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.

Do Talk Do – What Collaboration Looks Like

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’m on a warpath.

I’ve decided that most of the content consumed on a daily basis is the digital equivilent of frozen ready meals that get warmed and served up in 5 minutes, before being forgotten, having added no nutrition value to the body, and being dropped out into the toilet a day later in the chain of useless bodily consumption.

The irony is that I’m posting content to declare a war of sorts on content, but hear me out: today I’m beginning a collaboration project that you are all invited to.

Do Talk Do

The other day my friend Robin Dickinson said “DO-TALK-DO: continual talk without action lowers your credibility. Far better to talk about the action you took.”

When people ask what collaboration looks like, I’ve now got an answer. It’s this. Collaboration is that we do something. We talk about it’s successes and failures. Then we go and do again.

There’s twice as much doing as there is talking. And the talking is based on action, not theory.

Here’s How It’s Going to Work

I’ve been speaking to you in the comments, on Twitter recently, and face to face with many of you, about a collaboration project. About connections over community. Today it begins. This is how I see it happening to start with:

We’ve all done something. So we arrange a time to talk vision – probably on a bit conference call – along the lines of a rough agenda. If you haven’t done, don’t come.
If no one responds in the comments and on Twitter to this – then fine – I’ve clearly got it wrong. I’m not going to push it.
The aim is that we move ourselves from being content creators to those who make it happen. Goodwill and all that.
Put your name in the comments below if you’re in, with contact details.

Want more info? Like what we’re actually going to collaborate on? I don’t have it. The whole point is that this isn’t me, it’s us. And we don’t yet know where we are going.

Let it begin.

By the way, thanks to AJ Pape who inspired me no end last night with a short call where he showed me all the ideas he had ready from Like Minds. You can see them in the picture above. He’s already onboard. Thanks AJ.

The Issue With Social Media Events: They Aren’t Social

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Scott Gould

Let’s be honest today.

The feedback is coming in from some events running right now – SxSWi, SMWF and some reviews from Like Minds, and something is clear to me: we still are thinking top down.

Yesterday Valeria Maltoni posted “SxSWi in Quotes“, which comprised mostly of people saying their favourite thing at South By SouthWest (SxSW) was, lo and behold, meeting people. Chris Brogan made similar conclusions in his commentary entitled ”We Could Do So Much More“, when he negatively saw people not connecting, as well as panels that weren’t attendee centric. Some how it seems the people come for the people, but the event isn’t organised for this.

Update: Jay Bear has added his thoughts on SxSW today, which also echo the same sentiment. Jay writes that “the feeling of community, and ‘we’re all in this together’ is slipping away.”

Social Media World Forum (SMWF) struggled at the beginning of the week with criticism over the same old content, and poor focus on the attendees. From what I’ve heard, this wasn’t just the event organisers, but the general attitude of many involved (all all levels: sponsors, speakers, delegates) who saw it as another event to push their content – and from what I’ve seen on the #smwf hashtag, this does seem to be true.

The feedback we had for Like Minds was overwhelmingly positive, but the criticism came, and I’m very mindful of it, that there was still lots of talking heads and not enough application. Despite our innovations with the Like Minds Lunchtime Talks, I know many people still didn’t connect and get what they needed to go and implement on Monday morning. More theory than action.

Even at the beginning of the year at the Media140 Meetup in January, there was a point where Glenn Le Santo stood up and broke the broadcast from the panel and actually started some open, honest, two-way communication – which turned it into, again from what I heard, an exceptional evening.

What’s Wrong?

The whole point of Social Media is that it is supposed to be social. Non-broadcast. Non-vertical. But… Social Media events are very broadcast, very vertical, and aren’t social.

Perhaps I should say that they aren’t social enough – and stop being so polarising - but I’m not talking about the social aspect that happens around the content. What I mean is that the foundational concept of the event is not social, it is broadcast. It doesn’t need to be, but it be. And I have a few thoughts why:

1. We idolise content, so the organisers give it.

People who say event organisers do it for money haven’t organised an event. The reason why we are so heavy on broadcasting content is because we so idolise content above comments.

This is another contradiction that irritates me, that we focus on the content not the comments – which is again broadcast over conversation.

2. Speakers and panelists want their 5 minutes.

“Screw where the panel is going, I want to say my bit on what I did” is in the back of many minds, and then out goes the idea of ‘what is helpful to Joe Bloggs in the audience?’ This is why we have our panels planned at Like Minds – because value needs to be thought through. Otherwise, everyone just says the same thing.

