Community Management

2May

Murmur: SMS, Badges and Location

Butterfly Bridges, created by Natalie Jeremijenko’s X-Clinic, have spun me into idea flurry. Last night I attended her Strategic Lab (Slab) presentation on Measuring the Common Good in Smart Cities. She is teaching and shaping biodiversity in new urban frameworks. Civic action activities like this and placemaking really show the potential of how we can build community in new and creative ways.

Murmur, SMS + Badges + Location

It is no secret that I’m location-obsessed. While maps are storytelling devices and are not an end in themselves, there is a connectivity to how location and storytelling provide us with common space. The Emergency Hack Labs project attempts to connect SMS, Open Badges and Placemaking to help people during times of emergency. The goals include providing volunteer engagement and peer-to-peer thanks. I wrote about this previously in Open Badges in a Crisis.

Map/Location projects with a true plan to connect the online to the offline are the most sustainable. It is more amazing some of the creative SMS campaigns that give voice. These projects during times of crisis are busy and important windows into what is possible and where some of the opportunities exist. But, we should be building them outside of emergencies and morphing them to local language and context.

Murmur is a Toronto project that uses SMS to connect people to location for stories. You can simply call a number listed on a sign in a particular place. The recording places a story or poem. The thing that has always struck me about this project is that people share and they learn the power of location. What if Murmur was installed in post-conflict zones or risk-prone regions? Local communities could curate the stories and teach in community centres. And, what if Murmur existed when a disaster or emergency happened? Would there be a difference in the community if people already felt comfortable with that style of non-threatening, trusted network program? It could start as a creative and art project, but then change gears to be a recovery and healing project to help with storytelling, remembrance and support. This is all theoretical. Technical, privacy and security issues would need to be addressed. But, expecting people to trust location and report stories with no historical community process for this is always a hurdle. Another scenario is: What if Murmur or its SMS kin was turned into a Volunteer peer-to-peer thanks model like Emergency Hack Lab?

Surely, this has all been done before? What examples can you share? I want to dig in more to understand how we can make location and online storytelling tools realistically connect online and offline during times of crisis.

So, thanks to Butterfly Bridges. With all this thinking, I am going to the park.

20Apr

When Birds of a Feather Map Together

[Cross-post from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team blog.]

All spring we’ve been thinking about how to grow and support the HOT community. We know that we need to improve support to keep up the momentum of the last year while balancing quality great work around the world. At the State of the Map US event, we held a HOT BoF (Birds of Feather) session with over 45 participants. It is a small section of the wider global community, but it gave us a chance to see old friends, meet with partners and potentially engage new mappers.

Our conversations touched on recent activations, how to get involved, types of community members, teaching tools/methods, partnership engagement, working with imagery providers and, of course, UAVs.

How to Get Involved:

Join OSM, visit LearnOSM.org, watch MapGive videos
Join HOT mailing list, IRC
Pick a Task from Task Manager.

HOT’s community is gearing up. We have been doing some deep tissue analysis on how to improve in our HOT community Sprint. We recognize that there several distinct groups within our community who have particular needs that are unique to that group. These core types include connectors/teachers/organizers, mappers (many types), partners/mission supporters, techies, and, lastly, those involved in the business of mapping/data consumers/supporters.

Activations

HOT has been activated many times in the past year with the largest activation Typhoon Haiyan (Philippines). The wider community works with official and unofficial partners to respond such as the American Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontieres, USAID, HIU, CartONG, and the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery. Some session feedback included that HOT needs to get better with a structured owners and workflows for contact while capturing the partners needs.

To improve the quality of data, we need better activation specific training to help compare before and after imagery sets, plus local context guidance. One participant advised that they would like iD (the main editing tool at OpenStreetMap.org) with a swipe function to see the before and after imagery. For remote mapping, there needs to be more training tools to help improve the first edit. But, there needs to be a validation process. While it might be time-consuming, it might be beneficial to have a Tier 1 – 4 process to improve quality checks and provide mentorship. Mentorship is actually already happening, but this would allow us to formally recognize leaders more. Map Roulette might provide a way forward on this to be able to pull out the data that needs a second or third review.

