Category Archive

[the title by the way will probably only mean something to travellers on the Great Western Railway]

Suw just commented on my tuttle post on open spaces that we might have a book-reading session, which reminds me that I was talking to Laura North the other day who is working on the National Year of Reading - yes, it’s now, it’s happening.

My first idea was to get people together to do some play reading - a comedy, preferably, probably something intellectually stimulating too. And short. The Real Inspector Hound for example, or maybe some Orton. I don’t know, anyway, I thought it would be fun and easy to do and eminently bloggable. Anyone?

Isn’t happiness weird? I often find myself being choosy about who to give it away to - but why would I withhold happiness from anyone? And anyway, the more I give away, the more I get back

Isn’t New Year weird? How did something that should be about innovation become so fixed in tradition? I spent last night equally bored and nonplussed.

Isn’t time weird? This year’s a leap year and so just because we all agree that it’s going to happen, we’ll have an extra day in February. If we can agree on bending a rule about how many days there are in a year, surely we could agree on something else. You know, silly stuff like “let’s stop fighting” or “let’s make sure everyone’s got enough to eat today”

Love & hugs everybodeh!

Charles Frith (one of my fave twitter buddies btw) writes about two types of people Cold War survivors who see the world as black and white, good and evil and behave guardedly online with spy-like pseudonyms and ‘Post-Coldies” who are more comfortable with a zillion shades of grey and who let it all hang out.

It’s a difference that Helen also touched on in her thoughtful post on social media

Charles also points out that post-coldies don’t mind their friends meeting up, whereas the others will do anything to keep “different” areas of their life separate, even to the extent of lying to their “friends”. No wonder there’s such drama at weddings & funerals.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I feel very much at the post-coldie end of the spectrum but I’m not sure that the Cold War hostilities are the source of this separation, more that these are another manifestation of the same thing - the ancient tussle between what it means to be an individual and what it means to be part of a group, whether that group is at the level of 1:1 relationships, household, village, city, nation or continent (not to mention, planet, which is a whole other metaphysical adventure in itself).

I think another way of putting it is to say that some people are most comfortable getting their rules or boundary conditions from the group and others who are most comfortable setting their boundary conditions themselves. To each of these, the other’s behaviour can seem threatening and dangerous. I would argue that the former lead to more rigid behaviours while the latter lead to more flexible opportunities, but I’m aware that I may have a blind spot around this… and of course we’re talking about preferences, not necessarily hard-wired characteristics.

Ha ha, an example has just sprung to mind. This post is going to be a bit rambly. There are people who will tell you that a post needs a beginning middle and an end, a meaningful title, a relevant illustration and well-constructed tags. Tough shit - this is my blog and I make the rules.

In this context, I’m also thinking a lot about my facebook friending. Whenever there’s a conversation about social networking, sooner or later, Dunbar’s number is quoted - usually people describe it as “the limit to the number of real relationships one person can have” or something equally vague. It’s 150 and it’s more complicated than that description, but I’m thinking, OK, I have more than 150 friends on facebook, what does that mean in the context of Dunbar’s number? Specifically there seemed to be a paradox that although I was over the “limit” there are still a whole bunch of my friends and people with whom I have fairly intimate business and personal relationships who aren’t even on Facebook, let alone “friended” by me.

What I’m thinking at the moment is that I have, until now, (and in common with the cold war survivors) tried to manage groups of up to 150 people in my head - that’s why it feels so difficult! Of course 150 isn’t a limit on the number of people you can know, it’s really a limit on the number of people you can have meaningful relationships with without resorting to further rules and socially agreed boundaries.

So compartmentalising isn’t in itself “a Cold-War thing” or even “a bad thing” it’s a way of keeping our groups of relationships manageable. What online social networking does is to highlight that compartmentalising goes on, that people compartmentalise in different ways and allows for an external representation of a much larger number of my relationships than before which allows you to understand or infer (perhaps correctly, perhaps not) what my rules and boundaries are.

Of course this is probably all covered in Anthropology 101 but I much prefer learning from experience.

Thanks Rachel for tagging me. I’m not a very secretive person (you may have noticed) so this feels quite hard. I’m sorry if you’ve heard any of these before.

1. My nickname at middle school was BB which came about on a trip to France when I was sitting on a coach in tight jeans, an older girl shouted - “God, ain’t that kid got big bollocks” It stuck.

2. I have ‘A’ levels in German, French, Latin so spent my 6th form going slowly mad from translation fatigue. Actually that’s not quite true, I spent my 6th form hanging around the Swan Theatre, getting laid and getting drunk which I count as the main reason why I got an ‘A’ for General Studies.

3. When at drama school, I particularly enjoyed the stage fighting course, but as a result of not paying attention in the “learning to fall” sessions I dislocated both my shoulders (on separate occasions). This is why I may refuse if you ever need carrying up the stairs and one reason among many why I’m unlikely to be seen bowling at cricket.

4. I have never taken a driving test. I had a course of lessons when I was 19 and one this summer, but I have never felt ready or motivated enough to go through with the formalities. This year could be the year… or maybe it couldn’t!

5. I was thrown out of my first student digs in Guildford just before Christmas 1984 because my landlord who was a milkman was sick of meeting me on the stairs coming in from a night of debauchery when he was going out to work. He pushed a note under my door saying “This is not a halfway house. Make sure you and your things are out of here by the time I get back from work today” I did.

Even harder, is thinking of 5 other bloggers who haven’t been tagged yet. That will have to wait till later because….

today’s my birthday. I’m 42. That just feels absolutely mad. I’ve never felt so disconnected from my solar age. It just doesn’t seem to matter one jot to me - not that I feel some other age, just that I’ve come to see that the number is totally irrelevant.

I want to make clear that I don’t say the following from any position of superiority. People who know me well know how rude and controlling I can be when I don’t get my own way.

But it occurs to me that working at Six Apart must be tough.

Mena to Ben Metcalfe at Les Blogs 2 : “You’ve been an asshole to people all day”
Loic to Sam Sethi about Leweb3 : “Sam, you’re an asshole”

If that’s how they speak to customers in public, I hate to imagine how they speak to each other behind closed doors when things get rough.

I had a moment of clarity last week while holding an open space at Online. I hesitate to call it an “ah-ha” moment. It’s more of a “well….duuuhhh!” moment.

Hold Tight!

All organisations have formal systems and informal systems. You know the formal bits because formal usually means explicit - the org structure diagram, job descriptions, line (or matrix) management structures, written policies, mission statements, value statements and vision statements and the group and individual objectives (supposedly) derived from them and the behaviours that go with them - making a request, filling in a form, going to see the right person in facilities management, appraising staff performance, project and programme reporting. They also have formal links with customers, suppliers and other organisations - official channels. This is the bureacracy.

The informal or shadow systems are the links between people that may have nothing to do with their official roles or structures. This shadow organisation arises because the formal systems cannot be efficient or effective outside of certain limits. Ralph Stacey in Strategic Management & Organisational Dynamics (dreadful title - great summary and important critique of the development of modern strategic management) points out that there are two main reasons for bureacratic control failing to produce what it’s supposed to: the adverse human reaction to bureacracy (Yup! as I typed that previous paragraph I shuddered at ever having to be part of one again) leading to alienation, passive dependence, work without significance, deskilling and provocation of undesired or unintended behaviour. In addition, formal systems can’t deal well with ambiguity or uncertainty. So these informal groups, unofficial ways of behaving, doing business through social activities and networking grow up to allow the organisation to operate more effectively and efficiently. Remember too that unlike the formal part of the organisation, the boundaries of the shadow systems are permeable and always changing, making new contacts in “the industry” or “the sector” as and when opportunities arise.

