I’ve had a few people asking about the Social Media Game that is mentioned in the “Web 2.0 Tools for Facilitating Knowledge Management” training event that I ran earlier this week. The game was originally developed by Beth Kanter, David Wilcox and Drew Mackie, and has undergone a number of iterations and refinements, resulting in the “Social by Social Game“, which is the version I use for these training events.
The Facilitator’s notes for running the game can be found on the Social by Social website, reproduced below with a few modifications for the way that I run it.
You can play the Social by Social game in two ways – as a simulation around a situation that you invent, or “for real” in relation to a place or an organisation
In each case the sequence is much the same:
Delegates are asked to describe or invent a situation (a problem, or project) that they are facing. I try to encourage delegates to think about a real work-related situation as opposed to inventing something, otherwise later stages of the game can become a little abstract if there isn’t a real-world context. This then is the scenario.
Delegates are split into groups of not more than eight people, around a theme or set of issues. Then each group:-
- Defines what they are trying to achieve: the goals.
- Identifies the people they wish to engage, choosing methods from a set of cards. Cards have budget points as costs – so you have to prioritise.
- Think about the communication and engagement methods that are needed to achieve the goals, and choose the social media tools or other activities from another set of cards.
- Review the plan that is being developed and think about the resources that will be needed, and the roles to carry it out.
- Choose a number of the characters who figure in the scenario, and tell the stories of what happens to them over some months, or longer.
- If there is time, the Facilitator can throw in crises and opportunities for the groups to consider – e.g. key resources being pulled from the project, or funding being reduced.
Numbers
You can play with any number from a few people upwards. Ideally you need two groups, so six is a realistic minimum to get useful discussion. If you have large numbers you just split into lots of groups. The effective limit is set by the time it takes for groups to report back – but there are ways around that: see below.
Facilitators
One or two people, respected by participants, should act as facilator(s). They should ensure that participants are briefed; organise the room; manage the flow of the game without being directive; and make sure that any report back and final discussion relates to the purpose of the exercise. They should check that people are clear about the purpose of the workshop, and help them reach useful conclusions.
Equipment
You will need flip chart paper, preferably on easels, marker pens, one set of cards (engagement, tools, resources, roles), blu-tack, post-it notes. If you want a record, you’ll need a camera for photos and maybe video.
Establishing goals
Give groups a planning sheet, and ask each group to write into the top left quadrant their goals – what they are trying to achieve in the situation they are addressing.
- Identify who you wish to engage
- Ask groups to think about the different interests they need to engage with, and make a note of those in the top right quadrant.
Using the cards
Offer the groups the cards that they will use to plan their engagement, and then to develop their plan using the different tools and activities. I split the cards into the various categories and issue them in the following order as the group’s plans develop:
- tools and methods (yellow marking)
- engagement activities (green marking)
- roles and resources
Each card has a “budget” of effort/cost – 1, 2 or 3. Set budgets so groups can’t choose all the cards: say, 10 for engagement, 15 for tools. Ask groups to stick engagement cards top right, tools bottom right … adding their own ideas on blank cards or post-its, and amending cards if necessary. They are really just aids to conversation … so encourage as much discussion as possible, not just a mechanical exercise of playing the numbers.
After groups have chosen engagement and tools cards, ask them to consider what resources they will need, and what roles.
Reporting back
At this point, invite groups to report back. That could be to the room as a whole or just to the group that provided the challenge, if that’s the way things were set up.
By posting the flip chart sheet to a wall, then inviting people to wander round and review. That’s a good way of doing things if you have a lot groups, and limited time.
Variations of the game
- A slight variation of the game is that after the scenario and goals have been defined, the “challenge” is swapped with another group, i.e. the other group are now acting as consultants to the first group in delivering a solution that meets their goals, and vice versa. This can lead to some interesting dynamics and forces each group to think about how they present their recommendations to their “customer’ group.
- The Facilitator can introduce Resource cards where delegates need to consider how the project will be funded and maintained.
I’ve attached copies of PDF’s containing all the material for running this game, that is:
I’d be interested in getting feedback from anyone who has facilitated or took part in this game and whether it achieved the objective of thinking first about the problem and then what tools are required, and not (as so often happens) to implement the tools before really understanding what problem they are meant to fix. I’d also be interested to hear about any other variations of the game that people have developed.
