Full Circle Associates

Earlier this week my friend Doris Reeves-Lipscomb invited me into a conversation with Suzanne Daigle to explore options for including online/distributed participation in the upcoming Open Space on Open Space (OSONOS) in St. Petersburg Florida May 16-19. Having been to an OSONOS, I’d love to go, but the arrival of granddaughter #2 sometime soon says “STAY HOME!” (And if you don’t know about Open Space, check here –> it is wonderful!)

Doris took terrific notes during the call and I’ve augmented them with many links and some examples. I thought it might be nice to share them because we often have questions about the online/offline interconnections for face to face events and graciously, Doris and Suzanne agreed.  I should spend more time editing and amplifying, but if I waited to “find time” for that, I’d never get it up ! I’ve also blogged about this a lot here on the blog, and on my wiki, so a little searching may yield value! But if I don’t post this now… That also means, there are tons of gaps and opportunities for you to add your knowledge in the comments! PLEASE!

Recommendations from Skype Call—Nancy White, Suzanne Daigle, Doris Reeves-Lipscomb - April 30, 2013

Before Conference

Purpose

• Consider WHY you want to connect online and offline.
  • To harvest and share out what is going on (social reporting and more on social reporting. Don’t miss David Wilcox’s blog as well.)?
  • To facilitate virtual participation in parts or all of the OSNOS? To bring in a particular voice/voices into a particular OS session or plenary?
  • To tap outwards to the network when questions arise at the F2F? Or something else? Having a sense of purpose helps inform process and technology stewardship. just weave the network a bit? Help others see and discover it?
• Start where there is energy: Create opportunities for remote/ virtual engagement with the handful of OS practitioners who are ready for it. Identify both people who will be at the event and those online who would like to connect from afar during the event.
• Understand there may be resistance. Face to face gatherings are precious and some find the effort to include those “not in the room” detracts from their experience — or they have that perception or past experience. Go gently.

Process

• Verify availability and process for online access/bandwidth. (Yeah, this never goes as planned or promised! Having people with mobile web access is a great fallback!)
• Create a hashtag for WOS and share widely. Create posters for it and place around event (and especially near any instructions on how to log on to the wifi)
• Use Open Space email list to find out who already uses the online and build on the technologies they already use. Affirm preferred communication tools for use at WOS
  • What would they like to do?  What might they commit to doing?
  • Then get out of their way. Don’t put yourself too much in a hub role or you won’t have time or attention for anything else. Use the network!
• Technology Stewardship: Identify, practice with and debug virtual tools that you have relied on before—Crowdvine, WordPress, etc. — or plan to add to your technology configuration.
• Explore examples of good online events. What relates to good offline events? There IS a lot in common!
•  For social reporting, consider a small team comprised of millenials/digitally competent OS practitioners and prepare a social reporting plan. (My social reporting bookmarks. A few social reports.)
• For virtual real time interaction, identify time zone issues (I like to make a little map with people online in their time zone. It is easy to forget otherwise.)

During Conference

• Be clear: Announce at beginning how people can opt-in/opt-out of the use/uploading online of their  pictures/words via Twitter, Facebook, Crowdvine, etc. and showing opt-out preference with dot on badge; review any other decisions made to work virtually—who, when, how, where
• Affirm hashtag for all outgoing tweets, communications, blog posts, etc. (post those posters!)
• Social Reporting Stuff:
  • Tweet/FB images and short narratives of what is going on.
  • Connect particular practitioners who have an interest in each others’ practice
  • Do 1-2 minute interviews and post online, then tweet url (examples from 2 conference where I was social reporting : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHtv69eam5U and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yATDNzV_I, both of whom are OS community members!)
  • Point to blog posts or wiki pages where session reports are posted
  • Towards the end, gather super short reflections (sometimes it is fun to have people write their key insight, etc on a sheet of paper in broad marker, hold it up and then you film them saying out loud. Then you edit together. Here are some unedited examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJsvQpui7-0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mofj3zDQgzc
• For virtual participation, identify one or more OS sessions and offer them at the market place with the explicit offer to include virtual participants. (Be prepared for no one or too many to show up!). Consider debriefing these experiences to build knowledge and process for future events. (Here is a story of one I did at a conference – not Open Space tho!)
  • Open an OS session using  Google Hangouts or Skype with WOSonOS circle or Skype contact list, etc.  if you wish to use these tools or encourage others to use them.
  • Link reports and other harvests out via social networks, ie. use sociable plugin on WordPress for simultaneous messaging out to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
  •  (If you have decided to do this) use the OS format/Marketplace first round for setting up virtual participation leaders/practice
  • Bring others in by exporting key bits of conference to them through one minute mobile interviews or other kinds of social reporting; have interactive discussion online forum ready for conversations to happen
  • Use Storify to curate WOSonOS tweets
•  Consider asking for and harvesting post event reflections. (Example here of one of my reflections. And another.)

