21st Century Organization

Why Projects Fail: Realities from the PMINJ Symposium

Monday, May 3, I was a privileged speaker at the Project Manager Institute New Jersey's (PMINJ) Annual Symposium. Suffice to say this was the best managed conference I've ever attended and congratulations to the all-volunteer team that made it possible.

Building on work Victoria Axelrod and I have done  my talk addressed "Stakeholder Engagement & Co-Creation: Reducing Project Risks". Applying what we know from network science I made the case that bringing a network lens to projects, ensuring all stakeholders with diverse perspectives and expertise are engaged and strategically interconnected, is fundamental to a project's success.  Here are my slides:

Stakeholder Engagement & Co-Creation: Reducing Project Risk

View more presentations from Jenny Ambrozek.

Our discussion started with the question: "Why do projects fail?" with answers including:

• Loosely defined requirements
• Too big
• Sponsorship changes
• Scope creep

It was after participants had completed a project network drawing exercise that we were reminded of the "human" dimension in project success:

• The challenge of communication across virtual teams (no face-to-face and body language; operating across time zones)
• Silo mentalities- closed, no information sharing
• Cultural differences
• Competing influences on others.

It's more than a decade since Stowe Boyd identified the emergence of a new breed of software he designated "social tools". "Social business" is the rage but in reality, since the earliest market places, business has run on relationships.

On Monday the hard working, talented PMINJ project managers at the forefront of leading strategically important and complex projects in their businesses, reminded us that structuring organizations to:

• facilitate communication
• incent sharing, and
• align resources with strategic priorities

remains fundamental to success.

What's your experience with project challenges? How important are people and organizational issues to project success?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

From Crowdsourcing to Collective Intelligence at Work: Organizations are the Key

The Knowledge Innvovation Network (of the University of Warwick Business School) recently convened a diversely thought provoking workshop addressing "Knowledge and Prediction Markets". Jed Christiansen did his always stellar job explaining the operation and value of prediction markets.  I had the opportunity to broaden the discussion, talking about "Collective Intelligence at Work: Promises, Perils and Practice".

My slides are now posted along with appreciation to all the very smart people-- acknowledged below-- who gave time to providing cases, insights and idea filtering to inform my talk.

Collective Intelligence At Work

Next Practice

Qualcomm's Ricardo Dos Santos and Motorola's  Rami Levy are responsible for the two most evolved applications of "Collective Intelligence at Work" that I know:

i. Qualcomm's VentureFest where collective intelligence meets corporate entrepreneurship and

ii. Motorola's ThinkTank Idea Exchange (TIX), a model of "socialized innovation"

and generously shared their slides allowing others to learn from their initiatives.

Both demonstrate the investment involved in putting collective intelligence to work that begins with clear focus on business strategy and how value will be created through crowdsourcing. It proceeds to developing the organizational systems and collaboration platforms required to filter the most promising collected ideas into profitable business opportunities.

Qualcomm's Venturefest and Motorola's ThinkTank Exchange also highlight the exceptional "Whole Mind" management talent required to lead collective intelligence initiatives. Both Ricardo dos Santos and Rami Levy succeed because they have respect and support from executive leadership and can also build the relationships across their organizations to engage key stakeholders and contributions from diverse minds.

Promise and Perils

My talk also included examples of crowdsourcing efforts that help us appreciate the discipline and evolved nature of the Qualcomm and Motorola collective intelligence initiatives.

Wikipedia participation dynamics, the gap between the number of people who read and actively contribute and their organizational challenges, have been well documented and discussed.

Tom Malone, director of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, a "We are Smarter than Me" project sponsor, openly admits that the project needed more active facilitation. Ultimately a team of paid writers were hired to filter the crowdsourced contribution and produce the book.

Andrew McAfee's Cases 2.0 wiki was inspiration for Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises (WSE) (convened with colleague Victoria Axelrod) to collect examples of enterprises leading the way with sustainability projects to provide models for others. Paying closer attention to the number of Cases 2.0 collected emergently over two years would have made me wiser about the work involved to make WSE successful. I'm appreciating the organization the Social Media Advertising Consortium has assembled to collectively support the development of a common social media vocabulary and evolve their industry.

