Iterative Improvement: Part II

Tai Chi Chuan by Ponto de Cultura Vila Bruaque

To my classmates:

The past week has seen rapid movement among students to encourage BGI to integrate SW4SX into the MBA curriculum.  A number of creative and passionate voices are already contributing to this effort, making me feel that this endeavor is in very good hands.

So, I'd like to offer another perspective:

Its not the content; its the pedagogy.

Like many of you, I've spent a fair amount of time and effort developing my skills at facilitating and leading meetings in all types of venues.  We all know that an online meeting or even a conference phone call can be an unproductive and confusing experience when not led with techniques that involve and engage the group.  

Upon entering BGI, I was impressed that instructors would spend so much of their teaching time online, since I believe business will demand more and more online communication skills from all of us.  I was then surprised to find few good examples set by my instructors online.  Instead, I've been disappointed that so many of our instructors struggle to teach in the online environment, and worse, I did not see an active endeavor on the part of BGI to help instructors learn and share better techniques.

This impression changed the first time I attended an online class taught by Christopher Allen.  Here was a teacher who had not only thought a great deal about the engagement his students experienced in his online classroom, but he actively experimented with new techniques of making the online classroom more dynamic and experiential.  This is such an important part of the SW4SX experience that it is difficult for me to critique the course and its content without recognizing the success of Christopher's teaching methods.  He provided an excellent example of online teaching, facilitation, and community-building.

A new kind of mentor for a new age of teaching

Like others, I do believe that SW4SX belongs as core curriculum at BGI, either in its current form or integrated throughout other courses such as Marketing, Social Justice, and Leadership & Personal Development.

Still, while working with classmates to communicate this idea, I realized that I don't think the SW4SX class can be easily transferred to another instructor.  Its not that Christopher is an instructor without peers at BGI - we are blessed with many inspired and talented teachers.  Instead, I believe the challenge will be in transferring the unique pedagogy that Christopher practices.

In this light, Christopher's greatest value to BGI may be as a mentor to other instructors.  The experience of participating in Christopher's online classes is an experiential lesson for every student.  Experiencing and studying the pedagogy of SW4SX would be instructive and inspiring to BGI's faculty as well.  

Its not the media; its the messaging.  

Christopher is introducing BGI students to a new pedagogy for a new era of communication, practices that we will now emulate not only in online classrooms, but throughout our increasingly-online lives and careers.

Using the techniques and teaching methods of Using the Social Web for Social Change could help lead a social change and pedagogical change for the better at BGI.  I hope to see it happen.

Iterative Improvement - Part I

Colorful To A Point, by RedDogFever

I came to the class SW4SX to catch up with 'current' and 'next generation' online tools.  While I received this overview, I received something I didn't expect - the benefit of being part of truly successful 'next generation' educational experience.

Online learning was facilitated more successfully than I've seen any instructor accomplish at BGI or elsewhere, and Christopher did this with humility and a sense of group experimentation and engagement.   Beyond learning how to use the social web to inspire social change, I also learned that we need a new learning pedagogy for a new era of communication, one that we practice not only in an online classroom, but throughout our increasingly-online lives and careers.

The value I gained from this class was not so much about media as message, techniques, and pedagogy.

Successes of SW4SX

The combination class (Hunter Lovins' Topics in Sustainability and Christopher Allen's SW4SX) facilitated during our final intensive was a wonderful experience.  The consulting exercise we engaged in was a great way to put new learning to work. As a SW4SX consultant, I  was able to see the other class' projects in a new light: they were notable for their use of systems thinking and inspiring presentation, yet also notable for their focus on describing complex problems while struggling to present solutions.  I was also able to realize the power of implementing the techniques we've practiced this quarter, as our 'scan, focus, act' methodology produced a wealth of inspiring actions in a very short time.  I was very proud of my classmates and the creative consulting skills demonstrated by so many.

Challenges for Improvement

Simplifying the plethora of to-dos.

Techniques for sharing many small bits of information, links, tasks, and feedback present challenges whether online or off.  In this course, those challenges were considerable, and I think that even our web-savvy TAs and instructor have yet to solve these while using the Moodle platform, BGI's Channel, and Google Docs.  I believe the solution will be found by unleashing the assignments and checklists from Moodle, and presenting and tracking them through some other tool that hopefully will help students and TAs manage these many many small assignments without losing their minds.

Integration.

Not unique to this course, but still a common problem I find in today's online experience is the discontinuity experienced when moving between different tools and sites.  Social media and the entire online experience needs better integration to become more usable.  Google plus and the Google services model presents an opportunity to experience better integration, yet I feel that putting too much control of social media in the hands of one company is a disconcerting idea.  I am hoping can we retain the 'New Frontier' quality of today's social web, retain the spirit of entrepreneurship and sense of a level playing field, while also developing tools that help users integrate and simplify their experience.  This, for me, is a new frontier to explore.

