Steve’s List:

1. Work hard and be nice to people (two things but inseparable)
2. Do my tax return
3. Trust my instincts
4. Accept criticism gracefully
5. Read a little every day
6. Walk the dog
7. Daydream often; procrastinate less
8. Make more 3-minute phone calls
9. Convert the garage into a workspace
10. Share (especially via Instagram)
11. Eat more fruit bananas
12. Collaborate with others to bring @hardlynormal over to the UK
13. Make people laugh
14. Make my family proud
15. Post here more regularly, as I promised I would
16. Keep Friday evenings special – i.e. film night with @gicela
17. Build more bridges
18. Understand what my daughters need from me (besides extra pocket money)
19. Be there for my dad as he starts his fight against prostate cancer
20. Help charities get to where they need to get to quicker
21. Work hard and be nice to people

* It has been a fortnight of mud and rainbows; of roast turkey and cider. Most of all, mud. In the few months since we’ve become dog owners - pinch me; how did this happen - I’ve grown to cherish our daily walks in the waterlogged fields down the lane that runs behind our little house. When the girls are off school this is something we do together as a family. We slop and squelch about on the Moors, where the grazing marsh is criss-crossed by an interconnecting network of ditches (known locally as rhynes) which in mid-winter drain the floodwater from the fields.

Whatever your goals and dreams, and wherever you may be on that journey, I hope that some of them come true in 2012.

Update: Soon after I hit ‘publish’, I stumbled upon Taking 18 Minutes Day Towards A Year-Long Focus, which Beth also posted today. It really resonated with me, as I have also decided to focus on a handful of themes this year. I didn’t include them in My List; they merit posts of their own, so watch this space.

I bet charity:water is listening, too; they are very good at that sort of thing.

I was reminded of this next tweet I ‘collected’ last year. Just small talk; but most relationships start with small talk.

As Anne is fond of saying: it’s about creating target moments, far more than about target audiences.

This is Seth Godin at his disruptive best – speaking at last year’s NextGen:Charity conference on the topic of “Embracing Risk & Failure in Philanthropy”.

Most charities are part of the charity industrial complex, he says.

Ouch.

This is not an opportunity for you to put some “cool internet toppings on your factory-based charity mindset.” The internet is a connection machine, and charity:water, Kiva, Kickstarter… they are getting into the connection business.

Clever ways to interrupt people are fine, but it’s not the future. This is “not about pouring money on top of your traditional system.” This is about your desire to make connections.

Do you care enough to put it out there and have it not work? The changes that we’re looking for are impossible to imagine… until they work.

Listen to Seth for sixteen minutes. It is worth every second.

#ngc11 will take place in NYC on 17th and 18th November.

On a good day the high speed rail journey from my home village in Somerset to London lasts two hours and four minutes. If I get a window seat on the left hand side, just after half way there’s a glimpse of a spinney (as we say in my neck of the woods) marooned in a field. Last Thursday the clouds moved majestically across the sky and danced with those trees.

This weekend, downpours have come to a colourful end with spectacular rainbows. For me, these last days of summer bring with them a couple of exciting new projects. I’m ready.

I have decamped from a week with the family under canvas with enough memories to fill a year with daydreams. Luminous blue sea; low and empty sandy beaches; seagulls and fish and chips. Thank you, Cornwall; my vision has been swept clear and bright by the Atlantic breeze and there is much work to be done.

You know when a number of things align so completely you want to capture the moment for all time? These ‘moments’ cannot be anticipated or planned for, and the sheer joy of them is hard to put into words, but may last a lifetime. The emotion cannot be manufactured; I simply fall into the rhythm as the moment unfolds. It’s when I feel most alive.

If I close my eyes; think harder… a few more memories surface and slowly reveal themselves; like polaroids. Very small moments in my life; that enthralled. Often there’s a soundtrack, like C’est le Bon, which instantly transports me back to a cornfield during the summer of 1983.

Which brings me to yesterday evening. Who would have thought that wolfing down some fish and chips on the seafront in Clevedon with my family would hit such a high note. Just in case, I’m bookmarking it with this post… much as a reader might lovingly turn down a page to mark a favourite passage.

It is refreshing to witness many of our oldest charities embracing technology and the social web like toddlers finding the space to play and make new friends.

The complexity of the problems we face in the world out-paces the ability of any individual organisation to address them. Many people are now asking whether organisations working through networks could do better, and this was a constant theme through the day.

For example, should we give more focus to finding alternatives that tap the power of networks such as ‘crowd-funding’, which not only bring in money, but it also power the community?

