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

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.

I am suddenly inspired to write this up after enjoying Ron Donaldson‘s excellent ecological explanation of web2 and Dominic Campbell‘s admirable work for Barnet Council at Unicom’s social tools conference this week (great write ups of the sessions from Suw on Corante).

Three pieces came together for me at the conference today:

• Judith Lewis from iLevel said “… the internet taught me to be an extrovert…”
• Ron Donaldson said “… the early adopters patterned our direction…” (when describing how all these www2 tools have been adopted and the patterns of their use laid out)
• earlier conversations with Dominic Campbell (who told me to write this up in April) about twitter and personalities and public declarations as how we may be experiencing “declarative immaturity”

This is a piece about networking: past, present, and future.

(See the presentation on slideshare)

It’s meant to be delivered with a mix of semi-serious bafflement about these www2 tools which I use all the time (and the stupid things I have done with them) combined with moderate rage about how we are in the middle of some briliant changes but also a huge amount of hype and evangelism which can alienate the very people we want to enthuse.

Without a doubt, the comedy angle of it will be lost in my rambling verbiage write up, so remember it’s half curmudgeonly, half comedic observation. And I will go on a plain English course, soon.

The current setting is an industry with software providers and agencies primarily interested in shifting product or selling adverts on web services with some brilliant editorial and specific technical affordances designed to encourage ‘growth’.

Compering this situation are somewhat evangelist early adopters encouraging certain patterns of use that they have found suits them personally (see Crossing the Chasm for the risks of this in marketing speak).

On top of that is our great societal paradigm of ‘Growth’ (which was built on unfeasible debt, astoundingly greedy bonuses and the gradual transfer of state monies to the private sector).

On the growth theme, we’re also seeing a cultural tendency in these softwares and practices towards celebrating quantity in our lives as we count and publicly display our ‘value’ in terms of numbers of friends, comments on our blogs, size of our name in our friends’ tag clouds, recommendations on linkedin etc.

It’s like being a teenager obssessed with how many friends you have, but it all being laid open for all to see. Yes you can ignore it, but it’s tough.

I’m not saying that people don’t value their online interactions qualitatively, but too often I have seen inferences that people are better than others or more qualified for work because of how many contacts they have.

Think of the old addage ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ but on gnarly stimulants. People do this for themselves – they ‘game’ these social networks to see how many contacts they can get; groups are set up with the sole purpose of being the ‘biggest’ group.

The message is written (not so) implicitly all over the networking technology: ‘more friends is better’.

Dunbar’s theory on the practicalities of this aside, this all makes me feel rather uncomfortable and un-loved (ah poor me) when I foolishly compare myself to others. For some time I thought it was just me being so neurotic in a curmudgeonly response to fads, but further to sharing these feelings it seems others feel the same way.

In parallel to this, we are learning what is public, private, personal and political, and what to say in public with our social tools.

I have made some amazingly stupid (but harmless) blunders on almost every social tool; but it’s a new world and thus it’s OK to do stupid things as long as we learn from them. The boundaries between these four are blurring rapidly and different people’s ethics come into play.

(See the presentation on slideshare)

For example, an indignant and possibly righteously furious ex-employee of an organisation might be tempted to tell the world how they have been badly handled; whether this is ‘professional’ or ‘public’ or not is up for debate, let alone the discovery that the world doesn’t really like hearing this sort of thing; it discomforts people to hear of others misfortune and, frankly they would rather not know. Either way, airing your wounded pride may not necessarily be the best thing.

I am well aware that I could simply not use all this groovy new social networking stuff (as I have been told when I am also being called a neurotic curmudgeon), but I like it and I range from helpless declarer of things or total recluse.

If ‘networking is the future’, along with transparency and open-ness as we are repeatedly told, then more ‘quality’ needs to go into the design of the products and the messages sent out by early adopters.

We are also in the middle of a huge wave of new bottom-up, open, cheap, inclusive, participatory, engaging conferences, driven by the people for the people.

I’m a big fan of them. I design and run them. I’m one of the early adopter evangelist types in this instance (my blended facilitation work uses online social networking before and after the conference too), dragging people out from the quiet corners, forcing them to collaborate, waving my horn around.

Although I keenly try not terrorise the shy people, and try to include interventions that benefit all types of person. Ahem.

(See the presentation on slideshare)

Likewise, network and community facilitators may make efforts to ensure that the ‘power laws of personality’ (whereby popular confident people get more popular and thus are identified as more important etc.) are handled sensitively in order to help groups achieve their goals by including everyone’s offerings. A similar subject is seen at a recent debate around Open Space facilitation for example.

