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Monday, May 5. 2008
The Nature Conservancy today launched a major overhaul of ConserveOnline, supporting knowledge-flow and coordination between “conservation practitioners” around the world.
Free online demonstrations are scheduled throughout the week; contact Jonathan Adams for more information.
Not only does ConserveOnline innovate for professional conservationists, but with investment from Oracle and more than a year’s web programming by original developers of the open source Plone platform, it also explores how IT can support conservation of nature, and how nature can help IT evolve. In this case, the code enhancements to be released by the Plone Foundation reportedly including significant new ability to detach front-end user interface design from back-end data and admin structures, integration with Creative Commons functionality, and more.
We’ll be tracking some lessons from this intersection of nature and IT:
• Will sometimes-unsocial individual conservationists (you know, those who prefer to be alone in the woods for months at a time) actually use social networking tools to help projects build on lessons already learned elsewhere? That is ConserveOnline’s top goal.
• Will conservation organizations more broadly promote open source information flow and central repositories to their teams?
• And might conservation organizations take a step further and actually integrate data flow or direct web services with each other? ConserveOnline wants to explore such potential with other groups.
ConserveOnline is interesting in that it adheres to data norms of the Conservation Commons, while still pushing the open source approach for enabling solutions to keep pace with environmental problems worldwide.
Tuesday, April 15. 2008
 I'm at Forum One's second annual Online Community Business Forum
this Monday and Tuesday. Our Bill Johnston and Jim Cashel have put together a great selection of smart speakers and attendees, an invitation-only gathering of about 70 people from community software businesses, media properties, investors, businesses using online community for customer service or building market presence, and others. I've heard more than a few people say this is one of the best conferences they have been to in a long time, because of the caliber of the people and the level of discussion about online community strategy and business models. And spending a few days enjoying Santa Fe (and eating various green chili dishes!), is a treat.
 Photo by jwoodphoto.
A few impressions from Monday, day 1:
Twitter: I've been slow to understand the use and value of Twitter (see Wikipedia explanation of this "social media and microblogging service".) So it was illuminating to hear Shara Karasic ( http://twitter.com/sharakarasic) of Work.com talk over dinner about how she has used Twitter to build a following of people interested in her work and ideas, and which she then uses to disseminate "breaking" news of a new event, report, product or offering. A light bulb went off in my thick head that, among other things, Twitter is "just" another effective dissemination channel to quickly get out news. Read more of Shana's thinking about twittering for business on work.com.
[Event live blogging versus twittering? Great blog reflections by Thomas Kriese of Omidyar about " Better Way to Broadcast Live"]
Virtual worlds? I am just starting to understand virtual worlds... but interesting discussion about the worth of virtual worlds and virtual goods - ie a virtual single stem rose - $10 on " HotorNot" web site. My first thought was who/how/why, but then - people buy lots of things as gifts for people which may have little value because of the intention effect (my theory)!
But then I found myself thinking - someone must be using virtual goods for donations, for philanthropy (ie rather than a virtual rose for $10, why not $10 to AWF.org and a virtual elephant trumpet?) I found the answer quickly - Change the Present does this:
The Changing the Present app allows users to give "meaningful gifts" that contribute $1 each to a progressive cause. The idea could resonate with Facebook's users for a number of reasons:
* Many of Facebook's users are young, and $1 is a small enough amount that it seems like an affordable way to give to charity. Changing the Present frames its offers in such a way that $1 also seems like it can go a long way.
* It incentivizes giving by allowing users to interact on a personal level with friends and effect positive social change with and for their friends. Giving gifts is fun (Facebook's $1 gifts remain popular even in the face of so much free competition), so it is smart to tap into that trend.
* It publicizes giving. It will be harder for people to receive a gift without returning the sentiment when it is tied to a worthy progressive cause, and the $1 price tag means nearly all of Facebook's users can afford an in kind response.
More impressions from day 2 to follow....
