Wendy Harman and Suzy DeFrancis, American Red Cross
David Smith and Michael Weiser, National Conference on Citizenship
Moderated by Kari Dunn, Case Foundation

Intro from Kari:

When the Case Foundation was first discussing with partners what they wanted to get out of the Summit, they talked about how to bridge the generational divide. Both of these organizations have both been able to figure out how to bring people together across ages, cultures, etc. We see a lot of attention on next generation leaders, but not on how they will change our institutions. The Red Cross has been around for 130 years and so much has changed – for example with text-to-give after disasters. It’s been met with fear and excitement. With NCC, both the chairman and the CEO were brought in on the same day – one at 27 and one 56 years old.

As part of the rising generation, what do you see as far as myths about Millennials?

Wendy: First, there’s this idea that Millennials want to go their own way and be outside institutions. But what we found was that they had much higher trust in institutions than genx and boomers. It is not so much a distrust, but more that they really want to be part of the change. There’s also the selfish factor. I’m guilty of calling our community on the social web selfish because what it means is that anything we put out, it needs to be useful for them. They need to take it with them.

David: There’s greater trust with Millennials than other generations. Are there really that many differences between generations? I just had the honor of being part of a new leaders group studying how different generations were leading in the work force and we found there were lots of differences between where people were in life. For example, if two people had just had kids, regardless of age, they had more similarities than just age. It also feels that sometimes genx is being forgotten in this conversations. The Millennial generation has more of the perspective that “the leader is me” instead of waiting for the world to change.

Kari: Carol Phillips wrote an article this morning suggesting that the differences in the work place may have less to go do with generational differences and more with trust. Perhaps there is more that connects us than divides us?

Suzy: I know many people think the boomers like structure in the work place, we are concerned with making money – but we were the age of Aquarius! In the work place, what I love about Millennials is that they seemed really focused on their passions, not necessarily their professions. THey can be given more free reign to do amazing things. But also some Millennials are running into the fact that you want to go after your passions but you have to make a paycheck. I agree though, that there isn’t a divide. As a boomer, we want to be more welcome to Millennials – we are revamping our intranet, etc.

David: I agree there are a lot of things about the nonprofit sector that are attractive to Millennials, but hopefully it continues to become more competitive with forprofits for actually making those paychecks. In the for profit world, though, there’s more leadership development. When you take on a job in a nonprofit, you’re normally doing a lot more than you signed for without a lot of structure. If we could do more to support that growth we could attract more Millennials.

Michael: For all their frustrations about unemployment, they should be frustrated. Millennials come to the work place more prepared to teach than previous generations. When you step in the door, you come prepackaged with skills you can share. Technological expertise and an understanding with social media others don’t know. The ability to teach, with patience, is essential. And I think where Millennials make the greatest impact is when they realize their capabilities to teach and that there’s an audience that wants to teach.

Wendy: I had the chance to talk to 10 Red Cross workers from across the country that are all Millennials yesterday and they all had stories about trying to teach colleagues and try to shift organizational culture. It was beautiful to see how much confidence they had but we are also still all learning.

Kari: I’m so glad you brought that up. For so many organizations that are participating in the Summit, you can see these things can work! What are the conversations that should be happening and what advice do you have for organizations on how to be the teacher?

Wendy: If nothing else, Millennials are collaborative. That works really well at the Red Cross. It’s been a fantastic journey to see the cultural shift mirroring the way business changes. I think collaboration and turning organizations inside out is the way organizations will operate in the future.

Suzy: Collaboration is the best skill someone can have. We have to collaborate across silos, organizations, other partners on the ground. You look around the world at the collaborations happening between organizations and governments, etc. Seeing Millennials with those skills is great. Though, you also have to have focus and structure and I think it’s some times frustrating for Millennials to bump up against not having their idea move forward.

David: I think that goes to different ways you can structure how you bring people together. I suggest creating inter-generational working groups that go from ideation to implementation. It helps learning about the process and learning from each other. And it creates informal and formal opportunities for mentorship. I think mentorship can happen both ways.

Michael: I think it does go both ways. There is no substitute for perspective of power of technology. Social scientists will debate impact and influence of social technologies for a long time. But in building a level of trust, particularly with a chairman 30 years senior, is all about an environment where you can learn. Don’t expect to snap your fingers and have people praise your brilliance. It takes the same sort of intrapersonal elbow grease that it always has. And that’s an important lesson to learn.

Kari: We would be remiss to not talk about the technology a bit. Share with us about a little insight about where you innovation and so on?

Wendy: If we take the text to give campaign, we saw a group of people – Millennials prefer to work together, not against each other and it really manifest in the test to give. What we saw was that by 9 pm on January 12th we were able to launch the program and for the next thee days people only found out about it from Twitter and facebook and so many shared it. We also had accountability and that’s what Millennials are expecting – we can share just what the impact of the $10 is. They want to feel that intimacy and belonging.

Suzy: You can only sell so much, community has to sell it for you. We really saw that with the tsunami and earthquake – when it happened, and we came to the office, we were already trending on Twitter and we hadn’t yet done anything. They are different tools from traditional media and we have to learn how to use it, and not just for marketing. It has to be with the community.

David: What we’ve seen as we moved from a brochure website to one where people could interact and post and learn, we saw the traffic going up 1000s of % a year. But we really saw a lot around our conference. Many are adding hashtags and so on, but we started streaming content and letting people engage online we found we were engaging 10-100 times more people than were in the room and we could actually listen to them. So we are pushing on that and trying to do more. How can you engage a wider audience that isn’t just the same audience?

Michael: Working around and against gatekeepers really seems to be the biggest obstacle to tackle.

Suzy: When we grew up learning to develop a message, and write talking points, and stay on message…and now we are in a world where messages are being shared out there and your message is being controlled by others.

Kari: I imagine there’s some jealousy, that they’ve figured it out and others are still big insittutions. What do you think organizations should be thinking about?

