I’ve had the pleasure this evening (on behalf of NMK) of hosting a meeting of interested parties about the potential for the RSA’s adoption of social media. The meeting was prompted by a blog post from David Wilcox that was imported to Facebook, and led to some discussion and my offer to take that discussion face-to-face (Facebook users can see this here).
The RSA is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. Established 250 years ago, it currently has about 26,500 Fellows. They can attend a very full and well-attended events schedule;they get the letters FRSA after their name; there’s no shortage of applications for its paid membership. Business is booming. And yet there’s a little bit of a problem.
The Society’s problem is that times have changed. Fellows are apparently expressing some degree of disgruntlement that they don’t feel involved with the programme or the Society. While in the past, a programme of well-planned lectures from eminent persons, nice premises on the Strand and a learned journal several times a year seemed satisfactory, that’s no longer enough. Today’s younger members want projects they can join, causes they can work with and more of a say, arguably, in what’s happening at the Society. There’s a feeling of empty hands that want to be filled.
How can the RSA make Fellows feel more involved, develop and encourage projects that engage members at the grass roots level, rather than merely being part of the audience listening to someone from the stage in the Grand Hall of its London HQ?
The problem has many layers. What is the RSA’s great value to people and how can it continue to provide that while also opening up and devolving authority?
One of its key assets, it seems, is the premises. It’s free office space in central London for members. It’s a place where you can meet all kinds of interesting people. It’s a place where you can host all sorts of interesting events of your own.
And that makes it an incubator of sorts. By meeting fellow Fellows, you’re more likely to come up with great ideas. Quite possibly, through other Fellows, you can make them happen.
One of the initial and simplest ideas for social media involvement for the RSA was a Facebook group. I don’t really think that Facebook groups have a lot of mileage beyond those that are only for a very close group of friends and colleagues. It can create a mailing list for you of interested parties, but beyond that, there’s no real incentive to revisit a group you’ve joined. Nonetheless, I feel that a Facebook group for Fellows is certainly a start; there’s no real downside if it fails and it could well provide some great pointers for what the membership wants and for the next stage of the Society’s social media policy. However, a Facebook network, whereby Fellows can add the Society as an additional badge and means of connection appeared to me to have considerable value. The network status communicates your membership to everyone you connect with and could act as a badge of trust, expertise and commonality. Creating a network, though, requires a little money, as I understand.
There were at least two more canny ideas.
The first was some sort of RSA version of Yahoo Answers. The RSA can put you in touch with very clever people in lots of fields, was the sentiment. They can probably provide advice and answers on a multitude of topics.
The second, which may well be a variation of the first, was some sort of member directory. This would give Fellows access to the location and specialisation of other Fellows and allow them to ‘hook up’ in a Facebook-esque manner. I’m drawn to the way ecademy gets members to describe themselves in 50 words (tags to the Web 2.0 world) and allows other members to search for fellow members on those tags. A network in which all members had the added trust value of being Fellows could certainly work, I think. The Society already has a lot of the necessary data from Fellows’ sign-up forms and more could be added voluntarily.
Further discussion picked up around what the RSA’s brand values might be. One example of that was as an ‘excellent convener’. That it draws very brilliant and interesting people together. However, the RSA is keen that the Society was not just viewed a place or a publication, but also as an actor. That it allows for the creation of brilliant ideas and then also acts upon them. How to decide among those ideas for the ones to publically support is one problem (maybe the case for a prediction market). Another is the extent to which the Society might rightly claim some sort of part-ownership for creating that chemistry — not in a commercial sense, but in a branding sense.
In my own opinion, social media policy from the RSA can’t work on the basis of containing discussion within a particular forum or blog or social network. Nor can it claim ownership of ideas created through its auspices. Those discussions and ideas, as with any brand or grouping, cannot be contained or owned. They are going to happen and will continue to happen anyway. What the Society might work to is the idea that having your ideas and business connected to it in some way earns kudos. Yeah, we came up with it/ met them at the RSA network/bar/forum mentioned a few times in business interviews and conversations as a point of pride, the same way certain members’ clubs and restaurants are spoken about, would do a great deal for the current and future value of membership. Like MySpace members adopting brands as friends, new and existing companies that friend the RSA in some way in the social media space may well be a way forward.
So — to sum things up with a superficial buzzword — I think it needs a widget. And it needs a way to get people to adopt that widget. That’s the tricky bit, I expect.
