without my contribution

I found a rock that spoke to me.  And I placed it.

I didn’t want to put it in a precarious place.  And I definitely didn’t want to risk any of it tumbling down like a giant Jenga puzzle.  I found a flat rock, and placed it on a much larger, supporting (load bearing) flat rock.  About ¾ of my rock lies on the surface of the rock under it, and about ¼ extends out, cantilever.

Just as I feel welcome to build upon what’s there, my rock and its placement invite others to build upon it.  Some extra weight placed on the supported ¾ would allow someone else to place a rock on the extended end.  And I feel good about my role in this creation.

Now that I think about it, though, it’s probably not a single, ever-accumulating structure.  Rain and wind must knock it down – or some of it.  And people will build it back up again.  One stone at a time.  And it becomes a dance.  People taking their multipart turn; then nature takes its turn.  (I was at first thinking that nature’s turn was with one devastating blow.  But it’s not true.  Nature also has a multipart turn.  Each raindrop that hits.  Each gust of wind.  One rock falls over.  Two.  Three. A mini-landslide.  A fallen rock gets shoved again and again, until the storm is over and the sun comes out and it’s the people’s turn again.)

And, like with nature’s turn, the people’s turn is not neat and orderly.  The absence of stated (let alone enforced) rules makes sure of that.  Each person who encounters it determines their own rules.

with my contribution

When I encountered it, I just knew that I could place a rock – one rock.  I chose the rock.  I chose the placement.  I chose to sit down and appreciate it, to write down these impressions.

Someone else may decide to place several rocks.  Or rearrange existing rocks.  Or tear some (or all) of it down.  Or just move on with a passing glance.

Who’s “right”?  Is “right” even meaningful here?

I invest in this thing whatever meaning I choose.  I can name it… a collaborative expression?  Rock art?  Terraforming?  I choose to allow it to move me.  As others choose to regard it in their own ways, with profound meaning or with passing nonchalance.  And the vast, vast majority of people (including, quite possibly, everyone I’ve ever known) will never encounter it themselves.

I may try to share it with others, as I’m doing now, along with the meaning I derived from it.  And, while I can hope that others appreciate what I share, it’s unlikely to have the same depth of meaning for anyone else.  More significant, perhaps, is that I let others know that it is meaningful to me.  That’s how to connect with people – not to try to convey the meaningfulness per se, but to convey that it was meaningful to me.

I can’t convey meaning to others.  I can only be(come) and express myself.  And by doing so – authentically, honestly – then others can more deeply appreciate who I am, and, perhaps, find their own meaning in knowing me.

But celebrities are special cases (aside from their relative wealth).  Although some celebrities are private about their charitable contributions, others take advantage of their popularity to influence their fans to join them in supporting causes they care about.   And, when this happens, everybody wins. 

• The charity, of course, raises more funds and broadens their donor base. 
• The celebrity leverages her own support to have a greater impact, and also builds  a potentially meaningful connection with her fans. 
• And the fans themselves enjoy that same meaningful connection with their celebrity (and with fellow fans), in addition to the warm feeling of helping a good cause.

Celebrities try to persuade their fans to reach into their pockets in a number of ways.  They may appear on TV, endorsing their favorite charity.  Or they may appeal to their fans when they are gathered together and paying attention.  (Alicia Keys persuaded 90,000 American Idol viewers to text-donate $450,000 to Keep a Child Alive.)   And this is all great. 

But as any marketer knows, it’s easier to appeal for money when consumers already have their wallet out – like in the supermarket check-out line.

So, why not combine these two phenomena… Enable celebrities to invite fans to support their cause of choice at the point of a pending transaction?

Imagine going to iTunes to download I Gotta Feeling from the Black Eyed Peas, and seeing an appeal from them asking if you’d like to add $0.10 to your purchase to support Green For All, one of their favorite charities.

Or when you pick up a Harry Potter book from Amazon, and J.K. Rowling asks if you’d like to add a dollar to your purchase for one of her causes, like Book Aid International.

Or being asked by Andre Agassi for an extra $5.00 for Education Africa when you buy his Nikes from Zappos.

The big role here is played by the vendors, who present the interface and handle the transaction. And let’s push their role even further.  Imagine if the vendors enabled celebrities (or any of the creative voices whose products they sell) to submit or modify their appeal details directly, sans intermediary, thereby making the potential connection between celebrity and fans more direct and transparent. … and if the vendors didn’t charge a handling fee, so that 100% of the incremental contribution went straight to the charity.  Why would the vendors do this?  Because they just might sell more product – especially if they build this into their image, and artists urge their fans to buy from them.

I’m sure I’m glossing over (or totally ignorant of) plenty of technical and financial details.  But I like the idea of reducing the friction of charitable contribution, while at the same time increasing the opportunity for meaningful connection.  What do you think?

In her terrific and inspiring new book, Share This: How You Will Change the World With Social Networking (Berrett-Koehler, 2010), media technologist Deanna Zandt describes and applauds the new information environment of widespread, prolific sharing of information.