And to be fair – why shouldn’t the speakers and panelist get their 5 minutes? Given how much we worship content, it makes sense they’d want to get theirs out too.

3. Much of the audience wants to make money tomorrow with Social Media.

When people say that “it didn’t help me”, what they really mean is “it told me Social Media is hard work and didn’t tell me how to make money from Twitter tomorrow.” They are also the ones with business cards that they throw in everyone’s face…

Of course this isn’t just an issue with Social Media events – it’s an issue with Social Media itself, namely that we focus on content far more than action.

This is top down. It’s not audience centric, it’s author centric. I could so easily use Like Minds to push my personal purposes, but I don’t. I chose to not be author centric.

Solutions?

First: Can we not be a Social Media conference, but a conference that uses Social Media? This distinction alone changes the whole way you promote the event, because Social Media becomes a means, not an end. Therefore you can relax about whether you trend on Twitter or not. Yeah, it’s nice when you do, but it doesn’t actually make a shred of difference.

Second: Drilling down even further, our aims need to shift from providing more content to promoting more connections. Seeing as we already know more than we do, our aims should be to unite people not with more knowledge they don’t use, but with like minded individuals with whom they can make things happen. Seriously – for how much longer can we continue to preach to the converted?

Another way to say this would be to simply to say: make events about people, and action.

Third: We must dare to be different. We’re running the same 1950s conference model with 21st Century ideas. The unconference model is a step towards it, but these tend to be poorly organised and not accessible to those who are newcomers. I consider ‘unconferencing’ to be a part of the event as whole, but not the whole event, as I describe in Creating A People-To-People Conference.

I began to feel the echo chamber effect in December. I guess now it’s really echoing. The days of events riding on the back of Social Media and expecting to just succeed are over – at least for London anyway.

The Change Begins With You

As I described, I think this is stinking thinking that we’ve all got a little of. Stuck on the content wagon.

The first way to break it? Go away and do something.

What do you think?

Preaching to the Converted?

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

You might have the feeling if you’re using Social Media that you’re preaching to the converted. I often do. Question:

How many more case studies can we read?
How many more times can the same common sense be reinterpreted in 5 different points?
How many more summarises and digest emails can we look through for the same content packaged in new ways?
How many more comments can you leave saying “Great post”?
How many more events can you attend?

Lessons from Church

I’m an assistant pastor at my church. We have similar issues: How many sermons can you sit through? How many times can you come to church and hear the same basic principles (change, love, give, help) said in different ways?

There comes a point when you realise you are preaching to the converted. At this point you realise that it’s no longer about what you say, it’s about what they do.

Check out the diagram below. I’ve adapted it from Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (affiliate link) so that the language is more business orientated.

It’s pretty obvious, but let’s break it down.

The Crowd are the people in your general vicinity. This could be your city. In Social Media this used to be everyone on Twitter. But now that people follow so many other people, your crowd is probably those that either you follow or who follow you – people that you are linked to, but don’t engage with. These often are not aware of you.
The Community are those who in my case use the #likeminds hashtag and attended the last Like Minds Conference. You may speak with them occasionally. They are aware of you.
The Connected are the ones that you speak with semi-regularly to regularly. You comment on and subscribe to their blogs. Sometimes you collaborate with them. They are engaged with you.
The Committed are those you speak, discuss, update, collaborate and work with regularly. They are builders with you.
The Core are those with whom your life is share. They lead with you.

You see the change here. At the crowd level, you aren’t aware of each other. At the core level, you are leading with each other. The difference is action.

The tipping point is going from community to connected.

If you feel you are preaching to the converted

Then stop preaching. Instead, start working with them.

A few ideas for you to turn community into connections.

Schedule a skype call and get talking about your passions.
Agree to work together on a small project
Go out of your way to refer or make an opportunity for them
Do something extraordinarily special for them
Meet them

How about you? Are you preaching to the converted?

Scaling The Levels Of Social Communication

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a tweet worth?

One of the things I persistently tell my staff is “get on the phone!” When trying to get information, sort something out, or close the loop on a contract or task, I really do hate it when people leave things to email when they could so easily pick up and phone and do it right there.

Even when my wife says to me “I’ll text them” I say to her, “why text and wait for an answer when you can get one right away if you call!” The other day I even had someone say to me that they hoped so-and-so got their tweet about their meeting. My answer again was, “Phone?”

We seem to have forgotten sometimes that our mobile phone does indeed make phone calls on top of email and tweeting! Continue reading →

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.

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?