Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 7.0

I believe the best way to get from here to there -- where “there” is sound, social media related recommendations UCP and Red Treehouse can use to deliver the social goods -- is to do it methodically. To follow a framework that's logically consistent and proven effective, and that meaningfully addresses the key drivers of organizational success.

BRING ON THE EXPERTS.

Here are a few big thinkers whose frameworks fit the bill, along with a sentence or so about how they frame the challenges all organizations today face:
  • John Seely Brown, John Hagel III, and Lang Davison: authors of The Power of Pull. How do you systematically draw out people and resources as needed to address opportunities and challenges? 
  • The Social Business Bunch ('cept that there is no such bunch, ‘s’far as I know; this is just my shorthand for management consultants with social business* offerings -- a few at the front of the pack being): 
  • IBM: IBM. How do you become an agile, transparent, and engaged organization? 
  • Dachis Group: the social marketing optimization software solutions leader. How do businesses re-envision their inherent architecture to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities brought by changes in technology, society, and work? 
  • Gartner, Inc: the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. How do you use social media to identify, catalyze, empower, and derive value from a community and their mass collaboration? 
IN THE NET THESE PEOPLE TRUST.

It's their belief that those who know how to take advantage of the digital infrastructure have opportunities to create disproportionate impact and do great work.

My daughter and I have a stake in UCP’s and Red Treehouse’s great or not-so-great work to come. I want to be sure both organizations are at least considering -- 'cause I’ve been drinking more or less the same Kool-Aid -- what these experts are serving up

I’ll be methodically snooping around for signs that they are, and reporting back in the posts to follow. 

*One definition of a social business: An organization that has put in place the strategies, technologies and processes to systematically engage all the individuals of its ecosystem (employees, customers, partners, suppliers) to maximize the co-created value.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 1.1

It was already in my notes to research the ways in which LIVESTRONG and other “most admired” health non-profits like American Cancer Society are using social technologies to build hope and keep it alive. What wasn’t in my notes – and what took me by surprise, I must say – was to have what I had planned to look for...find me. In my car. On my radio. In the form of a public service announcement from the National MS Society

What got me about the psa was its relevance to this series. The point? To drive traffic (by driving those of us who were in traffic) to a new web site: www.msconnection.org. The point of the new site? To be a platform for sharing ideas, for "giving what you know."
The rationale behind it? Lots and lots of caring and connected people is the best hope for slowing MS down -- if not obliterating it altogether.

For now, you can visit this page to hear and /or see the psa. (radio and TV formats)

Sunday, October 14, 2012

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 6.0

Dear Red Treehouse and UCP:

I appreciate what you’re saying: “Connect with us and connect with hope.” I do. But, may I please have the floor for a minute to say what I believe on this day would make me feel hopeful?

I have three CP-related topics in mind and specific questions about each of ‘em. I think it’d be great if I could (1) click on my bookmarks toolbar (2) go to your site, and (3) find the answers I’m looking for there on your home page. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to do any clicking through at all. And the answers themselves would be right on the money. No “close, but no cigar”s. 

That's a heck of a lot to ask, I realize. Ergo when I went-a-wishfully-thinking to your site this week and didn’t find the answers I was looking for right off the bat, I wasn’t disappointed; I was ready and willing to search. So, I made (what I thought were) educated guesses about where to look. I acted on them. I came up empty-handed.

My m.o. these days as a visitor is to try the keyword site search tool sooner rather than later. That’s what I did next – using the following keywords or phrases...with and without quotation marks...with minor variations: 
  1. Physiatry; physiatrist
  2. Intensive therapy
  3. Low glycemic index treatment
Want to know the results?

"No results found."*

Two web sites. 
Three strikes each. 

Three strikes usually means you’re out. In this case, though, I also tried “orthotics” and “orthosis” but – strike four – was rebuffed again.

How can that be? Four unique and different topics. Each one clearly (right?) within the purview of your organization. No results found.

My searching-but-not-finding may not be the biggest of deals, but, until and unless you can take my queries as input and somehow (I don’t care what happens behind the curtain) turn them into answers I can use as output, you still have a way to go in my book. You've room for improvement. 