When we read a new story online, there’s usually a tool on the page that encourages us to “e-mail this to a friend” or post it to one of dozens of social networks.  When we watch a funny video, we embed it on our own site or link to it so that others will watch.  When something happens that makes us go “Wow!” we want to tell everyone we know.  (Zandt, p. 7)

It’s easy enough to read this, and say, “Sure, it’s fun to share stuff, but so what?  The world is a serious place with lots of problems.  Why should we waste our time and effort on fun and games like this?”

Ms. Zandt asserts that, though many of the shared items may seem frivolous in isolation, the collective stakes are really quite a bit higher. 

When we share our own and others’ experiences and opinions, we can begin to overhaul traditional power dynamics and relationships.  We start to determine for ourselves what’s relevant and important, and subvert the institutions that seek to keep the status quo.  (Zandt, p. 56)

Woah! This is a big claim.  Can it be true?  How can uncoordinated sharing of miscellaneous information “overhaul traditional power dynamics”?  Isn’t it really all just a bunch of random bits and pieces of information, spread helter-skelter among friends and strangers alike?  This can’t possibly add up to anything coherent or meaningful. 

Or can it?

In Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Holt, 2007), David Weinberger of Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society takes a more epistemological view of these scattered pieces of information and connection:

… For the first time, we have an infrastructure that allows us to hop over and around established categorizations with ease.  We can make connections and relationships at a pace never before imagined.  We are doing so together.  We are doing so in public.  Every hyperlink and every playlist enriches our shared miscellany, creating potential connections that we can’t often anticipate.  Each connection tells us something about the connected things, about the person who made the connection, about the culture in which a person could make such a connection, about the sorts of people who find that connection worth noticing.  This is how meaning grows.  Whether we’re doing it on purpose or simply by leaving tracks behind us, the public construction of meaning is the most important project of the next 100 years.  (Weinberger, p. 221-2, emphasis added)

In other words, sharing and connecting is not just a self-serving exercise.  It’s actually creating meaning — profoundly and long-lasting.  It’s changing how we collectively view the world and our relationship to it, and to one another.  And in today’s world of ecological destruction and other ills, a shift in our collective world view is critical.  

So, for those of us who want to join this “most important project”, how do we decide what information to share?  What are the most important connections for us to make?  Ms. Zandt provides some guidance:

… it’s not enough to put random things out there.  What you share in social networks needs to come from a real place in your personality: your own experiences, opinions, hopes, and fears.  It’s those authentic tidbits that are going to create connections of empathy and trust with other people… (Zandt, p. 50)

Put another way, the formula for effectively contributing to this critical effort to shift our collective world view is …. to be yourself.  Be your authentic self.  Trust your instincts.  Share what you think is important.  In a continual process of self-discovery, use your own voice (in any medium).  Be you.  See me.  Become we.

And will it make a difference?  Mr. Weinberger thinks so.

Every phenomenon of meaning will emerge from the miscellaneous, from limericks to marketplaces, from new products to poetry to peace.” (Weinberger, p. 172)

I think so, too.

While I imagine most optometrists don’t care a whole lot for what their colleagues ate that morning, the first thing that came to mind is the wonderful metaphor recently conveyed by Deanna Zandt that social media is like a pointillist painting, with each self-revealing statement contributing another point in portraying one’s identity.

And I tried to think more deeply about why I thought my optometrist’s attitude was short-sighted (or, at least, un-networky) in terms of making the most of the opportunity to nurture bonding social capital within this professional group.

• Leaving the borders loose.   Sure, the AOA social networking initiative clearly wants to help its member optometrists discover new connections among themselves in areas related to their profession.  And, probably would like to discover new connections outside of the professional realm – like who likes to ski, or what’s a good brand of binoculars.  But, what somebody had for breakfast?  That’s off-limits.  And I think this can be problematic because if you create strict, arbitrary borders, you risk limiting meaningful connection for a couple of reasons.
  • Sometimes what’s meaningful may not fall clearly on one side of the border or the other.   One can contrive examples for a situation like this, like “I’ve been drinking carrot juice with my breakfast for years…”  (Yes, I know this is contrived, but you get the point.)
  • Just being aware of boundaries promotes a degree of self-censorship among participants.  If the network intends to welcome authentic contributions, the fewer “rules” and boundaries that participants need to be cognizant of, the more freely they may express their authentic voice.
• Having a border patrol.  Although a stronger argument can be made re: the value of having somebody “police” what people share within the network to reduce the likelihood of slander or other illegal expression, it’s much harder, for me at least, to appreciate the value of having somebody monitor the “border” of what subjects are legitimate and what are not.  Whoever the monitor is, s/he necessarily applies a subjective perspective.  A human monitor is usually put in place because of the perceived need for judgment.  (If no judgment were needed, the border could be “patrolled” automatically – like by rejecting any posts that contain the word “breakfast”).  So, by having a human monitor in place to say that this content is OK, and that is not, the network centralizes responsibility for shaping/steering the conversation.  Far better (I think) to distribute such responsibility among all participants.  Let them hash out what’s appropriate or not, like with Wikipedia’s Discussion pages.
• Who maps the borders.  It’s understandable that AOA’s network organizers have a vision of appropriate (and inappropriate) use of this new venture that they are initiating.  And I would bet that most optometrists would tend to concur with such intentions.  (Few participants are likely to howl in protest that they really want to share their breakfast choices.)  But here is a group of professionals being invited to participate in a social network – an ecosystem of relationships in which each member has an equal right to self-expression.  I believe that if the network is to be most effective (i.e., most valuable to most participants), then it’s better to let its shape emerge organically.  I can imagine the organizers, in announcing the new service, sharing their expectations and vision to kick things off.  And then relax, sit back and watch what evolves.  If allowed to develop organically, in response to the authentic contributions of those members who choose to contribute, it will more likely grow into something that members find really useful and meaningful (with borders that nobody can predict today.)