Furthermore, it has been pointed out that the shadow organisation is the place where innovation and creativity are allowed to flourish. You can’t make new stuff effectively within a formal process. Creativity requires messiness, mistakes and flexibility around time. Innovations happen in the informal world - and, from time to time, when they are useful to the formal world, they become systematised and turned into policy or else they remain “the way we do things around here”. Note also that the organisation as a whole is the same bunch of people - just that they move over time between formal and informal modes and activities, however, my experience has been that there are people who feel more at home in the informal systems (cool dudes like me - heh!) and others who spend most of their time formally (tight-arsed pen-pushers - natch!)

Now, what came to me on Monday with a thud was that it’s these informal groups and activities that are supported by “social software” Blogs give people the opportunity to say what they want and talk about it, outside of any established order - just talk about what’s on your mind. Wikis allow for a meritocracy in collaborative documentation and policy/decision making. Social networking tools allow you to find and foster new connections outside of the org chart.

Examples of how this is working are coming thick and fast.

Do you believe that Threshers have mastered a process for viral marketing or was it a Stormhoek snowball kicked down the hill by Hugh?

For intellectual stimulation and working with new ideas there’s no competition between an openspace event and any one of the established panel-based conferences. Online was better this year, but still has some way to go.

Check out the reaction to Microsoft’s Zune player and then see what is coming from an informal, asynchronous conversation between Rojas, Winer and Calacanis have suggested and why Rowica might have more search results someday (or might not) (hey listen to the podcast of these guys chatting). OK, I like Rowica, but it seems it’s now dubbed the RWC Player.

So when we take social software or social media and try to sell it (through formal channels) as a part of the bureacracy - to replace something formal, it’s not surprising that we get asked about ROI and metrics and to prove “what’s in it for me”. And when we just take a risk and start something as an experiment that then just works, these questions get asked less and less.

That’s why I’m excited about the next round of Policy Unplugged social conferences which we’re branding as ‘Uploading’. The starting point for these events is that the tools exist, they are part of the ecosystem and it’s no longer about whether you should adopt them, but how you can best adopt them to get things done. And I would suggest that looking at the informal systems in organisations and within industries are the place to start that conversation.

Well…. duuuuuhhh!!!

Bonus Link: Johnnie is re-reading Patricia Shaw. Good move.

tags: innovation & complexity & management & social tools & rowica & policy unplugged & stormhoek & ralph stacey & RWC

Cartoon by: Hugh MacLeod

Meteor: Hey look at me, I’m new and exciting and add something really useful to what we’re all trying to do here. I let you do the stuff that you’ve always wanted to do.

Dinosaur: You are a dangerous fanatic. Your “innovation” is not new. You can’t do what you’re doing without breaking what we’ve been doing since time immemorial. What you’re suggesting will lead to the end of civilization as we know it.

Meteor: No, you misunderstand, I’m here to help you. You can still do things the way you’ve always done them if you like, but really, these are problems that I’ve heard you moaning about - aren’t you pleased?

Dinosaur: Your “solution” is of no use to me. I cannot see how this helps me. I cannot see how to do your thing and keep doing my thing too. I also have a range of academic and expert evidence to prove my point. I have powerpoint slides too. You are threatening my existence. I have no choice then except to destroy you. I will survive.

Meteor: OK, but I’m still here to help you if you want. When people ask you about it next year and you don’t know what to do, give me a call. I love you Dino.

I’m at Online Information 2006.

Rosie drew this comment out of me last night on the previous post and even in the cold light of day I thought it worth promoting to the front page:

I think it comes down to a simple premise - that good, lasting, profitable business arises out of good relationships. How do you improve any relationship? You give more and that’s how you get more. As you sow, so shall you reap, if you like (omigod, i can’t believe i’m quoting scripture… on my blog!)

So what I’m saying is that by giving more to the online relationship (making content, telling stories, providing a homely comfortable space, encouraging creativity among the audience, breaking down the barriers between artists and audience) rather than spending their energy on finding more efficient ways to extract money out of people, everybody ends up winning.

Theatres spend an awful lot of money trying to do those things above, but only in a physical space - and the crazy thing is, that it doesn’t cost a huge amount in order to do this stuff online.

David Wilcox writes about the role of Social Reporter.

“Online forums need hosts and moderators, workshops need facilitators, networks require some weaving to develop links. But how, for example, do you do that fast around an event, capture content, and follow through afterwards? I’m pondering the possible role of the social reporter. “

My experience is that it’s a big job, and we haven’t quite worked out whether, or how it’s worth the effort yet. Luckily there are people like us who don’t mind having a go without a stong prior proof that it will work and deliver benefit
I’m taking a softly, softly, catchee monkey approach. I think (and my order book shows) that we have agreement that it’s a “good thing” or at least a “nice thing” to have a richer record of a days proceedings and that blogs and wikis are a good way of producing that. What I agree we haven’t done yet is get to the point where we’re able to weave everything together to make it useful enough to participants that they want to do more than view the record.

But maybe that’s not our responsibility…yet. I see a risk that we’re pushing people too fast along a learning curve that we’ve taken a while to go along ourselves. I found last week that It is enough novelty for the average conference participant to deal with the fact that we’ve taken pictures, done some vox-pops with people and live blogged a keynote and they are up on the internet at the end of day 1! Maybe we should just let this aspect sink in for a little bit - if they want to interact as well, then that’s fantastic and we should be ready for it when it happens, but in the meantime, perhaps we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment.

Especially if we are also introducing more social aspects to the event, breaking down the distinction between presenter and audience - novelty fatigue might set in - I have to remember that not everyone gets bored as easily as I do!

[Bonus Link: Tara Hunt opens up an interesting conversation about measuring the health of communities - graphic equalizers are a little cybernetic for me, but rtwt]

Gia says “Typing ‘a href’ is not a creative act.” after her run in with Maryam Scoble.

I disagree. Typing ‘a href’ is *the* new creative act that makes all of this possible. Without links we just have nodes - we need both to make the network - the best bloggers have always been the ones who write amazing stuff *and* link to amazing stuff.

We’re playing the old game when we discriminate between different types of creativity. Shall I throw a tantrum because I didn’t get a round of applause for the amount of carbon dioxide and methane that my body has created today?

In my experience, demanding credit is a much less satisfying use of my time than just making more stuff that I think is cool.

I think we need to scale down our expectations of link-love a lot and be satisfied with the offline credit that we do get. It’s still great for me when people I’ve never met say “oh you’re at Perfect Path” or I hear someone go “there was this guy making bottles of Stormhoek explode” and I can say “yeah, that was me”. It’s taken a while, but there are now people saying “We’ve seen that you can do this stuff, have a large wodge of cash for doing it for us”.

Anyway I think Maryam’s way more pissed off with Robert than with Gia - time for some offline credit building activities I think - someone in her comments has already suggested the Aristophanean solution.

Note to self: Cut back on the similes or make sure you explain them fully.