UAVs

From imagery to drones, trying to solve the equation of how to get quality and as close to real-time data was very much on our minds. HOT has received some UAV imagery but has much caution in getting involved in UAV data collection as… there are problems with getting clearance for airspace, and technical work to patch together a mosaic for tracing. Add to this the complexities of liability issues and the risk to volunteers on the ground who could be accused of espionage (as has happened to other humanitarian volunteers). The level of resolution is an issue. We are currently looking at buildings and infrastructure – but there’s a lot more to look at that have : what if UVA derived detailed imagery was made available? What scenes would be made public to all parties? Who would be making vulnerable? What about all the privacy and security issues? What about the safety of the vulnerable should a drone be tampered with or crash.

The Sexy, Unsexy stuff

In terms of documentation, just like the wider Humanitarian field, HOT needs to build a research environment to create case studies from end to end. These need to include items like how to make something repeatable. HOT also needs a research arm to help tell the stories and analyze the progress to help guide any changes.

HOT needs are project managers for the tools and products that we produce within the community. All of our products needs to be translated and up to date. These folks are most welcome to join the Technical Working Group.

The Sexy, Unsexy stuff

Some of the unsexy things (thanks Robert Banick for coining it) that are needed are: documentation, policy, health and safety and more. Our friends and members from the Red Cross advised that we publish internships and volunteer roles on our website to a wider outreach. We have many mappers in our network, now it is time to grow the support areas.

Building Map Literacy, One Edit at a Time

One the other end, Map literacy is hard to do in an emergency. Proactive map projects like HOT Indonesia show that this type of knowledge sharing and capacity building is much more effective done in advance. The same methods apply for our Humanitarian organization partners. As we working more pre-disaster, we’ll have better data about the risks – the balance of working on basemapping vs. damage assessment will shift and this will change the game.

One day we’d like to have all the active community participants and Board members in the same room. Until then, we are very lucky to HOTties meet and share. HOT’s community is just a small corner of the wider OpenStreetMap community. We are fortunate to have opportunities to meet. Thanks to the HOT BoF participants and State of the Map US for giving us a place to connect.

Some Resources

Authors: Heather Leson and Mita Williams

Images are in the Public Domain via the Noun Project

12Apr

State of the Map US: Building Community

What can every community learn from OpenStreetmap? Often community managers particularly in OS communities cite OSM and Wikipedia as the top models to compare.

At State of the Map US, there is a whole track to share best practices. John Firebaugh (Mapbox) and Kathleen Danielson (OSM US) gave great talks on their experiences. It is a good thing they are recorded as I’m adding them both to my list of Community is hard and beautiful resources.

Community management and stewardship

In the past year, OSM has incorporated a number of big changes including implementing ID and changing the look/feel of the website. While paid staff (John) helped curate and design the process, the projects were community-driven and transparent. Listen to the talk for more in depth context and outside resources. Here are some of the core points:

Work in the open and be transparent

Over communicate

consult, consult

Set bounds

Call for cloture

Be patient

So, at a time of change in a number of communities, we should really heed John’s sage guidance, and, of course, remix for our own context.

(Side note: organizations need to hear this loud and clear. I am very keen to see this actually occur in every community. Over the years, I’ve seen so many teaching moments. As community managers and organizers, we can only do our job to the truest form of this type of feedback if allowed to be free.)

Resources:

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Building offline and online

Community starts with us online or in a room. A few hours into SOTMUS and I am even more bonded to the project, have caught up with old friends, met some new ones and feel inspired to learn/do more. Kathleen spoke about the importance of getting together locally. She provided tips and guidelines for community building and event planning. A few key points:

save community, save world OSM
Every community is unique
Take care of yourself
Community scales -up or top down

One topic that Kathleen raised is her distain for discourse loops via mailing lists. Another commenter mentioned their dislike of wiki(not always updated). I guess we could call this the old wars for communities(as one friend opines): mailing lists vs. x (x=forums, irc, wiki etc). As far as I am concerned there is no one source of truth. We need to use all communication tools to reach community where they are. Tall order, but as John rightfully pointed out: over communicate.