I re-read this, and some of it sounds dogmatic, elitist and theoretical.  I think it’s great that the AOA is getting into this world, even if their steps are influenced by old paradigms of their role and what is professional.  But it gets close to what I’m feeling, and I think I’ll post this now, because I’m hungry and haven’t eaten anything since my breakfast of shredded wheat with blueberries.

I’ve thought about the American flag a lot lately, and, since today is Flag Day, I decided to put some thoughts down in writing. It pisses me off that the flag, and the pride in this country that it symbolizes, has been yielded to the political right. When I see a flag on a car bumper or window, for instance, I immediately pigeon-hole the driver as right-wing, and feel a sense of alienation. I’m sure it’s not always true, but I think it’s mostly true.

There’s plenty that I’m not proud about the U.S. The hubris and imperialistic attitude toward the rest of the world, and the so often misplaced priorities at home. But there are reasons to be proud as well.

Earlier today I went to pick up some knives I had dropped off at A&A Tool Sharpening in Upper Darby. I’ve used this place before, and enjoyed dealing with the elderly proprietor with the thick Italian accent. His name is Tony Borrelli. This time, I asked him about his background. He told me he learned his craft growing up in Italy, and then lived in Argentina for some years before emigrating to the U.S., which he called “the best country on the planet”. I asked him why, and he lit up. He looked me in the eye to make sure we were connected, and he told me several things. I can’t remember them all, and they weren’t all about America per se, but a couple things I recall…

• In this country, if you want to work you can live. He felt he had a chance to live here in a way that was, among other qualities, more respectful than he felt in other countries. You have to live with people and eat with people and work with people from other countries, he said, to appreciate America, implying that I, native-born, take it for granted (and he’s probably right).
• The most important thing is “knowledge of other people”, he told me. “More important than money; more important than gold.” If you meet someone who knows more than you, show them respect, he advised. Then you can learn from them. He probably wouldn’t know the term “social capital”, but that’s what he meant.

I don’t know Mr. Borrelli’s politics. I suspect that they are not congruent with my own. But for a few moments, he and I connected on a special level — this man whose long and challenging life had taught him to love this country, and myself, who wants to be openly proud of my country.

I believe that America CAN do great things – things that I and others on the left would agree were great. But this means reinforcing (or creating) themes of what America is about that are not dominant today. And the signal that this has occurred will be when people see flags on bumper stickers, and cannot guess the politics of the drivers.

As he handed me my knives, Mr. Borrelli held my gaze and said, “I tell you this. You tell someone else.”

And so I am.

On our last Net Tuesday (December 1), we held the Philly Net Tuesday Book UNclub at Robin’s Bookstore.  The idea was pretty straightforward… We would discuss books in Net Tuesday’s scope of interest: social networking/media, nonprofit technology and social change.  (That’s the “biblio” part.)  And we would use the style of an unconference, in which participants set their own agenda.  (That’s the “social” part.)  As far as any of us knew, this wasn’t really done before.  (And that’s the “experiment” part.)

We were fortunate that Lindsay Tabas video recorded parts of the evening (and also led one of the book discussions).  She put together a really great, short piece that nicely captures the spirit of the evening.  Thank you, Lindsay!

A Biblio Social Experiment from Lindsay Tabas on Vimeo.

We had about 16 people show up, exhibiting our typical mix of techies and nonprofit/activist types.  And, thankfully, people were open-minded about taking part in an experiment.  We started with 3×5 cards with names of the 25 books that people had submitted to the Google spreadsheet over the previous month.  Then we added additional books suggested by the folks who showed up.  We eliminated those books from the spreadsheet that nobody present had read, or felt comfortable enough to generate a discussion, and came away with the following 9 ititles.

1. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software by Steven Johnson
2. Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger
3. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
4. Our Choice:  A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis by Al Gore
5. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide by Mark Warschauer
6. The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa
7. The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
8. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott
9. Twitterville: How Business Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods by Shel Israel

We arranged the cards into a 3 by 3 matrix for 9 breakout groups  (a 15-minute round of 3 breakout groups, followed by a second round, and a third).  Inevitably there was some chaos, especially during switching times, but discussions seemed quite engaged.  In fact, one of the most obvious problems was that 15 minutes was just too short for a discussion on almost all of these books.