What I said was:

“Blogs are *like* having your own newspaper”
“Podcasts are *like* having your own radio station”
“Videoblogs are *like* having your own TV station”

I’m not a newspaper publisher, I don’t make radio, I don’t make TV - they are all similar, but fundamentally different. I use comparison with those things to help you understand what it is that I really do. To try and put it in context for you.

It’s like saying (uh-oh here we go again) “Frogs legs are *like* chicken” - it prepares you a little for what’s coming, but you shouldn’t send them back just because you’d formed a mental picture of a family-size KFC bucket.

Lebanese flag

Originally uploaded by nic0.

Well, the blogs back. But looking at the news this morning puts the mere missingness of my website in perspective.

Via Alex Itin I’ve been listening this morning to the music of Marcel Khalife the Lebanese Oud (lute) player. Listen and pray for peace.

So Tom gave it to Suw who gave it to Euan who gave it to Gia who gave it to Andrew who gave it to Adriana who gave it to me. It only seems polite to pass it on.

Four jobs I’ve had:

* Ice Cream Man
* Company Director
* Flashergram
* Audio Typist

Four(teen) movies I can watch over and over (four’s just not enough):

* The Third Man/The Ipcress File/Goldfinger
* Casablanca/Some Like it Hot/It’s A Wonderful Life
* Brazil/Life of Brian/The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball
* Polanski’s Macbeth/Olivier’s Hamlet
* The Godfather/Apocalypse Now/Taxi Driver

Four places I’ve lived (this used to be ‘liked’ but I think lived is better - look ‘em up with Google Earth):

* 12, Hazel Croft, Northfield B31 2LP 1969-1975
* 39, Stourbridge Rd, Bromsgrove B61 OAH 1975-1984
* 50, Wodeland Avenue, Guildford GU2 4LA 1985-1987
* 38, Central Walk, Epsom KT19 8BY 2005-

Four TV shows I love:
* Marine Boy
* The Champions
* Dr Who
* Takeshi’s Castle - I haven’t laughed so hard since It’s a Knockout

Four places I’ve vacationed (mmmm… don’t really do vacations):

* Barmouth
* Malta
* Litton Cheney
* Disneyland Paris [shudders]

Four of my favorite dishes:

* Spicy Bacon & Mushroom Risotto
* Roast Chicken with Lentille Vertes & Braised Vegetables
* Kettner’s All-Day Breakfast
* My quick lamb curry

Four sites I visit daily (dull):
* Gmail
* BBC News
* Bloglines
* Flickr

Four places I would rather be right now (four is too many):

* On top of a hill and able to see for miles all around.
* In bed with a soft beautiful woman.
* Walking out of my bank having just paid in a very fat cheque.

Four bloggers I am tagging (you’re it!):
* Rachel
* Helen
* Lucie
* Neal

“Come on, get your shoes on”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going out”
“Why?”
“We need to go to the shops”
“Why?”
“To buy food for you to eat”
“Why?”
“Well, because if you don’t eat, you’ll die”
“Why?”
“Just get your shoes on, OK?”
“Why?”….

Anyone who’s been a three-year-old (except perhaps those whose parents and elder siblings responed to every question with silence or a slap) knows the joy of the “Why?” game.

It’s great fun for the person asking, but not so much for the person who has to come up with the answers. The trouble in organisations is that the small number of people who get to ask “Why?” over and over again ar eht ones who get the say over whether or not something happens, or at least whether or not it gets paid for, which is, more often than not, the same thing.

I think it’s sad (and irritating) enough when this is the accepted state of large organisations. But even sadder is that we continue to let ourselves be dominated by purpose when we step out of those organisations as individual entrepreneurs or small businesses.

I spent a delightful afternoon yesterday DEVOID OF EXPLICIT PURPOSE (except perhaps the challenge of having fun in London without doing anything pre-arranged or spending huge wodges of cash). My companion was a young lady who I won’t name here in case she doesn’t want it splashed about the blogosphere that the spent the afternoon doing “nothing” Though of course she’s free to ‘out’ herself in the comments or on her own blog (that narrows it down a bit I suppose) …errrr… if she has one, of course.

We started in Charlotte St and walked in a vaguely south-westerly direction. We walked relatively slowly and tried to keep our eyes up and looking around us rather than focusing on what was directly in front. We talked all the while as we went. We passed the Capel Bedyddwr Cymreig (Welsh Baptist Chapel) in Eastcastle Street and tried to decipher the consonant-heavy writings on its outside. We then slipped across the road to browse in the Getty Image Gallery, admiring black and white prints of Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Sean Connery, Liz Taylor & Monty Clift, Clark Gable and Chelsea Football Club among hundreds of others.

Out again and down over Oxford Street, we got talking about the relative merits of tea and coffee and whether coffee is really bad for you or not. Into Carnaby Street, where even Boot’s the Chemist tries to look trendy, we took a surreptitious wander into G*Room to check out those famous men’s grooming products. From there through the backstreets of Soho to the New Piccadilly, one of the last “caffs” worthy of that name. We rested and chatted over tea that had been brewing since 1958 when the formica tables where brand new.

In the New Picc, we sat and chatted (all the while trying to steer conversation away from work where possible) and I learned that an instant cure for teacup-burned fingers is to pinch one’s earlobe to cool them down (the fingers, not the earlobe, obviously) This naturally raised the question, “What if you burn the tip of your tongue?” I turned round to demonstrate on the women sitting behind me, but thought better of it.

We nipped across through Piccadilly Circus. Unfortunately the Criterion restaurant was closed for a private party, or we’d have popped in. “Are we going to Tesco’s” I was asked as we crossed Lower Regent Street. “Erm… well we weren’t, but why not?” I said and as we crossed the threshold, I knew how we would end our afternoon. I made a beeline for the bakery section and picked up a large madeira cake. Ducks love madeira cake (I got this from my friend Debbie) so it was off to St James’s Park.

Just before five and getting dark, we crossed the Mall into the Queen’s front garden and met a multitude of wild fowl including several varieties of duck, moorhens, canada geese and the other kind as well as a couple of swans. All of them wolfed down the madeira cake. Suddenly my coat felt very heavy and I realised that a squirrel was climbing up towards my pocket. I told him (not very politely I’m afraid, but in very clear terms) that this was unnacceptable behaviour and he should scamper off. He quickly complied.

The conversation as we strolled around the park at dusk (Big Ben chiming in the background), before jumping on a 211 towards Victoria, covered the S&M qualities of current London fashion, the decline of the British Army and the futility of British politics. We also discovered that 10 years ago, my companion had been living a matter of yards from where I was working for the Audit Commission - small world.

Why did we do this?
What was it all for?
Did we meet any of our strategic objectives?
What did we achieve?
What did it cost? (well, £2.00 for two teas (including tip) and £1.13 for madeira cake - and don’t give me that opportunity cost shit)

…are all the wrong questions, especially if we had tried to answer them beforehand in order to know whether or not to go in the first place.

tags: london & purposeless

Over on the podcasters mailing list Mark Czajka asks about selling podcasts. I’ve been talking to people about this sort of thing recently too.

It came to me in mid-bite of my apple this morning, as I contemplated another day in London in the 80s*, that selling content is like selling sunshine.

