If you tune in here often (the 86+ of you), you might find this job really fun and interesting.

We have been picking up quite a bit of work in line with training people on the concepts of network-centric advocacy and we are providing partners with direct support, online training and strategy services. I am looking to grow this part of my work at Green Media Toolshed over the next few years.

Hopefully, in the next few months I can bring on a few people interested in this work, train them and work with them over the next several years to build the Netcentric Campaigns Division of Green Media Toolshed. I am looking for great staff that want to get into the real work of networking the movement. Please check out the job and pass it on to friends that are interested in a great job in DC.

Network Advocacy Coordinator

There are some interesting assumptions in this theory of the inefficiency coefficient. Stefan Turner says that ineffency goes up in there are enough people to support independent coalitions and factions. However, as the barriers to coordination go down, it would seem that smaller coalitions and factions will be able to sustain themselves with less energy (need less people then in 1933) and we would have increased fragmentation and increased inefficiency which is the opposite of what has happened since 1933.

I am not buying it.


Physicists quantify the 'coefficient of inefficiency' - physicsworld.com
Parkinson, who died in 1993, discovered a strong correlation between a committee’s ability to make a good decision, and its size. In particular, Parkinson found that committees with more than about 20 members are much more ineffectual at making decisions than smaller groups — something he dubbed the “coefficient of inefficiency”.

While many organizations are aware of the 20 person rule, Thurner and colleagues had not been able to find any reference to a mathematical explanation of the coefficient. So they set out to first empirically verify Parkinson’s law and then develop a mathematical model to describe

Ouch. A new digital divide between groups and their high dollar donors.

Reaching 'wired wealthy' online can net bigger returns -- Minority Groups, National Museum of Mexican Art, University of Chicago -- chicagotribune.com
An "Internet communications gap" exists between many charities and their bigger donors, even as more higher-bracket people go online to contribute, a new report says. The study finds that "most charities are not making the best possible use of their Web and e-mail efforts to connect with a critically important audience" of affluent and Web-fluent donors. It suggests communications be tailored to fit a group it dubs the "wired wealthy." Members of the group contribute an average $10,896 a year, online or by traditional means. They are affluent, with about half from households with annual incomes of more than $100,000 and a quarter from households with incomes topping $200,000. They tend to be Baby Boomers and Internet-fluent, spending an average 18 hours online per week.

So how long will it be before a group of friends or a small campaign bands together with online donations to buy TV ads without the logistics and management of a larger group?


online & interactive marketing thoughts & banter
Google is continuing to make moves to become the advertising hub for agencies and clients who have in-house teams. They have opened their TV buying capabilities to all advertisers as its been in beta for around a year. Advertisers can buy TV spots through AdWords by markets, dayparts, specific programs and program content.

The interesting component is that they offer analytics through set-top box such as seconds tuned per impression and the number of people who watched the spot from beginning to end. Will be interesting to see if they look at tracking spot times and search queries in the same market to report how offline media drives people to the web for more information.

There are some interesting assumptions in this theory of the "inefficiency coefficient." I think physicswold has it wrong (how often do we get to say that?)

Stefan Turner says that inefficiency goes up when there are enough people to support independent coalitions and factions. That seems to make sense, but it should be universal across government, private sector, and public interest sectors.

However, as the barriers to coordination go down, it would seem that smaller coalitions and factions will be able to sustain themselves with less energy (need less people to maintain a viable faction then in 1933). We have actually observed increased fragmentation and increased inefficiency which is the opposite of what the big theory and conclusion would suggest.

This methodology doesn't make sense to me. There are other things at play. It is as if the indicators for success and the political systems that demand large cabinetes (include more people because the culture is deeply fragmented) are conflicting rather than any proof in the magic of the 20 people to a group. It may be something even more fundamental to human nature people are less willing to question authority in bigger groups? People less will to challenge leadership in larger group settings? Leaders less willing to throw open questions and reverse thier opinions in larger groups?

Less perfect information would lead to worse decisions not group size. Close the doors on opinions and limiting the seats of power as a way to make better government choices would only make sense to physics and math guy.

The real challenge then is to look for the ways to scale small group dynamic. To access the wisdom of the crowd and scale effective coordination using better communicaiton skills and technology.

