James Richards (BBC Learning Development) and Myles Runham (BBC Learning) co-hosted the event with Clare Reddington (Ished); I designed and facilitated it with help from Jack Martin Leith. There were approximately 65 attendees, made up of 15 BBC folk and 50 creative (and) technology types from around the country.

This report is split into the following:

• Event purpose
• Event outcomes
• Event design
• Event report
• Event documents for download

Event purpose:

• To profile the work and properties of BBC Learning to a community of pervasive media practitioners
• To communicate BBC Learning’s thoughts and ambitions in the area of creating new pervasive media projects with the BBC’s properties
• To work collaboratively over the day to create a range of high concept propositions
• To provide a networking opportunity for attendees to meet and interact

For the attendees it was a chance to:

• Meet and interact with others working in this field
• Gain unique access to BBC Learning commissioners
• Surface and discuss proposition ideas with BBC Learning staff as a group in an innovation lab format

Event outcomes:

At the end of the event, out of as many ideas as surfaced during the day, the three most suitable ideas (for BBC Learning) were identified by the BBC crew. These ‘idea holders’ would then work them over a bit more after the event, negotiate and discuss with BBC Learning and iShed, before one final idea will be chosen. This idea will then receive financial and organisational support by BBC Learning and iShed in order to put together a formal pitch to the Beeb.

In line with iShed’s keen dedication to brokering relevant and constructive relationships between different actors in the world of creative technology, an important underlying theme for the event design was to afford as many productive conversations between the different groups in the room. This was primarily to get the BBC folk to meet and work with non-BBC folk;  so a lot of attention was paid to ensuring that happened.

Event design:

I was very keen to introduce some (apparently) more informal, emotional stuff into this event. Our previous events for Media Sandbox have had a rather rational ‘knowledge’ edge to them - quite cerebral and purposeful - these have been sucessful, but after working with some of the Transition facilitators I wanted to explore some of the more unknown elements of human networking and decision making, and encourage the attendees to explore their responses to ‘ideas’ at different levels (head, heart and gut).

(event designing sheet)

Hence the event was structured to be relatively loose and informal in the morning, with a lot of movement and activity, no tables, lots of networking, some role play, different teams forming and discussing stuff. After lunch we got down to the serious business of brainstorming at tables, introducing a more formal, cerebral atmosphere.

Event report:

Welcome and Introduction

Clare Reddington and James Richards and Myles Runham introduced themselves as hosts of the event to set the context. James gave everyone an overview of BBC Learning Development and the types of project they are keen on.

Mapping and conversations:

Now we know why the event is happening, who the hosts are and what the outcomes will be, it is time to see who is in the room. All of the BBC folk came to the front and introduced themselves - enabling the non-BBC folk to work out who they wanted to speak to.

Then everyone jumped to their feet and we did some fast and furious networking based on a couple of parameters:

• Mac vs PC: human Venn diagram and conversations with one of the others
• How geeky am I?: line up from luddite to uber-geek and conversations with someone similar

(networking in action)

We were going to do a couple of others, but the event had started late so I had to make time, so we had to lose some of the networking. This is a shame, but the rest of the event was designed to make sure that as many relationships were brokered as possible (ie the networking is built into the interventions as well as being a session in itself).

The networking was very popular - always is - but I was surprised at how well everyone took to it and responded constructively.

BBC Learning-ness:

Being that we were aiming to encourage conversation around the department’s interests and commissioning process, and give everyone an idea of what is and what isn’t a suitable idea, we ran a session of ‘what is BBC-Learning-ness?’. As well as helping the group build a shared mental model and set the context for later decisions, it was also a great opportunity for everyone to see the BBC folk pitching in, and reacting to ideas in a short time under a lot of pressure (their gut instinct should come out here). Here’s how it worked:

1. James posed a question to the group: ‘In the app store in heaven, what are the two dream learning apps?’
2. Everyone broke out in groups of 6-ish and brainstormed 2 ideas
3. James and Myles stood by a board marked up with ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Maybe’
4. A group rep came to the board, read out their apps
5. James and Richard classified it Y/N/maybe

(Myles and James and BBC Learning-ness board)

James and Richard had 1 minute to classify each app in front of everyone. Naturally this isn’t a formal process, but it does illustrate their gut reactions to things, immediate questions which pop into their heads, and, interestingly (for me) the things they said while thinking out loud (’hmm not neccesarily a learning app, but knowledge might like that’). It was also a good excercise to get people working together (the BBC folk were spread out across the room) and further embedding the BBC-ness of things.