Technorati Tags:
OCBF2008
Online Community
Monday, April 7. 2008
 Forum One Communications has launched a wiki (at www.developmentcommons.org) as a space for collaboration to define and start work on the Global Development Commons (GDC).
The concept of the GDC is for a space / infrastructure / system to enable the virtual and physical sharing of information among people around the world working in international development. The GDC concept was first discussed, as far as we can tell, in 2007 by US Agency for International Development's Administrator Henrietta Fore, and is outlined on a USAID web page.
USAID deserves a lot of credit for promoting the concept of the GDC. At the same time, for the GDC to take root and succeed, it cannot be an initiative launched (primarily) by USAID. The GDC is going to need to have the participation of a wide array of groups apart from USAID - NGOs, multi-lateral organizations, international organizations, non-US government donors, technology businesses, academic institutions, and others.
So, we've set up and are hosting this wiki as a neutral space for any players in the development sector to share ideas about what the GDC could become and how it can grow. We outline on the wiki some initial thoughts on the structure and approach for the GDC, and other "commons" efforts. Excerpt from wiki:
The Global Development Commons is an "ecosystem" of online content and services that helps the international development community make progress on important issues of human, social and economic development.
Destination: The GDC is not a web site or web property – or even a suite of web sites. It is an interconnected set of services and information/content floating among those services, made possible by the use of common standards and tools.
Ownership: The GDC is a collaborative effort of many content sources and online service providers. There is coordination to define and evangelize about common standards which make possible the GDC. But there is no “ownership” of the GDC, any more than anyone “owns” the Internet.
Etc.
Our ideas on the wiki are still developing, and we are eager to have others contribute! Please register and add your own ideas.
And if you want to blog about this - use the tags
gdc
and
devcommons
Technorati Tags:
Global Development Commons
GDC
DevCommons
Thursday, March 6. 2008
 In an earlier posting, Jim Cashel noted that "the days of worrying about only your own web site ended in 2007." The standing-room-only turnout and high-quality dialogue at "Social Sites for Social Good" last week proved that people from policy-focused groups are thinking beyond their sites' walls.
This most recent installment in our ongoing series of Web Executive Seminars at the National Press Club in Washington featured six engaging speakers who presented case studies of their forays into the social web. We hosted speakers from the Centers for Disease Control, Ogilvy PR, Health and Human Services, the Genocide Intervention Network, the Nonprofit MySpace, and the Nature Conservancy. Our speakers are listed here. Each speaker shared advice for getting your feet wet with social media and networking sites ranging from MySpace to Facebook to Digg. Here, I boil their presentations down to a delicious five-tip reduction: 1. Do your research. If you think that people aren't already actively socializing online on the issues you and your organization care about, look harder. There's probabaly a community out there talking about everything from avian flu to zinc water treatment. You need to find out who is blogging, posting to message boards, uploading viral video, etc. related to your issue. These are your "influencers" and you'll need their support to succeed in your social web efforts. Useful places to search for communities and blogs discussing your issue include Boardreader, BoardTracker, Clusty, Technorati, and Google Blog Search. 2. Give your advocates some ownership. The social web is, by nature, a democracy -- not a representative, two-party democracy mind you -- but a direct democracy where the only barrier to participation is an internet connection. There are no "Super Delegates" here. You don't need to be a member of Congress to vote for a post on Digg or fillibuster all night long to write on your blog. The last thing your online audiences need is a big organization coming in and demanding that they play by its rules. So listen to your advocates, early and often, and give them a degree of ownership of your initiatives within the sites and online communities you sponsor or promote. 3. Measure what you can. No matter how cool your boss is, chances are he or she is not going to let you invest countless hours building a Facebook presence if you can't demonstrate some returns that support your mission. But it's important to set realistic goals for yourself as these social sites are new. Few organizations are raising much money directly through social networks. But there are other ways to assess value. Membership or "friends" counts are an obvious one. Quantity and timeliness of various social networking activities are worth tracking. Sometimes you can track newsletter signups that originated from a social site. But the main output of many of these efforts can be simply brand awareness, which is very valuable, but difficult to measure. 4. Embrace the chaos. Yes, user-controlled pages on the social web -- particularly MySpace -- can be ugly and make user experience folks want to paint over their Macbook monitors. You have to look beyond the clashing color schemes and informal writing styles. If you don't, you risk missing an opportunity to get ahead of your competitors or critics. 5. Don't be afraid to experiment. Social media and networking sites are big and growing. They are influential, popular, and worthy of investment. But they are also overwhelming. Decide on one or two key social sites you are going to concentrate on, learn them, and stick with it. It will take time. It will take patience. It may take internship labor. And you may not see immediate results. But, like the earliest days of the internet, experimenters enjoy first-mover advantage. Don't wait. Check back here soon for narrated "slidecasts" of the speakers' presentations, and let me know in the comments if you have any tips to add (whether you were at the event or not).
