How I use social media

Nancy's recording of Rob Cottingham's NVoice keynoteThis afternoon I’m spending a half hour on a Skype video conversation to share a bit of how I use social media. I figured it would be good to exercise my memory a bit and unearth some of the key stories that led me to to my social media use today, and perhaps surface some of my patterns. The history approach also shows that while the term “social media” was not in play when I jumped in, the social use of online media has been growing for many years – well before my online time. These roots are significant because our patterns of use, our ways of embracing or rejecting technology are grounded in this history.

Online Community

History of online communityMy first real step into what we now call social media was logging on to Howard Rheingold’s “Electric Minds” online community in November 1996.  Little did I know that this first toe-dip would literally change the course of my professional, and in many ways, my personal life. I didn’t know what an online community was, even though I have been steeped in community work all my life. All of a sudden I was in the midst of amazing, deep and human conversations with people from across the US and the globe. I remember Ran Avrahami, a professor in Israel, and how he jumped into the conversations and reached out and connected with us. He talked of his grandchildren and the orange trees on his apartment balcony as if he were next door. Of Jay Rosen, who went on to be a pioneer and scholar in online journalism. Of Bodhi in Chicago (who has since passed on) who took this newbie under his wing and who gave me my online name of choconancy.

“Eminds” was where I learned that online relationships can be real, how they get real, and  how they break and fail. It was in “helping” “save” the community after Howard lost funding that I had my first big online facilitation failure. This taught me about both the similarities and differences of group dynamics online and offline. It was my urgency to figure this out that set me on my professional path as a practitioner and learner about online facilitation. I knew from that experience that whenever we talked about technology (social media) we needed to also talk about practice and the human beings doing the practicing. It was life changing.

There are so many lessons from those early days that it is hard to pick out just one or two, but here are the ones that come to mind most quickly and which I remember “in my gut.”

  • Social media is a great place to fail. You can try something and if it doesn’t work, learn, adjust and try again. This is true of both the technology and the practices.
  • We can find, develop and utilize relationships with other humans online – and they have meaning. But for most of us, it takes an actual transformative experience of this to really believe and embrace it. The gap between the intellectual description and the experience of using social media to build and nurture relationships is large.

Online Learning Together
learningThe second seminal experience was taking part in George Por’s “Knowledge Ecology University” or KEU as we called it, and the  relationship forming event of the KE Fair. This was where I had the amazing opportunity to co-facilitate an online workshop with Mihaela Moussou (now Michele Paradise). Michele and I built on the foundational work of Lisa Kimball (then of Metanet, now of GroupJazz) and began to articulate the practice of doing stuff together online.  Just today I received an email from one of the people who took our workshop and he wrote “I still remember your course as one of the absolute best courses in my life. Thanks.”I believe our success was because we were passionate about this new form of human interaction.

  • From Michele, I learned the concept of “warm electronic communication” and developed deeper insights into the effect of these practices on the experience. Computer mediated – yes, but human driven. Over the years, this initial online learning experience formed the roots of my practice as a designer and facilitator of online learning events.
  • Now technology enables far more than the discussion forums of the late 90’s. Thanks to social media we have everything from formal courses to networks on Twitter to facilitate “here and now” learning at any moment we desire (and some we may not desire!) But regardless of the technology, how we use it always matters.
  • Conversation and content is at the core of the interactions, build on the foundation of relationship. Now though, relationship can start as a content mediated intersection and then become personal. It used to be the other way around almost exclusively. An interesting change. New social media that helps tag, sort and reuse content has been key to this change.

Communities of Practice and Learning
Through KEU I met Etienne Wenger and John Smith, who opened my eyes to the fact that I have been embracing community learning and communities of practice most of my life. I was simply unaware of the label, the research and scholarship around these things we call “CoPs.” Back in the late 90’s technology was just used for distributed Cops – folks who could not physically be together. Now technology is nearly pervasive for most communities in the developed world, colocated or not. We take it for granted that we’ll schedule, learn, work and play together assisted by social media. It has matured from an oddity and an outlier to a given.

