Social Reporting the Internet Governance Forum: Multiple Knowledges

I’ve just come back from a fascinating five days working with a team of young Egyptians and fellows of the Diplo Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme at the 2009 Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Amongst other things, one of the key things I was up to, working with Pete Cranston and Dejan Dincic, was training and supporting the youth team and Diplo fellows to use various digital online tools to ‘social report’ the IGF. The work was funded IKM Emergent – a project focussed on new perspectives on Knowledge Management (KM), particularly looking at ‘multiple knowledges‘.

In the process of working with a diverse international group at an incredibly diverse and complex event, we gained many insights into social reporting for multiple knowledges – and I’ve tried to unpack some of my reflections and learning below:

Social Reporting for multiple knowledges
One of the great transformations brought about by online digital media is that just about anyone can now create and share rich media to offer their own view of events or issues – and this media can be published where many of the worlds population with an Internet connection will be able to see it. As Deirdre from St Lucia pointed out, it’s not long ago that getting more than one news channel’s coverage of even major events was near impossible.

The main sessions of IGF09 were well recorded, with UN Webcasting in video or audio from every session or workshop, and live transcripts of many sessions available. Formal write-ups of each session will be available in due course. However, with social reporting our goal was not to duplicate these formal records of the event, but was to offer each participant, and particularly the youth team and Diplo fellows (henceforth referred to as ‘the social reporting team’), the chance to report on elements of the event of interest to them. And to do that, we were using simple, near-instant, online social media tools.

The idea of multiple knowledges is of course a complex one, and has many layers – but at IGF09 our core focus was on just one element – supporting the capture and sharing of different perspectives on the event from different actors in the event.

Reflection 1: Train in techniques, as well as tools

Few of the social reporting team we were working with had used twitter, online video or blogging before as a reporting tool. Before the IGF got started, Pete & Dejan ran a short afternoon’s training with some of the social reporting team, explaining how tools like Twitter worked, encouraging team members to sign up for accounts, and getting particpants to practice using Flip camera digital video recorders. They also introduced the team to the Social Reporting at the IGF handbook we had prepared.

However, whilst the handbook does offer a short introduction to the concept of social reporting itself, and mentions a few practical techniques for video interviews, it was only later in the week that we started to do more to demonstrate different techniques and to talk about ‘conceptual tools’ for creating social reporting content.

For example, the five interesting things about approach can be a very good technique to help new bloggers move away from replicating a ‘list of things that happened’ in a session, to capture a ‘list of interesting elements’ or a ‘list of controversies’ for social reporting.

It would be worth exploring in more depth the range of different techniques (and templates) that can help new (and experienced) social reporters to capture multiple knowledges in their reporting – and to explore how best to train and equip social reporters to choose and use these approaches.

Reflection Two: Let reporters choose their tools – and then build up multi-tool use

A social reporter who is comfortable with many different digital tools, and who is covering a particular conference theme, may start by sharing some insight or quotes from a session by Twitter. They may follow up by catching the panelist who the quote came from, and asking them to share more of their views in a short video interview. They may then upload that video interview, keeping a copy on their computer to edit into a later remix, and when the video is available to view online, they would use Twitter again to alert others to the fact it has been published, actively alerting (by using the @username convention) anyone who expressed an interest in the earlier twitter messages on this topic. Later in the day, when things are quieter, they may embed a screen-shot of the original tweet, and a copy of the video, into a blog post in which they draw out a key message from the video, and link to other blog posts and websites which relate to the topic under discussion.

But – getting from no use of social media tools and no experience of social reporting – to that sort of platform-hopping mixed-media reporting in just a few days is a tall order. In fact, rather than trying to get new social reporters to be platform-hopping from the start, a quick show-and-tell, or hands-on demo of the different tools available, followed by an invitation to each member of the social reporting team to choose which tools they want to explore first, or which they feel most comfortable with, seemed to generate far better results.

