The 45 Social by Social Propositions

Over the last few months, I’ve been collaborating with Andy Gibson and David Wilcox, and Clive Holtham and Nigel Courtney from Cass Business School, on a book about using new technologies for social benefit projects.  It’s going to be called Social by Social: a practical guide to using new technologies to deliver social impact and it should be published and distributed by NESTA next month.  I’ll be sure to post links to the book, online version, and so forth when it’s out!

The book is full of interviews, case studies, how-tos and more.  At the core of the book is a set of fundamental principles to follow to help make a social technology project successful. Below, you can find the 45 Social by Social Propositions.  We are sharing them with you now so we can hopefully get your feedback before publication.  Really looking forward to this conversation!  Let us know what you think by leaving comments below.

The 45 Social by Social Propositions

A set of principles and guidelines which we believe underpin the most successful ‘social by social’ projects.

  1. People want control. If you give them tools for taking more control of their lives, they will pay you back in attention, support and even hard cash.
  2. Empowerment is unconditional. Telling people what they can and can’t do with your platform is like an electricity company restricting what its power can be used for.
  3. People make technology work. Think about mindset, language and skills before you think about tools, features and screen designs.
  4. Know your limits. Technology can solve information problems, organise communities and publish behaviours, but they can’t deliver food or care for the sick.
  5. You can’t learn to fly by watching the pilot. If you want to understand new technologies, start using them. Dive in.
  6. Start at the top. Get the boss blogging or talking on YouTube.
  7. Don’t jump for the tool. Be clear on who your target audience are and what you will do for them. Choosing technology is the last thing you should do.
  8. Start small. It’s always better to build too little than too much. Beware of specifying costly systems until you are absolutely familiar with the tools and know how people would use them.
  9. Planning ahead is hard. Find cheap, easy ways to try your ideas out with real people in real situations before committing lots of resources.
  10. Expect the unexpected. Be prepared to develop tactically, evolving as you go, and learn to maximise possibilities.
  11. Give up on the illusion of control. In a networked world, organisations can no longer control what people think or say about their products and services. If you’re worried, get involved.
  12. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The more you open things up, the less risk there is of damage to your reputation. And restricting access can severely reduce usage and innovation.
  13. Keep it messy. Design to support conversations, relationships, stories – not to organise documents. If everything’s neat and tidy, it’s because no-one’s there.
  14. In user-centred design, everyone is right. Evolve any tools and systems with the people who will use them, and respect their complaints. Bring them in and let them help you.
  15. Never assume, always ask. You can’t know what your community wants from you without asking and they are waiting for you to ask. Be specific, define the issue, problem or idea, and let the answers pour in. but be transparent about your next moves and highlight the answers that informed your next steps.
  16. Design for real people. Tailor your offering to the real skills and characteristics of your users, not how you’d like them to be.
  17. Keep it simple. Every time you add a feature to your toolset, you make the existing features harder to use.
  18. Don’t centralise, aggregate. Do you really need data centralisation? Well do you? Use lots of different, disconnected tools and then pull the content together into a central location.
  19. Be a pirate. Don’t make things yourself; make use of what others have already shared.
  20. Empty rooms are easier to redecorate. Be fast and loose with evolving your platform in the early stages, but be cautious of changing things once people start using them.
  21. Build it and they may well not come. Build relationships and they probably will.
  22. The world is a noisy place. Getting people’s attention means offering them something valuable.
  23. Go where people are. Experienced users have plenty of existing places already, and newcomers are difficult to recruit. Go to see them and say hello.
  24. Learn to listen before you start talking. Good conversations require good listeners more than good talkers. Learn how to say things that people want to hear.
  25. Be consistent. Whatever you say in public, remember you are talking to everyone, all the time, so stay true to your principles.
  26. You can’t force people to volunteer. Contributing content and spreading the word are voluntary activities, so learn how to create good invitations and actionable opportunities.
  27. Respect how people choose to communicate. Some will write, others take pictures or make movies. Most people will just listen and view, and maybe comment.
  28. Enthusiasts are more important than experts. Attitude beats ability when tools are cheap and easy.
  29. Be realistic about who will create content. It’s about the same proportion as put their hands up at question time.
  30. Put your energy where their energy is. Support the early adopters rather than chasing the sceptics, and they will become your evangelists.
  31. All energy is good energy. If people are taking the time to criticise you, they are engaged. Don’t waste that.
  32. Throw a good party. Make it fun and sociable as well as worthwhile to get more commitment.
  33. Be a good host. Make people comfortable and then get out of the way.
  34. Don’t forget the tables and chairs. If you want people to communicate or collaborate online, bring them together face-to-face too.
  35. Keep your powder dry. Set aside as much money for design, copy and user testing, and for marketing and community engagement, as you do for software and hardware.
  36. A marathon, not a sprint. Launching the service is just the beginning; the hard work starts once you have something for people to engage with.
  37. Content is king. Providing great content, whether it’s resources, information, connections or conversations, means new users will find you and others will stick with you. Give people the means to share this content too, freely and openly.
  38. Eat your own dogfood. If you aren’t using your own services, why would anyone else? And you can’t influence the community if you aren’t in it.
  39. Your users own the platform. If they feel own it, they will trust it, help sustain it, and find ways to use and improve the tools; if they aren’t interested, no amount of pushing will help.
  40. Let people solve their own problems. As the amount of work grows, so does the number of workers.
  41. Someone has to pay. Although many online tools are free, everything has costs of time if not money. If possible, make sure the money comes from the core purpose of the project.
  42. Don’t confuse money with value. Look at the other assets you have in your community, like skills, volunteers and goodwill, and put them to use in sustaining it.
  43. No-one knows anything. The only thing worth watching is what your users are actually doing.
  44. Failure is useful. If you want to know what works, look at what didn’t. Fail often, fail usefully.
  45. Say thank you in public. People don’t need to have something hand-written on headed paper to feel recognized. Use your tools to acknowledge the people who helped make them in a visible way.

