In preparation for the upcoming series of NCDD 2010 Regional Events (including the one right here in the Bay Area, October 29), Sandy Heierbacher (Director, NCDD) has asked for input on a question I know has been on the minds of many in the NCDD community for the past few years: “How can we best meld/combine face-to-face engagement with online engagement?”
NCDD is currently in the process of gathering “some of the best-of-the-best materials” to support the three topic areas the events will focus on (quality public engagement, online tools, collaborations that work). Here’s the forum thread regarding the question above if you’d like to check it out: Combining Online and Face-to-Face Engagement
Much to my disappointment, I wasn’t able to find any specific material about online/offline integration on our internal wiki (aside from a few very general tidbits which — unsurprisingly — seem to indicate we think favorably of the concept and would like to explore it further). That despite the fact that we’ve tossed this question around many times in the past and do have a few ideas as to what the app could do to make integration easier. Adding Web 2.0 insult to social software injury, my bookmark stream on Delicious came back empty as well, though I’m almost certain I’ve enjoyed reading about this topic elsewhere before.
I guess I’ll have to go back and try to dig up some of the sources I vaguely remember, but before I do that here is a list of ten things I’d probably look into first if I were in charge of online/offline integration for a standard public participation effort today. As an obvious disclaimer, any of these may have already been tried by someone during some project (please leave a comment if you are that person).
With that out of the way, here we go:
- Start from the beginning: Make online/offline integration a core piece of your overall participation strategy (as with many things, success is probably much harder to achieve if the idea enters the project as an afterthought).
- Use online to promote offline and vice versa: Think online event calendar or event notifications on your website or websites, and promotion of your various web properties at your face-to-face events, incl. hand-out materials.
- Allow for each of the two channels to feed into each other: Post summaries/minutes of your face-to-face events online, make some time at the beginning or during an event or meeting to hear report-backs from online participants on how their part of the consultation is coming along. Live broadcasting (audio, video) of face-to-face events can be extremely valuable as well as a backchannel to allow for some level of remote participation.
- Make your online content available offline: Many online consultations maintain a library for important documents and resources, some projects even allow the participants to add to this repository or express whether or not they find a particular resource helpful. In addition, participants are generally given the opportunity to create a lot of raw content (posts, comments, ideas etc.), and sometimes these are summarized and synthesized by a moderator or facilitator. To the extent it is reasonable, consider taking some of these materials to your face-to-face events. That obscure third-party impact study about the planned development in your neighborhood from two years ago that one online participant shared and that many others found highly valuable? Maybe a good candidate to share with your offline audience as well.
- Identify the “bumble bees”: Ask participants to indicate if they plan to attend both online and in person and give them an opportunity to become ambassadors between the two channels. Their task can be quite simple: occasionally report back, generally help communicate between online and offline participants, help identify disconnects or gaps etc.
(Note: for those unfamiliar with Open Space Technology, a Bumble Bee “moves from one group to another, cross-pollinating.”) - Get the media to attend both online and offline activities: As part of your regular media outreach, make sure the press is aware of your online activities and give them observer status. Furthermore, make sure they are comfortable using your online properties (e.g. discussion forum, idea generation tool etc.). Facilitate direct contact with online participants where appropriate (e.g. for interviews).
- Bridge the digital divide: Ok, this is a tough one as digital divide issues can be hard to overcome. Don’t try to boil the ocean! Small things can have a positive impact and may be worth the extra effort. There are a number of things you can do to bring your online offerings closer to those people who don’t have access. Think partnering with public libraries or schools for computer access, installing kiosk systems at your face-to-face events etc.
One particular idea we’re pursuing with Zilino is the ability for the facilitator to invite participants into the role of citizen reporter (if you will) and have them gather evidence (stories, ideas, concerns etc.) from people who lack online access or aren’t likely to participate at all (either online or offline). - Synchronize online and offline activities: Events done right — whether online or offline — can have huge drawing power. Orchestrate your overall activities in ways that link online and offline participation more tightly (e.g. an online discussion phase leading up to a face-to-face event, a face-to-face meeting designed as the kick-off for further dialogue online). In some instances, you might even consider running online and offline activities in parallel and allow for some level of exchange of content and ideas in real-time.