Wendy: I do this all day every day. To me, listening is the absolute most important thing to do. If you aren’t doing it, start it right away. One of the keys to our success is that over the last four years we have moved from part of communications to working with all staff. We are good now at explaining just what is happening on the ground anywhere at any moment. There’s a lot of opportunity there for any nonprofit to carry out their mission on the social web using the power of people and collaboration.

Suzy: DOn’t be afraid that you’re losing control, people want to part of your mission. Find opportunities for them to be part of your mission. It doesn’t always have to be “the Red Cross way” maybe they have something else they can do that we didn’t even know about it. You can’t be afraid to let others be involved in your work.

Michael: Appreciate the power of what new media can do, it requires you to think in three dimensional terms. The message is less important than the push and has to be something is authentic. But at the same time, the message is incredibly important because of it’s ability to reach so many people.

David: For people thinking structurally about engaging Millennials, I would say that one of the big questions out there is whether or not they are going to change things, etc. But finding a mentor and a champion, we were able to make things happen.

Michael: All of my partnerships have been with my contemporaries and now I have a great partnership with someone that is the age of my children. I can’t speak to the kinds of opportunities there are in transcending that.

Kari: Whether or not the panelists are Millennials or not.

Suzy: I’m a baby boomer and have raised 3 Millennials.

Wendy: I’m on the cusp of the genx and Millennials.

Michael: I’m definitely a baby boomer but have never self-identified that way, it’s not part of how I think of myself.

David: I’m a Millennial and I stand by it. I fought for the Millennial name back when people were calling us genY.

Kari: Hierarchy within organizaitons – is it a good thing or bad thing?

Suzy: I think it exists and I think for Millennials, learning to work within the hierarchy is important. Learning to work within structure is important but it doesn’t mean you don’t push for your ideas, etc. A bad example: Millennial was given a performance review, the next day her manager got a call from her mom saying that they could work together to get better performance from the child.

Wendy: I think traditional org structures are going to change and aren’t the best. I think we should look more at spoke and wheel and working across the organization.

Michael: I think human beings develop habits and affinities and express those across gender and ages etc. They come together out of their like-mindedness and the more you can enable that the more learning can take place.

David: I think Millennials are looking at themselves as their own brands and what they can bring to the organization and the world. As organizations realize how to get the most out of people, you’ll see more team-oriented structures.

Kari: How do you track text-based giving?

Wedny: it’s very difficult to track. People can opt-in to getting additional messages from us so we may get their phone number but that’s it.

Suzy: the payment is also different so people give right away but we get the funds once the phone bill goes through.

Kari: What do you see as the future for mobile giving and keeping those people?

Wendy: The trust I have is that the people that gave that way know how to use Google – we aren’t hard to find. I’m not trying to hound anyone to stick around. If we aren’t providing value, they won’t. So we have to relevant.

Kari: How do we move people from fear to collaboration?

Wendy: I think it’s through examples – sharing success stories. I’ve been doing this for 4.5 years now and there’s always been a fair amount of fear. Nothing bad has happened. But I think some great stuff has.

David: If you’re raising money and you say this is going to be a new way to do it, you have a bottom line. But when you’re looking at collaboration, you’re looking at what other positive externatlities can come from that. Is it a better project, a better work place, recruiting talent? Is your organizational culture shifting?

Michael: We publish the civic health index which essentially says does it work? do people respond? Our own work to figure what the impact is, we’ve had great response to do more.

Kari – thanks to everyone and please share via #MDS11

Millennial Distinctions

• about 85 Million
• 1st generation raised on mobiles
• 95% own mobile devices
• 83% sleep with mobile at bedside
• 62% connect to internet wirelessly
• more likely than any other generation to post a video of themselves online

Are you Millennial ready?

There are five distinctions of Millennials.

• Co-creation: Millennials want to be part of the creation, they want to create with you and their peers.
• Be Smarter: they want to know how they are making an impact and what you’re doing with their money.
• Two-Player Game: they want to interact, know your leadership and staff.
• No Final Product: this is a social media world now, so there’s an expectation of constant evolution. You can’t stay stale.
• No such thing as un-connected: you have to be relevant wherever they are, when they want.

Why mobile?

Smartphones vs PCs – Smartphone sales beat PC sales with 100.9 million smartphones and 92.1 millions PCs in Q4 2010. This was originally estimated to happen two years later than it did. Smartphones are not just for highly educated groups.

90% of mobile subscribers in the US have internet-ready phones. 50% of Android users under 35, Apple use most under 44, RIM (Blackberry etc.) most over 45.

Start engaging Millennials now to make gains later

How do you do that? How do you use mobile to start engaging and communicating?

Apples has done a great job. They are looking for longevity. You do have to start looking at investing in the next generations now.

Big 4 In Mobile

Mobile Websites

If Millennials can’t find or connect with an organization the way they want to, they will go find a different organization. Millennials want basic information and tools for action. As an example, Soles4Souls.org’s mobile website looks very different than the normal website. It’s also important to have easily readable information via email – so be sure you use mobile rendering options for your emails, especially if you have a call to action and your email and website aren’t mobile rendered, they won’t be able to easily respond.

Smartphone Apps

Engaging with Millennials around volunteering. Millennials who volunteer more, give more. 79% of respondents volunteered in 2010, and they prefer to do it in groups. Develop a mobile app to get people interacting with your organization and encourage, track and inspire volunteering. Using a mobile app allows you as a nonprofit to have a tool where you can push messages out about how to volunteer/give, what the impact is, etc.

SmartOnline just wrapped up an Invent Your Mobile App contest. St Louis Volunteen won, two Millennials are the ones that developed it – geolocation app to find volunteering opportunities, find contests, find things tied to schools, and sharing on social media.

