Digital Identity Workbook for NPO/NGO Folks

some digital identitiesMy friend and colleague, Shirley Williams, pointed me to a great resource on digital identity (DI) that she and her colleagues created for their students at Reading University in the UK.  It is called “This Is Me.”

As I saw that lovely Creative Commons license on it, I thought I’d whip up a version for folks interested in social media and the digital identity implications in the non profit and NGO sectors. I thought it would be handy in an upcoming workshop I’m facilitating for the CGIAR starting next week.

Pat Parslow and Shirley uploaded a version to a Google doc. We edited, I did some rewrites and trims, and here is the first draft. I’d love feedback!

thisisme-ngo-v11

(updated to latest version on Thursday, May 21)
(Edited September 7 – there is now a version in Arabic here via the Social Media Exchange)

(Edited August 21, 2012 – file link has been repaired and there is a new Student version coming out in September!)

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

The Girl Effect – catalyzing positive change

This morning on Twitter, Idocente pointed me to The Girl Effect. WOW! As some of you know, I have been a champion of the GiGis (Girl Geeks in service of the World Cafe community) and have long been a (prejudiced) champion of females in changing the world. So it is no surprise I had a positive response to this site.  Take a look at the video.

Over breakfast today in Bonn, where I’m doing some work this week, my friend Ulf and I were talking about where we have seen positive change take place.  (Check out his cool work with Science-Connects.) We shared stories about how things seem to work better from the ground up. Where people with passion and ownship make things happen, building on assets and in spite of barriers. Girls and women are certainly catalysts for this in many parts of the world. Take a look at this data from The Girl Effect fact sheet (pdf).

  • When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
  • An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881[Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)
  • Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers. (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science
    and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.)
  • When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man. (Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.)

Since I was in Israel and Palestine last month, I have been struggling on how to write about my experience in a way that is not about judgement, but about reflecting what I saw. The tyranny of person over person is heartbreaking, regardless of the reasons and justifications we create. But from what I saw and learned about, women and children are victims as Israel and Palestine continue without a solution for sustainable peace. The statistics around maternal and child health paint a compelling picture that war, occupation, and the patterns that trigger them are bad for women and children. High levels of maternal depression correlate with poor child nutrition. Raising rates of stunting in children from persistent malnourishment (low nutrition and poor nutrition) are staggering. Cultural challenges that resist healthy patterns of breast feeding and trigger increased poor child health and adult obesity and heart disease in Palestinians.

Where is the hope for something better? For basic human rights of food, shelter, clothing, clean food and water and yes, even peace?

It is with the women.

The women of Palestine and Israel, both, who build bridges across the divides were the most compelling points of light I experienced amongst the bleakness that presented itself. At the conference I was attending, I met a midwife who works for the Jazoor Foundation for Health and Social Development who gave me one of the few moments of light and hope I felt during my visit. She was passionate about her profession of helping women have healthier babies. She was passionate about teaching others to be midwives, even amongst professional disdain from other health care professionals. (US midwives will remember the time when they were dismissed by doctors, and are now an important part of the maternal child health system.) Her brains, her heart, her attitude radiated light. She worked with other amazing, passionate advocates for health, social development and peace in the organization, led by another brilliant, passionate woman. (I’m kicking myself for not having her name handy, but it is on my home computer and I’m on the road!)

Women who are catalyzing positive change.

I would name this radiant midwife, and share a short video we made of her, but I have not asked her permission. I’ll try and remmber to do that when I get home to let you experience a bit of her light.

So the message of The Girl Effect site resonated with me this morning. Wherever we work – in businesses, education, non profit, or independent spirits in the world, what are we doing to foster this light in girls and women? Because so far, they are the best bet I can see for making positive change in the world. By no means am I dismissing boys. But girls are so often dismissed, when they may be the best chance we’ve got.