Or you could tell the EU to limit committee size... Are they actually buying that?

Physicists quantify the 'coefficient of inefficiency' - physicsworld.com
Parkinson, who died in 1993, discovered a strong correlation between a committee’s ability to make a good decision, and its size. In particular, Parkinson found that committees with more than about 20 members are much more ineffectual at making decisions than smaller groups — something he dubbed the “coefficient of inefficiency”.

While many organizations are aware of the 20 person rule, Thurner and colleagues had not been able to find any reference to a mathematical explanation of the coefficient. So they set out to first empirically verify Parkinson’s law and then develop a mathematical model to describe

Here is an update to the Fossett story. 50,000 searchers. Lots of false leads given to the Civil Air Patrol.

1. "Leads" Should have needed multiple blind confirmations. (Labor is free make redundancy your test on eliminating false leads.)
2. The user interface didn't work.
3. Poor images made the task very difficult.
4. Didn't leverage the network to sort and prioritize the volunteers.
5. Didn't realize the complexity of working with volunteers vs. Turks getting paid.

Link: Online Fossett Searchers Ask, Was It Worth It?.

Looking back, Diana Francis says she should have known it would be a big waste of time. She sat for hours each day in her husband's home office in Houston scouring little digital snapshots of the Nevada desert on Amazon.com, in hopes that she'd help locate vanished millionaire aviator Steve Fossett.

Finally, though, she decided the exercise was tedious and unproductive.

"It was so exciting and new when we started it and it seemed like it could really help them, but eventually it was disheartening, and I realized I had no idea what I was actually looking for," says Francis, who participated for a couple of weeks while her kids were at school. "You know the saying, 'a needle in a haystack'? Well, this literally was like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of a small European country."

She's not the only one now expressing doubts about Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a high-tech aspect of the Fossett search that received such vast media hype that Mechanical Turk's director, Peter Cohen, won't do interviews about it any more. The online retail giant took the most up-to-date satellite images of the 17,000-square-mile search area, broke it into smaller chunks, and had more than 50,000 volunteers look at randomly distributed segments. In Mechanical Turk parlance, each segment was a small job, known as a Human Intelligence Task or HIT, which required the assigned volunteer to flag anything thought to be out of the ordinary.

Fosset disappeared Sept. 3 during what was planned as a brief jaunt from a ranch 90 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada. The massive online effort didn't lead to the discovery of Fossett or the single-engine Citabria Super Decathalon he was flying. But neither did the dozens of planes and hundreds of ground searchers who made up the biggest search for a missing aircraft in U.S. history. To date, it remains a mystery what happened to Fossett.

Amazon closed the search last week, almost a month after the official on-site search ceased. Now that it's over, Amazon spokeswoman Kay Kinton says the company has learned much, and she gives the system high marks for its ability to update and adapt as the situation changed.

Still, many of those who participated have mixed feelings about their experiences. Francis, who says she's "not that much of a geek," regrets taking part, but many who are more knowledgeable about the technology say it was a worthwhile exercise that should help Amazon refine its methods in the future.

"There was always the hope that people with good eyes would hit the right image, but it's also a learning experience," says Ken Barbalace of Portland, Maine, who runs the website EnvironmentalChemistry.com and who looked at 25,000 HITs. "We can't figure out how to make it a valuable tool until you work on it and change things."

The most important change Amazon needs to make for the future, Barbalace says, is that the interface ought to offer a way for searchers to toggle between the image they're given and an image of the same section prior to the date of the search target's disappearance. That would have helped volunteers know whether the things they were spotting were new.

Instead, some volunteers took the GPS coordinates from the squares they were issued and fed them into Google Earth for older images, slowing down their progress. And in the last couple of weeks when Mechanical Turk started using higher-resolution images, the GPS coordinates were no longer listed with the images, which made matching the photos even more of a challenge.

Some volunteers believed that information was withheld because Amazon began to worry that helpers would try to actually go to the sites themselves to search. But Kinton says it's because the source at that point changed from satellite imagery to images taken from aircraft, which didn't have GPS coordinates attached.

