Start your online community or network the Tiësto way

Thanks to a column by Dutch management writer Ben Tiggelaar I learned about the working style of DJ Tiësto. He explains: "I start the evening with some different kind of music and various styles to see what is right for the audience. The styles that get the best response, is the way I continue."

I was struck by the similarities in the practices we've developed over the years in starting learning networks, especially online. Typically I propose to start a shorter experimental cycle (maybe 4 weeks, maybe 3 months in the most recent forest landscape restoration trajectory) and at the end discuss whether and how to continue. This is much easier than asking people upfront what activities they would like, since what they state in an interview or survey may work out differently in practice.

We start with a wide range of online activities, like open questions, expert inputs, watching videos, teleconferences, virtual field visits, etc. From the interactions, you can see what kind of topics and what kind of activities are attractive for people. You can observe what triggers the most interest (though you may need statistics too). In every trajectory you see that the balance of interest towards discussing own practices or outside research/expert opinions is different. In some groups, people like to be personal and have a need to discuss their own work. In other groups, they relate more to experts bringing in new perspectives. Long stories may work in one case, but do not resonate in another.

So the key is: experiment and don't be scared to abandon a certain approach!

The hardest phase: the coalescing phase in communities

Image via Wikipedia

In a lot of my consultancy work I use a social learning theory- about the functioning and growth of communities of practice. Even when people don't use the term community, but online network, platform, alliance, whatever. As long as learning is one of the goals. Every consultancy is different though- I find it hard to work with blue print materials because every situation is so distinct.

I can discern a red line in my work nevertheless. It is that people tend to underestimate the social capital side of online communities or online platforms. When you look at vibrant online exchanges, it may look as simple as inviting a lot of people by email to sign up, or announcing a new initiative in other online spaces. But this frequently leads to disappointments and leaves people wondering why it works for other online communities but not for their network.

So what are the challenges in the coalescing phase (the phase which follows the first phase when initiators have come together, defined the purpose, a platform has been built and sometimes an official launch has been organised)? I like the chapter in the book Cultivating communities of practice which outlines the following challenges:

• To balance the need to develop relationships between members and trust against the need to demonstrate (practical) value
• To keep the energy level up after a big launch event when everyone goes back to 'normal business'
• To get members to share 'thorny' issues when there is not yet a high level of trust..
• To stimulate private conversations (nothing wrong with those!) yet at the same time bringing private topics into the public community space

It is not an easy phase for coordinators /facilitators but it may help if they are aware of these issues and do not underestimate the art that goes into stewarding connections and knowledge in this phase (where they may feel not enough is happening).... And if the basics are not right- you might be working against the tide.

How to use social media for an event with people who are not used to social media?..

I've been to events where everyone is twittering, tagging and hopping around with their laptops. I've also been to events where nobody even knows what tagging is. In most events, you will find a mix of people.

I was asked by Partos, the branche association for development organisations in the Netherlands to think with them how social media can support their yearly event, Partos Plaza for roughly 100 participants. The event will take place next tuesday so we don't have any evaluation data yet, but I can share our design and some first observations about the process.

We thought very carefully about the aim of using social media. We didn't want to add a social media layer simply because you look old-fashioned if you don't (I think we can wait for the first event without any social media and it will be seen as a relief :). So our aim of using social media was:

• To support interaction between participants before and during the event and between the organisers and participants
• To experiment with social media and show participants some uses of social media
• To ensure continuity and follow-up- other years it was very invisible what happened with all the ideas and energy. Having online interaction afterwards can help taskteams or interest groups to continue online (if there is an interest to do so). This may lead to better collaboration initiatives

So what did we design? We chose to start with a ning platform as the central place. The advantage of ning compared to other solutions was that it is a social network, and can stimulate networking through personal pages. We asked people about their LinkedIn profile and whether they have a twitter account or site they want to share. So there are more opportunities to connect. Ning doesn't require a huge investment, so we can close it down after the event if there is no interest to continue online, gives quite some flexibility. And its events function could help with the organisations of the workshop and registration of attendance. Furthermore, we thought that we could use the platform to invite people to co-create the workshops and come up with ideas for the open space. We decided to make everything public so that people hesitant to register could also read along. We also experimented with a twitter account without investing too much time in it because we did not expect many participants to be on twitter. During the event we will focus on:

• A network wall with the printed profiles from the ning. We asked people in their profile about their interests and the knowledge that the person has they would like to meet. This will be displayed on the network wall and people will be invited to contact each other or suggest names of people to meet.
  
• A twitter screen and twitter corner. We would like people to answer the question: what idea, insight of new contact did you gain today? so that it becomes collectively visible what is happening in terms of networking and creation of new ideas. The large majority not on twitter will be invited to twitter from a central account in a specially set-up twitter corner.
  
• Last but not least, all workshopleaders will report something (small) back on the platform and investigate whether there is an interest to continue somehow working on their topic. This will allow people to read on what's happening in parallel workshop and ofcourse it will be easier for people who can not make it to peep into the content.
  

There will not be wireless access to the internet available. We did not stimulate people to bring laptops, and think it's OK to focus on the workshops and the conversation.

