Today, David Wilcox and I will be running a version of the Social by Social game at the Chain Reaction event in London … which promises to be a terrific 400-strong gathering of community activists, policy people, business leaders, with a few Cabinet Ministers too.
The game will be similar in form to those you’ll find here: we’ll invent a place, break into groups around some social challenges or themes, then use sets of cards to plan how to engage people, choose social media tools, and work out how to fund the package. However, although the format is pretty standard, I’m sure the ideas will be highly creative. The cards and other props are there to stimulate conversation – and that always works.
We’ve tweaked the cards from the last play, as you can see below. Each card has an image (so they don’t all look the same), a description, and budget points from 1-3. The green budget points are for engagement cards, yellow for tools, red for funding. We’ll set a budget for green and yellow, that has to be matched by red.
I wanted to get this preview up so we can do a little promotion of the workshop, and also have an immediate link for anyone who asks where they can get the cards on the day. We’ll shoot some video and report back later.
The official Twitter stream is cr_event, and you should be able to follow tweets tagged #cr09 through a search here. Follow us, too! @socialbysocial
Chain Reaction is coming back to London, and the world, this November. Last year, innovators and changemakers gathered for a two-day event in London to learn, share, and collaborate to make a better world. The conversations, presentations and workshops were shared online in real-time thanks to a myriad technology set (including Twitter, blogs, video, etc.). It’s time again to meet in London and invite the whole world in to the conversations.
Learn more and connect with Chain Reaction!
We succeed when we work together… Chain Reaction is a community of people, passionate about social change, who are saying ‘we can make a difference’.
Chain Reaction is a unique and challenging project based on a very simple idea – that we all have the power of our own actions, but that none of us on our own can change the world, not governments, not businesses, not charities. We succeed when we work together The Chain Reaction Networks helps individuals and organisations to connect together. We provide spaces – at ‘real life events’ and on line – in which people can collaborate with others across the boundaries that divide us and commit their energy to new ideas and new ways of working that will change the world.
Drawing on the learnings included in Social by Social: a practical guide to using new technology for social impact, the Social by Social Game walks participants through the strategic steps of creating a social media program for your community, whether you’re part of an organization, a geographic community, a campaign, or anything else. The game is a fun way to collaborate with others and learn more about what’s needed to create a project that leverages social media. We promise: it’s fun!
NFPTweetUp after Chain Reaction
The next NFPTweetUp will take place in the evening after the main Chain Reaction event. This is a great way to pull in new people to the tweetup experience and a super opportunity to keep conversations going even longer from the event.
A meet up of social media users and those interested in the potential of social media for themselves or their organisations. This event brings together organisations for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and networking – it will be part learning, part sharing, part social, collaborative, casual and very friendly. Note: You need to reserve a ticket for this evening session as spaces are limited – tickets are free of charge. (Read more about NFP Tweetup here)
Connect. Collaborate. Commit.
Chain Reaction is taking place November 12th, 2009, at Canary Warf, London. To find out more, use these links:
The Social by Social Game really took off at Net Tuesday this week when some 20 participants invented a south London borough, created a set of project ideas for better health, happiness and the environment, and then went on to plan how social technology could yield these social benefits. All within 90 minutes.
We did have the benefit of a set of props – more on that later – and lessons from the session that we ran at the SHINE09 conference a couple of weeks ago.
The core team was the same: David Wilcox, Andy Gibson and Amy Sample Ward – all co-authors, with Cass Business School of the forthcoming Social by Social handbook. More on that here.
This time around Andy had added some improvements in both props and procedure. As you can see from the summary sheet above – click here for larger – the sequence was:
we all brainstormed the characteristics of a south London borough, with its share of unemployment, health and housing issues, transport problems plus some very positive community activity on the arts front.
groups formed around the issues, and developed ideas for project. We then handed out two sets of cards to each group: one about social technologies, the other about ways to engage individuals and groups online, face to face and through traditional leafleting and other methods.
each card had a image, a brief description, and budget of one, two or three points. The task was to choose cards totalling only 10 points from each pack.
the final task was to use a set of money and resource cards to balance the budget … and then report back to everyone on the proposals.
