Over at the National Post, Matt Gurney recently stated that "Facebook groups are just about the dumbest way to advocate a political cause." His comments echo those of a number of pundits and politicians who give online activism – and Facebook groups in particular – short shrift.

For a variety of reasons online activism is discounted as not being “real” politics. Well, Facebook isn’t going to remake politics, but it does matter – something the explosive growth of the 150,000 person (and rising) group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament and the first anniversary of the anti-coalition Facebook campaign offers us a chance to reflect on. So here are three lessons on online activism for the Prime Minister, the news media and the rest of us.

What a week this has bene for Facebook!
David Eaves here in the Globe makes 3 good points:

1. There are 150,000 members of the Prorogation Group - a built in audience and multipliers for any good story that follows - leverage is available

2. Joining a Facebook Group is easy - builds a bigger group than marching and you march to get an audience anyway don't you? Easy makes FB more attractive as a political amplifier as the PM of Britain said in his interview with Mark Z last week

3. FB groups are rallies - they make it very very hard to hide poor decisions in politics

I think it is a given that Culture is the main barrier for most large organizations as they look at how to use Social media. As my colleague Joe reminds us there is real hesitancy in the mainstream. No large bureaucracy can be so bound by the fear of losing control than government. So it is interesting  - to me anyway – to discover a Canadian Federal Government Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, that has got more than a toe in the water. They are well engaged in an area where it is relatively “safe” to find out how to do this. I think that their experience here will give them the right and the know how to expand this into their operational area and to give others in Government the experience-based confidence to follow.

When the public think of Veterans Affairs, many of us think of Battlefields and Memorials. I was one of many thousands who returned to Vimy Ridge for the 90th anniversary in 2007.

Like many who visited, I blogged about my experience and posted a lot of information. Of course in these days I was not alone. Today thousands of us post material. Many people are exceptionally knowledgeable. There is enormous wisdom and energy embedded in those who visit.

One of the first ahas of Keith Hillier and his team Teresa MacLean and Joey Mokler – was that they could enhance the experience by bringing the Battlefield to the public rather than focus only on bringing the public to the Battlefield.

This recognition that there could be a “safe” way to bring the public in had very early roots in VAC. Today “silverorange” is a global leader in designing social media platforms. They have sites designed for leading entertainers such as Feist and Sloan, have added design to Firefox and Ning, have leading edge sales sites and so on. But few know that silverorange got its start with Veterans Affairs. A long time ago when many who are now old men at silverorange were in their early teens, VAC put out a tender for kids to create a Virtual Memorial for all those that had died in Canada’s conflicts.

This is the entry for my wife’s uncle Bill.

These are the entries that I made on his behalf. So even before “Social Media” was a buzz word, VAC had created a site, using kids, where the public could find out about their loved ones online and where the public could not only look but participate.

The key issue here in terms of culture and barriers, is that this is quite real – the public are really contributing and the service is authentic and valuable – but that the risks are low. Above all that VAC is learning by doing how to get a start.

They are much further along now. When I first started work with VAC about 10 years ago, they had this wonderful archive of film that they had made of interviews with Vets from WWI, WWI and Korea. The question back then was what were they going to do with this.

The answer of course has been YouTube!

Over time this invaluable archive is being made available for all of us. Not just in a static way but in a way that we can all use and share.

So what about today? Canadian Forces have been in action for many years in Afghanistan. What about their story? What about their families?

The answer is of course Facebook! There are over 200,000 members right now. Much of this is very personal and touching.

Here we see a film made by young Canadians about what Vimy meant to people in New Brunswick followed by a piece on the Highway of Heroes – the route taken by our fallen as they return from Afghanistan.

So what is really going on behind the scenes at VAC and how can what they are doing help you? Here are a few “Tips” that I can see now after nearly a decade in this work.

1. Leadership - First of all the work is being lead by a very senior and trusted executive – Keith Hillier ADM. My experience is that skunk works don’t work. At VAC as at KETC and before at NPR – having the most senior executives as the real champions is essential. For there are organizational risks and there is big push back and fear. Having a very senior person lead the charge enables you to extend your reach.

