Influence - Entries from November 2005

Wednesday, November 30. 2005

Jim Cashel recently asked the question Are Books Dead?. This month's FastCompany Magazine features a great conversation between Jeff Jarvis, a blogger at BuzzMachine.com, and John Griffin, President of The National Geographic Society, on that exact question - and there are some fantastic quotes in their brief exchange that have direct relevance to Policy and Issue-focused organizations that today rely heavily on thick research reports and books to distribute their message.

Here's some good ones:

So what are you in 20 years, when the medium no longer matters? In our post-scarcity world, distribution is not king and neither is content. Conversation is the kingdom, and trust is king. Perhaps your value is not just editors or articles but the community around them. Break free of media's shackles and ask: What are you really?...

So take that as advice from the bottom-up: Find ways to aggregate people and capture the wisdom of that crowd.

- Jarvis

technorati tags: ngo, nptech, blogs

Technorati tag: SOTU Bingo

Posted by Kurt Voelker in Strategy at 12:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Trends: Online Collaboration

Wednesday, November 30. 2005

We see online collaboration as one of the most powerful trends in how organizations will use online services to have a bigger impact in their work.

Now, collaboration has been happening online for a long time (email, Usenet, the Apache open source server software - which powers more than half the servers on the web) etc...

But collaboration is getting dramatically easier, more prevalent, and more powerful. The software tools to enable collaboration are fast improving - both for developers and users, web users are becoming more familiar with using collaborative tools (ever read an Amazon review before buying a book?), and I think organizations are figuring out new ways collaboration can help them get their work done.

My colleague Dave Witzel likens the possibilities for online collaboration to a Habitat for Humanity project - i.e. someone needs to provide the focus, do some planning, bring the tools, and guide the work - thus allowing an army of volunteers to pitch in to create something great.

Online collaboration is even getting mainstream media attention as an important trend, not just dot com déjà vu, for how businesses will operate and profit, for example this recent piece in the the Wall Street Journal, "The Jig Is Up . . . So What's Next?".

Some examples - from more basic sharing news and knowledge, to creating new kinds of services:

-Community Journalism, at Backfence.com
-Amazon's Top Reviewers (#10 has more than 1200!?!)
-Collaborative library, at Population and Health Infoshare
-Contributing voices to an audio recording project, Librivox
-Sharing personal stories and discussions among families of premature babies, Share Your Story
-Coordinating group projects online, our own ProjectSpaces
-Social bookmarking, see Forum One's Delicious links
Katrina Peoplefinder - developed quickly by a dispersed volunteer team, and see related story.
-Wikipedia: the collaborative online encyclopedia, news service, and fast evolving resource of more than 2 million articles in more than 200 languages. See articles on Hurricane Katrina, and Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
-Blogs as a vehicle to rapidly disseminate ideas and views, and also to engage with key audiences, such as "Vaccines for Development" by CGD, and the Becker-Posner blog on economics, law and policy issues (about 5000 comments on 200 posts to date.)
-Web "Mashups": Housing data from Craig's List (contributed by many) "mashed-up" with the Google Maps service (collaboration enabled by open software standards), HousingMaps.com
-Finally, one of the most interesting examples: Flickr photo sharing site, enabling collaborative art - see "Squaredcircles", and derivative services like colorpickr.

I'd love to hear of other examples- send them along!

Disclaimer: we're involved with some of the examples used here - namely: Population and Health Infoshare, ProjectSpaces, Vaccines for Development.

Posted by Chris Wolz in Collaboration at 11:11 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Wikipedia and Organizational Strategy

Monday, November 28. 2005

How can a non-profit, public-spirited organization grow to huge prominence using only volunteers online? You can now learn firsthand: Forum One is hosting Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales for a talk December 1st in Washington DC. Space is limited, so be sure to RSVP.

Technorati Tags:wiki, nptech, International Development

Posted by Jim Cashel in Strategy at 14:09 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The Website That Ate the Organization

Monday, November 21. 2005

What happens when a non-profit's website grows in reach and effectiveness to the point where it eclipses all other activities of that organization? This isn't a hypothetical question: many non-profits, if they took a dispassionate survey of their various activities (web, books, conferences, meetings), and truly weighed the effectiveness of the web (which routinely reaches tens of thousands) and other programs (which generally reach far fewer) would come to the conclusion that the web is possibly the only thing the organization should focus on.

So what does a dot-org look like that focuses only on the web? It looks like a dot-com: eBay, for example, has an entire organization built up to care for and feed a web site. Sure, eBay hosts conferences, and prints publications, and holds meetings, but the principal identity of eBay is the web. Similarly, the principal identity of most non-profits should be (and likely will be) the web. This will represent a dramatic psychological transition for organizations, but any review of web metrics and trends makes it clear -- most non-profits will be eaten by their websites, if they haven't been already.

Posted by Jim Cashel in Strategy at 23:52 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.