Your taking time to review my slides, comment and challenge my thinking is appreciated.

Do you agree putting collective intelligence to work is critical to 21st century business success?

Please share your successful collective intelligence projects and recommended practices.  And if perchance your initiatives did not meet expectations do take a moment to reflect so others benefit from your experience.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

CREDITS

In addition to Ricardo Dos Santos and Rami Levy who shared their cases my thanks to:

• Linda Rebrovick, CEO Consensus Point for permission to use her Web 2.0 Trends slide
• Ana María Llopis, founder of ideas4all;  David Resseguie, Sensorpedia, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and Michael Turillo, COO of Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations, (an industry leader through their investments in InnoCentive and Inno360) for product and trend insights
• Gary Colet and Phil Ridout (Knowledge Innovation Network), Victoria Axelrod, Bill Anderson, Steve Ardire, Dan Keldsen, John Maloney, Wendy Gold and Cathy Joseph for fresh perspectives 
• Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises contributors and Vincent Associates for providing network maps.

RELATED RESOURCES

• KIN December 2 Resources Google Wave
  
• Ambrozek, Jenny, and Axelrod, Victoria "Broadcasting Innovation:Organising to Collect Intelligence," Inside Knowledge Dec. 2007
• Axelrod, Victoria and Ambrozek, Jenny "Prediction Markets Co-creating an Organisation's Future." Inside Knowledge Mar. 2008

Have Prediction Markets arrived as an Enterprise Knowledge Sharing & Innovation Platform?

A small and really smart group of people convened by John Maloney (at the Gleacher Executive Center in Chicago), on November 6 to explore the latest developments in collective intelligence and use of prediction markets.

The conversation flow, diversity, and challenge to conventional thinking mirrored the forward looking sculptures in nearby Millenium Park.  

For those new to prediction markets finding a public prediction market to explore is increasingly easy, for example see the Industry Standard and CFO Magazine. The 2.0 Adoption Prediction Market made news at the recent San Francisco Enterprise 2.0 Conference. 

Andrew McAfee lists prediction markets as part of Enterprise 2.0. This Inside Knowledge Prediction Markets Masterclass (co-authored with colleague Victoria Axelrod) describes the prediction market landscape in 2008.

Why did I leave Chicago thinking that enterprise use of prediction markets to tap grassroots employee knowledge for forecasting, and in support of innovation. is about to blossom?

Three reasons:

1. High Profile Proven Enterprise Prediction Market Applications

Exemplifying the time for new ideas and technology to find their way into widespread adoption first use of an enterprise prediction market is credited to Robin Hanson (George Mason University professor and Consensus Point prediction market platform provider Chief Scientist) and dates to 1990. 

HP pioneered  use of prediction markets with it's BRAIN project. (Dr. Leslie Fine, now Crowdcast's VP Market Design, was HP's BRAIN lead researcher.)  The wider adoption of prediction markets by companies from Google to Best Buy, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, General Mills, Qualcomm and ArcelorMittal, is widely reported including in this New York Times articles.

Friday Rami Levy, added to the list in explaining Motorola's evolved use of a prediction market to filter ideas and speed innovation.

2. Technology Evolution

As a pioneering prediction market provider since 1994, Chicago Cluster sponsor Consensus Point hosts high profile clients Best Buy, Motorola and Qualcomm among others. The Chicago meeting also revealed a next generation of vendors including Crowdcast and Spigit. Crowdcast's focus is forecasting business results. Spigit gets attention  because of Warburg Pincus's recent $10m investment. Their platform targets "innovation management" and embeds prediction in a social networking platform.

Each provider is carving out a niche and extending enterprise prediction market applications.  In the process platforms are evolving, made easier to use and integrate into day-to-day business processes.