2. Use Projects – Don’t try and change the world in one go. Have a real project that you can use to find our by discovery and trial and error that will not get people fired if things don’t go well. At VAC this began with the Virtual Memorial and then has been extended into putting the film archive online on YouTube and now with asking the public to participate on Facebook. Teresa told me of their fears of trolls on Facebook. Conventional wisdom is that if the community is sound enough, they will control the trolls. But of course you don’t know that for sure. The war in Afghanistan is a tricky topic right now and sure enough some came to the site to talk about this. But the community – who are there to support the troops and their families asked them to go away and they did!

3. New actions lead to new thinking not the other way around - You can plan for ever, you can imagine for ever but it is only when you do that you learn and by learning your mind gets changed. By choosing small projects that could be made “safe” VAC is doing the doing and so all at VAC, not just the members of the team, can experience the new for themselves.

4. Start small - The team behind Keith includesTeresa MacLean and Joey Mokler. The money behind this is tiny. But the support is big. I think this is the safer way ahead. Jesus was born in a manger. Moses was found in the Bullrushes. You keep the organizational risk and the naysayers quiet by not announcing the second coming up front.

5. Partner – The early partnership was with a group of local teen nerds – what a gift to them and what a gift to PEI. You will not have the skills inside when you start. Now VAC wish to extend this to their service delivery for Vets. They do not have the resources for this. So the plan is to Partner – Partner with other agencies that can help them build a robust service delivery platform.

6. Have a clear vision for the future where social media gives you the win – The vision for “Commemoration” (Memorials etc) was to bring the memorial to the Public. The Vision for “Commemoration” – offering meaning for the sacrifice and the lives of our vets was to give this to the public. The new service delivery goal will be to shift the web from being a big pamphlet to being the place where the services of VAC are enacted – where a vet can get what he or she needs. Finally the visions for the social needs of the vets – which in most cases exceed the program needs – is to use the web to help vets get connected to others like them so that they can help each other. So far so good!

I think that VAC have earned the right to go for the service goals now – don’t you?

I think that they offer us a process that any large organization can follow too – don’t you?

“a source very close to Apple” suggest that Apple has been working on the next version of the Apple TV. The goods according to them: it will be a very small box (smaller than the current one) with perhaps only outputs for power and TV-out cables. It will run on Apple’s new A4 chip (the one found in the iPad and soon the new iPhone).. It will still do 1080p video, but may have as little as 16GB of flash memory. That’s because the thing will be based around streaming over the cloud (or from other computers in your home) rather than local storage. Most significantly, it will run the iPhone OS.

Basically, it’s an “iPhone without a screen,” is how Engadget hears it. Oh — and it will cost only $99, supposedly.

Looks likely that next week Apple will announce a new Apple TV - basically iPhone to drive our TV. War between Google and Apple will drive huge innovation.

So what then if your business is Conventional Appointment TV?

My bet is that within 2 years, Appointment TV will be over.

So what to do? Maybe first of all to understand this. For Public TV it means a Moon Shot Planning Process to get ready. Single stations cannot cope alone with this. Maybe it does not need all at the table but enough to build a new approach.

Content alone will not be enough either. Solving what truly is Public Service Media now becomes a compelling issue. How to be vital to your local community has to be more than being an online content supplier.

The crunch is in sight.

We are still trying to fond the way to measure this kind of work. I wonder if this model from the Gauravonomics Blog could be a clue?

Let's look at a simple and current project - Kotex's Campaign to change the conversation and the thinking about a woman's period from a secret nasty thing to being a natural part of any woman and the men in her life's life.

Here is the link to part of their work http://www.ubykotex.com/real_answers/qa

So Kotex have a lot of content on their site - wacky videos that show how embarrassed men are - the Q and A part of the site that the link takes you too - that has the questions that non on wants to ask in public view - on Facebook Jordan asks even more edgy questions such as what pet name do you have for your period.

The result has been a huge outpouring of collaboration - videos, conversations, comments etc. Many women are helping others deal with all sorts of issues.

I see true friendship and so community emerging. Over time Kotex have a good chance of changing the collective western view of the period.

They have used a tampon as a social object!

If they do that then ask yourself how does Kotex then stand as an organization?