So, this was our biblio-social experiment.  And, I believe it went fairly well.  We did some whole-group debriefing at the end, and the following constructive suggestions were made:

• Have more time to talk about each book, which might be accomplished in a couple of ways:
  • Talk about fewer books (i.e., fewer, but longer rounds)
  • Pre-select the books before the event, since the selection process at the beginning of the evening was too heavy and time-consuming.  This could be done with the group (crowd) still making the selection, as opposed to any individual.
• Narrow the subject focus more.
• Try this format with media other than books, like blogs, articles.
• Circulate information about the items to be discussed before the meeting, so people could do some prep if they wanted.

I think these are all great suggestions.  As an experiment, I think it was successful, and certainly worth trying again, incorporating some of these ideas.  But Philly Net Tuesday probably won’t return to this format before later next year at the earliest.  And, maybe this format could work elsewhere.  Anybody have the phone number for the Free Library of Philadelphia?

But how?  An electronic tagging system isn’t convenient on the subway where I do a lot of my reading.  So, I thought about jotting down these tags, along with their respective page numbers, on the blank pages at the back of the book.  Then, it occurred to me (duh!) that such an idea was called an index, that there already is one at the back of the book, and that it was created for the same purpose – to help me, the reader, re-locate items and concepts scattered throughout the text.  So, why not just annotate the index itself?

This is not such a radical idea, not so different from annotating the body of the book in the first place.  And maybe “everybody else” already does this. But it had never occurred to me before (nor to several others that I mentioned it to). 

from my copy of David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous

I realized that, though I had overcome my childhood qualms about writing in a book, I felt hesitant to mess around with the book’s index.  Its terse order and structure, its separation from the content of the text per se, and its accepted role of providing keys into that text, all conspire to imbue the back-of-the-book index with an authority distinct from that of the author’s written words.

And, as in information professional, I’m well aware that many (though not all) back-of-the-book indexes are constructed by conscientious professional indexers, who do a great job of identifying, disambiguating and articulating concepts that the author has carefully assembled for presentation.  But index quality is beside the point.  A back-of-the-book index – no matter how good it is – necessarily reflects somebody else’s conceptual framework and priorities.  Not mine.  A good index is a tremendously valuable tool, which I deeply appreciate and use.  But it can never reflect my own, changing intellectual perspective or emotional response.  Which is why different people’s annotations of the same book are different.

And, with this modest insight, I feel liberated to “personalize” a book’s index, to merge my subjective tags with the indexer’s “objective” terms, to make an already useful access tool more personally meaningful.  And, in this flush of discovery, I’ve only just begun to identify ways to annotate a back-of-the-book index, including:

• adding new entries in their approximate alphabetical positions;
• alphabetically adding tags in “my language” and referring to their synonymous index terms;
• adding page numbers to existing entries (which the indexer had not considered significant enough to include);
• flagging existing entries, or specific page references of existing entries, that feel particularly important or interesting;
• highlighting references to other books, authors or concepts that I want to pursue independently;
• augmenting existing entries, or specific page references of existing entries, with additional info about why they feel important;
• drawing lines between two index terms and/or tags to reveal connections not expressed by the author or indexer.

Maybe this is interesting to nobody else but me.  But if you’ve annotated your books’ indexes, please share your experience.  Was it useful?  Do you have some tips?  Did you run into problems?  Have you discovered alternatives?

In both cases, I remarked to my wife, you have a bunch of skill-based enthusiasts who come together to share their skills. But she pointed out a key difference. Beadfest is produced by the trade publisher Interweave Press, and is not particularly interested in facilitating sharing of expertise among participants. It’s really designed primarily for one-way flow of expertise – from Interweave’s sanctioned “experts” to the paying attendees. I don’t know if it just doesn’t occur to the event organizers to facilitate expertise sharing among attendees, or if they deliberately avoid doing so, perhaps for fear of diluting their underlying marketing message. Regardless, though, they do not have the types of explicit networking labels used by the origamists at their convention.

HOWEVER, my wife noted, most of the women (and most of the attendees are women) tend to wear some of their own creations. And “How did you do that?” questions inevitably ensue. I take this as an indication that people’s innate desire to share what they know with others will find a way to express itself. Though they’re not wearing explicit, written labels, the jewelry itself nevertheless serves as a “networking hook” to invite connection and sharing among attendees. People want to share with their peers – even when their environment doesn’t necessarily encourage it. Beadfest might want to look at this as an opportunity, rather than a threat.

]]> http://communishare.org/2009/08/folks-just-want-to-share-what-they-know/feed/ 1 http://communishare.org/2009/06/shirky-on-media-transformation/ http://communishare.org/2009/06/shirky-on-media-transformation/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:08:15 +0000 Seth http://communishare.org/?p=109 Perhaps I laud him too much (I see his name is quite big in my tag cloud), but here is a 17-minute talk given by Clay Shirky at the U.S. State Department last month.  It is the epitome of what gets me excited about this whole damn thing we’re living through.  “Web 2.0″ is just scratching the surface.

