Category: social media

Ask Idealware: Solutions for Tagging and Archiving a Discussion List

Laura Quinn asked me to contribute an answer towards Idealware’s Ask Idealware. It was a great question so I happily shot off an answer in email. It also made me realize that this was yet another thing contributing to my recent pattern of “not getting to blogging.” I have been writing for other publications, traveling and prioritizing more time for my own health – exercise and meditation – and blogging keeps coming out on the losing end. So Laura said it was fine to repub on my blog so my total silence can be broken! 😉

Anyway, here is the piece!

Melanie asks:

I’m working with a group of public radio station fundraisers who want a way to communicate regularly online to share tips and tests they have done in conjunction with project we are working on together to increase the number of donors to public radio nation-wide. The consensus of this group is they would like to do this via listserv. I really dislike listservs and would like to find a different option. Especially so we can easily archive and tag the posts. The vast majority of this group tells me they will be most likely to participate if something comes to their email inbox, not if they have to go to a blog to read and make comments. Is there a blog/listserv hybrid solution, perhaps using rss or something like that?

Nancy White, with Full Circle Interaction, responds:

If I hear you right, there are a number of things you want to support in this interaction:

  • Q&A and sharing of tips within the group via email
  • Archiving and organizing the tips so they can be found later, especially via tags
  • You intend to use the offerings as is without synthesis or editing (or not?)

Here are a couple of ideas that come to mind. They offer a bit of variation – so it depends which of the above activities are most important. The real challenge is most discussion tools haven’t yet integrated tagging even in web interfaces, and I have not seen any that enable tagging via email. So instead of having people tag as they post, it has to be done post-posting. That adds work. But it probably increases the consistency of tagging. Getting a group unfamiliar with tagging to institute a consistent tagging practice is not so quick nor easy. 😉

  • Combine an email list, tagging tool, and wiki. Use an email list with a web repository that offers a permalink to each post, then use an external tagging tool like del.icio.us to tag them. Aggregate those tags automatically into something like a wiki. For example, with Wikispaces you can automatically feed del.icio.us tags into a page. So you can either make a page for each tag, or if there aren’t too many tags, aggregate them on one page. If you do this, I suggest that you have an overall tag (like nancycrazyforchocolate) and then a tag that addresses the specific content of the post. This requires somebunny/bunnies to do the tagging. Maybe ask people to take turns doing this and have an initial conversation about shared tagging practices.
  • Curate the Q&As. The KM4Dev community functions in the day to day via a DGroups email list with a web repository. They pair this with a wiki (using Mediawiki) on their server where they collect “community knowledge” The community practice is whomever asks the question, collects the answers then summarizes them on a wiki page. A template helps organize those who feel a bit intimidated by the practice. Again, DOING this takes time to develop as a community practice. It is finally pretty well adopted by the KM4Dev community, but after 2 years of bugging by yours truly, now known as the wiki pest from the west.
  • Use a blog but set up email subscriptions. I’m not sure – and this would be good to ask one of our community’s blog experts, if there is blog software that not only delivers blog posts by email, but allows posting of comments by email. Here the key practices would be requiring the initiator of the question to actually post it on the blog and tag it initially. And remind people of the power of search.

Finally, I have to ask the hard question. Will people go back and use the archived and tagged material, or will they follow the age old pattern of just asking again? Will they wade through multiple messages or is synthesis going to really add significant value? We find in KM4Dev that community members tend to re-ask, but other, non members, seem to be hitting the wiki, suggesting that the artifacts we’ve produced are of value beyond the community. But in community, we seem to love that personal response that comes at the moment of asking and answering.

The Ask Idealware posts take on some of the questions that you send us at ask@idealware.org. Have other great options? Disagree with our answer? Help us out by entering your own answer as a comment below.