SMS/Text

Most every device can send a text message. Unlike mobile apps, this is something that is virtually available to everyone. Example: PETA anti-fur campaign – sms campaign to engage Millennials in anti-fur campaign against Donna Karen. Millennials were asked to respond Y (yes) to the number that they could then say how many people were voting in support.

The reason sms may be better for activism vs donation is that there isn’t as much transparency about how you’re impacting the world. They know they are voting, vs not knowing where their money is going. The average open rate for email is about 10% but with text messages it is 18%.

There’s an application from the One Campaign and Bono called One that is focused on activism.

Mobile Giving

Trust and donations were huge in the Millennial Donor Report. You must segment your channels of asking. Knowing where Millennials are and which channels do they prefer you use to talk to them is important. They said that they will stop giving if you ask too often. They want to know how their gift will be used.

Ensure your donation forms are optimized for mobile. If it’s a full screen on your computer, and you are looking at it on your phone, it’s impossible. And someone is just going to leave.

58% of Millennials prefer to give online – but they are likely to be accessing your website via a mobile phone. Mobile application giving will grow, 1:4 gave vs preferred. There’s currently very few applications. For example, a bike-a-thon in Texas has a Ride for Life app so that people can keep track of pledges and fundraising, see where others are, etc. Anything that can be game-like is great for an app.

Mobile Roadmap

One of the first things you should do is create a mobile website. Take the most important, relevant, action-oriented information and put it on the mobile version. Ensure your donation page is mobile accessible so that click throughs from emails on phones go somewhere that really works. Apps are a great way to educate and active. Native smartphone functionality is powerful, with geolocation and other services.

What are you doing now? If you haven’t started engaging yet, here’s how to start. Ask initial questions:

• What are you doing already?
• Strong social media presence?
• Activism focused mission?
• Educational programs?
• Large scale fundraising events?

Mobile plan:

• What are your biggest goals?
• What will Millennials and others do with/for you?
• Why would they want to use mobile solutions?
• Who/which departments need to be involved?
• How can enhancements and tools be paid for?
• Find a trusted partner!

Many Millennials have not yet chosen their life-long charities of choice. It’s important you start building trust and accessibility so that you can win them now.

“If your plans don’t include mobile, then your plans are not finished.” – Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola

What did they find out in the Millennial Donor Report?

Last year, we did research on Millennial donors and it spurred us to do it again. Giving, communication and engagement are the three areas of research.

Had respondents from nearly 3,000 participants, 20-35 year olds, with more than 90% with a college degree (nearly half pursued graduate studies and 37% had graduate degrees). The survey was distributed online only.

Giving

They found that when looking at giving, 93% of respondents made a donation in the last year.However, 58% said their largest gift was less than $100. 10% said they gave single gifts larger than $1,000. Millennials are giving small amount to multiple organizations.

This year’s research followed last year’s findings.

58% said they gave because of a personal request. Personal contact is important. The next biggest way to give was online on organization’s website. However, we also asked how they would prefer to give. 49% said they gave via a website, but 58% said they would prefer that way.

Compelling mission or cause for your organization is motivation to give for 85% of respondents, and 56% said personal connection and trust in the leadership/organization. 52% said they gave if their friends or family endorse the organization.

What influences trust? 77% said that if family or friends recommend an organization, they trust the organization. 70% said trust was in understanding financial information and how their donation would be used. 63% said they wanted to meet the organization’s leadership.

When are you likely to donate? 60% said they are very likely to donate if they trust the organization, 43% said very likely if it was a specific project or purpose. 41% said very likely if there was a matching gift.

What makes you stop donating? 79% very likely NOT to give if they don’t trust the organization. 37% said likely and 38% very likely that they would stop if the organization asked too often.

Only 28% of respondents said they would participate in a giving circle but only 22% rejected the notion outright. 50% said they weren’t sure what it is.

Communicating

71% said they learn about organizations through web searches (like Google). 62% said email communications from the organization and 56% said peer endorsement from family/friends. 70% say that when they first visit your website they want to know about your mission and history, and 56% want to know about your financial condition. People want transparency. 65% want an organizatoin’s website to explain how support will make a difference.

43% said they wanted communication monthly, 32% said quarterly, 10% weekly, 11% yearly. 79% said they want updates on programs and services. 70% want to know about volunteer opportunities. 56% want information about fundraising events and about activities for your professionals. Communication preference is email.

Engagement

How do Millennials want to be engaged? Interested in activities with your organization that involve others: dinner with entertainment, private events, social parties with peers, sports and walk/runs. These are also opportunities for them to connect with leadership from the organization.

How often do Millennials volunteer? 44% said a few times per year, 12% once a month, 18% a few times a month, 14% once a week or more, 12% ones a year. The primary obstacle to volunteering being a lack of time.

61% said they want to volunteer with friends and family, 56% said they want an organized group. 44% said they wanted to volunteer on their own.

Young Professional Groups – 40% said they would be interested in joining a young professional organization. Why: 80% said they would join if there was a compelling mission or cause, 77% said for networking and socialization, 75% said professional development.

What does this mean?

Communicating

Multichannel approach: direct mail still works, with a life of about 4-6 weeks. Email is core, but only has a life of about 6 hours. Strongly consider using peers and personal solicitation.

Smaller requests with appropriate frequency – Millennials said they want to hear from organizations, but not get asks all of the time (want info on programs and services monthly).

We know Millennials respond to face to face, the reality of getting out and talking to people to get a $50 gift is often not prioritized by staff – so have it be a peer to peer thing/event/group where they are asking each other.

They recommend you begin with email before you branch into social media, like facebook or mobile. Don’t start with broadcast, you need to engage and connect. Connecting via email is engagement. Work on soliciting a response via email.

Email: asking for $50 or less with a very timely message. Make your call to action in the email a button, including donation call outs. End your email with a call to action. What we see clients try to do is reformat their direct mail content into an email – that does not work.