My strongest motivation for going was to meet and bond with other Net Tuesday organizers.  Officially, there are 33 Net Tuesdays around the world, and 14 were represented at the conference this year:  Austin (Billy Bickett), Chicago (Justin Massa and Dorothee Royal-Hedinger), Guayaquil, Ecuador (Eduardo Bejar) , London (Amy Sample Ward), Montreal (Peter Dietz and Jeremy Clarke), New Orleans (Jessica Rohloff ), Philadelphia (Ivan Boothe and myself), Phoenix (Sandy Sutton Andrews), Portland, ME (Alex Steed), Raleigh (Justis Peters, San Francisco (Rachel Weidinger), Seattle (Sarah Schacht), Toronto (Celina Agaton) and Vancouver (Eli van der Giessen and Joe Solomon).

Last year (at N2Y3) we had a hastily planned lunch with fewer Net Tuesday organizers, only a couple of whom were also here this year.  But this year, the conference organizers much more intentionally acknowledged the Net Tuesday organizers and helping us bond and share.  The kickoff was an entire day before the actual conference began just for us.  Not only did we get to know one another (particularly helpful before the conference got underway), but had plenty of time to discover similarities and differences among our programs, and to share aspirations for the future.  I felt (and feel) a genuine bond with the other organizers that I hope to maintain (we planned some collaborative opportunities before N2Y5).  Unlike last year, when the vast majority of the conference attendees had no idea what “Net Tuesdays” were, this year I felt appropriately validated.  We were acknowledged in the conference program, given specially colored conference T-shirts, and some of us played the vaguely satisfying role of “hosting” (introducing) some of the sessions.   Twice, in plenary sessions, we were asked to stand, and received applause.  In other words, we were much more clearly contextualized in relation to NetSquared.  I feel more pride in my role, and got the (much needed) shot in the arm to return to Philly and keep pushing forward Net Tuesdays and other Philly NetSquared initiatives.  The conference did its job.

• FrontlineSMS:Medic. First place winner. The main aspect of the project is equipping community health workers (CHW’s) in the third world with second tier (not “smartphone”) mobile phones when they go out to rural villages – many miles from the nearest clinic. Special software provides the CHW’s with access to medical records and lab diagnostics, enabling them to deliver a higher degree of service in the field and reduce the need to transport patients to a medical facility. They’ve already demonstrated this impressively in a trial in Malawi. This is cool enough, but what really blew my (and others’) mind(s) is that they are working with a team at UCLA to develop a new diagnostic procedure. Removing the lens and adding an LED light source, they plan to use the camera chip to diagnose malaria and other diseases in the field, thereby dramatically reducing the time required for diagnosis and treatment. They are looking at the mobile phone not simply as a communications device, but as a platform for repurposing its technology. And, finally, I want to recognize Isaac Holeman, one of the team, who Skyped into our Net Tuesday Philly meeting the following week – making for a great gathering. Thanks again, Isaac!
• The Extraordinaries.  Second place winner. The basic idea is to use your smart phone to identify and perform short “micro-volunteer” tasks, like translating (or transcribing) documents. The video “elevator pitch” gives a nice illustration of what they’re envisioning.
• VozMob – Mobile Voices, Voces Moviles. Third place winner. This is a platform for citizen journalism and community building. Utilizing a participatory design process, VozMob is currently deployed in immigrant communities in Los Angeles. Enable immigrants to share their stories via text, images or sound, the cell phones are being used to empower the community, to report abuses and to connect with family back home.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to get excited by some mobile apps. Some of the participants, it seemed to me, were driven primarily by the technology and finding a cool application for it. But what impressed me was how many of these folks had a deeply developed sense of progressive social justice, and saw the technology as a tool toward that end. (The VozMob folks were particularly articulate about this.) I was also impressed by the sense of mutual support and collaboration among participants. It was fun to watch and be a part of.

Actually, though, I’ve been thinking more about the idea of the idea (the “meta-idea”?).  In other words, the generalized situation I see is this:

An intelligent person (“originator”) has an idea that is:

• personally meaningful
• potentially “big” – in the sense of finding wide acceptance and/or making the world a better place
• not immediately intuitive (it’s complex enough that it probably requires more than an “elevator speech” to adequately convey it to most people)
• at a point at which the originator needs perspectives and expertise from other people in order to validate the idea and move it forward (or, alternatively, to become convinced that it should be abandoned).

I believe that this accurately describes John’s situation with smart accounts.  It also describes my own situation with a couple of ideas, but especially an idea for which I’ve been using the name “Dissemination Station”.  And, I’m sure it applies to many other people and ideas as well.

It seems to me that the challenge for John, me and other such originators is to:

• articulate the idea
  • in sufficient detail and clarity that it conveys its essence
  • briefly and simply enough so that people will bother to read it (or view it, listen to it…)
• attract people to learn about the idea, including those who would:
  • have valuable and needed perspectives and expertise
  • be willing to share their insights with the originator

John has articulated his idea on his website, as well as by submitting the project to the NetSquared conference.  He’s out there and pushing it.  I, on the other hand, have yet to articulate my Dissemination Station idea publicly – even though I first articulated the original version of it as a confidential product proposal to Telebase in 1995!  I suppose my own reticence to “out” this idea is rooted in a long-learned, hard-to-shake sentiment for proprietary knowledge (“It’s ‘my’ idea”), combined with the insecurity that it may not really be as good an idea as I’ve thought.  But a lot of good that silence has done – for me, for the idea (meme) itself or for the world.  Well, fuck that.  I’m gonna out the idea, starting on this website, and risk the embarrassment of imperfect description, the pain of discovering it’s really a dumb idea, or the frustration of losing “credit” to somebody with more ambition and fewer scruples.

