Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity

A couple of people have asked me for more materials related to the Community Orientations Spidergram activity. I have embedded them into some slides now up … Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity. [Edit June 2011 – here is an updated pdf of the activity! Spidergram Worksheet 2011 ]

Here is a hint I should have shared earlier. The “context” orientation is a bit odd on the spidergram. You need to decide if internal orientation is in the middle/exterior towards the outside or reversed. I tend to use internal towards the middle, but I realized my instructions weren’t so clear.

Another way to do it is to ignore the “context” spoke from an internal/external perspective and then do one layer on the spidergram around your internally focused activities. Then with a different color, do another layer on externally focused activities. I’ve done this with a few test cases and it quickly showed that some communities which have both internal and external contexts have very different internal and external activities.

Technology Stewardship for Non Profits

Flickr CCommons by y A bunch of friends and colleagues have just written/edited a new book on stewarding technology in non profits and NGOs. Holly Ross, Katrin Verclas and Alison Levine wrangled some authors together to write Meet Your Mission. You can read about it on their wiki, including seeing chapter outlines and “bonus material.” Here is the overall scoop:

Nonprofit decision makers need to know how IT can help extend the reach and scope of their organizations. With contributions from the top experts in the nonprofit tech field, this book provides nonprofit decision makers with information to make smart, strategic decisions about technology. This book hones in on how to manage technology in an organization and offers practical advice on critical subject matter unfamiliar or mysterious to many in nonprofits. It offers a foundation of Information Technology (IT) and shows how technology can be strategically deployed in their organizations to better accomplish a nonprofit’s mission.

Here are the Chapters/Authors:

PART ONE: PLANNING AND PEOPLE.

Chapter 1: Mission First: Achieving IT Alignment (Steve Heye)
Chapter 2: Managing Technology Change (Dahna Goldstein)
Chapter 3: Measuring the Return on Investment of Technology (Beth Kanter)
Chapter 4: How to Decide: IT Planning and Prioritizing (Peter Campbell)
Chapter 5: Finding and Keeping the Right People (James Weinberg, and Cassie Scarano)
Chapter 6: Budgeting for and Funding Technology (Scott McCallum and Keith R. Thode)

PART TWO: THE TOOLS.

Chapter 7: The Foundation: Introduction to IT and Systems (Kevin Lo and Willow Cook)
Chapter 8: Where Are Your Stakeholders, and What Are They Doing Online (Michael Cervino)
Chapter 9: Effective Online Communications (John Kenyon)
Chapter 10: Donate Now: Online Fundraising (Madeline Stanionis)
Chapter 11: Where Will We Be Tomorrow (Edward Granger-Happ)

The only thing I missed from the outline is ongoing stewardship of technology and the related human processes. Once we have it, what do we do? Regular maintenance, how to support use, etc., is a huge part of stewarding technology in non profits. Maybe that is NTEN’s next book!

Photo Credit: by kevindooley

Take out your earplugs

Simply worth quoting….

37days: Take out your earplugs and sing together
Our last question was about that idea of “handing one another along.” “What would you like to teach young people today?” we asked as we ended our time with them. It was Candie who answered: “We live in such an individualist culture today,” she said, “but great change is communal. The power of song is a vast instrument to draw people together and deliver a message. I think we need to take out our iPod earphones and begin to sing together again.”

Red-Tails in Love: Birdwatchers as a community of practice

Red-Tails in LoveMy friend Sue Wolff generously lent me two books recently. The first, Marie Winn’sRed-Tails in Love” captured my heart and mind. It is the story of a community of birdwatchers in Central Park in New York City and how they observed, loved and obsessed over a family of Red-Tailed Hawks that raised a family on an apartment ledge just of Central Park.

If you have ever hankered to read a “real life” story about an organic community of practice, one free from the business pressures of CoPs manufactured inside of corporations, read this book. The narrative is compelling, but the lessons about community life are at once simple, effective and profound.

I thought it might be fun to look at this community, as best an outsider can do (which is usually not very well) from one of the CoP perspectives Etienne Wenger, John Smith and I use in our upcoming book, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for community.  This work builds on what Etienne has been doing for years. 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. By looking at orientations, we posit, you are in a better position to understand how to support them with tools and processes. They give you a lens to reflect on how your community is doing and where you might want it to be headed.

Here is a brief glimpse of the orientations:

  • Meetings – in person or online gatherings with an agenda (i.e. monthly topic calls)
  • Projects – interrelated tasks with specific outcomes or products (i.e. Identifying a new practice and refining it.)
  • Access to expertise – learning from experienced practitioners (i.e. access to subject matter experts)
  • Relationship – getting to know each other (i.e. the annual potluck dinner!)
  • Context – private, internally-focused or serving an organization, or the wider world (i.e. what is kept within the community, what is shared with the wider world)
  • Community cultivation – Recruiting, orienting and supporting members, growing the community (i.e. who made sure you’re the new person was invited in and met others?)
  • Individual participation – enabling members to craft their own experience of the community (i.e. access material when and how you want it.)
  • Content – a focus on capturing and publishing what the community learns and knows (i.e. a newsletter, publishing an article, etc.)
  • Open ended conversation – conversations that continue to rise and fall over time without a specific goal (i.e. listserv or web forum, Twitter, etc.)
Spidergram examples of the Central Park Birdwatchers
Spidergram examples of the Central Park Birdwatchers - click for larger image

We have been using a little “spidergram” as an assessment tool, again building on Etienne’s work, but each of us has been creative in how we use it. Sometimes it is for looking at technology choices (like in the Digital Habitats book), sometimes for community assessment and planning. So I decided to see what orientations were strong in the Central Park birdwatchers “Regulars” group chronicled in the book. Here is the image I came up with:

Would you like to try the Spidergram activity for your community? You can find a little cheat sheet and template  here. [Edit June 2011 – here is an updated pdf of the activity! Spidergram Worksheet 2011 ]

If you try it, I’d be interested to hear what you observed or learned about your community by doing this exercise.

And yes, the book is coming SOON!