Photo by morgen schuler morgenschulerphotography.comEarlier this year I presented at Ignite 20, here in Seattle. (Video here. Slides here.) I was delighted to come across some photos by Morgen Schuler of morgenschulerphotography.com on Flickr. I asked Morgen if I could use her shots and she graciously said yes. She and Kris Krug are two photographers who have captured me on film, unlike most others. So I am delighted to share her work with you. (Hint to my sons - a new family portrait would be a lovely 30th Anniversary gift to your parents!)Here they are! THANKS MORGEN!

I’m just home from some marathon travels, with my blog dusty and neglected. As a first bit of blog love, I want to STRONGLY ENCOURAGE all my facilitation friends and colleagues to look at Chris Corrigan’s terrific post on designing group process with introverts in mind.As a process designer, creating good meeting and learning spaces for introverts has long been a blind spot for me.  Facilitators by definition bring people together.  If we are extroverted, the processes we design can often contain an overwhelming amount of social interaction for introverts which actually alienates them from the group and marginalizes their contributions.  Sometimes I have run meetings where the introverts never contributed at all.  That wasn’t through their fault - it was the fault of my process design that never took their learning styles into account.You might call it extrovert privilege.via Designing with introverts in mind « Chris Corrigan.Read the whole thing. Really. And I’d add after three weeks in three different African countries, there are some really interesting cultural aspects to this as well. I’ll save that for later.Now I’ll be quiet.

In my graphic faciltiation work, people often ask for sources of ideas for visuals. Often, when we search on the web, we find a lot of North American/European looking materials. Now there is DevelopmentArt! Check it out!DevelopmentArt has a collection of copyright-free, downloadable, publication-quality line drawings, drawn by professional artists in Asia and Africa. Select the topic you want, browse through the thumbnails, click on the picture you want, and download it to your own computer. It’s free. All we ask is that if you use a picture, please credit the original artist or the publication it came from.DevelopmentArt collects artwork (mainly line drawings), asks for copyright permission, and makes it available to others: extension workers, development organizations, and the like. We have a large collection, which we’re gradually scanning and putting on this site.You can also find links to artists who can develop work just for your project!

