Full Circle Associates

I have lost track of my blog readers, buffeted by eddies of excess digital content. I stumbled back upon D’Arcy Norman’s blog this afternoon with pure delight. (The is one of his Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr … sometimes I prefer to just watch someone’s Flickr stream instead of read so much. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to set that up on an iPad for an idiot like me?)

It has been a long time since I visited D’Arcy’s blog. I new Alan Levine was heading that way and since I’ve been following Alan’s trip, the time felt right. I did not head for one post, I just read and scrolled. Kismet. Serendipity. This seems appropriate during August, where I am cutting myself some slack, in anticipation of an insane Fall work schedule. (Thus the gardening posts and food themed Tweets.)

My networks are now for the most part serendipity networks because they have become too large for me to track. When I need to research, interact, I can activate them for sure. But now they are like going to the candy store, staring at the counter for a few minutes, then picking a chocolate or two.

Here are a few chocolates from D’Arcy’s recent blogs.

he rides a steel cable. A link to a mind blowing YouTube video of a person who rides bikes where most of us can’t even imagine. I’ve watched it twice already.

ds106 campfire jam.  Friends jamming F2F and online.

photo(s) friday: dock life. Beautiful family photos.
And my favorite, which is so good I have to copy snippets that D’Arcy quoted… Thanks, D’Arcy!

on conformity through positive reinforcement.

From Neil Strauss’ article in the WSJ:

Just as stand-up comedians are trained to be funny by observing which of their lines and expressions are greeted with laughter, so too are our thoughts online molded to conform to popular opinion by these buttons. A status update that is met with no likes (or a clever tweet that isn’t retweeted) becomes the equivalent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewritten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to conform to the opinions of those around us.

and contrasting Like culture with the power of positive narcissism:

“Like” culture is antithetical to the concept of self-esteem, which a healthy individual should be developing from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Instead, we are shaped by our stats, which include not just “likes” but the number of comments generated in response to what we write and the number of friends or followers we have. I’ve seen rock stars agonize over the fact that another artist has far more Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers than they do.

and on freedom from Like culture:

So let’s rise up against the tyranny of the “like” button. Share what makes you different from everyone else, not what makes you exactly the same. Write about what’s important to you, not what you think everyone else wants to hear. Form your own opinions of something you’re reading, rather than looking at the feedback for cues about what to think. And, unless you truly believe that microblogging is your art form, don’t waste your time in pursuit of a quick fix of self-esteem and start focusing on your true passions.

Hallefrackinglujah.

Indeed, Hallefrackinglujah. And let’s hear it for summer serendipity.

Sometimes I am a silly goose. I help sponsor a great aggregation site, the Communities and Networks Connection, but I lose track of it on my own radar. I do get the highlights via an email subscription (look at the right side of the page) and thought I’d offer a little glimpse, a temptation, if you will, to the site.

