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Community Voices at Digital Engagement Event: Reflections on the Conversation
At the Digital Engagement Event, back on 6th October, David Wilcox and I helped the Community Voices team facilitate two sessions that focused on the three things more important to digital engagement than the technology. You can check out the Community Voices group on the Social by Social community for videos, notes and other reflections from the event.
We split participants up by topic areas for discussions and Community Voices team members lead the small group conversations, while others used various tools to capture what was said (audio, video, tweets and blogging). After the small group discussions, we had volunteers from each group provide a short report back to the full room of some of the highlights or lingering questions that came out of the conversation. During these report backs I captured a word cloud on a flip chart of key words. Here's what came out of each session:
Session #1 Word Cloud:
COMMUNITY
What's of interest?
PEOPLE
Existing Communities
Stereotypes
Individual Level
Lead
Participate
FUN
Creative Approach
Visible Benefits
Relevance
TRUST
Session #2 Word Cloud:
Relevant Content
Community of Interest
Individuals
No Jargon
Partnerships
TRUST
What's Success?
User Generated
Access to People
COMMUNITIES
Offline vs Online
HUMAN
The words in all caps represent the words that were repeated in each report out. If you look at the two sessions, you'll see very similar key words and phrases. Even more important to the topic of the sessions and, I think, in Community Voices' work in general, the words that every group used that appear in all caps are pretty much the same in both. The biggest focus: trust and communities.
Digital engagement is not about cool social media tools, or even fancy hardware. It starts with people and stays with people.
What do you think?
Were you there, and have ideas to add to this reflection? If you weren't there, what ideas do you have about the things most important to digital engagement other than technology? Would love to hear your thoughts!
Remember to visit the Community Voices group to connect with the rest of the conversations going on there.
We split participants up by topic areas for discussions and Community Voices team members lead the small group conversations, while others used various tools to capture what was said (audio, video, tweets and blogging). After the small group discussions, we had volunteers from each group provide a short report back to the full room of some of the highlights or lingering questions that came out of the conversation. During these report backs I captured a word cloud on a flip chart of key words. Here's what came out of each session:
Session #1 Word Cloud:
COMMUNITY
What's of interest?
PEOPLE
Existing Communities
Stereotypes
Individual Level
Lead
Participate
FUN
Creative Approach
Visible Benefits
Relevance
TRUST
Session #2 Word Cloud:
Relevant Content
Community of Interest
Individuals
No Jargon
Partnerships
TRUST
What's Success?
User Generated
Access to People
COMMUNITIES
Offline vs Online
HUMAN
The words in all caps represent the words that were repeated in each report out. If you look at the two sessions, you'll see very similar key words and phrases. Even more important to the topic of the sessions and, I think, in Community Voices' work in general, the words that every group used that appear in all caps are pretty much the same in both. The biggest focus: trust and communities.
Digital engagement is not about cool social media tools, or even fancy hardware. It starts with people and stays with people.
What do you think?
Were you there, and have ideas to add to this reflection? If you weren't there, what ideas do you have about the things most important to digital engagement other than technology? Would love to hear your thoughts!
Remember to visit the Community Voices group to connect with the rest of the conversations going on there.
Add a Comment
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Comment by Amy Sample Ward on October 30, 2009 at 14:49 -
Hey Aidan - thanks for sharing this feedback. I think you and the CV team are right on!
Do you have any projects or other workshops you've already done or are in the works that touch on building trust? Maybe it's a blog series waiting to happen (interviews with CV team members about what they think is needed to build trust within communities)!
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Comment by Aidan Kelly on October 30, 2009 at 11:56 -
Hi Amy,
It was great to have your input (and David's) at the Digital Engagement event. I really like your word cloud it highlights very neatly the key messages and thoughts from the day.
It was really interesting to observe that the two seminars produced similar outcomes/conclusions, but also raised interesting challenges. As you mention, the feedback states very clearly that digital engagement is not about the technology but about building up trusted networks within communities, not experts being parachuted in, not snazzy websites but facilitating the process that connects people with people who can inspire each other. Of course, there needs to be resources to help the inspiration grow and become useful but ultimately it starts with people and trust, as you point out.
It was great to be able to engage with people with very different experiences and perspectives at the Digital Engagement event, the honest feedback is a refreshing change that I hope is a sign of a growing ground swell of motivation and activity as more people get involved. The key message that I took away from the event was that we need to build trust within communities, I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts too, especially around how we can build up trust within communities .
© 2013 Created by David Wilcox.
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