A number of other practitioners and theorists who pay attention to networks and their dynamics (such as FASTForward’s Jevon Macdonald and Joe McKendrick, Dion Hinchcliffe, Valdis Krebs, Matthew Hodgson, Patti Anklam, Jessica Lipnack, and others) have covered the same or similar ground.  It is becoming more apparent that the returns from network activities are found in intangibles that do not fit well into the industrial era concept of Return on Investment (an accounting concept used to make investment decisions in stable, time-defined, typically single-purpose use cases).  New assumptions and methods for assessing what to do are needed.

So, I’d like to use the reporting in a ZDNet article that caught my eye titled “A Real ROI From Twitter ?  The Start of Social Medical Networks“  to discuss several of the key issues about whether or not to use social computing to achieve purposeful goals and objectives..

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There may not be a big enough return on tweeting yet to report it to your CFO. But it won’t be long before there’s a clear, return on tweeting to report it to your doctor.

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At the Autism One Conference in Chicago, a Web-based program for collecting data on individual cases of the brain development disorder will be unveiled. It’s called ChARMTracker and is designed, at the start, to help ease the burdens of each parent trying to keep track of the drugs, nutritional supplements, physical therapies and dietary tacks being taken to treat their sons or daughters. They will also use it to keep track of any observations about their behaviors that might seem pertinent and how their children are performing academically, as a result of the constantly changing constellation of combinations that are being applied to the still-mystic condition.

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Horn has, for instance, collected 60 two-inch thick binders of observations, medical and supplement records about Sophie, over the last 11 years. Those records would be available to Sophie’s doctors and health care aides, in an instant, if ChARMtracker had been around from the start. They would also be part of a growing mound of evidence on how drugs, supplements, therapies and diet affected autistic individuals, as they grew and evolved.

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Pramila has founded another company, MedicalMine Inc., which will take what she has developed and try to extend the approach to other chronic physical conditions and forms of disease management.

If all goes well, parents and patients will not just be collecting and sharing data through sites like this on the Web. They’ll be communicating with doctors and providing real-time evidence of results, through tweets and other instant messaging technologies. In some cases, sensors will provide constant streams of data that will be put into the record and analyzed, for individuals and the group, as a whole.

These social medical networks could wind up being “the most fundamental IT app” that a family or its friends need, when desperately seeking answers about afflictions suffered by anyone they care about.

For that, every data element – and every tweet – will count.

And, over the long haul, produce a calculable return.

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So, to begin measuring increases in effectiveness and value in a networked social computing environment, please consider the concept of Return on Investment in Interaction (ROII), which we have derived from the principles of Metcalfe’s Law of Networks (as have many of the others cited above).  Why, you may ask, do the above excerpts portend being able to identify and / or assess Return on Investment in Interaction ?

Identifying and Measuring ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction)

The focus in purposeful networked environments is to do what’s important and involve those who know what’s important, why it’s important and what they know (or know how to find out) about a problem or issue.

Let’s define some core assumptions about ROII :

• Continuous flows of information are the raw material of value creation and overall performance,
• Information flows are carried by links, alerts, RSS feeds, search engines, aggregation and filtering of content, etc.
• All leading social / collaboration platforms now feature social networking, search and computing capabilities,
• These platforms’ architectures facilitate purposeful cross-silo communications and exchange.

Social networking pioneer Valdis Krebs has outlined four generic metrics that are becoming widely accepted as leading to observable, tangible, measurable outputs:

• Increase in size of network  
• Increase in internal network connectivity 
• Increase in connection to valuable 3^rd parties   
• Increase in number of projects formed from all three factors above 

It’s important, we think, to note here that we are not proposing a definitive answer but rather the need to debate and clarify the issue(s). However, an attentive read of the ZDNet article referenced above clearly aligns with Krebs’ four principles:

1. Increase in size of network:  As The CHARMTracker database grows and the volume of families’ data it holds increases, it’s utility to doctors, other health care professionals and the families themselves increases.  And, as the article points out, if and when the data begins to be (appropriately) used by those networked around the health issues, the value of the interaction will increase in an (likely) exponential fashion.

2. Increase in internal network connectivity:  Again, as suggested by the paragraphs excerpted from the ZDNet article, as more and more participants are networked into the CHARMTracker information and begin to use the dynamics of social networks to seek for and circulate pertinent and useful information, each time a piece of information is useful to someone there’s a tangible return on the intangible capacity offered by the flows of information and knowledge.

3. Increase in connection to valuable 3rd parties:  As more information fills the CHARMTracker database, and more doctors, health care professional and families use it, the apparent value will become clear to others with expertise or value to provide to the social medical network that will have grown up around autism issues.  Expect to see both volunteer and for-profit services to be added to the growing ecosystem of knowledge and attention.  

This expected outcome reminds me of the core argument of Shoshan Zuboff’s book “The Support Economy – Why Corporation Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism”, wherein she argues that the complexity surrounding many issues in today’s society are such that all sorts of people (consumers, families, professionals, and so on) will need “support” that can be designed, built and delivered via the digital interlinked infrastructure we know as the Web.

4. Increase in number of projects formed from all three factors above:  It’s pretty easy to imagine that as the CHARMTRacker database and its use(s) take root, there will be other clever and useful projects that grow out of the experience and the learning it affords.  Doc Searls, of Cluetrain Manifesto and VRM (Vendor Relations Management) fame once sagely noted that one of the critical outcomes of operating in purposeful social networks was the “scaffolding” (building in layer upon layer) of useful knowledge. 