Best of Communities and Networks Connection

Week of July 30, 2011

• Google Plus and Twitter How They Work for Me Hand in HandELSUA|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011
• It’s been over a month since I first started making use of Google Plus. Yes, me, too!, I still can’t believe I have been there for that long already! But I am back to Twitter. No, I haven’t given up on Google Plus either. Quite Quite the opposite! So what’s happening then? Yes, indeed! Of course, who wouldn’t, right?
• 24 Tweets
• Twitter: when less is more. Tips for (not) getting unfollowed.EMODERATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• The news that @barackobama has apparently hemorrhaged 35,00 followers in the past few days has set the social media world sniggering with schadenfreude. These were the followers who presumably didn’t appreciate being spammed with 113 tweets in the space of a few hours, exhorting them to tweet-lobby (twobby?) their local reps in Obama’s support.
• 12 Tweets
• Vertaisrahasto.fi (Peer Fund)P2P FOUNDATION|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011
• Vertaisrahasto.fi (literally Peer Fund&# ) is a new way of collecting and allocating funding for research. The idea is very simple. There are two roles for volunteer participants: donors and applicants. Everyone is invited to donate to the fund, the minimum sum is 10 euros. Donations are piled up during a predesignated time.
• 7 Tweets
• Made by Many teams up with Good for Nothing to support the East Africa famine crisisMADE BY MANY|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011
• Made by Many is partnering with ethical innovators Good for Nothing in a rapid and collaborative response to the East Africa crisis. One child is dying every six minutes, and fundraising efforts are struggling to keep up to fund the relief effort. And we count you all in that network, so please step in and get involved. We need your ideas.
• 33 Tweets
• Traditional Media brainwashing Australians about Social MediaLAUREL PAPWORTH- SOCIAL NETWORK STRATEGY|SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011
• NSW Police have been made aware of a Facebook page that has allegedly made disturbing death threats against baby-faced singer Jack Vidgen. Telephones don t stalk children, Social Media doesn t intimidate them either. People do. Investigate People. Don t blame the online community tools. usually don t bother clicking anymore.
• 51 Tweets
• Objections to participation in conferencesCHRIS CORRIGAN|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• I have great clients. Most of the people who end up working with me do so because they want to work in radically more participatory ways, opening up processes to more voices, more leadership. In conference settings this means scheduling much more dialogue or running the whole thing using Open Space Technology and dispensing with pre-loading content.
• 11 Tweets
• Community activist hub: right problem, wrong solutionSOCIAL REPORTER|SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011
• I m puzzled by the recommendation for a central information hub for community activists&# from the Government s Champion for Active Safer Communities, Baroness Newlove. I m sure that Baroness Newlove has good evidence of a demand for information from her work in local communities in recent months so, right problem.
• 8 Tweets
• Social Media at Work ELSUA MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011
• Last week, upon my return from my last business trip, I was hoping to be able to resume my regular blogging activities and share with you folks some of the interesting conversations I have been engaging with and other interesting resources worth while sharing across. never ever blog whenever you are upset about something, or someone!
• 11 Tweets
• Hot-Desking: Good or Bad for Collaboration?MICHAEL SAMPSON – CURRENTS|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• New Zealand’s Stuff website asks whether hot-desking is hot or not? : ” Once upon a time, an employee’s desk was a home away from home. Adorned with paraphernalia of hobbies and interests and obligatory family photos, it was as much a statement of identity as it was a place to perform a job. But this cosy space is slowly being taken away.
• 6 Tweets
• Living “A World Without Email” in Google Plus ELSUA|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• In the last few weeks a lot has been written about whether Google Plus is the ultimate killer social networking site of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or several others, you name it. still think it s a bit too early to be announcing the painful death of each of those social networking environments. G+ still needs to reach that level. Or not.
• 12 Tweets
• Book of the Week (2): David Graeber’s take on the fake economics and their Imaginary Myth of Barter P2P FOUNDATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• Facebook allows merging of community Pages into official Pages EMODERATION|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011
• Help Complete the Intranet-Digital Workplace Trends 2011 Survey PORTALS AND KM|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• How Come I Can’t Tune Klout? ALCHEMY OF CHANGE|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• Book of the Week: David Graeber’s First Five Thousand Years of Debt P2P FOUNDATION|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011
• Network Weaving: The 5 Kinds of Communities JOHN TROPEA – DELICIOUS COMMUNITY|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• How the internet creates ecological/relational forms of awareness P2P FOUNDATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• Instant Business Guide to LinkedIn THE BUMBLE BEE|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011
• Forrester Groundswell 2011 Awards: AT&T Proving the ROI of Social Media for Customer Service< ANT’S EYEVIEW BLOG|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• Arab Spring inspires Israeli social justice movement P2P FOUNDATION|MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011
• High Performance Companies Collaborate | Podio Blog JOHN TROPEA – DELICIOUS COLLABORATION|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! ENDLESS KNOTS|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011
• Odd names and ordinariness NEIGHBOURHOODS|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• The snowflake model: Marshall Ganz on how technology has changed organizing revolutions P2P FOUNDATION|SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011
• Uploading to Youtube – it’s a snap (ha!) ENDLESS KNOTS|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011
• Together: a union approach to precariat P2P FOUNDATION|SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011
• Elinor Ostrom on Going Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons P2P FOUNDATION|TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• Police occupy Puerta del Sol #spanishrevolution #nopararemos P2P FOUNDATION|WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011
• The insuffficiency of efficiency P2P FOUNDATION |TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
• The P2P of Zion (2): Social Economy developments within the Mormon Church P2P FOUNDATION|THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011
• From systems of co-determination to full industrial democracy? P2P FOUNDATION|SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011

From the inimitable Howard Rheingold!

A mini-course on network and social network literacy – howardrheingold’s posterous.

I’ve become convinced that understanding how networks work is an essential 21st century literacy. This is the first in a series of short videos about how the structure and dynamics of networks influences political freedom, economic wealth creation, and participation in the creation of culture. The first video introduces the importance of understanding networks and explains how the underlying technical architecture of the Internet specifically supports the freedom of network users to innovate.

Carl Jackson of Westhill Knowledge Group (formerly at IDS – Institute of Development Studies), colleague at KM4Dev, friend and all around smart and funny guy took 20 minutes to share some of his experiences supporting and participating in online communities in international development. He has worked with a number of IDS’s Eldis communities, including Africa Adapt. While you can peruse the communities’ websites, nothing replaces hearing about the practice of stewarding and participating IN the community.

Click below for a listen — it’s about 18 minutes packed full of practical advice.