Crowd-funding has found itself in the spotlight since President Obama’s election victory in 2008, and I shared in the excitement of Tom Thirlwell, CEO at Big Balls Films, as he showcased the crowd-sourced film peaceBOMB, the money for which was raised in 30 days by over 100 people using the Kickstarter platform. All effectively became ‘producers’, and will get a name-check in the finished film; in Bob Dylan flipping cue cards-style.

Other themes were transparency, and how more of it is inevitable, whether we like it or not. Charities should expect it. Soon.

Ditto, charities as “sensemakers” – mashing data with storytelling – a topic that Peter Wanless blogged about this week.

Technology is driving a sea-change in peoples’ expectations of communication, with many now expecting charities to be as open with them as they are with their own relationships.

This is something ‘netroots’ charities like the Child’s i Foundation instinctively do well, using stories to illustrate impact and encouraging its supporter community to share what they have done with their friends.

However, this change in tone and posture appears much more difficult for many charities – those “not hardwired” for digital – as another speaker, Martha Lane Fox, put it.

I, however, remain an optimist and it was repeated more than once at Activate that this stuff is ’90% people, and only 10% technology’.

That’s down to us then.

In my talk I said we had designed our organisations for divisions, rather than for connections. Think about it; not only have we built silos, but we still call them ‘divisions’. I also repeated a line from my post last month:

Loyalty to a charity brand is being slowly augmented by a closer affinity with charity employees.

I’ve observed how it helps to develop the thread between a charity’s values and my own experience of that organisation – as I learn a little more about the individual daily contribution of those charity people I follow on Twitter (and who I might then meet). These ‘weak ties’ become stronger over time – more textured – and many eventually form bridges that connect us. But as Anne McCrossan (with whom I am fortunate enough to collaborate) writes in her post reflecting on this week’s event, charity leaders have been slow to appreciate how this connective tissue can create a compelling point of difference:

Job descriptions remain fixed, corporate reputations struggle with how to accommodate and integrate personal profiles into their own, the scope to build on the kind of affinity that can reshape organisational structure so it’s more fluid is limited. Hopping over the walls of internal departments to contribute to initiatives is often regarded as too provocative and challenging to the status quo.

Zappos – the online shoe and apparel store – expects each employee to “develop and cultivate the brand,” and shy away from any formal written guidelines, since their CEO, Tony Hsieh believes these are “too limiting and not aspirational enough.” We need to convince people that what they are doing has value. Of course some people – like Euan Semple – appreciated all this a long time before I did.

HCL Technologies in India has created the employee passion indicator – an instrument to establish what employees get most excited about. It might be financial reward (for less than half), recognition, advocacy, and so forth. Each employee gets a ‘traffic lights’ report indicating green, orange or red for the ‘fit’ between their own motivational factors and the requirements of their role. This helps them and the company to find the best match.

At Foviance, my friend Richard Sedley had the idea of sharing the business ‘lifestream’ on a blog. Elsewhere, SAY Media use employees’ images of their extra-curricular passions to start a conversation. I love what ihmmedia have done here on their ‘people’ page (thanks to @RobmDyson for this one), and I smiled with Heather Taylor as she shared her excitement at receiving her BBC staff pass.

So far these examples are all from the corporate world (but you get the idea).

Here come charity:water (who else?) to the rescue. They ’big up’ their people (including interns) via a meet the staff category on their blog, and use photos to capture the heartbeat of their young and dynamic organisation – such as when sharing the delight of receiving a poem or a visit from a young fundraiser in the office.

One last one. Now I have no idea whether the stunning new visual identity of the MIT Media Lab carries over into practice, but the intent is breathtaking (you really need to follow that link). Translate this to your charity: passionate and creative people from all kinds of backgrounds coming together, inspiring each other and collaboratively making change. Now imagine that branding extending out to those not on the payroll.

All this goes way beyond ‘employee engagement’; I’m thinking more ‘employee emancipation’.

What do you think?

I’m now about to jump on another train to try and persuade a group of Big Charity Finance Directors that this is something worth focusing on; that there is value in the ‘who’, as well as the ‘what’.

Anyway, here’s my presentation from Monday.

I recommend a week in Valencia in late May. Enough of the jacarandas are still in bloom, yet many of the trumpet-shaped flowers have fallen to form vivid lilac-blue carpets of blossom.

. . . . .

There is an encouraging theme running through the White Paper that backs up what I have heard with my own ears: an honest appraisal of the role of government. That means amplifying what works, helping to get more money to the best ideas, and brokering collaboration between charities and entrepreneurs.

There is a tendency in our sector to blame the givers (whether they are mega-rich, or like you and me) for not being more generous. But are we worthy of the gift just because we are charities? Do we still add value to the gift?

Has anyone questioned whether the way we currently behave towards donors may actually reinforce pre-existing social norms towards giving?