It was great fun and had a serious point. As well as this, it revealed something of them to us in a way that was open and human - large organisations can seem all wall from the outside, so good work to them for being game I say.

Although this was meant to be a very light-hearted idea generation quickie, some of the ideas produced definitely sparked off interest from the BBC folk. These ideas weren’t carried forward during the day; it was intended to get everyone in the mood around ideas. I think I could have integrated them better into later work (lesson learnt).

(BBC Learning-ness app ideas categorised)

Ideas preparation, analysis and discussion:

At this point, we needed to see who had an idea to work on in the afternoon. The idea holders identified themselves and how mature the idea was, and whether they wanted collaborators to help (in this age of collaboration-mania, I think it is totally fair to say ‘No, it’s my idea, I know what it is, I don’t need collaborators’).

This is a risky point in the event - no ideas means a radical and instant on the floor re-design of the event, too many ideas means a swift inclusion of a voting intervention… quite a lot of event facilitation relies on doing the sums on the fly; how many tables will we need for later? How much time do we give the idea holders to present their idea? etc. But I diverge into event design-ery pokery.

10 idea holders emerged. The perfect number. Uncanny.

The idea holders had 15 minutes to lay their ideas out on a flip chart sheet (we supplied templates). During this time, the ‘here to helpers’ broke out and did some more BBC-non-BBC networking.

We then brought the idea sheets back into the room, laid them out and everyone had 15 minutes to walk around, discuss, analyse the ideas without knowing whose they were from. Idea holders were not invited to comment or otherwise indicate it was theirs - for them it was a chance to see people reacting to an anonymous idea in an objective way.

Following this, each idea holder then had 3 minutes to present their ideas to the group, answer any questions they may have overheard during the earlier session, do a quick Q & A - whatever they fancied. They brought the ideas to life - which had been anonymous and objective earlier - giving them a face and language.

(presenting an idea in 3 minutes)

In the afternoon, attendees were going to work on the ideas with the idea holders at specific tables, so the ‘here to help-ers’ were also making some decisions as to which idea they were going to work on later. It’s also good practice for presenting to a group etc. etc.

Then we had lunch. Woohoo. During lunch, we brought 10 tables into the room and allocated one idea per table. Having been moving around all morning, everyone was going to sit down, work on one idea, get all cerebral and focused in the afternoon.

(the 10 ideas with names)

Case study:

In order to get everyone in the mood, a case study of actual projects from someone who had been commissioned was in order. Dominic Tinley has done exactly this and gave us an insightful and warts and all overview of some of the work he has been doing.

By now, everyone is at the table they will be at all afternoon, so Dominic’s case study was an excellent topic to get them talking about that in the context of the idea they will be working on.

Workshop working:

All the idea holders had a second template to complete for their idea. We used templates so the BBC folk could assess them from similar angles. There was much thought, scribbling with pens, scratching of chins etc.

(workshop working in session)

Top Three:

Now the crunch time. Which idea is suitable in this context, and why? This is another layer of learning for everyone. I have run events where attendees voted for their favourite idea etc. but, being that that would not reflect the real commissioning process for the BBC, the BBC folk were asked to select their top three.

This is not an easy task for the BBC folk - they rarely get a chance to be together from different departments, and don’t have to make such quick decisions.

They had 15 minutes to assess each idea as a group. One BBC person had been on each table so they could represent it. I scribed while they discussed. It was a fast moving conversation.

(BBC folk rapid decision-making for top three)

There was a clear top three - based on suitability for BBC Learning. Interestingly, almost all the other ideas had great merit and interest factor and the BBC folk felt that they could find other homes for the ideas. Hence it was agreed for each idea to have a ‘champion’ who would help the idea holder connect with someone suitable and interested in the BBC.

Good work all - dishing out tough love is a hard thing to do.

Then James and Myles ran through the decision, firstly looking at the top three and then discussing the others - why they weren’t suitable, why they might be more suitable elsewhere etc.

Closing, and a few jars of ale:

And that was it. Following a few rounds of applause, thank yous, questions etc., we retired to the Watershed bar for a few ales after a productive day. I was delighted to see the groups mixed up and chatting happily, swapping contact details and generally making the most of eachother.