3.  Growing Enterprise Understanding

The case has been made for the business value that comes from reaching out and engaging more diverse minds to solve business problems and co-create new opportunities. A host of books from James Surowiecki's Wisdom of the Crowds (2004) to Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks (2006), Dan Tapscott's Wikinomics  (2006) and Clara Shih's Facebook Era (2009) detail the trend. 

While enterprise prediction markets have been the province of innovative companies, the Chicago participants pointed to a diverse and expanding array of new applications.  

The talent represented in each of the platform vendor executive teams, and among participants implementing new applications, was also thought provoking about factors in successful use. Putting prediction markets to work in enterprises demands a wide array of skills from technical understanding for making markets perform within the culture of an organization, to relationship building to engage participants and encourage contribution.  Quantitative skills + tie to business strategy + relationship building + technology are all essential.

What have I missed? If you were in the room in Chicago, or not, please comment to inform my reflection on the discussions.

 ~ Jenny Ambrozek

21st Century Organizations @ Business of Community Networking: IBM, Avon, CondoDomain, AMA Boston & the National Collegiate Scouting Association

When Victoria Axelrod and I started writing about 21st Century Organizations here 3 years ago examples of enterprises not leveraging their people networks for success abounded but good models were less obvious.  The joy of the Business of Community Networking conference, in which we just participated, was access to terrific case examples. Here are some enterprises to watch:

IBM-Given the many times we've written about IBM's capacity to leverage knowledge deep within the organization (through JAMS) and from outside to inform their strategy (for example to rethink patent management p95 ), it was no surprize hearing Mark Bonchek, Chief Strategist Soundbridge, describing his company's work creating and supporting IBM's CIO Executive Advisory Council.  From the disciplined approach to engaging external stakeholders as advisors to the metrics being tracked and stories of customers becoming brand advocates, IBM understands creating value through  people interacting. 

AVON- Kristen Mitchell, Marketing Manager, AVON Online, provided inspiration and practical ideas from her use of social networking platforms to empower Avon representatives, extend their businesses and grow sales on and offline. Clearly Avon is prepared to experiment and evolve to operate in today's connected world.

Condo Domain-  Hearing Erica Farthing, Director of Social Media describe using blogs, video, Twitter, to extend this startup's brand and engage customers reminded me of Stowe Boyd's 2006 meme: "the individual is the new group". Erica does not hesitate to use her individual enthusiasm for her company and work to help build the business. Nor it appears do happy customers who appear in video interviews. The subsequent discussion raised the management issues around having employee identities so visible but clearly CondoDomain benefits from Erica's social media outreach. Read CondoDomain's story through their press coverage.

American Marketing Association, Boston- President Myles Bristowe captured attention describing his organization's evolved use of a Ning Network to grow membership and serve members.  AMA Boston's disciplined networking, including defined roles and responsibilities in the social network built on research into the "economics of contribution", is inspirational.

National Collegiate Scouting Association- Brian Davidson, Director of Social Media, opened eyes and possibilities describing use of an array of public social netorking platforms to promote NCSA. Hearing about sales happening as a result of outreach and respectful conversations in Twitter leaves no doubt about it's growing importance and potential for doing business and serving customers directly.

Clearly the "Business of Community Networking" is evolving but success from the array of initiatives presented points to the importance of not dallying in experimenting with the new ways to connect with customers and members the latest generation of social networking tools provide.

For more BOCN nuggets read the Twitter stream from #bocn and @just_kate's excellent summary blog post here.  And if you represented a model 21st Century Organization at #BOCN, putting people networks to work to grow your business, and I've overlooked you, please alert me. 

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 Summit Hannover Report & References

Thanks to Bjoern Negellman, Kongress Media, (organizer) and Simon Wardley (event facilitator), I was a privileged presenter, in the inaugural European Enterprise 2.0 Summit convened as part of CEBIT, March 4 in Hannover.   (Given COMDEX no longer operates in the United States, experiencing the CEBIT scale and vendor commitment was eye opening.)