Heads up.

What unites a rapper, a singer/songwriter, three jewelry-makers, a documentary on women in the media, a raffle, a silent auction, and a music video? Stumped? They’re all coming together for an Arts Free-for-All Party to raise money for filmmaker Hannah ‘helyx’ Horwitz’s documentary about American teens in Nicaragua.

All that and more will be happening Saturday, March 14, from 6-9 at Saladworks on the Penn Campus, 3728 Spruce Street, 19104. Lee G the rapper/singer will host and perform, and songwriter Kevin Ricci will sing. Works by artists and jewelry-makers Julia Eckenrode, Lisa Horwitz and Danny Kulp will be offered at silent auction, and Horwitz’ documentary on the impact of media images of women on girls will be shown. Rounding off the eclectic mix will be a raffle of a CD set, and a showing of Sandsnake, a Lee G and Delon music video filmed and edited by Horwitz. In short, the evening offers a madly mixed arts menu making one fun party.
The event is part of a broader fundraising effort to support Horwitz’s trip to Nicaragua this summer with a group of Philadelphia teens who will work with a small community there to build a school. Their trip is part of buildOn, (http://www.buildon.org/) an organization that combines after-school service in teens’ home communities here in the states with raising money and sending volunteers to build schools (295 to date) in developing communities around the world. 13 Philadelphia area high schools are working with buildOn (http://buildon.org/RegionsChapters/USProgramRegions/USProgramsList.aspx) and a group of students from those programs are headed to Nicaragua this summer. Horwitz’s film will document their work and the impact it will have, not just on the community building a new school, but on the lives of the American teens. Horwitz knows this impact well, as she describes her own buildOn experience in Nicaragua at age 17 as “life-changing.” Part of the money will go to fund a solar-powered battery charger to allow her to film in the remote community which lacks electricity.

There is no cover, but contributions will be joyfully received.

Madly Multi-Arts Party Backing buildOn Film
Saturday, March 14, 6-9
Saladworks on the Penn Campus, 3728 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Contact for more information: Hannah ‘helyx’ Horwitz, 610-539-9359, hhconnects@gmail.com ]]> http://communishare.org/2009/03/madly-multi-arts-party-to-back-documentary-filmmaker-on-saturday-march-14/feed/ 0 http://communishare.org/2009/02/why-nonprofits-should-promote-social-media-in-general/ http://communishare.org/2009/02/why-nonprofits-should-promote-social-media-in-general/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:44:35 +0000 Seth http://communishare.org/blog/?p=72 The NetSquared “think tank” topic this month is:

What do you think the role of nonprofit organizations is in the changing world of social media?

When I first read it, however, I mentally transposed “the changing” to “changing the” and read it as:

What do you think the role of nonprofit organizations is in changing the world of social media?

The two questions have different meanings. The first one asks about the role of nonprofits in the world of social media (a world which happens to be changing). The second question implies that nonprofits are actually causing that change. And I find this second question more provocative. (Answering one question kind of answers both, but I’m focusing on the second.)

One reason I find the second formation interesting is because many of us (NetSquared folks and others) are focused on how to use social media to benefit the world of nonprofits. But I never thought about asking the opposite question: How can nonprofits be used to benefit the world of social media? (And why should they bother?)

Well, as social media become more pervasive in our society, and as ever-new forms of social media emerge, I believe they will continue to create new opportunities for helping nonprofits that we can’t anticipate beforehand. And, if that’s true, then maybe it’s in the “self-interest” of nonprofits not just to utilize social media to help their own causes, but also to promote the use of social media in general.

When nonprofits employ social media tools they are by definition promoting social media. But, maybe they could go further. For instance…

• When inviting people to join your Facebook cause, provide links to resources about how they can get more out of Facebook for other purposes as well.
• While encouraging people to comment on your blog, provide links to services where they could start their own blogs, or where they could learn how to blog more effectively.
• On your organization’s podcast page, include information about how you made the podcast (tools, techniques, problems), which not only humanizes the process, but may inspire the user to take a leap and create her own podcast.

I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but I’m starting to see how nonprofits and social media exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship. And the lifeblood of that symbiosis, IMHO, is empowerment. Social media, of course, are the epitome of empowerment. (It’s more empowering to put your video onto YouTube than to simply watch someone else’s.) And nonprofits are about empowerment also – either directly (microlending to help a poor villager start a new business) or indirectly (realizing that your single voice is important in stopping global warming). So, as we all work to transform our world, perhaps we should be more aware (well, I am, anyway) that we should be thinking not just about how social media can benefit the world of nonprofits, but how nonprofits can benefit the world of social media. Ultimately, they may be one and the same.

Focusing on Twitter, the basic theme of the paper is that within any large social network, people tend to interact primarily within a small subset of more strongly connected, reciprocal relationships –which the authors refer to as “friends”. It’s hard to disagree with that basic premise, which we can readily observe in all our social networks, from the workplace to the neighborhood.