Reflection Three: It helps to know your audience

It’s tricky to write when you don’t know who you are writing for. It’s a lot easier to carry out a video interview when you have a sense of who might watch it. And it’s often easier to allow yourself to be present in your own reporting when you know your main audience will be a community you are part of. We all present ourselves differently to different audiences, and so to capture multiple knowleges, it can be useful for a social reporting team to think about multiple audiences.

We didn’t get much time to explore with our social reporting teams who they saw as the audience for the content they were creating, nor to think about the different spaces the content could be published or aggregated to in order to reach out to different audiences – but I have a sense this could be a valuable additional part of training and preparation for social reporting. At first we found all the reporting was talking place in English, but we encouraged our social reporters to create content in whatever language they felt most comfortable with, or that they felt was most appropriate for the content in question.

There were a number of ‘remote hubs’ following the IGF via the web cast, and participating in discussions through Skype and Webex, and in our debrief we’ve reflected on how it may be possible to pair social reporters up with geographical or thematic remote hubs – giving each reporting a strong connection with a specific audience.

Reflection Four: Quick clips cannot capture all knowledges

The Internet Governance Forum is a complex event. Not only does it deal with some complex issues (socially, technically and culturally), but it also is comprised of a vast array of actors, from governments and industry, to individuals and civil society. As a non-decision making body the spirit is neither of consensus, nor of conflict – and black and white statements of positions are rare. The presence of all different shades of opinion, and of the experience of actors from many different countries and contexts, appears to make IGF the idea place to explore multiple knowledges. Yet at the same time, the complexity of context and content makes capturing the multiple perspectives on IGF in ‘social media snippets’ a challenge.

In video reporting, the social reporters needs to have a reasonable domain-knowledge in order to be able to ask questions that illicit insights from interviewees. In quick twitter based reporting, capturing the most relevant points without reducing them to soundbites can be tricky – or can lead to only the most ‘tweetable’ and no neccessarily the most interesting or important ideas being shared. In blogging, the lack of definitive positions to ‘side with’ in writing up a session or theme can mean the social reporter needs to pick a path through many different subtlely different perspectives and to express them in text.

Reflection Five: When the event ends, then things are just getting started…

On the last day of the IGF I hastily put together this ‘Social Reporting after IGF’ handout for our teams – as we realised it was important to make sure that, for the social reporters, the end of IGF09 was not neccesarily the end of their use of social media tools to capture and share ideas. (I’ve also created a ‘Social Reporting’ group over on the Diplo Internet Governance network). Having invited many of the youth team, and the fellows from Diplo, to sign up with various online spaces, including Twitter, for the first time, we also had a reponsibility to make sure they were aware of the implications of continued use of these tools.

But ensuring new social reporters know how they can continue to use social media tools to capture content and create networks is only part of the legacy of social reporting at an event. With the creation of a significant amount of content, there is some obligation upon us to do something with it.

During the IGF we were using a public NetVibes page as an aggregator of all the content being published, but this does not act as a longer-term archive of the content, nor does it allow us much flexibility to curate and contextualise the content gathered.

So, over the coming weeks we’ll be thinking about ways to aggregate, archive and curate the content we gathered – and thinking about whether any content can continue to be used in useful ways over the coming year.

There is little point in equipping people with the skills to capture multiple knowledges, and going some of that capture, if the skills are left un-used in future, and the content captured and the knowledges it expresses disappear entirely into Internet obscurity.

I am sure there are many more reflections and learning points from other membes of the team – which they will undoubtedly share in due course.

To find out more about Diplo and the Internet Governance Forum visit: http://www.diplomacy.edu/ig/ and http://www.diplointernetgovernance.org/

To find out more about Practical Participation – my work focussing on Youth Participation and Social Technologies visit http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk

And to explore social reporting more in the context of IGF – please join the Diplo Internet Governance communitie’s Social Reporting group here: http://www.diplointernetgovernance.org/group/socialreporting

Delete – The Virtue of Forgetting in a Digital Age

[Summary: New book provides great discussion starters for youth groups on online content sharing and digital footprints]

Last week at the OII we were treated to an enchanting presentation by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger on his new book ‘Delete – The Virtue of Forgetting in a Digital Age‘. You can listen to an interview with Viktor talking about the book here.

