Above are the slides for the talk I gave last Friday to launch the 6 month Metapod Connect course I’m running with Helga Henry at Fierce Earth. Unfortunately (and somewhat ironically) I’ve been too busy planning and delivering the course to blog about it at length but it’s all going rather well and I’m learning a lot in the process.
I hope to record some audio for these slides as they weren’t designed to stand alone, so with that in mind, some notes.
- This was a three hour talk (with a break!) intended to load the participants with as many concepts and ideas as possible. It was not intended to be comprehensive or in depth. That will come over the 6 months of the course.
- After the “My Flickr Story” section, designed to ease them in and help them see when I was coming from, I did a lot of talking around the issues and Helga stepped in repeatedly to add context. I also encouraged questions and interjections.
- The participants were all from small to medium sized cultural organisations which receive Arts Council funding. The point of the course is for them to think about online culture and how their organisation might engage with that.
- There’s a lot of info in the slides. I don’t usually like to have so much stuff up on screen. And I know this breaks all the presentation rules. I could say social media is scrappy and DIY and I wanted to preserve that but the fact is I was on a deadline. (And I like scrappy and DIY.)
- Did I mention I barely scratched the surface?
With that in mind, please feel free to discuss the issues raised here in the comments. I know Jon Hickman has some views. Take it away, Jon!
Thanks for the plug Pete ;) I have already commented on the scribd page, so the comment below is a direct copy of that: for simplicity let’s try to keep the debate in one place (here)
Enough preamble:
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Nice stuff here Pete. So this next bit is not a criticism of your slides, but a point of debate and something to mull over.
On the topic of cultural capital, I can see what you’re saying re. the standing of people in the community and how that contributed to getting events up and running.
Would you accept a development of this point: that those who perceive themselves to have less influence may feel disenfranchised from the process of convening such events? i.e. if I feel less powerful, if I have less of what you call cultural capital, then I will be less likely to try to develop new ideas or take leadership of any activity.
Of course hierarchies and meritocracies in online or offline communities should not surprise us: they have been documented and debated as long as web studies has existed. However, the dominant discourse of social media activity seems to me to encompass ideas of equality, conversation and sharing. Therefore hierarchies are counterproductive to the goals of the community. If communities evolve through exchanges of social capital, then you limit opportunities to those who have the most capital.
Taking this out of the abstract and making this more practical: those with the social capital are going to be very busy because the rest of us will hang around waiting for you to do something.
Whether this is a blessing or a curse depends on your perspective.
Pete,
I love this, it captures the essence of the web 2.0 / social Media world that I inhabit very well. A great feature of that world is absolutely that the power rests in the hands of those who “can be bothered” – or put more positively, are motivated to make something interesting happen. In these days of micro-niches, that something need only happen to a couple of people for it to be a success.
My next challenge is to bring this, with confidence, into my workplace. In a democratic membership organisation, some of the authority issues are heavily entrenched – and we need to be very clear about why any of them should stay…
@Jon (a tangent, it goes without saying that the presentation is full of the interesting an the true).
>Therefore hierarchies are counterproductive to the goals of the community. If communities evolve through exchanges of social capital, then you limit opportunities to those who have the most capital.
Interesting stuff JH, it’s true that hierarchies of authority are counterproductive to the goals of the community – what the web develops more is perhaps hierarchies of contribution.
Those 1% of Wikipedia users that make 70% (sorry figure escapes) of edits have no more actual technical authority, but are important to the health of the community due to the amount of effort put it.
What becomes difficult is when social capital and effort are seemingly linked – which happens a lot on smaller-scale “unorganised organisations”, barriers to contribution that neither technically or even emotionally exist – but are perceived. This is where we start thinking about cliques and “groups” – and it’s where the ideals of the social web struggle. It’s where problems of social scale begin to show themselves.
It quite often doesn’t become such an issue as most “unorganised organisations” (“ad hoc”? doesn’t seem to stress openness enough) are by nature transitory and will desolve before the problem arises – but long standing (successful?) communities see the trouble. It often ends with originators feeling pressure to continue, or “hand over” responsibility – potential breaking point.