Carl Jackson on Online Communities in Development

Here are some of the nuggets I extracted:

• People are seeing  online communities and networks as core instruments of how we work.We can now cheaply create broad based activist networks. For example, Africa Adapt – with participatory researchers, policy makers, community advocates around climate adaptation. In 1.5 years built a sense of community, and has organized F2F events at a continental level. Used to be much harder to get off the ground. Now people prepared to give it a go or at least a benefit of a doubt.
• Focus, focus, focus: Carl reinforced the importance of subject specific focus… this then attracts a specific kind of people
• Some groups are harder to attract than others. On the whole, the one group where it has been harder to get awarness and buy in is with is the scientists in climate science community. In international development there is quite a strong divide between the natural scientists and social scientists. They have different networks and ways of sharing knowledge.
• Policy makers CAN be attracted with focused offerings. Within Eldis communities had a debate between experts on food security and gender, convened by BRIDGE at IDS. Researchers and policy makers from a range of organizations.
• Preparation for events matters. With a focused, short time frame event, they did substantial bilateral engagement w/ potential participants 3-4 weeks leading up to the date. A lot of work went into brainstorming themes they could focus on in the discussion, and in gathering and synthesizing brief bios of participants. They noticed in other discussions of this type a lot of initial energy gets soaked up in introductions, getting comfortable.
• Open conversations with less clear focus are still important. People are looking for more increasing awareness of the landscape, who the actors are, events are, values and languages. For that kind of orientation, open discussions are still really valuable. They allow you to discover things. In time delimited, you drill down, but not much discovery.
• Why has ELDIS community succeeded? Primary value of ELDIS communities: be in there for the long haul. When the communities  were set up there were other spaces like that, but the level of demand for ELDIS communities and level of initial participation was quite low. When you have short term performance requirements — could have bombed quickly. But the grant makers that work w/ IDS have a longer strategic vision about the value of collaboration, bringing in diverse and little heard voices – commitment was there. Seedbed for initiatives.
• Reputation still matters: IDS has been able to – because it has established reputation for research and training beyond its online work gives a certail level of brand recognition and associated knowledge resources on the broader Eldis portal. Quality and back up that can be hooked into community spaces. Drawing on the resource guides.
• Individually driven spaces require less support.  The largest number on ELDIS are set up by members for a blog or event, sharing documentation or share videos.  They are doing stuff in a very unsupported way beyond the provision of technical support and troubleshooting advice for things like setting up profiles and adding functionality to their personal spaces.
• Events benefit from strong staffing and preparation. The Food security and gender event was part of a wider programmatic effort around that subject, purpose of gathering knowledge for publication. 3 people working on the preparation for 2 day event with a 2 month lead time. Carl estimates that  total time of individuals that went into prep and facilitation, follow up was 30 person days. Consider the value of convening 30 experts internationally to have a very detailed cutting edge discussion. If you’d have looked at how else, the costs of convening that kind of group logistically in a physical space – order of 5-10 x cost.
• Design as if you are in their shoes. In thinking about design, especially new group coming together, it is important to try and think your way into where they are coming from, scenarios they might consider participating in. That’s a way of designing a process that leads to an online collaboration with as little logistical friction, anticipates some of the interests and needs they may have. Policy makers want a tractable output of feedback to policy. Researchers want highlights of current research or gather ideas for new research topics. Put yourself into the shoes of the participants and construct a process that is useful for both participants and commissioners of the event.
• Light facilitation rules the day. Now that people are much more comfortable participating in online spaces, the facilitation needs to be when it is live needs to be much more light touch. People don’t need so much hand holding. Facilitation should not be acting as chair of discussion– neither necessary or helpful. More about holding the space, backchannel matchmaking/connecting, draw out the quite – pastoral care behind the scenes. Then the energy the participants bring to the discussion doesn’t get blocked. I don’t think you can lead discussions online, you can only nudge them
• Any other advice? It’s important – when the community does come together in a good way, has a powerful discussion, important to translate that something as quick as possible into something tangible. There are often good intentions of producing outputs, but the wheels grind slowly, nice polished in 3 months. You have to be prepared to quickly synthesize and publish some kind of project. Rough and quick is better than polished and slow. They can immediately get the extra value.

You can find Carl on his company website, www.wkg.uk.net or on Twitter at @Carl_WKG

This linked set of tweets tells the story about why we don’t have to k now all the different processes we can use in groups, in our work. (This is also a nice Twitter Story which I can point to when we are talking aboutNetworks at CSIR in Pretoria next week!)

We need to focus not on encyclopedic knowledge, but to know

1) how to learn and practice new processes,

2) how to ask the right questions to select processes (alone and with others) and,

3) to tap the wider knowledge of our networks to identify our options.

via Students self-organize their own curriculum – storify.com.