where key figures in charity communications have teamed up to produce a snapshot of the most significant communications trends of the coming decade.

So, these are my five ‘future practice’ trends:

• The term ‘social media’ will sound just as dated as ‘information superhighway’ does today
• Fragmentary movements of citizens – some global, some local – will mobilise around single-issues, seeking alliances with social change organisations, which they believe can help bring the change they want
• In the web of ‘flow’, charities will catch people ‘in motion’ – when they are ‘goal orientated’ – and will give them the tools to reproduce messages through their own networks
• Websites will become much slimmer, with the focus switching to curation, aggregation… and amplifying the 000’s of ‘small actions’ of others
• Smart organisations will evolve their workforce for a networked economy and will trust a passionate community of employees to build relationships online using different platforms for different objectives

Here’s the deck.

It needs to be said that ‘digital’, and all the new stuff that we call ‘social media’, isn’t really the point; relationships are the point. Same as it ever was.

And yet so much has changed. Charities now need to reach out to people in a way that isn’t just ‘marketing’ and catch people ‘in motion’ – when they are ‘goal-orientated’; meeting people where they are, in real-time (or near real-time), around what is interesting to them. It is no longer a question of simply delivering content to people; it’s about your convening power to help people discover each other to help make the change you both want.

The trouble is, by treating social media as just another ‘channel’, in-house departments are often completely unprepared when people ‘answer back’, and struggle to make the required change in tone and posture. With a few exceptions, our sector does not have a great track record when it comes to distributing trust to staff and many organisations have created a bottleneck as communication is funnelled via a handful of staff. Social media has become just another silo.

We really need a much broader (and deeper) organisational alignment around supporters. I want everyone who works for a charity to be seen more as assets and advocates than as cost streams to be subsidised. This seems to me to be even more sensible as we are challenged to do more with less; charity leaders have a passionate community right under their noses: their own staff.

I agree with Will McInnes who is convinced that eventually…

every member of staff [will] need to have some level of responding power and be empowered to use social media to communicate and build relationships with the people around them.

I think that this is inevitable and irresistible, but is your charity ready to create new roles, re-train, and reallocate resources and budgets?

Today is her Beth Kanter’s 53rd birthday and she is asking her trusted network to join her to raise funds for the Sharing Foundation, and help send some young people to school, where they belong. In Beth’s words…

Many children in Cambodia do not go to school because their families lack the $10 for a uniform, required for school attendance. And even though $10 may seem like nothing to us, it can make a world of difference for a Cambodian child. We have hundreds of kids who need uniforms – so let’s help as many as we can.

I’ve met Beth in person only once – in February 2007 – but we have collaborated a number of times. I’m just one of a whole bunch of bloggers writing posts today about Beth, her cause, and her influence. (Amy, Stacey… great idea).

I’ve donated. Not just because of Beth (and her family), but because Cambodia holds a special place in my heart, too. Twenty-one years ago I managed a small team at Oxfam UK which coordinated (with the BBC) The Great Blue Peter Bring and Buy Sale for Kampuchea (as it then was), which raised in excess of GBP 1 million.

If you can, please donate to Beth’s cause on Facebook.

And Beth… thank you for leading by example.

Amy Sample Ward tagged me in her five-a-day-post, following the mindapples ’meme’ started (I think) by Andy Gibson of The School Of Everything, and brought to my attention initially by Tessy Britton. 

We’re asked what five things we do every day (or almost every day) to stay mentally healthy. So here goes…

• Listen to a TED talk. I do this often – or more accurately on those mornings when I answer my daily five o’clock alarm call, which if I’m honest, is about two or three times a week. TED talks typically last 20 minutes and rarely fail to inspire. My all-time favourite is Ken Robinson’s witty and moving rallying call for creating an education system that nurtures creativity. Genius.
   
• Explore Flickr. I first fell under the spell of the Flickr photo-sharing community in 2004, and in my opinion there is still very little on the web that can match it. Every day I look to see who may have viewed my own photostream and then click through to Flickr Explore. There’s no greater pleasure for me than attempting to capture the beauty of the world around us, and my family in it – even with my little compact camera. We live in a visual world that is becoming more and more visual, and if you’ve yet to experience Flickr, then perhaps this is the perfect place to start.
   
• Day dream. Whether I’m sitting in a favourite chair, looking out the window of a moving train, or on the seashore, or at the summit of the Tor, daydreaming is my #1 tool for creativity and I although I may not allocate time for it, I do it every day without fail. I cannot really plan for it, although I surround myself at home, around my desk, with physical things, often tiny things, each with a special memory attached to it. For example, take the tiny screw with the now infinitesimal fleck of turquoise paint. Looking at it instantly transports me back to 1991; it had slowly loosened itself over the course of a bumpy 12-hour journey on a ‘chicken bus’ from Guatemala City to Flores. Near our final destination, it had dropped into my lap. I decided to keep it. One day, if I ever write well enough, I might tell the whole story. (I was almost daydreaming there for a minute.)
  I should add that I also daydream on purpose, with a purpose; often to play out positive scenarios that I wish to happen that day, or in the future. In my daydreams I replay good times past, and imagine the good times still to come, when even the world’s injustices may be put right.  
   
