Work Stream #4 – Speaking at Client Events

4 thoughts on “Work Stream #4 – Speaking at Client Events”

  1. Thanks Luis – great challenge topics. A lot of those arise in the civic social space in slightly different forms, where we need to facilitate ways for citizens to connect and cooperate. Have you worked out of the enterprise sphere, or seen scope for cross-over?
    I also lost my blogging enthusiasm, partly by working in a rather closed consulting environment. Now exploring Connecting Citizens, and enabling the connectors. Your posts are an inspiration!

    1. Hi David, thanks a lot for dropping by and for the wonderful commentary! Greatly appreciated! RE: Have you worked out of the enterprise sphere, or seen scope for cross-over?, yes, I have worked with clients from the public sector, i.e. government agencies, although that work was mostly focused towards internal rather than external, i.e. with citizens.

      It was a rather interesting experience and also a confirmation as to why I don’t get to work with the public sector much, since there seems this, unjustified, fear towards working with freelancers. In my experience, not sure about others, hope they can comment as well on the topic, most of those public sector organisations would want to work with consulting agencies, the larger the better, because they feel their needs may well be better suited.

      It’s a pity, because, if anything, it is an indication of the old world they seem to be living in still, i.e. the XX century, instead of understanding how networks operate nowadays. Yes, I’m working myself as a freelancer, but I do have an extended network of friends / colleagues / peers who I rely on to collaborate and share our knowledge closely to help out get whatever the work done more effectively, in a timely manner and with excellent quality results. But, like I said, public sector needs to understand that a bit better and get on with the times and it’s our collective job to help out raise awareness where possible.

      That’s why, upon reading your comments about civic social space I got reminded of this blog post I put together nearly 9 years ago and it’s scary how accurate it still is and a testimony of the wonderful and exciting work ahead of us!

      RE: Blogging enthusiasm, I think all of us, who have been bloggers for a certain period of time, have lost that enthusiasm at some point in time, for sure. But contrary to other social technologies blogs will always be there, which means that, whenever we’d be ready we would be coming back to them in full force again. To me, for instance, it took me 8 months to realise that and here we are, once again, blogging away and enjoying, very much so!, the conversations!

      So keep blogging, David! Give me a shout-out if you do, because I’m very much interested in the whole civic social space, as you can see from the blog post I wrote on the topic almost nine years ago 😀👍🏻

  2. Thanks Luis – prescient post! In the spirit of your pieces, here’s a bit of my story and perspective.
    In the UK civic space we have government, non-profit organisations with paid staff, community groups who seldom have staff, volunteers helping groups and organisations. As state support and services are cut, it’s increasing important that people are well informed about what’s happening to their community, what opportunities there are, how to help each other. But relatively few are actively involved in social action and the different elements of the local ecosystems could benefit from more joining up.
    Over the last nine years we’ve seen a lot of enthusiasm for the potential of social media to enable local social action and collaboration, and project ranging from modest community blogs to ambitions platforms. But I’m not sure they’ve made as much difference as we hoped. Facebook has triumphed. Of course.
    My hunch is that one way to go now is to focus on the connectors in the civic ecosystem as well, of course, as aiming to enhance the capability of government, non-profit, groups etc.
    Despite all the tools, we still exist in silos at a time when cooperation is increasingly important.
    Back in 2006 I came up with “socialreporter” as way to describe how I wanted to make sense, join up ideas and people, help others do the same thing http://socialreporter.com/?p=40
    I did interviews, video and social media reporting from events, workshop games, presenting. It sort-of worked, and I got commissions to do open explorations of topics to inform agencies and funders.
    I’m now wondering whether a way to get some fresh momentum is explore the similarities of skills, attitudes and tools needed in the civic and enterprise spaces for connectors and curators.
    That would benefit from more of us in the space regaining our blogging and connecting enthusiasm. Is it worthwhile … if so, how can we help achieve that?
    (OK, I know, start by turning this into a post:-)

    1. Hi David, thanks a lot for the follow-up commentary and for the terrific insights! Much appreciated as well the kind comments on the blog post and comments. I really appreciate the extended explanation of the current state of things, very helpful! If anything, because it confirms it’s perhaps a bit more complex than what I thought it may well be and for good reasons.

      RE: ‘relatively few are actively involved in social action and the different elements of the local ecosystems could benefit from more joining up’ I guess the main reason for this to happen is mostly due to the fact that perhaps we’d need to do a bit more extensive work around explaining the reasons ‘why?’. Try to help answer the WIIFM question for them, because I suspect that’s the main argument they would have about their little involvement in social action. If it doesn’t hit them, in the good sense of the word, I guess it’s not going anywhere. It’s pretty much like in the enterprise world and time and time again most of these change initiatives keep failing along because no-one dared to ask the WIIFM for each and every single individual, which is what’s needed to get things going…

      I am not too sure ’Facebook has triumphed’ is a good thing, necessarily, specially, judging how much of the ‘we’ve become the product’ mantra it’d still apply to it, with very little return for each and every individual, if you know what I mean. Media companies have that. They are incredibly hungry about your data, but don’t do much around the ‘social’ part, missing it out on it big time! Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost the good old Web 2.0 spirit of social networks and social networking tools, whether in the public or private sectors and somehow we need to get that back, if we would want to succeed in the original premise for social change.

      I agree 100% with you that we need to collectively work together on removing the silos, where needed and appropriate, because, if anything all of these social tools are perpetuating what we have been going through all along, or perhaps even worse, if we keep insisting on making use of these walled garden media tools thinking they could help us out. No, they won’t. They are only interested in our data, so we need to shift that game and bring up the ‘social’ tidbits back again… I guess blogging is a good starting point altogether. Perhaps the one Web 2.0 component that may help us break through those silos and starting re-gaining back the Social Web we once envisioned, even for the social civic space.

      Thanks much, once again, for the wonderful commentary and blog on! 😀

      [PS. Just subscribed to your blog as well, by the way 😀👍🏻

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