The key thesis of the book is that, whilst in the past, forgetting was the default. Humans forget things. In a digital age, remembering is default. Computers, with cheap storage, can keep a copy of just about everything.

It is that new default, the default of remembering, that lies at the heart of many of the social challenges the Internet might present. The Facebook photos from teenage years that surface during job applications. The news report of a misdemeanour that appears top of Google searches for an individuals name, even though the midemenour took place years ago. The digital footprint that only grows and never shrinks. The comments on message boards that come back to haunt you.

This default of remembering is technical, legal and social: the technical choice of service providers to keep content indefinitely; the legal defaults that mean an individual can’t easily request information about them to be removed from what is now a very accessible public record (compare the news report indexed online and available with one click of a search button, to the news report which, though stil theoretically accessible years after being published only available on microfiche); and the social defaults of sharing content about other people without their consent, and of, as an individual, not going back to audit, and potentially remove some of, the content one has put online about oneself.

In ‘Delete’ Viktor explores a range of different responses that could move us back to a better equilibrium between ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ – and at least one involves us each changing the way we think about keeping and deleting the digital content we are responsible for.

Youth work potential
‘Delete’ offers a great entry point into thinking about the Internet in youth work contexts. Not least

Using examples from ‘Delete’ to discuss online content with a youth group
- Ask group members when they last deleted content online;
- Ask if anyone has ever asked a friend to delete photos, videos or comments online;
- Talk about whether the default should be remembering or forgetting, and what the pros and cons on each side are
Exploring your ‘Delete’ policy
- If you use digital media with your youth groups, how long do you leave it online for?
- How do you agree this with the group? Is it a discussion point?
- Memories are not usually there one moment, gone the next – but they fade and become trickier to access over time. How can your archives fade, rather than be deleted? (For example, you might remove individual photos from a project website, but keep group photos after a set time; or you might replace full project details with a project summary on the web – but keep a digital copy of content in the project’s archives).

If you use ‘Delete’ as the basis for work with young people, make sure you share the story of what you did with others over on Youth Work Online.

Don’t Just Buy. Do. Reflections on Fair Trade Futures

[Summary: Reconnecting Fairtrade with activism, thinking about Fairtrade and data, and how social reporting can transform events]

The Fair Trade Futures conference that took place in Oxford on Saturday has been well reported and captured, but, before I head over to start tidying up and re-posting the fantastic content created by Amplified on the main Oxford Fairtrade website, I thought I would add just a few quick reflections on the day.

Don’t just buy. Do.
As inscribed upon a banana by @oxfordsing, this ‘slogan’ captures the tension at the heart of the Fairtrade movement right now, and a thread running throughout the day. As Fairtrade reaches the mainstream, the connection between Fairtrade and activism, and the importance of linking Fairtrade with Trade Justice can become dilluted. Fairtrade is about building ethics into purchasing decisions, but, it’s also about building ethics and justice into trading relationships. That was a point made well by People Tree founder Safia Minney who spoke of how we need to push companies to respect principles of Fairtrade throughout the production process, not just in the inputs they buy.

The challenge, for the Fairtrade movement, is being in the mainstream, being a set of standards, but also being the first step for people on a pathway to engagement with wider global issues.

Data, data everywhere
I spent a lot of the day in conversations about the digital dimensions of Fairtrade. After a morning including presentations from Dorothea and Ian of the Fair Tracing project, and inputs from Steve Bridger and Pete Cranson on social media and Fair Trade, we spent one of the afternoon open space sessions talking about ‘Fair Trade 2.0’.

Asides from discussions about how social media could lead to greater disinter-mediation of supply chains, we also discussed the transformation of trade as being ‘trade in stuff’, to being ‘trade in stuff + data’. That is, the move, led by retail giants like Wall Mart, to enable every individual product in a supply chain to be tracked from origin to consumption, with vast collections of data on products and customers collected and created. How does Fairtrade, which is in one sense, a very simple bit of data for consumers about the conditions in which a product was made, engage with this environment?