Lessons in Social Change and the Social Web

I've had many lessons over the past few months studying social change and the social web with Christopher Allen.  Here are a few lessons I'm taking with me...

a personal lesson:

The first challenge in communicating online or between diverse communities is to

establish your identity and establish your voice.  Personal branding is key to establishing your identity.  Brand yourself with your larger motivations; brand yourself as large as you want to grow.

a business lesson:

Your client understands their problems and their message; bring them your technique.  See past the complexity of their problems to see one gap you can fill.  See the behavior that allows the gap to persist.  Trigger one desired behavior, influence one group, begin one chain of events.

‘The Fall’ by fdecomite http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdecomite/       

Some Rights Reserved – Creative Commons 

Focus.  Scan.  Act.

Let go of perfectionism, and trust others to provide the feedback you need.

Fail fast; iterate often. 

And, remember that nothing engages people more successfully than fun.

The Necessary Evolution of Occupy Wall Street

'Sleeping Dragon at Stirling Bridge' by pettifoggist

As Occupy encampments have been dismantled in a number of cities recently, an interesting discussion has ensued concerning how the Occupy Movement might morph into new forms in order to survive.

Not surprisingly, that Old Gray Lady, The New York Times, spent a column wringing her hands and wondering whether Occupy Wall Street could "make news" without a public encampment for the NYT to photograph and publicize.

Funny that as the NYT struggles to adapt their antiquated news model to the new world of online communication, they still cannot manage to see past their own nose for news.  NYT is, of course, covering Occupy because it IS news;  Occupy is not waiting to be blessed and publicized.

I've noticed many parallel stories lately in national politics.  Take, for instance, the traditional reporters scratching their heads over the rise of Newt Gingrich and the popularity struggles of Mitt Romney - the candidate who is performing perfectly according to the standards of traditional political media.  Gingrich was given up for dead by the mainstream press months ago when he fired his entire campaign staff.  Since then, his popularity has grown and his campaign re-emerged on his own terms as he ignored conventional wisdom and made his own news.

How could this happen?  In Gingrich's own words: "We were surrounded by a bunch of guys who had learned politics 25 years ago and they had no idea how the world had changed."

Occupy is no longer an encampment and traditional protest.  It is a movement that makes news by exposing news that traditional media is too compromised to recognize.  Those who are part of the 1% may not be willing to admit who they are, and the NYT is likely blind to their compromised position as a guardian of that 1%.

Perhaps its time to dramatically expand the concept of the flash mob.  After all, pitching a tent on the public square is not nearly as newsworthy as shutting down the Port of Oakland in order to make a statement to the world.

I'm reminded of the success that Michael Moore had with his one-person flash mob in documentaries like Roger and Me and TV Nation.  Back in 1989, Moore didn't have Twitter or YouTube.  It didn't matter.  He turned on his cameras, walked into the offices of the 1%, recorded the news, and made some news of his own.  The most entrepreneurial Occupy protestors are beginning to do the same.  The advantages the movement has are obvious - today we all own the means of spreading our news like wildfire.  

The NYT can go on thinking that Occupy isn't news unless its covered by NYT.  They can try to ignore the news that Occupy is making.  But these mainstream media types trying to get a grasp on how to report about Occupy may be missing an important part of the story: what qualifies as 'news' is not their call to make any longer; they are holding a dragon by the tail.
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Birthing a Social Change Project

The initial idea was simple and profound: build an online application that would allow the user to easily start an online petition campaign and recruit the friends to join.  "Do One Thing" became the working title. 

Beyond this, we wanted to incorporate a number of social web techniques and principles of influencing social chance that we had explored in Christopher Allen's class on Using the Social Web for Social Change.

Soon, with a team assembled and creative sessions begun, the idea began to grow.  What if we could use the social web to spread any simple request for positive change among larger social circles of friends?  What if we could inspire even inactive and apathetic people to stand up and announce their first attempt at encouraging others to do the right thing?  What if we could design a platform from which anyone could successfully launch social change campaigns, and grow them?

As the idea grew, a new name emerged.  Do One Thing was no doubt central to our project, but the potential for influence was growing in our minds.  If doing one thing to start a campaign is a stone thrown into the pond, then its the ripples spreading across the pond that are the waves of influence we want to create with each new campaign.

And so we birthed the RipplCampaign.

The storyboard is a creative tool as old as, well, perhaps as old as paper and pencil.  Good old paper - pencil - crayon - magic marker storyboarding is a technique that doesn't need much improvement with newer technology.  Likewise, sitting down together to share ideas and draw-up a storyboard can produce a group experience that is hard to match by any online tool.  The process is dynamic, interactive, and tactile.

Our team sat down a week ago in a Tacoma cafe, armed with paper and pencil and a slew of ideas. By the time finished our coffee, we had produced a storyboard that incorporated our philosophy, our users, their motivations, our triggers, and our tools.