Below is a photo I took of the output from the game from the “Web 2.0 Tools for Facilitating Knowledge Management” training event.
Doing final prep today for the Web 2 tools training course that I’m running on Tuesday 29th March. Key outcomes for the training are:
- An understanding of social networks and social media and the overlap between personal and professional identities.
- An understanding of the barriers to knowledge sharing and collaboration and how these can be overcome.
- Creation of a personalised social computing toolkit to support on-going learning and development in collaborative tools and techniques.
This will be highly practical, hands-on training event, since I firmly believe that you can’t really ‘teach’ social media. The best way to learn is by doing!
The programme includes:
- Social networks, privacy, digital orientations and the increasing overlap between personal and business networking.
- Risk and rewards in on-line engagement and collaboration.
- What does effective collaboration look like and what skills are needed to be an effective collaborator?
- Micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter) and its role as a business tool.
- Social Media Game – a fun game which introduces delegates to the various social media tools, how they can be used to solve real business problems, and the pros and cons of the deployment of these tools.
- The power of social bookmarking for knowledge sharing and collaboration.
- A practical introduction to Web 2.0 collaboration tools, including Google Apps, Blogs and Wikis.
- A practical introduction to social networks and social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare.
- Tools and techniques for developing and fostering successful communities of practice.
- Building a personalised collaboration toolkit.
Venue for the event is:
Etc. Venues
The Hatton
51-53 Hatton Garden
London EC1N 8HN
I’m looking forward to meeting the delegates – a good cross section representing both public and private sectors. It should be a good day!
The call for speakers and papers for the Online Information Conference 2011 (29th November to 1st December) is now out.
We want to hear from people and organisations that are using knowledge, information and technology in new and interesting ways. We are looking for exciting, innovative projects and lessons learned from the introduction of Web 2.0 tools and techniques. We want to showcase people and organisations that are leading the way in how we generate, consume and make sense of information in an increasingly complex world.
Do you have a story to tell?
- Where are we going with apps? Will the closed Apple ecosystem or the open Android market dominate this space?
- There has been a growing hype over the last few years around open and linked data but what has ‘the semantic web’ actually delivered in terms of value to users and organisations?
- Are you using mobile technologies to deliver information services in new ways to your users?
- Social media is now ‘business and usual’ – what strategies and technologies are you using to be creative and add value in your work environment?
- How are librarians working with end users over social media platforms to design and deliver services together?
- eBooks have exploded and are changing the way users consume content. What new business models are proving successful? What are the opportunities and challenges to libraries and publishers?
- What skills and competencies will the information professional of the future possess? How are roles evolving how and how are you staying relevant?
Then why not share it with others?
The Online world is waiting to learn from the pioneers who have made it work. This is your chance to be seen as one of the leaders – with your story reaching a global audience from over 40 countries. Please check the the details for submission of your paper, and make sure you don’t miss the deadline of 6th May!
Call for Speakers 2011 Submission Form
What would we do without serendipity? I was looking for something else on the internet just now and (re)stumbled across this from Dave Snowden. It’s from a blog he produced in 2008, but as relevant today as it was then. Worth sharing I thought.
- Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can’t make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can’t determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case.
- We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted.
- In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts.
- Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information.
- Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. When my young son burnt his finger on a match he learnt more about the dangers of fire than any amount of parental instruction cold provide. All human cultures have developed forms that allow stories of failure to spread without attribution of blame. Avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitation of success. It follows that attempting to impose best practice systems is flying in the face of over a hundred thousand years of evolution that says it is a bad thing.
- The way we know things is not the way we report we know things. There is an increasing body of research data which indicates that in the practice of knowledge people use heuristics, past pattern matching and extrapolation to make decisions, coupled with complex blending of ideas and experiences that takes place in nanoseconds. Asked to describe how they made a decision after the event they will tend to provide a more structured process oriented approach which does not match reality. This has major consequences for knowledge management practice.
- We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down. This is probably the most important. The process of taking things from our heads, to our mouths (speaking it) to our hands (writing it down) involves loss of content and context. It is always less than it could have been as it is increasingly codified.
