technology market, and know how to weave together the two.
You used to be able to teach one thing at a time - e.g.  "Now you will learn how to use Frontpage". But that strategy makes less sense now. Rather, you have to know how to use a suite of tools to make sense of any one tool i.e.  knowing about hyperlinks, tags, Technorati, blogrolls and RSS feeds makes more sense of keeping a blog.
But to know about so many things they have to make sense to you in your practice. You have to be ready to use them, otherwise you just don't (unless you've got a geeky bent). Much of a technology steward's job is knowing how and when to  introduce a tool, and to whom.  And one thing I've had to learn (with my enthusiasm) is that you have to know when  NOT to tell people about a tool.

The nature of technology stewardship is one that is exercising veteran online community facilitator and blogger Nancy White, and she let's us know about a call for papers for a knowledge management journal on the topic, due out in June this year. The call itself outlines lots of  the issues in community building, collaboration and knowledge sharing online. Here's Nancy's definition developed with John Smith and Etienne Wenger:

“Technology stewards are people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with technology to take leadership in addressing those needs. Stewardship typically includes selecting and configuring technology, as well as supporting its use in the practice of the community .”

Bev Trayner re-inforces the need to say no to the temptation of selling tech solutions on their own ... or even training. She concludes her post:

Tomorrow I'll be at a meeting in Brussels where I will share some of my interest and knowledge about Web2.0 tools. They asked me to "do a training" and I said no. My interest is not in training people to use tools. My interest is in understanding the community, its practices and (new) literacies. And then I am interested in helping them discover the tools that could support and extend those practices and literacies. And this concept of technology stewardship has given me a handle (and a language) for being able to express that.

I very much agree with the philosophy being put forward by Bev, Nancy and others promoting technology stewardship. I think it is something I can offer (particularly with help from open source thinkers like Nancy and Bev), in between trying to be a social reporter. The problem is explaining it to clients, particularly if they are ready to spend thousands on web development, but don't yet understand that isn't any use without someone to .... what ... Drive? Conduct? Steward? Isn't that someone who brings you another drink? Sigh. It's all another world, another language. More shortly on my A-Z of social media. If I stop blogging for a moment I might get it done at least as first draft.

Previously: Collaboration with technology ... and the need for stewards

Apprentice joiners turn story-tellers to tackle skills shortages

The power of  story telling is a theme that comes up a lot in engagement, marketing, knowledge management ... but I didn't expect it to emerge as a way of tackling skills shortages in the construction industry. My mistake.
The occasion was a roundtable discussion organised by the Edge Foundation before their annual awards ceremony. The foundation is dedicated to raising the status of vocational learning, which means helping young people develop practical skills through apprenticeships or other means. Government and the education industry is more inclined towards university degrees.
The roundtable I was facilitating was discussing how to deal with the predicted problem that 348,000 more employees will be needed in the construction industry by 2010. Will the 87,000 new recruits each year be home grown, or come from Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria for example?
Participants from the Foundation, and firms that had already won regional awards, could tell plenty of stories that brought reality to the figures. Young people didn't see engineering and construction as sexy, cool places to work and learn on the job. Graduates coming into the industries often lacked practical skills.
Any new mechanisms Government and colleges put in place to address this wouldn't work if young people and their parents weren't convinced. So who could solve that problem? At that stage I tried a little pro-active facilitation, and suggested that maybe those young people already in the industry might have something to contribute. They will be the experts on what appeals and what doesn't to other young people.
At this point Scott Sharkey really lit up. Scott had earlier explained that he had come up via "the gladiatorial route" from joiner to CEO of the Edinburgh-based  firm bearing his name. When Margaret Thatcher urged everyone to go self-employed, and companies shed their apprenticeship schemes, Scott went the other way and set up the Sharkey Academy, where more than 40 young people learn the trade and gain qualifications.
As you can hear in the interview, Scott's plans for expansion have been cramped by recruitmernt problems - and he thinks the industry is facing a disaster unless something can be done. After our discussion he's going to ask his apprentices what they think.

Never mind us clever dicks trying to think of it - the reality is that the young guys and gals have got the soluition. I'm  going to go back, get all the solutions from them and implement it. They can tell the stories to the wider audience, and young people, and tell them it is a sexy industry, a place to be ... and they can replicate what I have done from young apprentice joiner to company CEO.

At which point I could suggest workshops to think it through, blogs to tell the stories ... but somehow I think that Scott and his colleagues will work out some new directions pretty quickly. If they need a wider audience, the Edge is shortly launching a social networking site called The Horses Mouth. It will offer peer mentoring, features, articles, reports and reference materials. Good stories too, I hope.