We need to break our obsession with donor transactions and the mechanics of what may have worked adequately well in the past. We should give more attention to the donor – rather than just the donation – and look at giving as an enriching personal experience for the giver, and not simply a one-off or series of transactions.

I think we will see (and need) more hybrid models for giving [...] but giving is a means to an end. It’s what you do with the gift that matters. We mustn’t pretend that deeper pockets or a bigger bucket will bring instant results.

Much of the value in the stuff we call social media stems from its immediacy. Your employees now have the ability to report and share what they are experiencing right in front of them. In real time. In the moment.

Earlier this year I was excited to read this post on the Ushahidi blog – and in particular this snippet…

“…imagine getting a continuous flow of stories in near-real time that allows people to see needs as they emerge and act on them.”

In a frenetic world defined by more and more things competing for peoples’ attention, you need to be in that ‘flow’, where you have a better chance of catching people ‘in motion’ – when they are ‘goal orientated’.

I often show this slide to illustrate the point.

Where is all this leading? Well, Lucy Bernholz eloquently stated recently that philanthropy is the business of passion. I love that. That passion can also fade if you don’t know your own place in the story; if you hang up your passion with your coat every morning.

Way back – before the web was invented – my experience at Oxfam was that some of the best stories were locked in the ‘audio-visual unit’ (although I preferred to call it The Story Room). Two decades later charities still have a tendency to ‘save’ a great story for some future purpose (rather than sharing for maximum impact). In practice this often means it is buried among the fluff in the annual report, or (sometimes) devalued with a free plastic pen in a piece of direct mail.

Stories move people – and communications is about making stories real, urgent, and compelling to move people to act. You and your charity’s supporters are inextricably linked so create opportunities to bring you all closer together. Bridge the gap through participation with story as the connective tissue.

Make participation central – not just content – otherwise this is all just a sideshow. Your mission doesn’t want to just sit on paper – or even a static web page.

I guess I’m imagining something similar to the business lifestream Made by Many created for when a whole bunch of employees attended SXSW in March. They aggregate photos and tweets captured on employees’ iPhones using the Instagram app, and weave in blog posts that update dynamically and in real time. The Made by Many crew have created something visceral; a delivery system for their stories. They are active participants and put in their true selves. This may be the future of digital engagement: intimate and packed with multiple ‘light-touches’ across multiple possible touch-points.

In a charity, this kind of behaviour can inspire others who emotionally invest in you. Especially given loyalty to a charity brand is I believe being slowly augmented by a closer affinity with employees.

We are hard-wired to do this. We just haven’t had the toolkit until now. But just as we transition towards a more digital life – somehow behind the firewall we unlearn and grow more compliant and uncertain that we have something to add that will be valued. We lose confidence.

I view much of what I do now as helping to build the capability for ‘flow’ within charities. Working alongside Anne McCrossan we see the potential for organisations to make connections that move people and share the stuff that ‘tingles’; the kind of organisation that makes people want to respond and contribute.

Anne is fond of repeating these words from Maya Angelou, and they seem appropriate to include here…

“People will forget what you said; people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Are you ready to move from ‘busy’ to ‘flow’?

Photo by Michael Hartford available under a Creative Commons license

I’ve just returned from a stupendous week in the English Lake District. Very intermittent signal, so plenty of time for family, walking, and thinking.

I have promised myself that I will post more regularly here from the beginning of May.