Talk to Millennials about your goals, for example if you are trying to do something big and raise a large amount of money, break the goal and gifts down into smaller buckets so it isn’t overwhelming. Track your open rates and conversions (do they open the email and then do they actually make a gift) – open rates are important to measure, not just conversions and gifts.

As an example, visit the the ASPCA website – show small gift amounts, provide buttons, focus on impact and have used email campaigns to drive people to website for gifts

Using Google and other search engines is the most common way Millennials find you. Make sure you see how your organization comes up in search results.

Help Millennial donors experience your cause online. How do we tell our story and also engage Millennials virtually? Instead of printed annual reports, try doing a video with interview and clips from what you’ve done the last year. Engage your Millennials as guest bloggers.

As examples, check out Conservation International. They show how a donor has protected an acre of forest and provides ways for people to engage with the website and the mission. Another example is Team Fox, with it’s peer to peer fundraising.

Engagement

Millennials want to change the world and want to be challenged. Organizations need to create a challenge or they will go somewhere else. Ask them to think with us, plan with us, build with us. Share the challenges and the problems we want to tackle and asking them to join us in the whole process instead of just asking them to fund something.

Leadership interaction is important for Millennials. It isn’t that we need to organize them, but we need to facilitate ways for them to organize themselves.

Get the full Millennial Donor Report

You can get the full report, review charts and data, and more at: http://millennialdonors.com/research/report

• Tracy Fullerton – Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab
• Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History
• Elaine Charnov – The NY Public Library
• Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image
• Syed Salahuddin – Babycastles

Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library

100 Years of the flagship library in New York. Goal of the centennial project was to shine the light on the library’s resources and get new audiences engaged in the collections and connected to the curators and staff. Research libraries have been facing daunting challenges in the digital world, but not everything is digital in research and the library really wants to connect people with the curators and staff that can help them. Staged a major exhibition celebrating the spectrum of what is in the library, public programs partners with The Moth. Trying to engaged the teen-to-twenty-something who normally may not use the research library. They thought, wouldn’t it be interseting to create a game to get people in the library who may not have ever come?

Find the Future: The Game

Find the Future was the overarching theme of the projects. Involvement from the curators and staff to develop 100 quests that the public could participate in on the night of the 20th. An overnight at the library, only 500 people – over 5,000 entered and many more were viewing the site etc. During the period that the 500 were selected, they learned a lot about how various social networking tools could be used as they saw participants start partnering up and organizing themselves for the game. There were pregame efforts, during the night, and post-event where people joined up and have continued networking. 70 teams of about 7 people each were sent on various quests like writing about loyalty based on the Pooh series in the library. What made the game so unique is the social element – the game designers spent a lot of time writing about the participants and their visions for the future on postcards and distributing them throughout the night, giving them to random participants so they were prompted to seek out others.

The result was an 800 page book of narratives, pictures, stories, and much more that will now be part of the library’s collection. People are now coming to the library to see it as it includes content by all the 500 participants from that night. So much of the project was really about convening social groups and we see it continuing.

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History

For years we have been producing digital media to fulfill our mission of educating the public about science and history. We are trying to change the visitors’ experience at the museum as well as ownership of what is in the museum, break down the walls between the public and the museum. My focus is on how children learn science.

Learning Science by Design

The opportunities for engagement now include exhibitions, digital space, and education. The goals include learning made personal, extension of experience onsite and online, and access for all learning and lifelong learning – underlying all of it is innovation in learning. Within our exhibitions, we have a focus on creating very dynamic, interactive opportunities. The Brain exhibition, for example, has a table where people can work together to put together the pieces of the brain neuron by neuron. It provides an opportunity for learning but also for strangers to connect. In our digital space, we have a new innovation called the Explorer. It is an app for iphone that started as a way for way-finding but is more: it has personalized tours, it has games, etc. Visitors can challenge themselves, each other, etc. The education work has three areas: ology (their first online game space for kids), Urban Biodiversity Network (mobile and networked, youth-driven) which brought together kids from around the world and the Bronx Zoo where kids created eco-stations around the zoo and the Museum explored if this kind of game/engagement helped kids actually learn, Virtual Worlds Camp (happening this summer in the second pilot) 3-d virtual worlds where kids will spend 2 weeks researching under seas environments, building their animals/characters, and so on. In the future, Games in Exhibition that then extend online and in class, expanded out of school offerings including space, bio-luminescence and other areas, and expand into AMNH in school partnership programs.

Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image

The museum was founded in 1981, opened in 1989. Since 1989’s Hot Circuits exhibition of arcade games, they have always had arcade games on display, and all playable. In 1995, they offered downloadable ROMs to export the games. Digital Play commpared and contracted console games with arcade games. Real Virtuality had two games that were on display that augmented reality. We are also planning a big exhibition for next year.

Syed Salahuddin – Babycastles

Babycastles is New York’s first independent video arcade. We wanted to created a space where people could get together and talk about games. There are a lot of places online where people can meet up, have game jams, etc. but there wasn’t an offline space for that. When we first started babycastles, we had no idea there was any kind of community in NY for it. They knew of a few people but it was nothing like the communities on the West Coast. We started out in Queens and within a month or two had 50-60 people coming. We wanted to put arcades everywhere: museums, public spaces, insinuations, etc. Our first arcade was in the basement of Silent Barn and it cost about $650.

“There’s not much I can tell you about this game because I’m confused completely,” said Paul Cox, a first-time visitor to Babycasteles, as the attempted to navigate a game called “The You Testment,” based on Noah’s Ark. “It’s actually a blast so far.” – The New York Times

Next they were invited to start The Arcade Returns to 42nd Street, popup gallery. It game them the chance to expose people to independent games at a larger scale – we had walk-in traffic, etc. One man came in that was 82 years old and said he’d never played a video game before – he was given a controller and taught how to navigate. It lasted for four months. We started a Kickstarter that was pretty successful and were able to buy new hardware, etc.