• Listen to music – or more particularly, an anthem. Current favourite is Sigur Rós epic Hoppípolla, which packs a real emotional punch, especially now I associate it with a short film I watched at an Action for Children charity event in October.
   
• Be generous. I’m not certain of it, but I think I’m a pretty generous sort. I never expect anything in return, but it nearly always comes anyway; often when I least expect it, but when I have most reason to be grateful for it. Tools like Twitter make it easy to share and reward you in spades for doing so. And it only takes a minute to reciprcate. I’m reminded of something Guy Kawasaki once said: Eat like a bird; poop like an elephant. Finally… being generous can be as easy as making someone smile, or sharing a laugh. 

You can’t fake genuine emotion. Barack Obama connects and inspires. Did you see the tear-streaked faces of those gathered in Grants Park in downtown Chicago on Tuesday night? They were not mere spectators, but active participants as Obama called for a shared vision of the future – using We, not You or I as a subject.

Photo: David Katz/Obama for America. Licensed under Creative Commons on Flickr

This neat little video is part of Colalife’s submission to Google’s Project 10 to the 100th - a call for ideas to change the world.

Kudos to Simon Berry and the distributed Colalife team, for this one, and their intelligent and relentless campaign.

Just this morning, Mark Charmer of Akvo alerted me to a United Nations University study, which says providing sanitation and safe water is the top route to reducing world poverty.

Please join the Colalife group on Facebook; 6,391 members… and counting.

Imagine… a humungous aggregator of all the positive good that millions of people have done today. The tiny, but not so insignificant acts of kindness and philanthropy, which if joined together would add up to one heck of a powerful narrative for a more just world.

Bad news happens fast and travels fast, while a good story can take much longer to blossom and bear fruit.

Where are the stories of the courageous people who through their own efforts, or with a little leg up such as a Kiva loan, overcome their material poverty to create a brighter tomorrow for themselves and their communities, one person at a time.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom around at the moment. Even the last item on the late evening news – the one that is intended to make us forget the previous 25 minutes of bad news – well, even that has recently dropped off the end of the bulletin. It seems it’s all bad news.

Bloody hell, why can’t those news people get some perspective. Can’t they find just one, simple but remarkable thing that someone, or some group has done today with real and lasting social impact? Did they bother to look?

If you’re reading this and work for a charity – this is an invitation to demonstrate the positive impact of your work, more than you do today. Don’t tell me what £50 will buy for ’someone like’; show me what £50 has achieved. Better still, let me watch a video of a ‘real person’ that will bring me to within a heartbeat of your work. I’ll even donate towards buying a new computer, if you show me that the old one was used to empower a network of activists to make a positive difference.

I do not want to feel remote, guilty and helpless. I want to feel inspired and involved in making good stuff happen, right now.

We all want to be part of a good news story. Good news begets more good news.

And remember, today something good did happen. For a start, thousands and thousands of people participated in Blog Action Day.

Maybe it’s because I’m a glass-is-half-full kinda guy, but please tell me some good news, and I’ll gladly pass it on.

What are your ideas for making the good news more visible?

I was going to write about something else for Blog Action Day. I was going to write about Save the Children’s Kroo Bay and DfID’s bloggers. I’ll mention them, because they’re worth your attention.

I’m shortly going to be doing some work with Global Giving UK, to embed some more good news around the social web.

I know this is simplistic, and I’d never have dreamt making this sort of comparison when I studied Development Economics two decades ago.

But wait a minute, when other, less powerful nations needed bailouts in the past, weren’t these accompanied by stringent conditions? At the same time the rich nations exalted the “invisible hand” of market capitalism, they also attached “conditionalities” to the loans called “structural adjustment programmes“. The poorest suffered the most. The bankers and government ministers did OK.

Of course, I’m not surprised by these double standards. It just leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Gordon Brown advocates a “new global order, founded on transparency, not opacity”.

We do need a new global order. One based on fairness, equality, and justice for all. Not this.

Thanks to Joanna Juber – the charity’s Digital Engagement Manager – for inviting me to speak on a range of topics I will be blogging about over the coming months. Fundamentally, how technological innovation has always necessitated institutional innovation and how charities need to learn to be agile (the technology won’t slow to their pace).

Here’s the link to the presentation on slideshare for those of you picking this up in your feed reader, with the caveat that one or two slides make less sense without the narrative.

On my way back to Somerset on the train, I read that E. L. Doctorow once said writing a novel is like “driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

It struck me that this is much like the journey we’re all making with social media. Charities need to learn to be agile enough to get into driver’s seat, and brave enough to take the wheel and move out of second gear. It’s going to be an interesting ride. Baggsy be the co-driver.

I’m particularly looking forward to introducing Hoop MD, Sean O’Halloran who will talk about the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP). Sean has a close family link with the project.

MAP is funded by the Wellcome Trust, and is led by Professor Bob Snow at Oxford University. Malaria is one of the world’s biggest killers – but it is preventable if the right steps are taken. MAP charts the prevalence of malaria throughout the globe, and Bob’s team eventually want to make real time data available online.

Sean is as excited as I am about the creative potential of social technologies to mash up and interpret the data (through mapping, visualisations, etc.) and will be joining us at 2gether on Wednesday morning to frame the enormous challenge of eradicating malaria and perhaps bring some new energy to MAP with a big dose of collaborative thinking.

That’s just what 2gether is all about.