Saturday, March 1. 2008
 A recent incident of mistreatment of cattle at a slaughterhouse illustrates, I think, an opportunity to use a strategy of webcams, information transparency, and public participation (i.e. crowdsourcing) to improve slaughterhouse practices.
On January 30th the Humane Society released undercover video content of "downer" dairy cows - too sick or injured to be able to walk - being mistreated to get them onto their feet and into the Hallmark Meat Packing Co (Chino, CA) slaughterhouse. "Downer" cattle are at increased risk for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease") and other foodborne pathogens, and so the USDA regulations prevent the slaughter for human consumption of crippled cows.
The Humane Society video shows sickening treatment (cattle prods, forklifts, water hoses) of obviously injured or unhealthy animals. The video led to the "voluntary" recall of 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef products by Hallmark. More on the outcome of the investigation on the HSUS blog.
USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) does have inspectors and veterinarians who work on site at slaughterhouses to inspect and enforce the regulations, but in this case the video was captured by an undercover Humane Society investigator .
I think some low-cost internet technology could really change the regulatory regime for slaughterhouses. I suggest that live webcams be used to show a video feed on the web of the walkway which cattle use to enter the slaughterhouse. I think this could work with slaughterhouses because:
-there are finite number of known facilities, and USDA already has inspectors at these facilities permanently (or often) and so ensuring that the webcams are in place and working would be simple.
-visual inspection is valuable in identifying if cattle are sufficiently healthy. This is a key tool that on-the-ground inspectors reply upon.
-"noncompliance" is a major risk - to public health, and to public trust in the safety of the US food supply.
The webcams could provide a live feed to the internet, where the public could observe what is the visual condition of cattle being led into the slaughterhouse. This concept of using webcams was suggested on the food safety BarfBlog (International Foor Safety Network, Kansas State University), which noted that bars are increasingly using webcams to allow potential patrons to check out the scene before heading to a bar(!)
What BarfBlog did not talk about was the power of such a crowdsourcing approach to make possible the participation of a large distributed group of interested people. Slaughterhouse webcams would not replace FSIS on the ground inspection, but could would enable interested citizens to watch for potential problems and "tag" the video to raise issues to USDA. USDA might argue that they'd face a lot of problems with untrained viewers and false positives... but that can be addressed - just set up an online training program and give special "reporting" privileges to people who have gone through that "webcam inspector" training. This would not replace USDA's on the ground inspectors, but supplement their work, and probably change slaughterhouse performance by raising expectations.
A secondary benefit of the process of engaging the public to watch and track these webcams would be to raise public awareness of the food chain - where does our food come from and how, for better or worse(!)
Crowdsourcing inspection of food safety like this is in line with prior work on regulation/business behavior in World Bank research on information disclosure as a regulatory strategy, and work by the Center for Global Development (Forum One client) in using information transparency as a tool to address carbon emission via the Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) web site (and blog).