Fear Is the Mind Killer – Mind Set and Adoption

by Rob Paterson

May 19, 2010 at 7:45 am · Filed under Adoption, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV 

We have intuitively known for ages that the gateway to a 2.0 world – a world of participation and real partnership – is not merely the adoption of a new set of tools – but the mindset of the influencers in the organization. Now we know that this is an empirical fact.

In 2009 I was advising KETC, a public TV station in St Louis, as they tried a something truly novel. The Station had in its own market just completed a project funded by CPB, to see if it could use its Trust to convene the community to help each other get through the Mortgage Crisis. The challenge being that St Louis was locked down with fear and shame and it was all but impossible to find safe sources of help. The project was to find out who could be trusted and to help them set up a network of support and to connect this to the people. It forced the station to itself work across the silos and to connect TV with the web and with its outreach. The success of this experiment caused CPB to fund a much bigger test. 32 of the hardest hit markets in America were chosen. In each market CPB asked the TV and the Radio stations to partner and the entire group partnered as a group. Again the task was to reach into the community, to find those who could help, help them partner and to connect them to the people.

Here is a link to the full details of the project. We were in effect using the Mortgage Crisis as a Social Object.

View Facing the Mortgage Crisis, Participating Stations and Markets in a larger map
Here is a map of the scale of the work. If you expand it you will see the names of the stations.

So what happened? What happened is that some stations did brilliantly. Some did ok and others went through the motions. What was the difference? We found that the difference had nothing to do with any tools – we all used the same ones and we ll helped each other use them. No the Difference was mindset. The Mindset of the leadership of our a group of leaders at each station.

We were able to categorize the stations as you see in this chart. Here is more detail of what these categories mean. I offer it up because you can assess your own organization by using this screen.

Tier 1

• The station knows that they must shift their work patterns and focus on the external—they have a positive and open mindset

• They seek to shift their norms—despite what resources are available to make this shift

• Core beliefs inside the station have shifted and there is an emotional attachment between the station and the people they serve

• Communication is strong internally and externally

• Internal collaboration has become the norm, silos are minimized

• They are able to utilize all of their assets, leveraging the broadcast component and maximizing social and online media, community involvement and partnerships

• They listen first to their partners and their community, and they understand the value of these relationships in helping define a course of action for their work

• They are able to take direction from their community advisors and have a willingness to cede control of certain aspects to other organizations.

• Station leadership is strong and backs the work directly or makes certain that key staff are supported

• Relationship between TV and Radio is secure (where applicable).  Both organizations experience the benefits of working together to help their community

Tier 2

• Internal collaboration is emerging and is valued, silos are beginning to minimize

• They’ve made relative progress from where they started and very much want to make the leap, but don’t have the capacity, skill set, people or road map to shift their focus beyond the traditional work.

• They’re beginning to make the leap from station at the center to ceding control to partners

• They are exploring what social media and online can mean to their work

• Station leadership wants to make the leap to this new kind of work, but the shift is nascent

• Relationship between TV and Radio (where applicable) is improving

Tier 3

• They think they’ve done this before, but do not understand the nuances of why this work is different

• Staff work in silos, but collaborate ad hoc

• Still working through old processes/norms

• Station leadership is supportive, but invested in traditional work and won’t alter investments to new work

• Little or no collaboration between TV and Radio

Tier 4

• Regard this as just another project with funds attached—a beginning and an end—rather than a capacity builder

• Traditional approach with station at the center

• Unable to form meaningful and equal partnerships with community organizations—station is still very much in control

• Use social media very little and do not leverage multi-platform—broadcast is still only priority

• Station leadership regards this as business as usual

• Staff work in silos

These characteristics are meaningful—they are not simply an assessment of how the stations performed in this initiative.  The characteristics of the top performing stations help us understand how to make the shift to public media.  These characteristics are the key to making the case for the relevance and significance of public media in our communities and in our country.  This is the case for the sustainability of our industry.

MINDSET = IMPACT = SUSTAINABILITY

The evidence is clear—Tier 1 stations generated more external grant resources, dedicated more staff, forged more partnerships, hosted more discussions — on-air and online—produced more reports, and spurred more talk in their communities.  This in turn had big implications for community outcomes in terms of citizen resource utilization and other media attention—meaning more calls were generated to 211 in these communities and there was more media coverage beyond the station.

