Archive for Interview
by Rob Paterson
July 9, 2010 at 5:33 am · Filed under
Adoption, Enterprise Social Computing, FASTforward'09, Interview, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Objects
I think it is a given that Culture is the main barrier for most large organizations as they look at how to use Social media. As my colleague Joe reminds us there is real hesitancy in the mainstream. No large bureaucracy can be so bound by the fear of losing control than government. So it is interesting - to me anyway – to discover a Canadian Federal Government Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, that has got more than a toe in the water. They are well engaged in an area where it is relatively “safe” to find out how to do this. I think that their experience here will give them the right and the know how to expand this into their operational area and to give others in Government the experience-based confidence to follow.
When the public think of Veterans Affairs, many of us think of Battlefields and Memorials. I was one of many thousands who returned to Vimy Ridge for the 90th anniversary in 2007.
Like many who visited, I blogged about my experience and posted a lot of information. Of course in these days I was not alone. Today thousands of us post material. Many people are exceptionally knowledgeable. There is enormous wisdom and energy embedded in those who visit.
One of the first ahas of Keith Hillier and his team Teresa MacLean and Joey Mokler – was that they could enhance the experience by bringing the Battlefield to the public rather than focus only on bringing the public to the Battlefield.
This recognition that there could be a “safe” way to bring the public in had very early roots in VAC. Today “silverorange” is a global leader in designing social media platforms. They have sites designed for leading entertainers such as Feist and Sloan, have added design to Firefox and Ning, have leading edge sales sites and so on. But few know that silverorange got its start with Veterans Affairs. A long time ago when many who are now old men at silverorange were in their early teens, VAC put out a tender for kids to create a Virtual Memorial for all those that had died in Canada’s conflicts.
This is the entry for my wife’s uncle Bill.
These are the entries that I made on his behalf. So even before “Social Media” was a buzz word, VAC had created a site, using kids, where the public could find out about their loved ones online and where the public could not only look but participate.
The key issue here in terms of culture and barriers, is that this is quite real – the public are really contributing and the service is authentic and valuable – but that the risks are low. Above all that VAC is learning by doing how to get a start.
They are much further along now. When I first started work with VAC about 10 years ago, they had this wonderful archive of film that they had made of interviews with Vets from WWI, WWI and Korea. The question back then was what were they going to do with this.
The answer of course has been YouTube!
Over time this invaluable archive is being made available for all of us. Not just in a static way but in a way that we can all use and share.
So what about today? Canadian Forces have been in action for many years in Afghanistan. What about their story? What about their families?
The answer is of course Facebook! There are over 200,000 members right now. Much of this is very personal and touching.
Here we see a film made by young Canadians about what Vimy meant to people in New Brunswick followed by a piece on the Highway of Heroes – the route taken by our fallen as they return from Afghanistan.
So what is really going on behind the scenes at VAC and how can what they are doing help you? Here are a few “Tips” that I can see now after nearly a decade in this work.
1. Leadership - First of all the work is being lead by a very senior and trusted executive – Keith Hillier ADM. My experience is that skunk works don’t work. At VAC as at KETC and before at NPR – having the most senior executives as the real champions is essential. For there are organizational risks and there is big push back and fear. Having a very senior person lead the charge enables you to extend your reach.
2. Use Projects – Don’t try and change the world in one go. Have a real project that you can use to find our by discovery and trial and error that will not get people fired if things don’t go well. At VAC this began with the Virtual Memorial and then has been extended into putting the film archive online on YouTube and now with asking the public to participate on Facebook. Teresa told me of their fears of trolls on Facebook. Conventional wisdom is that if the community is sound enough, they will control the trolls. But of course you don’t know that for sure. The war in Afghanistan is a tricky topic right now and sure enough some came to the site to talk about this. But the community – who are there to support the troops and their families asked them to go away and they did!
3. New actions lead to new thinking not the other way around - You can plan for ever, you can imagine for ever but it is only when you do that you learn and by learning your mind gets changed. By choosing small projects that could be made “safe” VAC is doing the doing and so all at VAC, not just the members of the team, can experience the new for themselves.
4. Start small - The team behind Keith includesTeresa MacLean and Joey Mokler. The money behind this is tiny. But the support is big. I think this is the safer way ahead. Jesus was born in a manger. Moses was found in the Bullrushes. You keep the organizational risk and the naysayers quiet by not announcing the second coming up front.