Blog reports from Emanuele Quintarelli, François Nonnenmacher, Martin Koser and Robbert Homburg tell the event story that began with Simon Wardley reminding us how technology forces drive change, followed by Dion Hinchcliffe's keynote and Euan Semple's BBC lessons. Scenes from the event are captured on Flickr.

For me the event nuggets came in descriptions of serious business wiki applications by:

• Kenneth Lavrsen, Motorola A/S, wiki-ing quality standards documentation
• Wieland Stützel, Fraport AG (Frankfurt Airport), cross organizational knowledge sharing
• Diego Gianetti, BTicino S.p.a. (an Italian producer of communication, distribution and energy control systems) describing "Sul Campo" a sales force community of practice
• Cedric Blum, Société Française de Radiotéléphone Service Client (a French mobile carrier) explaining how using a wiki helps customer service solve customer problems and get more from IT

For those who stayed late into the day here are the books mentioned in my session introduction:

• Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks
• Rob Cross & Andrew Parker, Hidden Power of Social Networks
• Ron Burt, Structural Holes
• Lowell Bryan & Claudia Joyce, Mobilizing Minds
• Dan Tapscott, Wikinomics

Also referenced were:

• Patti Anklam, Net Work author
• Valdis Krebs, pioneering ONA practitioner
• InnoCentive and Harvard researcher Karim Lakhani et al's investigation of factors in problem resolution
• Procter & Gamble's Connect & Develop program

My presentation builds on a co-authored article "Learning through Participation and Connecting Intelligence". and two Inside Knowledge Magazine articles, Broadcasting innovation: organising to connect intelligence and Prediction Markets: Co-creating an organization's future (to be published).

    

     The Valdis Krebs admonition cited:

"You do understand Metcalfe's law does not work for social networks, right?“

came in response to reading our "Connecting Intelligence" article and Valdis's concern we had not made this point clear enough.  Metcalfe has openly asked us all to better understand the power of his law applied to social networks here . Colleagues and I have just completed an investigation of Facebook Groups in Business that points to the complexity of social network growth as Metcalfe discusses.

Thank you to everyone involved with Kongress Media's Enterprise 2.0 Summit for the rich conversations that I look forward to continuing, especially with Simon Wardley regarding his newly minted term:

"STRUCTURACTION"

Slides from my presentation are posted to Slideshare here.

   ~ Jenny Ambrozek

Using a Wiki to Co-Create an Article: Paying Attention to Uluru

Thanks Chris Carfi for sharing our lessons learned using a wiki to co-create an article on "learning through participation and connected intelligence" for Knowledge Tree, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework ejournal.  (My June 29 post provides context.)

Working with co-authors Victoria Axelrod and Kiki Mulliner on this article was a privilege and the lessons learned Chris Carfi points to from our article submission was just the beginning.  Rich conversations happened throughout with my co-authors and the group of people we approached for insights, and others who found us during the writing process. See the Acknowledgements page in the wiki. My sincere thanks to all.

Those distant from the oldest continent may be unfamiliar with Uluru the world's second largest monolith, and World Heritage site in the heart of Australia. I'm fortunate to have visited, and driven the 9.4km circumference at dusk, marvelling at the landscape that is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, the Aboriginal people of the area.

Photo Stuart Edwards 2006 Wikimedia Commons License

Uluru came to mind as we collaborated in the wiki and worked on the article.  Why? Because while Uluru impresses as it rises over a 1,000 feet above the desert plain, what's even more impressive is the unseen estimated two thirds lying below the ground.

I've participated in online email based Yahoo and Google groups and been conscious of the significant activity that happens behind the scenes in private exchanges.  I was paying close attention during our article writing collaboration because I realized our wiki "Recent Changes" made very transparent when we were, and were not active.

Being absent from the wiki was not a good indicator of whether or not work on the article was proceeding.  At times yes, it was, when we were travelling or engaged in other pursuits. But invisible through the wiki, especially as the deadline approached, was the flurry of email exchanges between the co-authors and the smart people in our networks we were tapping for insights, as well as phone calls, blog and Facebook activity. Not to forget the hours each co-author contributed to independent writing and editing to emerge the article.