As firms may be compelled to collect more data on each product, to come into line with safety regulation, how can we ensure ethical information is embedded alongside the other data that may follow a product on it’s journey? And how can that information be made meaningful and useful to time-pressured shoppers? Are ethical criteria needed to account for fair trading in the data that might travel with a product – so it does not become a source of commercial exploitation? And can the rise of a data-rich supply chain be subverted in the cause of ethics?

Amanda Gore, who was blogging with the Amplified team, has further notes on the discussions here. This was a session full of questions – but one raising issues I’m sure will be cropping up more in discussions of Fair Trade in future.

Amplified Events
There were quite a few experiments going on with the Fair Trade Futures conference. It was the first time many of the organising team had experienced any Open Space sessions, and for most delegates, the first time they had been at an event being actively digital reported.

I was a little nervous about the digital reporting – as I’ve seen it work well at technology events, and in youth events, but I’ve not experienced digital / social reporting in action with a community for whom social media is not part of the everyday. Yet it worked fantastically. And by the end of the day, many delegates were won over to the potential of social media to help capture, curate and continue conversations started at an in person event.

There is still much to learn about how best to use social reporting to catalyse online community (for example, I would love to work out how best to equip delegates new to social media to try their own blogging and twittering from sessions, without spending too much time training them up, or distracting them from participation in face-to-face discussions), but the team from Amplified certainly demonstrated that we need to be adding digital dimensions to many more events outside the social media mainstream.

(Co-incidentally, Amplified are currently setting up as a non-profit, able to marshal teams of digital reporters to all manor of events, so if you’ve got projects and events coming up that could do with an online edge, I would certainly recommend getting in touch with the Amplified team.)

Where next…
Fair Trade Futures was the follow on event from a Fair Trade conference held in Oxford five years ago. I have a feeling it may not be quite so long before the next events are held here – and I would love to see an event taking place soon dedicated to the digital dimensions of Fair Trade. No plans yet… but if you might be interested, do get in touch…

Fair Trade Futures: Online Coverage Today

If you’re reading this before 6pm on Saturday 7th November – then head over to the Amplified website to catch some of the blogging, tweeting and AudioBoo coverage from the Fair Trade Futures conference – taking place throughout the day.

If you are reading this after 6pm on Saturday 7th November. Well, you can still head over to see what they’ve captured – digging deep into what Fair Trade means and what the future of Fair Trade is in the niche and in the mainstream, post economic-crisis, and in a digital world.

Fair Trade Futures – Exploring Ethical Trade 2.0 – 7th November, Oxford

456906620 I’ve explored some of the possibilities connected to digital media and Fair Trade on this blog before, but never had chance to get into really good dialogue about the potential and challenges of digitally enabled Fair Trade Futures. So I’m delighted that in 10 or so days time we’ll be devoting at least one session, and hopefully more time with the Open Space discussions in the afternoon, to the topic at the Fair Trade Futures conference in Oxford.

If you’re interested in how the Internet and digital media can be used to…

Bring greater transparency to Fair Trade supply chains;
Create stronger links between consumers and producers;
Support Fair Trade campaigning at a local and national level;

… and you could make it to Oxford on the 7th November – then register for Fair Trade Futures and come to join the discussion. The session on Fair Trade 2.0 I’m convening kicks off around 11, and we’ll hopefully dig deeper into Fair Trade 2.0 in Open Space discussions in the afternoon.

Also at the conference will be themes exploring government’s role in promoting a sustainable textiles industry, speakers from Fair Trade Research and from Fair Trade Businesses, and a Keynote from People Tree founder Safia Miney.

All socially-reported and Amplified by the great Amplified team so even if you can’t make it on the day – you can still get a flavour of the discussions afterwards.

Youth Work in a Digital Age

I was recently asked to write an article for Children and Young People Now on ‘Youth Work in a Digital Age’. The resulting article was published in last weeks issue (15th – 21st October 09) and you can find it on the Children and Young People Now website here.

I’m grateful to C&YPN Editor Andy Hillier for his patience with my tendency to overshoot all word limits in a first draft, and for helping to turn my original drafts into a practical piece for a print magazine.