5. Partner – The early partnership was with a group of local teen nerds – what a gift to them and what a gift to PEI. You will not have the skills inside when you start. Now VAC wish to extend this to their service delivery for Vets. They do not have the resources for this. So the plan is to Partner – Partner with other agencies that can help them build a robust service delivery platform.
6. Have a clear vision for the future where social media gives you the win – The vision for “Commemoration” (Memorials etc) was to bring the memorial to the Public. The Vision for “Commemoration” – offering meaning for the sacrifice and the lives of our vets was to give this to the public. The new service delivery goal will be to shift the web from being a big pamphlet to being the place where the services of VAC are enacted – where a vet can get what he or she needs. Finally the visions for the social needs of the vets – which in most cases exceed the program needs – is to use the web to help vets get connected to others like them so that they can help each other. So far so good!
I think that VAC have earned the right to go for the service goals now – don’t you?
I think that they offer us a process that any large organization can follow too – don’t you?
by Rob Paterson
July 2, 2009 at 7:55 am · Filed under
Adoption, Clayton Christenson, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Innovator's Dilemma, Interview, Media, Movie Making, Organizational Design, Public Media, Social Media
One thing I know is true- real innovation – the disruptive idea that declares independence from the old system – can only happen at the edge.
So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal CEO of MiND, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call.
No TV operation is more unique than MiND (or, properly, MiND: Media Independence).
MiND is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5-minute programs, many made by MiND’s staff producers, some made by members of the public who attend MiND’s production Boot Camps. MiND is both on air and on the web. The staff have their own voice in a way that I have never seen anywhere before in media or ANY other place of work. It was not only a novel TV operation – it was a novel organization. It was what a 2.0 organization would be like- inside and outside. As an independent community licensee, MiND makes the most of its freedom–and engages everyone who walks through the door.
So I booked my flight and flew down to see Howard and his team.
So what did I find? How to make TV, the Gutenberg of our time.
You don’t believe me? Please invest 5 minutes in this film.
Did you get it? I found it compelling. A beautifully crafted story. Here is a heartfelt comment on IMDB. Made by a real pro – right? No – made by a regular citizen, Leontyne Anglin, whose passion is the topic but who had never made a film before.
The impact of Gutenberg’s technology in the 1500’s was to give people a voice. If video and TV are the main means of communication today, then the “New TV” must give people a voice. This is surely more than uploading to YouTube or adding comments to a web video. Merely pointing and shooting does not make you a filmmaker. When you have the ability to tell a story well – then you need a place where your early work reaches an audience with an already-established relationship with a trusted brand.
This is what happens at MiND. Day-in and day-out. It’s the reason why the system was built. And it’s working.
The key to MiND is found in its willingness to help the public learn how to be real video storytellers. MiND’s core members have joined a tribe of filmmakers with something to say. MiND’s eagerness to provide every storyteller access to its Trusted Space makes all the difference—MiND is a branded space that adds real depth and texture to the word “public” in the term “public television.”
How does MiND do this?
First of all, MiND employs a production staff drawn from the public and not from the priesthood. It has attracted such a staff by its culture and by its remarkable intern-and-volunteer system. While many stations regard interns as more trouble than they are worth, MiND has transformed coping with, and training, more than 200 interns into common practice. As such, the keen are fed into the system and the cream rise to the top. Nearly a third of MiND’s current staff members started as either volunteers or interns.
Secondly, MiND has built a transformational training system modeled on and called ‘Boot Camp.’ It is transformational in that a citizen comes in with all sorts of wild expectations about television and media; after six hours of intensive training, she is on the path to making a real MiND program that will go on the air and become part of MiND’s extensive internet library of 5-minute programs. In time, she becomes an enabled storyteller.
Leontyne went to a MiND Boot Camp. She was a doubter – MiND’s promise seemed too good to be true. But Leontyne and two others at the Boot Camp took up the challenge. They developed an idea, checked back with MiND to make sure they were on the right track, and made a terrific MiND program.
As a result, Leontyne is a new person–and now, one of MiND’s most vocal advocates. On her own terms, she has become video- and story- literate. She possesses new power in the most powerful medium of our age.
She is not an anomaly.
Here is a short documentary film made by another MiND intern. It’s broadcast quality in every way – a strong story line and intricate editing combine old and new footage. The person who made this film has become an accomplished filmmaker–and is now a teacher at a small college in New England.