(well earned pint of ale)

Event documents for download:

• Event design document
• Briefing sheets for idea holders

These things are challenging to get off the ground, but Dan Weisselberg and the other early members are putting a lot of effort and inspiration into it, having already organised a neighbourhood clean up (particularly fine thank you poster), found some excellent community space in a local (old) school, building local networks of interested neighbhours etc.

A bunch of us will all be in the old Fairfield School for both days, explaining what it’s all about, having some fun putting a community timeline together, and other stuff.

Here’s the flyer:

Come along.

Local wise guy, innovation catalyst, and font of much knowledge Chris Dean has kindly agreed to share his thoughts on ‘The Purpose and limits of Knowledge Management (KM)’ with us, which I can pretty much guarantee will be a very thought provoking intro to this excellent choice of subject. Here’s the blurb:

Since “KM” and “The Universe” are not synonyms it follows that KM is some subset of the latter, but which? Similarly, there is a purpose to KM - well there is isn’t there! (please let there be a purpose!!!).

It’s not really as abstract as it sounds, though it will provoke discussion…

As usual, please come along and enjoy while meeting and deepening your understanding of this topic, and book yourself in using the event booking page below.

If you want to stay up to date via the email distribution list, the link follows, and if you’re a facebook kind of person, Michael Corbett is the man behind the Bristol K-cafe group and is usually around for a good conversation…

Event booking and venue information link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe mailing list link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe Facebook group

(thanks flickr)

My mum gave them to a researcher from The Victoria and Albert Museum recently. She recently had an update:

Dear Mrs Mitchell

As it is some months since I was last in touch, I thought that you might appreciate a progress report.  Your parents’ correspondence has been sorted chronologically, starting with the very first letters in July 1930 and ending with a scattering of letters from the late 1940s.  The collection fills ten archive boxes!

Your mother was a particularly devoted correspondent, writing dutifully each day and spending several hours on her self appointed task.  Your father tried very hard but could not quite match her either in the frequency of his letters or in their length!

I have particularly enjoyed reading about Boston, which evokes for me so many happy memories of my family holiday last August, and have also been fascinated by the references to the financial crises of the early 1930s.

The collapse of two of the banks with which your grandfather Page was associated is of course echoed by the recent demise of various banks and building societies in 2009…

Well I never.

Steve Bridger gave us a great presentation around and about the subject of Generosity which left us with plenty to think about, personally, publicly and professionally. And Jesus’ social network, but that’s another story…

After a whistle stop tour ranging from big brands to personal sharing, religion to altruism, giving to taking, he left us with six things to think about:

1. Start with people
2. We are what we share
3. Is the social web making weak ties stronger than blood ties?
4. Successful brands are exceptionally generous
5. Create experiences that mirror people’s aspirations
6. Do we need new metrics for generosity?

There was a lot of discussion about society and culture, sharing in general and our expectations of selves and other. Maslow’s hierachy of needs came up along with some clarity about the term ‘survival of the fittest‘ (whereby it could be said that the Capitalist hegemony related the term ‘fittest’ to a blindly competitive theme rather than ‘that which is most suitable to its context’, which gives it a very different feel:

What’s more, although the phrase conjures up an image of a violent struggle for survival, in reality the word “fittest” seldom means the strongest or the most aggressive. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or the most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi.
(New Scientist article: Evolution myths)

We thought about why we give to charity, the implications of dis-intermediatory bodies like Kiva, Freecycle, Swop, School of Everything etc., whether big corporations actually can give, why, and what that means.

People explored how ‘brands’ could be generous, what impact that might have on ‘competition’ and ‘control’, and what it was that people were being generous with, and why.

• What are the implications for the world when my ‘generous’ act of sharing a photo means a professional photographer doesn’t get any money for producing a better one?
• Is ‘mega-corp multinational’ really being generous when it shares some of its codebase with a developer community, or simply sensible (and resourcing cheap innovation)?
• If we have a ‘competition commission’, are they the good guys or the bad guys?
• Can our market model exist side by side with a culture of ‘we are what we share’?
• If someone does what could be seen as a generous act for selfish reasons, does that make it less generous in outcome?