In the land of online communities, the KPIs are still focused largely on numbers of people, numbers of comments, ratio of readers to commenters etc. In the ‘knowledge’ world, assessing ‘knowledge’ transfer or transformation still eludes beleaguered knowledge management professionals, so the temptation is to place value on quantity (docs, contacts etc.). Hmm…

People who don’t make endless comments in online communities are called ‘lurkers’, and community managers are told to drag them out into the open and ‘convert’ them – success being seen as them making comments, which can be counted and presented in a fancy report to management.

It’s wrapped up in nice talk about engagement, but if not handled sensitively, rather whiffs of centralised community dictatorship. I’ve been there and know that when you obssess over this as the facilitator, you make a rod for your own back when you have other routes to ‘success’.

For example, when we decided to publish the first community book on KnowledgeBoard, we found that many of the people who stepped forward to voluntarily write whole chapters (not ‘metoo’ comments in a forum or empty nice comments to blogs) had not made any comments onsite ever – it just wasn’t their thing.

Who are we to (albeit non-directly) tell people to behave in a way that suits us?

(See the presentation on slideshare)

We are in a time when it is considered very important to behave in a highly extroverted manner with a public display of how many people we know.

What about the shy people? Those less confident than the highly literate www2-ers? They who aren’t attracted to shiney new gadgets? Those who just don’t get ‘technology’. How about the busy people? Those who feel uncomfortable in big groups? People with no small talk?

It breaks my heart that people using social networking technology can be made to ‘feel small’ by a friend of theirs’ tag cloud (and before you snort derisively, they do). That is not good design; that is blunt and myopic. And the business logic behind it? If you convince people they have to make more friends, they will see more pages, which means more advertising.

Do we all have to learn to be extroverted? That would be a new tyranny – the tyranny of ‘social’.

I referred to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to express the point about how we are all different. I know it attracts disparate opinions but dont’ get hung up on it.

(See the presentation on slideshare)

My point being that networks, communities, events, pubs, offices, squats etc. are composed of people who are different. Being that they are different, I bet that they would want different approaches to their social interactions, not this new tyranny.

Odds on, some of them won’t be good at having millions of friends, and might prefer to have deeper relationships with fewer people. Yes, they can still use the technology, but all the messages in and around it are implicitly discouraging this, which makes them feel bad.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m off to feed the cats and worry that I’m publicly declaring nonsense…

So – some ideas about the future of networking:

• People will tire of the relentless networking ‘growth’ paradigm just as most bloggers eventually tire of relentless blogging (links from one google search ‘taking a break from blogging), and others learn to turn their mobile phones off
• We’ll start seeing the networkers being network-ed out and taking a break and telling us how great occasional solitude is.
• The software providers will adjust their packages’ design to afford deeper relationships between users
• ‘Networking’ will move from ‘growth’ to take more purposeful ‘knowledge-y’ stuff into account, and services like twine will focus on groups congregating around activities and objects rather than random chat and endless expansion, while other services like the Cynefin software will finally bring qualitative analysis to the fore
• ‘Unconferences‘ will increasingly focus on specific issues and become more ‘constructivist‘
• Community and network facilitators will learn to know their members better and focus on network optimisation based on qualitative interaction analysis rather than ‘number of members’
• ‘Engagement planning’ will consider people in their context long before processes and technology appear on the agenda
• Those who say that ‘Community’ has gone from being local to being interest-based and global will find that the ‘local’never went away, it just didn’t need any sell-able technology (beyond door knockers on your neighbours’ doors)

It’s free and I recommend you read it. Here’s the blurb:

This article outlines how unconferencing contributes to the vision of a performative social science that aims at stimulating social change. The authors argue that conference participation is an integral part of research and has the potential to support social change by enabling learning processes. They then develop an unconferencing model from the theoretical reflection of different theories from social science which reveals that unconferences support individual and social learning processes through enabling knowledge transformation as well as through creating structural links between societal sub systems.

Link to the paper here

This is a subject close to all of our hearts and one we continue to drive very keenly. All of our events have this theory their core, but we try not to go on too much about it in case we bore people who just want a gig that works.

We did a fair amount of doing and learning around conference theory with the ‘Contactivity‘ events during our KnowledgeBoard days:

As a research body, KnowledgeBoard had a strong desire to create an event environment which we could study in order to generate knowledge about this new meeting format. It was a natural evolution of our thoughts during 2005; to host a gathering which would provide us with the data for our research. It was loaded with risk, but it’s not research if you know the outcome, is it?
(From the Contactivity event report)

Since then, we have used many of our separate event design jobs to explore the themes we found back in 2004/5/6 – the European doctors with their devilishly exploratory Unbla model, and well, me (with great support from my friends and colleagues) with ongoing event design and facilitation work (PM Studio, Connecting Bristol, DC10 plus, 2gether08, BBC Learning etc.).