We didn't track time devoted to each activity, or what part of our effort ultimately was most valuable for producing the article. However, if organizations are to increase proficiency in using collaborative tools like a wiki, based on our experience I seriously encourage paying close attention, gathering data to track the process, and allowing time to reflect on what worked and didn't.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Creating Value Through Interaction: Gardening, Listening, Understanding & Letting Go of Control

Since being a recipient of a Dave Snowden fireball in response to my suggestions in  responding to Euan Semple that the kinds of changes organizations confront implementing any new technology, I'm taking stock and looking for the value in these interactions. (I've discovered in some circles being the target of Dave's differing perspective is a badge of honour.) 

Introducing "The Social Life of Information" in 2000 John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid write:

"The way forward is paradoxically to look not ahead, but to look around."

I'm looking around to see:

1.  Gardening

Simon Wardley used this term describing his experiences using a wiki:

"So as an organisation we are needing to introduce "gardening" structures in order to maintain it's usefulness."

and Euan confirmed:

"One of the things we discovered with our wiki is that some people, often our librarians, liked gardening!"

Forum hosts in the earliest online days were charged with:

• FEED - respond to contributions to fuel participation
• WEED- remove the trash, and
• SEED-  start new threads to nurture fresh conversations.

I hadn't paid attention to "wiki gardening" as accepted use so thank you both.

2.  Listening

Euan Semple's closing comment here was:

"How many managers do you know who feel listened to at the moment?"

So how can participatory tools be used to promote "listening" in organizations?

3. Understanding & Letting Go of Control

On his blog Euan Semple writes:

"How many managers do you know who feel really listened to by their staff at the moment?

How many managers feel really understood by their boss?"

It will be interesting to see what comments emerge.  Will "misunderstood managers" contribute or are they so busy trying to survive in "misunderstanding" organizations they have no time to participate in conversations like this? Or because they work for "control freaks" are unable to express their experiences only?

Dave Snowden cast aside my suggestions for the changes organizations confront as "deeply flawed" and a "list that could have been produced anytime in the last 100 years (and has been)."  Perhaps we need look no further than Euan Semple's observations about "managers not being heard" and argument for liberating "control freaks" for why the list has longevity.  While technology buffets organizations people inside them, especially in positions of control, are reluctant to change.

John Seely Brown and Estee Solomon Gray wrote in the first "Fast Company" Magazine, October 1995 "People are the Company" and

"Organizations are webs of participation. Change the patterns of participation, and you change the organization. At the core of the 21st century company is the question of participation."

The arrival of participatory media tools challenge and demand organizational change but because "People are the Company" do not guarantee it.  Looking around perhaps "gardening", "listening", "understanding" and "letting go of control" offer clues to the way forward.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 5: Virtual ethics, norms and civil rights

I have been wondering how to conclude my somewhat staggered guest visit and how to say what I take from the current interest in MMORPG and virtual worlds. I have to say getting my head back into this after tramping the wilds of the south Island of New Zealand and Stewart Island was very hard. I plunged back to a 'reality' of sorts when I started facilitating online workshops for teachers and academics using the 3D virtual world and game space Quest Atlantis in their classes. The promise and concerns such environments hold for teachers are or should be shared by all organisations embarking on use of these environments.

What currently attracts them?

• Innovative ways to motivate and excite clients (learners)
• Providing interaction in social contexts outside the usual formal contexts
• Scaffolding independent decision making without dumbing things down
• Providing competition in a supportive environment
• Exposure to a diversity of cultures, languages and perspectives.

What concerns them?

• Regulating online behaviour
• Understanding the boundaries
• Maintaining a duty of care.

These teachers are as Gee suggests visioning new learning systems. This new virtual world technology provides opportunity for us to review our assumptions about learning and social contexts. With these new social contexts comes a raft of legal and ethical issues we cannot ignore. We have to ask what or who dictates the behaviour or establishes the norms, and when and how should we address issues of civil liberties and censorship? The program I am currently engaged in Quest Atlantis is a bespoke design of worlds and infrastructure that addresses many of the teacher concerns. But what can we expect if we enter the open space of already inhabited commercial environments where community norms have begun to develop? I don’t have answers but loads of questions.