But, I have a lot of trouble with their conclusion. I don’t doubt “the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and folowees, and a sparser and simpler [“hidden”] network of actual friends”. But then they assert that

most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view. Thus, we need to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on word of mouth to spread an idea, a belief, or a trend. [emphasis added]

The authors show lots of statistical associations, but I think it’s a big leap to assume that degree of “influence” necessarily resides within that “network of actual friends”.

It is particularly ironic that the authors cite Mark Granovetter’s groundbreaking 1973 article The Strength of Weak Ties (which Philly networking pioneer Stan Pokras introduced me to nearly 30 years ago, and which Wikipedia refers to as “one of the most influential sociology papers ever written”). My understanding of Granovetter is that he would regard these “networks of actual friends” as exhibiting “strong ties” among themselves, and that many of them also have “weak ties” with members of other “networks of actual friends”. His main thesis is that weak ties can have disproportionally strong influence because they help to bridge between otherwise unfamiliar networks.

In my own experience (admittedly without the statistical backup) new social networks like Twitter only validate and reinforce Granovetter’s insight that so-called “weak” ties can have unexpected “strength”:

• Some of the people I follow on Twitter are my favorite authors and thinkers, who don’t have any idea who I am (a weak tie). But they’ve influenced me greatly with some of the ideas and references to resources from their tweets.
• The authors don’t even mention “retweeting”, the fairly common practice of “forwarding” a tweet. People retweet posts specifically in order to bridge from one of one’s networks to another. (Retweeting has little value within one’s own “network of friends”.)
• Because of the profusion of hyperlinks within tweets, it’s really easy to follow-up on any weak-link tweet that seems even a little interesting, thereby enhancing their potential influence.

Maybe my experience clouds my perspective, but I truly believe that Twitter and other Internet-enabled social networks make weak ties more important and influential than ever before. It’s great to have a circle of friends; and it’s really cool to also have a much, much wider circle of potential friends.

… is beguilingly simple. The Internet makes copying cheaper and [so Big Media] must meet the greater danger of illicit copying with more expansive rights, harsher penalties, and expanded protections. … [w]ithout an increase in private property rights, cheaper copying will eat the heart out of our creative and cultural industries.

This has a certain logic – but it also sounds way wrong. Why? Boyle is clear that he does not disagree with the basic idea of copyright, and admits that Big Media are harmed by illicit copying. But, he goes on to show how this thinking is “dramatically incomplete” – and bad for individual freedom and cultural expression.

• For one thing, although new technology enables the potential for harming copyright holders, it also enables potential for benefitting copyright holders (e.g., with new promotion and distribution opportunities). It’s not clear, on balance, whether the harms outweigh the benefits. (And, even if this could be accurately measured today, the balance will likely change tomorrow.) “A large, leaky market may actually provide more revenue than a small one over which one’s control is much stronger.” Big media wants protection from the dangers, without regard to the benefits they receive.
• Another problem with the argument of the “Internet Threat” is that Big Media uses it to target the technologies which threaten them. Boyle describes the story of video recorders, which came on the scene in the ‘70’s with dramatically “cheaper copying”. Movie studios were “horrified” by video recorders, which they saw as a critical threat to their business model of tightly controlled distribution. In a famous suit against Sony (manufacturer of the Betamax), the movie studios sought to hold Sony liable because their machines could be used to violate copyright. Effectively, they wanted to be able to control the technology that threatened them. But the Supreme Court recognized that, since the technology could be used for legitimate, fair use purposes (like for time-shifting of TV programs), then the movie studios had no right to control the new technology. They had to learn to live with the existence of video recorders (and, ironically, figured out how to profit from them).

One way to view all this is that the new technological and social developments of the Internet represent entirely new “industries”. And, if established industries feel threatened by that, they can either adapt or perish. But, they should not control the playing field for newcomers. “Imagine”, opines Boyle, “if we had given the lamp-oil sellers the right to define the rules under which the newfangled electric light companies would operate”. We are, together, creating a new world of information and social relations. Exciting. Challenging. Profound.

Jeff describes his process in a 4-minute video, and it works like this: Each person receives a “Personal Social Networking Toolkit”: a baggie with 2 blank, self-adhesive name tags, one sheet of blank tiny labels (about 0.5″ x 0.75″?) and a pen.

1. On the first name tag, each person writes their name, plus a “personal tag line”.
2. On the other name tag, other people affix “tags” (which they’ve written on their own tiny labels) about that person that they’ve learned from their conversation.

In other words, in the first mode, people tag themselves; and in the second mode, they tag each other. All of these tags are what I referred to in my other post as “networking hooks”. The second mode is useful — because how people tag one another may reveal networking hooks that the original person may not have considered when tagging herself. So, as the event progresses, each person (ideally) accumulates additional tags resulting from their encounters with more people. More networking hooks (and more types of networking hooks) provide more opportunities for people to strike up conversations and to make meaningful connections. Great.

I like the idea, but it felt a bit awkward, and I noticed that some participants didn’t tag anybody else. So, here is a brainstorm of ideas that Jeff or others may want to consider when doing something similar in the future.