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Ian — great summary and more of our discussions, and delighted your NMK role enables you to enocurage these connections. The online-offline facilitator toolkit: Facebook account, a few bottles of wine, and a friendly demeanour …
Hello everyone. I’m very interested in this activity. I have been keen to find a way to contribute to the development of the RSA since I joined and this may be it. Couldn’t cope easily with meetings that finish at 1:25am in London very well though!
»as an aside, I tried to post this to Facebook but it told me it was too long! It’s probably right but a serious limitation all the same …
Nice one Ian I think you picked up the main points I remember. I’m for the idea of a network and incubator. I think the two are necessary for each other and would be mutually re-inforcing.
The RSA already does incubate projects that range from the Weee Man project on electrical waste (got caught out a bit by the UK delaying implementation until this year) to the Opening Minds — competency curriculum — sponsored Academy school in Tipton — to CarbonDaq http://www.rsacarbonlimited.org/emissions/default.aspa. Some of these are pretty successful but the problem in my opinion is that they were very closed in their development and lacked the network input to go along with them. So 2 things I would like to see is the opening up of the network of fellows to each other and the RSA opening up the project incubator to more ideas — taking more risks perhaps but also allowing for greater peer review and involvement.
Not sure if Facebook can help that but worth a try.
[Aside — thought I should post here too — this time without the spelling mistakes on facebook. I also got caught out with the facebook word limit but seem to have gotten more in than Simon!!]
Many thanks, chaps —
@simon — very sorry that we didn’t make contact earlier — the 1.30 thing was entirely my own doing. Sensible people left at sensible times.
@Malcolm — yes, it is exactly this transparency that seems to be the key.
This is an excellent discussion, I’m struck that it seems to have a modern resonance with the discussions William Shipley et al were having back in 1753 as the RSA was forming. (how to create a more civilised society…)
These, of course are very different times, and some may feel as I do that the challenges facing humanity are wider, deeper and more risk laden than they were at the outset of the RSA.
254 years ago the pursuit was “encouragement of the arts, manufactures and commerce”. There is no shortage, globally of any of these three, and there is much, much upside we enjoy from the legacies of arts, manufactures and commerce.
The problem is there is much downside too.
The pursuit of a civilised society.
Hmmm. I only caught a little of PM’s questions yesterday, but the challenges covered included: Terrorism, Health, Drugs, the Olympics, Casinos, Housing, Education, Nuclear Power, Open and Transparent political process….
I’m not sure if the Environment was covered.
My point? I think there are two. The big one first, (it seems to me) that humanity is still in its adolescence, and that we have still to workout how to live in a manageable degree of harmony with each other and our big home, the Earth.
We seem to lack a Sustainable mode of consciousness, or a prevailing worldview that looks like it will offer a bright future for our children (As I write I’m struck I sound like some kind of hippy earth child, the limitation here is my ability to express what it is we all know…)
The second therefore is how to use Social Media (Web 2.0) to get meaningful progressive engagement, (innovative thinking and action) with issues of the day (like the issues covered at PM’s Questions) within a greater progressive framework.
The Drugs Commission the RSA was (is?) such a great opportunity for much wider participation. Most likely members of this discussion have used recreational drugs. As have policy makers and MP’s. Many people have something to say, if properly motivated and enabled.
To drop thinking into the already excellent ideas on offer.
I’d like to see the a provocative set of arguments summarised on a GREAT short film (as well as the words we already have), I’d like to see the film on the home page of the RSA, (and BBC website on launch day) with ways of inviting participation from fellows and non fellows alike.
It would be great if we could use the good work of the Drugs commission to inspire or provoke, using a wide range of platforms, (All our websites, you tube, mobile phone younameit) to achieve differing levels and forms of engagement and deliberation with such issues. Arguably it is only through some form of deliberative democracy that informed consensus will evolve.
For me this is as much about innovative, media enable approaches to advancing democracy as it is fellowship engagement.
I’m sorry I could not attend, I was stuck at Gatwick, but respect to David, Ian and all engaged in this quest for finding a new paradigm for fellowship engagement at the RSA.
I quite like the hippy earth child thinking — think global act local — or is it the other way round now. I also like the idea of using film to project some of the ideas and would recommend one of the projects I am involved in http://www.intomedia.org.uk/index.php?pid=1135 — click on the diabetes film to see how a guyt from one of the south London estates gets the message across.