Friday, February 22. 2008
We all recognize a successful community in our neighborhood: Good schools, affordable housing, plentiful jobs, thriving businesses, clean parks, and modern roads. Bowling alleys and bike trails help too. But when an organization seeks to set up a successful online community, the vision can be more blurry. Lately, I've been attempting to illustrate a view for successful online communities, as part of an article I prepared for Idealware. It's titled Characteristics of Successful Online Communities. I use a neighborhood metaphor because I think it's helpful to paint a vision that's divorced from traditional success measures such as member counts, user postings and the like. Although I'm always happy to talk about web metrics, during community conception, success should be envisaged from the member's perspective first because if they don't like your community, they won't return. Metrics don't always clarify exactly why people will be drawn to your online community. And unlike a physical community, there's no lease or mortgage payment tying them down once they move in. Recognizing this, I attempt to catalog the features and management practices that are often associated with healthy and thriving online communities. Modeling your community on these attributes doesn't guarantee success, of course. After all "success" is achieving the goals you set for yourself. But I hope that your community planning and solution selection will be aided by the user-centric vision described in my article. I hope you like it, and enthusiastically welcome your comments.
Friday, February 15. 2008
In preparation for our upcoming event "Social Sites for Social Change", my colleague Kurt Voelker put together a great introduction to a social media strategy. "What?!" you say, " you just told me I needed an online strategy - now I need one of these social media things too!?" Ah yes, those consultants at it again, cooking up more shticks to sell work. Well, relax, friends, there is nothing fundamentally new here, just some changes in focus.
The social media strategy is nothing more than a nuance within your broader online strategy. Social media tools represent some emerging new angles you can consider as you consider your broader set of online services as part of your internet strategy development. As Kurt suggests, the [look out! consultant-speak!] paradigm of the internet is shifting. It used to be that the goal was to get people to come to your site and stay there as long as you could get them to stay. What you really care about, though, is people finding your content and services - that is what you are using to connect with target audiences. If you can get target audiences to find your content and services, regardless, of where, you have succeeded. Social media sites provide a means to put your content elsewhere, in addition to your own site, and enhance the chance target audience members will find it.
As you are consider the online services you will offer, therefore, have social media properties in the mix of options. a greats online service may not be one you build, but someone else's that you leverage well.
Tuesday, February 5. 2008
Recent overheard conversations in the office got me thinking again about members-only site sections, something that I have yet to see a cause-based organization do well. My informal survey of members-only areas suggests the typical such section is a small, somewhat-less-than-captivating collection of outdated publications knocking around with some tumbleweeds. It gets little attention, from members or from administrators.
At the same time, cause-based organizations are needing to identify new ways to offer value to their members in order to meet revenue goals. An online members-only area seems a compelling option - offer people an easy way to access privileged content and they will feel special and re-up year-after-year. So can it work?
A look at major for-profit online publishing houses suggests the approach most groups are thinking about - selecting certain content and placing it behind a login - poses challenges at best. A recent article in the Washington Post detailed the Wall Street Journal's decision to abandon its online subscription service, one of the first online subscription services to succeed that wasn't, well, you know. It wasn't that the services wasn't working; in this case and others, publishers believe there is much more to be gained from advertising to larger readership than there is from subscriptions. Writers - especially columnists - also prefer being much more widely read than subscription models allow.
For cause-based organizations, the problem with walling off content is even more acute. Most organizations would be loath to offer advertising on their sites (and many simply couldn't), not that traffic levels would compare to those of a WSJ. Furthermore, while the same issue of experts feeling under-exposed exists, walling off content is generally completely contrary to organizations' missions. Imagine if an organization's most critical publications suddenly received only a fraction readers they had previously seen - the chance for impact would be significantly damaged. Walling off the crown jewels would be counter-productive.
So the matter is dead, then? Add additional tschotskes to the bags at the annual conference and hope that cements the membership value? Happily, no, there are approaches that seem more promising, though they are mostly, as yet, unproven.