That’s how circulating pertinent information and sharing useful knowledge works .. we don’t go backwards, we build on what’s useful and what works.  That’s how Return On Investment in Interaction will work and will deliver value to organization and groups who decide to use social networks, linked information and data, and social computing dynamics to accelerate their effectiveness towards achieving their purpose.

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The Dominos “YouTube Adventure” last week  – when a couple made a disgusting video of what they did in making a Dominos Sub – is I think a “Rubicon” moment.  Not just for Dominos, who had already put their toe into the river of Social Media but for every enterprise. (Excellent revue here  by Frederic Lardinois from Read Write Web on what happened + Stats + Dominos response + an analysis)

All your customers, voters, members, suppliers – the public are now linked. Newsworthy events that are good and bad will spread like wildfire. Look at the “Good” event of Susan Boyle – as of this date 20 million views in less than a week!

The Rubicon is that – whether you like it or not – the public are now linked so well, that anything said about you will now spread everywhere and very quickly. This linkage, and hence the speed and immediacy of the spread, can only get wider and faster. Maybe, in a few months, events that affect you will spread instantly to everyone. What will spread the fastest of course will be the bad things.

So the new reality is that it is what others say that will matter not what you say. So your reputation – your brand – the trust you have – is now not longer easily or directly controlled by you.

You have to be swimming in this river to have any chance of protecting your name.

As with Dominos – using the new social media tools is not enough. You will have to understand and become a master of how to live and do well in thus new world.

Compared to many today, Dominos were somewhat ready. But even then – I think because they had only installed the tools but not the culture – they were awkward. They were late in catching their problem. Late in a their response. Stilted in their response – they did not understand that a scripted response is not going to help much.

They were still operating the new tools with the old culture.

They gave their CEO a script. He read from the prompter and did not make emotional contact with the audience. But Dominos still did well compared maybe to you! For do you even have the tools?

But of course it is not just about the tools. The issue is that you can no longer control. So their new plan is of course the old plan – “let’s control the store”. Their key response is to ban video cameras from their stores! This means a ban on cell phones really and how practical can that be?

The only effective response will be to get into the river with everyone else and get really good at how to behave in this new river. It will be to become so engaged that the conversation can be affected or shaped. You have to be a trusted part of the conversation to do this. You cannot just barge in.

Dominos and you will have to unlearn and put away all of what made old PR work. For all of PR up to now has used “Message” – a tightly controlled and scripted response where the text is key. Now you have to use “Presence” – an emotional message where the authenticity of the humanity of the “speaker” carries the point. Volts versus Amps.

This River will soon operate at the speed of light. To protect your name, you have to be a major presence in the river now. You have to merge with the river so that your nervous system is acutely attuned to the slightest hint of trouble. The leverage is Trust. Only a trusted player in the river will have any chance of settling down the ripples.

To have the Trust, you need to be known. To be known, you have to be a person and not an institution.The people that represent you in this river have to be free people who can be trusted. They have to have won the trust of the river. If trouble occurs, they have to respond immediately without a script. They have to be empathic and not controlled.

This role is foreign to institutions who are all about control. The answer are not the tools but the culture.

The error is to see your participation in Social Media as having the right Tools. “We use Twitter!” is a meaningless statement. Hey you can give me all the tools I would need to fix a car and I still will not be able to fix a car. Worse you can give me an airplane to fly and I will crash every time. The people who work for you in this field have to be the real deal. You would not hire a CFO who did not know her stuff?

Why simply tell your existing PR folks who know nothing about this – in fact who hate it – to take over? All of how PR, Research and Marketing has been done until now will have to be unlearned. Traditional PR, Research and Marketing folks will feel very uncomfortable and will do what all prior paradigm leaders do when confronted with the real future. They will undermine and fight it. They have to. For this is their nemesis.

The context for this decision is that the old world is dying. Here is how Coke is responding:

ATLANTA: Coca-Cola has created a new office of digital communications and social media within its public affairs and communications department. Clyde Tuggle, SVP of corporate affairs and productivity at Coke, noted “mass media is declining in importance,” when introducing the new department in a memo to staff, which the beverage manufacturer shared with PRWeek.

“Our future success depends on our continued ability to connect people to our brands and our Company all around the world, one person at a time,” Tuggle wrote. “Our new office of digital communications and social media will help us become even more comfortable and effective in these new spaces.”

The new unit will work in collaboration with global interactive marketing, IT, and consumer affairs, as well as legal and strategic security.

Adam Brown, digital communications director, and Anne Carelli, digital communications manager, will have oversight of corporate digital and social media communications efforts. Both Brown and Carelli will continue ongoing training programs, such as “Training Byte” online videos, in addition to “more robust” programs through its new PAC Institute.

The ideas in the new world that will have to be learned anew include these:

• Listen before you Speak – The New Tools allow you to hear the slightest tremor. Last week I Tweeted that I had done my taxes and that I had used QuickTax. Within minutes QuickTax had responded with a thank you. A week earlier I Tweeted that I had had a problem with accessing Ning. Within minutes a customer service person from Ning contacted me and worked over the weekend to solve my problem. If you cannot do this – you are not in the game. In future, most of your research will operate in real time without you having to ask any questions. Your new job will be to listen minute by minute and to have tools and people that can make sense of the stream. Not only to make sense of what you hear but also to shape the stream. QuickTax is responding to every mention good or bad. An early and a personal response, can settle a problem that could become a crisis. Such a strategy dramatically reduces your costs in research and brand management. Such a strategy dramatically increases your effectiveness and reduces your risks. More for less.