12Apr

State of the Map US: OSM in Biz and Map Roulette

Finally, it is spring. What better way to wake up brain cells than spending the weekend with maps, map nerds and ideas.

For the morning sessions, I attended sessions to consider the true potential of business and technology in the OpenStreetmap community and the wider network.

Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Designs uses OSM for half of their map projects. Giving back to the community, Stamen provides some of their beautiful designs for free (eg. Watercolour). They served 250 million free tiles in March 2014. An example of the extensibility of OSM is the potential to add a layers of useful information on a map highlighting the park than just the roads. (They did a National Park project which used OSM which included custom pins.) The potential of OSM in business, according to Rodenbeck, is to financially viable, more exposure and paying it forward.

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If I was a funder or a developer with spare time, I would invest ASAP into helping MapRoulette.org build a mobile and localized process to grow it internationally. Imagine the potential in a very mobile, global space. Every community should learn from them: easy interface, small task, clear and solid mission. The tool serves easy errors/bugs to fix. They focus on accomplishment and rewards. As we think about how to grow community and support for OSM, the window to success can be seen from the recent Connectivity errors map Roulette. The tool served up 40 000 map errors which messed up the intersections and the ability to create routing maps. The community repaired these within 6 weeks. In the future they may do a leaderboard or better stats in the future. Right now there are two core developers and they could use help

Martin of MapRoulette advised that the following are key to creating a good challenge:

1. make it armchair: Tasks that can be resolved by just looking at data no local knowledge

2. Small ask, brief time allotment: Tasks that can be easy to fix -taking seconds not minutes

3. Watch the tangents: Fix one thing, load and move onto the next task

Contribite:
GitHub.com/osmlab/maproulette

About the Event: Stateofthemap.us

All the sessions are being recorded so you can watch the talks after Monday.

(Photo: cat in Cherry Blossom trees (Washington DC), April 2014)

9Apr

Toolkits Sprouting up

Toolkits are important for any project, but should be embedded into software or on a usable website. The other day I was shopping for personal business cards, so I hopped onto Moo Cards. As any software developer or community manager knows, you are always “on” when it comes to great work. What do you see in other products, communities and programmes that you can learn from and potentially grow your own projects better. Moo Cards really inspired me by taking a process and making it user-friendly and fun. Simplicity at its best.

I’ve created, reviewed and advised a number of toolkit projects. While at Ushahidi, we helped take the important toolkit research and embed it into the design for the next Ushahidi version. End users can and should contribute to and ever change software to serve their purposes. We took the Ushahidi toolkits and remixed them for the Kenyan elections using Atlassian Confluence wiki software. This way the documents can be more sustainable and remixable.

Toolkits everywhere

Lately, it seems that every ICT or social technology programme is booting up a toolkit project. Why? Well, there are gaps in process, gaps in software and, most of all, big opportunities to learn and share. I like to think of toolkits as the new handbook, but often well-written in clear language that is easily translatable across domains of knowledge. We are in a toolkit frenzy. Even I’ve even written before about the Community Manager toolkit.

I think that we have a lot to learn about building toolkits that have the following attributes:

Easy to use
Translatable/Localize ready
Remixable (on github or a wiki)
Plain, Clear and concise text (eg. web copyediting)
Easy to learn
Delivers to many audience levels across domains (eg. types of users from different fields)

The next time I am building a toolkit, I am going to use the Moo Cards Test. If it can address those elements, but still serve the end goal, then great. It is hard to serve so many masters and audiences. Given some of the core missions of development or technology for good toolkits, it is worth the effort to communicate right.

Recent Toolkits

There seems to be a launchfest around new toolkits lately. It is super exciting to review them. From open data to open development to evidence-based research to building better social innovation, these projects have you covered. The best part is that all the projects are open for feedback and continue to improve based on community input.

DiyToolkit by Nesta – designed for development practitioners to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results.
Open Data for Resilience Field Guide (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery)
Info Activism shares best practices in Evidence Based Research and activism (Tactical Tech)
Guide to Safer Journalism from Internews
Open Development Toolkit (School of Data) (Disclosure: my Open Knowledge colleague is working on this project)

Happy learning and doing.