Another intense Turker, Andy Chantrill of Castle Donington, England, says he wishes Amazon had provided the searchers with more information about the overall effort. The 25-year-old software designer says he put in 85 hours poring over 20,000 HITs. Since each square was reviewed by up to 10 people, he says he'd like to know how many others had flagged ones he looked at.

"The value of the contribution is hard to quantify because ultimately we failed to find Steve, but it seems reasonable to imagine that this could work," Chantrill says. "I don't see any downsides to it, so long as people don't pester the professional search-and-rescue teams with poor leads."

Yet that is exactly what happened, much to the exasperation of Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan, who says her e-mail and voicemail boxes were flooded with leads from folks working on the Mechanical Turk. Many times, they mistook search aircraft in the air for Fossett's plane -- even though it's unlikely Fossett's plane would have appeared intact.

"The crowdsourcing thing added a level of complexity that we didn't need, because 99.9999 percent of the people who were doing it didn't have the faintest idea what they're looking for," Ryan says.

"In the early days, it sounded like a good idea," Ryan continues. "In hindsight, I wish it hadn't been there, because it didn't produce a darn thing that was productive except for being a giant black hole for energy, time and resources. There may come a day when this technology is capable of doing what it says it can deliver, but boy, that's not now."

Here is an update to the Fossett story. 50,000 searchers. Lots of false leads given to the Civil Air Patrol. 1. "Leads" Should have needed multiple blind confirmations. (Labor is free make redundancy your test on eliminating false leads.) 2. The user interface didn't work. 3. Poor images made the task very difficult. 4. Didn't leverage the network to sort and prioritize the volunteers. 5. Didn't realize the complexity of working with volunteers vs. Turks getting paid. Link: Online Fossett Searchers Ask, Was It Worth It?. Looking back, Diana Francis says she should have known it would be a big waste of time. She sat for hours each day in her husband's home office in Houston scouring little digital snapshots of the Nevada desert on Amazon.com, in hopes that she'd help locate vanished millionaire aviator Steve Fossett. Finally, though, she decided the exercise was tedious and unproductive. "It was so...

I am speechless. watch the video.

I am speechless. watch the video.

Tuesday Tips: Why Nonprofit Managers Must Use RSS ... And How to Start | DemocracyInAction You're not getting information -- about your cause, about your people, about your profession -- efficiently enough, which means you're not getting enough information, period. And someone else is getting that information, or will be soon. * Someone eyeballing your job. * Or your press release. * Or your grant application. * Someone competing with you for your constituents. * Or someone competing with your constituency for influence. They'll know when someone writes about your issue or blogs about your cause or has something to say about your organization, and know it without refreshing dozens of links and scouring dozens of mailing lists so their hands are free for the other hundred things they have to do.

Seth's Blog.has a good riff on engagement, big groups, fundraising and volunteering. We need to work harder in thinking of valuable things online volunteers can do to help move an agenda. Do they help you write thnak you notes? Do they call other volunteers? Do you send them phone lists and calling scripts so they can phone bank your member to remind them of upcoming events.

We are not afraid to let our members talk to each other off line at an event or meeting. We can't control it there face to face. However, we paic on the ideas that encourage our members to talk to each other in online contexts.

The big win is in turning donors into patrons and activists and participants. The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang the art. My mom was a volunteer for years at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and there's no doubt at all that we gave more money to the museum than we would have if they'd sent us a flyer once a month.

The internet allows some organizations to embrace long-distance involvement. It lets charities flip the funnel, not through some simple hand waving, but by reorganizing around the idea of engagement online. It means opening yourself up to volunteers, encouraging them to network, to connect with each other, and yes, even to mutiny. It means giving every one of your professionals a blog and the freedom to use it. It means mixing it up with volunteers, so they have something truly at stake. This is understandably scary for many non-profits, but I'm not so sure you have a choice.

Do you have to abandon the old ways today? Of course not. But responsible stewardship requires that you find and empower the mavericks and give them the flexibility to build something new, not to try to force the internet to act like direct mail with free stamps

Seth's Blog.has a good riff on engagement, big groups, fundraising and volunteering. We need to work harder in thinking of valuable things online volunteers can do to help move an agenda. Do they help you write thnak you notes? Do they call other volunteers? Do you send them phone lists and calling scripts so they can phone bank your member to remind them of upcoming events. We are not afraid to let our members talk to each other off line at an event or meeting. We can't control it there face to face. However, we paic on the ideas that encourage our members to talk to each other in online contexts. The big win is in turning donors into patrons and activists and participants. The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang...