Dear RSA online/offline group,
I wonder if it’s OK to pop in and say hello? I am a brand new fellow of RSA, and was surfing the site for like minded fellows on Friday, when I followed the ‘engagement’ thread and found myself here. I really enjoyed reading your dialogue and the links and your enthusiasm, David, is infectious and inspiring!
A couple of things resonated strongly. One is the fact that stakeholder engagement is still working from a ‘top down’ paradigm. I find this a lot in my work with Central Government Departments trying to get more in touch with regions and front line delivery agencies. In the RSA’s case this is manifested by the ‘great and good’ lecture format, and the sense of Fellows as an untapped resource. Even the Coffee House initiative, which I think is exciting and worthwhile. still for me has a whiff of an idea formulated at the Centre with the expectation that the battalions of fellows ‘go implement’. So I really appreciate and applaud your intiative to open up RSA and get a more equal, dynamic conversation moving between fellows.
The other thing that struck me is the emphasis you place on new forms of interactive technology as a vehicle for opening up dialogue.
So I understand the online/offline group to exist — at present — as a complement, or counterpoint to the traditional norms of RSA contact with fellows. Would this be right?
The thing is, I am seriously technologically challenged, and I keep getting messages from the universe that I need to open myself to this world and join with people who understand it.
Much of my expertise is in human and group processes, how to mediate the quality of contact and exchange between groups of people in real time, and the ‘field conditions’ that support more dynamic kinds of interaction. I feel there is so much to be done here. So I suppose I don’t want to take my eye off the ball of the established ‘above the line’ face to face processes and rituals of the RSA and how to transform them. For example, holding an RSA Open Space event as a possible way of seeding projects and helping Fellows find links, even changing the seating arrangements in the lecture hall, looking at how events are facilitated and organised for inclusion and participation.
A personal question for me is, how does this understanding of face to face human/group process make itself useful in a technologically driven age, and how might technology support a more ‘sustainable model of consciousness’ that Sean is pointing towards, which I agree is so needed, hippy child or not. And how can I/we do ‘offline/online’ in ever more powerful ways which would bring together and tap into both the traditions and the renewal energy inside organisations like RSA?
I’m not sure what your plans are or what the next step might be in this intiative, but if anything I’ve said is of interest, and/or you are looking for others to contribute to your work, I’d be really interested to join you.
In the meantime, thanks again for everything you’ve done so far, you have given me a very stimulating induction into the undersea world of RSA. Good luck with whatever happens next!
Fiona Coffey
Fiona — you raise some really key questions about online/offline … which I think deserve a face-to-face event with a mix of people different skills yet a common commitment to open, bottom-up approaches. Anyone else interested?
I agree that we can’t just do it online and that we need the face to face too. They complement and can build each other. For instance the meeting that took place last week initiated a flurry of online activity and the setting up of a Facebook group — a start only to opening up of the RSA to a more bottom up approach. Similarly one of the first suggestions on the group was to hold short training sessions on using the technology.
I will be at the RSA Advisory Council on Monday and at David’s suggestion will be arguing for more RSA support for face to face as well as the online. I think Matthew Taylor is looking to open it more and I am looking for suggestions and ideas that I can pass through Council tomorrow. One that has already come in from a Fellow of 5 years that echos your experience Fiona — create a guide for getting involved and have something on the end of a button on the website that says ‘get involved’. That could be a buddy scheme (is this all a bit too male bonding — fellows and buddies??) or access to lots of groups doing things that are open to new entrants. I am sure there will be no shortage of ideas.
David, Malcolm — thanks for your responses. Your group suggestion sounds exciting David, as does the conversation you’ll be having at Council tomorrow Malcolm. Speaking for my gender (?!) I don’t think a buddy scheme sounds too ‘male bonding’ at all, sounds like a very good idea. The interesting thing about RSA is that unlike perhaps many other membership organisations, people don’t necessarily enter at the early stages of their career (e.g after they’ve got their baseline professional qualification). I imagine it’s mixed. So I imagine also that the kind of buddying people need will be quite different — to do with their level of comfort/experience in participating actively in organisations such as this, the degree to which they want/expect to shape things, as well as their different interests and lifestage. (I can feel some dinner party hostess energy coming on — how to seat the right people together to make for a fabulous conversation?!)
OpenRSA.….…
The RSA is the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce and ‘works to remove the barriers to social progress’. It is however a “members only” club. The OpenRSA group is facilitating member/non member networks as well as …