(Photo: Tulips from my garden (last year and soon to be this year.))

7Apr

Spring renewal: Pysanky and Community

One of my favourite rites of spring is to create Pysanky with family and friends. It is about renewal, taking off the wax and welcoming the rebirth of colours. As with most years, I host a pysanky day with friends and family. This year I decided to create a pysanka in honour of a community I admire that needs to renew. I’m answering Emma’s call with an art kitchen party.

Emma Irvin, Mozilla Rep: “I think blogging, or sharing positive messages about Mozilla and community would be most welcome. I agree the more the merrier – we know what brings us to Mozilla, reasons we contribute (or work) for Mozilla, and those perspectives and stories tell the Mozilla story better than any single attempt ever could.”

About Pysanky:

Pysanky is a traditional Ukrainian and Eastern European art based on many designs and stories. Some designs are very religious eggs such as the 40 triangles while others design pagan art or even modern art. It is up to the artist to remix.

Imagine you have a fragile egg in your hand, you use a stick, beeswax and colours to create a simple or intricate design. Then, after layers of colour, you wipe off the wax by the light of candle. Revealed is this egg – handmade by you. Often it takes hours to do. In the end, your home smells like honey and beeswax. You’ve created something fragile and beautiful. Smiles abound.

Reflection in photos:

1. Mix your dyes

2. Prepare your workstation

3. Get your decorating station ready

4. Design

Colours are added from lightest to darkest. Dip into colours. Each line that your draw with your kitska (stick) using hot beeswax becomes that layer of colour.

5. Be sure to snack on candy

6. Wax off

7. Create something special

8. Share the experience with friends

9. Spread the happy in your neighbourhood

10. Most of all: have fun

About the Mozilla community

Mozilla is one of my community homes online. Truly, as a community organizer, I learn so much which I remix and share in other communities. I’ve participated in some local Toronto meetups. Mozilla Drumbeat which became Mozfest continues to one of my favourite events. I believe in an open web. And, I think renewal to share all the parts of the community will take time, integrity, trust, dialogue and a willingness to build something special together. Mozilla’s global and diverse community inspires me. I am sure that each of us will work to keep building an open web.

Some of my Mozilla moments:

30Mar

Ethics in CyberDialogue

The Internet connect us in so many ways. As we navigate online global activism and data-sharing, how can we find our ethical compass and the core principles across disciplines?

In the Crisismappers wider network, we actively discuss issues pertaining to ethics and digital humanitarians. When should digital volunteers review and assess imagery? Who owns that data? What is the agenda? How do we protect the communities we serve? Which data types should be collected and shared? Which data types should we anonymize or refuse to publish? With new technologies, what are some key guidelines for data collectors, consumers and citizens? Can this data be used as evidence for conflict zones and peace-building? Should it? Citizen Lab are great convenors for wide networks to talk about surveillance, security, and privacy. I am super honoured to be co-hosting a CyberDialogue Working Group. with Meredith Whittaker of Google Research. The sessions will be on Monday, March 31, 2014. One of the ethical scenario groups will review the Humanitarian UAV Code of Conduct (draft) and provide input to this new community of interest.

The CyberDialogue Session: Our Data, Security, and the Digital Commons: What are the Challenges and Opportunities?

The world of Big Data is revolutionizing research, humanitarianism, conflict prevention, open accountable governments, and the work of secretive intelligence agencies. This working group will explore the opportunities, tensions, and challenges of data collection and use in business, government and civil society. What are the data needs from different stakeholders? What are the unforeseen risks, especially security risks, that go along with them? How can we ensure the privacy and confidentiality of our data? Do we need to encourage more emphasis on digital security? What are the ethical and legal issues that need to be considered? What are the tradeoffs and risks?

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I’ll be sure to post about some incites post-event. Note: I am participating as a Board Member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

24Mar

WFA: Work from Anywhere, but Deliver

The Future of Work is on my mind: for individuals and organizations. I get dressed up and goes to ‘work’ every day in my home office or an associated city coworking space. I’ve spent the last 4 years digitally working and/or volunteering for some digital humanitarian and social tech organizations. On my journey to think about how to work better, I’ve been collecting books, websites, blogs and stories all about how others consider the work.

