I've arrived today in Singapore where I'll be doing social reporting at the KM Singapore Annual Conference. This is the second year that I have attended this event and I very much look forward to the conference starting tomorrow.
Organized by the Information & Knowledge Management Society of Singapore (iKMS) - a non-profit organisation aimed at serving information and knowledge management (KM) professionals - the 2012 KM Singapore Conference is the 9th Conference organised by the Society. For this year, the theme of the event is "Exploring the Frontiers of KM". To quote from the conference brief:
We want to look at emerging trends and reflect on implications for information and knowledge managers. Such trends may be in the realms of business management, IT, science, economy or society.
The conference aims to bring together the IKM Community in Singapore, both IKM practitioners and partners from the public and private sectors to share and learn about the latest development in KM in Singapore and beyond.
Though the target audience is mainly from Singapore, several international speakers who'll take the floor over the next two days. And the programme looks *really* good! Check the conference website and judge for yourself.
So you are not in Singapore and you are interested in following the event remotely? No problem, we've got that covered!
The crowd here is very Twitter savvy so you can follow the hastag #kmsg for live tweets, quotes and twitpics from the event. Event better, you can check the awsome Twitter wallprovided by JamiQ (@kelvinq) and see the different Tweets visualized in a great way.
In addition, the KMSG website will feature daily updates, including blogs and video interviews with speakers and participants, as well as pictures and presentations.
When Euforic Services approached me last year to facilitate an online course on social media, I didn’t imagine I would have so much fun. Last year I had
participants from many different countries and regions as well as professional backgrounds and levels
of knowledge. This definitely made for a good mix of people and certainly their contributions were
inspiring. This year, I’m having the privilege to facilitate the course again along with a colleague based in
Nigeria, Johnson Opigo. I’m still enjoying it very much!
The online course Innovative Collaboration for Development (ICfD), jointly developed by UNITAR and FAO has a unique approach to teaching and learning that is
hands on and focuses on knowledge sharing. Six different modules (one or two weeks in length each)
build up on concepts and skills gained throughout the course. Besides having interactive lessons,
there are many online resources that help reinforce the concepts and tools reviewed. Activities and
exercises help participants familiarize themselves with a wide range of tools and approaches to social media. For
busy professionals, this course is ideal as all is needed is a computer and internet connection. People are
able to fit the exercises, assessments and evaluations within their own schedules. We all are based in
different parts of the world, and we don’t need to be connected at the same time!
“This course has been an eye opener for me. I've always seen social media as a tool that business and for profit organization could leverage but I've never considered how it could be used for non-profits, particularly those at the community and grassroots level. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to participate in this training as it has caused me to think differently.” – Summer 2011 participant
The emphasis is not on the tools available, but rather on how an organization can choose and use
the tools effectively to achieve specific goals according to their needs. Therefore, at the end of the
6 modules, each participant designs a social media strategy for his or her organization with clear
objectives and measurable outcomes, giving them the opportunity to take something concrete back to
work.
"The knowledge gain will definitely be an asset to me and my organization. I plan to put these skills
gained into practice as soon as possible.” – Summer 2011 participant
Furthermore, this course concentrates specifically in the not for profit sector, with examples, case
studies and stories that are relevant, so participants can relate to similar challenges and opportunities
and they can adapt strategies that suit their requirements.
What makes a difference in this course is the participation of all the people involved. It’s definitely not
a linear contribution facilitator-participant, but rather a collective collaboration where participants
are encouraged to share their own experience and provide insights and recommendations to fellow
colleagues. We all learn from each other.
“It was really great meeting all these great minds for you all where great inspiration to me. Thank you all
for your contributions and dedication to the course.” – Summer 2011 participant
Following the success of the previous online courses, UNITAR and FAO are launching the Innovative
Collaboration for Development (ICfD) course again this fall from
15 October to 14 December, 2012. Registrations are now open and applications must be submitted online until 28 September.
More information can be found on the course introduction and application page. There is still time
to be part of this exciting experience!
On July 31 2012 we organised a Peer Exchange session on Theories of Change (ToC). The event took place at DFID in London, was organised in the context of the R4D project with our colleagues from CABI and CommsConsult. The aim was to better understand how ToC can be used in research uptake and communication programmes.
