A Gem from KM4Dev on Impact and Outcomes

There has been a great discussion on the KM4Dev mailing list the last 10 days or so about evaluation, impact and measurement. In the context of international development, this is critical. Why do something if it doesn’t make a difference. However, often we don’t do a very good job figuring out what does make a difference, let alone know why (causality.) Dave Snowden posted something that just rang the bell for me. I hastily copied it down to share here. The link to the web archive of the email discussion is at the bottom, if  you want to mine for the rest of the thread. Emphasis is mine.

The linear concept of input, leading to outputs, leading to outcomes which in turn leads to impact is I think at the heart of the problem, It implies (and I can see why people would want this) a causal chain that can be replicated.

However if the system is complex (in the sense of complex adaptive) then any input is a stimulus or modulator which influences but does not determine impact. That means we need to start measuring the sensitivity of a system to different stimuli, and the way in which some stimuli produce a disproportionate effect in that they catalyze other inputs. This is newly developing area which has not hit the development sector yet, but we are working on it in related fields, loosely termed modulator mapping. It also leads us to evolutionary representations (such as fitness landscapes) and measure based on stability of landscapes. In all those cases mathematics are simplified by representation and linked micro-narratives. There is no point in measuring anything if the results do not convince both donors and recipients alike to take action

All of that moves the “impact” agenda on. I didn’t confuse outputs and outcomes, I conflated them as the model means there is no real difference in what is measured in practice.

via Discussions.

I am now going to start paying attention to this idea of “measuring sensitivity of a system to different stimuli.” This relates closely to two projects I’m working on where I have been sensing this, but hadn’t had the words for it. Now I have a toehold. Onward!

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Twitter Links as Blog Comments – conversation or junk?

I was enjoying taking a few minutes to read Jon Husband and Harold Jarche’s terrific set of reflections on social learning, A framework for social learning in the enterprise: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary when I noticed something. 79 comments! Wow, there must be a great conversation going on. So I scrolled down.

What did I find? Tweets, autoposted as comments. The first seven were real responses. The rest were people tweeting out the url. Now, I believe I found the post via a tweet. So it was a good filter.

My question is, does this auto integration of tweets ruin the blog conversation? Yes, it shows how popular a post is, but wouldn’t it be better to have some sort of indicator of tweets and retweets rather than waste the space of a tweet which is essentially a URL?

This feels like a technology stewardship issue. Just because we CAN do something, should we? What are the anticipated outcomes? What surprises us once we implement something and when should we change it?

What do you think?

(Edited March 12 to more accurately reflect authorship of post in question. While Jon was listed as the “author” on the blog, much of the work was Harold’s. There was an interesting twitter back and forth with Harold on how someone else took and reposted the whole piece without due credit, and I said something like “it is still important to pay attention. Yet clearly, I did not pay enough attention. Good learning for me.)

Monday Video: Urgent Evoke & Games 4 Change

Urgent Evoke – A crash course in changing the world is a project of the amazing Jane McGonigal and the World Bank Institute. A game to engage young people in understanding and helping solve complex problems in Africa. I’m intrigued. It kicks off March 3rd. Check out the introductory video. Show it to a teen in your life and find out what happens!

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

Thanks to Twitter Friends for Librarian Network Links

haikugirlYesterday I put a query out to my Twitter network to identify active, vibrant networks of librarians. Thanks to the following fab friends, I was able to pull together a list which I’ve copied below.

Thanks to @MoreCoffeePls, @eekim, @Carl_wkg,  @ekreeger, @band, @alinwagnerlahmy, @goamick, @clairebrooks, @heatherdavis, @flexnib, @haikugirloz,

Networks that “Librarian 2.0” types might plug into

If you have any more, please leave them in the comments! THANKS!

References on Lurking

I was asked about some useful references on lurking and lurkers this week, so I thought I’d refresh  myself with a few that I like. (I’ve written about ithere on the blog quite often over the years!)

Personally, I’m of the school of thought that lurking is a form of legitimate peripheral participation, that in most cases, if everyone actively participated we’d be overwhelmed, that we often and appropriately lurk offline and that lurking is not always “take and no give,” that people do in fact take what they learn one place and often use it and contribute elsewhere. It is more generalized reciprocity.

First, is an old discussion summary from the Online Facilitation list from 2003, compiled by Chris Lang which still has value to me. You an find it here   TIPs for Facilitating Lurking

Second is another distillation of conversation, this time from CPSquare. Download file.

Of course, this has been studied in the academic community, such as this paper on why lurkers lurk, from Jenny Preece and Blair Nonnecke (pdf prepub).

Finally, some fine blog posts on lurking by friends and colleagues. (Edited to add more links March 30)

My bottom line is one’s approach to lurking is context dependent. If full participation is a stated requirement (as in a job or a course) one must find ways to facilitate and enable that participation. The larger and more open the group, the more lurking is a natural and expected behavior.

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