Influence - Entries from November 2007

Building Communities for Children and "Tweens"

Monday, November 19. 2007

I attended Forum One's Marketing & Online Communities event in New York City earlier this month. The event was organized by my colleague Bill Johnston who has already summarized a few sessions on our sister blog Online Community Report.

I participated in an interesting group discussion about building communities for kids and "Tweens" with Richard Weil, Community Director, at the Cartoon Network. He has been involved in the development of Mini Match, a virtual world for teens and other sites for kids.

An aside: The topic was interesting to me and my colleague Dave Witzel (also in attendance) because Forum One has had a hand in a number of sites for children including PBS Kids' Backyard Jungle, an online community for kids to share the natural world they find their own backyard.

Richard talked about the marketing challenges -- legal and ethical -- in building any community site for minors. Kid online communities present special challenges because due to the federal COPPA law and other guidelines, you really have to limit kids' ability to talk to one another.

This is, as a tween might say, a drag because unfettered communication is the heart of an online community. So, for example, TuneTown has no direct live chat and no official message boards. But they have been able to allow some interaction by allowing kids to select from a number of pre-approved messages to send to other kids. Likewise, "ground rules for MiniMatch, say "Personal Information: Don't give yours out, and don't ask for anyone else's.Don't give yours out, and don't ask for anyone else's."

Among Richards key points:

It's a fad-driven market: It's easy to fail. But when you have a big kid hit, it can be very, very big. The most successful online kid sites and shows become a multi-generational experience (think SpongeBob) and can be quite lucrative. Kids after all, heavily influence how and where their parents spend (and donate) their money.
Understand your audience: Don't assume that all kids within a certain age group have similar characteristics. Young children change their interests quickly and have very diverse interests. (Say, do I hear Tim Shaw's voice in the background?)
Don't aim too broadly: Targeting "Tweens" isn't much more narrow than targeting "humans." You really need to do your research and understand for whom you're building your community. Cartoon Network does this through parent focus groups and "mall grabs" among other techniques.
Test: Cartoon network has a very carefully staged testing process, although surprisingly kids are the last to test the product because you can't get a kid to sign a Non-disclosure Agreement.

In short, Richard said, the goal of any community-driven kid site is to create a "siloed" experience in which the kids -- and their parents -- feel safe.

I left this interesting discussion with the realitization that if it's hard for the Cartoon Network to reach children, policy groups and nonprofits certainly have their work cut out for them. Still, I think social and political message often ressonate with the young who really do want to improve their world. So I think there is a receptive audience that many organizations haven't yet fully engaged.

What sort of challenges have you run into in developing sites and communities for kids? Let us know in the comments!

Technorati tags:
Cartoon Network
Tweens
Mini Match
Online Communities

Posted by Andrew Cohen in Events, Strategy at 08:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

CARMA in the news

Thursday, November 15. 2007

The Center for Global Development's just-launched website on carbon pollution, CARMA, is getting great news coverage. One of the most interesting articles so far is a Reuters story, Greenpeace Shuts Down Australia Power Station. Reuters says, "A team of 15 activists from the environment group Greenpeace entered the Munmorah power station, north of Sydney, in a dawn raid, hanging banners reading "Climate change starts here" and "Coal kills". It goes on to explain, "The Greenpeace protest came after a report by the U.S.-based Carbon Monitoring for Action database (CARMA), found Australia was the world's biggest carbon emitter per capita, and ranked seventh in terms of overall carbon emissions."

The Google News count just hit 200 news articles. See for yourself!

(Image from Javno)

Posted by Dave Witzel in Communication, Strategy at 09:11 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

CARMA: "Carbon Monitoring for Action" Online Database Launches

Thursday, November 15. 2007

The Center for Global Development launched yesterday its remarkable new online database that shows how much individual power plants around the world are contributing to the total 10 billion annual tons of CO2 from that sector. The CARMA web site, which we're proud to have worked with CGD's David Wheeler to conceive and develop, allows users for the first time to explore, on an interactive map, where individual power plant sources are, who are their operating companies and how much do *they* contribute in total, how much are emissions by country, and more. Also very remarkable about the service, we think, is that the online data service was built with the intention of being an open source which others can build off of - using the open Application Programming Interface (API). CGD very much wants others to take this data and run with it - layer onto it other kinds of information and services, and the open API is to encourage and enable that.