My key learnings about social media and communities:

  • More significant that utility, social media has changed what it means to “be together.” It has changed our experience and understanding of being part of a group, a community or a network. It has created a massive multiplier of the options we now have to be with other people. This is heaven and hell. Heaven because we can access knowledge and relationship like never before. Hell because in our multi-membership, we dilute relationship, become overwhelmed, or fall into group mind narrowness by only associating with those who think like us  – just because we can. Social media enables this.
  • As with online communities, learning communities benefit from facilitation, both formal and informal, designated or spontaneous and self-generated. “Build it and they will come” continues to be a fallacy with each new wave of social media.  However, the facilitative practices must evolve in conjunction with the software. Things change on all sides.
  • The  deeply embedded nature of technologies in communities has given rise to the role and function of technology stewardship, the work of people who know enough about their community and enough about technology to help pick , configure and use technology to support community activities. This has become a central practice and learning focus in my life. See book writing below…

Global Networks & Knowledge Sharing
part of my networkIn 2000 I put it out to the universe that I wanted to work internationally. The internet was connecting me to people far beyond my personal geography and so enhancing my life, I wanted more. I was on an email list about online communities when someone in Turkey asked if anyone wanted to come to Turkey and talk about online communities. I said yes. The universe answered. Then it was Azerbaijan, Georgia (the country), Armenia, Kenya, South Africa, Indonesia, Columbia, Ghana, Ethiopia, and a multitude of international NGOs based in Europe and North America who gave me the opportunity to apply online interaction and collaboration practices in the field of international development.

The most amazing aspect of this work, going back to 2001 until today, was the different attitude of people outside of North America and Europe – people who heretofore did not have the ability to connect and learn outside of their village, town or city. While Americans would complain about the technology, the time, and anything, my African colleagues would overcome horrid bandwidth and intermittent electricity to participate. They invented ways to leap across the barriers, innovating with mobile technology, translating community and tribal practices into online environments and getting things done.

  • When the door to connection is open, watch who walks through and follow them, not those who stand at the doorway and naysay! And I’m not just talking about social media early adopters. I’m talking about people passionate about getting something done.
  • Social media offers us incredible intellectual capital opportunities to link up the best and often most diverse minds to address a problem or opportunity. The challenge is that this opportunity may lead us to feel overwhelmed and we are often unprepared to usefully use the diversity of the world and can easily retreat to our familiar territory and group think. The strategic use of social media to stretch us to our edges and immerse us in that diversity is centrally important.

Weaving  across Silos
community weavingAs I dove deeper into knowledge management and knowledge sharing in international development, social software was growing, changing and evolving. Through this work I also connected with a specific community, Knowledge Management for Development or “KM4Dev” which turned out to be one of my most important CoPs. Through KM4Dev I continued (and continue) to learn but more importantly become part of a network of people working in international development.  Our relationships – across organizations, countries, even language – became a new resource to share knowledge, learn together, and reduce duplication where it made sense (as in making a shared knowledge sharing toolkit) . I can’t prove this, but I think our network has actually contributed to more cross organizational cooperation and better use of resources.

  • Social media keep networks, their content and activities knitted together. Networks weave across people and organizations. So social software + networks = change and even transformation. (One of these days it would be worth writing about the difference between change and transformation!)

(Drawing) Pictures
processing my emotions after a visit to the West Bank w/ Tova - co paintedAfter years of words, words, words, something was beginning to dawn on me. I missed pictures. I missed art. I realized that all those little drawings and head shots I inserted into forum posts meant more to me and others than I had realized. Then I took a massive tumble offline to learn about visual thinking and visual practices, specifically graphic recording and graphic facilitation.  These new practices not only transformed my offline work, but have impacted how I use social media. Specifically,