Attitudinally

• Appreciate that both Millennial and new-bees can be fresh eyes in capturing important elements at the conference with onsite/offsite participants. They don’t have to be Open Space experts!Think of the relationship to Open Space bumblebee and butterfly kinds of functions.
• Don’t assume non-Millenials aren’t’ comfortable with and don’t use social media tools. Some of us boomers are quite adept.
• Reflect/debrief (but don’t over do it) and share what you learn back out to the wider community.
• Go with the flow. Plan and be prepared to abandon the plan. Stay present and enjoy!

From a Facebook post the students in Eric Tsui’s class at Hong Kong Polytechnic sent me this amazing thank you note. (Paper version, I’m told, is on the way!) Now THIS is a great community indicator. I get up early and late to deliver online webinar guest presentations. Rarely do you get this kind of feedback. I love it. Click the images to see more detail! Thank Eric and to all in your class. I’m smiling in Seattle.

Yesterday I was grateful to attend a panel presentation by Beth Kanter (Packard Foundation Fellow), Paul Shoemaker (Social Venture Partners), Jane Meseck (Microsoft Giving) and Eric Stowe (Splash.org) moderated by Erica Mills (Claxon). First of all, from a confessed short attention spanner, the hour went FAST. Eric tossed great questions for the first hour, then the audience added theirs in the second half. As usual, Beth got a Storify of the Tweets and a blog post up before we could blink. (Uncurated Tweets here.)

There was  much good basic insight on monitoring for non profits and NGOs. Some of may favorite soundbites include:

• What is your impact model? (Paul Shoemaker I think. I need to learn more about impact models)
• Are you measuring to prove, or to improve (Beth Kanter)
• Evaluation as a comparative practice (I think that was Beth)
• Benchmark across your organization (I think Eric)
• Transparency = Failing Out Loud (Eric)
• “Joyful Funeral” to learn from and stop doing things that didn’t work out (from Mom’s Rising via Beth)
• Mission statement does not equal IMPACT NOW. What outcomes are really happening RIGHT NOW (Eric)
• Ditch the “just in case” data (Beth)
• We need to redefine capacity (audience)
• How do we create access to and use all the data (big data) being produced out of all the M&E happening in the sector (Nathaniel James at Philanthrogeek)

But I want to pick out a few themes that were emerging for me as I listened. These were not the themes of the terrific panelists — but I’d sure wonder what they have to say about them.

A Portfolio Mindset on Monitoring and Evaluation

There were a number of threads about the impact of funders and their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) expectations. Beyond the challenge of what a funder does or doesn’t understand about M&E, they clearly need to think beyond evaluation at the individual grant or project level. This suggests making sense across data from multiple grantees –> something I have not seen a lot of from funders. I am reminded of the significant difference between managing a project and managing a portfolio of projects (learned from my clients at the Project Management Institute. Yeah, you Doc!) IF I understand correctly, portfolio project management is about the business case –> the impacts (in NGO language), not the operational management issues. Here is the Wikipedia definition:

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is the centralized management of processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage a group of current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals ― while honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors.