Around 15 people took part in this two-hour session. For the occasion, as well as DFID staff, we were joined by Duncan Green from Oxfam GB and Simon Batchelor from IDS, who have both done a lot of thinking and and writing on the subject of ToC and research.
After the session, we recorded a short conversation with Simon Batchelor and Duncan Green. In the video below, Simon and Duncan explain how they got interested in Theories of Change. They discuss how ToC can be used in research programmes and how DFID and other donors could created incentives for researchers to use ToC in their work.
The video is about 12 minutes long but worth watching there is rich content and insights that reflect the discussion and debate of the day.
In case you don't have time to watch the full recording, we have also produced these five short clips:
Social media and other collaborative web 2.0 tools are now firmly embedded in the mainstream of information, communication and knowledge sharing processes, both strategic and everyday. However, in our experience running social media training workshops in organizations over the years we have often seen how difficult it is to translate the enthusiasm of participants learning to use new tools into changed work functions and processes.
Sometimes, this has to do with the lack of management buy-in, resulting in little or no space for staff to try and experiment with social media on a daily basis - let alone the integration of new tools to support existing processes.
After the social media workshop we recently held at FAO, we had organized a two-hour session for Senior and Middle managers. This session, structured as a Peer Exchange, was meant to addresses three questions:
How can social media enrich communications and knowledge sharing activities, bring communities of practice closer and facilitate the flow of information and knowledge?
From an operational perspective, what is the most effective way to mobilise and manage resources to support these processes in teams, programmes and across projects?
Over a three to five year time-frame, what are the most effective strategies for maximising the impact of knowledge sharing and communications through building up and integrating the use of social media and other digital tools?
After a quick run around the table to introduce participants and collect the questions they had brought to the session, we kicked off with a presentation on the relationship between social media and information, knowledge sharing and communication. In particular, we looked at two case studies from other agricultural development organisations illustrating how social media can enhance information, knowledge sharing and communication activities.
The first case study, prepared by our colleague Vanessa Meadu, highlighted the experience of the CCAFS programme and how they used social media for communications and outreach during the Rio+20 event. The second case study instead presented the work of the ILRI KMIS Team and how they have been integrating social media in everyday business processes.
The discussion that followedcovered a range of interesting issues, some specific to FAO and some more generically applicable:
FAO, like other organisation, already
has 20 years of experience in web communications: it is important that with social media typical mistakes from the past are avoided (which in a way was the aim of the session, to share learning and experience!).
There is a trade off for FAO programmes and projects between doing more social media and diverting resources from other activities, especially as resources are limited. Having social media strategy templates would help managers decide where and how it is worth investing resources.
Strategies are not enough, clear work plans are also necessary - and having example templates here also would help managers in their decision-making.
With social media, the goal is engagement, it's about dialogue and conversations.
The Communication and Partnership team of FAO is developing a new version of FAO Social Media Policy to ensure that social media is used consistently across the organization and FAO projects itself as one single organization across the social media landscape. Therefore, Facebook is being used centrally and there is only one official FAO Facebook account. The 'one account policy' is a sensible approach followed also by other UN agencies.
The different teams and departments need to provide the Communication team with content and they will take care of disseminating it through Facebook - however, these content objects need to come with the right metadata and descriptions. A description of this work flow is being developed and will soon be shared within the organization so that staff is made aware of this.
It is important to realize and understand that the shelf life of individual content objects is longer than one of individual websites set up for specific programmes and projects.
In some FAO divisions, there are already several early adopters and innovators. Their talent and enthusiasm could be leveraged by asking them to produce content objects that work well across social media channels such as Facebook; example of these include quizzes and 'did you know' type of questions.
Overall, it was a fascinating session - even though only five managers were able to come on the day (it was mid-July in Rome!).
We'll continue these conversations at the second and third FAO social media workshop planned for October and November.
Last week both Pete and I were in lovely Rome for the first of three social media workshops with FAO staff. It was great to facilitate again a workshop together - as we work together almost on daily basis, but virtually. It was also great to be back at FAO and work with our good friend and colleague Gauri Salokhe.
However, I must confess I was a bit nervous as we were getting closer to the kick off of the workshop...