  • I’m consciously including visual methods and practices, particularly in synchronous online work, made possible by new visual tools such as shared mind mapping, and better online whiteboards.
  • Tapping the incredible content of networks like Flickr and the practice of Creative Commons licenses to use that content.
  • Appreciating and including visual and aesthetic  elements in any social software deployment work I do. A case in point was the impact of the “baby friendly” redesign of the hugely successful ShareYourStory online community for parents with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Blogging and Doing Business
Little did I think when I began this blog in 2004 that my blog would a) reveal the network I didn’t know I had and b) give my work visibility that helped me grown and deepen my consulting work. I had tried a few experimental project blogs with clients in early 2001 and 2002 and they did not root into the work. So I began again in 2004, mostly because I can’t talk and write about a social media tool until I have used it in practice. I was a total skeptic but in the first month, something happened. People who I didn’t know knew my work. They “knew” me.  The work I’d been publishing on my little hand made website was alive in the world. Now the blog gave a channel for people to respond, to critique and reciprocate. I was blow away. The blog made the network visible.

The second great value blogging gave me was a place to “think out loud” with my network, to offer half-baked ideas and solicit help to finish baking them. It is the easy-bake oven of learning. Write, hit post, and you are in the learning lab.

From this transparency, this “showing my work” in public I have gained new collaborators and clients. I have a visible track record of my thinking and work that people can peruse and evaluate. I find I now attract clients with whom I am a good fit and avoid those that would not create a productive partnership. My online identity serves me well. Flickr, Twitter and other social media tools now augment and enhance the blog – often woven into the blog with widgets.  80% of my working time is mediated using social media, from Skype, Google Docs, Twitter, Drupal, Moodle, Elluminate and an every changing myriad of other tools.

  • Social media is an amazing (and sometimes scary) set of tools to show your identity online. We have to learn more about what this means and its implications going forward.
  • Tools that help us visualize our networks is a key to tapping those networks.
  • I can’t imagine doing 90% of the work I do now without social media. Like it has for me, social media has enabled a wave of small and entrepreneurial business. I’m grateful.
  • Early supporters gave my blog exposure and me encouragement. Reciprocating the generosity of others is easy with social media – DO IT!

Cover of the Digital Habitats book

Writing a Book
As I noted, communities of practice gave a language, a name for so much of what I do. In 2004 Etienne came to John Smith and I and asked if we’d help him update a little report he wrote in 2001 on technologies for CoPs. We said sure. What started as a report revision grew slowly (and sometimes painfully) into what is now Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities which will come out this month. The book was written by the three of us primarily at a distance. Without Skype, email, Google docs, Flickr, and publishing on demand, this book would not have been born.  We had only three face to face sessions.

  • Social media provides an amazing research, testing and writing environment.

Liberating my inner geek
As the visual practice has liberated my inner artist, social software has liberated my inner geek. Particularly as a woman of 51 years of age, this enormous software playground has given me a way to bend stereotypes of middle aged white women and technology. I look proudly at my mom who at 79 is rediscovering high school friends on Facebook and enhancing volunteerism through web tools. Today’s tools are friendly enough to put hands on and just try. To experiment without high risk of either failure or humiliation. They can get a lot easier, but they have unleashed many inner geeks. This is true across generations and the impacts are significant on our culture and our world. I think if this blog post from Lisa, who I met in June at an educational tech conference in Hawaii. She wrote:

ED-MEDIA 2009 « Lisa’s (Online) Teaching Blog
My first technology-related experience, however, was on the plane getting here from San Diego. The flight was 5 1/2 hours, and during that time total strangers sat next to each other without ever introducing themselves, sharing adjacent space. Gradually I noticed some children giggling nearby. I looked over and they were, I thought, playing Nintendo. But when I peeked, I saw that they were writing on the screen, and I soon realized that many children on the plane had Nintendos and were using its wi-fi pictochat feature to write to each other. After an hour or so, children were exchanging information about their seat locations, and were getting up and saying hi. At one point there were kids standing in the aisle and the flight attendant had to ask them to sit down so she could serve food. By the time they had to shut off their devices for landing, they knew where everyone was staying in Hawaii and had arranged playdates if their hotels were near each other, forcing the parents to actually meet each other. The kids used technology to create society on the plane, where adults only endured the enforced company of others.