It was a lot of fun, and since Andy was doing an excellent job of facilitating, and Amy was mentoring the groups, I was able to capture proceedings on video. Here’s the first sessions:
And the the report back:
The game is a development of others Drew Mackie have created over the years – as you can see here – with the social media element added through work with Beth Kanter in 2007.
The greater value in the Social by Social Game as it has now developed is a clearer sequence for engagement, tech planning and funding, plus lots of new cards. Amy summarised it for me:
The grid sequence helps ensure that people consider first the problem they are tackling, then the way the audiences, community, or “people” will be engaged. After the problem and the people are addressed, then it’s time to consider the tech tools. Lastly, we have added the budget cards to bring everything back to a realistic perspective, not to ruin the fun but show how these kinds of projects are still doable with the appropriate planning.
Our aim is to use the game as one of the ways to introduce people to the substance of the Social by Social Handbook. We’ll evolve versions for organisations and networks as well as localities, so it will be possible to play the game “for real” and then follow through with support from the handbook and our team.
As one option we are thinking about workshops that could run for a day, with game-playing to start things off, some hands-on exploration of different social media tools, followed by more detail on who might do what to put things into practice.
The clear separation of engagement and tech cards in the game was a big improvement … with several of the groups putting emphasis on the use of face-to-face as well as online methods. That produced one good talking point … which is the main purpose of the demonstration version. It’s a great way to start conversations in a neutral space where people feel free to ask each other for help on things they don’t understand.
Here’s the cards we used (with a couple of changes we made afterwards. Feel free to download from Scribd and try and game for yourselves … we would really like to know how it goes. Alternatively, you can of course hire us to come and run a session! Either way, if you find this interesting, do drop a comment or question below.
I’m really looking forward to the 2 June event for London Net Tuesday where David Wilcox, Andy Gibson and I will facilitate a new iteration of the Social by Social Game!
The Social by Social game is a fun session to help people explore how social technology can be used for social benefit: whether that’s by a nonprofit, a social innovation startup, within a neighbourhood, or across a community. We’ll invent some of those places, then challenge each other in groups to develop plans using a pack of specially-developed cards and other props. It will be a mix of collaboration and competition that should give you lots of practical ideas that you can use in your own projects.
If you are looking for a different, fun, and insprirational opportunity to take a different look at how technology can help in social benefit organizations and addressing local social problems, then this is definitely the game for you!
If you want to find out how social technology can be used collaboratively to solve neighbourhood problems, do join me and colleagues for a lively session on May 16 in London at the SHINE unconference for social entrepreneurs. You’ll find details here.
“If you want to do it quickly, do it alone. If you want to do it well, do it together.” – African proverb.
Join the Social Collaboration Game on day two of SHINE. Everyone’s talking about the advantages of collaboration, open-source working and social technology to drive through social change. But how do you make it work in practice? Based on real life problems that SHINE participants are facing, get ready for a two hour game where you’ll have to crunch problems, make quick decisions and find ways to work together to get the job done. You will be doing that within the framework of an imagined but realistic neighbourhood where people are trying to tackle problems innovatively as recession bites. There’ll be competing interests to balance, barriers to getting what you need from partnerships,…
There will be some similarity to the neighbourhood game I ran recently in Holland – but with far more chance to form alliances and work out innovative ways to find projects. A bit like social media game meets Social Innovation Camp, in miniature.
We have some top talent to design and run the session: my usefulgames co-designer Drew Mackie is coming down from Edinburgh, and Andy Gibson and Amy Sample Ward will bringing their expertise on similar events and the use of social technology for social benefit. We’ve recently been working on a Social by Social handbook for NESTA on that subject – details here. I hope we’ll be able to evolve the game so that it can be run over half a day or a day, using content from the Social by Social handbook. There might even be a version in a box, like the non-tech Regeneration Game Drew and I developed a few years back.
Tickets for two days at SHINE are a bargain, at £30 plus VAT, for individuals and startups, and £100 plus VAT for larger organisations. Sign up here. That includes a party on Friday night.
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