- Encourage participants’ use of social media: Similar to item #3 above, social media can be a great way to enable participants help each other make sense of the process and share their findings. Luckily, there is a ton of material out there that explains how to do this kind of community building so I won’t go into detail here.
- Encourage higher-bandwidth modes of communication: This all depends on the geographic realities one is dealing with, of course. Provided a large-enough group of online participants live in close proximity to each other, you could use your website to coordinate small groups to meet face-to-face (alternatively, a phone conference might do the trick). Just because someone can’t attend a public meeting at 5pm on a Thursday doesn’t mean they can’t meet their neighbors for coffee after church on Sunday. The web can be great at this kind of matchmaking and scheduling. You could take advantage of these ad-hoc gatherings by keeping a list of small group tasks handy or topics your participants ought to address. Or, leave it more open: simply provide them with a minimum amount of guidance (e.g. how to have a productive conversation) and let them focus purely on relationship building, something that may pay off immensely once they go back to engaging each other online.
Still reading? Here’s a bonus idea:
- Ask your participants: Seriously, they are way smarter than you (often enough, at least). Let them help you figure out how to bridge online and offline in ways that work best for them.
And that’s it, ten pretty basic starting points to get going! Hopefully, this is enough of a collection to get the conversation started. Please leave a comment if you have feedback to share, more ideas to add or know of any interesting resources (confirming or contradicting anything I’ve said). Thanks!
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Excellent post, Tim; thanks for seeding these tidbits of wisdom as a way to “start the conversation” here and at the NCDD event next month.
The point you make that I’ve had the most experience with is #8 – in this case holding online and face to face events simultaneously and weaving them together in real time.
One of the most spectacular examples of this was a three-tiered World Cafe I co-designed for the Shambhala Summer Institute where we hosted 3 World Cafes at the same time – one face to face in Halifax, one in Second Life, and one on Skype. We used the same questions and timing for all three, audio-streamed the introduction live from the face to face event into Skype (which we translated in text chat into Second Life), and through a shared communication channel between key people in each of the three events, we linked the harvest in one with the other two. There was a screen of the actual Second Life World Cafe being projected live into the face to face Cafe in Halifax, which turned out to be so attractive that we suddenly had an influx of newbies in the middle of the SL Cafe who’d logged in from Halifax to see if it was as fun as it looked.
Thanks for sharing, Amy! A great example of online/offline integration, indeed.
Ok, after discussing this on Twitter and then in the NCDD forum, I’m clearer on what I like – most of the points, except perhaps for the second one – and what I don’t: “integration”. For me, the term resonates from the history of remedying social inequalities and integrating those who were previously “step down” with those who were “step up”.
It’s a great word, with historic meanings, but (for me, again), it brings a confounding resonance to this conversation, in that it implies that one necessarily should put online and offline on equal footing, encourage everyone to participate in each venue, etc. I don’ t think that, in general and always, online and offline should be on equal footing, or that everyone should participate in both venues as much as possible.
So I’d prefer a different term, say “orchestration” or “combination”. In some cases, a lot of offline, face to face, with just a touch of online (email to organize, a website to publish results afterwards) would be just the ticket. In other cases, where each modality is a way to reach out to different audiences, equal emphasis and careful weaving back and forth is more important.
Thanks, Tim, for raising these points.
Christoph,
Interesting language reference. I think Sandy used “melding” in her original question on the listserv (less lofty, more hands-on).
I probably should have outlined in more detail the question to which these ten ideas were meant to be an answer. If the combined use of both online and offline channels or methods has been deemed desirable with regard to the project’s objectives, then trying to integrate the two (i.e. remove friction, maximize use of scarce resources etc.) is probably a goal worth pursuing or at least deserves to be considered. The question then is: how can that goal be achieved? That’s a question a lot of folks in the NCDD community seem to have been struggling with in the past.
That is not to say that one mode can’t be more important than the other or that participation in both must be the norm for all participants. Quite the contrary!
Both online and offline modes of operation offer unique strengths and weaknesses. What I am suggesting is that — to the extent possible — allowing participants to move freely between the two based on what works best for them at any given time is probably a good strategy.
Hi Tim,
great list, I agree this is a critical topic for our field so far without good resources or best practices. I think the point that Amy raises is one that deserves a lot more attention: How can we exchange ideas across the different channels so that the conversations stimulate each other. I think your Bumble Bee concept is a good start.