Nobody tries to actually sell sunshine directly - that would be stupid and, under some jurisdictions, doubtless illegal. Here in the UK, we’d have to give the deckchair-hire surfer-dudes each a combined visible light, heat and UV-meter, get them to take readings regularly, and then go round busting people for more cash when the clouds disappeared (but we could also probably get away with paying them even less as they get free sunshine as a perk of the job!).

But do you doubt that there is money to be made if you have access to sunshine? Those deckchair-hire dudes are just a tiny part of the sunshine economy, and the benefits are open to anyone who lives in a seaside town in the summer. You make money by doing anything that enhances the sunshine experience, helps people get to the sunshine in the first place or helps them yakk about it for the next six months till they get their next dose.

Sunshine is free, it wants to be free but it can also bring you customers and put them in the mood to spend their money. And that’s what damned fine writing, sounds & pictures should aspire to do too.

tags selling & podcasting & money

* I mean 80-something fahrenheit, of course, the time machine to take me back to my youth still has some kinks that need ironing out before I can spend a whole day there. btw dexys send hugs (except kevin, he’s in a mood ‘cos I told him what happened to princess di).

I’ve had this conversation a few times recently and just realised I hadn’t written about it here.

It comes from putting all of these things together:

Democratisation of media - “anyone” (ok, not anyone, but a lot more people than before) have access to technology that allows them to produce written, audio and video content of a very high quality and distribute their offerings to a global audience. One of the key effects of this is that the distinction between producer and consumer gets blurred - more and more people are both.

Content is worth more if you can get it free than if you have to pay for it - people increasingly expect to get stuff on the net for free and in fact they value the product more if they’ve been able to get a free sample (or even the whole thing) online. Music and movie producers shouldn’t worry about file-sharing and copying for this reason. However, it does raise the question “What can you sell people through the web?”

Advertising is dying. It may be a slow death or a quick one, but the trend is downwards and terminal. People don’t want to be interrupted by commercial messages anymore. Yes we need commercial information, but we want it available when we go looking, not jumping out at us wherever we go. Please don’t try to grab me by the eyeballs. Trouble is, advertising is *the* business model in media - who knows how else to make money out of it?

When you put all of those things together, the future starts to look gloomy for media execs especially in TV. How on earth are we going to continue to make programmes and make money? I don’t know the answer, but I’m enjoying talking about it to help get to an answer. Whatever, I’m sure that it involves people in TV talking to people (currently) outside TV to see what things haven’t worked in the past and it also involves talking to your audiences as if they have something you want, rather than the other way round.

tags: television & democratic media & money & advertising

Two weeks after the last lot, the tube network was at standstill again because of explosions. Thank goodness they were smaller and relatively insignificant. Still enough to seriously put the wind up you if you were involved.

Here’s just hoping that this isn’t going to be a repeat of the IRA tactics when they found the way to bring London to a halt just about every week. That’s going to get really boring.

I came across an interesting discussion thread on the excellent Soflow network yesterday (you may have heard Robert Loch, founder of Soflow, admiring my t-shirt on the podcast).

A young lady in South Carolina was asking about advertising for theatre. It struck me as ironic - and I said so - that just as advertising and marketing folk are realising that they have to go for authentic emotional engagement and telling a good story, theatre people, for whom this is their stock-in-trade want to know from advertising bods how to go about it.

Obvious to me it is that a blog about the production would be a really cool way of generating and sustaining buzz. So I stuck my oar in.

These thoughts are where I’m at with it so far - I’m aware that my knowledge of the business is not what it was and that I’m overflowing with ignorance and prejudice in this area, but this is what I think:

What is success for a theatre PR campaign?

I’m guessing #1 is derrieres on the plush velvet seats. Preferably derrieres belonging to people who will love what you do, tell their friends, become patrons of your little theatre, come to every show, tell their friends to become patrons of your little theatre, tell their friends to come to every show.

You also want some press coverage, maybe local TV and radio. The best of this will be persistent stuff on the web, so that whenever someone’s looking for theatre anywhere in SC, say, they see the glowing reviews of your baby and the really, really cool way you went about producing it.

So how could a blog help with that?

Blogs build buzz. By talking everyday about what you’re doing with the production, and inviting people to comment and contribute, you’re giving yourself a platform for building a community of people who are already (positively, I hope) engaged with you before you even try to sell them a ticket.

What I was thinking was of a kind of collaborative production journal, where everyone contributes. This may be too much for you, especially with a small, poorly funded company that hasn’t been exposed to this sort of thing before, but think “The Making of…” fly-on-the-wall documentary style, only on the web, and released in chunks as they happen, day by day rather than being stitched together after the show has closed.

What do we have to work out first?

Who’s going to contribute? Ideally, (ie if I were running the project!) everyone would submit their own little diary pieces (or not) every day as they go along. Now of course a theatre project isn’t the same as, say an IT implementation project - you don’t have everyone working at a computer all day everyday. So it might be worth appointing someone as your blogger-in-chief, someone whose job it is to document some of what happens in the course of the day - maybe you could get a talented grad student from a nearby university who has a love of theatre and would do it on a kind of intern basis for the privilege of being involved. Maybe your PR person should be doing this and nothing else.

I think it will be richer the more people you can involve. I think it would be a mistake to just focus on the director’s view, or an actor’s, or the stage manager’s, or the wardrobe mistress’s - it would be great to see all the facets as they come together - but you might find the only thing you can get done is the diary of a struggling theatre PR assistant!

What media will you use? I think the barest minimum is text and pictures. You should also consider getting some video footage and some audio (rehearsals, performances or interviews with people who don’t like having a camera shoved in their face)

How much of the life-cycle are you going to cover? You could just cover rehearsals or from day 1 or rehearsals to opening night or all the way through from the initial commissioning meeting through to striking the set.

Will you allow comments? I’d strongly recommend that you do - this is where you start to engage with people and show them that you’re real people yourselves, just trying to make a piece of art. You may get abuse - we all do - how you deal with it will also be a measure of your success.

Who is already passionate and authoritative about this play, it’s subject matter, your theatre, the people involved in the production. These are the people that you want to draw into being involved. They may keep you on your toes from time to time, but they can also be a great help, because they already care. If they’re already online, where do they hang out? Go there yourself and politely introduce yourself - you know how to do this already.

How do we go about it?

You can set up a free or cheap blog at lots of places - typepad.com is popular, so are blogger.com and livejournal.com. They are all straightforward to set up - all you have to do then is start writing :o)

You can host photographs at flickr.com or buzznet.com You can host audio and video cheaply at libsyn.com

You can tag your content so that it can be easily found through technorati and other blog-based search engines. These tools will also help you monitor whether anyone else is talking about you.

You can get free statistics on how much traffic you’re getting and who is looking at your site. I use statcounter.com for this.

If you’re new to all this and your head is starting to swim, you might enlist the help of a friendly, experienced blogger who doesn’t mind sharing what they’ve learned (if you’ve ever come across someone like that).

Oooh, what might the grouches say?

There will doubtless be people who are negative about this, both within the company and outside. There’s the whole technology kills art thing. And then there’s the simple fact that this opens people up to some sort of scrutiny and that can be uncomfortable. If you’ve worked in theatre for long, you’ll already know how to deal with grouches - don’t imagine that they’re any more powerful just because they’re online.

Whatever you do, it must support and facilitate both the creative and the commercial processes. I’m sure that, done well, it would add to the overall success of the production, not just the PR side.