1. You are now pretty good at using digital marketing techniques to push your charity’s own content tactically, but what are you doing to bridge the social divide between digital marketing and something that looks more genuinely like a commitment to meaningfully participate in the networks that are already out there?
2. More charities are finding they can reach more people to talk about what they do. But by the same measure, more people are also discovering they can make a difference without you. So how can you address this using social media when people have less attention than ever?
3. Social media provides a platform for you to earn trust by telling specific and impactful stories that are shared in the moment through online and offline networks to fuel action. The deeper value lies right there. Do you agree?
4. Be prepared and engage your detractors. Not all of them, but where this is merited; Remember, a networked world is not always fun. Is your organisation engaging at this deeper level?
5. The world is changing faster than we can reorganise. How comfortable is your culture with stopping trying to get all its ducks in a row and embracing the messiness of the social web – and does this matter to you?
6. Don’t build thicker walls between career silos. We all ‘communicate’. We all have it within us to be fundraisers. Especially those not on the payroll. Is a new kind of volunteering on the horizon that can recognise and reward good people wherever they are?
7. People mistake the fundraising potential of the web with the sea-change it is bringing to peoples’ expectations of relationships and communication. But charities are still structured for ‘transactions’ rather than for participation – yet less than 1 per cent of time online is spent transacting. How does this fit in with your charity’s operating plan?
8. I am not at all sure that in the future, people will share the same affinity and allegiance to big charity ‘brands’ as my generation has shown with sustained loyalty. Our focus now should be on finding alternatives that tap the power of networks such as ‘crowd-funding’, which not only bring in money, but it also power community. Will this have implications for charities as we know them today?
9. ‘Donors’ can only give of their money. New online tools are offering people the ability to mobilise their social networks around peer-to-peer portfolio lending and other forms of contribution. I can foresee how groups of people will engage around a portfolio of small, tangible, impactful interests rather than direct debits. What could this spell out for the way charities do things?
10. What does your campaign celebrate? Are you setting up a culture that celebrates sharing, collaboration, collective action and trust? Or are you celebrating donations, staff size, media attention and individual credit? What are your metrics?
11. The tools are not useful unless people adopt the social behaviours to go with them. Is there evidence that social media is changing the language and tone of your communications to accelerate the delivery of your mission? How much should communications be geared to incoming communication, as well as measuring column inches? And how might this affect the shape of your communications department?
12. Breakthroughs in giving are now just as likely to evolve from multi-layered gaming technology as from within your fundraising department. If the charity sector is truly innovating – why aren’t we seeing roles being created that couldn’t have existed five or ten years ago? Are you ready to reallocate resources and budgets, and grow people into new roles?
13. How much can we avoid silos? We need to accept that it’s OK to make a noise about the work you do, to use your own networks to reach out and make connections with anyone, anywhere, and uncover people who may be looking for an opportunity and who share the same goals. Just as we must break down silos within charities (and re-organise into smaller units), we must also link arms across ‘sectors’.
14. Do you hang your passion up with your coat every morning? What can charities do to foster passion in their cause socially?
15. What are the barriers? What’s holding you back? Take the initiative. Today. You will get pushed back, but find the guts to do what you need to do. Are you ready to shape the future of your organisation… or is it going to be down to someone else to do it?

What do you think?

The book which Beth co-authored with Allison Fine has deservedly become a bestseller (has your CEO read it yet?). There are many reviews of the book, but among the most thought-provoking commentaries is this write-up by Ethan Zuckerman.

On 22 November, Beth will be speaking at the offices of The Guardian (an event we hope to stream) and again later that day at an event hosted by my friends at JustGiving. This evening event has been very popular (to say the least), but one or two places may become available, so do add yourself to the ‘waiting’ list. You never know.

In other news… I spent a couple of days up in Scotland the week before last (time flies, etc.). I had been invited to speak at the Institute of Fundraising’s Scottish conference in Glasgow, and the following day I jumped on a train to Edinburgh (my first time on that route) to take part in the inaugral BeGoodBeSocial event, which turned out to be a stormer. Check out my old friend Hugh Wallace’s reflections on the evening.

Unfortunately, I had to make a dash for the airport half way through the evening, but not before catching up with wonderful people like Ross McCulloch (@thirdsectorlab) – to whom I salute for being Organiser-in-Chief – Stuart Glen (@stuglen), Martin Keane (@onekindMK), Lauren Currie (@redjotter) and Sarah Drummond (@rufflemuffin) of Snook (@wearesnook), and Marc Bowker (@marcbowker) – all for the first time.

If there’s one thing I was keen for people to take-away from my talk (and it’s a theme I’m continually barking on about these days, so please forgive me if you’ve heard this before), it’s this…

the more we remain in our silos and feel constrained by our job descriptions, the greater the disconnect between us and our supporters

Here’s the deck (more ‘bullets’ than usual; optimised for sharing). Many thanks to all those who have tweeted / faved this already.

View on slideshare.

Picking up on from my last post (We get the return on social media we deserve), I encourage people to duck out of one meeting a week (you know, one of those of little real value)… and instead use that time to ‘be’ a community member.

On that score, it’s well worth making time to listen to Euan Semple doing what he does best at the ‘Do Lectures’ back in mid-September… before the leaves turned and fell.

Social media may fail to deliver the campaign result our planning meetings had pre-determined. Instead it may just unleash the kind of promising connections and surprises we ourselves are unable or unwilling to embrace. All relationships ebb and flow, often for a reason, and sometimes for no other reason than we are too busy, do not care, neglect the obvious… or simply fall out of love.

Consider our failure to expose our ‘meeting culture’ to the same rigorous demand for immediate return we ask of social media. The stuff we call social media actually lifts a mirror and reflects back on our own impatience to listen, to give more time to what other people want.

When contemplating the failures of social media, we first need to look at ourselves.

Anyway, enjoy the clip – or enjoy it all over again. It includes the immortal line:

the first ‘follower’ is what transforms a lone ‘nut’ into a leader…

The full transcript of Derek’s talk is available here.