It seems we’re not alone in pondering this subject. On a corporate note, an interesting article appeared about this very subject:

Has it ever been important for corporations to ditch the greed and embrace generosity? It’s something that countless individuals have already started doing, of course: giving is the new taking, and sharing is the new giving. And yes, we do realize that this month’s Trend Briefing is massive, but in this business climate, can you really afford not to spend some time figuring out how to get a little closer to your customers?…

GENERATION G | “Captures the growing importance of ‘generosity’ as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy—and while that same upheaval has them longing more than ever for institutions that care—the need for more generosity beautifully coincides with the ongoing (and pre-recession) emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers.

In fact, for many, sharing a passion and receiving recognition have replaced ‘taking’ as the new status symbol. Businesses should follow this societal/behavioral shift, however much it may oppose their decades-old devotion to me, myself and I.”
(Trendwatch article on Generation G)

The resounding note for me was that it is easiest and most rational to share within the boundaries of our ‘communities’ (however they are described), and sharing between them would involve some form of exchange. As ever, the issue of trust came up, and how we define our boundaries (which reflect our intentions, which define what we can and can’t share).

As ever, thanks to The Pervasive Media Studio, for their kind loan of the excellent space, and all attendees who came and had a good think together.

The next Gurteen Bristol Knowledge Cafe is going to be held in the ever-generous Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, on Wednesday 4th February, from 18:30. The cafe proper will begin at 19:00 prompt.

Steve Bridger, local k-cafe member and ‘Chief Generosity Officer’ (with almost 20 years of work within and consulting to the charity sector) will be sharing his thoughts on the subject with us before we get into discussion.

As usual, please come along and enjoy while meeting and deepening your understanding of this topic, and book yourself in using the event booking page below:

Event booking and venue information link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe mailing list link

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe Facebook group

I’m not sure I even believe in the ‘platform’ concept any more as it so loaded a word with so many centralised implications. As well as this inherited value, so much of our activity is now so widely distributed across the web and physical world that we as individuals can now behave in any way we choose and share our stuff with whichever network we fancy, on our own terms.

The diversity is astounding; which makes me think that any sustainable distributed community support platform isn’t just one thing any more. It’s a ecology of patterns that members experience in different places at different times to achieve different community goals. I’m thinking a lot about Ron Donaldson’s ecology of web2.

When you think about it, this means that any ‘platform’ should be doing more listening than publishing, aggregating and making sense of distributed activity, than telling people how to behave and forcing them to adopt set rules of behaviour in one walled garden.

It’s the patterns that make up the networks and communities that we need to identify, not the technological platforms. And to get to the patterns, we need to develop common languages, which lead to shared mental models of the purpose of the ‘platforms’.

There is a particularly interesting post from George Oates of flickr about some of their community stuff, and this particularly jumped out at me:

Any time you construct specific rules of engagement, they are instantly open to interpretation and circumvention, and we want our members to negotiate their place with each other, not with The Authority.

Read the full article here

What an interesting thing to say.

In a corporation, or organisation with pre-existing centralised structures there remains some reason for centralised control (largely to the benefit of the organisation).

How about across a huge emergent expanding bottom-up relatively structure-less movement of people?

It was fun. We worked hard and focused and produced some interesting stuff. David Wilcox did some fantastic social reporting, the attendees captured their work on video which is gradually appearing, and there are lots of photos on the flickr group. Expect much knowledge sharing; we work to an open innovation model.

A full event report will follow with the high level design rationale and details on the interventions and how you can do it yourself; in the meantime, one of the workshops was to identify the ‘five golden rules’ for anyone thinking of launching a new multi-platform project.

Here are the top five golden rules to consider when thinking about an ‘innovative multi-platform content’ project, as identified by the event attendees:

(the five golden rules as voted by attendees of the event)

Here are the those that didn’t make it into the top five:

(the next golden rules that didn’t make it to the top five)

Here is the full list of all the rules (the top 16 are in order of voting):

• What’s the point?
• Know your target audience
• Know your platforms and their features and constraints
• Identify a desire/need that this product is filling
• A single/simple idea
• Innovate or improve
• Consider potentials, adaptability, flexibility, extendabiity of your concept
• Go Gonzo: create a culture of use; go out there and create the story
• Ask if it makes financial sense
• There are no rules
• Release early and often
• Innovation must involve risk
• Give it a title
• Keep communication simple
• Content must be find-able
• Is it feasible?
• Develop/have a strong idea and stick to it
• New or existing technology used in a compelling and powerful way
• Agree upon a plan
• Don’t spend more than 1/3 of the budget on technology
• Start from what the user wants, not what you want
• Keep it simple
• Ask why it is multi-platform
• Ask yourself if you have the right skills to make it
• Understand the lifecycle and stages of development
• Ensure seamless content interaction across all platforms
• Do you or we have the expertise?
• Know how to measure success
• Can it grow?
• Are you using the right platform?
• Don’t forget your audience
• Platform must be driven by idea not technology
• Platforms must have relevance and value ‘use strenghts’
• Content must appeal to audience
• Interdependence of platform, content, audience
• A clear and adaptable business model
• A clear target audience

