Story Time: The Blog that Jack Built

For the 2009 National Main Street conference, I developed the short story below to explain how a structured social media strategy using free web tools can be built to support your organization's efforts.

The Session was titled "Blogs, Multi-media and Bunnies; Three Things You Need Not Fear". The slideshow below was modeled after the children's story "The House That Jack Built" and I featured it as story time as the Session wrap up to cover the concepts discussed in a way that is memorable and easy to understand.

I am posting "The Blog That Jack Built" as a silent movie so that readers can use it for their own work, while providing the narration them selves.

Enjoy.

The Blog that Jack Built from Robert Voigt on Vimeo.

A short story about mixing it up in the world of "free" web tools.

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Building Citizens

One of the challenges of municipal planning is engaging people within the community, and having them participate in meaningful and productive ways. Unfortunately there are a number of issues that make this daunting, and no doubt also a challenge for other municipal services.

I believe much of the cause rests with having people that are outside of the process by means of lack of information and/or lack of understanding. Both of which are often outside of their direct control, given the increasing complex municipal planning systems dominated by experts and professionals. I think it is fair to say that average (whatever that may be) people feel unequipped to participate in planning projects because they feel they don't know "enough" about them. Many others do participate, but in less than effective ways, because they don't know when or how to enter the process to have the best impact.

What is missing is a citizenry that has the tools to be part of THE PROCESS; and let's not forget it is THEIR PROCESS.

I feel that the need for Planning education for communities is critically important, and that it is one of the roles of municipal Planning departments to fulfill this need. Municipal Planning departments should be engaging their communities with active efforts to teach/inform about planning practices and contemporary theory as it relates to their community's context. This needs to be done in an ongoing manner that is independent of any particular project or application (which is almost exclusively the case and often leads to the forming of adversarial positions and a sense that the municipality is trying to justify their actions, as opposed to providing unbiased information). I suggest WE execute strategies that use all the professional facilitation, engagement, and participatory tools WE have available to achieve this (for example: social networking tools; walking tours; open space sessions; workshops; charrettes; videos; surveys; lectures; newspaper and magazine articles; posters; TV and radio discussions; publishing booklets; free courses, etcetera).

The goal is to increase the knowledge and understanding of planning within the community. Over time WE would be helping to build a citizenry that is able to understand and engage in planning actions with more awareness, effective measures, and participation. The results of this kind of work would bring us closer to municipal planning that is fair, efficient, just, and effective.

If our efforts are focused on building the places of our communities and ensuring that the "machine" runs efficiently, but WE loose sight of building our citizens with the assets of knowledge and understanding that empowers them, WE as Planners are forgetting who this is all for. People.

Give a community a plan; you have informed them. Teach a community how to plan; and you have empowered them.

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If You Have Nothing to Say, Don't Say It Online

I saw this video a number of months ago and wanted to share it, as it does such a great job of stating exactly what is wrong with social media when there is no thought put into its use.

If your municipality, non-profit organization, project team, community group or whatever is about to launch a new communication or outreach initiative that uses the latest web 2.0 tools, be sure to at least ask "Why?", "What?", "How?", and "Who for?".

If you can't come up with really good answers for these questions, then maybe the next question should be WTF?

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LOOK! Moving Pictures! Top 10 tips for making online videos.

Online videos can be a strong engagement and promotional tool for community organizations, municipal departments, and commercial associations.

To create online videos you don’t need a fancy camera or video professional to be effective. I am posting the following TOP 10 tips on creating online videos from a Crash Course I presented at the National Main Street Conference in Chicago this spring.

These tips will teach you the basics for making effective videos to showcase your work and engage stakeholders, whatever your profession or project:



ONE POINT
Don’t be too ambitious, begin making video projects with a single point or message. You can always do more videos later. Think of it like a commercial, not a movie; less IS more. Too much content makes the videos longer, can overload viewers, and makes the project that much more difficult to complete.

TWO MINUTES
Keep first projects short and to the point, around two minutes long. Longer videos are less likely to be viewed, and less likely to be forwarded to others. Got more to say, make more videos; improving your skills and creating more product to support your work. This time more IS more.