(A small suggestion to the Girl Effect folks. Your about page is in flash, making it hard to copy and share the stats. Yes, I know I can download the data, but that is one more step. Plus data is still locked in a PDF. For strong virality, making it simpler and easier may be more important than making it slick. )

I’ve been away:Reflections on a Journey Part 1

Introduction

The blog has been quiet because I have been on the road for 18 days, first to Rome to co-facilitate the second CGIAR/FAO Knowledge Sharing Workshop face to face phase, then on for a quick stop in Prague (cheaper to fly to Israel from Rome via Prague) where I met my pen pal of 40 years face to face for the first time, and finally to my first time in the Middle East in Israel and Palestine.

Four countries, many sets of new and old relationships and a profoundly moving and challenging experience of a new set of complex cultures has left me so much to reflect on that it will take a while. But in the spirit of learning, I wanted to capture some of it here on the blog because it has, for me, profound connections to the work so many of us do around working and communicating across all kinds of lines. And how everything changes, always.

Even as I start typing this at 7 in the morning, I am amazed how it is so dark, for only 18 days ago the sun was up at this time of the morning. How the leaves changed and the last tomatoes gave up any chance of ripening. I was not the only thing changing. Everything changes. As we seek to facilitate change, we are changed.

Interspersed with this reflection will be personal stuff. Political stuff. It is unavoidable when we travel outside our home territories, to become vulnerable and open to new things. So if you read my blog for the more professional stuff, you may either have to skip these posts, or read them with whatever filter you need.

Part 1 – The Power of Doing TOGETHER

I have been doing work with the Consultative Group on International Research (CGIAR) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN for many years. This year, I had the pleasure of doing work for them both at the same time as they collaborated on offering the second iteration of a Knowledge Sharing (KS) workshop some of us developed for the ICT-KM project of the CGIAR earlier this year. The workshop is a three phase online/face to face/online offering focused on learning about choosing and applying knowledge sharing tools and methods in the context of real work. Learn, do, revise, learn, do…. This time we had 35 people from around the world join the workshop with a variety of needs, levels of practice and, as always, time available to participate.

We have learned from similar workshops in the past that the mixing of participants from different organizations has provided some specific benefits. The diversity gets us out of any of our own “organizational ruts.” You know — the things we think we can’t do in our own organizations, the barriers that we feel are always surrounding us. We tend to put those aside when we are with others. The diversity of experience and perspectives opens us up to seeing the work in a new way. What is less-than-useful social “chatter” for one is critical trust building process for another. If we can’t see these things at work in a group, we have a harder time understanding their role in our work. We tend to design knowledge sharing processes based solely on our own perspectives and preferences. When we learn about them in a diverse group, we see them in new ways. This was very present in our online and face to face phases. The diversity does present challenges, but with some persistence and reflection, we can process them as a useful part of the learning. Together.

The F2F workshop was three days of learning about knowledge sharing tools and methods while using them. We spent 1.5 days in Open Space learning about a variety of tools and methods. We used video, audio and graphic recording to debrief our Open Space experience. We broke the ice each day with different methods. We learned together while doing peer assists and Samoan circles. We brainstormed and picked topics with Dotmocracy to Speed Geek about new technologies. It is so hard to really get the essence of these tools and methods simply by reading about them or having them presented. But when you do them, and debrief them afterwards, the learning feels richer and deeper. From the informal participant feedback, this seems to be the case. I’ll be interested to learn more as we do the rest of our post-workshop evaluation.

Debriefing and Crystallizing Learnings

I want to call out specifically the importance of the debrief. After each session which used a knowledge sharing tool or method, we took time to debrief both the experience of the method, how it was facilitated and why it was chosen, leading to a brief discussion of when something may or may NOT be useful. We tried to capture all these debriefs in our wiki notes and blogs, and I hope over the course of the next few weeks, we can weave what we learned in the debriefs into the specific tool and method pages on our shared webbased resource, the KSToolkit. Recently there has been a very rich thread on the KM4Dev (development) email list about capturing lessons learned from F2F events. If you are interested in this topic, take a peek. Look for the posts entitled “Documentation: More than Just Minutes.”