Susan Tenby and Beth Kanter wrote on TechSoup describing nonprofit use of virtual worlds as efforts to “Change the world by working in a virtual one”. The article describes aid agencies are working and raising funds in virtual campaigns and projects similar to their efforts in the ‘real world’. The only thing is, as the nonprofit managers agree, we don’t as yet completely understand what those virtual efforts will entail. We know from the headlines that if you build it they definitely will come but they won’t always behave or react in ways that you anticipate. Nic Fulton (quoted in Jenny’s last post) reminds us we may have to be prepared for the totally unexpected. I’m sure we can all comfortably envisage how to behave in controllable circumstances like corporate meetings and talk back events when they occur in virtual worlds.

• Meetings
• Events

But what is happening right now in the open social framework of games and virtual worlds while exciting is equally dark and unknown. Take for instance this noted example of "griefing", a term that excuses sometimes heinous behaviour

So where does the responsibility ultimately reside if we decide intellectual property, ethics and civil liberties are important? In many cases I have watched as educational virtual world communities mature, the members moderate each others behaviour and norms emerge that the members own. The community becomes somewhat self regulating. But in all these environments the convenors carry responsibility for the initial regulating, policing and modelling of some basic tenets of behaviour. They are not free for all spaces with open membership and untraceable levels of anonymity nor are they open market places with competing agendas. What are the ethical considerations for organisations seeking to market, inhabit or sponsor virtual environments? And what backlash can organisations and education institutions expect from natives when they immigrate to their worlds?

• Where does the responsibility lie?
• Violence as a norm
• Law enforcers

Gamers themselves are thinking about these issues.

• Ethics in games
• Second Life - bans in marketing and PR for false claims
• Intellectual property and freedom of the press

Constance Stienkheuler sees MMORPG games and virtual worlds as “third places”. Third places were described by Ray Oldenburg, like the English pub as the sanctuaries people maintained between home and work. Places where people would find a warm and inviting community to drop in on whenever needed. If organisations are to embrace these environments do managers/convenors need to start thinking like publicans to take responsibility for keeping order to provide for the safety of their patrons? Or at least recognise that responsibility comes with the license.

I will close this guest spot formally tomorrow by returning to where we began examining the notion of 'fun' in games and virtual worlds.

~ Bronwyn

Lizzie Jackson- Day Seven: From Humans to Avatars

It is not possible for presenters and hosts to be everywhere, all the time, of course. It is possible to separate out what has to be done by ‘human hand’ and what can be done by a range of other possible options, which I lay out below.

When to use humans and when to use automatic methods can be decided by looking at the ‘flocking’ behaviours of the participants – where they go, when, and in what numbers. The trick is to deploy the humans to places and at times when they will reach the largest numbers of engagers and have the most impact.

Much of the facilitation necessary in participatory media spaces is what I term ‘low-level CRM’, customer relationship management. Repetitive questions on how to use the user interface or how to enter a competition are two examples. It’s a good idea to keep a list of those Qs and if you find you are answering them time and time again, then think about doing a Q and A, or even spending on getting an avatar which is powered by a database capable of pattern-matching the Qs to the As. 

My great friend Phil Hall is good at building sophisticated chatterbots which drive Avatars – ask him about them. Some of his work can be found at www.ikea.co.uk  Go to http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_GB/local_home/croydon.html click on ‘Ask Anna’ and ask her to show you some chairs. Phil’s also created a bot (chatterbot) called Yhaken which will react emotionally if you insult him.  Give it a go. The best way to annoy Yhaken is to keep typing in obscenities very rapidly. Phil reckons it’s possible to create a host bot who could do some of the welcoming and low-level membership jobs. He’s up for the challenge.

