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News for January 2008
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 30 January 2008 |
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| The Journal of Networks and Civil Society Inaugral Issue |
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After frustrating delays, we are deeply pleased to announce the inaugural issue of The Journal of Networks and Civil Society. This is the second thematic issue in our journal series and is intended to complement the previous issue which focused on information technology. Papers include a case study of community wireless networking, the Internet as organizational mobilizer, participatory process for groups of organizations in Bolivia, and the institutionalization of technology in networks of organizations. Authors in the "From the Field" section include: Linda Lehrer, Geoff Mulgan, Margaret Wheatley, Nancy White, Lisa Zyga, and Michael Gilbert. There are also over 100 annotated resources from Nonprofit Online News on topics related to networks and civil society, including Collaboration, Community Building, Knowledge and Learning, Network Analysis, Open Systems, Organizations, Personal Media, Semantic Web, Social Networks, Social Software, and Strategy.
Posted: 1/30/08; 7:18:23 PM # |
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28 January 2008 |
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| Why Work-Life Balance is a Bad Idea |
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After a bit of a hiatus, I am continuing work on The Authentic Organization. The latest piece is something I have wanted to write for a long time: Why Work-Life Balance is Bad Idea. I've done value-driven career counseling for a long time and, however lovely it may sound, the concept has always bothered me.
Posted: 1/28/08; 3:54:40 PM # |
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24 January 2008 |
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| Navigating Soft Skills: Professional Life Skills with Sue Mackey and Laura Tonkin |
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Last year, I had the pleasure of reviewing Living Well, Working Smart, a book on personal and interpersonal life skills by Sue Mackey and Laura Tonkin. I was so excited by the granular, accessible structure of the book that I called them up and said: This should be a weblog!
Navigating Soft Skills is the latest addition to the Gilbert Authors Network. The authors use the phrase "soft skills" to refer to all those critical skills that tend not to be taught, but are nevertheless learned: communication skills, social skills, personal discipline, problem solving, and so forth. These are skills that make or break relationships, careers, organizations, and coalitions every day.
For example, in their recent post on positive and negative attitudes they point out quite rightly how even such a thing as attitude is subject to change through skills that can be learned. They are following in an ancient tradition here, of course, but they are putting this material in personal and organizational development terms. Given how fundamental attitude is to both success and happiness, this is a tremendous service.
Posted: 1/24/08; 1:26:52 PM # |
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21 January 2008 |
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| Google Foundation Grants and Investments |
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To great interest around the net, the Google Foundation's first round of Grants and Investments have been published. They follow from five major funding initiatives: affordable renewable energy, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology, prediction and prevention of health and environmental disasters, information in support of public services, and fueling the growth of small and medium sized enterprizes.
Posted: 1/21/08; 3:43:23 PM # |
| 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies |
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I love research into what stakeholders actually do with our communication, as opposed to what we would like to believe they do. The results of recent eye-tracking studies will no doubt disappoint people who love online publications designed as if they were in print. Christina Laun summarizes this evidence in the form of 23 Actionable Lessons, which include: Text attracts attention before graphics. Readers ignore banners. Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored. One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats. Text ads were viewed most intently of all types tested. Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus. Lists hold reader attention longer. White space is good.
Posted: 1/21/08; 2:09:36 PM # |
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16 January 2008 |
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| Organizational Restructuring in the Age of Networks: February 22 & 29, 2008 |
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As our much-delayed Journal of Networks and Civil Society finally wends its way to publication, we are happy to make another, very practical, network related announcement. We're offering a brand new, two part workshop on Organizational Restructuring in the Age of Networks on February 22 and 29, 2008. Some of the key topics include: how to cherry pick network opportunities for your organization, and the top changes networks bring to fundraising and volunteer management. I'll be covering both long lasting strategic methods and immediately applicable tactics. Like all our workshops, this one will be delivered online and is available in both live and on-demand formats.
Posted: 1/16/08; 2:13:11 PM # |
| Attacking Noise in Chat: Banning Unoriginal Sentences as a Moderation Technique |
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Online community organizers are always asking: How do you maintain and improve the quality of online discussions? Typical strategies fall into four categories: strict entry requirements, moderators, peer rating, and splitting off new groups. All of these have merit, especially when implemented within a clear community building strategy. But I'm absolutely fascinated by an experiment going on at an IRC chat channel called #xkcd-signal (live conversation about a delightful web comic). Essentially, they are Attacking Noise in Chat by automatically banning unoriginal sentences! It's a little more sophisticated than that, so I encourage you to read the article. The results are surprisingly promising!