I had a chance to interview Aaron Leonard late last September (photo URL) just before he took a leave from his online community management work at the World Bank to talk about that work. This is part of a client project I’m working on to evaluate a regional collaboration pattern and to start understanding processes for more strategic design, implementation and evaluation of collaboration platforms, particularly in the international development context.Aaron’s World Bank blog is http://www.southsouth.info/profiles/blog/list?user=1uxarewp1npnkHow long have you been working on "this online community/networks stuff" at the Bank?  How did your team’s practice emerge?I’ve been at the bank 4 years and working on their communities of practice (CoP) front for 3 of those. I started as a community manager building a CoP for external/non-bank people focused onSouth-South exchange. Throughout this process, I struggled with navigating the World Bank rules governing these types of "social websites". At the time, there were no actual rules in place - they were under formulation. So what you could do,/could not, use/ could not, pay for/ could not depended on who you talked to. I started working with other community managers to find answers to these questions along with getting tips and tricks on how to engage members, build HTML widgets, etc… I realized that my background working with networks (pre-Bank experience) and my experience launching an online community of practice within the Bank was useful to others. As more and more people joined our discussions, we started formalizing our conversation (scheduling meetings in advance, setting agendas, etc… but not too formal :).We were eventually able to make ourselves useful enough to the point where I applied for and received a small budget to bring in some outside help from a very capable firm called Root Change and to hire a brilliant guy, Kurt Morriesen, to help us develop a few tools for community managers and project teams and to help them think through their work with networks. We started with 15 groups - mostly within WBI, but some from the regions as well. All were asking and needing answers to some common questions, "How do we get what we want out of our network? How do we measure and communicate our success? How do we set up a secretariat and good governance structure?" This line of questioning seemed wrong in many ways. It represented a "management mindset" (credit Evan Bloom!) versus a "network mindset". The project teams were trying to get their membership to do work that fit their programmatic goals versus seeing the membership as the goal and working out a common direction for members to own and act on themselves. We started asking instead, "Why are you engaging? "Who really are you trying to work with?" What do you hope to get out of this engagement?" What value does this network provide its members?" This exercise was really eye opening for all of us and eventually blossomed into an actual program. I brought in Ese Emerhi last year as a full time team member. She has an amazing background as a digital activist, and knows more than I do about how to make communities really work well.Ese and I set up a work program around CoPs and built it into a practice area for the World Bank Institute (WBI) together with program community managers like Kurt, Norma Garza (Open Contracting), and Raphael Shepard (GYAC) among others. With Ese on board, we were able to expand beyond WBI (to the World Bank in general). This was possible in part because our team works on knowledge exchange, South-South knowledge exchange specifically (SSKE). We help project teams in the World Bank design and deliver effective knowledge exchange. CoPs are a growing part of this business, in part because the technology to connect people in a meaningful conversation is getting better, and in part because we know how to coach people on when and how to use communities.How did you approach the community building?With Rootchange  we started with basic stocktaking and crowd sourcing with respect to  trying to define an agenda for ourselves. We had 4-5 months for this activity. We settled on a couple things.Looking at different governance arrangements. How do we structure the networks?What tools or instruments to use in design of planning of more effective networks.We noticed that we were talking more about networks than communities. Some were blends of CoPs, coalitions, and broader programs. The goals aren’t always just the members’. So we talked about difference between these things, how they can be thought of along a spectrum of commitment or formality. A social network vs. an association and how they are/are not similar beasts.We gave assignments to project teams and met on monthly basis to work with these instruments. On the impetus of consultants at Root Change, we started doing 1 to 1 consultation w/ teams. We reserved a room, brought in cookies and coffee and then brought the teams in for 90 minutes each of  free consulting sessions. These were almost more useful for the teams than the project work. Instead of exploring the tools, they were APPLYING the tools themselves. It was also a matter of taking the time to focus, sit down and be intentional with their work with their networks. Just shut the door and collectively think about what is was they were trying to do. A lot of this started out in a more organic way around what was thought to be an easy win. "We’ll start a CoP, get a website, get 1000 people to sign" up without understanding what it meant for membership, resourcing, team, commitment and longer term goals and objectives.We helped them peel back some of the layers of the onion to better understand what they were trying to do. We didn’t get as far as wanted. We wanted to get into measuring and evaluation and social network analysis, but that was  a little advance for these teams and their stage of development. They did not have someone they could rely on to do this work. Some had a community manager but most of these were short term consultants, for 150 days or less, and often really junior people who saw the job  as an entry level gig. They were often more interested in the subject matter than being a community managers. They often tended to get pulled in different directions and may or may not have liked the work. They tended to be hired right out of an International  Devevlpment masters program where they had a thematic bent so they were usually interested in projects, vs organizing a 1000 people and lending some sense of community. Different skill sets!We worked with these teams, and came up with a few ideas,. Root Change wrote a small report (please share) which helped justify a budget for subsequent fiscal year and my boss let me hire someone who would have community building as part of their job. Together we were working on the Art of Knowledge Exchange toolkit and the other half time was for community. At this point we opened  up our offering to World Bank group to help people start,  understand how to work with membership, engage, measure and report on a CoP. We helped them figure out how they could use data and make sense of their community’s story. We brought in a few speakers and did social things to profile community managers. Over the course of the year we had talked to and worked with over 300 people. (Aaron reports they  have exact numbers, but I did not succeed in connecting with him before he left to get those numbers!). We did 100 one-on-one counseling sessions. We reached very broadly across institution and increased the awareness of the skillset we have in WBI regarding communities and networks. We helped people see that this is different way of working. Our work coincided with build up of the Bank’s internal community platform based on Jive (originally called Scoop and now called Sparks - a collaboration for development and CoP oriented platform.) The technology was getting really easy for people to access. There was more talk about knowledge work, about being able to connect clients, and awareness of what had been working well on the S-S platform.We did a good job and that gave us the support for another round of budget this year.  Now we have been able to shift some of the conversation to the convening and brokering role of the Bank. This coincided with the Bank’s decreased emphasis  in lending and increase in access to experts which complimented the direction we were going in.  We reached out and have become a reference point for a lot of this work. There have been parallele institutional efforts that flare and fade, flare and fade. But it is difficult to move "the machine." It can even be a painful process to witness. I admire the people doing this, but (the top down institutional change process) was something we tried to avoid. We did our work on the side, supporting people’s efforts where possible. Those things are finally bearing fruit. We have content. They have a management system. We have process for teams to open a new CoP space, a way to find what is available to them as community leaders, They have  a community finder associated with an expert finder. Great to have these things to have and invest in, but it is not where we were aiming. We want to know the community leaders, the people like Ese, like Norma Garza, running these communities and who struggle and have new ideas to share. What are the ways to navigate the institutional bureaucracy that governs our use of social media tools? How do you find good people to bring on board. You can’t just hire the next new grad and expect it to last. There is an actual skills set, unique, not always well defined but getting more recognition as something that is of value and unique to building a successful CoP. There is new literature out there and people like Richard Millington (FeverBee) - a kid genius doing this since he was 13. He takes ideas from people like you, Wenger and Denning. There is now more of a practice around this.While the Bank is still not super intentional on how it works internally with respect to  knowledge and process, more attention is being paid and more people are being brought in. It can be a touch and go effort. We’re just a small piece, but feeling a much needed demand and our numbers prove that. We have monthly workshops (x2 sometimes) that are promoted through a learning registration system and we’d sell the spaces out within minutes. People are stalking our stuff. It is exciting. At same time while it felt like the process of expansion touched a lot of people, convinced/shaped dialog, I also feel we lost touch with the Normas. Relationships changed. We were supporting them by profiling them, helping them communicate to their bosses, so the bosses understood their work, but not directly supporting them with new ideas, techniques, approaches.We reassessed at end of last year. We want to focus building an actual community again. We started but lost that last year while busy pushing outwards. But we still kept them close and we can rely on each other. It has  not been the intimate settings of 15-20 or 3 of us doing this work, sitting around and talking about what we are struggling with. Like "how did you do your web setup, how to do a Twitter Jam?" So our goals this year are a combination. Management likes that we hit so many people last year. They have been pretty hands off and we can set our own pace. Because we did well last year, they given us that room, the trust.So now we want to focus more on championing the higher level community managers. The idea is to take a two fold approach. First we want to use technology to reach out, to use our internal online space to communicate and form a more active online community. We secondly want to focus a few of our offerings on these higher level community managers with idea that if we can give them things to help their with the deeper challenges of their job, they will be able to help us field the more general requests for the more introductory offerings. Can you review my concept note?  Help me setting up my technology.It is still just the two of us. We are grooming another person but also working with the more senior community managers will allow us to handle more requests by relying on their experience. We give them training and  in return they help w/ basic requests. This is not a mandate. We don’t have to do this. It is what we see as a way of building a holistic and sustainable community within the Bank to meet the needs of community managers and people who use networks to deliver products and services with their clients.How do you set strategic intentions when setting up a platform?One of the things I love most advising about CoPs is telling them not to do it. I love being able to say this. The incentives are wrong, the purpose. So many people think CoPs are something that is "on the checklist, magic bullet, or a sexy tech solution". Whatever it is, those purposes are wrong. They are thinking about the tech and not the people they are engaging.. If you want to build a fence, you don’t go buy a hammer and be done with it. You need to actually plan it out, think about why you are building it. Why its going in, how high, … bad analogy. To often CoPs are done for all the wrong reasons. The whole intent around involving people in a conversation is lost or not even considered, or is simply an afterthought. The fallacy of "build it and they will come." One of my favorite usage pieces is from the guy who wrote the 10 things about how to increase engagement on your blog. It speaks to general advice of understanding who you are targeting. Anyone can build a blog, set up a cool website or space. But can you build community? The actual dialog or conversation? How do you do that?One key is reaching people where they already are - one of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard and I always pass on. Don’t build the fancy million dollar custom website if no one is really going to go there. One of the things I have is a little speech for people. Here’s my analogy. If you are going to throw a party, you have to think about who you are going to invite, where to do it, what to feed them, the music: you are hosting that party. You can’t just leave it up to them. They might trash your place, not get on board, never even open door. You have to manage the crowd, facilitate the conversation unless they already know each other. And why are you throwing the party if they already get together in another space?Coming from NGO world, and then coming to bank I saw  how easy it is to waste development dollars. It is frustrating. I have spoken openly about this. The amount of money wasted on fancy websites that no one uses is sad. There are a lot of great design firms that help you waste that money. It is an easy thing for someone to take credit for a website once it launches. It looks good, and someone makes a few clicks, then on one asks to look at it again. The boss looks at it once and that is it. No one thinks about or sees the long term investment. They see it as a short term win.One of the things I try to communicate is to ask, if you are going to invest in a platform, do you really want to hear back from the people you are pushing info to? If not build a simple website. If you do want to engage with that community, to what extent and for what purpose? How will you use what you learn to inform your product or work? If you can’t answer that, go back to the first question. If they actually have a plan - and their mandate is to "share knowledge’ - how do they anticipate sharing knowledge. They often tell me a long laundry list of target audiences. So you are targeting the world? This is the conversation I’ve experienced, with no clear, direct targeting, or understanding of who specifically they are trying to connect with. We suggest they focus on one user group. Name real names. If you can’t name an individual or write out a description.  Talk about their fears, desires, challenges, and work environment. Really understand them in their daily work life. Then think about how does this proposed platform/experience/community really add value. In what specific way. It is not just about knowledge sharing. People can Google for information. You are competing w/ Google, email, facebook, their boss, their partner. That’s your competition. How do you beat all those for attention. That is what you are competing with when someone sits down at the computer. This is the conversation we like to walk people through before they start. The hard part is a lot of these people are younger or temporary staff hired to do this. It is hard for them  to go back to boss and say "we don’t know what we are doing" and possibly lose their jobs. There can be an inherent conflict of interest.How do you monitor and evaluate the platforms? What indicators do you use? How are they useful?One of the things we don’t do - and this might be a sticking point - we don’t actually run or manage any of these communities. We just advise teams. I haven’t run one for 2 years. Ese has her own outside, but not inside that we personally run beside the community managers’ community and that has been mainly a repository.We have built some templates for starting up communities, especially for online networks with external or mixed external and internal audiences. We have online metrics (# posts, pageviews, etc) and survey data that we use to tell the story of a community. Often the target of those metrics are the managers who had the decision making role in that community. We try and communicate intentionally the value (the community gives) to members and to a program. We have developed some more sophisticated tools with RootChange, but we didn’t get enough people to use them. Perhaps they are too sophisticated for the current stage of community development. And we can’t’ force people to use them.It would be fantastic to have a common rubric, but we don’t have the energy or will to get these decisions. We are still in the early "toddler" stage. Common measurement approaches and quality indicators are far down the line. Same with social network analysis. RootChange has really pushed the envelope in that area, but we aren’t advanced enough to benefit from that level of analysis. The (Rootchange) tool is fun to play around with and provides a way of communicating complex systems to community owners and members. What RootChange has done is is develop an online social network analysis platform that can continuously be updated by members and grow over time. Unlike most SNA, which is a snapshot, this is more organic and builds on an initial survey that is sent to the initial group and they forward it to their networks.If you had a magic wand, what are three things you’d want every time you have to implement a collaboration platform?If I had a magic wand and I could actually DO it, I would first eliminate email. Part of the reason, the main reason we can’t get people to collaborate is that they aren’t familiar working in a new way. I think of my cousins that 10 years younger and they don’t have email. They use Facebook. They are dialoging in a different way. They use Facebook’s private messaging, Twitter, and Whatsapp. They use a combination of things that are a lot more direct. They keep an open running of IM messages. Right now email is the reigning champion in the Bank and if we have any hope of getting people to work differently and collaboratively we  have to  first get rid of email.Next, to implement any kind of project or activity in a collaboration space right  I’d want a really simple user interface, something so intuitive that it just needs no explanation.Thirdly, I’d’ want that thing available where those people are, regardless if it is on their cell phone, ipad, and any touchable, interactable interface. Here you have to sit at your computer. We don’t even get laptops. You have to sit at desk to engage in online space. Hard to do it through your phone - not easy. People still bring paper and pencil to meetings. More bringing ipads. Still a large minority. A while back I did a study tour to IDEO. They have this internal Facebook like system which shares project updates, findings and all  their internal communications called The Tube. No one was using it at the beginning. One of the smartest thing they did was installed - in 50 different offices.- a big flat screen at each entrance. which randomly displays the latest status updates pulled from Tube from across their global team. Once they did that, the rate of people updating their profile and using that as a way of communicating jumped to something like a 99% adoption rate in short time. From a small minority to vast majority. No one wanted to be seen with a project status update from many months past. It put a little social pressure in the commons areas and entrance way - right in front of your bosses and  teammates. It was an added incentive to use that space.You want something simple, that replaces traditional communications, and something with a strong, and present, incentive. When you think about building knowledge sharing into your review - how do you really measure that? You can use point systems, all sorts of ways to identify champions. Yelp does a great job at encouraging champions. I have talked to one of their community managers. They have a smart approach to building and engaging community. They incentive people through special offerings, such as first openings of new restaurants, that they can organize. They get reviews out of that. That’s their business model.We don’t really have a digital culture now. If we want to engage digitally, globally we have to be more agile with how we use communication technology and where we use it. The tube in front of the urinals and stall doors. You’ve got a minute or two to look at something. That’s the way! 

A must read blog from David Weinberger  and his wonderful network of commentors. This is one best left to a first hand read. Go for it!via Joho the Blog » What blogging was.