Later I will post more about our findings but I wanted to get the mindset issue on the table.

 

My dear pals who work with me here on Fast Forward Blog will chip in. Where is the leverage – who has to get it and how do they get it. How do you move up? What are the barriers?

 

More soon

 

 

Kotex showing the way!

Going 2.0 as Lee Bryant says is not about hanging shiny new objects on your old form. It is in truth that hardest of all things to do – changing who we are. As Euan says – it is the hard work of giving up our institutional form and re-becoming human again. So how do you make these changes to the inside of ourselves and our organizations?

I have been forced to reflect on this as one of my projects comes to the very edge of success. Here is the story I told the CEO today.

You are a chief. Your tribe lives in a valley. Over tall mountains is a much larger valley that has a huge lake – larger than Lake Ontario. It is like a vast sea. But you have never been there. You have never seen a lake. You have never fished in a lake or seen a boat. This new valley is beyond what you have ever experienced and so beyond what you can imagine. For your valley is savannah. It is plain full of herd animals and game of all types. It is lush and there are many plants that you use as well. Your tribe has been there a long time hunting and gathering. You are good at this. The Tribe has organized to do this work well.

But over the last few years, there has been a shift in weather. The savannah is drying out – the drought is getting worse. The game is getting scarce. The plants are dying too. Your success over the last 100 years means that you have many mouths to fill too.

So you have heard stories about the lake on the other side of the mountains from traders who go everywhere. So you send out a small reconnaissance party over the mountain to explore this new land. A new land where the skills to get food and the processes are very different. For remember none of you have ever seen a lake, a boat, a weir, a net. None of you have built houses in such surroundings. You don’t know what a pier is. You have no idea what weather can do on a lake. All you know are stories. Stories that might be fables.

The small party does quite well and returns home to tell you what happened. Now the lake and all that is needed to live by a lake is more real to you. At least people that you trust – your own tribesmen have seen it. But you are not going to up sticks and take all your people there just on the evidence of one trip. The risk is too big. You don’t know if enough of your people could adapt. And anyway, maybe the drought will end soon.

The drought gets worse. Now you send a larger party for a longer time. You tell them to really test this new life. Their mission to to see if a move to the new place is feasible. They set up a base camp in the new valley and build some boats and make nets. After much trial and error, they start to learn how to do well in the very new place. They spend a whole year there. They make a of of mistakes. Some die. But they can now see what has to be done. They are not good at any of it but they know the basics. They return home. Everyone is both fascinated and fearful. For if it is possible to live in this new valley, then it will be possible to leave our ancestral home. Everyone hopes that they don’t have to do that. Who wants to give up all they know? Maybe the drought will end.

But the drought gets worse. It is clear that this is a trend. It is clear that if the Tribe does not leave the valley, that in 5 years all will die. So now you send a lead party back over the pass into the new valley. Their job is to set up a new home for the tribe. They are not coming home. They are the beach head.

But as the new team settle in the new valley, they go home all the time in their minds. For the only home they really know is the old valley. Even though the new is feeding them. Even though they are gradually getting the new skills. They long for what they know. They are torn. They are in the new valley but they still are organized as if they were back in the old.

Still part of the tribe is left in the old valley. This left behind part of the tribe feel bad too. They know that they have been left behind. They know that the future is in the next valley. Both sides feel separated. One from the old, the other from the new. But this separation had to stand until the Chief knew that his people could make it in the new.

You could not wait however until he was completely sure because you could feel that the disconnect between the two groups was starting to threaten the whole tribe. So you moved the rest of the tribe over the pass into the new place as well. Because they were in a new place that needed new skills and new ways of working, you also had to realign who did what and for whom. You had to ensure that the tribe was organized to live in the new way. Fortunately because of the tension of the separation, most were relieved to have their doubts settled and quickly settled down to the new. Also because they all knew that they could not go back, that longing for “home” faded. After a while the new home became “Home” for all.

As I told this story, I started to see what had in fact happened. I had missed it all even myself. What we had done only became clear today.