Continuing with my posts about the Knowledge Hub (Beta release in April 2011):
I wanted to touch on another of the key features being delivered by the new system, the ‘Social Graph’ and ‘Activity Stream’. These are intimately related and hence it makes sense to discuss them as one feature or capability.
Social Graph
A social graph in its broadest context is the mapping of everyone and how they are related. The term is usually used to refer to online identities, e.g. as used within social networks.
As of 2011, the largest social graph in the world is Facebook’s, which contains the largest number of defined relationships between the largest number of people among all websites due to the fact that it is the most widely used social networking service in the world. (Source: Wikipedia).
Concern has focused on the fact that Facebook’s social graph is owned by the company and is not shared with other services, giving it a major advantage over other services and disallowing its users to take their graph with them to other services if they wish to do so, such as when a user is dissatisfied with Facebook. Google, has attempted to offer a solution to this problem by creating the Social Graph API, released in January 2008, which allows websites to draw publicly available information about a person to form a portable identity of the individual, in order to represent a user’s online identity.
You can see what your Facebook social graph looks like by adding the Social Graph App. Mine looks like this:
If you’re a member of the LinkedIn network (an open standards network), you can generate your own social graph here.
Mine looks like this:
The first release of the Knowledge Hub will not support a graphical representation as shown in the examples above, but the system itself will maintain the data representation, which will be used for managing the activity stream described below. A graphical representation will be considered for a future release.
The Knowledge Hub is an open platform that is adopting Open Standards wherever relevant and possible. We will be exploring the use of Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) standards for creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do. FOAF defines an open, decentralised technology for connecting social Web sites, and the people they describe.
Activity Stream
The activity stream is a chronologically ordered list of activities of ‘friends’ or contacts that have been mapped to the ‘Social Graph’ for each individual user. Facebook users will no doubt be familiar with the activity stream (referred to as the ‘News Feed’ in Facebook) showing what their friends are doing and saying. Only people who are in the user’s social graph (i.e. those who have been confirmed as ‘friends’) will show up in the activity stream.
Any and all actions are logged in the activity stream such as writing or commenting on a blog, uploading a document or photo, confirming attendance at a meeting, joining a new workspace or group etc. The system will automatically create an activity stream (or ‘digital footprint’) for each user, based on the actions they carry out. Each user will see an aggregated stream of activities for all of the people in their social graph, and for the workspaces that they have joined. Filters will be available for showing the activities for a specific user (who must be either part of your social graph or a member of one of the workspaces you have joined), or updates from the members of a workspace to which you belong, or just your own updates (a ‘Me’ filter). It will also be possible to block updates from a specific user, e.g. if you find their activities irrelevant or overwhelming!
So, what’s the benefit of all of this?
Activity streams are ubiquitous to any social network; I’ve mentioned Facebook, but they are also present in LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Twitter and just about any other social network you can mention. The activity stream provides information and intelligence about events that are likely to be relevant to a user and the broader workspace.community members. The user’s social graph is built up over time and includes people who the user has specifically identified as ‘people of interest’, for example:
- a shared interest or hobby
- working for the same organization
- working in the same location or region
- having a similar job
- an expert in a topic you are following
- a thought leader
- etc.
We expand our networks and our knowledge by social interaction, i.e. we learn from others. When we’re in meetings we pick up lots of information from the tacit conversations we have with our colleagues. The activity streams we see in these virtual spaces are fulfilling a similar function, albeit far more powerful, because we can pick up on ALL the conversations and activities from a group as opposed to just the people we have had the time to talk to in a meeting.
For example, how useful might it be to know that your colleague had just joined a community of practice that you were completely unaware of, but given you both have similar jobs is likely to be as relevant to you as it is to your colleague? Or to know that another colleagues have just posted information about a conference that is looks highly relevant to you?
There are many other tools, facilities and capabilities embedded into the Knowledge Hub, but in my opinion, the most powerful and useful of them all is the activity stream, because it provides the ‘glue’ that links otherwise unconnected actions and events together, providing both a lens and a filter on the things that are most likely to be of interest to you.
For the next Knowledge Hub post I’ll talk about some of the exciting developments around the App Store.