The service has already been written up in the Washington Post, New York Times, and National Public Radio's Climate Connections

New developments will be noted on the CARMA blog.

Technorati tags:
Center for Global Development
CGD
Climate Change
Global Warming
Greenhouse Gas
CARMA

Posted by Chris Wolz in Communication, Strategy, Technology at 05:48 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The Top 10 Best Corporations in Global Development: Nominations Being Accepted

Sunday, November 11. 2007

InterAction, the world's largest coalition of non-governmental organizations focused on the world's poor and most vulnerable people is conducting an online poll now to solicit nominations for the Top 10 Best Corporations in Global Development.

The listing will recognize companies that prioritize investment in people and demonstrate a commitment to the fight against global poverty.

It will be interesting to see what types of organizations are nominated by the nonprofit community. Perhaps it will encourage more corporations to become involved, or to incorporate this type of commitment into their coporate strategies.

Posted by Suzanne Rainey in Strategy at 10:33 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Kofi Annan Idea Spurs African Reality TV Show & Web Site

Thursday, November 8. 2007

We're going to be hearing from one of our guest panelists next week at our seminar entitled 'Global Health & the Internet: How Can We Save More Lives?' about a program spurred by a request of Kofi Annan. Eno Isong of the Kaiser Family Foundation is going to share the story of the creation and continued success of a program she manages called Broadcast HIV Africa.

As the story goes, in 2004 Kofi Annan approached the Foundation with the thought that they should create a program to reach every single radio and television company (both private and public) and engage them to commit to promoting HIV prevention messages and programming on the air. The next year, Broadcast HIV Africa was formed--and it's been growing steadily ever since.

There are now 3 complementary web sites in the initiative: The first, Broadcast HIV Africa, disseminates critical messaging information as well as community knowledge and targets owners of these African-based TV and radio stations. Stations in over 30 African countries have already signed an agreement and committed 5% of their air time to promoting prevention of HIV/AIDS to their viewers, in all sorts of ways.

The fantastic story here is that the community of media professionals that has been created by this initiative has taken it to places nobody ever dreamed: They've created their very own African-based awareness campaign called 'It Begins With You' promoting a key message of responsibility.

And this fall, they have together launched an Africa-wide reality TV series called 'Imagine Afrika'. The show 'pits 12 outstanding young African achievers against one another to come up with solutions to some of the continent’s most pressing problems. Chosen through a continent-wide call for nominations resulting in more than 10,000 applications, the contestants have been chosen to represent the diversity of Africa and for their exceptional personal achievements and talents.'

The Imagine Afrika web site allows users to vote for characters, vote on issues, dialogue, post comments, and interact in other ways. In its first month, it sounds like it will grow significantly through this season and beyond.

I look forward to learning more about this program next Tuesday. I also welcome readers to join us if you like. More details at www.forumone.com/globalhealth.

Posted by Suzanne Rainey in Global Health at 23:19 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Six steps to a successful online strategy, step 5 - sell and effect change

Wednesday, November 7. 2007

Last week, in my series of follow-up posts to our Web Executive Seminar "Six Steps to a Successful Online Strategy", I finished outlining how one develops their online strategy. I also said that, in doing so, one was not done. This week, I want to talk a bit about what I meant by saying this. Yes, there is the actual detailed design work - information architecture, technical architecture, functional design, and graphic design - and technical development work still to go, but that is not where I was going. My point today, in fact, is that creating a strategy is useless without a plan to actually bring it about.
Six steps diagram

Of shelfware and "Wayne's World"
In the software industry, there is a term of derision - "vaporware" - used to describe applications that don't actually work and are nothing but design documents. In the consulting industry our term is "shelfware" - strategies and designs that never became reality. Strategies with no attached implementation plans are all but destined to end up as shelfware, though in the worst cases, they do so only after piles have money has been poured into a failed implementation. Why does this happen?