MiND is creating a core of accomplished story/film makers who can help their community as storytellers. In time, with MiND’s support, Philly (and in time, other cities that may carry a local version of MiND as their own service) can develop a cadre of the new, media-literate creative workers engaged in the betterment of their home, their neighborhood, their city. It does not take much to imagine what they could do.
The incentive that MiND offers its “students” and interns is that not only will they gain the skills that they will need for our time, but that the work will be showcased on TV and the web–by a Trusted Brand.
All artists want their work to have an audience. TV is 1.0 but it offers a reward like no other. “Hey Mom my work is on TV!” So MiND is expanding its reach to other markets. It is building a national alliance in most of the key markets of the US – details here. The bigger the audience, the greater the impact.
So what next?
It is no secret that all the public stations in Pennsylvania are under pressure because their Governor plans to cut all state funding. MiND’s low cost approach makes it especially vulnerable–just completing its first year, MiND has focused on operational efficiency, programming and community; MiND’s first revenue programs are just beginning, and are insufficient to cover a 40% cut in the total budget. MiND will not stop–but it will slow down as resources disappear.
This is the reason for my post today–to encourage the public television community to consider what MiND has done in its first year, and how its ideas might be used to reinvigorate a tired system. MiND is not the full answer but it contains most of the DNA for the full answer and so I felt compelled to tell its story now.
What can we all learn from this?
Set up a new organization to do this – The station culture is key. MiND is a 2.0 Culture. Here is how it sees itself. These are not simply words on a page. With 30 plus years in the field of culture – I observed first hand that this is no bull – what they say is how they are. So you cannot change all your station culture to be like this. I also know that to be true. So what can you do? Clay Christenson is clear – set up a separate organization to house this aspect of the new - your transformational organization. I know of several stations that are thinking along these lines. You cannot make this shift inside the old–but you can make the shift if the new is allowed to grow alongside the old.
The Goal Is Self Reliance – The goal is to transform your community to be self-reliant – to do that you have to be able to tell the collective story of how people are bringing about change in your community. To do that you need to develop real storytellers by teaching them how to tell stories– and you have to imbue their stories with the added value of your brand. Create a “school” for the new literacy. Bring in the people as interns and volunteers. Bring in the young. Use your digital channels and the web as the “channel.” Or, let MiND show you how; they are willing and capable guides. And, please, don’t get caught up in the validity of five-minute programs–not before watching MiND or considering the sheer number of unique five-minute programs that can be produced in a year.
Gain strength and power by connecting. Connect to the institutions organizations in your community who need this kind of help – use your storytellers to give them a voice. How might non-profits be involved? How about schools (K-12 and higher education)? What if everyone really did have a voice–and what if that voice defined the future of public media? Imagine connecting with other stations across America and the world–perhaps create a national network with MiND at the core – and jointly build MiND as an initiative that engages people at the local, regional, national, even global level. It’s clear that MiND was built with precisely that strategy at its core. Increase the power of the collective story by comparing what’s happening in Philadelphia with what’s happening in Chicago or Denver, and ultimately, with Mumbai or Warsaw.
MiND benefits from a wonderful gift–it is one of the few truly independent agents within public media–in fact, the company’s official name is (you guessed it) Independence Media. From that independence has grown true innovation. Make no mistake–this is not a play by a tiny public TV station operating at the edge of reality. Instead, it is likely the center of a new solar system with increasingly powerful gravitational pull.
We will not get through the turbulence of our times by relying on the status quo in any part of our lives. So I do my bit to tell the story of Howard and his band of sisters and brothers at MiND.
Bless them all. And for my American friends, about to celebrate their annual holiday, do consider the value, opportunity and responsibilities associated with independence.
by Jon Husband
February 11, 2009 at 2:16 pm · Filed under
Change, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Interview, Social Computing, Social Networking, User Revolution, Web 2.0
A couple of days ago, as the FASTForward 09 conference opened, I had the opportunity to sit down with Clay Shirky, author of the book “Here Comes Everybody – the power of organizing without organizations” and a consultant, professor and writer. I wanted to bear down a little bit on some of the core ideas in his recent book and examine how his premises impact what management needs to understand and do with the new set of conditions created by an interconnected digital infrastructure that supports all communications and management of information – the lifeblood of an organization’s operations.
As a way to get into the issues, I asked Clay to offer his perspective about how the Web and its interconnectedness is affecting knowledge-based work.