“For the opening exhibition at a temporary space near Times Square last year, Thu Tran, the inimitable maestro of the IFC show “Food Party,” turned a former storefront into a veritable zoo of brightly-colored furniture and cabinets. In painted wood and styrofoam, it was a masterful and whimsical refusal to answer that pesky question of whether games can be art. here was a kind of proof that you don’t have to choose.” CNN

“Many of the games at Babycastles don’t fit the traditional definitions of the medium; they veer closer to artistic experiementation than they do to mass-market viability.” – New York Times

Future Babycastles is in Williamsburg, just opened. And the next location will be at MoMA where they are teaching a 10 week digital media course about building arcades and will actually build one with kids.

Questions and Discussion

Tracy: When we speak about cultureal spaces, we are really talking about caging and preserving culture. I wonder if you might speak to the excitement and interest in games from your perspectives:

Ruth: the excitement is in the potential. Your comments are close to our heart – as an institutions we make decisions every day about how people are going to engage. We want to focus on experiences and the experience of culture is an interaction, that’s why these places need to be live. There is potential for creating a game for that experience, especially with the participants.

Elaine: In terms of the compassion, and as an organization that collects and preserves, we wonder how to engage people into the real thing while also translating that real thing into the real world. We have one of the copies of the Declaration of Independence, so people can engage with the real thing but also think about the things in the 21st century that inspire them. We want to work with the real, tangible history, but draw on all the technologies and forms of play that get folks involved and excited. That’s one of the goals of research institustions and cultureal spaces in general.

Tracy: Games are about subverting a system. And here we have places where we are preserving and saving important things and then we say wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could invite people in to play. I do think it’s great to invite play into those spaces.

Elaine: We invited some people in to create a game about the museum, Accomplice, that is like real-time Clue. We think it works, it is still piloting, but that’s a big risk for an instituation.

Tracy: The problem of showing games in public spaces, it is problematic. Games, if they aren’t public events, then a lot of times they are meant to be played for longer periods of time on one’s own. Going through a public space and stopping for a few minutes to observe doesn’t work for a game.

Syed: When I went to PS1’s exhibit, it took up an entire room, the walls were the actual screen and you literally walk as you are in the side scroller. It was a beautiful exhibition, but no one was playing it. There was a facilitator there that would play it and she played it all day. But people felt weird playing with her. I’ve seen that happen before.

James: The best exhibition game I’ve seen was because all of these people were willing to play. So people were willing to try, others would watch and learn and then when they played they could get further and those watching would learn and it just helped collectively get through the game.

Tracy: When we were developing The Night Journey, we got two sets of pay testers over a few months and I thought of it as a V: gamers who were interested in experiemental play, people who had visited a gallery in the last few months – people who were far away from each other in the comfort zone of the game. They would wait for you to tell them what to do. Through the course of a lot of play testing and simplification, we got to the place where there was enough simplicity that the truly non0game playing public could pick it up and do something meaningful and the more sofisticated game-players could do something more deeper but equally engaging.

James: Yeah, it’s all about context. When someone is playing Grand Theft Auto, they have a good idea of how the controller works and they’ve gone past lots of learning but someone in public space hasn’t worked through everything with the game to know what to do.

Tracy: The questions of really of usage and usability and appeal start to sound like questions we might not normally ask when we talk about museums and preservation.

Ruth: Public spaces become known as the places where people interact with each other and where it is safe to interact. That’s the doorway into the 21st center. There’s so much knowledge and information that they are intimidated when they come in the museum. So, finding games and interactions that make it easy for people to engage with the information.

Elaine: The media often undermines the role of games in institutions as showing them just as scavenger hunts and not interaction and personal exploration of learning and information.

If you want to build a strong online community, getting the right platform in place is only half the battle, and it’s the easy half. In this peer-led discussion, we’ll share our experiences of online community building and build lists of best practices around recruiting new members and retaining them, increasing participation and moderating your community.

Social networks and social media has busted out of the marketing communications and fundraising silos and changing the way nonprofits deliver programs, manage, and even govern.  This session will take a look about these trends and how nonprofits can equipment themselves to be networked nonprofits.

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http://networkednonprofit.wikispaces.com

The writing process for the book:

• Expository vs storytelling
• Different brains – visual vs words
• Helpful guide tone vs colorful and wordy
• Hired an arbitrator to be the editor

There was one thing that we both had in common: chocolate.

What is the Networked Nonprofit?

Working through networks allows us to scale social change projects geographically and geometrically. When you do that, there’s an entity called the networked nonprofit.

BE:

• understand networks
• create social culture
• listen, engage, and build relationships
• trust through transparency
• simplicity

Do:

• work with crowds
• learning loops
• friending to funding
• governing through networks

Three Themes from the Book:

1. Social Culture

Red Cross – started social media efforts shortly after Katrina when people weren’t saying very good things. Wendy was hired “to make the bloggers go away.” As she started putting into practice some great listening practices, she realized that listening was the gateway drug for social media.  Staff started to see the value in social media and it led to adoption of tools. Fast forward to 2009, Wendy led a process internally to create a social media guidelines and operational handbook. It’s evolving the social culture of the organization.

Step 1: overcoming the fear and opening up – can’t let fears keep you from moving forward.

Step 2: make learning in public less stressful, worst case scenarios and contingency plans.

Step 3: Reflection – where the greatest learning is

Momsrising uses joyful funerals for things that don’t work. The richest insights come when we are at the wake of a joyful funeral.

Step 4: Leaders experience personal use.

Codifying a Social Culture: Policy

Most important thing in a social media policy: be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. represent us well. remember that you can’t control it once you hit send.

Step 5: Testing the policies: refining, educating

Operational guidelines need to be specific and include examples!

2. Transparency

The gravitational pull of social media is from inside organization out. You can’t close yourself off from the world.  3 kinds of organizations: Fortress, Transactional, and Transparent.

