GoodGNUs

I’m travelling back from the Connecting 2.0 Communities event held this afternoon and evening at Madlab, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. An MDDA-sponsored event to give technical and social media advice to community groups. I was arm-twisted into giving a short talk, so rapidly prepared an item on Social Media tactics and strategy culled from our 3hour course.

Firefighting IT problems? Get some IT strategy in your Org!

However the first speaker, Matt Haworth, did such a great job on exactly the same subject, with the wonderful local example of Manchester’s  Lesbian & Gay Foundation’s viral response to US hate adverts, that I mentally ripped up my improvised speech, and settled on the least interesting topic under the sun: IT Strategy. IT Happens, I told the unfortunate audience, it drops from the sky as meteorites of randomly-funded PCs, and volunteer-coded websites, and leaves organisations busy fighting fires as IT fails to do what it should, instead of concentrating on delivering the front-line services for which they have so much enthusiasm.

So, what’s to be done? Organisations with chronic IT problems tend to be those which don’t just lack an IT strategy, but often don’t really realise how essential it is to any modern organisation. These groups usually lack IT expertise not just in staff and volunteers, which is understandable, but in their boards of governance, too. In an age when hardware and software is effectively free, IT funding should first go into bringing in outside help to assess an organisation, and help to draught its strategy; something that would pay for itself in a very short time.

Back in my M6-IT days (and before that at BVSC’s MOST project) we ran courses on IT strategy for decision makers in Voluntary Sector groups. In both cases we relied on carrot and stick from partner organisations to bring in attendees who most needed the courses. What can be done? I’d love to hear ideas for reaching groups (other than springing them on an unsuspecting audience like today ;), otherwise third sector groups will continue to fight fires, instead of using IT to grow and support their organisations.

Earlier today I spoke to Andy Dearden about my contributions to the forthcoming PRADSA (Practical Design for Social Action) event, New Understandings, New Communities, New Practices, on 16 March, at NAVCA in London.

Little GTD

I’m doing a poster (if I can get one out on time), but it was the workshop that needed discussion, as I have two I’m developing that I wanted to try out. Option one is a workshop idea that I’ve had brewing for a while: “Keeping the Activist active: Organisation for hopeless procrastinators, and people who can’t see their desks”. This stems from my re-discovered passion for all things GTD and zero inbox, as well as the de-cluttering ideas that feature so prominently in Tim Ferriss’ works.

The idea is how to declutter your mind, and concentrate on Getting Things Done using various simple techniques. Specific tools are mentioned, but these will be personal preferences for most people, so the emphasis is on techniques and where to go for more information and help with such ways of working.

Keeping active?

The need for such a workshop? I’ve noted that I’m not the only activist who suffers from perennial procrastination, accumulating to-do piles, and information overload. I’ve been working hard on dealing with this over recent months and:

1. Want to share what I’ve learned
2. Want to gain from others’ productivity tips that may be shared in workshops

Meanwhile I note the continuing rise of GTD on mostly word-of-mouth, and take that as some confirmation that it really works for a lot of people.

And what works enables us to segué seemlessly to the other option, based on my forthcoming Social Cafe, Small Steps to Sustainability, at FACT’s Climate for Change exhibition. This uses the 20:20 format - 20 slides each given 15 or 20 seconds of commentary to introduce a topic without boring to distraction on areas of no interest to the audience. Leeds GeekUp often features two or three 20:20s, and recently O’Reilly’s first Ignite to be held in England was held in Leeds with 18 such talks.

Social Café

I sugested to FACT a “Small Steps to Sustainability” exhibition, highlighting 11 areas linking technology and environmentalism, over the 11 weeks of their Climate for Change exhibition, in an “11:20″ format, and highlighting one area in each week to showcase with other activists. They took the idea and ran with it until it became an after-work Social Café with beer at 6pm on what I non-alliteratively refer to as Sustainability Wednesdays. If you’re in Liverpool come along - more on this nearer the time.