Posted: 1/16/08; 1:55:19 PM # |
| Social Capital Measurement |
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The Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America has been doing some wonderful work. Some of the most interesting is on the topic of Social Capital Measurement. One of the sad things about social capital is that we have been trained to be blind to when we're destroying it, to overlook opportunities to build it, and to ignore it in our decisions (both as individuals and as organizations). Although I think our mental models are central to this sad problem, we can go a long way toward turning this around through the use of new metrics. Saguaro has developed a number of highly usable instruments and tools for this purpose, including: a short social capital survey form, a social capital toolkit (now in version 1.2), and a program evaluation guide specifically designed for nonprofits assessing their own work.
Posted: 1/16/08; 1:42:46 PM # |
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14 January 2008 |
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| Freaky Nukes |
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The authors of Freakanomics are popular in some circles of the nonprofit tech community. Despite their decidely establishment perspectives, they are hip enough that you would think, when discussing nuclear power, they could come up with less stale targets of blame than Jane Fonda! But that's exactly what they do in a recent NYT Magazine article. In Freaky Nukes, Phil Bereano takes them to task for it in his latest arch commentary on the New York Times and its memes.
Posted: 1/14/08; 3:54:21 PM # |
| Love, Honor, and Thank |
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Recent research shows that successful domestic relationships don't just depend on how partners divide their household chores, but on how they each express gratitude for the work the other one puts in. Given how gratitude in nonprofit organizations often seems expressed only in order to get more out of someone, I would be very interested in seeing this research extended to our sector.
Posted: 1/14/08; 3:36:31 PM # |
| With Friends Like These: Tom Hodgkinson on the Politics of the People Behind Facebook |
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While I love social network analysis, I tend to be less than thrilled by most "social networking" websites. For example, I have a backlog of several hundred Facebook friend requests to which I have yet to respond. Of course, I have never been good at pursuing the latest cool gathering place, whether online or off and privatization of the commons (of which Facebook's walled garden and even its vaunted API is an example) bothers me in general. Nevertheless, I was going to take another look at it in 2008 (and maybe apologize to all those people whose requests I haven't answered), when along comes a powerful critique of Facebook by Tom Hodgkinson. Since one aspect of social networking sites is judging people by the company they keep, I deeply appreciate knowing whos who at the top of Facebook and what they really seem to think of civil society.
Posted: 1/14/08; 3:33:24 PM # |
| How to Bust the Office Bully |
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Last year, the Project for Wellness and Work-Life published How to Bust the Office Bully (16 page PDF), which I found while researching an upcoming piece on "work-life balance". It's really very sensible and goes into enough detail with each of its eight tactics to be genuinely useful. Those eight tactics are: (1) Be rational, (2) Express emotions appropriately, (3) Provide consistent details, (4) Offer a plausible story, (5) Be relevant, (6) Emphasize your own competence, (7) Show consideration for others’ perspectives, and (8) Be specific.
Posted: 1/14/08; 2:59:14 PM # |
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7 January 2008 |
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| Fred Turner's Papers on Cyberculture |
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I recently watched a fantastic lecture by Fred Turner, concerning his book From Counterculture to Cyberculture (which I hope to review). If you're interested in the origins of digital utopianism and you share my concerns about it (while still seeing some democratic promise), I recommend you read a couple of Turner's publically available papers. In particular, take a look at “How Digital Media Found Utopian Ideology: Lessons from the First Hackers’ Conference" and “Where the Counterculture Met The New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community".
Posted: 1/7/08; 7:32:04 PM # |
| Lunch over IP: Tips for Conference Bloggers |
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Conference blogging has definitely been catching on in the nonprofit sector. If you're inclined to do this sort of thing, I highly recommend the amazing Ethan Zuckerman's Lunch over IP: Tips for Conference Bloggers. It's a short, free ebook derived from conversations with some of the best conference bloggers out there and includes tips on a huge range of topics including: tools, preparation, style, level of detail, the use of quotes, providing context, linking, tagging, and the (all important) matter of timing. I'm not a good conference blogger (I like to take too much time for analysis and synthesis), but I am a big fan of those who are.