For now, I feel like I’m far better off doing a Google search of the whole Net. 

Find hope? 
Nope. Not this trip, unfortunately. 
Found discouragement.

*For #2 on my list, there were some results but only two of the first fifteen from Red Treehouse and one of twenty from UCP were relevant at all.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 5.1

While we’re talking about site structures, an observation about navigating the two of ‘em:

It looks to me like they’re doing a better job at www.redtreehouse.org of taking visitors by the hand and walking them from start to finish, i.e., of being specific about how to use the tool that is their web site to get results. 

At www.redtreehouse.org you can find resources, organizations, and events in one of two ways. 

Could things possibly be any more straightforward?

At www.ucp.org on the other hand…things don't seem so clear cut. Unless of course you’re lucky enough to have landed on one of the issue-specific sites (e.g., www.mychildwithoutlimits.org) first.

More about UCP’s issue-specific sites – and all this jazz – down the road. 

It’s nice when it comes to equipment, tools, and machines to have clear operating instructions. That goes for hope machines, too.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 5.0

More than just bits and bytes, this digital infrastructure consists of the institutions, practices, and protocols that together organize and deliver the increasing power of digital technology to business and society.*
Ultimately, I want to evaluate how well these two orgs. are utilizing the world's digital infrastructure to deliver on their high-level promises – beginning with a basic accounting (below) of what I call their “digital deliverables”: those offerings o' theirs that I as a user or visitor can access with my laptop.

Two notes: I don’t have a particular framework for doing this accounting. No cool tools, in other words, to bring to the party. Nor do I have any insider knowledge whatsoever.  

Red Treehouse 

Short and sweet: There’s the web site. There’s a separate Facebook page (that, for some unknown reason, isn't linked to or from the main site). I‘m tempted to add press releases to the mix, but will hold off. All I really want to do now is say a couple of words about the first.

The web site brings together “three sources for information and support”. It’s structured so that users can search for and find the following: 
  1. RESOURCES, guides and tool-kits.
  2. Names, contacts and helpful information about community ORGANIZATIONS.
  3. Calendar of EVENTS, trainings and activities happening locally.
Ohio families, young adults, professionals, and organizations make up the user universe. Those who register receive monthly heads-ups regarding new content that’s been added to the site. 

UCP

UCP's web site is bigger and more sprawled out than Red Treehouse’s. I’m just starting to get a grip on the structure and logic behind it. 

One of the largest health non-profits in the country, UCP differs from Red Treehouse in that it operates a large affiliate network and also advocates for public policies “that ensure fair and full citizenship for people with a spectrum of disabilities.” A sizable chunk of the real estate at www.ucp.org is dedicated to those two functions. What's left of it (the real estate, that is) is tied mainly to UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts. It's those efforts that lead me to want to compare the two organizations in the first place.

PEO combines two primary components. First, there’s Public Education Resources. UCP’s online offerings in this category remind me very much of Red Treehouse’s offerings in their entirety. Included therein are in-depth online Resources, and State Resource Guides: contact information for state and local disability related services and organizations. “Never scour the Web again for bits and pieces of disability information and resources from disparate sources!”

Public Education Campaigns is the second PEO component. Subsumed under this heading are four (4) issue-specific campaigns, each of which has, or will have, its own web site. The four are: My Child Without Limits, Brave Kids, My Life Without Limits (to come), and Siblings Initiative (to come, as well).

About PEO online, I'll just say generally that newer digital tools are richly in evidence. Here you'll find blogs, tools for helping people with reading disabilities, online communities, live stream webcasts, and more. Social media use looks to be lively, especially as it relates to the issue-specific campaigns. 

UCP has been experimenting with trying to harness the power of the Net for some time. Much of the experimenting has stemmed from the Life Without Limits initiative begun in ’04. Peruse the site's pages and you still see references to older LWL campaigns (Don't Block My Vote and Who Will Care?), social media experiments, a crowd-sourced immersive scenario game (Ruby’s Bequest)...

Aggressive, if not progressive, use of digital technologies has been and still seems to be a UCP preference. I hope to dig deeper into it going forward.

*from The Power of Pull  (2010) by John Seely Brown, John Hagel III, and Lang Davison