Internet4Change Discussions

The Micro-Success Experiment

In December, I posted to the Internet4Change blog about Micro-Success - a collaborative support group for social enterprise start-ups that I have initiated offline in Brussels and that I intend to also mirror with an online-only group here at Ned.

This is a 6 month experiment, undertaken for specific reasons, and to achieve specific objectives that merit explaining.

I hold an intuitive belief that collaboration can be highly beneficial to social enterprise start-ups, and that more collaboration between organizations can enhance the impact of the social change "sector" at large.

My professional intent over the next several years is to work toward creating ways to facilitate and promote increased collaboration on a global scale, between organizations that seek to create social impact.

The primary purpose for initiating both an online and an offline collaborative support group for social enterprise start-ups is to model and observe the dynamics of collaboration in action, with the aims of identifying what works or doesn't work well, what needs or doesn't need support and facilitation, and how collaborative interaction differs in online and offline environments.

My active hope is that by the end of the 6 month experiment, the enterprises involved will have benefited from the interaction with each other, and that we will all have learned some insightful lessons about how to effectively encourage and enhance fruitful collaboration on a broader scale.

Finally,

My personal reason for focusing this experiment on social enterprise start-ups is that I am also a social entrepreneur, in the throes of starting a(nother) new social enterprise myself. I have experienced the powerful (positive and negative) impacts of formal and informal collaboration on my own work in the past, and have a heartfelt desire to help myself and others maximize the benefit of those many lessons learned.

Over the course of the past few months, I have spoken to a number of online colleagues about initiating a group for social enterprise collaboration online here at Ned.com. At a gathering in November, a number of fellow HubBrussels members with start-ups in progress indicated a desire to work together in a more structured way. I stepped forward to voluntarily organize that group as well, for the comparative insight it might provide.

The group in Brussels has already met for the first time to discuss objectives and modalities for working together; a write up of what happened at the introductory session is in the MicroSuccessOffline workspace. In February (after the ned.com unconference) I'll be starting the online Micro-Success group here at ned.com.

In this discussion thread you're invited to comment, share observations, discuss, help shape and ask questions about the Micro-Success experiment. I would really love to hear your thoughts.

If you are currently starting a Social Enterprise and would like to join the online Micro-Success group in February, please contact me here on Ned to let me know a bit about your project.

Sooooo... whaddaya think about all this?

Last comment added: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 09:01:53 PDT

How do you keep track of your conversations online?

In the Defining Collaboration in the Social Change Sector discussion, I asked the tireless Dan Bassill of Chicago's Tutor/Mentor Connection to share some tips on how he manages to keep track of the many conversations he's engaged in online.

He graciously responded:

I struggle with this myself. One way is that I post links to some of the forums I post comments in on the T/MC web site. Another is that I do a "google search" from time to time, to find places where I've commented, but not visited in a while.

I have a few core sites that I visit once or twice a week, just to see what is going on, and where I might contribute. Ned is one of those places. I visit more often than I comment because most of the discussion here does not focus on tutoring/mentoring, or poverty in Chicago. However, collaboration and capacity building is relevant, which is why I keep coming back to this thread.

In all of my networking, I'm pointing people to web sites I host, sort of like how advertisers point people to their stores. When someone visits my site and leaves a comment, or emails me, I respond and this helps build our relationships and progress toward goals. In this way, I don't need to worry about following all of those who have not responded to my messages. I only need to focus on responding to those who do.

Most of my comments relate to the mission of T/MC so while I'm in lots of places, it's not hard to keep track of my line of thinking, because it's always related to progress toward goal, or some form of network building.

I'm trying to find ways to map this strategy, using the concept maps on my site, wikis and social network analysis tools. Finding manpower to do some of this work is what slows me down. I can't do it all myself.

As the web continues to expand and offer more and more resources for working with others, it feels to me that managing our time spent in various spaces is key. In the search for allies and meaningful collaborative potential, I am finding that there are an increasing number of discussion spaces, blogs, and networks out there to participate in. Participating in just one space feels very limiting, but as soon as I start participating in many, it quickly becomes difficult to remember where I've been and engage in continued deeper and meaningful dialogue.

What about you?

How do you keep track of your conversations online?

What factors guide your choices in where to participate/contribute online?

Once you've contributed to a discussion once, how much of an effort do you make to follow up for continued dialogue?

Are there tools or strategies you can share that might help others who are struggling with this issue?

I would argue that some new tools for doing this better are necessary, but meanwhile I'm hoping we can all learn from each other how to manage better with tools we've already got.

Thanks in advance for sharing your tips!

Last comment added: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:02:38 PST

Defining "Collaboration" in the Social Change sector

There's a lot of talk lately in the Social Change circles I hang out with online about "collaboration" and the need for more of it in our sector. But are we on the same page about what collaboration means?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines collaborate as a verb meaning To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.