There are, of course, no guarantees - this is a new area and it might all go horribly wrong - I’ve only done some quick googling, but I couldn’t find anything like it straight away so you’ve also got the advantage of not having to live up to any expectations.

Anyone in the UK doing anything like this? Anyone want to?

tags: theatre & theater & blogging & PR

Photograph by Bev Sykes on flickr

Johnnie Moore puts out a great podcast conversation with Chris Corrigan and Rob Paterson about “unconferences”

David Wilcox asks “Why aren’t events about engagement more engaging?”

And Doug Kaye announces his intention to extend IT Conversations

I put all of this together with what I’ve experienced in presenting my part of the results of BARC, LesBlogs, the Geek Dinner and this post that I wrote almost a year ago, not to mention what I said the other day about RTS2005 and there’s a picture beginning to form. A grey, mussy, cloudy and unclear picture but a picture that starts to look like a business opportunity nonetheless. What’s needed after all this talk is action, but which actions to take first aren’t immediately obvious to me.

Which again, is why I blog.

tags: events & facilitation & km & unconferences

There’s actually something else I want to say about this “why I blog” thing. Blogging and podcasting have something really useful buried within them. They’re about ‘dialogue’ and dialogue is a (perhaps the) great tool for unlocking creativity.

When I blog or create a podcast, I’m initiating a dialogue on a couple of levels.

I’m conducting a dialogue with myself, usually with the motivation of understanding better what I think, what I’ve been doing, who I am, who all the people around me are. Regardless of whether anyone else reads/hears/sees what I’ve written/said/erm…y’know video’d, the process of deciding what to say, saying it and reflecting on what’s said has a great value in it for me as a personal knowledge management activity (let alone the emotional or spiritual benefit) - I know better what I know. Importantly, but often forgotten, I’m talking to myself in the future - tomorrow, next week, next year, on my deathbed (btw hopefully that’s way after next year) and I give myself the opportunity to commune with myself in the past to think about what I was thinking then to talk about it, and if I’m brave let it go, let it die so that I can give life to what I think today.

More obviously, I’m conducting an asynchronous persistent dialogue with a self-selecting, global group of people (blimey, now I know why I feel tired after a hard day’s bloggin).

Why is asynchronous important? Well, there’s a difference between a conversation I have face to face with someone and this, where I leave a message for others to find. I don’t get immediate feedback (which can alter what I’m saying as I say it) When I do get feedback, it is usually in the same asynchronous form (except when I meet readers/listeners face to face). This gives us both the chance to step back from the subject-matter, from the message, and to think about it before responding…or not.

Persistent - this stuff stays around, we can pick up the dialogue at any time, because all the bits are still there (Murphy willing) and interlinked. They can accumulate interest and value over time just by sitting there.

Self-selecting? You choose to listen to me or to see my words pop up on your screen. I don’t choose you. I try to encourage you to continue to look at my messages by what I write or say or how I say it. I invite you to engage with me, sometimes provocatively, but the decision rests with you. And if you’re like me, the decision is rarely explicit. And there are no criteria for membership of this group, except the willingness to accept my bitstream in some form.

Global? Well duh! Here though there are some barriers to engagement. No internet connection? Makes it difficult. Can’t read English? Difficult. Your government thinks I’m a dangerous radical lunatic? Unlikely but understandable - and it would make it difficult. Nonetheless, I have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with a hugely diverse range of people - this helps my thinking grow and be richer than was ever possible before - people who say I’m wrong, or who point out the cultural assumptions that I’m making nourish me just as much as those who smile and say “Yes! You’re right.”

Then there are the different dimensions to the contact or engagement. You read my post. How do you react? Regardless of whether you explicitly, consciously react or not, you are in some way changed by reading it. Perhaps this is the post that makes you decide to unsubscribe and never go to Perfect Path again. Maybe it adds to your prejudices about English people. Maybe it adds to your prejudices about Welsh people (not realising that I’m not Welsh). Maybe it stops you from taking another bite of that sausage roll. Maybe the words just crawl across your retina and are instantly forgotten, on to the next post. A hugely complex range of reactions - the sum of your experience and mine, touching for a few moments.

What is unusual about this engagement is that you hearing me has no direct and immediate effect on me until you respond. And I have absolutely no control or influence over how you react, I don’t know how you’ll react and neither do you. However, all of these reactions are part of the dialogue - they will influence how you respond, whether you do it by posting a comment or mentioning, when we meet, in twenty years time, that you found it very difficult to understand what I was going on about on 30th June 2005.

The fundamental point here is that dialogue is a creative act and that the act of creation is near-impossible without dialogue. Individuals and organisations need access to their creativity. Whatever business you’re in, you need to be thinking of new ways to do things, different things to do, to be constantly asking: Who are we? Why are we still here? What do we do? Who are we? And if that’s whe we are, what choices are we making today about who we’re going to be tomorrow?

These activities, blogging, podcasting, videoblogging are all ways of asking those questions and getting the answers, whether you’re 1 person or 1,000,000.

tags: why i blog & km & creativity & dialogue

Johnnie, Paul and Gia have all been very kind about my earlier post on why I blog.

I have to admit there’s even more to it than my personal lifestance. This same reasoning applies to my cheerleading for organisational blogging, whether it’s inside the firewall or across it.

The questions are the same for any organisation, particularly those whose primary functions are the creation, nurturing, collation and dissemination of ideas, aka knowledge-based organisations aka the greater part of the ‘developed’ economy.

“Who are we?” and “Who do we choose to be today?” “Who do we think we are?” and “What do other people see in us and the things we do?”

This is day-to-day strategic management. There is a textbook view that success depends on developing vision statements and mission statements and cascading management by objectives. Most managers have a different experience. The comply with the performance management systems, because that’s part of their job. But when it comes down to it, these are the questions they really have to answer day in, day out.

What are we trying to do here? Why do we do it? How do we do it? How don’t we do it? How do we know when we’re doing well? How would we like to be seen by our customers, suppliers, competitors and collaborators? How do we measure up to that ideal? What can we do that gets us further towards that ideal?

As a manager, these questions ring truer than any checklist in a management handbook, but how do we answer them? For the brave organisation and the brave employee, blogs can answer these questions, by allowing people to engage in a conversation that goes “This is what I think we’re trying to do here”, “Well I think that’s baloney, it’s like this”, “Hey, perhaps there’s another way of looking at this”. Now in the past, those conversations have gone on in people’s heads or gathered around the water-cooler/coffee-machine. But to deal with the fact that physical proximity to one’s colleagues is no longer a given, we need new ways to do this, to chew the fat, to check ourselves out, to work out what to do today. That’s what you can use blogs for - whether the person who thinks it’s baloney is ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ your organisation.

And just as personal blogging requires an ability to deal with the anxiety of putting yourself on the line and the maturity to accept others as they are, so corporate blogging requires levels of honesty and tolerance that most organisations just just aren’t used to having out in the open. Trouble is, the best way of encouraging these quailities is to explore our own dishonesty and intolerance and gently expose that of others - and that’s really, really hard - it’s going to take a while.

Can you tell, I’m having a slack work period at the moment? Hire me! and get this brain working on your knotty problems.

tags: km & corporate blogging why i blog

Over the last couple of weeks (particularly on those occasions when I’ve stood up in public and identified myself as a blogger) I’ve been asked the same question several times:

“Do you think I could have a blog?”