I have a killer project in the works. I am not sure Net2 application and/or presentation does the project justice.

The Advocacy Email Index will change the way we scan emails and understand the movements. Who wants to be on our our allies email list? This project will help us scan and navigate thousands of emails more easily. Users will figure out new ways to find allies and swarm issues.

Why?
I want to know what all the groups at Green Media Toolshed are talking about (clients, or peace movement, yada..yada) Green Media Toolshed has 194 member groups. I wish I knew what issues they are working on today, this week, over the last year. What is important to them? What are they discussion with their members in email? I want to know so I can swarm on issues and support folks. I want help our members network better and self-organize on issues. I need a technorotti or digg for the issues of the movement.

My inbox is full and I can't seem to read newsletters fast enough. Our best content is in our enewsletters. I need to be able to process email faster. I might know more about training needs, expertise and partnership opportunities. I need to know the words and trends in my network. (images of progressive exchange - inbox folder and tag cloud. It is all email subjects since Jan 1. What does it tell you?

The Advocacy Email Index will identify key words used in emails to members. We need to know who is talking about what, and where. By illustrating the community “chatter”, this tool will empower messaging, appeals and issue framing. It will help our disconnected and fragmented movement swarm.

Vote for it. Pop it on net2 and we will get it finished.
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/email-advocacy-index

We also ran on Center for American Progress emails....over on our blog.
http://netcentriccampaigns.org/advocacy-email-index

A better title would also be great. (comments)

I have a killer project in the works. I am not sure Net2 application and/or presentation does the project justice. The Advocacy Email Index will change the way we scan emails and understand the movements. Who wants to be on our our allies email list? This project will help us scan and navigate thousands of emails more easily. Users will figure out new ways to find allies and swarm issues. Why? I want to know what all the groups at Green Media Toolshed are talking about (clients, or peace movement, yada..yada) Green Media Toolshed has 194 member groups. I wish I knew what issues they are working on today, this week, over the last year. What is important to them? What are they discussion with their members in email? I want to know so I can swarm on issues and support folks. I want help our members network better and...

Great video. Do you see the network in the middle of all the organizations? As folks work to create change what are you looking at? What are you trying to measure and count? Why do you miss the network? It is right there.

Great video. Do you see the network in the middle of all the organizations? As folks work to create change what are you looking at? What are you trying to measure and count? Why do you miss the network? It is right there.

This is a very cool tool tracking news and chatter on the election.

This is a very cool tool tracking news and chatter on the election.

Here is a great riff by Michele Martin on the failures to create conversation via a blog. It is a really good riff.

At the heart of her six reasons are the basic rules of conversation. The same reason you don't want to talk to the looser at the bar or picnic translates online.

Do you like to get sold something? Do you like being gamed in a conversation? Do you really ask folks what they are up to and riff with them on issues that are important to them?

Add the being a jerk factor to technical problems and you will kill any conversation.

All that being said, Why do you blog? Is it for the comments and conversation? When I started this blog I riffed on my reasons and I think I am still pretty much in the same space....

It takes me a long time to write anything really well. If i developed ideas into fully formed thoughts and officials papers ...well. It would take forever. This blog is

1. my online thinking space.
2. my clips and research library.
3. a loose tie to mentors and smart people that can "see" my thinking and give me feedback on stuff via email or when we meet face to face.
4. my scream to the world I am not perfect. Don't let me pretend to be...my blog is full of mistakes, bad ideas and losts of rambles.
5. my family protection plan. It is a solid declaration I will remain behind the scenes ..putting out so many random ideas and rambling riffs is a one way ticket out of jobs with huge responsibility...(too much information on the blog sinks me from any high power appointment.)

The first item is really the biggest reason I blog. I feel a strong drive to keep some of my current thinking that is still in formation on my blog before it goes into papers or products for work. I also look back over my past post when I get stuck and need ideas to build on.

Link: The Bamboo Project Blog: Six Reasons People Aren't Commenting On Your Blog.