• Participate not Pontificate – To be heard, you have to participate. To speak, you have to lose your corporate voice. You have to lose the official tone of voice. You have to regain a human voice. This can only be done if you allow your social media staff to be themselves. They cannot be the highly controlled drones that are the standard in the corporate or bureaucratic world – many people in your organization will not be able to lose this voice. They even use it at home. Simply training old staff will not be enough. For how can you have trained people in the Shetl to be Americans?  You have to live in the New World to become a citizen. To have the new voice is to be a native of the new culture that is the very opposite of the norms of the old country. As with immigrants, it will be the kids who will get it first and they will train the others. But the Bubbies will never get it. This aspect of having the new strategy work or not is the most challenging part of all of this. In the end it means, that the old culture has to die too. Maybe in the interim, you set your unit up apart from the rest and have it report to the CEO for protection. Clayton Christenson has a lot to say about this problem. For to respond to this new reality demands that you disrupt your culture. The most difficult of all acts for a leader.

• Importance – Life or Death: This is not an add on or a side show as Newspapers found – This is all about whether you are going to live or die – As the Coke folks say but more gently than I – Mass Media is dying. So then is the entire Mass Media approach to PR and Broadcast – the God-like Voice and Moses with the Text of God from on high does not work. So how important is your reputation? How important is your business or enterprise? Adopting this new way is one of the most important decisions you will make. So also having the RIGHT PEOPLE to do this for you is the second decision you will make after deciding to cross the River. Ideally you have to have them report to the CEO. Ideally the CEO needs to become immersed as well. If I can do this, aged 59 and having spent most of my working life in institutions. Then so can you. The only issue is will. Do you have the will as a CEO to move into the future?

Caesar made the call by crossing the Rubicon to end the Republic and to begin the Empire. He had the will to stake it all. There was then no going back.

Actually it is society that has crossed the Rubicon. The new interactive and participative world is now here.

Will you cross too? This is a life or death decision for you. It’s also a winning choice. Many will not be able to make this choice. Their own culture will be too powerful. If you can, you have the advantage. The earlier you move, the better you will get at this.

In November of 2008, Stowe Boyd and I were invited to speak at the soft launch of blueKiwi 2009, an innovative collaboration platform which is one of the leading European providers of Enterprise 2.0 social computing business software.  Stowe began the evening’s presentation with an overview of the high-level impacts of the web on human activities, I brought that down somewhat closer to the ground by providing a perspective on the impacts of interconnection and networks on organizational and management dynamics, and Carlos Diaz, the President and CEO of blueKiwi, gave the audience an excellent overview of blueKiwi’s value proposition and the design and new features offered by the 2009 version.

blueKiwi has now revamped its web site to signal the launch of the bK 2009 version and value proposition, and is “coming out” with bK 2009 at this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Last week I caught up with Carlos and co-founder Christophe Routhieau, CTO and software architect, in order to go into deeper detail as to why blueKiwi promises both innovation and pragmatic value as a social business collaboration platform.

We started off by covering a bit of history about blueKiwi’s roots and how the platform came into being just as the Web began to have major impact on the knowledge-based workplace.  Carlos and Christophe were already successful web entrepreneurs in France.  Carlos and his brother Manuel co-founded the web agency groupeReflect and Christophe joined the agency in 2000, and the team managed it successfully through several business cycles, eventually selling it to Emakina, an interactive marketing agency.   Carlos and Christophe said it was useful and important to the early success of blueKiwi that they are coming to the issues of collaboration and social computing from the web rather than from a starting point in the pre-web information technology world (the traditional software world).

The initial version of blueKiwi was conceived and built prior to the advent of the domain known as Enterprise 2.0 in response to client organizations that wanted to use Web 2.0 capabilities inside their organizations to communicate more spontaneously and efficiently. So they and their early clients understood that people were growing into using the Web, and wanted to use that knowledge and understanding to inform the core design principles, functionality and usability of the first version of blueKiwi, which was built and implemented at one of their key clients, Dassault Systems.

Given that all the serious Enterprise 2.0 platforms claim to focus on the sociality now seen as central to effective responsiveness and organizational agility and effectiveness, I asked them what differentiates bK2009 from some of the other leading Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platforms.  For me, this is where things start to get really interesting and what I find exciting about what blueKiwi has to offer.  Starting from the vantage point of the Web 2.0-savvy user, they have designed and built blueKiwi to be user-centric whilst responding to the business issues that require the building, distributing and  and deploying of business-focused knowledge … the essence of social business computing, in my opinion.

bK2009 is centered on the building, nourishing and sustaining of business-focused relationships – building useful knowledge and getting things done.  Carlos and Christophe pointed out that they had learned something important during the 2nd wave of blueKiwi’s adoption by clients … most collaboration systems start from the point of view of technical capabilities and do not make it easy, or overlook, the building and growing of relationships.  In the past, users of collaborative platforms had to go about building their business relationships, both internally and externally, outside of the collaboration system / platform.  bK2009 is first and foremost a means of building valuable and value-added relationships in the course of doing one’s work … it can enable, contain and manage all the activity in a business ecosystem.

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Digging a bit deeper, I asked them what they thought was unique about blueKiwi.  Carlos and Christophe believe that not only is their product design different from competitors, but they are very enthused about breaking new ground with the “economic model” offered by blueKiwi.  The feel that with bK 2009 they are breaking new ground in two ways.