Clay feels that it matters enormously how directed or undirected the knowledge work is. If the purpose of the knowledge work is to discover or extend something as directed by management, then the focus is on R&D. That of course is quite useful and goes on all the time (it’s a great example of what we think of as normal work, and can be highly collaborative or not so much, or anywhere in between).
But … Clay notes that this is not the really radical change that is coming to the interconnected knowledge-based workplace. The really radical changes become apparent when the work turns to finding or creating something new, something really different, when the direction is aimed directly at stimulating and supporting innovation.
Generally, knowledge work is designed to accomplish certain defined objectives, or accomplish specific purpose(s). And yet, particularly in today’s fast-moving world, conditions change like the weather and can strongly impact how accomplishing a purpose is addressed. Dave Snowden, a well-known complexity and knowledge work specialist, likes talking about how the notion of a ‘crew’ can operate well in complex conditions … the members of a crew know their roles, have specific knowledge at their disposal and can swing into action and deploy their knowledge in a wider range of configurations depending upon current and future conditions. However … the effectiveness of a crew structure depends upon the purpose or mission having boundaries; for example a start point, a destination, a flight of so many hours, favourable weather conditions, and so on … not straying into unbounded or undefined conditions
What about fast-moving and ever-changing flows of information, or being pushed by demanding clients and markets to stray into territory wherein an organization has not clearly thought through or designed the boundaries, and where accomplishing the purpose or mission is threatened by inadequate response ? This is where social networks come in … they make it possible to have crew-like work in less-well-defined, less bounded conditions. Social networks in a knowledge workplace provide a new foundation or substrate that enables crew-like work that is not so bounded at the edges … purpose-driven flow, much like gossip in social circles with the differentiation that the chatter, the back-and-forth exchanges, are aimed at the purpose of the work and the (eventual) accomplishment of objectives.
As Clay and I discussed the ways the Web and the new set of conditions are informing and impacting this less-bounded work, I offered the observation (with which Clay agreed); rather than following the long-established lines of reporting relationships on an org chart, in networked conditions “our agreements are our structures”.
Clay elaborated: The development of the first formal org chart is contentious, but one of the contenders is David MacCallum, whose initiative included five rules. Rule #5 begat the fundamental assumption about reporting relationships (upward), that information should only flow through hierarchical reporting relationships so as to avoid embarrassing people (typically upwards, as the embarrassment came from not knowing, not being up-to-date or using bad information to make decisions).
This led us into discussing the effectiveness and responsiveness of the traditional hierarchical structure. While the need and desire of the upper management to know what’s going on for their business as a whole and the need of line managers to know what to do is critical, in effect the traditional hierarchical model does not deal with today’s information flows fast enough or well enough. We don’t have to take a moral or an ethical view about whether hierarchy is “good” or “bad”, we just need to recognize that it is less and less efficient and effective in conditions of continuous and accelerating flows of information.
We delved into the subtitle of Clay’s most recent book … “organizing without organizations”. Clay stated that by using that phrase he did not mean the wholesale replacement of hierarchy. He clarified; we used to regard group action as a priori proof of someone instantiating and organizing the action. He offered an example, citing the case of the Chinese government’s concern about a widespread negative reaction in the blogosphere to the possibility of devaluing yuan, and its conclusion that someone must be behind this. There wasn’t … it was a case of a large-ish number of people noticing the issue and commenting on it and connecting and hyperlinking as only the “blogosphere” can. The point ? We need to start getting used to seeing and noticing organic organization around issues and content.
We then turned to talking about the major implications for leaders and managers when considering what they will need to do to develop and sustain effectiveness in the new set of conditions. Again Clay used a story to set out an example .. the day after Obama was elected and Change.gov went up (during meltdown, wars, etc.) the #1 question was re: medical marijuana. It is not the case that there is automatic legitimation just because a crowd voted it up to the top, as in a ”closed” ( for the purposes of this post a community in which a large majority of members are focused on a range of issues in defined domains) community like Digg, where the implication might be that Obama should be taking marching orders from the “community”. Rather, the legitimizing issue for leaders is demonstrating to the community an effective response to the community’s “are you listening ?” *
In these new condition, Clay suggests leaders need to listen (much more closely than before), clarify what needs to happen and why, and engage in real ways with their constituents. In effect, they need to state clearly “we have heard you, but that’s not the top priority for the following reasons – and here’s why”. These tending-towards-democratic conditions resulting from the mass adoption of the Web ensure that communities and leaders and managers will continue to wrestle with what makes a group outcome legitimate.