Transparency is not the same as being in a glass house. Think about national archives, behind a glass case – there’s still a barrier even if it is see-through.  A better anology is a natural sponge. They are anchored to the ocean floor, they let in 20 thousand times their weight of water through them every day, and they hold the nutrients from the water. It’s about engaging, that’s why you can’t have a glass wall.

Radical transparency: all naked all the time. You can’t run organizations that way. We don’t know where the line is but the line is there.

3. Simplicity

charity:water – focus on what you do best and network the rest.

You have too much to do because you do too much.

4. Reflection

One small step: what is one small step that you can take to make a big different in your organization to become a networked nonprofit.

http://networkednonprofit.wikispaces.com

Who: Speakers: Amy Sample Ward | Netsquared; Debra Askanase; Ivan Boothe

When: 1:30 p.m.

What: What is the basis of community organizing and why is it important to online campaigns? Traditional community organizing informs a successful online campaign and lays the groundwork for a sustainable, effective movement for social change. In this session, participants will get their hands dirty planning a social media campaign that integrates traditional organizing theory and practice. During the workshop, we will present traditional community organizing principles and methods of campaign mapping. We will also ask up to three attending organizations to present an idea for an upcoming campaign and goals. Attendees will divide into break-out groups to design the online campaign. The groups will use both community organizing principles and social media tools to create an online social media campaign. Each group will present its campaign strategy and tactics to the entire workshop. Workshop leaders will offer feedback and evaluation. Come to the session with your online campaign ideas, and get ready to have fun mapping out a campaign!

Who: Speakers: Susan Tenby | TechSoup Global; Janet Fouts; Kira Marchenese

What: An important part of your social media strategy should be listening for people and organizations who are talking about the issues you want to discuss.How do you know which networks will be most effective to reach your goals? Listen first and discover where the conversations are!

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Tools for listening:

Goodbyebuddy – find out when people aren’t listening to you any more. Learn what people want to hear.

Tweetdeck – add columns to listen and track conversations or watch mentions. Not just following mentions but also events – anything with hashtags, etc.

Google Alerts – remember that they aren’t always accurate or enough to find everything.

Mixed Reality events – conference going on in Second Life with a live streamed video into Second Life, it expands the audience exponentially. Conversations take place in both places separately and together.  Multi-channel conversations.

Flickr and YouTube – monitor and subscribe to activity around you, not just your own.

Lessons for Listening:

Don’t be afraid! Hold the reins: if you aren’t listening, paying attention, and diving in then the conversation can get so far away that you aren’t able to join in.  You can only have a real impact and “control” or influence over the public conversation about you, your organization or your programming if you are listening and engaging.

Where are the conversations?

• Blogs
• Linkedin
• Forums
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Communities
• Ning/Yahoo/Google

What to listen for:

• brand
• cxo names
• sponsors and donors
• supporters and evangelists
• industry and local news
• topics of corporate and/or personal interest

Find conversations quickly: check out Radian6, Biz360 and so on – a fairly expensive way to listen but comes with functionality to sort, track, etc.  Not about follower numbers, but about engagement and content.

Lazyfeed: use it for when you don’t have anything to say but want to say something. Set up keyword searches and it brings you relevant tweets and links. Allows you to be a thought-leader because you are on top of the conversations.

Twitter: even if you don’t want to engage on it, you need to be listening there. Set up alerts and so on.

Check out listening tools at: http://janetfouts.com/listen/

Listen, engage, repeat!

Follow #10ntc.listen on Twitter for links and conversation from this session.

Context for the event from Rory Cellan-Jones:  Prevailing ethos of the web has been libertarian, optimistic about the potential of the internet to be a medium of free expression and break down barriers.  That ethos continued until the last three years or so with issues in Burma, Iran, and China.  We’ve seen potential for those unsympathetic to the cause to use the technology too – a bit of an arms race created.  Technology is amoral – it doesn’t care. In Iran we’ve seen it used to get out information and resist censorship but have also seen it used by the government to alter a mobile phone system and monitoring calls.

Tweets and highlights from this event on Twitter at #AITech

Panelists include:

• Susan Pointer, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations
• Andrew Keen (via video), author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture
• Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of the Guardian
• Annabelle Sreberny, Professor of Global Media and Communication, School of Oriental and African Studies (with special interest in Iran, bloggers & social media)
• Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent for the BBC, is chairing.

Susan Pointer: declaring an interest as a passionate advocate of the potential of internet technology. When it comes to the potential to underpin human rights, for me the question is not technology good for human rights but is the access to information, the ability to connect with people online, to use online tools to mobilize offline activities, to question wisdom, and shine a light of transparency – it’s a useful tool for promoting and underpinning human rights. So, the answer is yes as a tool. The access to information drives knowledge. The technology itself is not intrinsically good -at Google we are advocates for free expression on the internet and free access for all; the technology istelf is and should be a neutral platform for this. it does not itself dictate who does the communicating or how we assess the communications. Nor does it require that we leave our human faculties at the on switch – the internet democratizes the channels.  Rather than ask if the tool is perfect or not, we should work together to make it a perfect tool, keep the internet platform healthy.

Andrew Keen: I would never argue that technology is against human rights. When it comes to the internet, you can of course find lots of examples where twitter or facebook or email have been used by governments or corporations or regimes. But, the tools of the digital revolution are used by those against the regime but are equally used by those in the regimes.  Because of the natural of the internet, where traditional intermediaries have been done away with, it’s increasingly easy for regimes to use this supposed democratized media for their own.  I haven’t seen that much proof that internet has changed [post the Obama election]. Changes come through people and culture and not through technology. I’m not arguing that it is bad, but the internet isn’t necessarily good for human rights.