But, with the luxury of a blog, where running to 1967 words, rather than the allotted 1500 for a spread in C&YPN, I though I would take the liberty of posting here an earlier draft, which takes a bit more a theoretical look at the question of Youth Work in a Digital Age. All comments and feedback welcome…

Youth Work in a Digital Age (v 0.1)

Where can you always find a group of young people hanging out together; chatting about everyday life and about issues that matter; planning an upcoming adventure; reflecting upon all the activities they have recently been involved in; sharing jokes; flirting with one another; having heart-to-heart discussions with their peers; and generally being young people? Ten years ago ‘the youth club’, or ‘the street corner’ might have been the answer. Today it’s far more likely to be online – on Bebo.com or MSN Messenger.

Some people have seen this as a threat to youth work as we know it – but if you had been listening in at the ‘Young people and youth work in a digital age’ conference that took place at Glyndwr University last month, you would have been far more likely to hear youth workers talking about the golden opportunities that digital technologies have created for practitioners to promote activities; to engage with young people; and to generally deliver high quality youth work.

With over 80% of young people using one or more social network sites (5 in 6 young people aged 11 – 25 were users of at least one social network site in a April 2009 representative sample study of 1000 young people by nfpSynergy) and young people increasingly turning to the internet for communication, entertainment and information youth work cannot afford to miss the digital boat.

Made for youth work?

Over recent years young people’s use of digital media has shifted from consuming entertainment and information, to creating and sharing content, being in constant communication with peers, and participating in online communities. With the right support from informal educators, digital media offers the tools and platforms for young people to move from ‘consumer’ to ‘creator’.

Working with young people online, where many of the power dynamics between young people and adults are turned on their head, can, as many workers have discovered, create an environment far closer to the youth work ideal of voluntary engagement. Youth worker Katie Bacon, who has been using the web to engage diverse groups from across Devon in decision making explains: “Online young people are often far more honest and up-front with their opinions, and the presence of the ‘block’ button that young people can use to end a conversation puts them far more in control. It can be challenging and disconcerting for workers, but once you get used to it you can see that it’s voluntary engagement in practice.”

And with social network sites very much based around peer-group interaction and relationship building, it is easy to see the potential fit between digital media and core youth work values and practices.

Even so, digital media tools have rarely been created with a ‘youth workers instruction manual’ to accompany them – so the challenge for youth workers is to work out how to understand, adopt and adapt digital media tools for their practice. It can help to think about three forms of ‘youth work in a digital age’: (1) supporting young people to navigate growing up in a digital world; (2) using digital media tools to promote and add value to existing youth work; (3) weaving the digital media tools into youth work activities – and making the most of the technology for youth work goals.

Growing up digital

Just ten years ago, young people may have only been able to be in social contact with their peers for a small part of the day: snatched conversations between lessons at school, on the way home, or meeting up for a few hours in the evening. A couple of hours spent in a youth project may have been a significant part of young people’s social time. Now, many young people live in near constant contact with peers, sharing text messages, photos and videos from phones, computers and consoles. In this world where communication moves faster, both positive and negative experiences can be ‘amplified’ by digital media; and the divide between those with access and skills to be connected, and those without can widen.

Whilst government backed education programmes such as ThinkUKnow.co.uk are doing important work educating professionals and young people about potential dangers of digital media, youth workers have an additional role in equipping young people not only with awareness of the risk, but also with the resolve, resources and resiliency to navigate dangers, whilst still taking advantage of online opportunities.

That might involve giving a peer group the opportunity to reflect upon the sorts of images, photos and videos of themselves and their friends they are sharing online – and to come to an agreement about what to share or what not to. Or it might involve workers being attuned to instances when bullying might be moving onto the web, and being ready to address the underlying bullying. Starting from young people’s experience of digital media, youth workers need to be supporting young people to become digital media literate, and for many workers that will start with developing their own digital media literacy.