In the past and in traditional hierarchies, not responding or staying silent on difficult issues were often used as ways of controlling group action. Clay suggested, in closing, that leaders and managers will need to give up the fantasy that silence still provides effective control …
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* see Shirky’s discussion of the complex issues presented by the “09 F9″ digital key furor and the subsequent community leadership issues encountered by Digg / Kevin Rose, pp. 290-91, Here Comes Everybody – the power of organizing without organizations, 2008
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Tags: Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, hierarchy, networks, information flows, leadership, management
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by Rob Paterson
April 29, 2008 at 8:13 am · Filed under
ABC News, CBS, Information Management, Interview, Messy World, Michael Skoler, News, Politics, Public Insight Journalism, Public Media, Public TV, Social Networking, Trust, Trusted Space, User Revolution
It’s ironic isn’t it, that at a time when the problems that confront us, such as the end of cheap oil, a war that we cannot get out of, an education system that fails 40% of Americans, a healthcare system that serves only a few, that our news is so awful.
CBS put all their eggs in Katie’s salary and now are thinking of leaving news. ABC spend half the debate on stuff that doesn’t matter. We now know that most of the experts called in to advise us about the war were on the payroll of the Pentagon.
News is becoming entertainment or has often been bought just when we all need to be informed.
How can we get a sense of how these issues, or any issue, really affects us?
I interviewed Michael Skoler of American Public Media to find out how he is using new technology to draw on the real experience of over 50,000 citizens to ground their news at a price that they can afford. His project is called Public Insight Journalism and may be part of the foundation of a more relevant way of offering news.
Over 55,000 people are in the network and are tapped for their experience – how are gas prices affecting your life rather than what do you feel about rising gas prices.
This network is facilitated by a new kind of journalist and by a new kind of social software that keeps the system healthy.
The experiment is now 5 years old and has gone beyond the experiment into the operational and is now starting to spread.
What do you think about the news today? Do you think this may help?
by Jon Husband
April 23, 2008 at 6:25 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Interview, SOA, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Over the past two weeks in between a lot of work and some more hard work, I managed to pop in to several sessions at the OpenWeb Vancouver conference, a two-day conference focused on "showcasing open web technologies, communities and culture, and evangelizing the Open Web to developers, designers, organizers and the community at large".
At OpenWeb I was introduced to one of the presenters, Duane Nickull, Senior Global Technology Evangelist for Adobe. According to Duane, he is Adobe’s only Vancouver employee (nice work if you can get it, jetting all over the world whilst coming home every once in a while to this lovely little corner of the globe). Duane has also just co-authored a book with Tim O’Reilly … I’m pretty sure it’s about SOA but I can’t quite remember. I’ll clear that up soon and report back in the interview (see below).
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The main focus of my professional career has been working for both the United Nations CEFACT committee and OASIS for the purposes of writing and building new architectures for global integration of multiple systems. I also work for Adobe Systems which I love. Great company!
Since 1996, I have been fortunate enough to work on multiple enterprise architectures including many service oriented architectures (SOA) within various standards bodies including W3C, UN/CEFACT, OASIS and others. I have also contributed to many SOA papers and articles on service oriented architecture. My focus has shifted towards many web service standards in recent years.
I have worked on many other interesting technologies including the first contextual XML Search Engine, an Alternative fuel hydrogen project and the new UN/CEFACT eBusiness Architecture and related technologies. The next level of this work will probably be linked to Ontology work. I participate in the Ontolog Forum which is a great group.
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Duane’s OpenWeb Vancouver session was titled "Web 2.0 Design Patterns, Models and Analysis".
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"Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by successful Web 2.0 companies. This session starts with Tim O’Reilly’s list of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns from behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in multiple domains including government."
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I asked Duane if I could interview him … about Adobe, it’s plans for Enterprise 2.0, what flows of information mean to him and his colleagues at Adobe and insights on noticing, and using patterns to design and build better, easier-to-use, more flexible and more powerful applications.
We’re still looking for a mutually convenient date (he travels a lot and is speaking at the Web 2.0 conference at the moment, so this really means when will Duane next be back in Vancouver ?), but it looks like I will interview him sometime in the first week of May. I hope you’ll check in for what I will strive mightily to make an interesting and educational interview.
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