Noticing some nice non-profit wiki work

CCN Wiki HomepageA while ago Beth Kanter put out to her network a request to know about useful nonprofit wiki practices. I meant to reply, but, as usual, got distracted. Today I received an email update about a local coalition here in Washington State (USA) that reminded me about their great wiki work. Check out the Communities Connect Network Wiki . Early on, I had the pleasure of working with Peg Giffels who was their main wiki gardener (among many other roles.) Peg “got” that there was both an information architecture and a set of social processes associated with their use of a wiki as both a project communication tool and as a knowledge sharing tool.

Intially the blog was going to be a general place for coalition members to share stuff. But we all know how general stuff goes — slowly if at all. Then Peg hit on using the wiki to be the central point for the coalitions training programs. Now, at the completion of this last round, Peg has a site that is rich in materials (print, audio, video), has an integrated wiki orientation and training component, reflects specific member areas and contributions (for example here and here) and is well organized and “gardened.” The left navigation links to major areas of the wiki.

One of the things that came out of the early “Wiki Wednesday” hour long telephone based orientations was that people came to get trained, but left with new connections to other coalition members. When asked what was best about the calls — it was always the people they connected with. Peg lives that in the way she works with the coalition. While she stewarded the technology and the content, her attention to the people came across to me, as I observed the wiki development over the months and now years.

Like most wikis, there is a relatively small proportion of editors to page views. For example, in April, there was a rough average of 220 unique visitors per day, 2-3 editors and intermittent spikes of editing across the month. This makes sense given the ‘wind down’ phase as well. There was a huge jump in traffic between February and March. I should ask Peg what was going on!

Interestingly, while this wiki is very focused on Washington state, there are viewers from around the world. I really wish I knew what they thought, in what ways, if any, they benefited from visiting the wiki. I appreciate that the Communities Connect project worked with such openness. They have made a contribution that is bigger than their own project work. I like that about public wikis.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this cool wiki with you. Do you have any great wikis you’d like to share with the rest of us?

P.S. Beth, when I went to find the link on your blog, I noticed two things. Your search box is now waaaay down on the left nav bar of your blog – I almost gave up looking for it. And it is a Technorati search, so I have to go to Technorati and THEN link back to your blog. Maybe consider putting in a Google or other direct search option? I want to find your great stuff FAST! And yes, I’m finally becoming a searcher!

More on community management (part 3 or “what’s in a name”)

Otto's ear
Creative Commons License photo credit: os♄to
I hate titling these blog posts with the words “community management.” After writing post 1 and post 2 on this topic (triggered by Chris Brogan), the words just feel wrong. But because this is the label that has been floating across our blog conversations, I’m keeping it in as “connective tissue.” I was actually thinking about “The Giant Ear!”

So why am I writing a third post in three days on community management? (Instead of going for a walk this morning. Uh oh.) It is “in the air.” For those who have had a baby, it’s like once you get pregnant, all of a sudden you notice all the other pregnant women walking around town! Once you start putting blogging your ideas on something, you notice others who have thought/said/tickled around the same thing. The waves of blogging conversations about community management seem to be washing on the shore closer together these days.

While catching up on some feeds, I saw Matt Moore’s bit on
chief conversation officer.

Organisations need Social Media Relations people. And because of the participatory nature of the social media, these people will have to blog. And comment on other blogs. And Twitter. And all that other stuff. They will encourage, advise and look out for bloggers and social media headz in their own organisations. And they will have to believe in what their organisations do (be it curing cancer or causing it) or else they will get found out.

Everyone wants to be Chief Talking Officer. Who wants to be Chief Conversation Officer?

Hm. Matt is talking about something different than this animal we’ve been calling community manager, but some of the functions he lists hearken back to Chris’s list. But do you feel the dissonance that I do? Just the title “officer” shows us the polarities that we activate when trying to reconcile a network activity with a corporate structure.

Control <–> Emergence
Talking <–> Listening
Planned <–> Evolving
Being in charge <–> Being able to be an effective network actor

We are recognizing these polarities or tensions. (YAY!) They are showing up in thousands of blog posts and creeping into books. They emerge from deep roots and cannot be ignored or wished away. Yet it seems to be hard to talk about them within organizations and even the “job descriptions” we see more of every day. (Check the listing of online community manager blogs on Forum One’s site or on Jake McKee’s.)