And my answer is always the same and unequivocal:

“Yes, not only that, but I think you should”

Increasingly, I’m adding:

“in fact, you really ought to, it’s your duty!”

The model of communication enshrined in national newspapers and magazines is a 20th Century phenomenon. It was born of an industrial world, one where we were coming to terms with mass production, transportation and electrification. National newspapers used the very latest ideas to create a modern system of communication where suddenly people all over the country could read national stories everyday. Combined with education for a vastly increased proportion of the population, news, national (even…gasp…international) news became popularly accessible and with increased supply, the appetite grew. The successful products that emerged were those that mirrored the great idea of the day - centralisation.

Now things have changed again.

We (in most of Europe and the U.S.) no longer live in a predominantly industrial society. We now primarily deal with knowledge, ideas and information. We have created very powerful computing machines; software for recording words, pictures and music and then connected all the machines together so that we can talk to each other. Education has continued to increase and improve. In the UK, Government has a target of getting 50% of young people leaving school each year to go on to Higher Education. According to DfES, 539,900 qualifications were obtained by students at Higher Education institutions in the UK in 2003/04.

So what are these half-million newly qualified people supposed to do with their improved ability to think and learn for themselves? Well according to the established media, they should just sit back and open wide. Carry on taking the medicine; accept the status quo; continue to live with a hundred-year-old system of communication that was invented for a very different society, because we’re too scared to do anything different. Yes, perhaps it means that we’ll have some brighter journalistic stars and more intelligent readers who can critically appraise what we produce, but they should stay in their place and we will stay in ours.

No. People have a voice, they’re taught to use their brains more and how to express themselves well. They are given tools to express themselves easily and to communicate globally. So now the term ‘mass production’ can have a new meaning. Instead of meaning that a few produce for the masses, it can come to mean that the masses produce for themselves and for each other, thank you very much. The successful products will be those that support today’s big ideas - decentralisation and disintermediation.

So do you think you could have a blog? What on earth is the point of taking three or more years out of economic activity getting yourself educated at the expense of your family and the rest of society, developing your thinking and critical faculties in ways that your grandparents would have killed for and then sitting and watching Big Brother for the rest of your life?

How about we create something better? You can, you should and it starts with writing “Hello world, well here I am with my little blog - who’d have thought it!? lol”.

tags: blogging & msm & knowledge management & higher education & mass production & disintermediation

I guess my years at the Audit Commission created an intolerance in me for stuff that looks like it restricts people’s creativity in the search for premium efficiency or effectiveness. My initial prickliness when reading Euan’s piece More is Less has subsided with subsequent readings.

For me, my podcast is more about art than efficient communication - it is no more an attempt to become a radio star than my blog is an attempt to get a job writing full-time for a newspaper. But doing anything in this interconnected world means doing it in public. And doing art in public means there are mistakes out there and stuff I wish I’d never done (no I’m not going to link to examples!), stuff where I’ve struggled to express myself clearly, as well as the bits I’m really proud of.

As I said (with my ranting trousers pulled right up to my armpits) the other week when it was suggested that podcasting is a “bad idea” (with additions for emphasis in square brackets)

Let’s look at this in another context to try to show you what I’m talking about. why do I bother getting dressed up, travelling into the city and pay a lot of money to sit in a theatre for hours on end to see some people “act out” stuff that Shakespeare wrote down [very effectively] 400 years ago. I mean, I even have his complete works on my bookshelf - I can read all of them [with extreme efficiency] without leaving my house, in fact I can read some of one play and then skip over to another - this stuff’s all on DVD anyway. Hey, even worse than that, I hear my kid’s school is going to do Hamlet next year - how crap is that going to be ?!? - those kids should just stay in and read.

That said, it’s also about me learning to use a communication tool for which I see organisational applications - where efficiency and effectiveness of communication are important - but as with other learning, one has to do the inefficient in order to see the efficient, to do the ineffective to truly see what will be effective.

If you’ve ever done a workshop or an awayday with me, it’s highly likely that you’ll have played “Same or Different” It’s a generic classification game we play about all sorts of subjects to clarify how people think about a particular question.

Same or Different is at the base of all sorts of things we do in the knowledge economy. We’re always asking, is this thing the same as this other thing or is it different? And the answers is usually, it’s both, they’re the same in these ways and they’re different in others.

In restructuring an organisation or setting up a project, which bits go together and which bits are apart? How is that sameness actually manifested in people’s day to day activities? What does it mean to be different? Under what circumstances might it change?

What happens when people disagree about sameness or difference? What happens when I think I’m the same as you but you think we’re different? How might I convince you of my point of view? Do I need to? Is it important? Should I just accept that we differ on this point?

I blog. Perhaps you do too. You may consider my blog to be the same as yours. I might agree. Or disagree. Other people might lump us together - we might be the only ones who perceive sufficient difference for it to matter.

I podcast. Perhaps you do too. You may consider my podcast to be the same as yours. I might agree. Or disagree. Other people might lump us together - we might be the only ones who perceive sufficient difference for it to matter.

So you might say, “What does it matter? We’re similar - isn’t that enough? Surely that’s a much better way of putting it?”

To me settling for saying “similar” avoids asking (and answering) the important questions, it’s hiding in vagueness. It might be the best and most accurate answer in the end, but it’s not nearly as productive as delving deeper in to sameness and difference.

As it says up above, Perfect Path is a knowledge management consulting practice. So what’s with all this stuff about blogs and podcasts?

Well to me, knowledge management (see the sidebar for why I think it’s just management) is about how organisations and the individuals working in them:

• create new ideas;
• find & evaluate ideas from elsewhere;
• spread ideas about;
• save ideas for later;
• find ideas that they made earlier; and
• work out new ways of dealing with all of these things

This site is my way of exploring those things for myself on a daily basis. And it’s becoming a cool showcase for how such things work - if I can get my ideas out to loads of people then maybe I can help you do it too.

My experience with clients is that some of the big problems come in the “spread ideas about” bit and I think blogs and podcasts are great ways of doing that (and above all they are sooooo much cheaper to implement than the gazillions you may already be spending on other IT systems).

So if you’re having difficulty with getting your ideas heard, whether it’s called “knowledge management” or “internal communications” or “personal development” do give me a shout and lets talk about how I can help.

knowledge management & blogs & podcasts & consulting

Dave Winer gets to do a podcast that will be broadcast on KYOU in San Francisco. In his latest Morning Coffee Notes and on podcatch.com he talks a little about the differences between podcasting and broadcasting and he’s also asking for thoughts about what he should say.

This is what occurs to me:

1. Dave starts with a description of the difference in terms of form, explaining that the main differences are that the constraints of time and geography are lifted - broadcast generally means you can only listen if you’re within range of this transmitter (arguably less so with internet radio/webcasting) but more importantly everyone has to listen at the same time. I think this is an important distinction to make when trying to explain what it’s about - talking about RSS feeds and Podcatchers is a bit like explaining a blog by saying it’s an online journal presented in reverse chronological order - but I think there are more important things to say about the social, cultural and political implications of the ability to do this.