Meanwhile, PRADSA: A workshop slot at New Understandings, New Communities, New Practices, suggested an opportunity to rehearse this workshop and, ideal for PRADSA’s aims, to discuss the 20:20 format, and other technology-driven trends in presentations.

Will talk for beer

So, two workshops in progress, one of which will be developed and delivered throughout spring. The question: does anyone want to book one of them for any third sector events? We also have the ever-eager Speak to a Geek panel looking for opportunities to help at such events, with answers to a volley of IT, web & social media enquiries. Call us ;-)

Following a discussion on the GeekUp mailing list, Guy Dickinson took it on himself to get a bunch of geeks together in a panel to help out third sector groups with their problems. MDDA was the venue, last Friday afternoon.
Straight on to social networking, with the announcement of a FaceBook group to take the idea beyond a single event, and expand the conversation. Then conversation on one of the recurring themes of the day. how do you build a community online, a bulletin board for example that will be populated by active citizens, rather than the sound of tumbleweed blowing through?
One comment per hundred reads was given as a good ratio for blogs, and talk centred on existing, organically-arising groups, and how to get them into a charity’s site - begging the question, is the site the right place? Google groups were mentioned as a good “in” - most are comfortable with e-mail.

Personality

One panelist (Tom?) mentioned personality, and the need to engage with your constituency, not simply publish at them. Something to which I returned a number of times over the afternoon. Particularly later, when we went further into social media. Obviously this included twitter [# link], and Paul Webster in the audience, as well as others, were twittering throughout.

At M6-IT we’ve long worked to get improved IT knowledge, and an understanding of IT strategy into the sector. Something re-iterated as many groups present spoke of their negative experiences with poor websites, reluctantly updated by contracted techies who were holding their data and domain nams to ransome. For larger groups I suggested getting a consultant to draw up a spec doc for any IT project, and being clear on the desired outcome. For small groups there are answers, and we should pick up on this through the FB group.

Resources

With a number of organisation geeks on the panel, GTD soon came up, along with Inbox Zero, in answer to concerns about drowning in e-mails, and having no time to consider Twitter. Project management resources were discussed, and the Getting Real PDF from 37 Signals was recommended.
Google Apps was given as the answer to many a question, including Google Analytics for monitoring and analysing visitors to a charity’s website. Google apps can be used to manage a domain, pointing to wherever you move the hosting, providing online spreadsheets, and spam-filtering e-mail.

Technology was pitched at an appropriate level, with Paul Robinson kicking off a round of praising paper-based communication and notes.

Quo vadis?

A lot was packed into two hours, and there is little doubt about the appetite of parts of the third sector to get the best out of Social Media, and the latest IT tools. Indeed the gathering contained a disproportionately high number of Social Media users. Next task, perhaps, is to reach the orgs which wouldn’t self-select to attend a techie event, possibly by piggy-backing on a non-techie 3rd sector event, such as something from VA Manchester or GMCVO?

After the event, Paul Webster came up and mentioned the Social Media Surgeries with which he’d been involved in Birmingham. Another avenue to explore - if you are interested, please sign up to the FaceBook group, and join in.

Special thanks to Guy, not just for getting things of the ground, but for the excellent meal at Red Chilli afterwards, where a Chinese couple at the next table helped me explain veganism to the waiters and managers, as I’d left my Vegan Passport behind.

Yet another blog on the Interweb pipes? Is there a need?

Who knows - I gave up blogging (though it wasn’t called that, then) about a decade ago, but found myself micro-blogging rather a lot about work these last few weeks:

http://identi.ca/richardsmedley

http://twitter.com/RichardSmedley

…and found the need to add in more. More on the Social Enterprise scene in the North West (and N Wales, and the Midlands). More on Free Software developments, and the software we’re writing. More on websites, as I seem to be moving from the back-end (oiling the servers, and tweaking code) to the front-end, and far too much on Social Networks.

So, another business blog. Why not?

Anyway, off to find a good WP theme to customise, then write some thoughts on last week’s Speak To A Geek event.