Promote what you do

You can support young people to develop skills and literacy for growing up digital without touching any technology yourself, but if you want to reach out and promote youth work activities to young people for whom the internet is the primary information source then it’s time to log-on. Setting up a blog, for example, gives you an instant (and free) publishing platform where you can share news about your project and details of upcoming events – and within weeks details of what you do should be appearing in search engine results, helping young people discover and remind themselves of what you do.

Facebook Pages, or Bebo and MySpace profiles, can provide a powerful free platform for promoting projects and activities to young people – taking the message to the social network spaces where young people are hanging out. When Denise Drake updates the Tower Hamlets Summer University Facebook Page, the update is featured in the news feeds of over 250 people, all of whom have signed up as ‘Fans’ of Summer Uni. If any of those people comment on one of these updates, then their comment (and the original message) could also be shown in the news feeds of their friend networks on Facebook. News of new activities can spread quickly through the network.

Of course, one of the greatest potentials of digital media is the ability to show young people what’s on offer, rather than just telling them in text. With cheap video hosting and online editing tools – sharing videos, photos or recordings to give young people an insight into what happens at your project is easier than ever.

However, if you try promotion without participation you’re likely to be disappointed. As local authority communications expert Simon Wakeman recently explained in an interview on the Plings project blog (http://blogs.plings.net): “It’s two-way communication – having a one-way dialogue just doesn’t work! Social media blends communications and consultation. You can’t start using social media without being prepared to have conversations online.

Weaving digital media in

Digital media can be a big draw to attract young people to take part in a project. But more importantly, ensuring young people have digital skills is key to support both their participation in social life and education now, and in social life, education and work in the future.

For just about any youth work activity there will be digital media tool that can add a new dimension to it: from using online video clips as discussion starters at a youth club, to using blogging to help young people reflect upon and document an international youth exchange. And as Hilary Mason, Senior Manager at West Sussex youth service recently discovered, when using blogging as a way for young people on exchanges to China and India to reflect on their experiences and share news with friends and family back home – there are often unexpected positive impacts of using digital media: “There was a knock-on effect in the local community – with parents and grandparents who would normally not be using a computer reading and commenting on the blogs. The messages of affirmation to young people coming from family back home with written comments saying ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’ were very powerful.”

In weaving digital media tools into youth work practice there are often decisions to be made about what is published on the web, and how you manage conversations and communication. In the case of young people blogging from China, West Sussex youth service made sure that there were staff back in the UK to check over blog posts before they went on the web, and to address and issues that came up. “One of the main things that came up was comments from parents – we had to remind them that the blog was public communication.”

Getting started

If you’re not already using digital media in your work, then knowing where to start can be tricky. But, as the Youth Work and Social Neworking report (NYA, 2008) sets out – there are four simple steps to going digital.

1) Survey: find out what’s already going on in your organisation & find out about the digital opportunities young people are interested in. Create a ‘community profile’ of the social media spaces young people are active in (there’s no point being on Facebook if everyone you work with in on Bebo). Check what policies your organisation has on digital media, and check what technology you have available.

2) Strategy: choose how you will engage with digital media. Will you discuss digital media issues with young people but without using the technology directly? Will you use digital media as a promotion tool? In face-to-face settings? Or as a tool for online outreach?

3) Safety: check out the safety issues linked with your choice of digital media. Think about possible safety issues and how to overcome them. Most issues can be overcome with careful thought. You can find an overview of key safety issues to consider in the online Youth Engagement & Social Media guide that I’ve been developing here: http://is.gd/3Orsc

4) Skills: give yourself an hour or two to explore the digital media tools you are planning on using. Try them out – or find a colleague who can teach you how to use them. You don’t need to be an expert – just confident enough to learn as you go along, and to identify the issues that may make for discussion points with young people.

Going further

Finding your own route to engage with digital media in youth work can seem daunting, particularly when there is no set pattern to copy. However, digital media isn’t just about youth work delivery. It can also play a part in youth worker’s professional development and learning – and you will find a growing range of supportive online communities, reflective blogs, and online resources to help you explore youth work in a digital age.

