CrapHammer

The Future of Publics

I don't come from this space, so speaking of "publics" in the plural freaks me out a little.  That said, this presentation rocks.  It's much closer to engagement in this new socially leveraged world of technology we live in today.

Public Media 09 Presentation | Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics, by Jessica Clark and Pat Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media

View more presentations from Jessica Clark. (tags: for center)

It's time for brands to do something for people...

I found this great little slidecast (a powerpoint with audio) over on Paul Isakson's site.

It contains a quick but focused recap by a major media agency on the history of communities and a wonderful call for brands to help people do things.  There are some great case studies as well.  Worth the watch, IMO.

The Future of Advertising, APA, 17/02/09

View more presentations from John v Willshire. (tags: communities social)

I really liked the simple but easy to remember four areas for brands to create value, invite people into the brands' communities and to do something for people:
Useful
Entertain
Educate
Connect People

But like all traditional media players, it stays centred on the brand being the source - the creator of things that people use/interact with.  So while it is cool to see the research findings from things like the Cadbury Gorilla campaign, this presentation stops short of what I see the real power of engagement being.  More on that to come.

The Passion Economy eBook

It all started when I first read Saul Kaplan's article on "Creating a Passion Economy". I was so enamored with this concept that I asked eleven people I respect to weigh in on their views regarding "The Passion Economy" and it's role or impact on business, brands and each of us.

 

 

 
Downloadable Link:
The Passion Economy: opportunity for brands or jut a fad? (PDF, 2.3 megs)

First, a big thanks to:
Saul Kaplan for the article that kicked this all off (catalyst!)
Valeria Maltoni for the idea I stole (eBook)
Peter Flaschner for his design vision, ideas and wine
Eli McIlveen for urging me on and his amazing editorial reviews

And now, a round of applause for the contributors:

Scott Suthren
Ellen Di Resta
Gavin Heaton
Charles Frith
Mike Wagner
Mack Collier
Mike Arauz
Katie Chatfield
Alan Wolk
Peter Flaschner
Matthew Milan

Please share this document freely and join in the conversation!

 

Participation Public of Spectrum

The IAP2 present a very compelling, well constructed and well-adopted framework for public engagement.  Something no doubt honed and developed over many years of successful public engagements and policy reform.

Only it's wrong.  The stages may be fine, but it is 100% wrong in that is is completely backwards.

What I've come to understand in exploring engagement from the point of view of passion and within the context of our present day world is that "business as usual" is over.  There are some significant opportunities to enable and support deeper levels of engagement but it requires us to change our approach.

The need

You want to reach a group of people.  You have something you wish to accomplish.  The first step is to break down the underlying values and passions that are driving your initiative and then begin to identify who you are looking to engage with.

Stage 1: Empower

As Rahaf Harfoush might say, the first step is to pay attention to who among those you are trying to reach is already taking action and the tools they are using. 

It is not about us.  Repeat with me.  It is not about us.  It is about supporting these individuals and groups. It is about answering this question, "What can I actively bring to these people to help them accomplish the goals they are already committed to achieving?"

This takes time but it is quite straightforward to being to identify and find these passionate individuals.  A topic for a later post.

Stage 2: Collaborate

You have connected with the most passionate and likely your view of the world has been lifted and changed as a result.  And if you have done Stage 1 even moderately well, you have built relationships with real people. 

This is critical. Unlike the traditional approach where you hope to have strong bonds of trust by the end, in stage 2 you should have a platform of trust built with the most active and passionate people you can find.  This can now be leveraged to engage these people (and their networks) to work towards something larger or tangential but that aligns with their passions and actions to date.

This is about working together towards a common goal.  This is about you being seen as someone who helps them to accomplish that which they believe in.  A facilitator for their passions.

Stage 3: Involve

It can start with a simple invitation to a place or platform that can better harness or support a larger community of people united by common passions, values and/or beliefs.  Or it can be shifting the spend on conferences to become a series of community engagements where you are supporting the communities to further their own interests.

This is the realm of co-creation.  I'm reminded of a quote from Brains on Fire that remains one of my favorites.

"And believe us, it’s not about influence, because influencers can be MADE. But passion can’t. And it’s not about evangelizing your brand. It’s about your brand being the jumping off point that allows people to evangelize what’s important in their lives."

Stage 4: Consult

The world of prototyping, participatory design and mass collaboration open up many opportunities to more actively consult those you value and trust to offer insight, manpower and feedback to what you are working to accomplish.  Here they begin to work together with you to build your platform to support your goals, actions and passions.

Stage 5: Inform

This is my favorite.  This is no longer about posting notices, or publicizing town halls or making sure your point of view or platform is up on some website.  This stage is now about reaching out to all those who have been involved to date and showing them clearly what you have been able to build together with them.  And also the launching off point to loop back into an earlier stage.

NOTE: In my conversations with Lina Srivastava and Aaron Dus it has been quickly raised by both that the terms (names of the stages) need to be updated and there is also the opportunity to grow and evolve this model.  I'm very interested to see what both Lina and Aaron come back with.