Now, we all know that having favourites is wrong, so these aren’t my favourites, but a couple of them really touched my favourite spots:

This one made me think of Nancy White, John Smith and Etienne Wenger and their work on the emerging role of Technology Steward:

(golden rule from event)

This one just simply IS:

Good work all! Full report to follow.

We worked with Lorna Candy and the team at Incisive Media to help them provide more networking opportunities for delegates and speakers before and during the conference, online and offline, using different tools.

Background:

We approached it from a ‘blended facilitation’ perspective; here is a working definition of ‘blended facilitation’ from earlier work findings:

‘Blended facilitation’ is an understanding of how to facilitate a group’s development using different tools and interventions in the two different domains (virtual and physical) in a structured framework.
(Media Sandbox report, November 2008)

A number of us have been circling this subject for some time and building an open body of experiments and lessons learned since Contactivity in 2006, Media Sandbox and Unbla in 2007 and 2gether08 and many others.

Before the event:

The first thing we did was read the lessons learned from our work at 2gether08, where David had used Crowdvine (the event social networking platform) intensively and Ed had worked on an early knowledge networking experiment called ‘tag surfing’.

As a group with the Incisive team, we defined the purpose of the event itself, and how the facilitation would fit into that. Incisive set up a free version of Crowdvine for the event and we configured the profile questions to reflect a ‘knowledge-y’ enquiry (‘What topics do you have experience in’ and ‘What topics do you want to learn more about?’).

As delegates entered this information as part of their profiles, this gathered two ‘tag clouds’ which reflected the interests of the attendees and gave them a natural route to finding eachother. We printed these out and made them public at the event too:

(Topic tags from online network)

We put together a ‘facilitation plan’ with Incisive, outlining the different platforms and activities in the run up to the event. The agreement was to not intervene unless necessary; we could have put lots of effort into conversational engagement to drive up activity, but that was not the purpose of our experiment. Instead, we asked some of the speakers to write a brief description of their sessions and left it at that. I also put together a few simple ‘howto’ walkthroughs for those who could not understand how to use the platform but these were used once or twice only – a good sign.

In the run up to the event, the platform had 115 users making 193 ‘connections’ (adding others as ‘friends’, ‘want-to-meet’, ‘fan’). This is approximately 16% of the event attendees (approximately 700).

Having set the platform up and tried it with some speakers, Incisive sent emails to everyone who had registered inviting them to try it out. Integrating the platform with the booking system wasn’t easy, as there is no process to support this so as the booking process proceeded, not all delegates received invites to the platform. This integration element (both technically and socially) is clearly something that will improve.

On the last day before the event itself we sent a reminder to the platform users to print out their ‘who I want to meet’ sheet with some further information about the interventions we would be trying at the event, packed our bags and moved to Olympia for the week…

During the event:

Knowledge networking:

In line with the work done at 2gether, we were interested to see how we could support event delegates meet eachother based on interest. This began with asking people to express their interests on the online networking platform, and we needed to carry that across to the event.

We did this with some facilitation boards and a bunch of post-it notes in true old facilitation style.

In the morning tea break, we (helped by Josh Connor of Bond Associates) handed out post-it notes to delegates, explaining the purpose of our experiment and asking them to write keywords representing their interests, and to hand them back or add them to the boards themselves. This generated a bunch of post-its on a board:

(David and Emma with the boards filling up with topics)

During the next conference session, we grouped the topics but did not add titles to them. The boards were an attraction in themselves – many delegates came to look at the work ongoing and we asked them to re-arrange them as they saw fit; one or two people did:

(Attendees moving the post-its around)

During the conference session after lunch, having asked the delegates to alter the post-it notes groupings if suitable, we labeled the groupings and put those labels on tables around the centre with a handy board describing which table had which topic. There were 12 high level topics:

(The most popular topics became table-based topics)

In the afternoon break, delegates were invited to sit at these tables, meet others with similar interests, and have whatever conversation they chose. Approximately half of the tables were attended; some noticeably not (see lessons learned below for more detail). One or two tables were taken by people who did not want to discuss the labeled topic. Those tables that were attended thoroughly enjoyed it:

(The learning table had never met before but had a lot in common)

We did not repeat this experiment as the intervention was best done over one day in this context, but we did leave the resultant mindmap onsite along with the experiment’s lessons learned during the reset of the event which received a continuous flow of interested observers.