Many scoff at those of us who love Twitter, and frankly I couldn’t care less. It works for me (at least for the moment). But I recognise that others – particularly decision makers – need to hear more than that. Twelve months ago I wrote a post, which asked, Do you tweet out on a limb? – with some suggestions on how to convince colleagues of the value of Twitter. That particular battle is on-going – although for me, Cory Doctorow nailed it earlier in the year.

The real value of Twitter… is to keep the invisible lines of connection between us alive

These days – above all else it seems – I am asked whether you can be personal (as opposed to private) and professional in social media? While Dawn Foster has written eloquently around this subject on her blog, there is generally a good deal of uncertainty about how to represent the charity brand personally – so yesterday I asked my Twitter friends about their experiences (see the bullet points a bit further down).

It must be said that on the whole, charities are gradually giving their staff more visibility online – none more so than the always refreshing charity:water – who positively celebrate their employees with a blog ‘category’ all of their own. Other organisations prefer to maintain a Twitter ‘list’ of tweeting employees – although even this is by no means a straightforward ask, and more than one person told me (privately) that they had to stop their charity employer from adding them to a staff list, citing their tweets as “too political”, and potentially compromising.

Of the 200+ people I ‘follow’ on Twitter who work for UK charities, I’d say a minority actually name their employer – with a handful carrying the stamp of approval of a Twitter ‘handle’ that is ‘on brand’ – e.g. Colin Butfield (@Colin_WWF), Head of Campaigns at the conservation and sustainable development charity. Also in that category include @onekindMK, @redspesh_oxfam, and Carolyn Miller @MerlinChiefExec.

What I do know is that I much prefer to follow real people than a corporate charity brand. Over time, everyone who wishes to, can participate. These voices may evolve into a charity’s social ‘tone of voice’ – the aggregate of all their staff – and become a vital aspect to their brand.

Back to the question. Steven Buckley (@stevenbuckley), Head of Communications and Brand at Christian Aid, shared the following with me…

[It's] Difficult to say anything that could be perceived as contrary to org policy and hard to let off steam about internal challenges. On balance I think a personal / corporate public profile is a good thing (credibility / opinion etc) but will admit that there are times when I’d like to say something about an issue – ‘chugging’ is just one thing that comes to mind – but I end up staying schtum.

A few people told me they give quite a bit of thought about what they do and don’t tweet about. Some admit to composing a tweet and, then thinking better of it. I’ve consolidated the feedback I received* into this brief list:

• Include a disclaimer in your profile;
• Common sense should always prevail;
• Don’t tweet what you wouldn’t want to see in print – or your mother to read;
• Keep it clean (a few people advised against swearing);
• Try to stay clear of controversial topics – or at the very least refrain from using inflammatory language.
• While your views are your own, bear in mind what you say could reflect negatively on the charity’s reputation
• Take care not to announce a new initiative before the ‘official’ word is out, and if in doubt leave it out, or seek advice (even though embargoes are so last century);
• Do not say anything that may damage relationships with corporate partners, suppliers, and other charities
• Be transparent – if responding to any work-related social media activities always make a disclosure.

I’d say that is a pretty good list. What do you think?

There are a few things I would also recommend charity leaders consider seriously…

• Begin from a position of trust;
• Don’t outsource your charity’s ‘voice’;
• Don’t make social media another silo;
• This is more than just a question of adoption – which is not enough on its own. You want those who ‘get it’ to collaborate with others;
• Build up the digital capability of your organisation – this should be endorsed as an HR objective;
• The digital capability that comes on-stream needs to be rolled into the brand
• Allow staff the freedom to be themselves – at least those who are already comfortable in their own skin;
• Avoid jumping in with both feet; many staff will already be fearful of getting involved. Rather consider carefully how you can signal a gentle suggestion of permission – “We’re cool about you tweeting” sort of thing;
• Recognise that much of the value in Twitter stems from its immediacy and the ability of staff to report and share what they are experiencing right in front of them;
• As a general rule, social media is best done by those closest to the frontline, already talking about your work – i.e. contextual conversations that might lead to an action, rather than something staged;
• Capture good examples of Twitter use that catch your eye, and share. This will help create a humanising effect that will invite staff to be part of an internal community.

That list is longer than what I had first intended. I guess it’s not that simple. But it is imperative; imperative that charities seek to build on the passionate community they (hopefully) have right under their noses: their People. For in the end, it’s all about the people.

Above all, charity leaders should recognise and encourage the ‘currency’ of connection that cements relationships and sparks new collaborations. Indeed, the best way to protect and embed the brand is the distribution of trust and the transfer of skills to the wider organisation. And as the internet for many has become a tool for everyday life, so charities should work to make sure every member of staff feels comfortable using it as part of their role – not least to allow for the free flow of ideas and to encourage innovation that often thrives in the grey spaces between ‘silos’.