Talking social media at an unsocial event

Tonight's  meeting of the London Social Media Club, convened "to discuss the latest in tools, technologies and success stories" was a ... ***?!**

Whoa! Pause there.  The social reporter is meant to be collaborative and celebratory rather than critical, and I'm feeling a bit challenged on how to do that.
Start again.
The second Club meeting was hosted by PR company Fleishman Hillard London, and they did us proud in the board room with a table laden with beer, wine and nibbles.  Our hostess kicked off the conversations with some challenging questions about the role of blogs and other tools in the world of PR, and the 20 plus people there all had a chance to chip in their stories.
That's all true, but am I being honest? No. Here's another attempt.
Architecture is important in buildings, on the web, and at events. Board rooms, cafes and bars are designed for different purposes. Blog communities and web forums offer different types of conversations and relationships. Pre-programmed conferences, with slots for Powerpoint presentations, offer a very different experience from social conferences - or unconferences as some people call them.
Styles of hosting and/or facilitation are hugely important too, whether as dictator, conductor, or chameleon.
Among the most interesting facets of social media and things Web 2.0 are self-publishing through blogs, the development of self-organising networks through feeds and links, together with a willingness to be open and informal. You can choose who you talk to, how you do that - text, audio, video - and what relationships you foster. It's a very bottom-up sort of online club in which the participants evolve the rules and set the agenda ... leading to a participation culture.
For those reasons I had high hopes of the Social Media Club as a place to chat face-to-face with other people on topics of our choosing ... with an architecture of flexible space, and light-touch hosting. Maybe a mini version of the open space conferences I've been involved in with Policy Unplugged.
It wasn't like that. We had a board room with seats tightly arranged around the table, and facilitation as gentle inquisition. Our hostess asked questions and we responded. OK, it was all pretty informal, but we had one conversation at a time instead of maybe half a dozen in parallel. The initial introductions round the table gave me three or four people I would have loved to talk to ... but there was no way I could get to them.
I tried asking why we were talking about Web 2.0 using an Event 0 format, and got the offer of another drink. I clearly didn't explain myself well ... which is why I'm blogging it here. Maybe everyone else was happy? No - several others left for the pub after an hour. Maybe it all changed before the end? If so, I'm glad, and hope to read about it.
However, if future meetings are going to be run the same way, I suggest calling them round tables or something similar. Alternatively try something like the excellent Gurteen Knowledge Cafes.
Of course, it could be me - and Groucho Marx.  I shouldn't try and join any club that would have someone like me for a member.
Tomorrow I'm conference videoblogger at e-Democracy '06 with my son Dan, and on best behaviour.
Update: the more clubable social reporter Lloyd Davis comments below that it did all get more social a bit later ... so I hope Jackie won't take my comments to hard. I just couldn't resist the analogies.

Dictator, conductor, chameleon ... facilitator

Just as participation is about culture as much as tools, I believe facilitation is about style as much as technique. But like culture, that's difficult to explain. Andrew Rixon of Anecdote has given us an excellent start in What kind of facilitator are you?. Andrew writes:

At the upcoming Australian Facilitators conference I’m looking forward to the “Facilitator Archetypes” workshop that I’m running alongside a great cartoonist, Simon Kneebone. This workshop was inspired from some work we did earlier this year exploring language in facilitation. When I asked “what metaphor describes your style of facilitation” I had no idea it would result in such an interesting collection of characters. Characters like; The invisible facilitator. Facilitator as chameleon. Facilitator as dictator. Facilitator as conductor. Thanks to Simon, we have translated our initial findings into some great cartoons that capture these characters. I can’t wait to see what characters emerge from our workshop!

You can  see the rest of the cartoons here ... I'm looking forward to more.

The cartoons reminded me of an excellent workshop that Johnnie Moore ran earlier in the year on authentic facilitation. There's another in January. Johnnie says:

Being open to the unexpected, and resourceful in responding, is a key skill for facilitators. Some of our best work comes when we have to drop our original plans and respond in the moment to what happens before us. Authentic facilitation is a great way to increase the ability to improvise.

During our workshop Johnnie encouraged conversations and some collaborative storytelling. We were strongly focussed on talking to each other. He then moved to the flip chart , started talking. What happens? The facilitator becomes the focus and we lose contact with each other. If one of us had stepped up, it would have been a different dynamic again. I don't think Johnnie was saying right-wrong - just encouraging us to reflect on how different styles and behaviours make an enormous difference, and may be appropriate in different circumstances. I grabbed a quick picture (sorry about the quality). If only there was a cartoonist on hand...

Reality check on social reporting: people

In Social Reporting and Rich Records Lloyd Davis picks up my post about the role of Social Reporter, and offers some wise words drawn from his own experience (which is rather more than mine, I should say):

I'm taking a softly, softly, catchee monkey approach. I think (and my order book shows) that we have agreement that it's a "good thing" or at least a "nice thing" to have a richer record of a days proceedings and that blogs and wikis are a good way of producing that. What I agree we haven't done yet is get to the point where we're able to weave everything together to make it useful enough to participants that they want to do more than view the record.