A System for Measuring Change through Stories

I stumbled across a reference to the Most Significant Change process a week or so ago.  For the life of me, I can't recall exactly where.  A search on Google brought up a PDF that presents both the concept and the process for implementing MSC. It is designed as a participatory monitoring tool for social change campaigns that have complex goals, involve organizations with many layers and where conventional monitoring systems are proving less than effective at furthering the mission.

LINK to PDF.

What most impressed me about MSC was it's focus on stories of significant change and a system for evolving and growing the values of an organization around such.  The stories that most resonate with the organization are the same stories that slowly transform all levels of the organization.  A wonderful use of social phenomenon to shape and grow an organization (as opposed to market norms).

1. It is a good means of identifying unexpected changes.

2. It is a good way to clearly identify the values that prevail in an
organisation and to have a practical discussion about which of
those values are the most important. This happens when people
think through and discuss which of the SCs is the most significant.
This can happen at all levels of the organisation.

3. It is a participatory form of monitoring that requires no special
professional skills. Compared to other monitoring approaches, it is
easy to communicate across cultures. There is no need to explain
what an indicator is. Everyone can tell stories about events they
think were important.

4. It encourages analysis as well as data collection because people
have to explain why they believe one change is more important
than another.

5. It can build staff capacity in analysing data and conceptualising
impact.

6. It can deliver a rich picture of what is happening, rather than
an overly simplified picture where organisational, social and
economic developments are reduced to a single number.

7. It can be used to monitor and evaluate bottom-up initiatives that
do not have predefined outcomes against which to evaluate.

Again, here is the link to the PDF for those interested in learning more.

The Latent Truths

I recently found myself re-reading two of Ellen Diresta's wonderful posts from 2008 on uncovering explicit and tacit motivations in the context of product and service innovation.

After attending Adaptive Paths' MX conference, I posted a framework for consumer research that defined three areas to Ellen's two.  I've updated the descriptions below.

• Explicit:  What someone is willing (and able) to tell us.
• Tacit:  What they can't say directly, but we can infer.
• Latent:  What could manifest in the future but is unavailable to them (unknowable.)

I highly recommend a read of Ellen's posts for uncovering the explicit and the tacit motivations driving consumer behavior/needs.  They are dead on.  But it strikes me once again that there is a soft line that potentially divides the Tacit into that which can be known or imagined (by the user) and that which is unknowable to them in their current state of mind and social existence (unimaginable.)

The realm of product/service/business disruption seems a fecund playground for latent motivations - behaviors, needs and desires that can't exist in the current environment and that require a world the user lacks the ability (or skills) to bring themselves to imagine or conceive.

I will play off of Ellen's example of the personal computer.  But rather than speak of innovations to the personal computer, I will speak of the shift from Mainframe to personal computers.  I believe it would have been very difficult to understand unmet future needs when speaking to mainframe adopters or laggards. The first forays from mainframe computing to personal computing would slowly disrupt and revolutionize the industry over a period of a few years. 

Most of us have read or heard of Ken Olsen's statement (then head of DEC), "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." This is a quotation taken out of context of that era's milieu.  What Ken appears to have been trying to convey was that there was no reason to have a computer that controlled your home, turned on and off your lights, managed your heating and even regulated your refrigerator and meals.

Yet this is exactly what computers are now doing in an ever increasing number of homes.  From home security systems to turning on your coffee pot and even "intelligent" refrigerators. In fact, personal computers even help manage our entertainment or media consumption (AppleTV and Window Media Center.)  I realize I've taken a bit of a leap from mainframes to embedded micro-controllers and the like, but not when you consider the exponentially increasing pace of technological change.

The speed of technological advancement and subsequent breakthroughs continues to increase and this is inversely impacting time to disruption.  When placed in the context of changes that occurred from the industrial and pre-industrial age, the timeframes can be quite stunning.  Today we see a number of relatively recent entrants already showing their ability to severely disrupt the incumbents.

• VOIP vs. Analog Telephony
• Open Source Movement vs. Proprietary Software
• High speed CMOS vs. Film

And here is where I believe that prototypes combined with structured play give us the opportunity to shift the Latent into the realm of the Tacit or even the Explicit. Even as the developers of a disruptive offering, we can't clearly see the disruption we are looking to bring to the table or predict it's implications or potential adoption.

Prototypes give a glimpse of something different but alone fall short of the social, emotional and environmental triggers that would create the paradigm shift required.  Play provides a structure within which suspension of disbelief can be engaged and environmental factors can be transferred to the participant via the "rules" of the game.

Combined these two forces can allow us to shortcut the significant defenses against imagining an alien reality.

“…the real value of a model or simulation may stem less from
its ability to test a hypothesis than from its power to generate
useful surprise.”, Michael Schrage, Serious Play (h/t portigal)

My experience tells me it is far more likely that we succeed in shifting latent needs and motivations into the realm of the tacit versus the explicit. Thus we should be careful of taking consumers at their "word." Ellen says it beautifully, "Since you're trying to create something that does not yet exist, you cannot take the consumers' suggestions at face value.  The translation between what they say and the criteria you need to develop for a successful new product may take several iterations."

Image Source: Bright Tal (Political)