Talking of which – I’ve witnessed how Twitter (among other things) can close those spaces between otherwise siloed employees – in a similar way to how Tom Peters describes the benefits of “manipulating the physical space” within organisations.

* Special thanks to @kanter, @AnnieGoss, @seidld, @medavep, @missnpatel, @lucycaldicott, @abougu, @benrmatthews, , @jacquiobeirne, @RobmDyson, @suefidler and others who asked to remain anonymous.

The 8th NFPtweetup will be held on 15th September 2010, and further information on this and previous events is available at www.nfptweetup.org.uk. As always, kudos to beautifulworld and JustGiving for sponsoring and supporting this event.

Here’s a link to the photo set on Flickr.

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.

A long, long time ago (in internet time)… in fact, exactly six months to the day before the first ‘tweet’, a Category Four hurricane they inappropriately named Wilma slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico. In a matter of a few hours, most of Cancún’s resort beach had been sucked away and dumped on the sea bed. Serious stuff.

It was around midnight on Friday 21 October 2005.

Three weeks later, on 14 November in London, I spoke with Gabriela Rodríguez Gálvez, Tourism Minister for Quintana Roo, the state that is home to Cancún, Cozumel, and the Riviera Maya. As I wrote later…

We discussed the challenges ahead. I expressed my belief that traditional PR and marketing methods are losing their grip on customers as we take recommendations from each other.

Secretary Rodríguez seemed to agree, and she stated:

You cannot predict the future but you can be prepared.

“Definitely,” I nodded. So I encouraged them to start a blog. Tell people what’s happening, I said.

I wasn’t hopeful. I decided there and then to have a go myself (what was I thinking? I lived 5,000 miles away in the SW of England… or “Little Mexico”, as we like to call it). I even ‘mapped’ out some basic ideas on the train home after speaking with the Minister. I wrote down what the purpose of the blog would be, which would later become the about page when we went ‘live’ on 12 December 2005.

Four days later, Secretary Rodríguez was quoted in a CNN.com article as saying:

…it’s very important that the tourists know exactly the status of Cancún, because we don’t want them to expect something else and then have frustrated tourists.

No blog was forthcoming; just a megaphone. Wait for it: The Mexico Tourism Board pumped US$5m into a gimmicky glass-sided “Promobus” filled with sand, palm trees and bikini-clad beachgoers which roamed the wintry streets of 21 US cities, interrupting Christmas shoppers with the message “Cancún is open for business”.

Well, it was a plan. After all, they had always done it that way.

I got to work. I viewed every photo uploaded to Flickr tagged “cancun”, “playa del carmen”, etc., and invited people to add images to a Flickr group. I cross-checked the documentary evidence with the news I gleaned from hotel concierges or plucked from the wires. And yes, it became an obsession. Over the next five months, I estimate I dedicated over 500 hours to updating the blog.

And I guess that’s the first lesson: never ever underestimate the lengths that some people will go to collaborate with strangers to uncover the real story!

The blog became the only source of information on the beach reclamation project and you need only scan a few of these comments to see how keen people were for the clarity they were not getting from their hotel or tour operators!

So what else did we learn?

Now is too late

A big part of being prepared for future storms (or for that matter, any ‘crisis’ event) is to establish – in advance – the best way to inform people what is happening. This way, search engines will already have picked up the blog before any crisis kicks off. Speed is critical. Blogging in this context is a continuous record of facts and corrections of errors in near real time. Questions need answering quickly and accurately (truthfully) to slow speculation and knock down rumours convincingly. You can always add detail as it is verified. The State Tourism office went into damage limitation mode and instead relied on the webmaster to upload woefully inadequate information onto a web page.

In whom we trust

The ‘audience’ (I’m reaching for a better description) is integral to the story. How about inviting half a dozen smart people (who can write a bit) to blog through the hurricane season. Digital cameras were commonplace four years ago, but cheap point-and-shoot video cameras were certainly not. They are now increasingly ubiquitous. I can only imagine how this would have been amplified many times over had Twitter existed in October 2005,

Hello, is anyone out there?

I would have liked those working directly in the travel industry (hotels, tour operators, etc.) to have taken advantage of the blog – connected with it, and participated in the conversation. I was pretty well known to the Mexican tourism authorities, having been presented with a writing award by the Tourism Secretary in 2003. I contacted over twenty representatives in London and in Mexico. I met with a wall of silence. Not one reply. Not a single acknowledgement of what we were doing. Whatever you do, reach out to those who seek to be your advocates.

Head in the sand won’t stop the backchat

The job of PR was changing fast even back then. They can have a conversation with their customers – and potential customers – via comments and posts to bulletin boards. They can enjoy the value that comes from listening to what people have to say. Marketers need to understand that their job is more than simply ‘bums on seats’ and selling ‘product’. They are now marketing ‘conversations’, and they need to join in themselves. Participation is marketing.