So what are the patterns?
First, it has been useful for me to recognize that social media has a role in my life as an individual, as a member of communities and groups, and as a participant in these wider, free-ranging things we call networks.  Individual – Group – Network -> the whole spectrum. I find this amazing.

Second, my activities can be loosely grouped into the following.

  • Learning
  • Getting work done
  • Finding and connecting with people
  • Getting stuff (search, content, etc.)
  • Exploring and pushing my own boundaries

My practices have been radically changed and shaped – yes, even transformed – by social software.

I never would have imagined this back in November, 1996. Thanks, Howard! (edited to correct date from 2006 to 1996)

(P.S. In a future post I might try and document the configuration of tools that I use in these practices. But now it is time for lunch!)

Book News!

On other fronts, our book is at the printer. YES OUR BOOK IS AT THE PRINTER! Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities is DONE!!

The manuscript is at our printer, Lightingsource. The cover is done. The index is done. We await the proofs, knowing full well there will be errors and typos, despite the best effort of us and our friends who have been helping out. But Digital Habitats is about to emerge. The tentative date is August 15, 2009.technologyforcommunities.com, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities, Aug 2009

You should read the whole article.

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Technology Stewardship at Libraries – Free Online Event

CC photo on Flickr by http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1261/997909242_df8c169e34.jpg?v=0June 10th I’ll be joining the good folks at WebJunction to do an hour on technology stewardship in/at libraries. The full official details are below, but I also wanted to add that I’ll have two special guests who will make the difference – two librarians who work with these issues of technology and community every day in their work. Together, we’ll “keep it real” with stories and practices from the stacks, so to speak! If you are a librarian or library junkie, join us!

Event Registration
Event Type: Webinar
Date: 6/10/2009
Start Time: 2:00 PM
End Time: 3:00 PM
Flickr cc image by http://farm1.static.flickr.com/64/227332249_0894edbc6f.jpg?v=0Description:
Join presenter Nancy White co-author of the forthcoming book Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities, (with Etienne Wenger and John E. Smith) for this free webinar. Nancy is recognized internationally for her research exploring online communities today, and in her work as a technology steward, designer and builder of online interaction spaces. In this webinar, Nancy will focus on librarians as community technology stewards. She will offer practical steps for you to begin to understand your community, assess the technology needs of your community, and how to select, configure, and support the online technologies your community uses.

Library: WebJunction
Location: Wimba Classroom
Other Information:
*Registration is required for this event.*Instructions for joining will be included in a confirmation email and follow-up reminder before the webinar.*Times listed are in U.S. Eastern Time. Use timezoneconverter.com (or a WCAG 2.0 Compliant option, thetimenow.com (Edit, 9/21/16 – thetimenow.com has asked us to remove all links so you just see the name, not the link.  NW))  to convert webinar start time to your local time zone.*If you have any problems getting connected to the webinar room, refer to our Wimba Classroom Guide.

*When you register for a WebJunction event, we use your contact information to provide you with details about attending the program. We may also follow up with you about your experiences with the session or your interest in WebJunction.

Contact: info@webjunction.org
Link: WebJunction Event Archives

Photo Credits:

Update: Digital Habitats Presentation Recording

Thanks to Jeff Lebow, there is a recording, synched to my slides, of Friday’s presentation as part of Webheads in Action Online unConvergence. Sweet! I have also copied in the text with some of the slides below. I also learned the slide set on Slideshare was featured today! Fun!