First … all collaboration platforms offer spaces where people can connect, gather, share and exchange information.  Thus far, the mainstream approach has been to offer spaces where people can connect and gather, and then share content … information about issues, problems, and areas of interest, and as people exchange and collaborate, useful knowledge is built.  bK2009 turns this upside down, or around (you choose).  It is designed on the principle that the collaborative space is there for content and its distribution, and the individual user then chooses which groups she or he wishes to engage with.  Thus, any individual user can be a member of the groups they have chosen to interact with.  And of course it has a Twitter clone as one of its features.

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What eventuates is a network of interaction around pertinent content, and thus over time an ecosystem around issues in which engagement is de facto defined by the users’ interest and willingness to engage.  This then leads to the ability to watch and quantify the volume of interactions and obtain a better, and visible , understanding of the value that is being created (responsiveness, innovation, deepening understanding and so on).

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There are three key effects stemming from this approach:

1. there is an inherent, and ongoing, flexibility in creating and participating in (”on the fly”, said Carlos) any given group (reminiscent of Clay Shirky’s “ridiculously easy group-forming ) – the individual is always in a sense at the centre of an information ecosystem in which she or he is by definition an integral part,

2. thus, an organization’s productive social networks are developed out of the interactions between individuals (I call this the “natural sociology of knowledge work”), which in effect reproduces the dynamics of blogging or using LinkedIn or Facebook, and

3. bK 2009’s profiles reveal an individual’s contributions in a dynamic and interactive way … an user creates his or her profile, but others can add to it (a la reputation systems) and finally, the bK 2009 platform offers up various analytics on the types and foci of any user’s inter-activities.

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Second … as blueKiwi has evolved through its second wave of client installations, what it learned was the practical logic of Metcalfe’s Law of Networks, whereby the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected members of the network (debate continues, as you will note in the links and citations at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry).  To date, the standard model of pricing for social computing / social business platforms involves fees based on the number of seats or users.  The more users, the larger the fee, and the fewer the users, the less the fee.  So, many organizations begin with pilots, or make decisions about enhancing collaborative capability that involve decisions about the difficulty and costs of customization of their installation of Sharepoint or IBM Lotus Connections.

Back to Metcalfe’s Law …  blueKiwi believes that organizations should realize that collaboration in connected networks is the way work will be done all the time in the near future, and so organizations should seek to enroll and engage the entire organization in the use of the collaborative platform.  Thus, the fees to use bK2009 are based on the levels of user activity each month.  As activity increases the value to the organization increases, and accordingly blueKiwi’s revenues from that client increase.  Conversely, if there is no activity, there is no revenue to blueKiwi.

This is essentially like pricing a utility, like paying for electricity or water … so, if eventually all or almost all knowledge work is going to happen on a collaborative platform, it makes sense that the platform and its capabilities be seen as one of the organization’s necessary utilities. As activity increases and the value to the organization increases, so should the price paid for the capabilities that help create the value.  Technology is thus not a cost per se, rather the activity the technology enables reflects the price and value of the utility, and the users determine the ROI.

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Regarding its positioning in the Enterprise 2.0 market space, Carlos stated that bK 2009 is coming from the position of having “nothing to defend”.  What does he mean ?  He means that, for example, Sharepoint or IBM Lotus have fundamental technology assumptions and massive installations to defend, whereas blueKiwi is a new player, one that is coming from origins in / on the web as opposed to previous, pre-web IT design principles and  architecture.  They (blueKiwi) watched consumer behaviour on the web, Dassault Systems asked them to help build a system for more spontaneous, efficient and effective exchanges of information and knowledge, and the result after several years of intense design, development and deployment is a collaborative platform that in my opinion more closely mirrors the natural sociology of knowledge work than any other platform about which I know.  The fundamental design principle stems not from the “technology” that supported existing work processes, whereby the design and architecture of the technology drives the way(s) users operate it (or try to do so), but from how people exchange and use information and knowledge.

bK 2009 is a “social technology” .. a couple of other capabilities reinforce this position.  bK 2009 enables users to plug in and use a range of widgets so that they can take advantage of a wide range of pertinent socially-generated information and knowledge (this is closely aligned with some of my previous mutterings about mass customization / mass personalization of knowledge work).  As both Carlos and Christophe stated, the ultimate goal is have organizations recognize that bK 2009 is effectively a layer over the organization’s existing IT architecture, and that it can and should operate as a strategic complementarity to existing databases, enterprise search engines, security functions and so on.  It’s a social technology, and blueKiwi wants existing and future client organizations to see its design and capabilities as offering a “Social Hub” that complements an organization’s existing industrial-strength information technology architecture and investments.

Over and above the offering for large enterprises considering Enterprise 2.0 possibilities, blueKiwi is also now offering bK2009 Pro Edition for small and medium-sized organizations, for a flat (and affordable) fee.   An interesting wrinkle … it allows such organizations to invite external members of its value web to join and interact.  So, effectively it is providing these organizations with what they would today seek to accomplish by setting up a Facebook group (effectively side-stepping any potential hassles with Facebook privacy or Facebook owning all the member data).  Neat !

I was impressed by this company and its people when I spent time with them, and I remain impressed.  Can you tell ?

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UPDATE: If you want to know more about bK2009 or can’t see the detail on the screen shots well enough to understand as well as you’d like to, here are three short, well-produced video clips that help explain how bK2009 helps Foster Conversations, Build Efficient Networks and Bring People Together.