Often, starting to use the tools for your own professional development, whether reading and commenting on blog posts from other youth workers, or participating in a focussed network of youth work practitioners such as YouthWorkOnline.org.uk, you can pick up the skills and experiences you need to apply digital tools in your own practice. Hilary Mason was one of the first youth work bloggers from the statutory sector, and for Hilary being able to explore both digital tools and youth work ideas through maintaining a blog at http://ukyouthblog.wordpress.com/ is key: “As a reflective tool it’s huge, both in spending time writing and thinking about what you are going to say.”

The digital world is here. And it’s moving forward at a phenomenal pace. Youth work has some catching up to do – but it also has a key opportunity and offer to make – and hopefully soon we’ll be seeing all youth work as work engaged with the digital age.

Do stop me if…

I’ve just made it to the end of the first week of term on the MSc course I’m taking full time for the next year.

I’m aware that already my writing style is heading off towards the academic and even-more-verbose-than-usual; and the topics I’m exploring day-to-day are getting relatively specialised.

I’ve been wondering whether I should start another blog for study-related content, but I’ve decided for now, to stick to writing here.

But – this blog is for readers as well as it’s writer. I want to make sure that I can get a sense if readers think the blog is getting too technical. Or indeed, not technical enough.

Speaking at conferences before I’ve used the jargon busting red card system, where everyone in the audience has a red card to hold up should the speaker end up off-topic or using too much jargon. Scary for the person on the podium. But it encourage a great discipline for the speaker to maintain clarity and focus. Seeing a sea of red-cards start to shuffle in the audience certainly helps me to get back on track if I’ve mis-judged how to pitch a presentation.

So consider this post to gift you a virtual red card, and to be an open invitation and encouragement to give your feedback and to help keep this blog useful and practical.

The myth of easy engagement. Who should participate and how…

Decisions are made by those who turn up.

Often, those looking to engage people in decision making and shaping services make the shaky leap from the fact that over 70% of people have internet access, to the idea that the internet offers the straightforward opportunity to engage 70% of the people. A few days ago, frustrated by questions driven by this logic, and of the form ‘How many people in our local area are on Twitter?’, Dave Briggs sought to explode ‘The myth of engaging with everyone‘. Dave asks for clarity stating:

The first thing to be clear on is that no one engagement method will reach, or suit, everyone.

The second thing to be clear on, is that you don’t necessarily want to reach everyone, anyway.

Two statements that seem empirically and intuitively sensible. But the argument they lead Dave to is not necessarily so uncontroversial:

My argument would always be to focus on the small number of active, enthusiastic people first.

Whilst there are a limited number of cases where putting the primary focus on the active, enthusiastic people is the right way forward, in local authorities, national government and other democratic contexts we need to think more carefully. The ‘active, enthusiasts’ who leap upon any opportunity to get involved may well be great & capable people – but they may well not have all the ideas, insights, experiences and networks that we need for innovation, change, and the development of engaged vibrant communities. The following post is not a call to reject the active enthusiasts, engaged online and willing to make considerable contributions to civic life – but it is a call to remember that, if decisions are made by those who turn up, those planning and facilitating engagement have a responsibility to make sure they are inviting and supporting the right individuals and groups to be part of the process.

So, who should turn up? Below I’ve sketched out three steps to thinking about who you need to engage, and how to manage that engagement.

This is a quick sketch – and I’m sure the ideas it explores have been well developed elsewhere – so I welcome comments / pointers and reflections to help shape and develop this more…

1) Start from the end
You can’t start planning an engagement process without thinking about why you are looking to engage people. Why you are thinking about engagement, will determine who needs to be engaged, and how.

Some useful questions to ask yourself about the outcomes you want:

Are we looking to make a decision at the end of this process? If so:
- Does the decision need to be decided by a democratic process? Or does it otherwise need some democratic legitimacy?
- Do we already have a mandate or responsibility for making this decision?
Is the goal to make a particular project happen where we already know what that project is?
Is the goal to take action on a particular issue, but without already knowing what action to take?
Is the goal to build a community who can take forward projects and action in future?