Once again, we get back to the organizational dynamics sphere. Any good strategy will, to some extent, require the organization to change in some respect. Even an unlikely strategy that says "do everything we are doing now, only better!" assumes changes in processes and practices to make the required improvements. Most good online strategies envision new services, new content, and new relationships. All require that the organization do different kinds of work, sometimes at the expense of things done in the past. In short, good strategies require lots of change. And peoples' general reaction to lots of change? Let me quote Wayne and Garth: "We fear change!!!"

Selling the plan
Design and development aspects aside, the key aspects to implementing an online strategy are managing the required change. This involves first selling the changes to the plan's major stakeholders; the second involves making the changes stick. No matter the bosses in question, the first is going to be easier.

Selling the strategy typically amounts to preparing an expected design and development budget and going through an RFP process in which key people participate. Getting this budget may be struggle enough - won't it be a DOA if you also lay out the organizational changes that need to accompany the technical stuff? Maybe, but the reality is that not including it is delusional, and if you sell one piece and not the other you are creating a day of reckoning down the line. It is better that everyone understand the entire picture, even if that means more work to push the ideas through.

The good news is, if you followed the process I have laid out over the last few weeks, you have a great deal of good information to use. Some guidelines for selling are:

Know the players - Make sure you know all possible stakeholders, especially those who have no interest in the online world but rely on people the plan supposes will have different roles.
Get face time - Meet with all key players and explain the process, the assumptions, the logic, and the conclusions. Ideally, they were involved all along, but let's be realistic...
Show them the data - Now is when you will be glad you did surveys, interviews, focus groups, and/or other kinds of audience research. This data should validate conclusions - show it off.
Paint the picture of standing still - You are making educated guesses here, but based on other findings, suggest what might happen by doing nothing (or not much).
Paint the their place in the vision - Ultimately their concerns will be with having less power / influence in the "new world." Show how their role after the changes holds new exciting opportunities as the organization nails its goals.

Effecting the change
So you did a great job and sold everyone on the full plan. Now you need to actually bring about all the implied changes. This is the arena of change management, and this is a much much richer topic than I can get into here. The basic idea is that even if all decision-makers sign off and say "make it so," the individuals who are the ones that actually need to change can derail the whole plan by simply not changing. You need to see that everyone buys in and does their part. Some elements:

Make sure the leaders have your back - The folks you sold the plan to have to do their part and unequivocally, vocally, and frequently back the project.
Repeat the road-show - Meet with all colleagues, but particularly effected ones and explain the plan, the reason it is important, the changes required, and the opportunities it creates.
Co-opt the detractors - Figure out who is going to try to block the changes and get them on board. If you can't do that, then try to address their their concerns directly. You do not want to have to fight them; try to diffuse them.
Build allies - Figure out who you can bring onto your side to help evangelize for the plan. Seek out people who have much to gain and are influential among their peers.
Repeat the above - often.

As I said, this is only a snap-shot of this effort. The idea is clear, though. The change may be important, but it will be key to making the technology actually work. It is a huge effort, but if your assumptions are correct that you can make large advances toward achieving organizational goals, they will be worth it.

Up next, the strategy as a living thing...

Posted by Tim Shaw in Strategy at 20:21 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

GrantsFire and Foundation Transparency

Wednesday, November 7. 2007

I'm attending the Technology Affinity Group annual conference in San Francisco - a gathering of foundation technology leaders. Here's some live blogging notes on a session about GrantsFire - an edge aggregator of grant information.