Six Reasons People Aren't Commenting on Your Blog

1. You sound like a press release.
This is a particular problem when a blog is either being run by an organization or by an individual who's trying to generate business and isn't getting the informal, authentic nature of the blogging culture. The problem is that a press release is not something that's designed to invite conversation. It sounds like what it is--a way to get coverage from newspapers or magazines. It has its place in a marketing mix, but it doesn't belong on your blog.

Let me show you what I mean. This is a press release. Read it and then then let me know how drawn into a conversation you might feel if you saw this or some version of this on a blog. Right. I didn't think so.

2. You sound like an infomercial.
This is closely related to problem 1. Blogs that come across as thinly-veiled sales pitches don't invite comments. I would argue that they don't invite a lot of readership either, but that might just be me.

Certainly having some individual posts that are related to "selling" something can be OK, but I wouldn't expect a lot of comments on them. And I definitely wouldn't expect to create a big sense of community on your blog if most of your posts are geared towards pitching your products or organization. There are ways to do this, but you have to be adding value separate from anything you're trying to sell. I think that the Rapid E-Learning Blog is an excellent example of the "soft-sell" approach that works best in the blogosphere.

3. You sound like a know-it-all.
I've been running an informal experiment here for the past few months, trying to see which blog posts generate the most comments. Hands-down they are the posts where I ask a lot of questions and where I give incomplete answers on topics that interest me. I think this works for two reasons. First, no one is attracted to a know-it-all. Oh, we may want to bookmark their stuff, but that doesn't mean we want to talk to them. I also think it's because by asking questions and not having all the answers, we leave space for comments to happen. As a reader, it feels like there's more that could be said on the topic, so I'm more inclined to comment. Questions are the lifeblood of conversation . They need to be a regular part of posts.

4. You haven't showed them how.
If you're blogging for bloggers or for people who are comfortable with the conventions of blogging, then explaining what comments are and how to comment isn't necessary. But if you're blogging for people who are new to the blogosphere or who aren't that proficient with the technology, you definitely need to make commenting easy to do. This is something I learned during the 31 Day Challenge and have seen a substantial increase in comments since then.

5. You haven't created the right atmosphere.Comment_thread_3
You know how you go to some gatherings where the hosts make you feel right at home? Even if you don't know everyone there, they do a great job of introducing people to each other and creating an environment that invites people to settle in for a chat. It's the same dynamic with blogs. Some blogs make you WANT to talk to the author and to other commenters. Some blogs--not so much.

My personal feeling is that a lot of it has to do with "tone." If someone's writing seems warm, inviting, authentic and transparent, then I want to join the conversation. If they sound "institutional" or distant, the conversation will have to be pretty darn interesting for me to be drawn into commenting.

I've also found that I'm reluctant to comment if it feels like I may be breaking into someone's "clique." Not that you won't have regular commenters, but sometimes there can be a problem with having an "in-crowd" that emerges over time, making newcomers less likely to share their thoughts.

6. You just don't seem that into it.
I LOVE talking to people who are really passionate about a topic and are incredibly excited to share their ideas with me. I'm less thrilled to talk to people who aren't that into the conversation. Same thing with bloggers. The ones who are passionate about their topic--and allow that passion to shine through--they're the bloggers we want to talk to. But if your posts feel like you're slogging through them, unless it's a post on how you're slogging through posting, you probably won't get the conversation started. Blogging is about passion and about sharing your excitement about a topic. It's those posts that tend to generate conversation, not the ones where you're going through the motions.

So those are my six reasons for why I think that people may not be commenting on your blog. What would you add to the list?

Photos via premasager and ario_j

Here is a great riff by Michele Martin on the failures to create conversation via a blog. It is a really good riff. At the heart of her six reasons are the basic rules of conversation. The same reason you don't want to talk to the looser at the bar or picnic translates online. Do you like to get sold something? Do you like being gamed in a conversation? Do you really ask folks what they are up to and riff with them on issues that are important to them? Add the being a jerk factor to technical problems and you will kill any conversation. All that being said, Why do you blog? Is it for the comments and conversation? When I started this blog I riffed on my reasons and I think I am still pretty much in the same space.... It takes me a long time to write...