Notes:

  • Slide 5 : These roles and practices create the conditions that enable people to….
  • Slide 6: This activity comes out of a chapter in our book that looks at the activity orientations of communities of practice and how this might drive both the technology stewardship and the overall community nurturing and leadership activities. In this context, we are using it to explore the application of social media to a particular goal you might have.
  • Slide 7: In our research of CoPs we noticed 9 general patterns of activities that characterized a community’s orientation. Most had a mix, but some were more prominent in every case.Image: Wenger, White and Smith, 2007
  • Slide 8: Before you do the Spidergram exercise, read through the orientations and think of some examples from a number of contexts. I’ll offer two examples as well in subsequent slides.
  • Slide 9: Here is an example drawn from the book “Red-Tails in Love: Pale Male’s Story — A True Wildlife Drama in Central Park” by Marie Winn. Vintage Books, 2005. The book tells of a community of bird watchers in Central Park and exquisitely describes their practices. This is a predominantly face to face group that might use some social media, but not as their central way of interacting. They are a large, diverse group, but tightly geographically bound to Central Park in New York City. They might fill this spidergram differently than I might, but this is just an example! Image: Wenger, White and Smith, 2007
  • Slide 10: KM4Dev (http://www.km4dev.org) is a global network of practitioners interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing in international development. Over 800 members are subscribed to the email list which had it’s origins in July 2000. It is both a well established but loosely bounded network that interacts primarily online, with once a year meetings that a small subset attend.
  • What was interesting was that these orientations had implications beyond communities. They could be a useful analysis, diagnostic and measurement tool for the application of social media to an organization’s work. What was interesting was that these orientations had implications beyond communities. They could be a useful analysis, diagnostic and measurement tool for the application of social media to an organization’s work.
  • Slide 12: You can see how different groups have different priorities. It is a bit like a community activity “finger print.” The next step is to think about what tools support the different orientations.
  • Slide 13: Here are some examples of social media tools that support the orientations. Keep in mind that while a tool may have been designed for a specific purpose, people regularly and imaginatively use them in different ways.
  • Slide 14: A tech steward may be called upon to make sense of all the offerings of the market, scanning and selecting for her community. They start paying attention to working with the tensions between the individual and the group, synch and asynch group, interacting and publishing. Image credit: Wenger, White and Smith
  • Slide 15: Sliders – as we think about how we pick, design and deploy technology, what sort of intentionality do we want with respect to these tensions? More importantly, how do we use them as ways to track our community’s health, make adjustments in both technology and practice.
  • Slide 16: What would your Spidergram look like? Think of a specific group or project that you want to explore. What activities do you need to support? Which are more important than others? Put a mark on the arrow to indicate how important a particular orientation is to your community. The more important the orientation, the further out on the arrow the dot should be placed. Then draw a line between the dots. Clarification: For context, towards the middle means a more inward (private) orientation and towards the outer edge a more public/open orientation.Discuss the spidergram with your group or community. Do they see it differently? Adjust your image to get the fullest view possible. Then, and only then, start thinking about tools. Always start with WHAT you want to do before the HOW!
  • Slide 17: Here is a blank template for you. You can do it in PowerPoint or print it off, do it by hand then scan or take a digital image to share back online with the rest of the group. Put a mark on the arrow to indicate how important a particular orientation is to your community. The more important the orientation, the further out on the arrow the dot should be placed. Then draw a line between the dots. See the next example.
  • Slide 18: Let’s brainstorm some  examples of social media tools that support the orientations. Keep in mind that while a tool may have been designed for a specific purpose, people regularly and imaginatively use them in different ways.

CPsquare’s Connected Futures Workshop

Flickr CC image by takuya miyamotoIt’s time to register for the Connected Futures Workshop that begins April 20.

I’m on the team again this time holding the fort on week 4. My partners in learning/crime are John Smith, Bronwyn Stuckey, Shirley Williams and Etienne Wenger. We are using Howard Rheingold’s Social Media Classroom as our home base this round (we vary each time to add to our own learning!) Note, you’ll get a pre-press copy of the now-infamous and as of yet still unpublished “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for community” book, plus a 6 month membership to CPSquare. So be there or don’t be square. (Sorry, I could not resist!)