There is a little bell ringing in my head that there is an important distinction between how we do project M&E — which is often process heavy and too short term to look at impact in a complex environment — and being able to look strategically at our M&E across our projects. This is where we use the “fail forward” opportunities, the iterating towards improvements AND investing in a longer view of how we measure the change we hope to see in the world. I can’t quite articulate it. Maybe one of you has your finger on this pulse and can pull out more clarity. But the bell is ringing and I didn’t want to ignore it.

This idea also rubs up against something Eric said which I both internally applauded and recoiled from. It was something along the lines of “if you can’t prove you are creating impact, no one should fund you.” I love the accountability. I worry about actually how to meaningfully do this in a)  very complex non profit and international development contexts, and for the next reason…

Who Owns Measurement and Data?

Chart from Effective Philanthropy 2/2013

There is a very challenging paradigm in non profits and NGOs — the “helping syndrome.” The idea that we who “have” know what the “have nots” need or want. This model has failed over and over again and yet we still do it. I worry that this applies to M&E as well. So first of all, any efforts towards transparency (including owning and learning from failures) is stellar. I love what I see, for example, on Splash.org particularly their Proving.it technology. (In the run up to the event, Paul Shoemaker pointed to this article on the disconnect on information needs between funders and grantees.) Mostly I hear about the disconnect between funders information needs and those of the NPOs. But what about the stakeholders’ information needs and interests?

Some of the projects I’m learning from in agriculture (mostly in Africa and SE/S Asia) are looking towards finding the right mix of grant funding, public (government and international) investment and local ownership (vs. an extractive model). Some of the more common examples are marketing networks for farmers to get the best prices for their crops, lending clubs and using local entrepreneurs to fill new business niches associated with basics such as water, food, housing, etc. The key is the ownership at the level of stakeholders/people being served/impacted/etc. (I’m trying to avoid the word users as it has so many unintended other meanings for me!)

So if we are including these folks as drivers of the work, are they also the drivers of M&E and, in the end, the “owners” of the data produced. This is important not only because for years we have measured stakeholders and rarely been accountable to share that data, or actually USE it productive, but also because change is often motivated by being able to measure change and see improvement. 10 more kids got clean water in our neighborhood this week. 52 wells are now being regularly serviced and local business people are increasing their livelihoods by fulfilling those service contracts.  The data is part of the on-the-ground workings of a project. Not a retrospective to be shoveled into YARTNR (yet another report that no one reads.)

In working with communities of practice, M&E is a form of community learning. In working with scouts, badges are incentives, learning measures and just plain fun. The ownership is not just at the sponsor level. It is embedded with those most intimately involved in the work.

So stepping back to Eric’s staunch support of accountability, I say yes AND the full ownership of that accountability with all involved, not just the NGO/NPO/Funder.

The Unintended Consequences of How We Measure

Related to ownership of M&E and the resulting data brings me back to the complexity lens. I’m a fan of the Cynefin Framework to help me suss out where I am working – simple, complicated, complex or chaotic domains. Using the framework may be a good diagnostic for M&E efforts because when we are working in a complex domain, predicting cause and effect may not be possible (now, or into the future.) If we expect M&E to determine if we are having impact, this implies we can predict cause and effect and focus our efforts there. But things such as local context may suggest that everything won’t play out the same way everywhere.  What we are measuring may end up having unintended negative consequences (this HAS happened!) Learning from failures is one useful intervention, but I sense we have a lot more to learn here. Some of the threads about big data yesterday related to this — again a portfolio mentality looking across projects and data sets (calling Nathaniel James) We need to do more of the iterative monitoring until we know what we SHOULD be measuring.  I’m getting out of my depth again here (Help! Patricia Rogers! Dave Snowden!)  The point is, there is a risk of being simplistic in our M&E and a risk of missing unintended consequences. I think that is one reason I enjoyed the panel so much yesterday, as you could see the wheels turning in people’s heads as they listened to each other!

Arghhh, so much to think about and consider. Delicious possibilities…

 Wednesday Edit: See this interesting article on causal chains… so much to learn about M&E! I think it reflects something Eric said (which is not captured above) about measuring what really happens NOW, not just this presumption of “we touched one person therefore it transformed their life!!”