This month I’m getting to share a day’s worth of graphic facilitation practices with the good folks at the International Labor Organizations Torino (Turin) Training Centre. In preparation, my colleague from the Centre, Tom Wambeke, asked me to answer some questions for their blog. It is interesting to try and organize one’s thoughts on such a huge subject. And to make sense at the same time! I’m doing a dry run here, so feedback is appreciated! The questions are his. I also realized I have a ton of great images that are NOT organized and easily accessible. Hmmm….1. What is visual facilitation all about ?Graphic or visual facilitation is the intentional use of visual practices, including drawing, using pre-made visual artifacts and other forms, by an individual or by members of the group to support the group’s process. Some of the intentions behind visual facilitation include:using visuals as sense-making toolsusing the negotiability of images to think together when words (written/spoken) may block usthe value of people creating a shared artifact of their work/learning/experiencethe power of "making my mark" as an individual in a groupusing as many of our senses as is useful in a particular contextGraphic facilitation is different from graphic recording, which is the visual capture of what is being said in a room. We can use graphic recording as a way to enhance and facilitate meetings, but with graphic facilitation we are using visuals to enhance all the processes in the room. So it is less about making something beautiful, but to make beautiful interactions within a group. In the Centre’s case, this might mean making beautiful learning!Finally, while drawing is a key element of graphic facilitation, it is NOT the only thing. We use visuals such as post it notes for learners to take ownership and write and move their own ideas. We vote with colored dots. We use "red, yellow, green" cards for real time presentation feedback. The ideas from Gamestorming by Dave Gray (and this nifty Gamestorming design kit by ). These are all visual methods. AND, you don’t have to be an artist even if you ARE drawing. Look at the amazing work of Dan Roam and Mike Rhode who inspire even the most rudimentary doodlers in us.2. Why is it important?There are many reasons visual facilitation is important. First of all we have the cognitive value. Our human brains react not just to words (spoken or written) but to images, sounds and even the kinesthetic experience we have as we interact with each other. So including the visual aspects into learning and doing things together enhances a group’s practice and results.Second, visuals help us both in meaning making and in our working relationships with each other. I work internationally a lot and I’ve found visual facilitation does some wonderful things around the issues of power and language. Pictures, unlike words in so many cultures, are often perceived as less precise, or negotiable. When someone says "blah blah blah blah" we tend to either THINK we understand them, or if we don’t we may resist saying something at the risk of "looking stupid, " especially in contexts of power and in hierarchies. We may not even be listening.When someone doodles a little picture on a napkin or flip chart, we sit up and take notice. We begin to wonder, ESPECIALLY if it is imperfect, and we can more easily say "what do you mean by that." We have gone into the place of discussability and negotiation of meaning, the place of learning and understanding. This is a HUGE benefit to groups. Wonder can jump start listening and deeper conversation.Discussability also helps bridge linguistic gaps. When we are working with groups who do not share a home language, we can miss meaning. The pictures slow us down just enough to find out if we are or are not talking about the same thing.Finally, there is something about visuals that raises the energy in a room, helps us focus our attention and is just plain FUN. This supports engagement, ownership and, well, I’ll say it again, contributes fun. I think that is real and legitimate so I’m not afraid to say that three letter word. FUN!So we get cognitive benefits, we get power-leveling benefits, we get meaning making benefits, we increase engagement and we have fun. THAT is a lot of value! If you want more peeks into this sort of thinking, check out Nancy Duarte’s "Resonate" - there are some bits online and the following link has some great videos. http://www.duarte.com/book/resonate/#www3. We live in a visual world and up to today training is still very much relying on text-based materials and facilitation aids.What added value can visual facilitation bring to a training Centre?Beyond making learning beautiful? Let’s start with the one people often least expect: listening. I want to share a great quote from Avril Orloff, an amazing visual facilitator and one of my mentors, about the role of visuals in listening."Any event that convenes a conversation == whether it’s a strategic planning session, a community engagement process, a workshop, or a dialogue between stakeholders — is only as successful as the quality of the listening taking place. "We often think of the visuals as the content of the curriculum, but they are also "receptacles" of interaction. They can be a rich part of our process. Visuals help both the teacher and the learner to listen to each other and, when the conversational artifacts are captured as a visual practice, to show that people have been heard. We can use them between participants to foster better small group work, especially with people who are shyer to talk, or may need to stimulate other parts of their brain to engage and learn. Consider what would happen if you captured learner feedback on a white board visually (not just words) to help understand their understanding, and to demonstrate your listening as a teacher — what kind of a reaction might you expect from the learners? I bet it will be very gratifying and enlightening. I often use paired drawings  (learned from Johnnie Moore) between participants as a way to get to know each other and engage in deeper conversation.Second, think about visuals to frame content, process and meaning making. I’m not just talking about making your PowerPoint presentations more visually attractive. That is certainly a benefit (see how I drew my slides here), but I think it is important to think about visuals changing HOW we teach and learn and certainly step beyond presentation and delivery of content as the center.  Here are just a few of the many things you can do.Visuals can be an amazing way to plan your curriculum.  I’m really enjoying how the folks at Liberating Structures have used what they call Design Storyboarding . (You even have an example on your blog where Tod Harple said "I was also being very visual-rolling a whiteboard into her office so that we could "visualize" as we thought out loud. In this way, we were able to quickly frame the key components of the results and consider the narrative or story of how we would express them. (http://itcilo.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/interview-hosting-todd-harple-intel-experience-engineer-at-itc-ilo/#more-999 ) We can use  a visual time line to provide a course overview to show sequence, or even options and alternatives.  We can use a visual "make your own" agenda with post its for learners to suggest and prioritize what they want to learn. (Post Its, flip chart, pens… voila!)Visuals can be used by the teacher and the learners for organizing ideas, particularly with complicated subjects. Think of a mind map to outline a set of ideas, or to capture learner input. Some learners are using personal sketchnoting (http://www.core77.com/blog/sketchnotes/sketchnotes_101_the_basics_of_visual_note-taking_19678.asp) to take notes that have more meaning for them, and prompt better recall than text notes.Visuals can be part of interactive practices with small and large groups. A human spectrogram is both visual and kinesthetic, yet never lifts a single pen, all the while the group is helping making its insights or knowledge "visible" to you and to each other! Visuals are particularly good at helping draw out ideas. Check out "Drawing Together."  This quote from that page is too good NOT to share."Drawing together makes it possible to access hidden knowledge. Hidden knowledge may include feelings and patterns difficult to express with words. When people are tired, their brains are full, and you have reached the limits of logical thinking, drawing together can evoke ideas that precede logical, step-by-step understanding of what is possible. Stories about individual or group transformations can be told with five easy-to-draw symbols. Each symbol has a universal meaning.  Being playful signals you are allowing for unlimited possibility and many right answers. Over-reliance on writing and what people say can limit novelty!"Visual practices can be a key element in reflective and evaluative processes. Think about visuals as a way to test and apply ideas. You can use card sorting exercises and dotmocracy to help learners sift and make sense of content. You can do a visual reflection exercise with the River of Life  (we may use this to evaluate our time together in Torino!) You can have learners map their next steps - literally.Finally, when we think of ourselves as teachers, visuals ask us to step out of our possible "ruts" of the strings of words we have gotten so good at delivering. They ask us to challenge our own thinking and express ourselves in new ways. That often triggers new insights for ourselves, not just our students. Visuals are a discovery pathway, even a vector for innovation.4.  Three books to read?These days, I’m torn to pick three. I want to rebel! I probably would put different books every day of the week, but here goes… (AND look at the larger list linked here!)Brandy Agerbecks , How to use your listening, thinking and drawing skills to make meaninghttp://bit.ly/1eDeTQuDavid Sibbet’s How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity http://bit.ly/JVfFNtDave Gray’s Gamestorming http://bit.ly/1aju2BJ 5. Three must read articles?Oh, Tom, this is really no fair! There are so many aspects to the practice, and it is blossoming right now, so there is something interesting everyday. I’d suggest people join the RosViz10 group where we link stuff as it emerges. https://www.facebook.com/groups/122858401095871/ Then they can be "in the flow" with the rest of us. The Graphic Facilitation group is also terrific https://www.facebook.com/groups/2708716559/.6. Two must see websites?The International Forum of Visual Practitioners is the professional development hub http://ifvpcommunity.ning.com/  and The Center for Graphic Facilitation is another great aggregator of emerging material across the practice http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/  There is also a strong European community, but I’m less well connected to them. I’m asking my network for their recommendations and will let you know. And of course, my crazy little wiki of resources http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/Visual+Work+and+ThinkingI also have a bit more linked here.

Gender keeps coming up in my work a lot lately, both as a theme for meetings and work, but also in my lived experience. I have a colleague who has taken over one of my clients because we both feel the client will take on the coaching and feedback better from another man than from me. In a conversation about social capital related investments, another colleague says his rule of thumb is to ad 10% to women they are investing in over the equal-on-paper men just because he knows it pays off. Women’s role in agriculture is finally being recognized in the international development world. And in many cases, it is the development of good data to support these hunches that is finally helping us get traction in USING what we know about gender. So this article comes as no surprise. Don’t stop at the first quote… read to the second one!"If you want to create a team that works intelligently, put more women on it than men. According to studies conducted by , Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence…"More women was correlated with more intelligence," he says."Here are the three factors that emerged from the research:The average social perceptiveness of the group members.The degree to which members participated equally in the discussion.The percentage of women in the group was a predictor of the group’s intelligence.OK, so now everyone jumps up and down and says, yeah, but this is different online when there is more ease of contribution and no need for eye contact. Yeah. Right."Interestingly, the findings hold up in electronic collaboration among a group as well as they do in verbal collaboration. In some tests, the groups came together online and could only communicate by text chat. "It turned out that the average social perceptiveness of group members was equally applied, even when they can’t see each other’s eyes at all," Malone says. He believes this means that a high score in the ‘reading the mind in the eyes’ test must be correlated with broader range of social skills and social intelligence."Online facilitators, TAKE NOTE! via Groups are smarter with women, MIT research shows | Profit Minded - Yahoo Small Business Advisor.