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The mortgage crisis is now clearly not just about a few people who should have known better, as many like to see it, but is a crisis so deep and wide that it has the power to doom not only individuals but cities. As houses fall, so do streets, the blocks then neighborhoods and then entire cities. Loss of taxes will shutter schools, loss of taxes will neuter governments, loss of mobility and loss of value will shut down people. So the financial cancer spreads until maybe America comes to a halt.

So what to do? This is where social media will I think play it’s most important role – that of empowering people to come together and to help each other. This is I think where the history books will tell the story – not that Facebook or My Space were cool, not that business finally got it. No I think the story will be that Social Media enabled the rise of Community Power and that it was Community Power that helped America through these times. That it was Community Power that replaced machine Democracy and restored the Republic.

Big claim! So here are some early signs – you can see this great power stir before your eyes

KETC, a client of mine, the Public TV Channel in St Louis, has been chosen by CPB to test how well a public TV station can be in Convening the wider community of its city to come together and help each other cope with a giant crisis. Here is a link to the background.

I am writing today to offer up an early report. This week we held the first on air/web town hall meeting.

For the first time St Louisans could see that they were not alone. The room was full of all sorts of people. St Louisans could see the enormous amount of help that was there for them. They could hear stories of all the things that could happen for bad or good. They could feel hope.

The show (links part 1 - part 2 - part 3 – part 4) was masterful. First of all it set the context – it gave the whole story. Then the full range of risks and remedies were explored.

As I watched this show, I felt as I had after Robin’s cancer diagnosis when we met the wonderful team of people who saved her life. I felt that while the situation was dire, that I might lose not my home but my wife, that we had the benefit of a great team and of the best that medicine could offer – we knew what we were up against. We knew that we had a chance. We had hope whereas before we had only fear.

I thought that I knew it all before the show. But I didn’t. In an hour, Ruth had covered the full story. No sound bites here. The full story!

The last segment was for me the most gripping. Here the show is opened up to the audience, to callers and those on the web. Here the voice of the community spoke. The dignity of the people and the panel was something to behold. The barriers between the helpers and the helped were eliminated. Something important happened.

The full impact was also revealed.

This is much more than a person losing their home. This is about the ripple effect that kills blocks, kills communities and in the end can doom the city. The ripple effect affects us all.

Next week we have a second show. This time we will focus on the the ripple effect – how can St Louisans work together to protect their communities? How can the people save their city?

Of course what you see on TV is merely the surface. If you look at the video, you will see The Swan – You will see the show but behind the scenes the feet are paddling hard under the surface.

The guys at KETC are paddling like fury all over the city and the state connecting people to help and more important connecting the help to the help. Have a look at the credits at the end of part 4.

This is the hard graft – many organizations, I call them Nodes of Trust, are meeting each other for the first time and seeing how much they can do to help each other do a better job.

Many are also seeing that the mortgage crisis itself is only part of a much more dangerous threat, the Ripple, that has the power to take the entire city down.

This is why I make the claim I do. I can think of only one way to dig our way out of this mess – to connect the people so that they can take charge themselves. Social Media and stations like KETC are the way to make these connections.

Many are starting to see that many who got caught were not foolish but unfortunate or worse exploited.

St Louisan are starting to feel that they might have a chance of beating this – a chance not because of false hope or exhortation but hope drawn from meeting other good men and women and seeing that together they can make an impact. Seeing that they are not helpless.

I think that KETC is on its way to prove out the hopes of CPB – that Public Media can be seen as a powerful force for good in their community. For who else can do this work? Who else can act as the convenor in these tough times?

If you are confronted by a interviewer, a sound man and a camera man with a huge camera on his shoulder – it’s hard to open up.

If the topic of what is on the table is a hard one – then maybe you will not open up. We are for instance finding it hard to get people to talk in St Louis about losing their homes – whereas it was easy to get people to talk about their experience in the war. We are starting to debate how we can reduce the barriers to story and hence to engagement.

This traditional approach – where interviewer is outside the story themselves – is not engaging enough.

Here then is my ideal. Molly Dineen making her brilliant film – The Lie of the Land – Available in full on Google Video.

This film is about the  death throws of farming in England and about the barrier between city folk who think that food comes from the supermarket and the country folk who struggle to produce food for a living when the supermarkets and the government do all they can to break them.

What is so special about the film is Molly’s POV. By working alone with just a small camera – she is part of the story. Her warmth allows the natural dignity of the inarticulate to shine through and to give power to the thoughts of people who could never speak other wise.

There is no barrier between her and the people or the actions in the film.

The film has caused a storm. It seems to be the Silent Spring of our time. The wake-up call.

It is the technology of the mini cam that has allowed her to change the relationship between the film maker and the subject. This brings out the emotional power of the story. It is the technology of the web that is allowing you to see this film whenever you want. The new social web brings us depth and distribution. A great story will travel.

A warning – Molly shows the reality of life and death on the farm. NO shrink wrapped beef here.In so doing she reminds us of the real cost of our food – a cost that goes beyond money.

BPP was tested in beta by allowing a lot of interaction – real time research.

Now NPR are going further – they are starting a blog whose purpose is to get behind the scenes, under the hood, open the kimono. What people like Andy and Dennis understand is that the more human NPR is, the greater the attachment.

Here is the fist key post:

On behalf of the NPR Digital Media team, we’d like to welcome you to Inside NPR.org, a new blog that will serve as our official headquarters for new features and services we’re developing for the NPR Web site. It’s a chance for you to explore some of the many projects we’re working on, and help us make them more useful as we roll them out.