2. That there’s something interesting to say about the different societies and economies that these two ways of disseminating ideas spring from. Radio, as one of the initial means of broadcasting was born in a world where manufacturing industry was the dominant, expanding bit of the economy to be in, and the distribution and application of electricity was the exciting new technology that was radically changing the world. Radio was born in a time when people were working out what that all meant and how they wanted to organise society in that context. Hierarchies, a small number of people working out what a large number of people should do and then getting them to do it, was an efficient way to do it and radio mirrors that. The similarity with today and the rise of podcasting is that we’re figuring out how we want to use a new technology that is changing our world - but in the world where the use of information and knowledge is the dominant part of the economy we’re finding that different ways of organising business and society are more effective than hierarchies and this, I believe, is reflected in podcasting.

3. Building on what I wrote the other day about the podshow type of thing, I think the important benefits that podcasting has over a broadcast model are that:

• It’s empowering - it provides a (more) level playing field for people to express themselves and lowers the fear associated with expressing oneself in public - it doesn’t matter - I can screw up because my continued ability to podcast is not dependent on how many listeners I have.
• It enriches communication between people across the world, allowing (if I so choose) richer, more real, emotional and spiritual connections between human beings because nobody gets to decide what I say to you except me.
• It allows for the immediate communication of multiple subjective viewpoints. OK that’s knocked my head off for a minute, I’m going to have to come back to that one some other time, but it’s about collaboration, unmediated speech, the power of conversation and the social construction of ideas - there’s a whole book in there.
• It allows me to hear a far more diverse range of voices (again, if I so choose) and to be heard by people not used to hearing my sort of voice. I believe that enriches me and enriches them - it also helps to reinforce the fact that whatever our differences, we are all human and therefore the same at some level - in this way I think it works against those who thrive on division and exploiting difference for their own ends.

Much of this could also be said about blogging and that’s where I think they’re the same (why podcasting isn’t just audio-blogging is the subject for a whole ‘nother post.

4. I think it’s important to not describe podcasting as a child of radio or in some other way that implies a difference in standing between the two - they are two ways of moving sound, both just as worthy as each other but useful for different circumstances and applications.

tags: podcasting & broadcasting

I’d like to look at the hypothesis that Podshows (and any other schemes like it that may come along) are more likely to restrict and reduce creativity than they are to increase it.

There are a number of factors involved here:

1. Power - the delivery mechanism that podcasts use can be entirely decentralised - I am responsible for the distribution and delivery of my podcasts. The distribution system is available to many people for relatively low cost. Some intermediaries have provided added-value hosting services, but essentially the model remains the same. This means I have greater power - I can decide when to create, what to create, what to include and what to exclude. I can choose to work with other people or to work alone. I can choose to re-use and add value to existing material or strike out and create entirely new material. Compared to an environment where I am entirely dependent on a corporation that has to continue to invest in an expensive distribution infrastructure, I am set free, my creativity flourishes, the only critics I listen to are those I choose to.

2. Courage - the freedom and unstructured nature of podcasting literally encourages me to have a go. It doesn’t matter if I screw up. A radio station or music company that has overheads to cover and shareholders to satisfy is likely to be more risk averse than I am purely as an individual - I have much less to lose. If I depend on the corporation I have to take on some of their fear of failure. Creativity thrives on the courage that comes from having nothing to lose.

3. Good buddies - Podcasting has generated a sense of camaraderie, we’re all in it together, we share ideas and formats - we comment on what works and what doesn’t - we forgive eachother’s mistakes, we snigger at some, but we also build each other up. We share hints and tips on equipment and software. Some naughty people even share software that they’re not allowed to share by law. We collaborate more than we compete. I don’t create podcasts to stop you listening to someone else’s, I create them to express my voice and my voice gets richer when I know I’m talking to people who appreciate what I’m doing and are doing the same thing. Greater creativity comes from a confident enriched voice.

4. This stuff flows quickly and easily. I podcast from London in the UK. I have listeners in London, I also have listeners in Continental Europe and across North America. They all have equally fast access to what I create and I have equally fast access to what they create (as long as we’re awake at the same time). So we hear each other faster, we feed back on each others work faster, we learn from each other faster - what works, what doesn’t, what’s been tried before, what hasn’t. And if I want to make something quick and dirty and get it out NOW, I can - I don’t have to wait for someone else to greenlight me.

5. Diversity - you can make a podcast about anything you like - you cannot make a radio show or sell CDs in Woolworths about anything you like. Anyone with access to modern computing equipment and the internet can make a podcast - a much smaller number of people can create a radio show or sell CDs in Woolworths. Podcasting can be done by atheists, buddhists, muslims, jews, christians, hindus, daoists and slightly worried agnostics. Podcasting can be done by english speakers, dutch speakers, french speakers, swahili speakers - heck, Suw even did one in Welsh! Podcasting can be done by incredibly bright people and incredibly stupid people. It can be done by Sid in the postroom or by the CEO. Your skin can be any shade between Ronald McDonald and Laurence Olivier as Othello. You can podcast regardless of any disability (except one that precludes you from making any sounds at all). In fact it’s better if we are different, if we’re all the same, if we all think the same, we all do the same and we continue to do the same again and again - creativity thrives on diversity and on people who are allowed to be themselves.

These I see as steps forward along a path. That’s how I see things, it just is, that’s why I called my company and my blog Perfect Path - it’s the path we tread between chaos, disorder and stagnation.

I’m not saying that this new model will take us back to where we started, but I think what I’ve heard so far is sufficient to show that the Podshow model pushes us back towards the position that we used to be in before we had podcasts. So what do you think?

• Does the Podshow model further de-centralise power or does it concentrate it in fewer hands?
• Does the Podshow model encourage new talent to have a go or does it introduce the need to manage risk and fear of failure?
• Does the Podshow model create richer human relationships between podcasters or does it foster separation and competition?
• Does the Podshow model make it easier and quicker for everyone to make podcasts or does it introduce stalling mechanisms?
• Does the Podshow model celebrate difference and let people be themselves or does it value sameness in the name of, say, brand recognition?

I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions (except perhaps the first) but I think they’re good questions to ask and we should keep talking about them.

PS I don’t think I’ve ever published anything this long on this weblog. It’s not generally the way I like to write these days, but it kind of needed to all be said and I didn’t want to stretch it out over a number of posts. I know I don’t generally read all the way through posts that are this long, but if you have, thank you very much.

podshow & creativity

People coming to live in the UK from elsewhere, particularly Americans, are often astounded by the TV Licence, which is how we fund the BBC. For some it confirms their idea that we’re all submissive, unimaginative and just a bit dim when it comes to commercial opportunities, for others it looks like yet another communistic bit of state-sponsored theft.

So, just putting aside for a moment the fact that I hear a lot of Americans saying that they’d do anything to have TV and Radio without pushy advertising (but presumably, like Meatloaf, they wouldn’t do *that*) and the huge cultural benefit and joy I’ve had from BBC productions all through my life, here’s one example of why I don’t mind paying for my TV licence one bit; and here’s another

Tags: BBC & podcasting & Creative Archive

I’ve been looking back at some work I did a couple of years ago on customer focus for a large government department to try to explain how a simple Pinpoint workshop works – I’m having trouble writing a case study (soooo boring) so I just thought I’d write it out here and see where that got me.

I’d forgotten that the original brief was to find some different communication form for talking to as many people as possible within this department about “customer focus”. The perception (in grossly generalised terms) was that people were more focused on their given functional tasks and rarely questioned what value they were adding for the end users or customers or did anything to find out whether the service they provided was useful or met a customer need.