But maybe that's not our responsibility...yet. I see a risk that we're pushing people too fast along a learning curve that we've taken a while to go along ourselves. I found last week that It is enough novelty for the average conference participant to deal with the fact that we've taken pictures, done some vox-pops with people and live blogged a keynote and they are up on the internet at the end of day 1! Maybe we should just let this aspect sink in for a little bit - if they want to interact as well, then that's fantastic and we should be ready for it when it happens, but in the meantime, perhaps we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment.

This accords with the professional digital divide observations of Dave Pollard (maybe 2 percent are power users of collaboration tools), and those of my Portugal-based colleague Bev Trayner in Reality check - the new renaissance:

I have been taken aback with (fico suprendida com) how unfamiliar many people are with these new tools and technologies. Yet again I find myself living in two different mindsets.

On the one hand there is a world where online and offline connections blend, complement, compete and synergise. Time is not synchronous. Technologies are ubiquitous and "everyone uses RSS feeds". This world is not dominated by technologists, but by social entrepreneurs who see the potential of new technologies.

In another world intentions like "e-learning platform" or "knowledge portal" are heralded as badges of innovation and state-of-the-art accomplishments. In this world you still hear people insist that face-to-face is more complete than online, as if the two were in opposition. The frames of same-time same-place are unquestionable. People who know about technologies must be engineers, technologists or freaks.

Adding:

It has been a salutory lesson. And it reminds me of an ongoing design question I have (and that was stimulated by Nancy): how do you stimulate people's imagination to try out technologies? And also - how come some people see it and others don't?

If the ethos of the social reporter is to promote collaboration by standing on the side of the user/reader/viewer and helping them to contribute, we have to take this very seriously. Evangelising - come on in, it's wonderful - doesn't work any better than warnings - you'll be left behind if you don't.

Part of the answer is being clear about the purpose ... what real benefit will tech-supported collaboration bring - and aware of the prevailing culture which may not be receptive. I think it is also about respecting people's preferences. That's partly about personality, and partly about offering a choice of audio, video, text and so on.

All that means that social reporting, to be successful, requires a pretty full set of skills and tools. As Lloyd says, instead of pushing too hard we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment. If we can't get the gigs, maybe we need some simulated rehearsing ... a sort of emerging social reporting conference, where we all practise on some willing non-tech participants. Any sponsors up for that?

Social media, social web, social networking ... time for the social reporter

Online forums need hosts and moderators, workshops need facilitators, networks require some weaving to develop links. But how, for example, do you do that fast around an event, capture content, and follow through afterwards? I'm pondering the possible role of the social reporter.
I'm interested from two angles. The first is the practicality of setting up and supporting multi-use blogs sites like this for people attending events, and so mix face-to-face and online. The ideal is to help people register, post their profiles, contribute through blogging and commenting, while at the same time being offered links to wider networks and good briefing material. Contributions at the event will be reported through blog items, audio and video. Afterwards there may be further contributions to other sites, maybe some joint work on a wiki.
Except ... it doesn't just happen. Unless the event is about social media few people will be comfortable with the tools. There isn't time to build a community gradually, nor the critical mass of users to get a lot of spontaneous contributions. Just seeding the space isn't enough ... more intensive gardening is required.
Of course, you may say none of this is worth the effort, and face-to-face events don't benefit from before and afters online, but for now let's say it is worth experimenting in different ways. If that's the case, then someone has to find external resources, spot stories of interest to participants, look for common interests in profiles and make introductions, post items an help others to so, shoot video ... and so on. I think it's a mix of facilitation and journalism.
My second interest is the journalism angle ... something I used to do in print. When someone asks these days what I do, I end up stumbling around ... "I use social media for social benefit ... help people collaborate in workshops and online .... you know, blogs and wikis and that sort of thing". It used to be much easier to say I was a reporter.
It occurs to me that I should try calling myself a social reporter; it feels more comfortable for this purpose than knowledge activist or technology steward.
For me it has the advantage of confirming some fraternal links with people like Nick Booth of Podnosh, who blogs and podcasts in his local community in Birmingham, while reflecting on what's needed to shift from the news values of traditional journalism to something more socially beneficial. We need to move from conflict, celebrity and criticism to collaboration, celebration, creativity.
It seems to me that the role of social reporter could be important as we see a shift from "all in one place" online communities to the sort of blog communities described by Nancy White. It chimes in with the work I'm doing with Bev Trayner in developing sites that may support communities of practice (and learning a lot from Bev along with way on CoPs). 'Social reporter" also reminds me I have a lot to learn from Beth Kanter on how to use the wealth of web and personal media tools now available. It ties in with work to explore what social networking may mean for nonprofits, over at the mediablends site. Maybe I'll end up with something useful to contribute to the exciting work on conversations and storytelling generously put into the public domain by the guys at Anecdote. They really seem to know how to mix face-to-face and online.
There are many other great examples of people doing really innovative work using social media for social benefit ... so much so it can be a bit intimidating. Hence the need - for me anyway - to find a way of describing the work that is a bit personal, a bit general. Social reporter may be it. As part of my rather cursory research I tried Wikipedia ... nothing there. I Googled the term and found a certain amount about people who audit the environmental and social impact of business. Hmmm. But then I found reference to others who seemed to get invited to a lot of parties. Phew, that's alright then. Don't want to lose all the traditional benefits.

