Are You A King, Or A King-Maker?

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Scott Gould

I wrote yesterday about my dear friend Trey Pennington who I described as a king-maker. People really liked the analogy of being a king or king-maker, which isn’t surprising - but I wonder how many people really are making kings?

It’s far more rewarding, effective and exciting to be the king-maker, than trying to put yourself on the throne all the time. Ego is hard work, and trying to make yourself king is tiring. I’ve tried it before, and not only did I find it exhausting, but I found I wasn’t helping anyone else but myself.

You know how it is when someone is trying to be king – the ego casts a shadow a mile long, right? Not always. It can be very subtle. In fact, I find pretty much the whole of the Twitter community are trying to be kings. There’s nothing wrong with that, but doesn’t all this ‘share’ talk annoy you when the ones who shout ‘share’ really mean ‘share me?’

Those who are trying to be kings are always:

Trying to get attention, rather than give it
Trying to get traffic, than send it
Trying to get comments, rather than give them
Trying to sell, rather than buying
Trying to build the house, rather than build the hostel

The difference between these people, and king-makers, is that king-makers get attention, by giving it, and so on.

Of course some people are kings. But the best kings were king-makers first - and will always be king-makers – because these are the ones that better the country they lead.

Your Leading Thoughts

Every regular at this blog that comments aren’t self proclaimed – I know you all. So my question is:

Are you a king-maker. If yes, or if no, why?
If you’re not, shouldn’t you be?

Image courtesy of Timothy K Hamilton.

Model: The 7 Levels of Participation

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Scott Gould

The above model is something I’ve been thinking about for a while – and would love to now think through with you – that aims to present some guide and scale for participation, with the goal of helping us know what level of participation to pitch for our communities or projects.

My basic assumption is that as the level of participation increases, the number of people who participate decreases. A lot of the successes, and failures, that I see not only within Social Media but community engagement in general are linked to pitching at the right level of participation:

Failure generally happens where the amount of participation is overestimated, and only a high level is provided
Successes generally happen where multiple levels of participation are provided, meaning lower and higher levels happen

Whether you’re building a social network, running a blog, doing an online campaign, cultivating a community, and so on, you must consider your levels of participation. Continue reading →

4 Things Charities Can Learn From Christian Aid Week

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdRbDXf8Hxk

If you can’t see the video above, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

I got an email last week from Sally Douglas from Agenda21Digital.com asking me to say something about Christian Aid Week which runs all this week to raise awareness and finances for some core social justice issues around the world.

Why am I posting it? First of all, I believe in it.

Secondly, it’s not hard to imagine they targeted UK bloggers based on keywords like “Christian” and “Pastor” – but the fact that they did that, that not only an agency did it, but a charity like Christian Aid also went with it, deserves some respect.

I also love the way Sally went about doing it. She gave me very clear points, posted three bit.ly links (so as to not cram my screen), and then kindly asked me to post a link to them. It was easy for me to write this post - all the research was done for me. The tools were complete.

The campaign is actually pretty cool. You can do things like “donate your Facebook status” (on this page here), which is a very low participatory way to help spread the message that is also new and not just the regular retweet button or host of share buttons that no one ever uses. Continue reading →

Mass Relationship

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Scott Gould

In the comment section of our discussion this week on Social Media not being ‘social’, Robin Dickinson and I discussed the future of conferences, namely that the future could be a future without them altogether. Robin and I have been discussing this on Skype since July and his point is, ‘why in the 21st century are we still using 1950s conferencing models?’

Many of the ideas of Social Media, like engagement, conversation, friendship, follower, social and discussion, are based around relationship. That’s the whole point: it’s social and it’s relationship.

But I notice a few things that don’t line up that I’d like your feedback on:

Despite all this talk of community, why do we still idolise content over everything else? Talk about hypocritical!
Conferences are good becuase they allow people to make and strengthen relationship, but the conferences aren’t actually made for this. Should they be? Or should we be building relationships ourselves anyway?
The idea of conversation, when considering Dunbar’s number of 150 friends is the max you can handle, means we have to enter into mass relationship. Can we have an ‘online gathering’ whilst still retaining connections? What if people get lost? Or is that their fault?
How do we operate in a world where we have micro relationships and mass relationships? Do mass relationships just send us back to pushing content again?
Some people say face to face is best, others say should evolved. How do you scale face to face into mass relationship?

Did you see what I said there? Micro relationships and mass relationships. It brings me back to this diagram from my article on Preaching to the Converted:

I’m unsure about where we go from here, and what the implications of mass relationship are. I’m hoping we can talk it through.

P.S. If you are wanting to get past content and into real connections with real people to really collaborate, you might want to read this.

Broadcasting Hypocrisy

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Scott Gould

I think Seth Godin is reading my blog. Yesterday he wrote on ‘Losing Andrew Carnegie‘ and talked about investing in people over parts. Anyone who has been reading here a while knows I’ve been talking about this a lot since October, and gaining new levels of growth by getting free what I call ‘Factory thinking‘. The idea is that parts in a factory will break, but if you lead people, they can develop and grow.

Of course I know Seth isn’t reading my blog, nor is the idea mine to begin with – we’re just standing on the soliders of giants who’ve been discussing this since the beginning of time.

However it is an opportunity to discuss something that’s really on my mind right now and will require me to be painfully honest.