Well, it certainly was not our first social media workshop, quite the contrary...And we were well prepared: we had spent quite some times over the weeks prior to the event to design the workshop and produce slides and training materials, counting also on the excellent collaboration of Vanessa Meadu (CCAFS and Euforic Services Associate, who will co-facilitate in the next two session) and the useful feedback from Gauri.
However, this time around we had opted for a complete new methodology and we were very curious and excited to see how it would be received by the participants.
[Workshop participant Uwe Barg reflects in what he learnt in the Social Media workshop]
Over the years, we had learnt the lessons that social media tools are fun to use and you can get training participants very enthusiastic when they put their hands onto things like Google reader and Netvibes, or when they practice to edit and upload a video online. The question remains, however, on how they will adopt the different tools in their daily work practices, and if they will be able to incorporate social media in the tasks they are required to perform at the workplace. Even more so, as you consider that these people are probably the middle and late adopters of social media.
So how did we go about it?
Start from the business functions, not from the social media tools!
Quite simply, instead of starting from a standard set of tools - the typical social media toolkit of a knowledge worker in development - we started from the business functions this worker has to perform. The KS Toolkit provided to be an excellent starting point, with a quite comprehensive list of example contexts and specific tasks one may need to achieve. From this long list of functions, we boiled them down into three main areas:
Project management
Collaboration
Communication and promotion.
For each of these, we identified a set of specific sub-functions. Through a pre-training survey, participants indicated the work processes and functions that were most relevant for them and on the basis of the results, we matched functions and tools; better yet, we bundled a set of core tools around each of the specific functions that were chosen in the survey, excluding the tools that were already known to participants. At the end of the first day of the workshop, we 'negotiated' with participants and together selected the tools that we would practice with (hands on) or simply demo and introduce (in speed geeking session) on the second day of the workshop.
Overall the agenda setting was very flexible and 'democratic', and we tried to accommodate participants requests as they emerged. Still, three sessions were 'non-negotiable':
A stakeholder assessment - This in fact was the starting point of the workshop: you need to have clear who you want to reach and engage with, before you look into the how social media can help you doing it.
A session on 'personalized listening dashboards' (i.e. Google reader and Netvibes - and yes, we do need a better title for it...) - We strongly believe that being able to read the web through RSS feeds and mastering the tools to do so is fundamental in today's personal information management and to avoid information overload (or filter failure, according to how you see it)
A closing session on strategy - From our experience, getting participants to start thinking strategically how they would put social media at work in their context is a key component of an effective workshop, something that participants can go back to their desk with and start implementing immediately.
So how did this work out?
Positive feedback...but there's always room for improvement!
Personally, I had the feeling the overall methodology worked well: starting from the business functions put the whole workshop in a complete different perspective. Moreover, the fact that the ultimate choice of tools to explore came from participants themselves put the ownership of the event in their hands. The personal feedback we received from the participants also confirmed these impressions, as well as the overall score of the online evaluation we asked them to fill in after the workshop.
However, as always, there is room to improve the workshop, and we're already working to incorporate the lessons learnt in the next sessions:
The group (15 participants) was a mix of communication officers, programme officers and technical officers. This meant that the entry level and the knowledge and practical experience with social media was very different amongst the different participants. We'll try to have more homogeneous groups in the next two sessions.
Across the workshop, we repeatedly stressed on the concept of 'content object': we wanted participants to understand that being online today is not just about uploading a report online on your corporate website. Increasingly, it is about creating different content objects around it, or different products for different audiences. These objects ought to have 'legs' to be able to travel across the web - and to be share-able so that your audience can pass them on to their own friends and followers and help you disseminate what you do. This concept worked out well but we need to have more graphics and diagrams to make it even clearer, especially to a beginner audience.
We had a conversation around FAO social media policy on the last day of the workshop - right before participants had to develop their own social media plans, for their programme, project or team; for some participants, this conversation should have happened up front at the beginning of the whole workshop, so that they would have a clear idea what they are allowed and encouraged to do. We're still discussing where this session would fit best.
The next two sessions will be in October and November, there are already quite some FAO staff that have expressed their interest in participating - and hopefully there's some positive buzz in the building after last week training and both sessions will be fully booked.