Indulge me for a moment and allow me to use a travel metaphor: To fully understand the value and culture of social media, it is best to participate as a ‘traveller’, and not as an occasional tourist. It can be uncomfortable at times, but less so if you are well-prepared. Know before you go, and if the expertise does not exist in house, ask for help.

No news is good news… or is it?

Not necessarily. I recall one hotel which sent me a photo of some of its staff with their backs to the Caribbean Sea. I was able to locate a photo taken from almost exactly the same spot (on Flickr), but pointing in the direction of the hotel, which was badly damaged. Even those hotels which escaped with only minor damage, or none at all, should have said as much on their websites. Otherwise, we’ll just assume the worst.

In the words of Dan Gilmour:

Tell the truth. Tell it quickly. Tell as much as you can. People crave a genuine, human voice in times of crisis.

Thousands of people visited the blog. Very quickly it became clear that many were not going to be put off from travelling to Cancún for a holiday. I believe that this was the greatest failure of the travel PR people. They failed to grasp that by encouraging conversations about on-going developments (which was in fact largely a positive story following the disaster of Katrina), the blog meant that people travelled better informed and with sensible expectations. By their absence, the tourism authorities in this particular story turned a drama into a crisis.

So that’s the story. Nearly four years on, I remain enormously proud of what we achieved together. To be totally frank, looking back over the comments left on the blog brings a lump to my throat.

The web truly became social for me over those few months.

My only regret is that although I still visit Mexico (with family and my camera) every 18 months or so, I’ve not written a single article about Mexico since mothballing After Wilma. I’ve moved on, I guess.

Cue sunset.

Do you work for a charity? Do you use Twitter?

I’ll put the question I posed in the title another way:

Do you ‘tweet’ ‘under the radar’… or seek management buy-in before you start?

This is one of the questions we’ll be asking on Thursday (the 24th), when it will be the turn of my friends at Breast Cancer Care to host the fourth NFPtweetup.

When the very first nfptweetup was held in November 2008, you could pretty much squeeze everyone who ticked both the ‘charity’, and ‘Twitter’ boxes into the cosy upstairs room in the Coach and Horses in London’s Soho.

Less than one year later, and you are too many to mention. Many UK charities (or at least many individuals within charities) have adopted Twitter and like me have no doubt been surprised, confounded, and delighted in equal measure.

There are many great examples of Twitter success; I signposted a few good examples in a short and sweet piece I wrote for London Twestival earlier this month. Beth has done better elsewhere.

On Thursday I’ve agreed to facilitate a group break-out session around convincing colleagues of Twitter’s value?

Tweeting charity CEO, Gary Williams of Sound Seekers is in no doubt. He told me (in less than 140 characters)…

[It] has to be about organisational goals. Specifically, it has to be about building a richer conversation with stakeholders, potential supporters.

So, there you have it.

But what if you’re not lucky enough to have someone like Gary as your CEO and want to get internal buy-in? Should you go under the radar of management in order to first build a compelling and coherent business case (rather than a vaguely-defined idea) and make your ‘apology’ afterwards? Or do you prepare a 20-page strategy document – as Neil Williams did to convince civil service colleagues of the value of embracing Twitter. (Neil’s PDF template is well worth downloading by the way).

Now for me personally Twitter is the best thing since sliced bread (with the possible exception of Flickr and meeting my wife). It’s of enormous value to me. I’m with Danah, who I think described Twitter as “a social filter, flushing good stuff to me.” That’s it right there.

Plan or improvise?

But what problem does Twitter solve if you are a charity? And how do you capture the value from the relentless flow from people who would like to connect with you. It’s certainly more than a numbers game. As Joanne Jacobs points out:

Social media influence is best measured by network effects analysis, not popularity.

Takes a bit of time and effort then.

So do you plan or improvise? Can you plan *too much*? Arguably, you cannot nail down a strategy in an environment of such accelerating turbulence. You have to be ready to jump on opportunities (if you’ve left some slack in your budget). Maybe just trust your instinct and use some basic principles as a guide instead.