What is GrantsFire?

a web site: http://www.grantsfire.com
a working group
a data standard initiative

The Site

search for and view awarded grants details

Why GrantsFire?
Comments from the audience:

a great source of info for grantseekers
info for grantees to see other similar work being done across their sector
inform grantmakers to see sector-based investments -> lead to collaboration
demonstrate the collective impact of a foundation's investment
trend monitoring

Why Do This in the First Place?
The foundatiion center has, for years manually collected and 'munged' grants data from participants - labor intensive and slooow - poor visibility into the real data

How?

any foundation publishes their grant data to the web in a standard format
register your grant feed with GrantsFire
GrantsFire spiders registered sites

Publishing Standards:

use standard XHTML tags (HGrant microformant)
RSS: use extended RSS format

Some of my thoughts:

This is a great initiative to increase transparency and open information sharing.
opportunity exists to extend standard to grantee outputs - so that a grantee could tag their outputs to a specific grant - and have grantsfire compile the documents, posts, photos, reports etc - wow
amazing to me that leading grant management database vendors don't automatically support this standard and provide the publishing service to their customers

Posted by Kurt Voelker in Collaboration at 14:34 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Bill Gates: "Saving the World is Within Our Grasp"

Tuesday, November 6. 2007

Bill Gates presented an inspirational article in the October 1 issue of Newsweek dedicated entirely to Global Health, called "Saving the World is Within Our Grasp." In just a few paragraphs he cites some of the major -- and impressive -- leaps forward that have been made in recent years toward conquering the diseases plaguing millions of people today. At a time when we're inundated with statistics on a daily basis that dampen the spirit, he cites numbers showing some real progress. Fortunately for him, he's able to witness a lot of this first-hand, and notes:

Millions of lives have been saved through better financing and delivery of the medical advances available today.

The GAVI Alliance has immunized 100 million children, averting some 600,000 deaths last year alone, and a creative approach to the bond markets has raised $1 billion more to buy more vaccines. (He's referring to the innovative Advanced Market Commitments announced earlier this year. Read more on the Vaccine AMC web site which Forum One built for the GAVI Alliance.)
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is saving 3,000 lives a day.

Mr. Gates also states, "I'm amazed by the work of the Nothing But Nets campaign, which has managed through Web-based marketing to raise $13 million—mostly from young people—for insecticide-treated bed nets."

Quick Plug: We're fortunate to be hosting an energetic speaker (Shannon Raybold) from the UN Foundation's Nothing But Nets Campaign next week at our event entitled "Global Health and the Internet: How Can We Save More Lives?". Tickets are still available. Learn more & sign up to join us! (Nov. 13 8am-11am, National Press Club in Washington, DC): www.forumone.com/globalhealth

I applaud Mr. Gates for shedding such a positive light on all of the hard work being done around the world in global health--and for leading many of these efforts through his Foundation.

Posted by Suzanne Rainey in Global Health at 21:26 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Full-time Knowledge Management Job at JSI under USAID's Bureau of Global Health

Tuesday, November 6. 2007

There's an interesting job opening for a professional with in-depth knowledge management and international development/global health experience available via John Snow, Inc. (JSI).

USAID's programs in global health represent the commitment and determination of the American people to prevent suffering, save lives and create a brighter future for men, women and children in the developing world. Specifically, USAID assists developing countries by helping create the conditions for global health and wellness through improving the quality, availability and use of essential health services and support. With an annual budget in excess of $1.6 billion, USAID's Bureau for Global Health supports in-country health programs, advances research and innovation, and transfers new technologies to the field through its own staff, coordination with donors, and through partnerships with a variety of international health organizations. The Bureau includes three primary technical offices: the Office of Health, Infectious Disease and Nutrition; the Office of HIV/AIDS; and the Office of Population and Reproductive Health.

The Knowledge Management Advisor (KM Advisor) provides advisory oversight, including leading/co-leading the development and implementation efforts of the contract's strategy for knowledge management. The KM Advisor will work closely with both the Applications Development Team, and the Data Collection and Maintenance Team. The KM Advisor reports to the Director/ Deputy Director.

I suspect we will be seeing more positions of this type opening as the task of managing vast amounts of knowledge -- in innovative ways -- grows in scope and complexity. JSI is a partner with which we have worked on a number of initiatives, and to me this seems like a very interesting opportunity within a strong & interesting organization.

Posted by Suzanne Rainey in Global Health, Jobs at 13:44 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)