During the event:

Social Reporting:

Crowdvine provided a very easy way to post video shot at the event, and this was done in three ways that you can see on the site:

1. Phone: Using a mobile phone (Nokia N82) and Qik software to stream directly to the web, and then taking embed code from the site and pasting directly into a blog post, as you can see here.
2. Videoboo: Using a laptop with Videoboo software to record interviews through the webcam, and then automatically uploading to YouTube. There’s an example here.
3. Video camera. The Clay Shirky interview was shot to higher quality on a Sanyo Xacti, then edited and uploaded. It would have been time-consuming to do more of that.

Each of the first two was made possible - or certainly easier - by having a wifi connection. The phone could have been used with a 3g connection, but it would have been slower and less certain. The files from the laptop could have been uploaded later, but it would have been a lengthier process.

Interviews are easiest when people are just “hanging out” … having informal conversations with others, rather than engaged in group conversations, queuing for lunch or coffee. Most people were fairly busy in sessions, so trying to get interviews during breaks can be intrusive.

In these situations the laptop was easier, because it was possible to approach people with the offer of trying a portable videobooth - something in which they might have a professional interest. They could then decide whether or not to record an interview.

The aim of the video socialreporting was:

• a) partly to create an informal record
• b) partly to add content to the Crowdvine to increase networking, and perhaps
• c) also to add something to conversations … for example, asking people to summarise a discussion around the topical tags.

a) We did get some record from interviews with speakers and others. The Clay Shirky interview provided a fresh story - he recommended asking for examples of what didn’t work, not just “best practice”. In order to do more of this, it would be best to arrange with event organisers in advance which speakers to cover, and when they might be available. It can difficult to get “opportunistic” interviews if speakers are not expecting to be asked.

b) There was little commenting on the items on Crowdvine, perhaps because not many people brought laptops and/or expected to engage online.

c) In this instance social reporting didn’t really add anything to conversations. It wasn’t expected, and people were wary.

(Lessons Learned from the experiment available for all to see)

Lessons Learned:

Social Intervention lessons

• Mindmapping: was very popular both as an activity and as an object. The board proved very popular amongst those taking photographs of the event. Some are starting to be been published to Flickr and some photos of the post-it tags are receiving virtual world tags and comments.
• Instructions are absolutely vital – you need to be able to explain the purpose and process of your intervention very simply
• Language Barriers:  a language barrier became apparent after many Northern Europeans with English not as first language attendees approached the facilitators to understand the meaning of the boards. Once they understood the concept, many where happy to participate.
• Must Approach: very few people will approach the boards out of interest and convert to adding a tag. Approaching and chatting to people is critical for success.
• Time to Think: many participants like to think about what they want to add before jumping in. Allowing them time is invaluable.
• Definition of Networking: feedback from previous events had suggested that more networking was wanted. Facilitated networking involving meeting with others about shared topics and talking with them wasn’t necessarily the only way – while the mindmap was popular, the discussion break-outs weren’t universally wanted.
• Real World 90-9-1: as with online interaction analysis, there are far more people who want to observe than actively participate!
• Personalities: there was much discussion about the relationship between levels of ‘chatting’ and type of topic. Perhaps some people are drawn to certain subjects of interest and they are equally chatty/non-chatty?
• Surprisingly Disruptive: it was!

Social reporting lessons:

• While those attending had expressed an interest in more networking - and social media was one of their concerns - the expectation was that they would mainly receive information rather than use social media to enhance their experience.
• The format of the event - in line with those expectations - meant that a lot of social reporting could have been seen as intrusive. It was not a “conversational” event.
• Because most people were not online during the event they were not able to respond to anything we posted.