THREE SETS OF EYES
Avoid the memory and personality black hole created when looking into a camera. Stage live action shots with a speaker, an interviewer, and an observer - the camera. Have a conversation between the speaker and interviewer and capture personality, passion and excitement with the observer.

TELL THE STORY WITH NARRATION FIRST
Avoid the difficulties with presenting to the camera, numerous takes, and lighting, and begin your journey into video production with narrated slide shows.
This also allows greater control over video length, message clarity, and flexibility for the time and people involved in making the video.

SOUND CHECK
Although perhaps counter intuitive, sound quality trumps image quality for online videos due to the size and resolution of the screens that will be playing your videos. Invest in a good quality voice recorder, and/or microphone, and audio software to fix the basics such as volume levels and background noise.

MIX IT UP
As your skills improve, being interspersing your video slide shows with short takes of live action. This begins to make the presentation more personable and engaging; while still allowing you to use the slide show structure to keep the entire project focused and under control.

ONE TAKE
Do all live action in one take. If you mess up, pause, and move on. This avoids what I call camera fatigue; where you repeat the same script over again and again, only to drift off message and stumble at the same points. Edit the mistakes, add transitions between good takes and end up with a very viewable project.

CUES
For longer live action speeches use cue-cards or teleprompter. Don’t rely on your memory until you are really comfortable in front of the camera; you may be surprised about how much of a memory black hole is created when looking into the camera lens. A free online prompter is available at www.cueprompter.com.

SET THE STAGE
Create the environment that best fits your project and speaker. If your subject feels most natural at a podium, in a boardroom or in front of a chart, then by all means shoot your video with laser pointer in hand at the white board. A comfortable speaker will give you a far better project then one mesmerized by the camera lens.

LAYERS
As you get more advanced with the layout of your projects start overlapping sounds from one take, or image, to another. This slight detail adds a flow and pace that makes the project less choppy and more interesting to the viewer. With practice this technique can be used for surprise or as an introduction to elements.

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Leap in the dark: what's your social media strategy?

For many municipalities the rush to use social media tools is a flawed exercise in tactics unsupported by strategy. Simply using web 2.0 technologies with their exhibited potential for significant and far reaching impacts, is not the same as integrating them into ones work programs, and the function of an organization. While these tools are often no more complicated to use than existing word processing programs, when municipalities or other government organizations use them for stakeholder engagement; networking; communication; crowd sourcing information; or any number of other activities, the potential risks are as high as the potential payoffs. For example, the breaching of confidentiality and security by US federal officials using Twitter within meetings and during visits abroad earlier this year. Municipal problems resulting from unskilled use of these kinds of tools may be slightly less dramatic, but with no less potential impact on the local scene.

Turning on a light does not make one an electrician, and in terms of social media use, municipalities need more electricians than switch flippers.


The skills needed to successfully design structures and methods for integrating web 2.0 into the organizational and legal parameters found within the realm of municipal governance are complex. Expanding or enhancing any activities with such potentially powerful tools should at the very least be done with understanding of: notice requirements; communications policies; records retention requirements; issues of vesting and legal standings associated with various applications; codes of professional conduct and ethics; accessibility issues and requirements; economic and cultural cohorts within the community; and, in camera procedures.

Organizations need people with more than just web 2.0 end user skills, they need people with creativity and broad minded problem solving skills. These individuals will help maximize the potential of social media tools, by adapting their use beyond common limits and/or initial design and integrating them into existing structures and procedures without conflict to policies. For example, blogs can used as management tools for monitoring resources for major projects and employee teams if they are designed appropriately and published internally. These kinds of blogs can reduce reliance on meetings, facilitate telecommuting, improve access to and dissemination of information, remove organizational silos, and enhance succession strategies and training for new staff.

At the very least, knowing how to design and use social media to maximize their vast potential, requires more than switch flipping but also the ability to generate communication policy; understanding of organizational development; strategic systems thinking; and facilitative leadership skills. If your organization has web 2.0 electricians with these kinds of skills you will likely find yourself happy on target and not be taking leaps into the dark when someone flips the wrong switch.

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