First, Getting Rid of the Gatekeeper
Photo by Mikey G
I want to write about online collaboration software and Twitter and Jott and how we’re toying with all of those things in our tiny org. But when I think about social media and it’s principles, I think back to the most fundamental shift we made in our org in terms of the Internet. Probably most of you who are reading this are way past this stage, but I am not sure I can talk about other internal innovations without starting here.
It started several years ago when I arrived here. The website was static, updated by an “accidental techie” who was the only person who knew how to update the website. It was brochure-ware, broadcasting info about our programs. If someone needed to update a web page, she had to rely on the tech to get it done.
Our org is tiny and “flat.” That doesn’t mean we run the org by consensus. There are clear lines of supervision and authority. But we all have areas of expertise, and we defer somewhat to each other in these areas. What this has always meant is that we design projects and make decisions with a lot (sometimes too much) conversation.
Conversation and collaboration, online, are major principles of Web 2.0. What’s exciting about it to me is the decentralization of certain kinds of power. The power to put images and ideas on the web used to be tightly controlled. Messages came from the top down and were put online by highly skilled techies. Now anyone with Internet access and some basic skills can speak up on Facebook or her own blog. Anyone can post pictures to Flickr or video to YouTube. This is a significant power shift.
For me, that power shift began in the workplace. I started my career in non-profit tech as an “accidental techie.” I was intimidated at first by techie jargon. For some reason, I was fascinated enough with the web to learn in spite of my fear. But I’ve never forgotten that fear. It’s all too easy to slip into total jargon Tweeting about Friendfeed and other social media tools. (You can tell you’re talking in jargon whenever someone’s eyes glaze over and/or they look uncomfortable. I try to look for this when I am yammering on about the Interwebs, but I am not always successful at catching myself.)
So, internally, my fundamental goal became clear: de-mystify the tools. With some limits for quality control purposes, I wanted anyone and everyone on our staff to be able to post information to our website. I wanted others to be able to send out emails to our lists. I wanted them to be comfortable with the Internet as much as possible, without having to be “experts” in it.
Luckily for us, others were thinking this way, too. We started using Democracy in Action to send out mass emails, which had a user interface that someone with basic web skills could easily use. I had been building websites for years, but open-source content management systems (CMS) like Joomla and Drupal were suddenly very accessible. I was able to re-build our website in a CMS so that, again, anyone on our staff with basic web surfing and word processing skills could post content to our site.
Yes, there were (and are) vetting processes to control the content that goes up on our site and out in our emails. But, from a tech perspective, when we made these changes, I was no longer the gatekeeper to emailing to our constituents and posting content on our website. Everyone knows at least a few HTML tags, including a couple of our staff members who are over the age of 60. Our staff could prepare web content in a hands-on way, which contributed greatly to their feeling of ownership of our site and to their learning about the web.
Today, I almost never post content to our site or send out an email. I can go on vacation and our news and blog roll on without me. I keep the infrastructure healthy–I answer questions about Drupal quirks, fix problems and make improvements–but I have time now to think about tech strategy. To think and plan and dream about how to use new tech tools and social media to do our work better. Our staff understands the Internet and its tools better because they use them every day, and that helps them think about how to integrate them into our work, too.
Even though I was once the techie gatekeeper with the keys to the website, I love this loss of control and am inspired thinking about the new places it will take us.
I wonder a lot about how other orgs work. Who controls the posting power in your org? Who controls the content? How else is your org present on the web? Is it tightly controlled? If so, is that changing at all?
July 9th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Thank you for this excellent post. I too wonder how other organizations work. We do not have a broad CMS or much of decentralized process for posting to the web. The site was launched by IT before the organization had a communications staff and changing this “process” (as with any change) is not coming easily.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Right on. Fact is, web publishing is not that hard anymore. 4th generation web development software (like social tools) and CMS packages make communicating on the web as easy as using (dare I say) MS Word.
One thing that concerns me is two dimensions beyond mere web publication are style and useability. There are web reading style givens (e.g. skmming/scanning, time dimensions) and many useability issues (serifs, contrast). New authors venturing into webland tend to bring their print baggage. What happens is, writing and graphical styles almost never transfer well from print.
This creates another type of vetting: re-purposing content and web translation. As techies we can demystify and empower all day. At the same time we empower clients with technology we need to be empowering them with web realities like writing style and useability guidelines.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Thanks for your comments!
Tracy, I am curious, have you been asked to make that change happen? If so, how are you going about it? Of course it helps the more upper-level buy-in you have. I have been lucky in that both our E.D.s are very smart about tech. (I’ve more had the other problem–having to reign in enthusiasm at times, but that’s another post.)
Jonathan, I have spent the last few years going over writing-for-the-web skills with our staff. For the basics, I’ve used an “old” classic book, Hot Text. There’s a lot on the web now, too, and I send relevant stuff to my staff to help keep them thinking about how to write better for the web. I have to say, my staff has gotten more and more savvy about it on their own. When you see the difference in open rates in emails written a certain way, it helps the learning process a ton.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Sounds like you are such a fantastic resource for your org. Thanks for the link to Hot Text. I’ll explore. BTW, I’ve gotten web writing inspiration from two books by Gerry McGovern: “Content Critical” and “Killer Web Content”. The first was introduced to me in a web writing workshop 5-6 years ago. I’ve used both for the past few years in conversation and small group work. Good resources.