Second edit: Here is a link with some questions about who owns the data… may be related http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=59975

Third edit: An interesting article on participation with some comments on data and evaluation http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-people-affected-by-problem-have-to.html

Fourth Edit (I keep finding cool stuff)

• “Who Counts: the power of participatory statistics.” Edited by Jeremy Holland with an Afterword by Robert Chambers.
• NYTimes “Can Big Data From Epic Indian Pilgrimage Help Save Lives?“

The public health project is part of a larger pilgrimage by Harvard scholars to study the Kumbh Mela. You can follow their progress on Twitter, using the hashtag #HarvardKumbh.

This is the second post about touring existing online communities as a learning journey for those building or sustaining their own communities. (Part 1 is here.) This one is about the nuts and bolts of doing a live tour of online communities. The first post laid out purpose, identification of potential communities to tour, and criteria for review and evaluation. So now lets talk about HOW to run the tour. This is nuts and bolts time!

Planning

1. Pick your web touring technology. For this sort of event, I like to have a tool with fairly easy screen sharing and a shared chat room for note taking. I use a white board or slides to share the initial overview and questions.
2. Set the date. Let your “tourists” know date, time and any technical requirement. This may mean needing to be online, have a headset/mic or an appropriate telephone dial in option.Confirm your communities. Get permissions as appropriate if you plan to use your personal log in to tour any private communities!
3. Set up a URL list that can work both within your web technology and on a separate web page as back up. Plan a SHORT intro narrative to each community. Decide what pages you will visit and why. See the first post!  I like to throw the URLs and short descriptions on to a Google doc and share it with the tourists in advance.
4. Test your URLs within the web meeting tool. Should they be links? Preloaded? Do you need username/password to log on to any private sites?
5. As backup, grab a basic set of screen shots of each community in case your web touring technology fails. Yes, it happens! Always have a plan B.
6. If you have a co-facilitator, define each of your roles.
   • It is often useful to have one person help folks if they have any technical needs, while the other runs the tour.
7. Consider how you want to capture questions as you go — sometimes you will need to research and come back later with answers.  Encourage the tourists to take notes if that fits your culture!
8. Send an email with the login information and any preparation you would like the tourists to do. I often send a short piece on community PURPOSE and some of the questions I mentioned in the  first post.

Running the event

1. Log in early and make sure everything is working. Have an email prepped to resend in case anyone contacts you saying “I lost the url/login/etc.
2. If you decided to preload URLs on separate whiteboards, etc, get that all set up. Set up any polls or questions on other white board pages or have them handy to cut/paste in.
3. If you are recording the tour, don’t forget to hit the old “record” button once you start.
4. When you start with your participants, give an overview of the tour process. It might go something like this:
   • We are going to look at X different communities today. I’m going to use the screen sharing tool (or whatever you plan) so I’ll be “driving” the tour, but please, if you see something you’d like me to click on, let me know. There is a slight lag with the screen sharing so speak up as soon as you can!
   • I want to review a couple of questions we should keep in mind as we tour (then I review the questions.)
   • Encourage shared note taking (I often use the chat room in the webinar tool).
   • Do you have any questions? (Answer them..)
   • Start…
   • Pause often for questions, observations.
5. Between communities, do a quick recap asking for observations and answers to questions. Sometimes it is worth going deeper and seeing fewer communities…
6. Leave at least 25% of the time at the end for reflection and next steps.

Follow Up

1. If you are recording the event, capture the recording and share the URL.
2. Clean up and share any collective notes taken during the event.

Do you have any other suggestions or ideas? Resource pointers? Please, chime in!

I just received a request for some quick suggestions for picking a web meeting tool. I cobbled a few quick thoughts here (really ought to edit this properly, but maybe later.)  I’d love any additional opinions and suggestions.

My Selection Criteria

OK here are the criteria I use for evaluating web meeting systems, followed by a few quick brand comments. But you need to know, I am very focused on interactive engagements, so I’m biased away from tools that are broadcast-centric and hierarchically controlled!

Purpose, Purpose, Purpose! What are you going to do?