Let’s make them discussable, and we can discover the way forward. Let’s discuss them — with every boss and leader who will listen. Let’s encourage the network around organizations to tell them how they feel about being managed – or listened to. Let’s find a way to use the power of the network for our organizations, and with it, the multiplied, nested power of the communities that live in and spring from the network. (Oh heck, I’m getting all riled up and haven’t even had a cup of tea this morning!)

To circle back to this idea of “community manager,” and what it is becoming in a network age, the first thing is to be brave enough discuss the idea that it may be “management” in the frame of business structures and some “older ways” of doing things, but in terms of the action in the network, it is not management as we know it. It is is about being connective tissue between an organization and the world/network it lives within. It is about activation, listening, pattern seeking and then bringing that back into the current context of the organization – at whatever stage that organization is in becoming a network organization. It is about reconciling that businesses, in their interaction with the world (customer, vendors, regulators) have opened the door to a new way of being in the system that requires more than management. More than measurable data. More than targets and goals. It requires intuition, intellect and heart.

Heart? Community Managers and HEART she says? INTUITION???

Yes. Heart and intuition, but not in the absence of intellect. Because systems include that beautiful, irrational, impulsive part of human life – emotion. “Community” and “network” both imply human beings. The person you entrust to guide and represent and help your organization learn – this person we have been calling the “community manager” – is your person who stewards your connection to both hearts and minds. Who listens with every available channel, including intuition. How do you measure your ROI on intuition? On heart? I’d ask, what are you losing every day by ignoring them.

So what would you call that role? Magician? The Giant Ear? Elder? I’m currently stumped.

(edited later for a silly typo)

CPSquare’s Long Live the Platform Event Report

cp2llpreportimage.jpgI haven’t read through this report in detail, but I wanted to blog it to get it wider visibility because the sharing the learnings from our community activities is an important (and appreciated) contribution to improving our practices. IN this case – about doing online events for our communities of practice. Check it out — Long Live the Platform Report (application/pdf Object).

Building a collaborative workplace (or community… or network)

rgg_20080315_134928
Creative Commons License photo credit: rgordon

A while back my friend and colleague Shawn Callahan asked me to pitch in with him and fellow Anecdote-ite Mark Schenk to write a paper on collaboration. It is out today on the Anecdote site –> Anecdote – Whitepapers – Building a collaborative workplace. From the introduction:

Today we all need to be collaboration superstars. The trouble is, collaboration is a skill and set of practices we are rarely taught. It’s something we learn on the job in a hit-or-miss fashion. Some people are naturals at it, but most of us are clueless.

Our challenge doesn’t stop there. An organisation’s ability to support collaboration is highly dependent on its own organisational culture. Some cultures foster collaboration while others stop it dead in its tracks.

To make matters worse, technology providers have convinced many organisations that they only need to purchase collaboration software to foster collaboration. There are many large organisations that have bought enterprise licences for products like IBM’s Collaboration Suite or Microsoft’s Solutions for Collaboration who are not getting good value for money, simply because people don’t know how to collaborate effectively or because their culture works against collaboration.

Of course technology plays an important role in effective collaboration. We are not anti-technology. Rather we want to help redress the balance and shift the emphasis from merely thinking about collaboration technology to thinking about collaboration skills, practices, technology and supporting culture. Technology makes things possible; people collaborating makes it happen.

This paper has three parts. We start by briefly exploring what we mean by collaboration and why organisations and individuals should build their collaboration capability. Then, based on that understanding, we lay out a series of steps for developing a collaboration capability. We finish the paper with a simple test of your current collaboration capability.

I think the issue is beyond building a collaborative workplace. It applies to our communities and networks. But heck, starting with organizations is always worth a try, eh? 😉

While we were co-writing (using a Google doc) I started reading more about the differences between collaboration and cooperation – which we don’t address in the paper, but which are important. So I’ve noted that for future writing. If you are interested in Cooperation, don’t miss Howard Rheingold’s work on this.