My Key Learnings

  • People make meaning through the construction of their own experience so having a chance to try methods like Speed Geeking and Open Space are important moments, even when we have other constraints which might suggest other methods.
  • Give people ownership of their participation. At the start of the workshop I commented that many people had laptops open. I said I was not going to tell people to close or open them, but that they should make choices about their use of their laptops based both on their own needs and their perception of how their choices might impact others. In other words, we are responsible both for our own actions and to be attentive to the needs and actions of the group. This is right in line with Open Space’s “Law of Two Feet.” At the end of the workshop, a couple of people commented on how important this was for them, and how different from the “usual” where we are told what to do and how to do it.
  • As I noted above, the power of debriefing and shared meaning making.
  • Try to have your workshop close to lodgings. It took a lot of energy to get us from our hotels in Rome out 30 minutes to our meeting location. The location and hosting of our workshop by Bioversity was fantastic, but the travel took a lot of energy that could be used elsewhere. You do what you have to do, but just in case you CAN be close, be CLOSE!
  • I’d like to do more participant “capturing of learning” with video, audio and other media. We did this a bit and I think there is a lot more that I’d like to experiment with.
  • We missed time for people to plan their next steps in their work. Last time we spent too much time on this. This time I think we spent too little.
  • Plan a dinner the night before to start the socializing.
  • When doing Speed Geeking, we did NOT have expert practitioners for each station and in retrospect, that would have been a good idea. I loved that people created useful groups around things they wanted to learn, but I think this mixed up too many things and Speed Geeking might be best with just one intent.
  • Find ways to engage the participants in the facilitation. We did this a bit and I’d like to find more ways to increase others’ chances to facilitate.

Amazing Participants and Co-Facilitators

The joy of work like this is the people I get to work with. The participants of the workshop were diverse, engaged and they didn’t just passively take in information, they engaged and challenged us. And as always, facilitation and learning is not a solo sport, and I want to thank Pete Shelton and Gauri Salokhe, my F2F co-conspiritors, and Simone Stagier who supported from afar.

Soundtrack while writing: the guitar playing of Sungha Jung

Noticing some nice non-profit wiki work

CCN Wiki HomepageA while ago Beth Kanter put out to her network a request to know about useful nonprofit wiki practices. I meant to reply, but, as usual, got distracted. Today I received an email update about a local coalition here in Washington State (USA) that reminded me about their great wiki work. Check out the Communities Connect Network Wiki . Early on, I had the pleasure of working with Peg Giffels who was their main wiki gardener (among many other roles.) Peg “got” that there was both an information architecture and a set of social processes associated with their use of a wiki as both a project communication tool and as a knowledge sharing tool.

Intially the blog was going to be a general place for coalition members to share stuff. But we all know how general stuff goes — slowly if at all. Then Peg hit on using the wiki to be the central point for the coalitions training programs. Now, at the completion of this last round, Peg has a site that is rich in materials (print, audio, video), has an integrated wiki orientation and training component, reflects specific member areas and contributions (for example here and here) and is well organized and “gardened.” The left navigation links to major areas of the wiki.

One of the things that came out of the early “Wiki Wednesday” hour long telephone based orientations was that people came to get trained, but left with new connections to other coalition members. When asked what was best about the calls — it was always the people they connected with. Peg lives that in the way she works with the coalition. While she stewarded the technology and the content, her attention to the people came across to me, as I observed the wiki development over the months and now years.

Like most wikis, there is a relatively small proportion of editors to page views. For example, in April, there was a rough average of 220 unique visitors per day, 2-3 editors and intermittent spikes of editing across the month. This makes sense given the ‘wind down’ phase as well. There was a huge jump in traffic between February and March. I should ask Peg what was going on!

Interestingly, while this wiki is very focused on Washington state, there are viewers from around the world. I really wish I knew what they thought, in what ways, if any, they benefited from visiting the wiki. I appreciate that the Communities Connect project worked with such openness. They have made a contribution that is bigger than their own project work. I like that about public wikis.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this cool wiki with you. Do you have any great wikis you’d like to share with the rest of us?

P.S. Beth, when I went to find the link on your blog, I noticed two things. Your search box is now waaaay down on the left nav bar of your blog – I almost gave up looking for it. And it is a Technorati search, so I have to go to Technorati and THEN link back to your blog. Maybe consider putting in a Google or other direct search option? I want to find your great stuff FAST! And yes, I’m finally becoming a searcher!