The idea behind this blog has its roots in our two newest shows – Tell Me More and The Bryant Park Project. Both of them were rolled out as blogs many months before they were ready to go on air, in the hopes of getting as much public feedback as possible. Historically, it’s common to develop a show behind the scenes, only giving listeners a chance to hear it when it was ready for prime time. By creating online communities for each show while they were still “rough cuts,” we were able to build better programs because of it.

Now, we’d like to apply the same rough cuts idea to our online services in general. Whether it’s rolling out social networking, building new mobile products or improving our online strategy in general, we’re hoping we can develop better tools if you’re a part of the conversation.

In the coming weeks and months, you’ll hear from a variety of people from behind the scenes at NPR.org – software developers, product managers, online producers and others who are working on new Web site features. We hope that talking about these activities more openly will help create a virtuous cycle of product development and feedback.

Thanks for joining us; we look forward to brainstorming with you!

— Andy Carvin and Daniel Jacobson

It is the hope of CPB that Public Media can do more to serve its country than offer great content alone. It is our collective hope that by learning how to do what we are doing now well, that Public TV and Radio can serve the public by acting as a convener of Trust for the community – so that we can draw on the great and latent power that resides in all local communities to take action themselves to solve the great problems that confront us.

Our hope is that our one station in one city can offer enough experience that in the fall many more can join in the work and that soon we may have a national effort underway.

Here is an update as to how we are starting this work.

First of all – we had to settle on what could be our objective? What could we do that was both possible and legitimate to help? What was the “problem that could be solved and what did we really bring to the table?

What we hear is going on that can be remedied is this. Many people can be helped to stay in their homes. BUT to be helped, they have to act very quickly. Days make a difference. The barriers to these people getting the help that will save their home are these:

* They don’t know where the safe help is. They are surrounded by sharks waiting to feed off them
* They are often frozen by shame and fear.

We can connect them to help that they can trust. We can use our power as story tellers to help break through the shame barrier – we can show that they are not alone and that there is hope. We have decided that we can and that we have to be the “Connector” – connect people that can be helped to the help that can be trusted. We have to connect the help to the help, so that it can be more powerful.

So for those who can be helped, maybe 30% of the total, the issue is Trust. They have to know who they can trust in a situation where they have had all their trust in financial advice destroyed.

So one of our aims is to “reveal” the Nodes of Trust in St Louis. To reveal the hidden network of help. To reveal this network not only to those who need it but to those that who are part of this network of help and trust. We are going to use who we are – the most trusted organization in the City – to use our power of media to reveal a hidden part of our city – the network of Nodes of Trust that exist in St Louis. Over the last 2 weeks we have been convening meetings in our studios of the leaders of these organizations. Many of these people had never met before.

We are going to do our best to connect these people enough to each other that the latent power of this network of Trust becomes manifest and real.

View Larger Map

Just as KPBS used Google Maps to show the extent and the nature of both the fire and the help – so we plan to do the same. With by the way the active help of KPBS and Google Maps. This is our first shot.

Our hope is that the community will help us produce the definitive map of “help” and “Trust” in St Louis. Our hunch is that each community has a map of trust – the Bosnians, the African Americans, the Hispanics etc. Our hunch is that these Nodes of Trust are even more local and less obvious than the ones we start with – they surely include churches, beauty salons, cafes etc. These Nodes of Trust are real. They exist. They are just for now outside of our vision. If we can reveal them and connect them – then what? What can St Louis really do when the full power of this resource is realized?

Surely every city has this latent network of Trust and local power that can be activated and enhanced by a crisis and by a convener who has no ax to grind?

So much of this work is different from Broadcasting – we are drawing on the years of experience in the station of outreach and on our position in the city as being part of the community to work face to face with those who can help to enhance their efforts. Our key local partner in this is the United Way who run a funnel into the network of help via their 21 number.

But even with help available, what about the issues of fear and shame that block people from seeking help?

Here we use our power as story tellers. Fear and shame can be overcome, if we can see that we are not alone and that forces beyond us have been and are in play. Here video and TV have an unparalleled power to tell story and to connect. Here is a link to our YouTube Channel where we will have many many many stories. We will be broadcasting interstitials (one minute items), 6 minute items and long format shows. All that we broadcast will be put up on our blog, on YouTube and Facebook

Is the problem just about people losing their homes? No!

We are starting to see that the real problem is the ripple effect of people losing their homes on the entire fabric of America. As vacant houses destroy the value of the rest of the street, as ruined streets destroy a community, as ruined communities destroy a city, as ruined cities destroy the state – we see that this is like the flood in New Orleans. Cities and then states become socially and then economically gutted.

The tragedy is greater than the loss of a home and the dream for a family. This is a cancer that threatens the nation. As such, being self righteous and blaming others and thinking that the pain can be limited to to the guilty, is to be short sighted.

We have to be the story teller about “The Ripple Effect”. Many think that they are OK. Many think that we should do nothing to help the stupid and the ill informed.

But we are learning that such an attitude is like blaming people who have typhoid. There is a “dis-ease” spreading. The impact of this crisis on the few will affect the many. We cannot stand by and think that we will be OK. This is like America in WWII. For what happens in the “other neighborhood is going to affect us and the whole world. So as Ed Murrow, the spiritual father of Public Service as a broadcaster, told the larger story of the war from the Blitz in London, so we at KETC have to tell the story of the larger Ripple Effect of the housing crisis on our city and state.