The institutional world is dying. But it is the only world we know. Our place in it is home. We cannot just jump to the new. We have to explore it.  This exploration needs to be organized as history tells us successful explorations are conducted – using larger and longer staying expeditions. At some point some people have to stay in the new world.

Even then history tells us that we at first long for the old. We even organize based on the old even when we live in the new. This tension is debilitating.

This is the story of America itself. Many expeditions lead in the end to the early colonies. The War of Independence is the re-org. This then opens up the west and the new culture and millions cross the sea for the dream.

Yes the tools are important, but it is the change in world view that is the key.

Soon I will have the data to prove this.

What do you think? Where are you on this journey?

The statue’s pedestal bears the words of poet Emma Lazarus, written in 1883:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

When the Ellis Island immigration center opened its doors on an island in New York Harbor near the Statue of Liberty in 1892, Lazarus’ words welcomed the 12 million immigrants who passed by “Lady Liberty” after trying trans-Atlantic journeys on their way to becoming Americans.(Daily Cufflinks)

Is this still true? Is America still the land of opportunity for those that seek it?

There is no doubt that in 2010, Immigration, will move to the top of the list of issues that Americans think about. But what will the debate be like? Send all the illegals away! Give amnesty to all! Will it pander to our worst fears? What is the truth?

Can we find a truth? Labeling people is so easy. We know “us” and we don’t know “them”, so it is easy to put our fears on “them”.

At KETC we are trying an experiment - we are going to do our best to help each other find more of the truth. For we know no more than you. We too only know what we know and that is not very much.

So here in this space we are going to do our best to make a place where we can discover more of the truth than we could know if we only bandied about soundbites. We plan to build a very complex web presence to handle a very complex issue. In addition we are planning a 4 hour TV series on Immigration today in America that I think we can use as a Social Object or Catalyst to focus attention.

There have been TV shows that have had a web add on before. There have been web series on issues. This is a first. The first time that a TV station has built a holistic whole of TV and Web. Where the broadcast has been wrapped in engagement from the first.

The TV series will be shot this summer and fall and we begin this week with the web. The engagement process, where we go out to the community and find out from them directly what is going on started 2 months ago.

Here is our design for how the web will role out over the nest few months.

News and Comment - We are getting ready to bring you the most interesting stories being written by anyone. We as a team are scanning the web and we ask you to help us here too. We are also experimenting with a brand new type of search tool, Darwin, that will look for how issues rise and fall on the web. (More on that later).  We are building human networks that will reach into the immigrants in St Louis – nurturing social bridges that we hope will enable people who today are only labels to others find their own voice and not only tell their own stories but also help each other find their way in the strange new land that is America. We hope that we can go back and forth between the web and the people and see how the truth emerges.

We will be adding a Twitter and Facebook stream to this soon and we hope that you can help us find material that will add more light to the entire topic. We hope that this space can become the best place to go to find out the wider truth. To discover an emergent picture of what is really going on.

Helping new Americans find their way - As we prepared for this project, we were stunned at how complex the journey is to become not only a legal American but also as important an assimilated American – a person who fits into the culture. We were stunned to find out how complex the legal issues are. We were stunned to find out how much conflict there is between cultures that see the extended family as the core of existence and the homeland culture that looks to the law. In this segment we plan to offer a number of views. First of all people need expert advice. Getting the system wrong is easy and has enormous consequences. We plan to find sources of expertise who can shed light – just as we did in our Facing the Mortgage Crisis project. We at KETC can never be the experts, but we can help you find ones that you can trust. But we have found that there are two kinds of experts. The technical experts and those who have lived and are living what you are going through. We plan to offer the second kind as well. We hope to have a panel of New Americans that have made it. Made it through all the system and also made the cultural adaptation. We hope to find a panel of  immigrants who too are finding their way. It is our hope that such a panel will have the practical expertise to ask and answer the best questions. For who will know more than they about how to make this journey?

Helping established Americans find a place for their concerns - Many people have deep fears. Fears of having their economic future threatened. Fears of losing their community. Fears of losing their culture. Many others merely dismiss these fears as being stupid and then wonder why people become angry. We plan to explore these fears. For a fear explored is then a fear that can be coped with. What is the impact on jobs? What is it like to have your community change around you – who gets to set the culture? Most of all “Who are these strangers” and “what do they want”?