The storyboard proved to be a great launching pad for the next phases of our project.  Going online at our next meeting, we presented the storyboard using PowerPoint and Blackboard Collaborate.  From here, Dave Ventresca rebuilt the storyboard in PREZI.  Our next step is to produce a video for our second iteration product.

Meanwhile, Dave is coding the Facebook Application. But even without the application in hand, the storyboard allows us to illustrate and consider user behavior, as well as the potential outcomes of using our product.

Key to our social change methodology:

• Help our users overcome their feeling of apathy and sense of inability.
• Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.
• Allow one small action to spread and influence others.
• Leverage the social network expanding tools in Facebook.
• Track and measure activity, and use these measures to create compelling illustrations of success.
• Remind users of their influence, encourage them to recruit others to their cause, and encourage them to take action again.

We have found a number of organizations that share some of our ideas and methods, but none who have used Facebook quite the way we envision using it.  

Yet another tool is becoming more powerful than I had imagined.  Put to use to help others overcome apathy and become change agents on the social web, Facebook is staring to look like a great platform for positive social change.

UPDATE:
The current products of Team Rippl and the RipplCampaign Project are posted here:
http://makingarippl.blogspot.com/

More Relationships: Weaker Relationships?

(photo by Keoni Cabral)

In her YouTube video "‪Ease Of Losing Community Trust‬",  Nancy White says

"I think when we have relationships based on content its easier to ignore them… the relationship is around an issue, its not an enduring bond.  The relationship comes and goes very freely.  There are times when we that's what we need, and times in our lives when we also need a persistent conversation that keeps going even when its rough…. And I wonder about that balance in this world: Are we going to deepen relationships in the network as we figure out how to do that?"

The video was recorded in 2009.  If I could have a conversation with Ms White today, I would ask her what she's learned about encouraging more persistent relationships and conversations in the online network.

Its become conventional wisdom that online communication produces a life filled with more shallow relationships than in the pre-internet world.  So much so that a Pew Center survey in 2010 seemed quite impressed with its result that as many as 85% of people surveyed agreed with the statement "In 2020, when I look at the big picture and consider my personal friendships, marriage and other relationships, I see that the internet has mostly been a positive force on my social world. And this will only grow more true in the future."

And yet, googling the words "online relationship" or "deeper online relationships", or even "deepening relationships online" each yield results almost entirely devoted to attracting new dating partners or business customers, rather than actually deepening existing relationships.

Fortunately a few greater minds have broached the topic in their blogs.

Gideon Rosenblatt, former Executive Director of ONE/Northwest and expert in CRM tools, offers insight to relationship building in business in his blog Alchemy of Change, saying

"[How] do we integrate the strategies for cultivating lots of weak ties with our strategies for deepening relationships?  When it comes to social change, the problem with online social networking tools has less to do with the tools themselves – and more to do with how organizations fail to connect their social network organizing with their efforts to deepen their relationships with people… deep relationships don’t just appear magically out of thin air. They need to be cultivated over time with thoughtful and deliberate organizational effort and they need to be fed by influxes of new people, which is precisely where online social networks like Twitter and Facebook can play an important role."

And yet, it is those social networks - in their current state - that are adding to our angst.  Christopher Allen, in his Blog A Life With Alacrity, helps define the problem of having too many relationships to manage, saying "social networks can become too large, and many social networking services are causing the problem rather than solving it."  He goes on to suggest that perhaps a "cultural strategy for managing excessive relationships is prioritization. I could prioritize my relationships and focus only on the 100+ or so that might be the most useful to me."  And yet he admits this is not a satisfying solution since this would risk "offending people forever by excluding them today."

I've seen little evidence of social networking tools being designed or used to help cure the problem of weakening relationships.  I hope that this points to the immature state of these as communication tools, rather than a tragic flaw in the technology or a lack of desire for meaningful relationships in today's culture.  I'm inclined to believe that human intention and focus, rather than technical solutions, are what must be better employed by us all to solve this problem.

As for our current state of affairs, I'm inclined to agree with blogger Mark Schaefer:

"The days of conducting business based on these deep relationships is largely over I think — relationships that were built on a golf course, a boat, long dinner conversations — not text messages, online help functions, and customer service tweets. 

Ten years ago, if you had a business crisis, you could probably count on those deep relationships to help pull you through, at least to a certain extent. Today, and especially after the recession, people just don’t have time for relationship-building.  I can’t imagine inviting a customer to a weekend of golfing any more.  Everybody is doing what used to be three jobs. Who has the time for building business friendships? 

Maybe there will be backlash and a re-focusing on deep relationships at some point. 

 There was recently a story about tech start-ups scrambling for office space near Twitter because of the live networking opportunities.  Kind of ironic.  Seeking deeper offline relationships with people dedicated to spreading low-impact online relationships."

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A Video

Rethinking my personal brand caused me to revisit a recurring theme in my life: difficult problems and the opportunities I might not have found without them.