When was the last time you picked up a book about workstyle and drank all of it in a matter of days? Well, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the future of work now tops that list. How can all of us learn from WordPress? Reading about remote working is kind of soothing. The insanity of ducktaping together various tools for global collaboration and basic communications is a microcosm of the Internet. We are a growing oddity of remote workers. A few months ago a dear friend had his job relocated. While the work he does is Internet-based, he has to travel up to 3 hours a day to get to work. Last fall while temporarily living in London (UK), I spent over about 4 hours a day commuting to the co-working space just so that I could have solid internet and co-work in person. The toll was insane. In the past years, I’ve always worked biking distance from employment. This is my continued plan: WFH or bike distance. As a community organizer, I tend to have verbal calls in various timezones. This makes co-working hard on occasion because you need to be at a location at 07:00 ET or take over a board room for a day.

Berkun is hosting a webinar this Thursday. I highly recommend that you read the book and attend. Go! You have 3 days to deliver.

In the Social Policy Forecast by Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, they cite non-profits like Mozilla and Ushahidi:
“They are blazing new paths regarding community accountability and decision-making, cross-border (and-currency) financial management, and multiple layers of reporting. For these organizations, and many to come, the governance requirements of nonprofits – particularly in terms of how decisions are made, how they are reported, who has final say, and to whom results are reported – are more limiting than helpful.”

They go on the highlight the need for the possibility of new governance needs for global, digital, networked civil action. This really means thinking about how we interact and work with communities while getting things done. Their research into the various types of funding and models for sane, stable organizations is just the surface.

Both Mozilla and Ushahidi, like Automattic, have highly distributed teams. There is no one formula for work style or funding models, but each of these bodies of thought are helping me unclutter the “what works” and “needs work”.

(photo credit: Heather Leson (October 2013) The Crystal Sustainable Cities Initiative: Safe and Sound Exhibition)

20Mar

Faith in Using Technology for Good

Have a little faith is what Neelley Hicks and the United Methodist Church remind us. Today they have launched their paper about their experiences in using Tech for Good.

“Technology is a tool for economic and social development that can aid in the reduction of poverty and change lives.” – Larry Hollon, Chief Executive, United Methodist Communications

I’ve talked with Neelly and her team a number of times throughout the last year regarding their Crowdmap. The experience taught me that we should all be partnering with faith-based organizations to help them learn and use technology for good. The United Methodist Church is using Ushahidi, Frontline SMS and other technical tools. Community organizers, especially CrisisMappers or ICT4D programme managers, know that the best projects include matching offline and online networks, training and planning, testing/iterating, having a strong infrastructure, taking care of your volunteers and doing something meaningful. As the United Methodist Church proves, faith-based organizations and technology are a great match. Neelley’s team taught me much about their sense of community and dedication to do great work. They have global, active community members who give their time and energy. Great community programmes should consider collaborating with local community centers (eg. Harassmap’s best practice) and local church groups (eg.United Methodist Church’s best practice).

Need convincing? Here are their #ICT4D Best Practice – 10 Tips: (follow their hashtag #ict4dBP)
#1: Put people first.
#2: Understand the local landscape.
#3: Design using appropriate tools.
#4: Prototype, fail, iterate, succeed.
#5: Build in #monitoring & #evaluation.
#6: Consider privacy & security.
#7: Enable user feedback loops.
#8: Remember community is critical.
#9: Build for sustainability and scale.
#10: Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.

Congratulations Neelley and UMC team! Keep inspiring us to do good with purpose.

Resources

Get the full Using Technology for Good report.

The United Methodist Communiciations Press release.

18Mar

Community is hard…and beautiful

We are polygamists. Seriously, do you belong to one community? I like to think that a number of us are all involved in many communities both locally and globally. For community leaders, we know that this journey is both beautiful and hard. We want to encourage active participation in a collaborative method.