Mike Orwell, one of the BBC Children’s host/moderators has also just pointed out to me that moderation can be a kind of ‘passive’ hosting i.e. some benign ‘shaping’ of the shared space to encourage a more ‘on topic’ debate can change the ambience just as a lightening of control can encourage a more ‘party-like vibe’ – good point.  I think this is a clear example of how the proper management of hosted space is a very sophisticated skill or technique.

It seems from research by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass (The Media Equation) and from further research from Nass and Brave that people are happy to have an emotional relationship with either a user interface or even a very polite and friendly button if the object has enough sociability. What did you think of Yhaken? Did you feel some emotional response? 

People seem to want organisations providing sophisticated interactivity which has user-generated content, collaborative or immersive environments, to ‘interact back’. It’s not really fair, right, or even just, not to interact back, certainly not neighbourly. Organisations that hide away behind interactive content are missing out on a very useful relationship, on audience ideas and enthusiasm, and on merely enjoying exchanging thoughts.  They are missing out on audience intelligence and feedback, from which they could improve their content in a kind of progressive beta test which continues to evolve to suit the needs of both the participants and the organisation itself.

Thanks for inviting me to blog!

~ Lizzie Jackson

Lizzie Jackson- Day 6: Hosted Space

The Internet is, as we know, maturing into a medium which has both media and participatory elements. Needing to put a label on what was emerging, for chapters for the PhD Thesis and to feed the research back into the Corporation (as agreed), I began to use the term ‘Participatory Media’. A paper titled ‘Overview of the implications for the BBC of Participatory Media – management, awareness, literacy and safety on interactive media platforms’ was produced for review by senior BBC managers in August, 2005.

My own definition of Participatory Media would be ‘iterative content published in hosted space, that is a shared space, facilitated by a media organisation on behalf of the public’.  The title of the Thesis is ‘Hosted Space: the mediation of interactive public service content’. The term ‘Participatory Journalism’ has been widely used as described in the excellent report (later book) ‘We Media’ by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis.

Findings from my doctoral research will begin to be released from October 2006 onwards, but the main themes are:

Facilitation: The importance of having trained facilitators in participatory media environments, whether they be members of staff or members of the public seems clear. 

Presenting, hosting and moderation: There are differences between the three roles, but they are highly complementary. Audiences want to be acknowledged for their contributions and to engage with the facilitators instead of merely viewing presenters from a distance.

Changes in time and space: Unlike linear media, participatory media offers the opportunity to both watch and engage, even at the same time. The important thing is that the participant or consumer can organise the way they want to consume, as they wish, when they wish, where they wish.

Membership culture: The relationship between the producers and the audience changes in participatory media environments. It ceases to be an ‘episodic’ one to become something which is much more ongoing.

Proximity: Participants like to feel a sense of proximity to the presenters and hosts or the organisation, and to know that someone will drop in from time to time to chat or to help organise the shared spaces.

Fear: Many presenters, producers and hosts do not feel comfortable ‘interacting back’ to the audience/members (we need a better term!).  They may need to learn how to engage with the participants and it is a particular skill.

Control: Participatory media environments mean that there is more of a sharing of control between the producers and the participants.  Sometimes the producers will editorialise, and it may be the participants do the editorialising at other times; there may also be a sharing of production. Without the presence of skilled facilitators, the changes in control will be difficult to manage.

Hosted Space: There is a new sense of the existence of a place which sometimes is closer to the domain of the producer and sometimes closer to the place where the participants ‘inhabit’. Mostly the space is probably somewhere in between.

Presence: I spoke to many of the Celebdaq traders and asked them whether they felt the presence of others when they were buying and selling shares and chatting to other traders online – many said yes, they definitely had a sense of others being present. They also said the other traders who they knew well had the ability to stir up much stronger emotions than their purely ‘real life’ friends.

How can presenters and hosts manage to be ‘present’ on an ongoing basis as well as being able to facilitate the episodic content of any live events or transmissions (be they televisual, textual or aural)?  I have some thoughts which I will put forward tomorrow, in the last part of my guest blog.

~ Lizzie Jackson