It should be fun. Holler if you’d like more information. Here is the boilerplate!

Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice is a five-week workshop for community managers, designers and conveners to explore social strategies and tools to support them (referred to by some as Web2.0). We anticipate offering it twice a year. This workshop is a hands-on, practice-shifting, dive into the use of new technologies to meet community needs. At the end of this workshop, participants can expect to:

  • Become more confident in managing and combining tools to support a community’s orientation and ongoing activities
  • Develop a deeper understanding of how new tools enable one another, are adopted and supported in communities
  • Have productive and lasting social connections with other participants, community leaders and community conveners.

New technology stewards are encouraged to join us. The workshop includes virtual field trips to successful communities and dives into the use of new tools. We will explore many readily available technologies, including web conferencing, teleconferences, blogging, RSS syndication, microblogging, social bookmarking and tagging, wikis, mashups, and social networking. Each aspect has the support of experts and leaders in areas such as organizational, educational, government and enterprise communities. Participants will work through a process of thinking through new social strategies and technologies to support the ongoing life of their respective communities of practice. Participants will also receive an advance electronic copy (PDF) of parts of the forthcoming book “Digital habitats: stewarding technology for Communities ” (Wenger, White, and Smith 2008).

See what previous participants have said about the workshop.

Requirements:

While this workshop is intended to be challenging, it is grounded in today’s reality for communities of practice, social strategies and new tools. We assume some experience with communities of practice and with technologies such as teleconferences, web forums or email lists. Our aim is to support practitioners: participants should be in a leadership role or intending to take one on, or be convening an existing community of practice.

  • Participants are expected to be conversant with basic notions such as domain, community and practice and have had experience participating in or organizing online events and learning activities (such as the Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop).
  • Participants should be willing to install, run and experiment with an array of tools (such as Skype) on their computers.
  • Participants should be confident to converse in English.
  • Participants commit to 20 to 40 hours of engagement over the 5 weeks. Since several phases and phase changes are designed into the workshop structure (we change technologies, modes of connecting, and frameworks), participants need to be attentive enough to make those changes with us when they are scheduled.

The workshop includes a lot of modeling by both workshop leaders and participants of learning interactions, stratagems, and tactics using a dozen different social technologies. We are all “teachers” and “learners.”

The workshop is designed to support:

  • Getting to know each other and each other’s communities (Community)
  • Creating “a workshop as laboratory” (Practice)
  • Exploring real communities, from an insider’s and outsider’s perspective to see community orientations & technology integration (Domain and Practice)
  • Considering the role and activity of the technology stewards in authentic situations (Practice)
  • Exploring the uses of social technologies to stay in touch with each other, as well as for sustained focus on a topic (Practice)
  • Experiencing the design of learning agendas and then configuring technology to pursue those agendas (Domain and Practice)
  • Articulate strategies to introduce new social technologies to a community (Domain and Practice)

We’re designing the workshop to support:

  • Getting to know each other and each other’s communities
  • Creating “a workshop as laboratory”
  • Exploring real communities, from an insider’s perspective to see community orientations & technology integration
  • Considering the role and activity of the technology stewards in authentic situations
  • Exploring the uses of social technologies to stay in touch as well as for sustained inquiry
  • Experiencing the design of learning agendas and then configuring technology to pursue those agendas
  • Articulate strategies to introduce new social technologies to a community

Readings from Wenger, White and Smith’s “Stewarding Technology for Communities” and several other sources on topics such as:

  • Communities of practice theory glimpse
  • Community technology stewardship
  • Tools and their Integration
  • Scanning the Technology Landscape
  • Orientations: community experience and configuration of tools
  • A More Distributed Future
  • A Learning Agenda

Tuition is as follows:

Standard rate $995
NGO, Non-profit employee $795
Student $595

Participants receive a free 6-month membership in CPsquare upon completion of the workshop.

If money is a challenge in this economy, write me directly to inquire about “FON” discounts. (Friends of Nancy).

Photo Credit: takuya miyamoto