The next Gurteen Bristol Knowledge Cafe is going to be held in the exceptionally ethical Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, on Thursday February 11th, from 18:30. The cafe proper will begin at 19:00 prompt as usual.

It will be introduced by Andy Wistreich from Essential Education, who has kindly offered to raise the topic of ‘Ethics’. This is an important, complex and often problematic issue for the individual and society.  By sharing our perspectives we can all learn something to help us in our ethical challenges.

Here’s the blurb:

It looks like ethics is about right and wrong, but it is never black and white.  For me the fundamental issue is motivation – why do or not do something?  I am also interested in the fact that laws and ethical codes seem to come from out there in society whereas our choices about how to behave seem to be made in here in our minds.  Again, this is not a simple division.  I’ll try to introduce these general points in the intro and then people can take it where they want with examples from their own work and practice.

Ethical consumerism is still consumerism

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

Introduced by Mike Zeidler, facilitator, coach and connector, driving force behind the Bristol Hub, Association of Sustainability Practitioners and more.

Our subject is ‘language and leadership’. Here’s the blurb:

Words send men to war, make stocks and shares plunge or rocket and can completely change the feel of almost any situation.  Many leaders feel safer with facts, figures and physical materials because feelings are soft and fluffy.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Mike will be talking about the immense power of language, and how skillful use can make leaders of us all.  If that sounds like a recipe for chaos to you, you should definitely come along..!

Do as we say, not as we do (Carnyville, Bristol)

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

Ciaran, Tim, Michael and Philippa kindly wrote up some of their reflections which I include along with my own.

Phillipa gave an excellent presentation on the subject, considering some different definitions, the context (from personal to eco-system), whether we can ‘build’ it, what the properties of a resilient system could be, and a few further thoughts.

You can see the presentation here:

Write up from Phillipa:

Ciaran on the tension between building resilient systems that have redundancy, and “efficient” systems – e.g. for power generation.  The argument goes that although micro-generating, distributed systems might be more resilient, they cost twice as much.  But is the real question how you cost these things appropriately?  As with the banking crisis, the cost of fixing everything after the disaster is absolutely enormous.  There’s also the question of the real environmental costs of building massive power plants, as well as the toll on people’s lives who live near them etc.

K-cafe group

Write up from Ciaran:

We discussed how resilience is an emergent property of well balanced communicative systems and this can be viewed on different levels:

On a personal level resilience requires balance between the conscious will to achieve or act in a certain way and the reflective state of just being and so able to be receptive and allow creative flow.

This second way of being requires inner confidence and/or supportive surroundings where explicit goals or other directive and judgement thinking are not at play. It is this space that allows for the creativity and innovation to emerge.

These two ways of being are reflected at community, organisational and societal levels, but often run counter to the pressure to be more efficient and productive. Similar to the individual, a balanced community for example would include some individuals allowed more time to be reflective whilst others more directive. A balanced society looks for reflective thinking in academic institutions and by supporting diverse artistic communities (the example of Ireland allowing poor artists to pay zero tax was cited). Striking the balance is key to resilience. Too much of one or the other can lead to problems. These different aspects to ourselves and communities etc. need also to be communicating well with each other.

Our group discussed how currently organisations and society generally seems particularly focused on the drive for efficiency and the education system has become increasingly directive, with too little room for more reflection and genuine creativity and diversity. Combined with a narrowing of cultural perspectives due to globalisation of the western socio-economic paradigm, we have been left very rigid and so vulnerable to changes. Examples of how Australian aboriginal culture approaches ‘problem solving’ reminded us how there are in fact many other ways to be that we have little or no experience of and we carry many assumptions about what is possible and what will be in the future. We discussed how these assumptions along with our aspirations are looking very shaky if not plain stupid! Paradoxically the times of plenty we have been through that might have offered the greater redundancy for more reflective states of being at all levels, has been somewhat swept aside by a consumer culture which fosters anxiety and lack of self confidence, so not conducive to development of personal or societal resilience.