(Nancy’s Note: I’ve known Sue online for quite some time. She no longer blogs but this post on Facebook and the subsequent discussion thread caught my eye.  This line, in particular, resonated with something I had been drafting for this blog: "So if the lesson here is to listen to the people chasing impossibly grand and improbable ideas about community capacity building, then the proof of worth might be when those people put their money where their mouths are in a very significant way." I wanted to be able to "point" to it in a public online space, so Sue agreed to let me post it as a guest post. Thanks, Sue! The image is from the Chihuly Glass Museum in Seattle)A decade ago a handful of people harkened to the call to find their own power to make good things happen at the invitation of Omidyar.net. People who came there looking for an inside glimpse at the couple that founded eBay were likely more than a little astonished to find that Pam and Pierre were a man and a woman who rolled up their sleeves and dug right into the sometimes mucky business of better world building right alongside you.All these years later some of my staunchest allies remain the people I met around that digital kitchen table. It had a profound effect on my ability to trust in both the idea of a reputation-based network (Pierre applied the eBay theory to social networking) and to see the value of investing in seeding a lot of small things that worked and finding ways of scaling them up. Of the many projects that found life there, one of the ones that intrigued me most was an idea Tom Munnecke embraced: nurturing a grassroots, positive media network. As a journalist that excited me. It was indie, and audacious, and too good to ever actually work in the minds of a whole lot of people from an industry far too full of itself to see the writing on the wall.During that time Pierre poked me in the ribs to get me to try a couple of things that I initially had a hard time seeing the value of. One was Twitter (why in the hell would I want to sit around a digital water cooler spilling my guts about what I just ate for breakfast, and who I was having coffee with now? … and yes, that’s exactly what I said to him at the time) and the now defunct Vox (which many of us ended up using as a training ground for networked indie media blogging). Those early days conversations were a revelation, particularly when he began brainstorming about the use of Twitter as both a first-responder network in real time crisis situations, and also as a grassroots media portal for people responding from those experiences on the ground. Both of those things came to pass. We’ve seen Twitter become not only a tool of reporting and rescue in earthquakes, in hurricanes and in war zones, but one that has been embraced by the mainstream media as their own rapid headline push tool.So if the lesson here is to listen to the people chasing impossibly grand and improbable ideas about community capacity building, then the proof of worth might be when those people put their money where their mouths are in a very significant way. Take a look at Pierre’s latest project:https://www.firstlook.organd take the time to watch the 2 1/2 minute video that explains exactly why this is so damned vital and cool. His bottomline:"Journalism is more than telling stories. It’s about telling stories that make a difference."And believe him when he says he’s not only in this for the long haul, but committed to making it work. He absolutely will.

Last Friday I was lucky to be the Mid Atlantic Facilitator’s Network February speaker. Of course, instead of talking about something I was totally comfortable with, I decided to explore the application of Liberating Structures to knowledge sharing, AND to explore the use of the structures in an online "webinar" environment. Nothing like jumping off the bridge. But the water was wonderful. I owe a lot to the hosting team (thanks Dana and Fran), the daring participants who were willing to push their use of Adobe Connect a bit further than normal, and the support of the wider LS community of users.Here are the cleaned up slides. I included cleaned up versions of the chat transcripts in the respective "harvest" slides (which started out blank).We are building a nice bunch of people who want to experiment more with Liberating Structures online. If you are interested, check out our LinkedIn group and join us! via Liberating Structures for Knowledge Sharing.

I’m running like a maniac today, but this post from Eugene Eric Kim is to spot on to pass by. My highlights are the attention to online meeting design, shared visuals and slowing down to really notice what is going on. I hope that makes you want to click in and read. Image from the blog post by Amy Wu. Click to see the whole thing!Civic Engagement Funders Aligning for Impact.

Back in 2012 I posted about different card decks I’ve seen and used while facilitating (mostly face to face.) It turned out to be a popular post, so when I see new decks (like with then FABULOUS Groupworks Deck came out) I blog about them. Today one of the folks from the Open Innovators group  at the Hague University (where I have fun facilitating in the autumn) posted about a deck I hadn’t seen on facilitating behavior change and I thought I’d add this one to the evolving list. (Update: Here is another great list.)The behavior change cards come from the Artefact Group. (Hey, they are in Seattle!) Here is their blurb:This set of 23 cards was crafted to help designers, researchers, and anyone facing a behavior change challenge, think through strategies to nudge people toward positive behavioral outcomes. They work particularly well when you have in mind a specific behavior that you want to change (e.g., "We want to get more people to ride the bus," or, "We want people to stop smoking"). We focused on making these strategies easy to grasp, incorporate, and act on.The set is divided into five thematic sections, each featuring strategies and examples that will help you understand whythe strategies are effective, and prompt you to think through how they might be used.Make it personal: The persuasive power of "me" and "my" (cards 1- 6)Tip the scales: How perceptions of losses and gains influence our choices (cards 7- 13)Craft the journey: Why the entire experience matters (cards 14 - 17)Set up the options: Setting the stage for the desired decision (cards 18 - 21)Keep it simple: Avoiding undesirable outcomes (cards 22 - 23)These cards should be considered a starting point, to help you think through strategies and brainstorm new ideas you may not have previously considered. Keep in mind that any given strategy, on its own, is unlikely to be a silver bullet. And while some of these strategies may work in the short term, they don’t necessarily guarantee long-term success. At the end of the day, the only way to make sure that what you’re designing has the outcome you desire is to test it with real people.From a quick glance the cards have a product design perspective, which makes sense as the Artefact Group works in design. I scrolled through them to consider how they might work  the international development contexts I often find myself. The images feel pretty North American to me, and reflect a strong consumer culture. I could see using the cards in the US even outside of commercial product design because the examples are familiar and would offer good thinking triggers. In international development the consumer emphasis and images would not translate well.  The tips and ideas are  useful and I think they would resonate in other cultures with appropriate  reframing for different contexts. A little side note: As an American, I have to be particularly sensitive as people often default to a "disregard that - just another American thing" when I bring them, even if the thing I bring is NOT American. Our cultural identities and our perceptions are strong! My behavior is deeply connected to my roots, so the act of carrying ideas across boundaries is essential to my work, but it has to be done with quite a bit of care. And I still mess up!This is one of the really tough things with any of these decks is how to make them useful across domains and cultures. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take a deck and remix the images? Tweak the text and create a remixed deck altogether? Someone clever could program that, I’m sure.In the meantime, the resonance of all the decks I’ve tried is the mix of the visual with the images, the tactile experience of the cards (moving them around, sharing them in a group setting, etc.) and the triggers that both the images and the words offer us to step, at least slightly, out of our practiced thinking and behaving pathways. (Yeah, ruts!)While you are on the Artefact Group’s site, check out their larger set of resources.  I was drawn a couple of other toolkit elements with a strong visual focus. Check out Designing for Empathy  and their relationship map (see also their whitepaper which is actually YELLOW!) . I have also downloaded "Designing to Incentivize" but haven’t read it yet. (And yes, I still dislike the word "incentivize" but I’m very interested in when incentives help and when they screw things up!) Clearly these folks have a good sense of humor. Here is a screen shot of the page with the summary of the incentives piece: 

Thanks to a serendipitous conversation with friends im Benson (@ourfounder), Tonianne DeMaria Barry (@sprezzatura), I was able to pop in for 1/4 of the Seattle #KaizenCamp. If I were pitching a Hollywood script, I’d say "Open Space" meets "Lean Coffee" meets "Liberating Structures." A group of smart, engaged people conversing about ways of working in a lovely place (The Foundry) with good food and coffee.I sat at two rounds of "lean coffee," one about Storytelling and the Arts, and one about Knowledge Sharing. I made a couple of sketch notes and captured some of the resources and I wanted to get them up and out, tagged and tweeted, before I rushed on to the next thing. (Rushing— sucks!) So here we go…Storytelling and the Arts URLs/Resources Shared:Liberating Structures http://www.liberatingstructures.comFred Hutchison "Innerspace" project (could not quickly find a link!)Frye Museum "Here, Now"Group Works Deck (facilitation pattern language) http://www.groupworksdeck.orgVisuals Speak cardsGraphic Facilitation resources from me (and our summer workshop)Facilitation Card DecksAnd finally, the image I drew to summarize my learnings, using the Liberating Structure "Drawing Together." Knowledge Sharing URLs/Resources:The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit http://www.kstoolkit.orgLiberating Structures http://www.liberatingstructures.comCynefin complexity framework from http://www.cognitive-edge.com 

There is so much to learn from the THE THREE "RULES" OF ETEGAMI, a Japanese style of painting. I could write so much more, but it could not add to these three amazing rules.1 The motto of Etegami is "It’s fine to be clumsy. It’s good to be clumsy." What matters is whether or not you have put your heart into your painting, not whether the painting is a fine work of art. Your earnestness communicates to the person who receives the card, and touches his heart. Each etegami should express something of the character of the person who painted it.2 Etegami is a one-shot deal; there is no underdrawing or practicing on another piece of paper before doing the actual painting. Every time you paint an etegami, you are, so to speak, "broadcasting live." There is no concept of a "failed" or "ruined" etegami. Every etegami you paint should be placed in the mail box and sent on its way to someone else.3 Unlike many other forms of traditional Japanese art, there is no "model" etegami painted by a master for you to imitate. The flowers and vegetables created by the hand of God are your best "models." Observe these models closely before you begin to paint them.via dosankodebbie’s etegami notebook: a review of the "rules" of etegami.And because it is Monday and it has been so long since I posted a Monday video, here is Etegami in practice:

Note: Faciliplay: Play as an Online Facilitation Technique was a post I wrote way back in the early life of this blog, before I moved to WordPress. A lot of those posts feel lost, so I’m picking a few and reposting them. Some, like this one on play, need updating or at least contextualizing. This was written in the day when online interaction was centered on discussion forums, so the advice is framed in that context. It is almost quaint.  Today we can imagine and improvise a much broader repertoire of faciliplay. If you have any great examples, please add them in the comments.Faciliplay: Play as an Online Facilitation Technique (in discussion forums)by choconancyFirst of all, the members of the Fall 1999 Knowledge Ecology University (now defunct) Online Facilitation Course inspired me write this. Their wonderful expressions in "Just Three Words" confirmed what I’ve felt for a while that play can be a liberating, powerful tool for groups and individuals.The online manifestations for play are varied. Like offline humor, we need to take care that our choices respect or bridge personal and cultural differences. Segmentation of "playful" spaces and activities help maintain topical and project work in the "serious" spaces. The terms "playful" and "serious" don’t need to be so separate, so inviolate. They can be merged with some attention to group dynamics. But that’s for another time.What I’d like to share here are some resources on incorporating play into your facilitation repertoire for online conference/discussion spaces; a "bag of toys," if you will, which you can spread out on the "virtual table." These are primarily for use in asynchronous bulletin boards or discussion forums but if you use your imagination, I bet you can find many other ways to use them.As background on the use of play in facilitation, you may wish to check out Bernie DeKoven’s "Deep Fun" site at http://www.deepfun.com. Bernie is the author of The Well-Played Game. Bernie has created a playground to share ideas on play for facilitators, therapists and healers.  Check it out. Add your ideas. Let’s play!Playful TopicsThere is a rich tradition in online play topics from social communities across the net. Many of them became "institutions" at such places as the http://www.well.com,  and other communities. Here are some examples:Just One Word/Just Three Words: as the topic explains, each post has a word limitation. This creates a quick interaction opportunity, allows each poster to "riff" of the previous and can spawn some interesting creative runs. Good for freeing up thinking while brainstorming or using other divergent, creative facilitation strategies. Safe place for anyone to post… you don’t have to create a great literary piece to post! If you want to ratchet it up a notch, try approaches like "rhyme two lines:"It’s better to jump in and try it yourself Than let a forum linger, closed, on the shelf…The Never-Ending Story/Limericks, and other Continuation Topics: Group creation of a story, poem or limerick draws people back because they want to see how the next person has built on their contribution. This also demonstrates how responding to others and reciprocity can help build the group. Plus, it can be a creative kick in the pants. In watching these topic grow, a facilitator can also get an idea of what type of team player each participant might be. There will be those who will adhere to the story line, and those who always veer. Both are important parts of a group. But it’s nice to know who is who, eh?Community History Topics: Online architect Amy Jo Kim is a strong proponent of a community "backstory" or history. By providing space for the group to record and comment on the history, to actually create it, you can provide ownership and a place to be "seen" by the community through specific additions to the record.Bars/Grills/Coffeeshops: Hanging out, shooting the breeze, playing around with simulacrums of food and drink is very engaging for a portion of your group. These places are safe spots to let us slowly reveal more about ourselves, both in and out of our "task" or "work/business" concepts. They provide some metaphorical "body language." What Are You Reading/Eating/Thinking: Easy places to drop information, have fun without a high intellectual or time overhead. And get great tips on new books, movies or chocolate recipies. Good for longer term communities and groups. These topics don’t build the critical mass in shorter, time-delimited settings unless, of course, it is a topic about chocolate (only kidding…) Confess and Be Absolved: Sometimes you just need to get it off your chest. Master storyteller Paul Beleserene of Vancouver BC started this topic in the old Electric Minds. It was a people magnet. It could be funny, poignant, it could be a safe way to apologize to a fellow community member. And Paul, as host, absolved every single person and sent him or her on their way feeling just a little bit better about themselves. I confess I still love this topic.Playful Applications of Interaction SpacesBulletin Boards/Forums/Discussions: Consider creating a segment of your online space for play to ensure it doesn’t jeopardize your "serious" topics. Not everyone likes to goof around. Make sure your names reflect the purpose of those spaces.Chat: Provide open chat room areas for people to spontaneously chat and get to know, talk about non-project issues or just goof around. Schedule chat times for the group as a coffee klatch or cocktail party as a "get to know" function.Instant Messengers: Quick compliments, silly one liners or a quick emoticon wink can create deeper context for your more serious, recorded activities in a conference. Find a place to share IM contacts.Playful Communications ToolsEmoticons: There are tons of emoticons that serve as text "body language." Some disdain them, but it is helpful to include a little if you are using irony or sarcasm in the space where tone and facial expression are absent. Here are a few along with some acronyms commonly used online: or are smiley faces composed of a colon and a right parenthesis mark or or or ;-> is a more tongue in cheek smile, wink, employing a semi-colon :O = surprised face (and there are hundreds of variations)<g> = grinD or = big grin:/ or :-/ = chagrin, disappointment, etc. or = frownbtw = by the wayimo = in my opinion (or imho = in my humble opinion)rotfl = rolling on the floor laughinglol = laughing out loudFor more emoticons, see Emoticons: Online Body LanguageImages and Fonts: Sometimes adding a little color or images to a communication can help enhance a message. Here is one of my favorite animated gifs that a member of one of my online communities made in reference to people getting a wee bit too touchy about issues and feeling attacked:  Image courtesy of Steve Ruano, ©1999 (alas, gif is gone!)Snarfs and Post-a-thons: These are really down-and-dirty techniques that are not for just any online interaction space, but for die-hard online addicts. Most often found in purely social communities, they can inspire quite intense participation and engagement. Now, definitions! A snarf is a post with a particularly toothsome number. Century snarfs (100, 200, 300) are pretty common in big, public communities. Big K’s (1,000’s) are rarer and more prized. Then there are the other odd number combinations which include repeat numbers (555, or the infamous Karen Valentine snarf — 222), numbers with other significance (777, 69) or sometimes people like to snarf numbers that have personal significance like birthdays (51558) or anniversaries. It is totally silly. It can catch like wildfire. It can also destroy the experience for those who do not like snarfing. Consider yourself warned.Post-A-Thons are group efforts to drive up the number of posts in a topic. Again, this is a social community thing. Don’t ask me. I’ve done it. I confess. I really burned out a wrist one weekend trying to get 7,000 posts in one topic as a form of social protest to site management’ capricious decisions at a community that will go unnamed. But you would be amazed how it builds a group over a short period of time. Kind of like a strong, addictive drug. Again, you’ve been warned…. The best way to understand these playful applications is to visit some online communities and join in. (ALAS, so many of these are gone!) Check out http://www.electricminds.org, (especially the Playground conference),http://www.salon.com (click on Table Talk) or http://www.utne.com . And have fun!Image of purple lady from Jeffrey Zeldman Presents

Some words just catch us.I was scanning this transcript of an interview with Clay Shirky (thank you Twitter network) and came across this quote:So the collaborative penumbra around 3-D printing is a place where you don’t have to have someone who can do everything—from having the idea to making the mesh to printing it. You can start having division of labor. So you’ve got all of these small groups that are just working together like studios and still able to play on a world stage.via The disruptive power of collaboration: An interview with Clay Shirky | McKinsey & Company.I just loved the term, "collaborative penumbra."I continue to rabbit away at what has become my hobby research, how international development organizations plan for, pick, provision, monitor and evaluate their online collaboration platforms. What comes up again and again is that organizations have very limited ideas about the meaning and possibilities of collaboration. There is still this idea that it is composed of two things: document sharing and project management. And document sharing covers the territory of "knowledge sharing." Sigh. I keep looking for useful anecdotes to demonstrate the rainbow of possibilities. But each example then points to the fact that this is a fundamental shift in the way work is done. That scares people. They like their "habitus" as Zaid Hassan talks about in his book, "The Social Labs Revolution."Here is another quote from the interview (emphasis mine):"And all the way at the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got these collaborative environments where almost no one has to coordinate with anybody else. When I upload something to Thingiverse, or I make an edit on Wikipedia, it’s not like I need anybody else’s help or permission. So the collaborative range is expanding. The tight groups have more resources, and the loose groups can be much more loosely coordinated and operate at a much larger scale. And I think the people who think about collaboration want to know what’s happening to it, and the answer is everything."Go read the rest. There are more gems there… go to the source!