A thoroughly exciting thing is that I am currently co-designing an epic event with the unbla team in Zurich in the autumn to generate do-able answers to carbon reduction problems, but more on that another day; suffice to say it feels like coming home (albeit a bit of a weird Euro-warm and loving but infinitely challenging home).

Well done all! I knew you could make sense of it!

It was great as I got to talk about sport stuff, and communities, and virtual tools, and facilitation – almost a perfect triangle for me.

Watch the presentation here

The aim was to show how virtual technologies can support actual existing real communities (as opposed to building them online) in different ways, in order to give Sport England and the other people there an idea of the range of options ahead of them as they roll onward into the social media world.

I identified and discussed one very real community I know and love (Bristol Climbing Centre), and had a look at all the disparate communications/collaboration tools we use to co-ordinate ourselves, then considered the new activmob model (currently in pilot down in Kent) as a contrast, and drew a few benefits/key points out of the comparison.

Watch the presentation here

We are planning for the final event to wrap up this year’s Media Sandbox commissions and give the community another boost with a physical gathering.

For background, you can read about the launch event, and the high level case study about the blended facilitation approach we took to the project as a whole.

Suffice to say, we want to wave farewell to this phase with a satisfying ‘whoosh’, and welcome in the new phase with an open and inquisitive ‘oooh ain’t that cool’ noise. And I’m keen for the event to afford as much open learning as possible while we’re at it.

It’s going to be a mix of serious workshop (knowledge transfer stuff about the actual business of the projects doing R&D), judging panel on the projects (for more support), exhibiting the projects’ work, playing some games, and an open opportunity for anyone to pitch their idea for cash and a Pervasive Media Studio residency.

And a village fayre. With bunting. And tea. And I have bought a new horn specially to honk at twitterers.

As always, it’s free and anyone can come. Official blurb here:

From public fountains to bluetooth fountains, street games to shop windows, over the last three months the six groups of Media Sandbox participants have been working on new applications in pervasive media.

This final Media Sandbox event is your chance to play with the prototypes, discuss the challenges and watch the final project pitches as the Sandbox participants present their work to a team of industry judges. And, at the end of the night, one project will be presented with a further £8,000 production grant.

Plus your chance to win £1,000

The event will also feature a pervasive media pitching session with a chance to win a £1,000 development grant and residency at the Pervasive Media Studio. Enter your idea here.
(Event link and booking here)

Come along. It will be fun. And we will learn.

Event link for more information

Digital networks and computer systems remain obscure to most people until something goes wrong. What if everyone had a role in designing them and deciding how society used its digital technologies? This one-day workshop shares methods taken from performance and drama developed to engage people in thinking about technology and what they want from the designers of the systems that will surround us in The Not Quite Yet.
Link to event page

… And please tell me all about it.

This ties in with a long held passion of mine which is that we still don’t understand enough about what we mean when we start designing systems, and we aren’t involving the right people in the design process, or dropping them into unsuitable spaces and expecting them to behave. And when we wave the word ‘engagement’ around, it’s getting serious. And when we try to facilitate people in unsuitable spaces, of course it leads to issues…

We have inherited ‘social’ software from a history of people who tell us it is ‘social’ so there (at least it’s not big centralised enterprise systems, or heavily monitored communities we are told), but is it really that ‘social’? What does it mean? For whom? For what purpose?
Aren’t we now just throwing all the new widgets at a social requirement and hoping some of them stick? Shouldn’t we be understanding the requirements much more fully?

Are we sure that we aren’t still stuffing humans into communication technology frameworks from the top down that don’t give them what they need or want? Even if we adopt agile, get busy with UCD, drum up many use cases, throw personas around like billy-ho, watch punters through one way mirrors, and whatever new process is going, isn’t that still a bit abstract and top down?

It still doesn’t sound democratic and co-design to me. Still sounds like people being given stuff and told to use it – not necessarily for their benefit.
Where are the people in this process?

How can we connect with them in order to explain to them the implications of their decisions?

The gap remains and I think this workshop is part of the facilitation meets strategy puzzle.

Other people thinking about this include David Wilcox who has an excellent series of workshops designed to flatten the power laws of supplier-punter by cascading the right questions at the right times, and Nancy White with the Technology Steward idea, which takes online facilitation into this realm, and I’m sure others (hello!).

I’m working with Dan Dixon on a workshop applying Pattern Design principles to a new system before we even use the ‘community’ word, which we will be writing about in due course…

Umm. Yes, well. Err. There you go. Soap box moment over. Go to the workshop, and let me know.