(Ciaran Mundy)

Write up from Michael:

Resilience is linked to the esprit de corps (used in the sense of – common spirit of comradeship, enthusiasm, and devotion to a cause among the members of a group) of the community.  EDC comes from a lot of things including the ideology, the “community code” (which dictates how community members treat each other, how they help each other, how they behave, etc), and the ongoing interactions that keep the community alive.

So I think forging a powerful community code is a thing that community leaders need to do (by example, by fiat or whatever) and ensuring that community members have community minded interactions with each other.

(Michael Corbett)

K-cafe big circle

Write up from Tim:

Breakout group discussion

For resilience you need slack in any system, otherwise it’s fragile. There needs to be room and time for experimentation so that adaptability and flexibility can happen.

Robust doesn’t equal resilient. Robust suggests something won’t fail. Resilient suggests it can fail and bounce back – sometimes failure can be good, for development.

Working targets, which are an ubiquitous method now, are about cutting out slack from the system, hence they tend towards eliminating resilience.

Can a system break down and then be rebuilt? Is that resilience?
That’s not resilience for the system, but could be resilience for a higher level of system containing it.
So we have to be clear what level is our focus within the hierarchy of systems.

Personal resilience is the struggle of Will (or Intention) and Emotion. When we pursue something we use our will to keep our intention and action continuing. When we meet obstacles and failures we often feel discouragement. If our feelings get too negative that drains our energy and saps our will to continue. Philippa’s slide showed Positivity as a component of resilience.

The word will may suggest a drive towards a goal. If so, intention may be a better word. We always have some intention, even if only to keep behaving according to our own values, which isn’t goal-focused or active behaviour.

Can resilience be lost? If things are too easy, complacency can lead to loss of responsiveness, like lack of exercise leads to loss of muscle tone.

Action must be balanced by review and reflection – this is the slack. So there’s a need for people to ponder and experiment, perhaps even dedicated people for those tasks. The Irish government recognised the value of this to the whole of society and they said so when they stopped artistic vocations being liable for income tax.

Targets and league tables in effect claim to define perfection and how to get there. Setting them implies that reaching or exceeding the targets means reaching the ideal. But having an ideal of perfection leaves no room for innovation and creativity to improve the ideal. So if everyone’s energies are taken up in meeting targets the system can’t evolve.

The harder you strive to extend yourself to achieve a hard goal, the less resilient and more vulnerable/fragile you are. The last straw can break your back.

Whole Group Discussion

When a thing is resilient it implies that it continues despite obstacles. But what continues? It’s not always obvious, especially if there is evolution and adaptation that changes a lot of the original. So there has to be some essence that does continue and is the thing that is resilient.

Castro has been a very resilient dictator. Has that been helped by the tension and opposition from the USA? That very opposition has created activity and strength, like resistance exercises a muscle. Muscles are resilient, but through actively using that resilience they grow more and more resilient. Unused resilience leads to weakness, using it repeatedly leads to strength.

So tension is perhaps a key to resilience. Muscles have tone, which is an optimal level of tension even when relaxed. A cat is the epitome of relaxation yet is ready to spring. A tennis ball is very resilient and can take a lot of challenge yet return to its form and function undamaged – it’s the tension inherent in its construction that gives that ability. Perhaps resilience requires plenty of latent ‘potential energy’. Elasticity is resilience.

Ideas and religions can be resilient. They (or some) do compete, evolve and adapt. So they are in tension and face resistance. The idea of memes put ideas into a context of being objects that compete for survival.

Too settled a state leads to loss of resilience, like loss of muscle tone. e.g. Woolworths was once very strong and presumably resilient, enough to fend off all threats. But then its settled state led eventually to it becoming something else – flabby, rigid, stagnant? – until it was very vulnerable and collapsed.

Efficiency seems opposite to resilience.

How do you measure resilience?

(Tim Sheppard)

Nice picture of some pigs as it's cute

Write up from Ed (that’s me by the way):

It was fascinating all the way through, with huge amounts to reflect on and consider. Among many things, what stuck out the most for me was a question raised about the relationship between personal and communal resilience. As well as its relevance to Transition initiatives, I suspect that this is an important point for David Wilcox and the work around Local Communities.