However, this was a good opportunity to explore what might be appropriate in future. I would suggest:

• Agreement with speakers that they would be available for interviews on the day, and if possible one of the organisers to assist the social reporter in the logistics of this.
• Setting up a videobooth, perhaps explicitly linked to discussions after sessions, so that people could contribute something while engaged with a topic.
• Shooting some video before the event that would be available on Crowdine to show what’s possible, and start commenting

General lessons:

• Official Twitter channel: engaging at the earliest opportunity with an official Twitter channel. The social intervention team were tweeting but not through the official channel. There was some confusion around this onsite.
• Guide people using Twitter: use the Twitter channel to guide people to and around official channels (website, Facebook, Crowdvine, physical world activities).
• Hashtags to aggregate content: make sure the official tags (#hashtag) are published so that those who want to can use them and find each other’s content easily. Unique tags (if possible) are essential i.e. ‘onlineinfo’ on its own is too general. Make a new tag every year i.e. ‘#onlineinfo2008’, ‘#onlineinfo2009’.
• Not as add-on: facilitation of this nature bringing together physical world, live tagging, online tagging social networks and social reporting is most effective when worked into the event formally.

Quotes and things we overheard:

Feedback has been taken from official and unofficial channels including Face-to-Face at the Event, Twitter, Blog Networks, Flickr and Facebook Network, Crowdvine.

Positive

Twitter Coverage:

• LBrad: #onlineinfo table12 social networking: was social & interesting debate - hard to leave & go back to the next session. More please (view Tweet)

Flickr Coverage:

• Photo on flickr

Blog Posts on Clay Shirky Interview:

• Dave Briggs
• Steve Dale

Blog Posts on the Tagging Experiment:

• Information Today

Negative

Technology:

• karenblakeman: “Tags at Online Information are a mess. For searching Twitter I am now using onlineinfo2008 OR onlineinfo08 OR onlineinfo OR online2008″
• Karen Blakeman (on the Crowdvine network): “But the feeds aren’t updated and I am not sure where one starts a discussion. There seem to be bits and pieces everywhere.”

Thank you to everyone who tried the experiment and shared their opinions with us. As we said at the beginning, it was an experiment and we all approached from a learning perspective, so that next year can be more effective.

The main lesson to emerge is that facilitated interventions, social reporting and use of social media need to be more than an add-on if they are to be deeply successful. They have to be designed into the event, with a clear purpose, briefing for speakers and others, and specific arrangements on the day. That will, however, only be appropriate if those attending really do want a more interactive experience.

Incisive gave us a good start in this area which made it all possible. The conference industry is well entrenched with specific business models so we know it was a step into the unknown for them!

The level of engagement we tried on this occasion was probably appropriate given the expectations of those attending. By next year many people attending may have had more personal experience with social media, and also be professionally “hungrier” to understand what’s possible. If that’s the case, we could consider an early session that offered some hands-on demonstrations, providing people with the opportunity to follow through and try the interventions for themselves. Even if 3-4 people were interested it would help move them from an external add-on into something relevant to professional practice.

We all hope that this provides you with some clues, ideas, tips and so forth. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Well done all! Sharing is caring

Storytelling and narrative analysis bounced back into fashion through knowledge management a few years ago and is increasingly popular. We hear more and more about organisations looking to ‘engage us’ with ‘it’ (usually involving social media), but ‘it’ also has great power (with related ethical considerations) as a tool for groups to understand themselves, make sense of their situation and develop apropriately.

There are hints of this in social reporting, technical stewardship, user-centred design processes, community hosting and more.

One of the things that stuck most in my head from the k-cafe was the importance of stories to communities as social objects to share, compare, think about, discuss, and build around. We all have a different perspective on these tales, especially until they are written down, yet (and perhaps because of this) they bond us in many ways.

Here’s a bit from ‘The Storyteller’ by Mario Vargas Llosa:

“… I was deeply moved by the thought of that being, those beings, in the unhealthy forests of eastern Cusco and Madre de Dios, making long journeys of days or weeks, bringing stories from one group of Machiguengas to another and taking away others, reminding each member of the tribe that the others were alive, that despite the great distances that separated them, they still formed a community, shared a tradition and beliefs, ancestors, misfortunes and joys; the fleeting, perhaps legendary figures of those habladores who - by occupation, out of necessity, to satisfy a human whim - using the simplest, most time-hallowed of expedients, the telling of stories, were the living sap that circulated and made the Machiguengas into a society, a people interconnected and interdependent beings…”
(The Storyteller, p93)