Dealing with the “Other” - Nothing is more scary than the unknown. As we walk down the street and we see people who are unknown and unknowable to us. They look so different. We plan to explore the “different”. What it is to be Bosnian in St Louis. To be Liberian, to be Mexican, to be Chinese, to be Irish or Scots, to be different. We will explore food, music, religion, family life. What is their culture. We will explore what brought people here and what the journey has been like.

We hope to give people a chance to be themselves in public to show yes how different they are but also how much they are the same. How they too want the freedom that America represents. How they care about many of the same things. About what they face from the dominant culture. How surface similarities hide fears. Such as how a Liberian can be taken for an African American until he opens his mouth and how the same is true for a Bosnian being taken for a WASP. We will find out that many immigrant groups who believe that they are unique will find out that others share much of their story such as how both a Liberian and a Bosnian have both come from a war zone so horrific that we cannot imagine – how maybe both boys saw their father killed in front of them.

Established Americans are strangers too for many newcomers. Much about the established America is hard to understand. This is manifested not only in the streets, the schools and the workplace where we all meet but in the homes of many traditional immigrant families. As the youth adapt, as girls wear new clothes, as boys listen to new music and eat new food, the older generations become afraid. As the power to translate the new culture moves to the young the old power lines in the family are threatened.

Our hope is to give all a chance to celebrate who they are and so give us a glimpse of not of a stranger but of people that we get to know who too have fears, hopes, families and a deep desire to do well in life.

Video and Story - As you can see as this project evolves, we intend to give up most of this space to you. Much of it will involve video. So to enable you to tell your story well on video, we have set up a “school”. This “school” is here to help you learn how to master short form story telling for the web. We will teach editing, all the mechanics and how best to tell a story. To help in this, we also have more than 100 Flip cameras that we will be lending to those that wish to tell their story.

The Documentary - Currently we are in the development phase of the film making process. We are deciding on what 4 big stories we will tell and what each story needs to be made. As we get more defined, we will come back to you here and tell you what we are doing. You will see the documentaries being made – the “story of” will be made as we make the story. There will be times when we need your help and we will ask you here for it.

The Team - At the moment the team is all from KETC. It involves people from all disciplines. But in time, we will withdraw to the background. Most of whom you will see and hear from will be from the community of St Louis.

This weekend we launch a new project at KETC. We are taking a subject that is at the heart of the nation - its social, economic and cultural heart - and trying something never before attempted.

We are trying to get away from the "He said" - "She said" - "on the one hand" and "on the other" POV of how issues are traditionally covered by the media.

We hope to offer up the broad complexity of the issue.

We are creating a TV series that is surrounded and informed by social engagement and the web. No add on after the show but the Petri Dish in which the show is born.

We are creating a "Social Object".

Over the next year, I will do my best to tell you the story of this project.

This post is from our new website. It has just been launched. It's only a starting point right now.

We are at the day of birth today. Much has been happening in the womb before this day. Much of it messy and painful. We have had to go from let's put on a show to having a real plan based on real objectives. Later I will tell you about those struggles.

Our new child is as helpless and feeble as a new born is. But as the months go on, she will I hope, grow into a strong and capable person - capable of reaching the potential that her "parents" KETC hope for her.

My hope is that by November we can have expanded the debate beyond the demagoguery that I fear and that we with your help may shed light and hope into this so complex and taxing issue.

I get so frustrated with shiny balls approach to Social Media - Tie some 2.0 shiny balls onto your hard 1.0 organization. Coopt the tools to continue being a manipulator.

Here Lee speaks the truth. The reality of a Social Enterprise is that it is not a manipulator. It is an organism that facilitates you getting what you need.

Being mean about this it demands a cultural rebirth. It demands that what and how you do things inside enables you to do this outside.

Lee reminds us that to change ourselves takes more than will, as anyone who had given up eating bad food or smoking knows. It demands that we set up new habits. That we do things differently. So a workplace that still meets, communicates and interacts in a top down, silo laden, hierarchical manner is going to fail.

So what do we do to make a change? How do we create these new habits?

Install the tools and processes of a 2.0 culture inside and get good at this.

You must not put new wine into old bottles.