So first of all I designed a Pinpoint workshop to run with a selection of senior managers from across the organisation (people who pretty much already got customer focus) to talk about this and what should be done.

This workshop asked the following questions:

• What does Customer Focus mean to us?
• What does Customer Focus mean to customers?
• How good is the Department at Customer Focus?
• What are the characteristics of excellent internal communication that would improve our Customer Focus?
• What communication products would improve the Customer Focus of the Department?

I wish I could say I entirely planned it this way, but the way it turned out was that as well as understanding better what customer focus meant in this organisation, everyone said: “This is great, we should make this workshop into something that everyone can do”.

So we came up with this amended version:

Who are your customers? This warmed people up and got some of the stuff out of the way about differences of opinion on this subject – in government departments some civil servants still see ministers as their key customers!

What does Customer Focus mean to you? People talked about feedback, communication, building relationships, responsive action.

How well do you involve customers in what you do? Naturally some people felt better about this than others – depending on personal experience and the nature of their jobs.

What does Customer Focus mean to your customers? Here people thought more about quality, responsiveness and meeting expectations.

What more could we do to involve customers in what we do? This varied between teams depending on what their level of interaction with customers but it generally brought out high-level ideas about improving the quality and quantity of communication.

Then depending on what ideas had come out of that, the group was split into two or three sub-groups to look in detail at what ideas they had about improving how they involved customers. This involved an ideas gallery session asking them to come up with Ideas, Barriers and Resources required.

After creating these and discussing them, the team came up with an action plan for themselves (what to do, who would do it, by when, with help from whom). The team also had to come up with a contact to liaise with the customer focus team to let them know how they were getting on and where they needed further help.

So the outcomes were:

• A better and shared understanding among the participants of what customer focus really meant.
• Some broad ideas for improvement that might be picked up later
• An action plan for specific things to do in the short-term
• A link with the centre to help make sure things got done, or at least moved forward

Tags: Customer focus & workshops & Pinpoint

I was initially puzzled by what Dave Winer meant by me believing in the insiders and giving them the power (I wouldn’t have put it that way) but his explanation of what happens when the drugs wear off helps.

And what he says about tools puts into focus my dissatisfaction with Sparks! as I wrote about it earlier. It doesn’t actually do anything more that I want to do as a podcaster except bring together cut down versions of the tools in a single package and bung in some free (for now) hosting. I’d much rather learn to use the existing separate tools (my minidisc, audacity, RSS 2.0 and associated software, ftp, ipodder, MT) which I might one day use for other things too, than put the effort into learning how to use a needlessly over-complicated interface which just sews together the bits that someone else thinks are important.

The whole notion of insiders and outsiders kind of dissolves when I remember that to me Dave appears to be an insider - he plainly doesn’t feel like one. To anyone who discovered blogging yesterday I might look like an insider - well I just ain’t, but I have experienced the buzz of people considering me an insider in other areas and I don’t deny it is a powerful drug.

This leads me to refine what I said about power on Doc’s site - I left out those who don’t accept the popular view of where power lies and point out that (as usual) those who style themselves as “kings” are in the altogether.

So please Adam, Evan and all, put some clothes on, quick, I’m finding it difficult to put my mouth right up to the mic with that mental image in my mind.

odeo & podshow &
sparks & podcasting & power

I was initially puzzled by what Dave Winer meant by me believing in the insiders and giving them the power (I wouldn’t have put it that way) but his explanation of what happens when the drugs wear off helps.

And what he says about tools puts into focus my dissatisfaction with Sparks! as I wrote about it earlier. It doesn’t actually do anything more that I want to do as a podcaster except bring together cut down versions of the tools in a single package and bung in some free (for now) hosting. I’d much rather learn to use the existing separate tools (my minidisc, audacity, RSS 2.0 and associated software, ftp, ipodder, MT) which I might one day use for other things too, than put the effort into learning how to use a needlessly over-complicated interface which just sews together the bits that someone else thinks are important.

The whole notion of insiders and outsiders kind of dissolves when I remember that to me Dave appears to be an insider - he plainly doesn’t feel like one. To anyone who discovered blogging yesterday I might look like an insider - well I just ain’t, but I have experienced the buzz of people considering me an insider in other areas and I don’t deny it is a powerful drug.

This leads me to refine what I said about power on Doc’s site - I left out those who don’t accept the popular view of where power lies and point out that (as usual) those who style themselves as “kings” are in the altogether.

So please Adam, Evan and all, put some clothes on, quick, I’m finding it difficult to put my mouth right up to the mic with that mental image in my mind.

odeo & podshow &
sparks & podcasting & power

There’s a dialogue going on, over on the AOK list which has become [my paraphrase] “Is knowledge management dead, dying or actually bursting chock-full of life?” No prizes for which side I’m on and, to be honest, most of the contributors are on too.

My take on this is that Knowledge Management is about as “dead” as Scientific Management was for a great deal of the last century - ie its time as a management fad was finished, but it continued to form the basis of the best thinking about how to run organisations for long after people saw themselves as practitioners of Scientific Management.

For me, the trouble is that we haven’t quite shaken that off - many of the ideas inherent in that approach have become so entrenched in the collective psyche that we still think that management is about control, efficiency and productivity (as in the ratio of outputs to inputs) and that the organisations are actually huge machines, not groups of people at all. There is another way - it’s a bit messy, it doesn’t necessarily conform to our ideas of what a management discipline is, but the ways of working that together we’ve come to call Knowledge Management are the only ways that organisations can continue to thrive as the emphasis of what we do has shifted from industry and manual labour to brain work.

That’s why I started talking here about Kmanagement (the K is silent). It really is just about management of knowledge-based organisations and I do believe that much of the pain we feel at work (anyone not feel pain? - hurrah for you!) is down to us knowing that the old methods don’t work, but not knowing what would.

I think the implications fall into three areas:

and

But social institutions may be for another day’s discussion. Thank goodness there are so many excellent brains working on how to make this all work out for the best.

So just give up on the production line stuff.

She will not do everything you want exactly as you want it. He won’t comply with your processes (ever). They will talk about it behind your back and come up with better ideas between them than you ever could yourself. And it’s OK.

When we were making widgets, it was about control.

“We at Widget Corp have carefully developed the optimum standardised process for widget production. There are 7 key steps in the production procedure. These must be followed by everyone. If you deviate in any way from any of the 7 steps in the widget production procedure there is a significant risk of physical harm to you and your colleagues and an unnacceptably high number of defective widgets. Widgets can only be made on our premises for health and saftey reasons. Our salespeople sell 1,000 widgets a week - we therefore need every employee to produce 5 perfectly formed widgets per day (during their 8 hour shifts between the hours of 6.00am and 10.00pm) in order to meet orders and create reserve stocks. If you cannot produce 5 perfect widgets per day, we can always find someone else who can. Because of the physical strength required in the production process, widgets are traditionally only created by men.”

All perfectly (ahem) reasonable.

Now go back and substitute “idea” for “widget” throughout that paragraph.

That’s why Kmanagement isn’t about control.

The boston square, 2×2 matrix has become a lazy way of representing the fact that anything you want to think about in your organisation has (at least) two dimensions. I don’t think they’re big and I don’t think they’re clever but in all the talk about</