Annabelle Sreberny: Communication technologies have been good for human rights since we created the alphabet. These are tools that can perhaps accelerate the speed of information and the number of people involved, but it’s always had the potential for change. Politics is communications by another name. Communication technologies have always been used for political change, especially with Iran. 1905-1911, people were publishing in exile, printing and sharing over the boarder, etc. in Tehran. 1975 revolution used leaflets and cassette tapes helped mobilize and push the revolution. Youtube and facebook are just the new tools for political change. Western audiences came to know Iran through the 2009 election, the internet had been the place where you could find politics happening inside Iran when in person it was very hard there.  For example, the internet was important because it was difficult to organize offline. Given the difficulties of face to face politics and public space control, many of the people 30 and under stay home where they can be online and be free. They are inventing it for themselves. One thing that internet technologies can do is the bringing together across boundaries – so, the diaspora are slowly invited back into politics. Which causes a lot of Iranian politics to take place outside of the country.  This is politics – we need the good and the bad; the cyber army, the 10,000 bloggers claimed to be trained by the national guard, etc.  In Iran the regime hasn’t yet shown itself to be as savvy as the green movement.

Kevin Anderson: I think in terms of human rights and damage of censorship the internet has been a net good.  Without social media, we wouldn’t have been able to provide the kind of information that was available. It would have been a blackout of information but suddenly there’s a way to get it out. The Guardian had an injunction to gather all the names of the people who were killed and detained and that’s something that would have never been possible without the internet. I think what we are learning is that increasing the freedom of information isn’t all that’s needed to free those living under extremist regimes.  People point to Obama but it was actually a perfect marriage of the internet and traditional pounding on doors. The internet can be problematic – some of the debates can become quite divisive online instead of cohesion. I think underlying slacktivism isn’t enough – you can’t just turn your profile green.  Just as the Guardian used crowdsourcing to get the names of those detained, the government is using crowdsourcing too. Security is going to be increasingly one of the things that internet activists have to learn. Today, a China official said the internet is a new battlefield without gun powder. The incident with Google in China has made aware the increasing militarization of the internet – targeted attacks against corporations and activists and that’s the most worrying development.  These are sophisticated attacks and as the regimes become more sophisticated in espionage methods, people engaged in human rights will have to live in a new threat environment.

Questions:

Isn’t there plenty of evidence that technology is actually bringing information to societies in a way that was not possible 20 or 30 years ago?  Isn’t accelerating the process by which people can take on governments?

Andrew Keen: The wall in Berlin was open by accident by a guard, so you could argue that the internet is a distribution of knowledge so that would have never happened. The internet is actually a really effective tool for maintaining regimes.  So, this organization of knowledge could actually be a good thing for demoralizing government.  The more knowledge there is in the world, the easier it is to spy or look into the knowledge.  Let’s not delude ourselves that the opposition are Luddites.

We always thought of the internet as a free space with free spirits, anarchic, but it’s actually becoming dominated by a few corporate players, like Google. It has said a lot about it’s commitment to freedom of expression and so on, but it’s first duty is to it’s shareholders just like any other corporation.  Given that, how profound is Google’s commitment ever going to be to human rights?

Susan Pointer: First, Google’s size – we live or die by the trust users have in our services. We have no contract, tie-in, etc. – most all of our services are free.  Those users are free to choose whether to use our services or elsewhere. We retain their loyalty by providing services they want to use and having protections in place that they trust. It’s very different than your traditional model. Without a doubt, every user is important to our business but every user has the choice. Do we want to keep you? Of course, so we have to keep innovating, providing exciting services and that’s what drives. We support an open and competitive environment that is based on user buy in. In terms of our commitment to online freedom of expression, from the beginning our motto has been to do no evil – it means we are committed to providing as much access as possible.

Even in China?

Susan Pointer: We took the decision as a very complex – google.cn  It was not an alternative to the normal site. We found that there were users in China couldn’t access the .com site so it was created to give them access.

There was no commercial imperative behind that?

Susan Pointer: It was absolutely based on what would provide the most access to our users there. What that means  is that in order to set up the .cn site we had to be compliant with Chinese law. Which meant self censorship of the results. We would do that, we would not provide access to the .com site so you could still get results there, and on the .cn site we would provide a message when censorship was happening so the user would see when results were being withheld. In light of our investigations of attacks on the human rights activists, we have taken the point that we are no longer comfortable self censoring results and are pursing how we can provide results without censorship with China which could mean we have to discontinue use there.

Historically, people have used all kinds of methods to fight for human rights. Is there evidence that these tools are making the fight easier?

Annabelle Sreberny: The arguments would have to focus on the speed and the numbers of people involved. It’s about scale. They work like memes, the speed people react and join in.

Slacktivist term, is there not a danger that 20 or 30 years ago there was far more intensity because easy technology wasn’t there. You had to get face to face with people.

Kevin Anderson: I think it’s a bit of both. The idea that social media completely transplants face to face – one of the difficulties is that it isn’t an either or. I think there are people who say “yes, there are people who have said I’ve changed my avatar green…” One of the things with Dean’s campaign initially was that they had huge amounts of online activism but had problems turning that into real life work. It can be broad but shallow. The power of the Obama campaign was translating online activity to real world impact. Translating a click into someone on the streets is the step it takes.

People have seen technologies for a force for good and bad – in Iran you have to say that there was a unique set of circumstances. Before the election you had a population that had migrated to the internet, a government who had let them have that space. After the election that space exploded and the government was slow to catch up. But now they are catching up, with the cyber army and beyond. The question is how can we make it a force for good?

You use the term slacktivism about people in the west – the point that needs to be made is that internet lets people participate in the activism without the fear, true there is the other side of the coin…

Kevin Anderson: The point I’m making is that politics is communications but it is also a number of other actions, especially when you are dealing with regimes that have been successful at staying in power. You have to use all the tools of politics to make that change. While freedom of communications is key, there are a number of other steps. As regimes get more sophisticated, like we see China exporting some of it’s internet controlling tools elsewhere (like Iran), the methods have to get more sophisticated. If you show support you are lazy – no. But there has to be a number of people taking actions in the real world, too.