By the way, did I mention we also had a very interesting peer exchange session with some FAO senior managers? Well, stay tuned, we will be blogging about it soon!
We are meeting different people these days when we talk about and work with social media, more of the massive numbers in the middle and latter portions of the classic adoption curve.
Presenting and facilitating at three very different events -the eDiplomacy day at the Instituto Publico in Rome, an ICARDA/ICRISAT programme inception workshop in Dubai and an informal chat with a group of international development consultants in Oxford - I heard similar things from people who are only now feeling their way into how they can engage with the online mainstream:
there are many from the ‘early majority’: people who have became enthusiastic and skilled users of several social media or collaborative platforms and who want to integrate them into their everyday work, as well as evaluate some of the less-well known tools
there are probably more from the ‘late majority’ who are involved in one or two platforms, sometimes uneasily or by default:
'I am on Facebook to follow the kids' is something I've heard around the world;
the logistics information, agenda and reports for the Dubai workshop were on a wiki, which for many of the participants was their first real exposure to anything other than Wikipedia: they had no choice;
'I kept being invited to LinkedIn so I eventually joined'
and there are some classic late adopters checking out the space: 'everyone tells me I need to be on Twitter, do I?' to which the answer is, 'it depends'. I don't like the term 'laggards’. It is loaded and inaccurate: it implies everyone will - should - adopt,
eventually. But there is, of course, no reason to join any of these platforms unless it serves a purpose.
And what is the mainstream? As an illustration I listed for one of the groups the tools that I use regularly, not because I am a model but because they are also typically used by many other early adopters I know. The list is at the bottom of this post.
Seven principles for those late into the social web
It’s hard to come up with general principles for the majority, since it includes all human variation and possible sets of interests. And in 2012 there are many, many mature products on the market which can be adapted to suit an individual’s needs. For a long time in our training we have used business functions within organisations as the basis for assessing need and interest. It's an approach that can be extended to individuals. For example, promotion and collaboration were the two functions which generated most interest amongst the group of consultants. Here are some notes from our discussion, elaborated later of course, which is the right of the blogger.
As ever, start with youraims: why would you want to use one of these tools? For example:
Promotion: what is the audience you want to reach, where do they hangout online? Research, join and start to engage.
Collaboration: are your colleagues already using a tool? How good is their Internet access and how confident are they using social media? Select an appropriate platform (see below) and invest the time in learning how to use it well, so you can support them. Note that if you choose a wiki they will probably find it surprisingly difficult.
Engage with people: the essence of social media is that it is, well, social. That means personal conversations, linking people to people, sharing information, ideas etc, joining important lists and conversations on other people’s sites. These are not platforms for broadcast messages. Crucially, it also means keeping on top of the exchanges, for example, commenting on comments, thanking people for linking to your work or RT your tweets.
Feed the web and it will feed you back. For example, linking to other people’s content, RT in Twitter, liking in Facebook or slideshare and commenting in blogs will get you noticed, connected and - if your content has meaning - shared in turn
Use groups of tools, linking and integrating: many social media tools are designed to one thing well but they are all designed to interact and exchange data (to be mashed up, as they say). For example, I echo tweets into LinkedIn (via the Hootsuite client) and selectively into Facebook (you simply have to link the two accounts and use #fb). I tweet about content I generate - Blogs, videos, photos, slides;
Always share and record your work online somewhere public, for example slides on slideshare, project progress on Blogs or Twitter
Be yourself: authenticity scores over slickness, although manufacturing 'authenticity' earns PR firms and political spin merchants a good living.
Have fun: Good social media practice has a lot in common with being a good party host: introduce people to people, provide interesting titbits, circulate regularly, help people have fun.
So what social media tools do you use?