1. Include a clipboard in the kit. This would make it much easier (and therefore more likely) to write on the tiny labels. (And the clipboards can be returned for future use.)
2. Do something to identify the tiny tags with their respective authors. Ideally, this would mean having people’s names on all of their blank tiny tags, but it could be as simple as having all the tiny tags on each sheet indicate an identifying number. (All of my tiny tags have a 17 on them; all of yours have a 22.) This is more analogous to electronic social networks (where you can see who has created a tag or comment). Not only does it tell you who wrote each tag, but it silently encourages people to be more prolific in their tagging. (“Boy, I see #22 has done a lot of tagging.”)
3. I would have needed 4 hands to really take advantage of the breakfast. As anyone who’s been to a buffet reception knows, it’s hard enough to juggle a cup of coffee and plate of danish while talking to somebody. Add to that using a pen to write on a label. It can’t all be done at the same time. I opted to keep my pen ready and got really hungry. Others ate a nice breakfast, but weren’t doing any tagging. I think an ideal environment would have a number of standing-height tables. Then, as people walk around, they can more easily put down their coffee to write a tag.
4. Finally, I’d love to see this idea applied to a speed networking scenario. You know, the kind of event where you have 2 minutes to exchange business cards and talk to another person; then move on to the next person for 2 minutes; and so on. Imagine also encouraging people to tag their partner before moving to the next one. Not only would this add useful networking hooks, it would encourage people to listen to one another in a particularly purposeful way.

I believe (as does Jeff and many others) that tagging can be a useful practice in certain face-to-face situations. How else can this concept be applied?

Last night, I joined my wife to attend the keynote panel at the Franklin Institute, entitled “What is the purpose of school?” It was a really impressive group of panelists, including African-American scholar Molefi Asante who has authored over 65 books; Jeff Han, inventor of the multi-touch screen; and Stephen Squyrers, Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Their comments and subsequent discussion were very interesting, and I’m glad I went. BUT, I’m disappointed that this powerful panel discussion, within this really progressive conference, never even questioned the premise of compulsory schooling.

The idea of compulsory schooling is so ingrained, so taken for granted that we fail to remember that it is less than 300 years old — the tiniest of slivers of human history. Its logic is compelling and attractive: “We need compulsory schooling to prepare young people for a complex world. And, besides, what else would we do with all those kids?” And I don’t have an easy answer for that (certainly not conveniently contained within a blog post). But lots of others have been thinking about this. I’m sensitive to it because my undergraduate honors thesis 30 years ago (yikes!) focussed on three authors (Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and John Holt) who boldly and lucidly questioned compulsory schooling.

And, now, a just-published book by John Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction, apparently does the same. I haven’t read a book about education for many years. But I’ve become aware that I’m not hearing anybody around me raise the issue of compulsory schooling. And, my own ability to articulate the arguments is rusty. Maybe time to get the book. (And if anyone else has read it, please let me know what you thought.)

It’s hard to mentally envision the “public domain” because, while we may think about intellectual property itself, we tend not to conceptualize its opposite, the “outside” of intellectual property. The public domain, Boyle says, is “not some gummy residue left behind when all the good stuff has been covered by [intellectual] property law” (p. 40-41). The public domain is, rather, the vast majority of our culture. (Language itself, for instance, is part of the public domain. You don’t have to buy “English, Professional Edition”; it’s just there for you to use as you wish.)

The whole justification for the government granting copyrights and patents – which are, in effect, monopolies – is to provide a form of “protection” in order to encourage authors and inventors to put forth the time, effort and expense to create new works, and then to receive reasonable recognition and reward in return. But, in summarizing Jefferson’s warning about this protection, such monopolies “should be tightly limited in time and should not last a day longer than necessary to encourage the innovation in the first place.” (p. 21) In other words, some protection may be useful, but it should be as temporary and limited as possible.

This has provided me a metaphorical image. I think the public domain is like a coral reef. The vast, beautiful majority is comprised of long-dead coral animals. On the edges, here and there at any given time, are living coral polyps. The live a little while and then die, their calcified remains adding incrementally to the overall coral reef. The living coral polyps need some protection to do their job. But their lives are temporary. If their lives were permanent, the reef wouldn’t grow. And the collective result of their temporary “production” is the giant, diverse coral reef for others to use and enjoy (ignoring, of course, the tragic ecological threat posed to real coral in the real world).

This is not a perfect metaphor for lots of reasons. But it’s helped me construct a mental image for the public domain: vast, beautiful, diverse. And, to the extent that intellectual property is justified and useful (which is an argument in its own right), it should be limited and temporary in order to enrich our shared public domain as soon as possible.

This is one reason Creative Commons make so much sense. Enabling individual creators to determine for themselves the limits of their copyright is a much more nuanced and efficient way of applying “just the right amount” of protection for each creator’s work. The government’s current one-size-fits-all system is both heavy and ham-handed by comparison. In order to protect the very few creations that might (another argument) warrant extensive protection, it “overprotects” all creative works, and, in so doing, squanders the dynamic potential of our public domain — the “basis for our art, our science and our self-understanding… the raw material from which we make new inventions and create new cultural worlds.” (p. 39)