Again – here we use our TV channel and all the power of social media. Here we also convene meetings with people who don’t normally meet and we are asking them to work together to understand the full risk and power of the Ripple Effect.

Here we give our voice on TV and on the Beacon to others such as Senator MacAskill to speak to the challenge that confronts us all.

“People are making assumptions that just certain kinds of people are in this position,” McCaskill said. “I think that people’s stereotypes kick in. I don’t think they realize that these distressed homes and families are all over the St. Louis area. From Chesterfield to South County to Warren County and St. Charles, there are homes facing foreclosure.”

McCaskill said the impact of the foreclosure crisis — which analysts predict could reach 3 million nationally — goes well beyond individual homeowners and is undermining the strength of the U.S. economy.

“There is this ripple effect that foreclosures have on the economy that we are focused on. This isn’t about a bailout for any individual. This is about what’s best for our economy so we don’t fall off the table into a full-blown depression,” she said.

“It’s hard for people because they’re used to operating within their lane. Can I pay my bills? And if I can pay my bills, why are we helping anybody who can’t pay their bills? This is not about staying in your lane. This is about our overall economic strength right now as a nation and the things we can do that help the credit markets stabilize, that help the dollar strengthen, that cut out some of the speculation in oil. All of those things need to happen, and this housing bill is just one part of that.”

“What you don’t see in this room are the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are just like you,” she said to the homeowners in the assemblage. “We estimate up to 20,000 homes in Missouri will face foreclosure before the end of next year. So, imagine if we had 20,000 people in this room what it would look like. You are not in this alone. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of others out there that have the same kind of challenges.”

This is a very long post. I don’t know how to compress our story while it is still being written.

I will post shortly about how we are “Managing” this process – by using social media and total project transparency – but I have a request first.

We need help. In particular we need help from bloggers in St Louis. I know you are out there. You are surely also part of the Nodes of Trust in St Louis. You too are the unseen network of trust in the city. Please some of you contact me so that you too can become visible and that you too can help your city and your state in this time of great need.

So this then is the context for our work.

We are going full tilt to the end of August to learn how to connect people to help. To learn how to help the help become connected so that they can offer more and better help. To learn how to tell the bigger story of the Ripple effect so that those with the power to help at this level can also locate their power and apply it. To be the beta test site for public media so that we can extend this work nationally.

At the end of his speech to congress after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt said this:

With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

Maybe we can modify this call to hope and to the determination of the people and say:

With confidence in our communities—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

We are beavering away getting ready for a launch at the beginning of July.

One of the tools that we are using to enable us all to work with each other across many departments, different places and different organizations is Ning. Ning is not a traditional project management tool but we are finding it very helpful.

Soon we will have not only the project team using it but also folks from several stations, CPB and PBS and a few friends who know a lot more than old Rob about reaching the hard to reach.

I think that this is a new way of running a project – where the client and the next to go can look under the hood while we are still making the car.

In essence the work looks like this:

The Big Idea: – Our research tells us that many can save their homes but are prevented because they do not know where to go for help that they can trust. Many who can be helped are shamed and don’t want to put their hand up or are frozen. They have no one who has empathy who can help them find help.

Many cannot keep their homes. But they too are frozen with fear. This fear may well turn to resentment. Many are not directly affected but will be when many houses in their neighborhood are – at the moment they are stuck as individuals – how can they protect their own street? They need help.

The current problem – Most of the help is hard to find, finds you or is on the web. Most of it is “help” from “Vultures” or the people who “helped” get people into this mess.

What is Public TV’s great Value? – We are the most trusted organization in town.

So what then is the work? – We can’t give people money. We can’t know all the answers. But we can find the help that people can trust and we can fortify the existing networks of trust to give people the best shot of finding help that they can trust.

So I think that our work is to find the 30 – 60 “Nodes of Trust” in St Louis – those people and those organizations that have the trust of each segment and form a trusted bond with them. If we can do this, then we can do “The Work” which is I think to help people find the help.

If we can do this, we will also have found a new relationship with our city. A relationship much more meaningful than bringing quality content. A relationship where we can reveal and strengthen the fabric of community and so equip it to cope with the harsh realities of our time.

Here then is a sequence of what we may see happen – all this work is done by the brilliant Valdis Krebs.

This is where we are now – this may be how your city is – there are institutions but they are not connected and these are only the big ones. In reality there are maybe hundreds of churches, beauty salons, youth centres whatever that are Nodes Of Trust.

Here is what I think we have to do this summer – reveal and connect the key nodes. At first it will be us going out to the and then revealing them to each other and to the public.

We plan to use Google Maps to do this. We will have a layer for each community. The Bosnians will have their map. The African Americans will have their map and so on. Each push pin will have as much data as possible and we will ask the public for more Nodes.

We will connect this network to the best and most trusted help that we can find. We are now digging into what is on offer and who can help in every area. We will use our ability to tell stories in print – see a new post of the Beacon – on Video – on the web and in person.

If we are fortunate – some of these Nodes will start to connect independently of us to each other.

I think this might be all that we can do this summer.

But here is my hope. That as this network becomes more self aware and as we help it find each other – then some kind of life will emerge. Like a nuclear reaction and that we will have been present at the birth of a star:

What could St Louis be capable of – if it now looked like this?

What would be the place of a public TV station – if we could have ben the midwife attending such a birth?

What could America be like if the 300 stations in the country could have this effect in the 300 major cities of the nation?

There is a lot to play for at a time when there is a lot at stake.