First be clear on the range of purposes you need the tool to support. There is a big difference between a “broadcast model” and a small group working session. Some tools can’t handle that range, particularly at the more interactive end. For broadcast to large groups, you need a host that can support that many connections, so consider size range. Consider what types of content you need to share/host and what kinds of activities you need to foster.

Related to purpose is cost — if something is REALLY important, does it also have a budget line or do you need to use just free tools?

Specifics (in no specific order!)

1. Audio Connection Technology: Can it accommodate Phone bridge AND VoIP – this may not be crucial for you, but when I’m working internationally, it is.

2. Recording: Can it record calls? Do you need just the audio or do you need the audio and video? Do you need them separate? Can those calls be saved in a non proprietary format? (I.e. Blackboard’s web meeting is a proprietary file that has to be replayed via their web platform. It can be export to a common .wav  or mp3 (for audio only ) files but you have ot know how to do that. ) Is file size an issue?

3. Diverse Participant Roles/Controls: It has a chat room where participants can chat peer to peer and not just mediated through a moderator. Webinars create a pretty significant power imbalance when only the moderator(s) can allow anyone to do anything. For a broadcast situation, this is fine. For engagement, you need more options for devolving control and agency to participants in an appropriate process and with appropriate technology. This means:

• a peer to peer chat room (I MUST HAVE THIS FEATURE!!!)
• ability to easily pass moderator roles to a person or more than one person. (For example, if you have to be the moderator to use the white board, then can you make EVERYONE a moderator.
• sometimes having a private chat option is important
• sometimes a controlled/moderated question queue is important. (I don’t tend to use those myself…)

4. White board. I can’t help myself, I’m visual. Particularly I like whiteboards where everyone can participate. I also like it when whiteboard tools can be used to annotate slides.

5. Applications/screen sharing: For web tours, showing things, etc.

6. Ability to share slides: Both in-app and via screen sharing. Sometimes one is better than the other. That said, please don’t bore me to death with your slides!

7. Do you need video? Some platforms support one camera at a time, others (like Adobe connect) support multiple cameras giving that sense fo F2F conversation. (Called multi-point video display)

8. Bandwidth tools: Does the platform have technology to ameliorate the impacts of diverse participant bandwidth?

9. Polling tools:  I like these — and ease of use of the polling tool is important to check. I like both planned and ad-hoc options.

Advice: Don’t believe the hype — TRY IT!

Don’t just believe the marketing materials! Try it and try it with the size group you plan to work with!

Tools I’ve Tried:>

• Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate) – Great whiteboard, very stable, proprietary recording format, good adjustments for different bandwidths, higher on the cost end… @thatchmo also likes this tool!
• Adobe Connect – good for multi-camera video, decent white board, chat room, etc.
• WebEx – there are different webex products – make sure you trial the one you are looking for. Some are more broadcast oriented, some are more collaboration focused.
• LiveMeeting – Very higherarchically controlled. I would not recommend.
• GoToMeeting – recently changed and I have not evaluated the newer platform. I’ve read that there are some challenges in recording meetings.
• MeetingBurner – for smaller, team meetings, but not so great for large groups
• I’ve also used Google+, Skype, etc, but I suggest you avoid systems where people have to have a username/password. These are, however, great for ad hoc groups and G+ recording and autoposting to YouTube is slick! We used it this past fall for an online course. @BonnieZink likes G+

Resources:

• Robin Good is always noting the most recent info in the field http://collaborationtools.masternewmedia.org/ - he is my first go-to resource
• http://webconferencing-test.com/en/online-meeting-home
• http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com/
• http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2012/102212-desktop-videoconferencing-test-263197.html
• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234680/7_low_cost_videoconferencing_services_Which_is_best_for_your_meeting_

And if you for some bizarre reason want more to read on webmeeting process:

• http://www.fullcirc.com/2007/01/25/what-are-your-most-useful-synchronous-online-facilitation-practices/
• http://www.fullcirc.com/tag/videoconferences/

Now, what are you thoughts? Criteria? Recommendations?