unicom conference presentation: cilip

Sift | tel: +44 (0) 117 915 9600 | [email protected] | www.sift.com | 2007 Sift Group Ltd

Using social tools to support membership organisations

Lyndsay Rees-Jones: Membership Services Unit, CILIPEd Mitchell: community and engagement consultant

Theory Practice

TechnologyFindings


Whatever the tool, it’s there for the community

"...with communities, the need to design for evolution is paramount. The community’s needs at the beginning of

its life will evolve over time...

Unlike the trajectory of a team, which can often be fairly well planned from the start, the life of a community is a voyage of

discovery..."

(Wenger, White, Smith et al, 2005, as seen at: http://www.technologyforcommunities.com)


Theory

Context– Membership organisation background, requirements and future

Goals– Real engagement, governance, advocacy

People– Broadly distributed membership: is it a community? A network?

Does it have a common purpose? Where are the vested interests?


Practice

Organisation design– Memsocs and modernity, community, governance etc.

Social models– Pre-existing and emergent

People and multi-domain thinking– Trust building through loops of multi-domain activity and feedback

and responsive organisational interface


Technology

Forums– originally tied with blogs for the CoP model

Blogs– originally tied with forums but then opened up in phase 2

Tags– emergent interest and potential use for organisational knowledge

Aggregation– capturing the thoughts of those members outside

Physical meetings– conferences, workshops, inforums

(MySpace, Youtube, flickr, secondlife, facebook, ning etc…)


Communities: phase 1

Department of Knowledge and

Information

Community leaderMember

Community

Community hub

CILIP membership

Knowledge flows fromPeer to peer

Facilitator

Expert


Communities: phase 2

Community leader

Member

CoP

Community hub

CILIP membership

Knowledge flows fromPeer to peer

Expert

Blog

Mentors and Mentees usingprofiles

Members with blogs

RSS

Other networks

RSS

BranchGroup


Social model: facilitation

Public facilitation:External blogsResponsesChampioningAdvocatingMarketingAttracting

Internal facilitation:Editing

RespondingFinding people

Finding knowledgeSupportingBalancingNurturing


0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

July October January April

Users

New posts

Replies

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

January March May

Number of blogs

Number of posts

Number of comments

Forums Blogs

"... Where facilitation is withdrawn or inconsistent, community activity often decreases. Where it is pro-active, consistent and visible, communities tend to flourish provided purpose and

expectations are clear and understood by the participants"

(Research from Bristol University into talk2learn, NCSL's online communities)

Social model: facilitation


Findings

Process: – Plan– Measure-ables– Facilitation– Technology– Pilot– Roll-out– Reflect

Measurement Team business: seriously

Hand-holding

Common language

Adapting to a new way of working


At the end of the day, we’re all humans…

“…I don’t think there is much future in my doing this, as if I talked or discussed half of what is going on here on a blog then I am sure I would upset someone !!...”

“…This initiative is easily, for me, the stand-out project that CILIP has undertaken in recent years, and I am proud to be a member of an organisation that is pushing forward into social software at this stage (2nd-generation adoption)…”

(Backchannel member communications)