Saloneering in Smithfield

The other evening a few of us got together to reflect on what sort of events we really enjoy, and in particular whether salons fit the bill. The impetus for this came last year from an event about design and society that we all attended, and ended up grumbling about in the bar afterwards. It wasn't a bad event - we just wanted more talking to each other than being talked at, more intimate conversation, less public cleverness.
I had met Ann Light before at the workshop that helped launch this blog, and she introduced me to Kathryn Best and Christina Li. After a little stimulating converse and a few drinks we decided that what we needed was a series of salons.... I think it was Kathryn who inspired us with tales of 18th century Parisian gatherings, also documented here in wikipedia.

A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "to please and educate" (aut delectare aut prodesse est). The salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical salons of the 17th century and 18th century, were carried on until quite recently in urban settings among like-minded people of a 'set': many 20th-century salons could be instanced.

I was sufficiently enthused to run a salon with my friends at the Civic Trust, where I learned that free wine and a jazz pianist were useful ingredients. On reflection the over-sized badges and rally-round flags were a bit over the top, but one must experiment ...
Anyway, the four of us eventually got around to gathering with a few others for our first salon: about salons. It was a Smithfield bar (appropriately called Meet) rather than a drawing room, but fine for the purpose. I can recommend the alcohol-free "You're so cool" cocktail, though in the interests of conviviality switched to more traditional salon-fare after one.
It seemed a little over-formal to take notes - though there was one handheld scribbler. Difficult to know if he was catching the odd bon-mot or catching up on the day's email. I do recall "trusted .... empathy ... party where you can hear people .... not just more networking .... being intellectually generous".
Things did get a little tense at one point because of a division of opinion about whether events need to achieve anything. Shouldn't there be some purpose beyond just meeting and talking? Isn't a format important? No, was the majority opinion. That's not a salon.
At this point we began a round of reflections on different people - and in particular personality types as profiled by the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.
Would buzzy salons appeal to introverts, or mainly extraverts? Would intuitives favour salons for inspirations and explorations, while sensers find them a little short on factual content? In particular was it the judging types who wanted control and closure, compared with the more flexible perceiving types? My paraphrase doesn't do justice to the discussion, and certainly not to Myers Briggs ... but the topic certainly raised the volume quite a bit. Seems like a good salon theme.
At that stage we decided we could only take so much high intellectual discourse, and retired to the nearby Sutton Arms for a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. I think we decided something, but that's the trouble with salons...

Western Australia demonstrates innovation in community engagement

I've just caught up with Tom Atlee's report on a wealth of innovative deliberation techniques demonstrated at a recent conference in Perth, Western Australia, where the government has been pioneering what Tom calls a "committed experiment in democratic collective intelligence".

The conference, organised by Janette Hartz-Karp, immersed participants in demonstrations of methods including 21st Century Town Meeting, Deliberative Polling, World Cafe, Mind Mapping, Citizens Jury, Wisdom Council, and Dynamic Facilitation.
Panelists also provided a list of suggestions on how to ensure people are included in deliberative processes, among them:

* Learn the historical and cultural factors important to the populations you want to reach.
* Understand the dynamics of oppression and how factors such as race, level of education, economic status, disability, sexuality, gender, and religious background can combine to exclude people from being chosen or, once chosen, from speaking up and being taken seriously -- and work to counter such suppressive factors.
* Identify and engage the key players and opinion leaders in those populations.
* Explore how physical, geographic and economic factors may play a role in people's ability to participate, and compensate for these (such as by providing transportation, child care, payment, etc.).
* Find out what kinds of interactions they've had with other such projects, with officials of various sorts, and with mainstream society.
* Make it clear how their participation will make a difference. Be honest and don't making promises you can't keep or be too grandiose in your proposals.
* Provide enough time and realistic information for them to consider your project.
* Use random selection, with special efforts to reach such people if they don't turn up (e.g., don't have phones).
* Give them opportunities to speak in their own way and to be well heard and respected for what they contribute.
* Increase public employees' and officials' awareness of these factors and improve their ability to handle them.

Tom is also facilitating development of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation wiki, which provides more detailed explanation of methods he mentions. Discovered via Happenings - Thataway