With my facilitator hat on, the balance between individual and group dynamics is a core issue for event design, and something I deal with when helping groups identify and achieve their goals. Every event I design tries to take into account that we are all human and not perfect ‘expressors’, indeed that many of us don’t like being in groups, and find the now ubiquitous ‘sharing’ something of a tyranny. In light of this I try to make space for different behaviours; not expecting everyone to behave in the same way. But this isn’t necessarily about ‘resilience’ per se; more a background to the following questions.

A knowledge café attendee once told me that she felt intimidated before coming to a café as she thought that she might look stupid. She is not stupid at all. This response is partly her responsibility about her confidence (as responsible for her self) and mine (as responsible for the group reputation, language and dynamics). This is difficult for her, an issue for me (who wants everyone to be happy all the time – one of my personal issues), and possibly a reflection on this individual/group crossover, and possibly a learning point for the café model and the language used.

This individual confidence issue is touched upon in a recent post from Rob about Transition Oxford’s story; among other things about people feeling a lack of confidence, and the language used, and I reckon a jump off point for the following questions in my head:

• Is personal resilience a necessary pre-condition for resilient relationships with others (intimately, friendship-ly, and in groups and beyond)?
• How can we assess our own personal resilience, and be aware of our strengths and weaknesses when relating to others?
• How can we understand the effect we have on our relationships?
• Does success as a group rely on each group member being personally resilient?
• Or can a group’s structure and dynamics be designed (or emerge) to overcome our individual issues and bring out the best of us?
• Is it necessary for a group to have a clear purpose in order to overcome our personal issues?

So more questions than anything else from me then!

So good work all and particular thanks to Phillipa for speaking, and the contributors for their thoughts above

Our introductory speaker is Philipa Bayley, acting head of the Centre for Public Engagement, Bristol University (and full on neuro-science doctor geek but don’t tell her I told you that).

Our subject is ‘resilience’; we will be hearing a lot of this word soon, that’s a guarantee.

Here’s the blurb:

None of us knows what the future holds (not even Mystic Meg) but chances are there are some not-too-nice things up ahead.

Whether we’re thinking about the challenges that individuals, communities or nations face, resilience is about how we deal with those challenges and not only bounce back, but ‘bounce up’.

Come and discuss what makes people and organisations resilient, and how we might build that capacity in from the start.

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

Some other handy links:

Definition of resilience on wikipedia

Interesting piece from Dave Pollard on resilience

jellyfish on flickr

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)

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

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

It covers all of our strategic planning, the tools we used, activities we pursued (and chose not to pursue), the lessons we learnt and the metrics we measured by. And there are some handy diagrams.

Download the full report here:
Which Widget for What? Media Sandbox 2008 Report

Here’s the intro:

“…Much has been made of the potential of web 2.0 or social media technologies to harness knowledge and network distributed communities, but how easy is it for organisations to effectively use these widgets and websites?

In November 2007, as part of the Media Sandbox commissioning scheme,  iShed set out to explore how organisations could integrate and deploy digital technologies and new facilitation methods to support collaborative research and build a Community Of Interest around a research topic…”

We set out on this trip with a mutual agreement to share our findings with others interested in the suitable application of all this web2.0 stuff in an organisation. I am proud that we got there and are publishing it.

Many thanks to Clare Reddington of iShed for being a pro-active, approriately daring, and wise collaborator.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate get in touch. The only constant is change and the learning never stops.

Download the full report here:
Which Widget for What? Media Sandbox 2008 Report

Other reports from this project:

• Launch event report
• Early case study
• Final event report

The next Gurteen Bristol Knowledge Cafe is going to be held in the multi-disciplinary Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, on Thursday 27 November, from 18:30. The cafe proper will begin at 19:00 prompt.

Tim Sheppard, local storytelling group member, will be introducing the subject before we get down to the serious k-cafe business as usual.

If you have any specific interests, please let us know. Tim got some feedback in the pub after our last gathering, but if you feel the urge to share some more with him, please add your thoughts to the wiki page.

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

Tim Sheppard website link

Storytelling wiki page for you to add any requests

Bristol Gurteen Knowledge Cafe mailing list link

Event page on Gurteen website