For the record, and because we believe in transparency, here is the list of tools I regularly use, ranked loosely by how often and how important they are to my work:
Delicious (it's always surprising how few people who work collaboratively with others around the world use Delicious or one of the competitors like Diigo)
Dropbox (probably the most straightforward collaborative application since it requires no social media experience and, carefully managed, can serve as a common repository for collaborative projects. Importantly, it doesn't require users to change their favourite tools, like MS Office or the Mac equivalents
Wiki (e.g. euforicweb; platforms I use include mediawiki [free, open source: clunky, the original, and still the Wikipedia platform]; wikispaces; pbworks) Note that a lot of people find learning to use a wiki quite difficult: for example the 'edit' function, also a basic essential for blogging, flummoxes people who haven't had a lot of experience)
Google docs (tends to be easier to understand for new users, since the applications 'feel' similar to MS Office packages that people use already. It does require good Internet access, although there is offline access to documents. Candidly, I have had more problems that I expected with offline Google docs)
News and other feeds, through Google Reader; we suggest using an iGoogle Home Page as an introduction to the value of filtering news through feeds, or netvibes, which allows users to share and publish a common home page, as in this great example from Stephanie Psaila of Diplo Foundation
Blogs (writing on our own blog; for communication support, for example the Diplo Foundation blog, from where I cross-post here or from events, such as those we support for GDNet. I always quote John Naughton as my favourite blogger, partly for interest and partly because he does it so well; Tim Davies is another superb digital-artist)
Scheduling tools (for example Doodle for diaries; eventbrite for, er, events)
YouTube (we use Blip.tv, as it syndicates content to other sites; Vimeo is used by many people for video quality reasons)
Flickr for pictures and images (see again euforicweb for how we easily the content can be shared and displayed; many people also Google’s platform called Picassa)
After a long, competitive selection process we are then told we know nothing and can't use the knowledge and skills we bring with us', said an exasperated new foreign diplomat based in Rome from a diplomatic service which lags a long way behind the mainstream in its adoption of social media and the other tools of eDiplomacy. It was especially surprising to hear of such myopia in Italy where 73% of the online population are on Facebook (approx 37% of the population), making it Facebook's 11th most active market. The majority of the approximately 80 participants at the eDiplomacy day held at the Instituto Diplomatico in Rome this week told more positive stories about how their own Ministries are engaging with the digital landscape. For example, Ambassador Bernardino Regazzoni, introducing the evening expert panel session, described how the Embassy of Switzerland in Italy employs the experience of younger diplomats in their drive to engage online.
In a time of constrained and reducing budgets, resource issues were understandably high on the agenda. Few countries could match the three staff working on communication at the US Embassy in Rome. Yet, like the Italian Instituto itself, most are creatively redeploying and retraining staff to be able to engage with what the majority recognised as essential tools for public diplomacy. Stefano Baldi, the Director of the Instituto illustrated how they are using all kinds of technology from video streaming to blogging, as can be seen in this impressively rapidly turned around video from the Italian Ministry (up a long time before I could complete this blog!).
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (or a similar photo-sharing application) and Blogging have emerged as the standard set of tools used to implement the kind of multi-channel communication strategy shown to be effective by those leading the band of eMFAs into the next phase of the digital age. Put on the spot, a narrow majority of the participants at the evening session agreed that Embassies should engage with at least three such channels. To sceptical looks from those struggling with budgets, participants from several Embassies told stories illustrating how, beyond an initial learning period, integrating different social media channels is an economical use of time, relative to the returns in term of closer engagement with the different audiences with which MFAs aim to connect.
In reviewing the eDiplomacy Hype Cycle, which we in Diplo have been discussing recently, participant's accounts of progress and good practice within their own institutions suggests that there are micro-cycles within an overall cycle which are applicable to national contexts. MFAs like the US, the Canadian and the UK FCO have been using social media tools for over three to four years and they have learned how to maximise returns from investing limited resources. Other later adopters are engaging with enormous enthusiasm but are likely to experience something of a backlash - a descent into the Trough of Disillusionment - as longer-term resource commitments become clearer, along with the typically slow build of a new online profile in a digital space which is becoming more and more crowded.
As for what next, during his opening remarks to the panel discussion, Ambassador Carmel Inguanez from the Embassy of Malta in Italy invited participants to an Innovation in Diplomacy conference which is to take place in Malta on the 20th and 21st of November. The digital space changes so rapidly it will be fascinating to see what will already be history in six months time. Jovan Kurbalija reminded us that Diplomacy has always struggled with the acute tension between continuity and change, a tension screwed ever tighter by the imperative to adapt policy and practice to the new digital seas in which we all swim.
(cross posted from Diplo Foundation site)