That definition resonates with me to a certain point. Yes, it is extremely useful to think things through together, and to learn from each others' experiences. In this connected day and age, I'd even venture that it's silly for change agents not to seek intellectual input on their ideas. But I find myself wanting more action in how collaboration in our sector pans out. I want collaboration in our sector to mean taking cooperative, collective action for greater social impact.

Am I alone in wanting that? Is that asking too much? More importantly, perhaps, what does (or could) that desired definition of collaboration actually look like in practical terms? Will greater social impact be achieved if collaboration is intentionally better defined, structured and incentivized in the new social economy? Or is collaboration that's more loosely structured (ie, thinking things through together) as far as we need to go to see our impact as a sector increase over time?

I'd love for us to explore this.

What does the term "collaboration" mean to you when it's applied to your thinking about Social Change?

Can you share good or bad examples of collaboration in the Social Change sector that you've participated in or admired?

Is collaboration more effective when it's structured or unstructured?

Does collaboration ever fail to increase social impact? If yes, what are the factors that lead to failure?

What are the biggest incentives for collaborating? The biggest deterrents?

Is there a pattern of factors that lead to successfull collaboration?

I look very much forward to reading your thoughts.

If you have found this disussion through Twitter:

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Last comment added: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:38:55 PST

Creating a Weekly i4c Update

Much in the spirit of "ONTopic" - a useful weekly newsletter about activities happening at the Omidyar Network Community while it was alive, I'd like the main Internet4Change workspace at Ned to offer a weekly roundup of what's happening in the Internet4Change group space at ned and "out there" on the worldwide web.

If you would be willing to help further develop one of the update sections on a regular basis, or suggest a new section of info to include, please let me know in this thread.

Many thanks in advance for your help!

There are no comments.

Having conversations at more than one site #i4c

I want to reinvent the concept of the home page.

As a Better World Builder who works a lot online, what I want from a homepage is a single personal public profile page that is both informative for visitors and practical for me. On that page, I want to be able to show you and remind myself who I am and what I'm working on.

On my ideal profile... If you want my resume, you can click through to me at linked in. If we have ever breathed the same air together, you can connect with me on facebook. You can read my blog to learn about my latest progress. Yes, I know, we've already got all of that, and more...

But I want what we don't yet have.

If you want to talk to me about the stuff I'm working on in the social sector, I want you to be able to see and join me in the current discussions I'm already having with others around the web;

I want to be able to access my tools to help and seek help from peers in achieving my Social Change work-related objectives 24/7 from the convenience of one well organized start page;

I'd like to be able to reflect a reputation through the body of online work I have achieved with others;

Oh yes, and I'd love for that page and my activities reflected there to somehow earn me some money to pay some of my costs.

In a comment on the Internet4Change blog, Charles Cameron says:

"I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what can bring a conversational site through the stages from isolated posts > frequent responses > friendly network of conversations > active community with collaborations afoot, and it seems to me that getting conversations going at more than one site at once is one key stage."

These are my thoughts exactly.

The first things I'm going to be working on modeling at http://Internet4Change.com are the first two items on my wishlist above.** As an experiment, I'm going to try to see how much conversation I can integrate from ned and other blogs into the homepage at http://Internet4Change.com.

Now, how to do it?!

Right now it's a generic wordpress theme. I have a few ideas to try and would so appreciate how-to and idea input on how to model a blog page format that can be really useful for social entrepreneurs in their work, and that would encouraging multi-site collaboration.

What's on your wishlist for the ultimate Social Entrepreneur's profile & startpage?

** The reputation system and a financial model I have in mind only make sense once the first two wish list items start to take shape.

Last comment added: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:55:04 PDT

Internet4Change Founder's Statement #i4c #piece #socent

I have posted a "Founder's Statement" about getting Internet4Change started at the http://Internet4Change.com blog.

The part I really want the folks collaborating at Ned to see is this:

It is our obligation as careholders of the new kind of world we hope to create, to recognize the need to invest and participate in developing new forms of governance – and that starts with governing ourselves. As we collaborate more and more, the structures and systems within which we are accustomed to working will, by necessity, become stretched. To collaborate with maximum effectiveness, we must find ways to make our old legal structures, our old moral boundaries, and our old economic models irrelevant to the task of mobilizing solutions.

I do not mean to suggest that we learn to work in a state of lawlessness. On the contrary, we must each find the courage to understand and accept the current-system risks and constraints to innovation that we face, and start developing new norms for operating in the cross-dimensional space we share.

I look forward to your comments and reactions. You might want to add this to your Ned watchlist.

.piece

Christina

(edited for formatting)

Last comment added: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:21:42 PST