Community Management – my top 5 go to list

Over the past months, I’ve had a few conversations with folks just starting out in Community Management, especially HFOSS Communities. They all ask for resources on how to get oriented and meet others. There are Community Manager Linked In groups and regional organizations. This is my top 5 go to list for community managers:

1. Community Roundtable
While the audience is focused on corporate Community Managers, they provide rich data with regular Roundtable newsletter and annual community survey.
2. Community Leadership Summit
OSCON is the largest OS conference in the world. The Community Leadership Summit happens right before it. I find that HFOSS groups still get a ton of value. You can read our notes from last year.
3. The Art of Community
Jono’s book, The Art of Community, is fantastic.
4. Dave Eaves – Django talk
Community is negotiation. I tend to re-listen to Dave Eaves’ Django talk (video) at least once a year. There are books on negotiation, but he really nails the nuances of global open source community.
5.Opensource.com
There is a wealth of articles on here about community engagement and open source projects.

Tech 4 Good Organizers

I started a google group for folks who lead in HFOSS or Business (corporate social responsibility) who run tech 4 good events or communities. There are a number of groups out there, but I feel like there is a gap for leaders in Tech 4 Good. It is just getting started but you are welcome to join: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tech4goodorganizers. We are stronger if we learn and engage together.

How to analyze and build a community:

Another question I often get is how to activate community. People have a finite amount of time and energy. If you build spaces and interactions, they will stay. To me the basics of service design are core to building community. Do something that is relevant, build ‘With‘ the community not only ‘For‘ your goals, and plan for the community to change you and your organization.

Everyone has their own methods, but here is a list that I tend to share:

1. Collect Data
What is the current state? Do some interviews with stakeholders, ask questions, ask to talk with people who have left the community, survey and use the stats (website, newsletter, blog, social media).
2. Do analysis and decide future goals
Assess the community maturation model. Decide what the community wants and build goals of organization with that in mind. Here are some tools to help: Diytoolkit and Reboot’s Service Design model.
3. Test ideas with the community. Prepare to adjust.
4. Start small for wins for engagement. You will know what these are because you’ve done your research and tested out the spirit of the community. Think in the frame of Dan Pink’s model of Drive: Autonomy, mastery and purpose.
5. Prioritize, co-brain and deliver
6. Delegate and co-lead
7. Global means that translation is part of your plan, not an afterthought.

(ps. Foxclocks and timeanddate are your event planning friends.)

Some Tech 4 Good Issues

I’ve been in a number of communities both volunteer and paid. These are some of the harder issues to consider. While I don’t have the answers, I think it is appropriate to share and see if we can learn to solve and adapt together.

How do we get to the next 1000 active community members. We know that the potential of small asks, big tasks is the key to community engagement. Communities like Zooiverse are schooling us on capacity, value and relevancy. How can we learn from them? (See Patrick Meier’s post on this topic)
Early adopters can sometimes scare, deter new strangers by their sense of ownership and entitlement. Building a community that serves all the types of community members, cultures, languages and, personality styles, is a tall order. But, it is necessary.I have been thinking of ways to build to the silent doers. (see my post on the Welcome Committee)
I think the social economy/social entrepreneurship model of NGOs builds accountability and transparency. Maybe it is my tech start up background, but I think that NGOs need to consider shaping to serve citizens with feedback loops and new funding models. In the last while, there have been a number of coalition and partnership funding programmes. This gives me tremendous hope in the adage that we are stronger when we build together.
There is an uncomfortable digital scramble for open territory which sometimes goes against the values of open and global collaboration. While it may be naive, I think there is enough digital space for everyone. This is not a gold rush. Being open and sharing will win. I trust in the Economic Impact of Open Source (Business model) transferring to other open communities. (see my presentation: Coining Global(especially the notes))
Building duplicate efforts hurts the opportunity to build with each other. Remember: Community is a beautiful gift in which people share their intellect, time and energy. We owe these folks so much as their interactions and contributions are a gift. The key is that they add value and that we, in return, reciprocate and thank them.

What are some of the community building conundrums you have encountered? Solutions, Ideas?

(Photo: The Lumiere path in Montreal, Heather Leson, January 2014)

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