If you do run up against the buffers trying to convince ‘non-believers’ in your organisation to experiment with Twitter, we can all learn from Katya Andresen’s wise list of tactics to employ (written with social media in mind, not just Twitter)…

1. Change the subject:  If you’re having a debate over the value of social media [or Twitter], you’re having the wrong discussion. The discussion should be about your organisation’s goals – with web 2.0 being the means, not the end (see #2).
2. Make it about what your boss already wants: Don’t position your web 2.0 idea as a social media initiative; frame it as your initiative to support your boss’s goals, in your boss’s language.
3. Make it about the audience: A good way to depersonalise the web 2.0 debate is to make it about your target audience’s preferences rather than a philosophical tug of war between you and said boss.
4. Sign your boss up to listen: Set up Google Alerts and TweetBeep for your boss, so she or he can see that there are already many discussions about your organisation going on online.
5. Set some ground rules:  Set a social media policy for your organisation, so it’s clear how to respond to what you’re hearing – and what types of initiatives have internal support.
6. Start clear and small: If you’re going to start an initiative, make it a small one with clear goals so you know how to measure success.
7. Report, report, report: Share every little bit of progress and give your boss credit for it!

A pretty good list – even if I do balk a little at kowtowing to “your boss” quite so much! I’m hoping we can come up with our own list on Thursday.

I’ll give Neil Williams almost the last word on this. Neil says one of the benefits of having the [20-page] document in his armoury is

To get buy-in, explain Twitter’s importance to non-believers and the uninitiated, and face down accusations of bandwagon-jumping.

After all, microblogging is a low-barrier to entry, low-risk and low-resource channel relative to other corporate communications overheads like a blog or printed newsletter. And the pioneers in corporate use of Twitter by central government… all started as low-profile experiments and grew organically into what they are today.

Anyway, if you’ve registered for Thursday’s event – I’ll see you there. If you haven’t (and it’s already fully booked), you can follow the proceedings online.

Once again, the event is being sponsored by JustGiving (see Jonathan Waddingham’s summary of the nfptweetup story to date) and Beautiful World (who’s co-founder, Rachel Beer came up with the whole idea in the first place).

You had better believe it when I say of all the events I attend regularly… this is my favourite. I get a chance to spend some face-to-face time with some very good ‘online’ friends.

I captured this awesome cloud during a short family holiday in Northumberland last week. I like it a lot.

I guessed it was cumulus congestus but checked with Gavin Pretor-Pinney of The Cloud Appreciation Society:

“Yes, indeed. With a crisp summit like that, it had yet to mature into a Cumulonimbus, at which point the top freezes and looks more blurry. It’s a beauty.”

Feel free to use the larger version for presentations (or whatever).

I was invited to give a so-called “masterclass” [cough] at the Social Media Exchange in London this week. (This is me setting up and ‘delivering‘!)

You may already know that I’m a huge fan of Flickr. I’ve remained loyal since 2004, and despite some recent ups and downs (thanks, Yahoo!), the Flickr community continues to build great things, such as The Commons, which I talked a little about on Monday, and which has it’s own passionate supporters.

You can view this deck on Slideshare, but this time I thought it would be appropriate to upload the slides (as images) to Flickr! I think they’re easier to read, but you can see for yourself!

The plan had been to save enough to put down a deposit and first month’s rent on a flat in London, and start the next chapter of our lives together here, where we paint our houses the colour of bad weather. But the crippling peso devaluation in December 1994 kicked that idea – and our immediate aspirations – into touch. We had to start all over again.

So there we were, in Taunton (where my parents live) on a wet and miserable January morning. Gicela picked up what must have been Issue 5 (or thereabouts) of Internet magazine from the shelves in WH Smith. The rest, as they say, is history. Faster than you can say World Wide Web Consortium, we were both enrolled on the EU-funded electronic publishing course at Hoxton Bibliotech. I was whisked along by Gicela’s enthusiasm for technology, as I have been pretty much ever since.

In early 1996, Gicela started work at The Guardian New Media Lab, which was led then by Bill Thompson. She later joined the small team at Microsoft who launched Expedia in the UK, before moving to a web start-up called e-garden, which faded and died as the dot com bubble burst. I’ve fished out this interview in Computer Weekly, from that time.

Gicela was born in Toliman, high up in the heartland of Mexico. As a young girl she used to gather up an armful of avocados and chillies harvested from her parents’ garden, to sell in the town plaza every Sunday morning. Some years later, just before we met, she graduated as an electronics engineer – the only woman in her year. She stayed on to teach, and I recall that she later shared her lab (on the very jungly edge of a Pacific coastal town) with tarantulas, as well as many less handsome male colleagues. Take my word for it, teaching electronics to a class full of young men in Mexico is no beach holiday.

So here we are, a decade and a half later. Gicela, thank you for the journey and happy fifteenth wedding anniversary. I’m so proud that in their mother, our two daughters have such a wonderful role model.

Love and respect. Forever.

Follow @gicela on Twitter.

Find out more about Ada Lovelace Day.

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.

After finishing this list and glancing back at what I have written, it becomes obvious to me that all of it helps me stay grounded, and to keep my balance and perspective.

I went for a brief walk in Clifton on Saturday afternoon. You can view the slideshow on Flickr.