Our first experiences are mixed:
- There were not that many reactions to the statements and to the invitation to think along the programming. I guess it is due to not being that at ease with working through a social network because the people who did respond were all well versed with various social media. It is an repeated event, so I see that participants are quite passive and not that eager to co-create. It's fine if other organise it for them! (this is my interpretation by the way)
- The number of participants on the ning and the number of visitors were higher than expected. We are now at 90 people. We had expected a maximum of 60 on the social network because some might not be interested in it.
- Twitter has been an eye-opener! Without investing a lot, we have 31 followers in 4 weeks time. And from the participants, at least 30 are on twitter and/or have a corporate twitter account. Interesting to see that twitter has become such an easy entrance into social media.... about 7% of the traffic to the ning has come through twitter, even though it was not heavily used. And 20% is still through the website of Partos.
- There are some assumption in social networks that work against the hierarchy. Secretaries asking how they can register their bosses for workshops when the boss has registered on the ning... This is only possible to do it yourself or if the boss gives his/her log in data to the secretary.
- I have the impression it makes it easier for the not-so-obvious participants to join, like the private intiatives (as we call them) versus the professional organisations.

Will keep you posted after tuesday and definitely after we have some feedback from participants...

Fostering online networks in development (south-south learning processes)

I just finished preparing a presentation about the art of fostering online networks in development; with a focus on producer organisations in the south (for a session with progresonetwork). While preparing the presentation I thought again about the fact that the basics of online networks are still social networks. Nothing else. So that is what I stress in my presentation. Since I really believe in the power of peer learning, I am existed by the possibilities of web2.0 to make south-south learning possible.

I've always believed in south-south learning since you can learn a lot of people who face similar difficulties and practice- just slightly different. Not that everybody in the south can learn from everybody else, but for instance cocoa producer organisations in Ghana can learn a lot from cocoa producers in Ivory Coast- similar difficulties but different context which pushes you to think creatively. I'm refering in my presentation to a survey undertaken by the world bank with 137 respondents about south-south learning. 94% think it is important or extremely important for improving the impact of international development and poverty reduction. Partnerships and alliances score best as mechanisms for south-south learning, followed by networks and associations, exchanges/secondments and study tours.

I use the examples of km4dev (see interview Lucy Lamoureux) and the IFRTD networks (see evaluation) and the lessons here are definitely that you have to mix face-to-face and online communication creatively and that it really help to have a dedicated network leadership, consistent over time.

Suddenly thought it is sometimes discouraging to read these success stories (that are even hard to replicate too!) and included the lessons of two attempts to stimulate online learning networks which were less successful: one by Anne Hardon, virtual knowledge communities: lessons learned in making them work, the other by three authors titled Forming a community of practice to strengthen the capacities of learning and knowledge sharing centres in Latin America and the Caribbean: a Dgroup case study. Great that these experiences are also shared and they may be even more helpful and insightful than the success stories.

Fostering Online Networks

View more presentations from Joitske Hulsebosch.

Are your community's lurkers healthy lurkers?

I facilitated a teleconference with Mirjam Neelen for CPsquare. Mirjam is doing a thesis on this topic and shared her literature research with us. It struck me how much more you dive into a topic if you have to facilitate it, you suddenly feel more responsible and really invest in the topic. I've blogged about lurking before, investigating whether lurking in online forums is a sort of legitimate peripheral participation that leads to people learning about the practices of a community of practice. This time we tried to analyze whether lurking in online forums is a problem or a bliss for companies. The definition of lurking is as people who NEVER post, hence they don't share their questions, ideas or suggestions online.

What did I learn about lurking? First, most of all recognized that lurking can be very positive. Lurking into an online forum because you feel you are a novice can make you more expert. Or scanning a wide variety of online forum to know what's happening in other fields (helps boundary crossing). Something that really struck me in Mirjam's paper was the observation by Stegbauer that if participants remained inactive for the first four months, the likelihood for them to become active was minimized. I recognized this from my own behaviour. That means there is a crucial period to try and get participants active, to stimulate active participation. Mirjam outlined a wide variety of barriers that may lead to lurking behaviour and withold members from posting:

• Interpersonal barriers- loss of face
• Procedural barriers- people don't buy into the recommended ways of sharing (could be called preferential barriers?)
  
• Technological barriers - lack of technological aptitude
• Cultural barriers- crosscultural differences

'Healthy' lurking processes are probably situation where people are novices and learn by lurking or interdisciplinary lurking. It becomes unhealthy when important information and knowledge is missed out because of the above mentioned barriers. Suppose an online community is missing out all major experts because they continue to change offline, then some bridging needs to be done to ensure the online community doesn't become marginalized and mediocre. I guess an analyisis of inbound trajectories whereby people move from lurking to being active or core members are key to seeing whether lurking is healthy. What are the community's practice to stimulate sharing of ideas and perspectives?

What did I learn about online facilitation? I made it into a sort of exercise in online facilitation for myself, designing and online-teleconference-online sequence. The idea was to collect lurker stories online, discuss the research focussing on lurking behaviour in online corporate community forums, and go back online to brainstorm about research questions. The first part worked well, but there was no energy to go back online to discuss the research questions. I think I should have changed the initial plan into a topic that might have attracted more energy for the participants of the teleconference, like research methodologies. What really paid off was to prepare it all together beforehand in a skype session. That's an investment that really pays off in terms of quality.