- True members-only content - The good news is that many organizations have content that really is members-only: training materials, dedicated research, etc. This can, of course, go in a members-only section. Make sure, however, that you pay attention to this content and keep it fresh. You should also use tools like SlideShare that bring presentations alive as opposed to just posting PPTs and PDFs.
- Access to experts - The Post article cites one of my favorite examples, ESPN.com. ESPN gives away all its stories, but requires a subscription to access high-value interactions with its experts (chat transcripts, blogs, some rankings, etc.). Its clearly takes time to do this, but granting privileged access to experts, but not their publications, might provide value without limiting the spread of the message (this also enhances the stature of the expert).
- Enhanced networking - Many members find the offline conferences groups put on to be most valuable for the networking the offer. Some organizations seem timid about allowing true member-to-member interaction. Within a closed space, though, and with some careful management (mostly rules, norms, and community policing), the ability to interact with other members and build a profile within the community might be a value-add to the membership.
- Enhanced event access - So much energy typically gets devoted to a few days of an offline event that there tends to be a boom-and-bust cycle of attention for the organization. It might be valuable to allow members to help participate in the event online before and after. Allow members to shape the event (surveys to design sessions, submission of questions in advance, etc.) and participate in the take-aways (figure out projects members could take on collaboratively that add value to all members and increase their own stature.
In short, offer new services that build the depth of the membership relationship, while letting the content flow freely. This approach certainly has costs, but the benefits may justify rethinking your work and what you offer.
Friday, January 11. 2008
In September, 2007, Forum One hosted one of its Web Executive Seminars: "Six Steps to a Successful Online Strategy".  Following that event, I began writing in more detail about each of the six steps, aiming for one a week. That worked out well until the holiday season hit. I was recently able to complete the series, however, and, for those looking for a quicker synopsis, I wanted to offer this overview (with links to the detail). As always, we would be happy to talk in more detail about any points of interest.
- Step 1 - know your goals - I hope I began the series by drilling home the point that your online strategy must be fundamentally grounded in your organizational mission and goals. Remember the Forum One mantra: "mission-focused, audience-centric." If the online strategy does not truly support these organizational imperatives, then its chance of success rests on just that: chance.
- Step 2 - know your audiences - If goals are the foundation for an online strategy, then audiences are the major structural supports. In my post on this step, I laid out process for defining who the most valuable audiences are for a given effort and learning more about them. The long and short of it? Target audiences are those types of people who have a strong ability to take actions that bring about organizational goals and who can be reached well online.
- Step 3 - know yourself - I argue that this is a critical - and often forgotten - step. You need to understand yourself as an organization - what you do well, what you do less well, what assets you have, and what you lack. These capabilities and deficits play a key role in determining what online services are and are not a good fit. The right services for one group may not be right for another, even if the two groups are trying to reach the same audiences to achieve the same goals, because they may have entirely different organizational dynamics.
- Step 4 - select the right services - I walk through, in this post, nothing more than a cost-benefit analysis. What are the benefits of possible services in terms of both the ability to attract target audiences and help them do what you want and in terms of helping navigate organizational dynamics? What are the costs in terms of technical development, content development, and resource time? Priority services are those that best achieve desired ends while having an acceptable cost.
- Step 5 - sell and effect change - New online services will entail new kinds of content, new processes, new staff skills, new management needs, etc. All this means that there will be significant organizational change required in order to make the services actually work. You need to be prepared to sell this change as part of the process and then help manage the change moving forward.
- Step 6 - monitor & manage - Strategies are frameworks and they need to live and adapt. You need to manage the services on an ongoing basis, reviewing performance against pre-set metrics and making changes after review of this performance. In most cases, you will find yourself maintaining essentially the same services, but tweaking them to fit unexpected uses and preferences. In some cases, the best-thought plans will prove untenable and you will need to move on. The strategy is, in short, and ongoing exercise and won't just happen on its own.
- Some additional thoughts - I end with some final thoughts about baseline analysis and competitive / comparative analysis, two additional activities which can be valuable.
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