Warning: LONG thinking-out-loud post! And note, the best stuff is in the comments!For the last month or so there have been some very interesting conversations on the KM4Dev email discussion. One of them has been a reflection on the governance of KM4Dev, particularly the role of the current Core Group and the overall business model. KM4Dev has been around for over 10 years and grown to be a vibrant and respected community. It certainly is one of my very central communities of practice and I love and fret over it a lot. I was on the Core group from its inception until about 18 months ago when I stepped out, partly from burnout, partly from frustration, but keenly aware that my "just do it" attitude had longer term ramifications of people expecting me and the other "do-ers" to, well, just get it done. That is dis-empowering. (And I can be, um, a little dominating? ) Now, back to the question of governance.This begs the question, what kind of animal IS KM4Dev? A community of practice (CoP)? A loose, affiliated network of people interested in KM in development? A service? How should this inform our choices? Are there sufficient distinctions in the governance and supporting infrastructure of a larger network, versus a more bounded community? Or is it more dependent on the nature of that community or network?As I read the messages, there were those who advocated a strong group for governance, for a paid secretariat staff. For formality. Others suggested developing multiple local offshoots and centralize the support functions in those volunteer hubs. From ideas for spin offs that embrace diverse business models, pleas for funding, to a very open, "let it be" model, all struck me as models that reflected each person’s world view.  Some  fundamentally urged the group to become more of an advocate for KM in development as a community, while others kept a more CoP-traditional perspective of the group as a place for its own learning. Do academics prefer more formality? What causes people to think paid positions are more generative for the community than volunteering? Are there ramifications beyond reliability? SOOOO many things to consider.I then sent the following message to the group (this is just part of the message. It was a rambly, early morning thing!):Here is my perception (NOT FACT) Those of us who prefer structure and some degree of formality discussed more about governance and secretariat (and I suppose, have a clearer idea about that differentiation. It is not a language used outside of development much here in the US!) Those of us who prefer informality (or perhaps, just fleeing too much structure!) emphasize the more emergent and adhoc options. Those who are taking a strong community lens focus on the community aspects of volunteerism and self organization. Those with a KM lens, (which in fact, have not stood out in my memory of reading these threads — INTERESTING) advocate for structures which focus on KM and finally, some have advocated structure that in fact advocates for international development.How do we find your way forward with all these options? Furthermore, how do you discern options where people will "walk their talk" and pick up leadership. It is all nice and good to say "YOU should do this or that." But in the end, if no one in the community is willing to step up to the tasks, all is probably lost. If no one cares enough to value and use what is provided - paid or not, what is it worth?Consider this:  if you look at the number of people posting in the thread (less than 20?) compared to the list of members on the email list and/or our NING site (2500+), how do you reconcile the individual advocacy for a particular path forward with the huge, silent, larger whole? To whom does this "governance" thing matter? Is it important to those who simply see KM4Dev as an email list they can dip into when they need it - a sort of service? To those who avidly read, but rarely or never post for a host of reasons? To those of us who perhaps love KM4dev too much? So I started doodling.  Is it useful to examine our governance and structure questions from a variety of lenses, and then find out if there is a sweet spot between them? From the conversation I discerned three possible lenses or perspectives including:  Community, KM (in development) and Advocacy for KM in Development. Here is what I sketched on my notebook.For example, philosophically I absolute love the idea that KM4Dev should be more altruistic and more actively serve development. The realist in me says this is a structural mismatch, that indeed, by focusing on community and KM, we become stronger agents of that wider change through other, more formalized structures (of our orgs, etc) and we become INFLUENCERS as a network.  But that does not exclude forays into advocacy. The lenses do not imply "either/or" but simply help us explore from a variety of perspectives. Here is a very imperfect first try and looking across the three example lenses :  If I look across the three, there is less difference between the community lens and the domain lens, while the advocacy lens presents unique benefits and needs. As noted above, it looks to be a far stretch for KM4Dev to pull that off. That said, KM4Dev might be an amazing incubator for a more focused group working on the advocacy.So the next level of resource implications are about the degree of importance KM4Dev activities and artifacts have to be polished to the level of acceptance by development organizations and practitioners outside of the community. In other words, legitimacy beyond the community. This seems to require more infrastructure and thus more refined business models (funding) and processes.So the question is, what does the community want and what can it pull off. And I’d personally add, how does it differentiate itself from yet another organization?Help me improve my thinking.P.S. If you look back up to the first image, you will see some scribbling on the lower right of the notebook sketch. I’ll post about that in the next blog post.  Stay tuned for Part 2 of Nancy’s Ramblings….

Well, it is on the schedule for tomorrow morning, so I had better be ready for my keynote at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education Conference. This is a placeholder blog where I’ll post the talk artifacts (song lyrics, visuals, and whatever else we create) and resources. The resources below are placeholder for now, so stand by until tomorrow night! I’m talking without slides, with uke and probably (as usual) trying to pack too much in. But hey, if you aren’t learning, why do a keynote, right? Wish me luckResourcesLiberating Structures http:/www.liberatingstructures.comDigital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities http://bit.ly/RFhWzOCynefin framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CynefinThe Social Labs Revolution http://social-labs.org/Aldo deMoor’s site on pattern language for collaboration (ask him about his Blackboard study) http://www.communitysense.nl/Group process pattern language http://www.groupworksdeck.orgSource of the Curtis Ogden quote: http://interactioninstitute.org/blog/2014/05/14/do-acracy-vs-democracy/Source of the Wenger-Trayner quote http://cpsquare.org/2014/05/reporting-on-systems-convening-and-landscapes-of-practice-conference/Intellectual Estuaries of Alice MacGillivray http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/CNIE+2014+Intellectual+EstuariesRelated and Interesting Stuffhttp://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.130.1129&rep=rep1&type=pdf

I strongly recommend all of you who (still!) read this blog and who work in nonprofits, care about the role of service in our communities, have been served or have served a non profit, (etc. etc. etc.) to read Vu Le’s post, General operating funds, admin expenses, and why we nonprofits are our own worst enemies . So that means ALL of you who are readers from the US. And this applies to NGOs as well, so that probably means ALL of you.I have worked for non profits as staff, consultant and/or volunteer most of my adult life and all I can say to Vu is AMEN! The farce of fundraising language used to drive me crazy as a non profit staffer. The way we fund and account for money in US non profits is insane, and take that in the context of the proliferation of non profits, the whole thing starts sinking. And if you think the US is crazy, look into large NGOs and UN agencies. Mama mia!And at whose expense is this farce? Those we seek to serve. So get our your checkbook, bitcoin, credit card or even cash. Walk over to your favorite non profit and give them money with no strings.Accountability you say? Here is the magic sauce. After you fork over your money, fork over your time. Pay attention to what’s happening around you. Then you become part of the real accountability process. Is something good happening that the organization with and for its constituency? Is there learning happening through both successes and failures? Are more people talking about and aware of the organization and its mission, bringing in more support?Vu also outlined 7 ways non profit staff can help shift towards more honest funding and accountability. I’m putting in some snippets here:Stop saying "100% (or 98%, or 95% or whatever) of your donations go into programming." …The next time you attend a fundraising event that says "100% of your donations…," forward them this blog post. Or, raise your paddle and then loudly proclaim, "I want my donations to support administrative expenses!"Publicly recognize funders who support general operating funds. …These are our strongest allies, like Unmi Song of the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation or Paul Shoemaker of Social Venture Partners. Stop using the term "overhead" or "indirect." We need to change these crappy words and phrases with all the negative connotations. …From now on, in all our annual reports and in general, let’s call it "critical infrastructure" or "core support" or "Things We Need in Order to Do Our Jobs and Make the World Better Dammit" (TWNODOJMWBD)Stop artificially deflating numbers and apologizing for percentage spent on critical infrastructure…."There is no standardized way to calculate admin expenses, so the comparison is meaningless. Plus, we strongly believe that investing in critical infrastructure like staff development leads to much better outcomes."Stop seeking the approval of charity watchdog organizations like Charity Navigator, Charity Watch, and Better Business Bureau/Wise Giving Alliance. …until they figure out a way to accurately measure organizations’ effectiveness, their rankings are misleading and distracting.Write in a line-item for reserve funds in your organization’s operating budget. … Build in a line for reserves, and if anyone whines about it, explain why it’s important and ask them to support it or else to stop asking about sustainability.Push back, and be willing to lose a funder. …Sometimes, telling the truth or refusing to break down our expenses and forcing people to focus on outcomes, or refusing to accept funds to do things that would ultimately cost us more than it brings in revenues, may cost us a funder or donor, but this short-term sacrifice may be far better for our organization and for our sector in the long run.I’ve forked over my money. Now I have to hold ME accountable and return to forking over time.A confession: A few years ago I did some work for Social Venture Partners here in Seattle. I was deeply impressed with how they operated at every level and their strong intentions to see and work at a systems level. I almost became an investor, but personally felt outside of the culture of the other investors so I shied away. But as I read Vu’s comments about the value and importance of how SVP invests in its communities with both money and time, I am reminded how important these approaches are. Whether I join an SVP, or I find a kindred approach, I reconfirm my intention that it is not just what we do to support our communities, but how we do. And funding all facets of the work is critical.