@jon and jon
This is a tricky one. I sometimes get a (teeny little) bit dispirited that when activity bubbles up someone feels the need to organise it. Sometimes that can be a good thing but often that activity came about because there wasn’t a structure in place, be it organisational or social. While I may have ostensibly been “in charge” of the Flickrmeets and set the ground rules, once it was proven to be working I stepped back and announced those rules could be torn up if necessary. The makeup of the group dictates the way the group works.
On the flipside, there was a move to take the regulars from the Flickrmeet and form something closer to a trad photographic society with a name (Birmingham Exposure) and website and exhibitions and everything. It didn’t work for various reasons, and I wouldn’t want to state what they were, but I suspect the desire for that came out of seeing a new way of doing things and applying the old way of thinking to it. (To flip again, I don’t think Birmingham Photospace has the same issues – it’s a different beast altogether).
I think what’s interesting about online social spaces now, and which slightly differentiates them not only from offline but from traditional online communities, is that they don’t really exist as communities. Twitter does not have a community. Your Twitter community overlaps with mine but they’re different. And Twitter as a whole cannot be reasonably be seen as a community. While Twitter is a solid example of this the same applies to online social activity generally. The blogs we follow, the Flickr groups we’re in, the searches we monitor – they’re all unique to ourselves. The “communities” are merely where they overlap a lot. And because our online activity is constantly shifting (not being mediated by geography or monopoly media) those overlaps are also shifting so these conceptual communities grow and shrink. And when they shrink we think that’s a problem when in fact it’s perfectly normal and should be celebrated.
As for social capital in this area, I think it’s tricky to generalise about it because, again, it’s personal to each individual. You don’t have good standing in a community. What you have is good standing with a number of active people whose online activity overlaps which enables you to do something with those people (putting it crudely). If hierarchies exist then they are, by the nature of the environment, going to shift and change. Someone who one day can marshall hundreds may not be able to the next day because those hundreds might have their attention elsewhere.
Hickman: “those with the social capital are going to be very busy because the rest of us will hang around waiting for you to do something.” And this is why I get dispirited. The people with the social capital generally didn’t do much to get it. That’s not to diminish what they did but, in my case, there’s nothing I did to build my rep that anyone else couldn’t have done. I just had the attitude (probably from my zine days) that I wanted to see something interesting happen, the existing hierarchies weren’t gonna do that for me, so I had to do it for myself. w
With the benefit of hindsight this is what the Flickrmeets and Created in Birmingham were all about. Stop moaning that “they” should do this and that and don’t think you’re not good enough to do it. Fuck ‘em. Do It Yourself. And, if I’m now one of “them”, tell me to fuck off. Get your posse together, be it three people or a hundred, and get on with it.
Here via @tomewing. Really nice slides – for me they illustrated how small-scale online involvement and participation can build gradually into something else. I guess Flickr removed lots of barriers that were preventing you (and a lot of other people) from really enjoying photography. It’s applying that sort of lesson to other people’s business that feels as though it may be the key.
Not quite there with Flickr yet, but I have a digital camera and a computer with an SD slot, and that’s transformed my photography…
@Pete you’re right – that’s exactly how things should — and increasing can — work.
While the financial cost of “failure” (or having an idea) is now almost zero, there’s still the emotional cost to consider – attempting to organise or even trying something without knowing how the people online will react is nerve-wracking, the emotional cost of “failure” may be lessening but it’s still quite high.
A wise old newspaper man once said “never start a campaign you aren’t going to win” – and while that’s not (or shouldn’t be) true of personal activity, it’s how a lot of people feel (I’m guessing”).
@bounder The emotional cost of failure is not something I’d really given much thought to (other than to say “it doesn’t matter”). Interesting.
In my draft tweets on Birdhouse (yes, I keep draft tweets…) I’ve got “since trad business models don’t work online, so it goes for trad social models”. I’m not completely happy with that as it’s a bit blunt but there’s something lurking there.
I think it’s a case of who exactly is failing here, or where some kind of “blame” can be placed. If it’s a single person working alone who’s leading and directing everything then, yes, the emotional cost (or rewards) will affect them. But in the case of a community or collective where no-one is in charge and, while effort is uneven, no-one takes direct credit the emotional cost and reward is also spread.