And then ask about the sort of input you need. Do you want:

Ideas?
Insights?
Expertise?
Innovation?
People taking action?
Voting?
etc.

The reality is that most engagement projects involve multiple possible outcomes, and multiple sorts of input.

For example, you may want to initially get a wide range of ideas about the priorities that should be set for a £100k pot of local funding; to follow this up with a democratically legitimate vote to discover the top local priorities; to put together a panel who will invite local groups to apply for funding to run innovative projects that match up against the chosen priorities; and to decide who gets the funding and to support them in running projects and making an impact. Each stage of the process answers the questions above in different ways – and so will need to think differently about who to engage and how…

2) Think about who is affected & who should be involved

If you want to engage a local population – you could just put an engagement opportunity up online, and let the people who are interested find out. But, as Mark Pack points out in a comment on Dave’s blog post:

often those keenest on an issue have a different view from those less keen on the issue

Those who self-select to get involved in an engagement opportunity may not represent all the people who should be involved in an engagement opportunity. Of course, who should be involved depends on the sorts of answers you gave to the questions above.

If you want to get the best possible democratically legitimate outcome that respects the independence and self-determination of local communities then you need at least two broad groups of people involved:

(a) People with expertise on the issues in consideration;
(b) People who will be affected by decisions or actions that result from this process;

You could just work with a tick-list consisting of these two items, and check you have people from both categories taking part – but chances are that breaking down category (b) at least is going to prove useful for targeting engagement opportunities and making sure you get beyond the easy-to-reach enthusiasts.

For example, you may decide you need to hear from:

Men & women, of a range of ages and employment situations, who live in different wards where your funding of £100k might be spent.

You may find you can generate a matrix from the lists of different group you want to engage – giving you a tool to check and think about who is engaged so far. For example, the matrix below helps get a rough sense of whether a process is hearing from participants across areas of Oxford, and from a range of age groups and employment backgrounds.

It’s important to note, however, that these are not tick-boxes. You may not necessarily have someone from every category. These lists are tools to help you think about and visualise whether or not you are getting a broad range of inputs into your engagement process.

Engaging some groups is easier than others. Although – as I heard it put at the recent Beyond Twitter conference, that’s not because some groups are ‘hard to reach’, but because from some places in your local area, the council is harder to reach. With a matrix like the above, you can think about where you put your resources, and how accessible the engagement you are creating is to different groups.

3) Think about the sorts of input you allow, and the inputs you are getting

The people you engage are not, unless they have been elected through a suitable process, representatives . Nor, unless you’ve gone through some in-depth statistical sampling, are they representative.

But they do bring something to your process. And knowing what they bring is important to ensure the outcome is as high quality and legitimate as possible.

People bring ideas, insights, lived experience, energy to take action, skills and practice know how and a whole lot more. Sometimes people should be allowed to bring a veto; or to call for a vote on particular issues.

Fascilitating engagement involves looking at these different sorts of input, and getting the right balance at the right time.

For example, you may first gather stories from across an area about what living there is like, and share these stories with the ‘active enthusiasts’ who have time and energy to give in thinking about innovative funding priorities that could respond to those stories. You may invite those affected by decisions about funding to reflect upon the ‘active enthusiasts’ suggestions. You may offer a veto power to local community members. You may seek out the views of specific groups to make sure a decision is well rounded. And you may seek to bring together a large group to vote on proposals. If all the stories and insights come from one group; all the ideas from another; and all the action from another group again – then the risk that your process is unbalanced is big.

Engaging everyone

Many people have had bad experiences of engagement in the past. Some people are not interested in being engaged. Many people face barriers to getting engaged. You can’t engage with everyone all the time.

But whatever you do, look beyond the easy and obvious, to seek approaches that will work, and that will push forward are more just society.

Why engage online?

Where does this leave the argument for online engagement that Dave Briggs was exploring in the post that sparked the exploration above? Well, one avenue worth exploring is how digital technologies can lower the costs of engaging the easy-to-engage, to free up resources to offer substantive support to those groups, who for reasons of structural and systematic disadvantage, may find their input less likely to be otherwise included.