Over the next 7 days I will offer up more detail as it becomes available

How would you feel today, if you stood to lose your house and all around you the media were labeling you as stupid and deserving of being put on the street?

How would you feel if you were struggling to save your house, but all around you those  who said that they were there to help you, were really just jackals waiting to prey on your carcass?

How would you feel if you have lots of what you thought was equity in your house, if 20% of the houses in your community were being sold at auction for a few thousand dollars?

What kind of city or place will you live in if say 20% of the people there have learned that they have been fooled, betrayed and abandoned by their society?

This is a graph of how the SARS epidemic spread. This is how all social epidemics spread. This is the risk before us!

I think that if lots of people feel this way that there is going to be hell to pay. For I think that the real threat of the subprime crisis is social.

The science behind the Tipping Point tells us that if there is momentum and and if the “Chasm” of about 15% is crossed the system Tips. If 15-20% of the people in your city feel that they have no support or hope, then there is a good chance that your city will Tip.I am saying that if you think that you are OK while large swathes of your city become ghost towns – watch out for the Zombies and watch out for your tax base, your own equity, crime and your way of life.

I am not saying that the “Cure” is to save every person’s house. I am saying that if people affected cannot get Trusted help and in the end trusted support, they will not only lose their house but get very angry. This is when the pitchforks and torches come into town.

So why am I posting this in a blog where the focus is Social Media? Because at its core the subprime mortgage problem is no longer merely financial nor is it confined to a few people. It is now becoming a social problem – it is largely now about isolation, abandonment and and soon it will be about betrayal.

People who are affected directly find it exceptionally difficult to find help that they can trust. People who are directly affected are often in shock too and hence are shut down and will not trust official help – after all it was the system that told them that borrowing was going to be OK. People who are directly affected feel shame and feel shamed. Many must feel like many returning vets from Vietnam. The are being told that the subprime crisis is all their fault. The commercial media are telling them that we do not care about them.

Many others are smug. I am OK. This is not about about me. My nice middle class or upper class area is safe. But of course it’s not and nor will it be as the ripple spreads

Others see the business opportunity. Facebook and the web are full of people now lining up to exploit the crisis. Houses can be bought at auction for hundreds of dollars. The same forces that put millions in jeopardy are now fighting over the scraps.

Here is the overview by region.

Here is an overview by house price change.

All our research tells us is that this is not the end but the beginning.

As I see it, the issue is larger than a person losing their home. The real risk is that too many people in a city will give up on being a citizen. They will give up not simply because they lost their home but because they think that they have been betrayed. They went for the Dream and they were taken for a ride.

So what can we do? Can we save every home? Should we save every home? Can we save every home?

I think the answer is no to all of those questions. But I think we can do this:

• If we can find real help that can be trusted – we can help those that can be helped to save their house
• If we can connect people in trouble to each other, they can maybe help others save their homes and ALSO get the emotional support that they need
• If we can show to the larger community that we are all involved, then we can end the blame and the shame and we can mobilize the entire community – as we are seeing in the Iowa Floods – for this is a collective disaster.
• If we can show that people are no longer helpless then hope will return
• At worst, if we can show that you can lose your home and still be OK, then we will really achieved something for what we will have done is shown that there is a community and that it does care about you. That the Dream is not dead.

A public TV station that has no ax to grind may have the essential trust to take up this work. A Public TV station that does its best to learn how to use Social Media might have a chance.

KETC, Channel 9, in St Louis has been chosen by CPB to develop a template and a set of tools for Public TV that will have a real shot at ensuring that that we might be able to do this. We have until the end of August to make a difference.

We are going to need your help.

I will do my best to tell you what we are doing – as we try stuff. Please let me know what you think.

As a start I need to find some well connected bloggers in St Louis. If you are one or know one please let me know in the comments.

Iowa is truly a disaster state right now – not only has it record floods but also tornadoes.

IPTV, Iowa Public TV, has asked the public for help and it is getting it. Here is its video page where you can see not only a selection of Videos from the public and the station but also its process of attracting them into the station. This is a thumbnail so click to see more.

Here is is Flickr Feed. Click to see more.

Ironically, the minimal resources that Public TV has is making its adoption of social media more widespread and the result is of course that the stations that have gone down this route are getting more attached to their members.

With the fire in San Diego, the Bridge collapse in Minneapolis and now the Floods in Iowa, we are seeing Public TV starting to find a new definition for the term “Public Broadcaster”.

At KETC in St Louis we begin a new chapter in covering disasters and in engaging the public. For normally when we think “Disaster” we think of a flood or a fire. But what about the great and complex social problems that we all face. What about education? What about health care? Are these not “Disasters”.

Unlike a flood, they are persistent and they are pervasive. They also seem insoluble – maybe until now? For their causes are surely systemic and we are very poor at even seeing systemic issues, let alone coping with them. We tend to line up along special interest lines. There is not enough trust in play to break through.

There has also been no Trusted Place for the real conversation to be held.

Next week we will start to see if we can help the people of St Louis cope with the mortgage crisis. What could be more complex than that? What could be more dangerous that large segments of any city losing hope that they can be part of society? Our hope is that Public TV can offer the Trust that can connect the unconnected and hence mobilize the Trust that is surely the essential element of how a community can come together and confront these dangerous systemic social “disasters” that are eroding our society.

I will be posting the story of how we do this as it unfolds. I hope to share with you in real time our thoughts and our struggles to take this next step in media. (Cross posted to Robert Paterson’s Weblog)