Posted: 1/7/08; 7:26:39 PM # |
| P2P Foundation (The Foundation for P2P Alternatives) |
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The P2P Foundation (AKA: The Foundation for P2P Alternatives) has come a long way since the last time I pointed my readers in their direction. Although I have some serious concerns with the digital utopianism of a lot of the content at their site, I nevertheless think this is a very useful resource for community organizers and organizational planners. Although the most transparently "nonprofit" topic is the rather thin and moribund P2P Aid/Relief/Emergency Response Project, there is plenty of material to help inspire your thinking. I recommend: Robin Good's Introduction to the Politics of Peer to Peer and the entire sections on Peer Production and Collective Intelligence.
Posted: 1/7/08; 7:19:47 PM # |
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4 January 2008 |
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| 2008 State of the World: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy |
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I read the WorldWatch Institute's State of the World report every year. The 2008 Edition, subtitled Innovations for a Sustainable Economy deserves special mention. Even if you don't think of your work as directly related to the environment, I encourage you to consider its connection to the current fate of the earth. In fourteen chapters by as many knowledgable contributors, this volume touches on a wide range of critical issues, including sustainable lifestyles, investing for sustainability, mobilizing human energy, and the parallell economy of the commons. There are issues here that touch on all the work of civil society, no matter how it's otherwise framed.
Posted: 1/4/08; 5:29:49 PM # |
| Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data |
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Stephen Few's book Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data is an attempt to do for dynamic displays what Edward Tufte has done with static displays. Although I have some misgivings about the fact that his methods are not oriented toward action and workflow, I think this lovely book comes close to its aspirations and I recommend it highly to anyone in the field of nonprofit information systems. The author defines a dashboard as: "A visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, which fits entirely on a single computer screen so it can be monitored at a glance." He tackles a wide range of dashboard types, including strategic, analytical, and operational.
Just Chapter Three alone is worth the price of this book. It describes the following thirteen common mistakes in dashboard design: (1) Exceeding the Boundaries of a Single Screen, (2) Supplying Inadequate Context for the Data, (3) Displaying Excessive Detail or Precision, (4) Choosing a Deficient Measure, (5) Choosing Inappropriate Display Media, (6) Introducing Meaningless Variety, (7) Using Poorly Designed Display Media, (8) Encoding Quantitative Data Inaccurately, (9) Arranging the Data Poorly, (10) Highlighting Important Data Ineffectively or Not at All, (11) Cluttering the Display with Useless Decoration, (12) Misusing or Overusing Color, and (13) Designing an Unattractive Visual Display.
Posted: 1/4/08; 5:21:07 PM # |
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2 January 2008 |
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| What the World Needs Now |
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In looking ahead to 2008, I found myself drawn to Bill McKibben's article in Ode Magazine on What the World Needs Now. Whether it's about organizing mass actions to leverage the weaknesses of oppressive intitutions or about how to renew and create human scale economic systems, his man for all seasons is Mahatma Gandhi: "Gandhi was our scientist of the human spirit, our engineer of political courage. The other advice from the 20th century seems stale now: central planning, endless economic expansion. We’ve hardly started to explore the possibilities that spring from Gandhi’s example. We better get going."
Posted: 1/2/08; 12:53:08 PM # |
| Ten Civil Society Victories in 2007 |
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Robert Weissman of Essential Action and Multinational Monitor magazine lists ten great civil society victories of 2007: (1) Cultural Change on Global Warming, (2) Bank of the South, (3) Treatment for People with HIV/AIDS, (4) Thailand and Brazil Face Down Big Pharma, (5) The Billionaire’s Tax Loophole Comes Under Scrutiny, (6) The U.S. Minimum Wage Goes Up, (7) McDonald’s Agrees to Pay Tomato Pickers More, (8) School Fees Phased Out, (9) White-Collar Drug Pushers Punished, and (10) The Bush Countdown Begins.
Posted: 1/2/08; 12:53:02 PM # |
| Humanitarianism in Crisis |
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Conor Foley's article on Humanitarianism in Crisis is part of a great series at the Guardian that serves as a retrospective on 2007. Foley sees 2007 as the year in which the world finally woke up to the harm being done by many sorts of interventionist humanitarian projects.
Posted: 1/2/08; 12:43:32 PM # |
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