I wonder if there’s a connection with your Viral vs Meme distinction (viral is owned by one person, meme is not owned by the originator)?
Anyway, end of the day it’s probably like falling off a bike. Before you do it it’s scary but once you’ve fallen and survived it’s not so bad and you’ll be a better rider. Or something.
I think it’s the old ‘cop in the head’ doing the blaming. Some people shrug off failure and recognise it as a stepping stone to success. Some are paralysed by it. Most fall in-between these two poles (I think).
I agree that some people are paralysed by failure, or fear of it – yet there ae some fairly simple strategies for offsetting it. To some extent these might be part of a profession – as a lecturer, I’m always trying to tease, cajole, engage folk into doing things around my ideas or theirs and if it doesn’t work, I have a dozen ways of a)laughing it off so I don’t look stupid
b) tweaking or reworking something so that it does work.
I’m paid well to do that well and most of the time it works – but if you don’t have those tools and techniques, it can be a bit cringeworthy – but there’s no reason why others can’t learn some of these strategies.
I think as well, since I started using Twitter, the community I have engaged with has occasionally gone in for collective love-ins around certain individuals – often with good reason, so thats not in itself a criticism – so the community is a bumpier place for distributed effort – and failire than perhaps is implied…
>I think it’s a case of who exactly is failing here, or where some kind of “blame” can be placed. If it’s a single person working alone who’s leading and directing everything then, yes, the emotional cost (or rewards) will affect them.
Most things have an originator – it’s not blame it’s fear or embarrassment or fear of feeling stupid (or something), of being the one who suggests or starts stuff that doesn’t work.
As a personal example (all I can really go on) is “Brum Guide” — i thought that since wikipedia didn’t allow conjecture or “un notable” stuff then there would be a need or use for a brum-location encyclopedia.
As it turned out, there wasn’t — it petered out after about 10 entries, never gaining any traction. Now, if it was my first “idea” I would have been disappointed, maybe disheartened — would I have put the (admittedly small-ish) amount of effort into something again? I don’t know.
What is sure is that the speed of “unorganising” these days is making the chance remark into something owned by groups quickly — so the chance of emotional responsibility, and the potential emotional cost of “failure” is spread and lessened. Or it could be that you can quickly gauge the level of interest or engagement in any idea or project.
>I wonder if there’s a connection with your Viral vs Meme distinction (viral is owned by one person, meme is not owned by the originator)?
Maybe, intended “virals” can fail, memes evolve so can’t be intended (at least not real ones). Maybe the successful unorganisations are the ones that go memetical?
The emotional cost is also heavily influenced by expectations, and our expectations tend to be exaggerated by where a social tool is on the adoption curve.
F’rinstance, I started blogging at about the same time in Blogger history as you started in Flickr – not one of the very first users but early enough that I didn’t have any expectations. So every bit of recognition I did get felt like a success and a surprise. Same with my first website – I remember, after 6 months, getting my 1,000th “hit” overall on Sitemeter and buying everyone who was around a drink to celebrate.
But if I was launching my first site, or starting my first blog, or joining Flickr or Twitter or whatever NOW my definitions of ‘failure’ would be different. If I participated and people didn’t notice I’d be disappointed – especially as my awareness of what it was “meant” to be like would be warped by media coverage of blogs, Twitter, Flickr etc.
There’s an awful lot of encouragement of people into social media – which is great – but not an awful lot of helping them set realistic expectations.
Couple from Rob Lindsay on Twitter:
1) definitely emotional cost – When persuading others to invest time, failure can be destroying, so ‘one-man’ projects prioritised.
2) Failure to deliver can result in feelings that others will become disengaged. Two steps back.
>There’s an awful lot of encouragement of people into social media – which is great – but not an awful lot of helping them set realistic expectations.
Yes, there’s a connection with the “pastoral care” theme that Michael Grimes puts so well here: http://citizensheep.com/blog/2008/12/09/digital-mentors-as-pastoral-carers/