Stephen Dale's Posterous - Passionate about the social web, collaboration, learning, sharing and trying to make sense of an increasingly complex world.
I’ve just completed my first ‘Hot Seat’ session for the IDeA Communities of Practice. My specialist subject “The Knowledge Hub”. I think I managed to answer all of the questions correctly, and was encouraged to see that we had over 470 page views during the 2-hour session. I was encouraged by the interest in this project from such a wide variety of users. Some challenging questions as well – all available at the Facilitation Now! conference 26th Feb.
However, the problem is not information overload but rather filter failure, according to Clay Shirky.
In traditional knowledge management the focus has been on quantity, not quality. Organizations have struggled to collect all the knowledge that their workers possess.
The goal was simply to collect all the individual knowledge in one big common knowledge base.
Very few companies had success with this strategy, but the ones that actually had success was facing a different problem: information overload .
Welcome to the London Datastore | London DataStore – This is where we’ll be releasing all of the Greater London Authority’s data for all Londoners to see and use free of charge.
Releasing GLA data is just the beginning though and we’ll be using our connections and influence to request and cajole other public sector organisations into following suit.
I think that most community of practice (CoP) facilitators or moderators will recognise the challenge in getting conversations started within the community. The ratio of ‘lurkers’ to ‘contributors’ is one of the standard indicators that should be measured for any CoP in order to gain a better understanding of the dynamics and health of the CoP.  It’s unreasonable to expect that everyone will be a contributor, and the fact that members don’t contribute doesn’t mean they are not getting some value from the CoP. However, there’s nothing wrong in encouraging more contributions, and I’ve seen various incentives used to increase contribution rates.
I thought this particular scheme being implemented for the local government CoP platform was particularly inventive, and I’ll be interested to see how successful it is (I have access to the platform-wide metrics). This message was sent out to all registered users of the CoP platform:
Dear CoP member,
It hasn’t been long since communities of practice welcomed its 50,000th member, yet we’ve hardly had time to register such a momentous milestone before that number is actually closer to the 55,000 member mark. And with a pool of over a thousand different communities to choose from, the potential benefits to the local government and wider public sector of those members sharing what they know grows significantly every day.
It’s no surprise to hear that the secret behind the platform’s success is its members – you! Without you, there would be nothing to share, no one to share with, and the variety and vibrancy of many communities wouldn’t be close to the level they are today.
To celebrate reaching this milestone, we want to say thank you by giving something back to all you sharers out there.
So, from February 16, we’re beginning a new campaign, Everyone ’s a sharer! where the first hundred CoP members each month to make their very first contribution on the platform will receive a small-but-tasty appreciation of our gratitude, with further reward going to each month’s top sharers, as well as to those members who make the highest number of contributions.
We’re also looking into starting a recognition system for those who make a lot of contributions to communities. In the coming months, members who make over 50 contributions will see a bronze heart appear on their profile; 100 contributions will be silver; and 150 gold.
So get involved by contributing as much as you can to your communities, and share your knowledge. Because after all…
… Everyone ’s a sharer!
Hopefully this post might stimulate some more ideas on how to increase contribution rates from those involved in CoPs. I would add this mantra for CoP facilitators/moderators: “Know who your contributors are….and look after them!”
National Knowledge Service Homepage – The mission of the National Knowledge Service, set out in the strategy of NHS Connecting for Health, is to ensure that every decision made by a patient or a healthcare professional can be supported by best current evidence. Knowledge is like water and access to clean, clear knowledge is a right. Knowledge, like water, needs to be managed and every healthcare organisation needs to manage knowledge, even more carefully than they manage money. Resources to support these activities are available at the National Library for Knowledge Management.
Explaining social media to senior managers by Michele Ide-Smith – This week I had the opportunity to present to senior managers in my organisation (a local authority) to explain what social media is, how it is affecting us and why we need to develop a social media strategy. The key message of the presentation was:
“People are having conversations about us online, but we are not part of those conversations.”
For me this was a great opportunity to get buy-in from the very top of the organisation to the development of a social media strategy. We already have a project underway to develop a social media framework (strategy, policy, guidelines and tools) which has arisen as a result of demand from services and growing awareness of the usage of social media tools by citizens.
These are my links for February 7th through February 12th:
Social Media Case Studies | The Parallax View – There’s more and more case studies on social media, web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. Keeping track of them all is an on-going project. Here’s some of the ones I’ve been looking at lately. This is not meant to be a definitive list, it’s more like a set of bookmarks, but if there’s a really good one I’ve missed out, please add a comment* or ping me on Twitter, on my remiss and I’ll add it.
OneSocialWeb – Creating a free, open, and decentralized social networking platform. – The purpose of onesocialweb is to enable free, open, and decentralized social applications on the web. Its protocol can be used to turn any XMPP server into a full fledged social network, participating in the onesocialweb federation. The suite of extensions covers all the usual social networking use cases such as user profiles, relationships, activity streams and third party applications. In addition, it provides support for fine grained access control, realtime notification and collaboration.
Social Media is growing in its adoption across all areas of society, including Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). To gain a current picture of this rapidly developing area within UK Higher Education Institutions, research has recently been conducted into the Challenges, Usage and Benefits of Social Media within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
Prospect talks to the father of the world wide web « Prospect Magazine – On 5th January, just before the public launch of data.gov.uk, Prospect’s Tom Chatfield spoke to Tim Berners-Lee about how Berners-Lee helped the government to open up public data. On 7th January, Chatfield spoke to Berners-Lee’s friend and colleague Nigel Shadbolt about his role in the project. The edited highlights of both conversations are below.
Linked Data | Linked Data – Connect Distributed Data across the Web – Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods. More specifically, Wikipedia defines Linked Data as "a term used to describe a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF." This site exists to provide a home for, or pointers to, resources from across the Linked Data community.
LocalGovCamp London – An event for anyone interested in social media and digital engagement, and its relevance to local authorities.
LocalGovCamp London – part of a series of UK-wide LocalGovCamps
Most seven year old's are unaware of the devastation going on around them, let alone what they see on TV. Yet one little boy decided after watching the horror on the news he wanted to help raise money to send to the haiti children and people who are now homeless and hungry.
He originally decided £500 but after publicity of his challenge hit local news, he has so far raises £35,000.