I was bummed to miss the September Liberating Structures Seattle User Group meeting as it was about using LS online.  (If you don’t know what LS is, click that first link!)I am passionately interested in this. Today, I had a chance to see the notes and a "minimum specs" document in the works and was VERY HAPPY. (I uploaded it to GoogleDrive so we can all play with it together! I hope that is OK with Keith McCandless, Jim Best, Alex Dunne and Fisher Qua. Guys, ok?I first want to share the notes. I’m adding my comments in bold.User Group members got a good start on Min Specs for bringing virtual meetings back to life.1. Distributing information must not be the purpose of convening a virtual meeting. Firmly invite participants read the material in advance-no ifs, ands, or buts.  Stop the madness of long-boring-stifling-ineffective PPT presentations. AMEN. True online and offline, but I think even more toxic online. People multitask themselves into oblivion. This is also one of the challenging points to convey to "meeting" sponsors. So thinking more about how to engage positively and proactively on this set up issue is on my mind.2. Asking questions that invite participants to explore a shared challenge must be part of the virtual meeting purpose.  For example, if the topic is "what can we do about poor employee engagement scores?," a set of productive questions could include:  How do you know when people are not engaged?  What do you do to maintain your own focus?  How do you help others do the same?  What makes it difficult to maintain a positive and engaged attitude? Do you know anyone or any group who is able to maintain high engagement consistently or effortlessly?  How??  Are any good ideas coming to mind? Any 15% Solutions?  What first steps could we take together? [Adapted from Discovery and Action Dialogue]  This set of questions sparks both self-discovery and action to move forward together.  Ahhhhh.  For me this is true online and offline. So the online elements are how people respond (voice, text, group size — i.e. 1-2.4-all) and what type of design and facilitation enables coherence if we cross different communication forms. Some people type. Some need to talk, etc. 3. Contributing ideas must be very simple and safe for every participant.  More coming… This builds on my last note from an operational perspective. I also think that sometimes the anonymity or semi-anonymity of the online space can actually make it "safer" than F2F.via Liberating Structures - User Group Startup.I keep waffling between the approach - find and adapt a tool and grow from there the practices, or use whatever is at hand and adapt the practices. The practical me says the latter. What do you think? (See more of our collective thinking here and here.)P.S. I know, it has been a LONG time since I blogged. Longest gap ever. And this is a fast post, but I figured better fast than never!

Warning: The following was written in haste, has repetition and can very much stand a good edit. But if I don’t hit post, this won’t go out. Life is busy.Earlier today my friend and respected KM/KS practitioner Ian Thorpe Tweeted a link to a consultancy announcement.Consultancy for Writing, Editing and Production of UNICEF Knowledge Exchange Toolbox (with my team) pls share http://t.co/XpzMwxgZVW— Ian Thorpe (@ithorpe) October 8, 2014I blithely responded: @peterballantyne @ithorpe @GH_Knowledge http://t.co/xbuZx56wvz Sounds like wheel recreation http://t.co/mFaIbIrNIY & many others! — Nancy White (@NancyWhite) October 8, 2014Now, I was pretty tough on Ian and did not offer any context. Later this morning he posted a really thoughtful blog post on the thinking behind his organization’s desire to have their own internal Knowledge Exchange Toolbox. I started to post a comment, but the comment grew so large I decided a post here was called for.I’m going to quote a sizable chunk of his post and then my response. But if this interests you, please go read the whole thing.But, I think there are actually a few good reasons to reinvent or at least adapt.People working in an organization tend to have more trust, and are thus more likely to use something that has been specifically created for them and has some form of official endorsement. This sounds like "not invented here syndrome" - but it’s not quite that.The advantages of developing your own toolkit (or platform, strategy, bibliography, taxonomy etc.) include:It can be written in the kind of language (and jargon and buzzwords) people in the organization understandIt can include tools selected to meet the specific needs of the organization, and the tools selected (even when sourced from elsewhere) can be adapted and tailored to the organizational context.The tools can be tested on real organizational problems and the feedback obtained can be used to improve them and help communicate them better.The tools can go through a quality review and sign off process that the organization understands and respects.The fact that the toolbox is developed together with internal as well as external expertise means that staff know who they can follow-up with for advice and support on when and how to use them.Overall these points mean that there is a sense of organizational ownership of the toolbox meaning not only is it officially sanctioned, but also officially supported and adapted to what the organization needs.Thanks for adding really useful context, Ian. I find your reasoning totally logical. I have also heard it many times at other organizations.First, can we connect usage to the factors you noted above in the context of ownership? Has anyone objectively looked at how usage of such a tool matters if it is internal or external?I strongly suspect usage is driven by other, less visible, more informal things like seeing other peers use the tools, having colleagues they value endorse or role model, etc. I don’t have data. But in considering this,  I wonder about our assumptions aboutthe use of these toolkits in general, andthe importance of the points you make toward use (and improvements going forward).Or are we just masking or missing the deeper, underlying issues? I really don’t know and I’d really LIKE to know.I confess, I get totally frustrated when my own clients hire me to do things that are already done. The KS Toolkit came out of that frustration after three separate clients asked for the SAME thing and the differentiating factor was not whether the tool was on a private intranet or public, but branding. Yes, branding. Does that change the value of the toolkit? Should it?  Now, that said, over time the existing Toolkit product needs improvement. And your focus on adaptation is to me SUPER IMPORTANT. The issue of how to create and improve cooperatively sourced products alone deserves another blog post. (Note to self). But lets go back to rationale for internal vs. cooperative, shared resources.I think a lot of the points you make are right on, but I also worry about some of the underlying causes that make these ideas of "needing internal validation," "our language" and stuff so important in a field like international development and cooperation. From where I sit, I thought our field has shared goals.   So why do we have these counterproductive insider, invented here, not invented here, we are different from everyone else, etc attitudes? What do they represent? Control? Power? Fear? Territoriality? Reliance on the status quo?Do we really understand if and why we need our unique products? Or is our vision too limited to see both the value and possibility for, and the mechanisms to cooperatively create, use, and improve resources?Let me get more specific and look at each of Ian’s reasons for a customized product.It can be written in the kind of language (and jargon and buzzwords) people in the organization understand. Having a sense of identity and ownership is important. But reinforcing organizational buzzwords and jargon does not help wider cooperation in the development field, no? Why might we want to reinforce this behavior? Think of the "beneficiaries" as well. Doesn’t our insider language and jargon distance us from them? It can include tools selected to meet the specific needs of the organization, and the tools selected (even when sourced from elsewhere) can be adapted and tailored to the organizational context. This is a compelling argument for internal platforms. Curation, adaptation and tailoring are really useful "value added" to a toolkit. But why not do that adaptation in a public, cooperative platform where others can learn from what you do, particularly those closest to your organizational domains. Why not do it WITH those others? Hm, as I write this, I wonder about shifting from "organizational" context to "practice" or "domain" context. So if tool X is more useful in working with Y population, lets make sure all of us working with Y population have access to that tool adaptation and can contribute towards its ongoing improvement?The tools can be tested on real organizational problems and the feedback obtained can be used to improve them and help communicate them better. I can’t figure out the value of this being internal to an organization. Again, it relates to the practice, no? The global public good here is pretty darn high…The tools can go through a quality review and sign off process that the organization understands and respects. Why can’t this happen in a cooperative platform? Heck, it might even contribute to better interorganization practices as a whole? And who is the arbiter of quality at the tool level when we rarely seem to care or pay attention at the application level where the IMPACT happens, right?The fact that the toolbox is developed together with internal as well as external expertise means that staff know who they can follow-up with for advice and support on when and how to use them.  Again, I can imagine this same value on a public/cooperative platform.Adaptation is an important thing we ignore very often in KM. There is too much sense that replication and scaling are the solution. So I deeply respect this aspect of adaptation that I sense in Ian’s response.My "yes, and" perspective  is that what you learn/do through adaptation is of value beyond your org. And insights come from beyond your org. And your org exists for public good, right? Why not build more nuanced structures that facilitate open, public, crowdsourced resources, ones that add that layers of adaptation - for example there are other orgs sharing UNICEF’s targets and goals who might also benefit from this need to improve tools.I fully know that what I’m suggesting is not easy. We have learned through the KSToolkit.org that people DO have different needs, need the material organized or expressed differently. But those reasons don’t appear to be organizational. They appear to be driven by the users context and practice. And that these contexts and practices vary WITHIN organizations, and are often shared ACROSS organizations. And cooperatively creating and supporting a shared resource doesn’t fit into most organizational process or budgeting parameters, so when we see things like the KSToolkit.org we are seeing the work of committed individuals who make things happen, often in spite of their organizations. (And deep bow to all of you, including Ian who has been a toolkit supporter.)I think there is a much larger, more valuable proposition of opening up some of this work across organizations and getting off the  focus on our organizations. Lets focus on our goals and the ultimate reason we are doing this. So every human being has the right to and access to food, clean water, housing, education and human dignity.So what are the barriers? What is it we are really avoiding by sharing this "knowledge infrastructure?" Is it convenience? When we work for global public good, what is the cost of this "convenience?" What is keeping us from shifting towards more cooperative and networked structures which can tap a potentially broader and more diverse set of expertise, share the burden of refinement, adaptation, improvement and just simply reduce this recreation? We all need and benefit from the process of adapting and improving tools.  Many of the tools in a Knowledge Exchange toolkit will have relevance to wider audiences. At the same time, so much of what is in these toolkits is not rocket science. What IS rocket sciences is the organizational shifts and changes that actually enable people to USE this stuff. Toolkits are just a resource. And this opens another Pandora’s box for another blog post!I’ll say it. Lets start breaking down more walls instead of using what is convenient and conventional to maintain the status quo. And a little starting point like KM and KS toolkits seems like an ideal laboratory to find new, cooperative, networked ways to maximize value and minimize waste. Let’s recreate and improve together. Otherwise we are supporting wheel reinvention.And Ian, thanks for lighting me up to write about this today. You have helped me clarify my thinking. The next two things we need to consider is what it takes to cooperatively create global public goods (and a lot of good people have been doing some great work in other domains from which we can learn), and how to move the tools from toolboxes into practice!via Why we sometimes need to reinvent the wheel | KM on a dollar a day.