Annabelle Sreberny: Mousy solidarity – how easy it is to click on a petition, and so on.  Why the sense of solidarity? Because we don’t ave politics like this – it feels good to be part of it. We feel like we can participate.

Our attention span is ever shorter, time is relative.

Kevin Anderson: If it’s going to be that transient 24-hour news cycle, that sustained action is key. Once the novelty wears off, breaking through the media cycle is difficult. In Iran, it’s quite clear, this is a long sustained struggle and isn’t something that’s going to happen quickly. You had more democratic and open societies with the Velvet and the Orange revolutions. With the Chinese, the point they made was that we have to control information otherwise there will be chaos.

Susan Pointer: It was the immediacy that played the role in creating interest in Iran. Had that information come out weeks later it would have been restricted to academics and others pouring over the information. It’s important to sustain that information and interest. The discussion about membership of an organization and what it means to be active: lots of people would have joined a group or gone to a meeting without contributing. The power of showing numbers online can be more powerful than showing up online. We need to look at how membership and participation are defined. Where does the pressure come from on an international exposure. How we defend the nature of the internet: it makes institutions and governments nervous. We need to be as vigilant in our spaces as internationally to keep it without gatekeepers and screeners. That’s what will keep it a source of immediacy.

The deision making process by Google – with Iran it can seem clear. What kind of process does Google go through to make those decisions?

Susan Pointer: Once we created google.cn we had to meet compliance. In general terms, I spend a lot of my time with issues where access to our services are restricted and we work to fix it. The open access to our services – it shouldn’t matter where in the world you are, you should be able to access services.

Is the speed and scale of internet communications a bug as well as a feature?

Kevin Anderson: My experience online is largely positive. The places where i see the most animosity is news sites. And that’s not the internet to me.

There’s debate between those who say you should be able to say/do anything and those that say other people’s human rights are at risk in that situation.

Kevin Anderson: I can only speak for myself but I wouldn’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say face to face. It’s said that it is still so new we haven’t created social mores for it. I remember when the AOL newbies came on and we thought they were ruining the internet… if you are saying things you think would turn you red if you were saying them outloud, then you probably shouldn’t say them.

Climate change and climate gate – what are the social media implications?

Kevin Anderson: as a journalist, yes, we want to present all sides but do we present all sides as if they are valid? At the Guardian our editorial decision is very different than at the BBC. We can take a stand. I believe strongly in objectivity but it can be a difficult thing in fractious debates like this. It might be a bit beyond this debate.

If corporations are immoral – one of the reasons we expect corporations to be moral is because Google wears morals on the sleeve, etc. Where does the openness of information infringe on human rights (like Google Buzz – there was no consent for followers, etc.)?

Susan Pointer: mission, people, leadership and so on decide who a company is. I chose Google because I felt that it made good decisions. It’s easy to disassociate ourselves though. One thing I would say from our perspective is we follow through from the way we communicate, some would argue we are too open but I think that’s part of the process to engage with users. Buzz is one where we thought we had the controls in place but the options that were there could have been better with visibility – and we responded immediately.  We do have the ongoing discussion with our users. Privacy comes down to individuals having choice, transparency and control. Transparency in the human rights space is interesting – we want the option to be anonymous but we also want to know who is saying something.

Google’s business depends on knowing more and more about users – behavioral advertising. Isn’t that going to be difficult to walk that line? You have to make bigger profits and that lies in knowing more about your users.

Susan Pointer: Majority of our advertising is contextual – the search you made and the content on the page. We hold IP addresses, and not users. You can also opt out permanently of being associated with certain things. In settings, users can have the option to opt out, or opt in to certain things.

Annabelle Sreberny: So much of the content from Iran was user generated content sent to the media – what’s happened to that? Why should we be working for free for large media? Facebook is increasingly hard to excavate. People put content online that they want to share but you can’t get to it. What happens to the content we are putting up there?

Do you think access to technology will be acknowledge as a basic human right like water and shelter? Is it trivializing human rights by associating the internet with it?

Kevin Anderson: Yes. Technology – internet is about communications. We already have universal access provisions for things like telephones. Technology infuses my life. What we are seeing now is not that people don’t have access but choose not to have it. Why do people exclude themselves and what are the resasons? Especially in a technologically advanced country, that becomes a bigger issue.

Susan Pointer: When we are talking about technology we are taking it from the point that you have access to it. We have to consider the fact that in many places of the world people still don’t have access. We aren’t just talking about changing governments but giving citizens access to information at all.

Should Amnesty be fighting for the right to access the internet?

Annabelle Sreberny: Article 19 – the fundamental mission. THe right to community is all about access. Thinking about the right to communicate opens up many interesting issues.

Is there any indication that Amnesty is doing better now with technology?

Amnesty Rep: You can argue yes. If you look at Amnesty’s history, 49 years ago people wrote letters to get people out of prison. Once we had fax machines, we started having urgent actions to send a fax. Now we coax people to send emails. Technology gives us new ways to do things.

I would imagine a letter or a bag of letters 20 years ago was possibly more effective than a million emails today.

Amnesty Rep: It explains why we’ve never given up on letters. To some extent you can delete your inbox really quickly than you can get rid of a bag of letters. But it also means we can get information quickly and from everywhere quickly.

What technology means for people who are experiencing a crisis who don’t have access – don’t make it onto twitter, don’t make the news cycle?  Like Sri Lanka where pictures weren’t getting out.

Annabelle Sreberny: There were also huge demonstrations elsewhere pulling in the diaspora.  They play a role in alerting the media in other places. We can fall into the trap that one technology takes over from all others. Other technologies are still around. With the diaspora, you just need to get enough people to pay attention that they can spur the media.

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