Are We Really Focussing On People In Social Media, Really?

So confession time. Claiming that Seth Godin is reading my blog is attention seeking. My blog is getting less comments and retweets and I find myself at times wondering what the point is. I’ve been doing things like writing blog titles like this, trying to promote my own stuff as if it’s someone else’s. All the dirty tricks.

But then I catch myself: this is factory thinking. It’s treating my blog is a machine that has outputs – rather than a place to serve and lead people.

What really shook me up was spending a bit of time with Chris Brogan at Like Minds. I don’t want to play the name game, but I was profoundly impacted by the time I spent with Chris. I’m pretty good with people and good with names – but Chris was on a whole other level.

I saw him meet people in the morning, meet a tonne of people during the day, and then call that person by name in the evening. Every person he spoke to I watched him converse with genuine interest, and never flip open his phone or excuse himself like I know I so often do.

When I asked Chris what his secret was, he gave me the simplest, yet most painful answer: “I just have an insane passion for humans”

Are We Broadcasting Social Media?

I wonder how many of us are broadcasting the message of discussion? The whole idea of Social Media is that it is two, three, four way communication, yet I know my behaviour of late has been one of broadcast.

What hypocrisy!

One of my friends is Robin Dickinson. He and I talked a few months ago about a comment-driven blog, a place where the blogger was actually a facilitator – and rather than forcing his readers to read his content, he instead used the blog as a place to draw comments to form the content.

Well Robin went away and did it. What he has going on right now at RADSmarts is something I’ve never seen before – a community that is commenting on each others comments based on a short, 50 word blog ‘question’ with a picture.

I’ve got no point to round this up on, and to be honest I’ve lost the expectation of getting an discussion going below. But that doesn’t matter. This isn’t a machine that I’m churning – it’s a place to lead people. And if what I’ve seen last week with Like Minds is anything to go by, leading people will build far bigger things than managing machines ever will.

My thought now is, how much of what I thought was ‘discussion’ and ‘social’ was just broadcast?

You’ve Got A Heart, A Wallet, And Contacts – So Use Them

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8D_Ll6VrSU

Last week Matt Young presented the Have A Heart Appeal as one of our Endeavours at Like Minds.

The aim is simple: to raise £1,000 for the Starlight Children’s Foundation, whose aim is to basically grant the wishes of terminally ill children.

I’m not asking you to have a heart because I know you have one. I’m just asking you to do two things:

1. Give to the appeal if you haven’t already.
2. Pull your contacts to see how we can not only smash through £1,000, but use our connections to help make some wishes come true. Put what you can do in the comments below.

So, to give to Have A Heart, click here.

I know we can do a lot of good for the local community with this – and do things that really matter.

What can we do with our collective Like Minds?

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Scott Gould

In a world where many are caught in a Catch 22, you have to wonder, what can we do with our collective Like Minds?

If we could convert our community into connections, I bet we’d find ourselves accomplishing things we never thought possible. I know that’s where I’m finding myself at the moment.

- What change could we make in the local community?
- What differences could we make for those living with tragically poor quality of life?
- What opportunities could we open for those who have none?
- What people could we connect together who could change the world?

So the question is, how are you leading the way with the connections you’ve made?

Photo courtesy of the stellar Benjamin Ellis.

Local Charities Doing Good – With Social Media

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aIj0rp5rM

If you can’t see the video click here. You can watch the video on YouTube here.

I was taking a break on Dartmoor this week when I started seing lots of collection boxes for Devon Air Ambulance Trust (DAAT) in practically every shop, hotel or restaurant that I went to. The woman at this shop told me that everyone in the town (Chagford in this instance) had at the very least a family member who had been directly helped by DAAT.

So I flipped out my camera and started rolling. It was a moment of synchronicity – let me tell you why:

We had Heléna Holt on the first panel at Like Minds last week, who is the CEO of Devon Air Ambulance Trust, and I know the campaigning that she and many others do through Social Media to not only get funds but to also increase awareness. Having Heléna on the panel was another local person who we had in the diverse mix of people speaking. I hear people talk about ‘local’ in Social Media, but few do it.

The local goodness doesn’t stop there. In fact this whole thing is a local affair – because it’s our local partners Optix Solutions who developed Devon Air Ambulance’s website and Social Media campaign. In fact having ‘local partners’ is something that just isn’t really being done by conferences that have a global voice. Anyway, moving on…

Heléna sat on the panel that Jonathan Akwue from Digital Public had keynoted on minutes before – the very keynote where Jon boldly said that “Social Media saves lives.” The Guardian were there and concured with Jon, and thus ran the first of two articles on Like Minds, titled ‘Like Minds: Social Media can save lives‘. You can see the interview with Jon and how they reduced teenage pregnancies using Social Media here and then the keynote here.

And there’s one more thing: before Like Minds, not too many people knew about Jon – something he blogged about quite openly here. But his opening keynote has been praised over and over. We knew that he had something to give, even if he didn’t shout about it.

There are plenty of examples of local charities doing good with Social Media. But more often than not they are behind the scenes rather than jumping to get attention. Take our like minded endeavours for example – I never knew any of them were functioning at such a level.

Let me hear from you – what local charities do you know of using Social Media to do good that we should be promoting?

Your Leading Thoughts

Why Comments Matter

Are We Really Focussing On People In Social Media, Really?

Are We Broadcasting Social Media?