14 years ago I did my first overseas gig in Central Asia. I stayed with the project over three years including a number of trips to Armenia to work with the team on the ground. (See White-2005-Little) Ostensibly I was there to help facilitate learning around using online tools for community development, particularly in rural towns being connected via a school connectivity project. But in the end, what I realized was that my role was as a mirror for the team to see itself.As we had our final closing circle for an After Action Review before the project began its transition away from the organization to the Ministry of Education, we started with the first question "What did we intend to do?" That was pretty easy. The project had a clear mandate, goals, and measurable intermediate outputs. We transitioned quickly into "What did we actually do." There were the things we had dealt with, change, reformations of assumptions and operating conditions, etc. No big surprises.When we got to the third question, "What did we learn?" we sat for a moment in silence, pondering. You could feel something change in the room. The concern that the Ministry would muck it all up, unspoken, but present. The acknowledgement of grief of having to let the program grow was palpable. Maybe even a sense of failure, fearing the transition was untenable.Then one of the amazing women of the program opened her mouth and helped us begin. She said something to the effect of "Nancy Jan, you have helped me realize how much we have grown in our ability to really support change in our communities." Then it began to flow, and the group unearthed first changes in themselves, the lessons they learned. From there insights about structural and environmental factors emerged in ways that were constructive for subsequent work - for the Ministry’s and their own. Something broke open. It was no longer a laundry list of things done.The ability to learn lessons about projects, to surface them and analyze them with sufficient clarity starts with the ability to learn about ourselves. To reflect on our ways of working, of perceiving the work we do, of our assumptions and blind spots. This team had started with little appreciation of their own skills, their ability to influence their partners and stakeholders, and their deep creativity sprung from their even deeper commitment to their work. If anything, they hid their own light.I’m currently working on two projects that are, in essence, about how we learn from our work. One is the development of a self-paced eLearning module on Experience Capitalization, which is a process for describing project work, extracting lessons and recommendations, creating communications products and channels for those lessons so they can be seen, adapted and used by others with similar interests and goals. How do we build our individual and organizational capacity to do that? My mirror role is to try and understand and interpret the content created by subject matter experts, and see it through novice eyes.The second project is as a very peripheral participant helping a knowledge management initiative pick up clues to what is being learned about the learning in the project. How do we notice useful bits, pick them up, reflect on them and share them? The team leader has expressed a very open willingness to start with himself, which is rare and wonderful. So mirrors up!I keep going back to that moment in Armenia, and the same element emerges. We often don’t (or can’t) see what is right in front of us, mostly because we are too busy, working too fast, and can’t seem to find the "mirror" to stop and look ourselves in the eye and reflect. We may lack some basic structure or affordances TO reflect. What if we took time to reinsert reflection and these affordances into our work? Would something change?Is it that simple?I don’t think it is that simple, or that learning from doing IS simple. But this pattern of finding a moment to "be heard" - even if by our own selves, is critical to both identifying and internalizing/applying learning. It is that moment of taking a breath before we do something new, something technical or challenging. Focus. Attention.So back to the mirror. When you ask someone, heck, when you pay someone else to help you learn, you take the time to learn. One of those odd incentives that seem silly because of course we want to learn. But we don’t. That’s when the mirror role comes in very handy.As much as I LOVE being the mirror (it is a fantastic role), it is not a sustainable strategy when learning becomes a matter of importance as it is in my work in international development. Think of the learning that is, or SHOULD be going on now with the Ebola epidemic.I am going to write about this a few more times in the coming weeks and months to try and whittle down one or two things that are actionable, doable and can be motivated from within to leverage more learning from our work, and helping it connect with others who may be able to use our learning.Image by PhotoComIX on Flickr, Creative Commons

This is the second post in a series about how we learn from our work. The first one can be found here.The great American baseball player/philosopher Yogi Berra, said "You can observe a lot just by watching."That quote popped into my mind when I was on a phone call with a group of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grantees of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene program. We were on a great 90 minute call with those working on projects in Africa when one participant shared this story. The following is a total paraphrase!I received this drawing of a septic tank from one of our colleagues in India. Looking at it, I saw it was a great design, but I closed the email and moved on. A few months later I visited and saw the remarkable tank and realized what a breakthrough it was and thought, why did I just close that email a few months ago? Why didn’t I share it with a colleague in Africa who I knew would be interested? What was it about that face to face moment that crystallized the learning for me?"You can observe a lot just by watching." All humor aside, I’d like to greet that with a rousing "Yes, AND…" The AND is that we are getting so programmed for efficiency, and addressing every little blip on the radar screen that we miss the importance of the things we are ostensibly "watching." When we go into the field, many of those distractions are electronically de-tethered. We focus, focus, focus on what we actually see in front of us. We ARE watching with all of our attention and thus can reflect on the importance of what we are seeing.So is the solution to simply go into the field? Well, not so practical. Not so sustainable. Sometimes not even possible, especially for anyone lower on the project hierarchy. It is not equitable.So what do we do?We are currently initiating two experiments to try and solve this problem. I’ll share the first here, and save the second for a follow up post. (Focus, focus, focus!)Shared, Open-Topic ConversationsOne is the semi-regular, open agenda telephone calls with subgroups of BDS grantees. The calls were initiated by the portfolio leader, as a response to working with the KM team and hearing needs from grantees. By walking the talk, our client is using his leadership position to invite conversation, versus disseminate requirements or content.So far it feels like having between 8-12 people on the call is a good size. There is enough diversity, but not too many voices so everyone can have some air time and attention. We use a telephone bridge line and a shared note taking/chatting space. (Our "community technology configuration.") Currently we’ve been experimenting with Meeting Words (http://www.meetingwords.com).We do a quick check in, then each person is invited to share some insight about their current work. People use chat or voice to ask questions, answer, look for possible collaboration opportunities, but more importantly, pay attention for 90 minutes to thinking across the portfolio, not just within their project.Because there are others there "listening" to us, we speak and pay attention differently than a quick scan of an email. My sense is that the more we can recreate the sense that we are together, the more this behavior shows up, rather than paying attention with half an ear whilst doing email and reading a note someone in the office just set in front of us. The shared note taking space helps focus attention and offer different means of engagement. We didn’t have it the first call and I personally felt less coherence. (That could just be me.) When we added it for the second call, people did not have to wait for "airtime" to talk - they could type. In addition, I did live note taking in the wiki side of the page and invited others to improve my note taking. In when the links! In went the correct spelling of a report. And we had very useful, collaborative notes ready by the end of the call. Boom!The turn taking helps stimulate our past experience of being in a room, in a circle together sharing a beer or coffee, and simply talking with each other.  It helps the shyer people know there will be a space for them, even if they want to pass. It evens out some of the inevitable power dynamics of funder/grantee, boss/team member.At the end of the second call we asked ourselves if we found value in the call and the meeting words and the quick informal feedback was very positive. I was even surprised at how positive. What did we do right? What could be improved? We still need to answer these questions.The final piece of these calls is just starting up - following up with sharing of mentioned resources, setting up follow up actions for pairs with shared needs or interests, and development of asynchronous discussion threads of topics identified as useful for more depth.My key questions going forward on this include:How often do these calls need to be to build sufficient trust and practice to be, and be perceived as valuable and worth the time spent? In other words, what is the heartbeat of this practice? Time is always the scarce resource, so value MUST exceed time spent. This raises the question of what metrics help us understand received and perceived value. Is it important to have metrics or is informal feedback enough?How will the proposed follow up items emerge and how will we discern the value of these experiments? Will we succeed in sustaining asynchronous interaction or is that even another step away from the "face to face attention." Again, what are our metrics?Finally, if these calls continue to provide value, who else would benefit from/want to attend? How far away from those in charge of the grants should we go? I personally think we miss a LOT by not having these conversations with front line staff, but it becomes increasingly logistically challenging and time is that darn choke point.Have you done informal, regular knowledge sharing calls? What have you learned about convening them? Measuring their value? Let me know and I’ll share it back around! Because, after all, you can observe a lot by watching, right? J

Why The ____ Would I Wake Up at 4am for a Hangout? Project Community  Alan shared a great blog post about the final Project Community Hangout - it is wonderful so I’m being a lazy blogger and pointing you towards it. I’ll have a final reflective blog on this… but later! I need to catch up on my sleep first!Of course, I also have to share the great pic Alan found…

The work of Elinor Ostrom comes up again and again as I engage with people from different parts of my diverse network. This is always an indicator to PAY ATTENTION. Here is a brief summary of Ostrom’s * Principles for Managing a Commons via "On the Commons." This has been in my draft file for too long, so I’m getting it OUT!A classic example of this was her field research in a Swiss village where farmers tend private plots for crops but share a communal meadow to graze their cows. While this would appear a perfect model to prove the tragedy-of-the-commons theory, Ostrom discovered that in reality there were no problems with overgrazing. That is because of a common agreement among villagers that one is allowed to graze more cows on the meadow than they can care for over the winter—a rule that dates back to 1517. Ostrom has documented similar effective examples of "governing the commons" in her research in Kenya, Guatemala, Nepal, Turkey, and Los Angeles.Based on her extensive work, Ostrom offers 8 principles for how commons can be governed sustainably and equitably in a community.8 Principles for Managing a CommonsDefine clear group boundaries.Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior.Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.As I prepare to facilitate a research scientists team retreat with communications and teamwork on the agenda, I am refreshing myself with some foundational ideas and thinking. Anything else I should be looking at or revisiting?via Elinor Ostrom’s 8 Principles for Managing A Commmons | On the Commons.