I wrote an article about that a while back, before the rise of social media. So it’s fairly outdated, but for what it’s worth, http://www.digital-ink.co.uk/QuickThinking/Limehouse/limehouse-1.html. And we also briefly discussed the implications of integrating online and offline at the end of our Promising Practices paper, http://publicagenda.org/files/pdf/PA_CAPE_Paper3_Promising_Mech2.pdf, but not as detailed as I wish we could have.
Chris
Here are two posts I added to the NCDD listserv about this:
Post #1
I can offer our past and working draft Issues Forum guides to the pot.
http://e-democracy.org/if/guide.pdf
Also, note the drafting zone for the updated version:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Issues_Forum_Guide
Also, this outline on how to open the state-wide online phase of a
dialogue after a set of in-person gatherings might be useful:
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/3FcVFRc4U43ldpKNYSCsYi
Finally, let me just say that we use “in-person” expectations all of
the time with our local forums at E-Democracy.org. A few notes:
1. Real names – If you want to meld the values of f2f with online, in
almost ALL circumstances real names are essential. Pictures can help
too, but are not as important. This is for civility and
accountability. Exceptions are working with youth, very sensitive
topics, or in unsafe countries where even private online exchanges can
get you thrown in jail or worse.
2. Round of Introductions – We now launch our neighbors Issues Forums
with a round of introductions. First we require 100 people to join
before opening (imagine starting a f2f event before half of your
participants arrived) and then make it feel safer to folks with a
round of introductions. This gives people a chance to say hello and
mention issues they would like to discuss without the pressure of
staking out a position. Note:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Starting_introductions And:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Starting_a_neighbors_forum – You’ll note
that we use volunteer “Forum Managers” to guide our forums … do not
expect technology to produce high quality exchange without a real
named human personality guiding the discussion from time to time. (Do
exactly the _opposite_ of online news commenting which is the
anti-guidance).)
3. Inclusion Matters – Without in-person outreach with local forums,
just engaging those who show up first or most easily online provides
limited value. Note: http://e-democracy.org/inclusion and our recent
blog post on print materials: http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/923
4. Local Matters – Building on the last point, we have the distinct
advantage of having our online exchanges interact with the “real
world.” A post gets discussed at the neighborhood association meeting,
at the park, etc. I’ve been organizing the “hosts” of Locals Online
here: http://e-democracy.org/locals To me this has tremendous
potential as people can see the impact of online engagement in a way
they can see and measure. (Just imagine the impact you could have with
your dialogue and deliberation skills if you could effectively apply
them online starting in the neighborhood where you live – perhaps
another topic … but what kind of technology (existing or not) do we
think we need to have to allow those not so tech-oriented to
comfortably facilitate online? The technology is in far greater supply
than the skills required IMHO.)
I hope this is helpful.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
Post #2
Let, me add one more item
Technology Choice, Distributed Access – I note Tim B’s blog post and
discovered there is a separate forum -
http://ncdd.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=801&start=0 – topic in this
as well with different content.
You really want to avoid splitting your participatory audience by
using different unconnected technologies – particularly if you are
dealing with smaller audience. It might work on a national site, but
ideally the experience reaches people where they “are” online.
If you use WordPress for example, be sure to use as many e-mail
notice/subscribe to comments features as possible.
In our case, we use GroupServer because it combines e-mail and web
(smart e-mail list, simple web forum) to allow people to choose where
they want to interact with the online public space we’ve created.
So for example, prior to the first CityCamp unconference, we used an
online group for a pre-gathering round of online introductions and to
this day use the group to exchange info.
The main e-mail list/web forum:
http://e-democracy.org/citycamp
Is available via:
* E-mail and e-mail digest
* Web
* Web Feed
* Facebook: http://facebook.com/citycamp
* Twitter: http://twitter.com/CityCampEx
Someday, we will add a mobile web “style” that further optimizes the
smart phone experience and it would be nice to have iPhone and Android
apps as well.Based on the free tools available out there, Facebook and
Twitter are places to read the forum, but to interact with everyone
they do have to use the main site.
I strongly recommend a similar approach for anyone hoping to sustain
participation by the widest range of people.
Steven Clift – http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director – http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me – http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072
Great list of additions, Steven. Thanks!
Chris Haller writes about the topic here: Public Involvement in Planning: Simple Steps for Bridging the Online/Offline Divide
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