These propositions are a starting point for a new conversation about using technology to improve the world we live in. So, would you sign up to them? We may be wrong. And that’s fine. Let us know your thoughts, share them with other people you think may be interested, and we’ll be putting them out more widely for discussion, additions and edits once we’ve figured out the right format. You can also add your links, articles and comments on the School of Everything Scrapbook for Social by Social too.

And stay tuned for announcements on the book launch, I’ll keep you posted here.

socialforsocialUpdate: Rob Allen offered this great visualization of the 45 Propositions.  I think it is a terrific way of noting the most important aspects of these guidelines.  Notice that “People” is huge; when working with social technologies to connect with and engage your supporters, members, donors and volunteers you have to remember: the tools, the messages, the actions are all based on the people.

Thanks, Rob!

29 thoughts on “The 45 Social by Social Propositions

  1. Amy, what a fantastic list! My first impression, reading through, was to keep nodding — every one of these resonates w/ my experience, too. My second impression, as I got to the end, was to feel a bit overwhelmed. I had been going through it checklist style (yup, we’re doing that; nope, we’re not doing that), and thinking of this kind of resource as a list of “to-do’s” can be exhausting.

    But if I take a deep breath, and embrace your lead-in — that these are principles, not prescriptions — then I can handle it.

    I can imagine people using this to give themselves a 1-10 score for each item, and then saying, “Well, if we’re not creating the kind of thriving, purposeful community we’d like to, perhaps we should pay closer attention to these areas where we’re only giving ourselves a 1 or 2.”

  2. I almost feel like this is a therapy session for an org just getting their organization started in social media – which is great! It gives people a chance to realize that they’re not alone in what can seem like an out of control maze, and that they’re not really supposed to have control – and that’s OK.

    I will most certainly use these (#19 at work) when I’m talking to orgs that have decided to make the plunge.

  3. Thanks, Christine – I LOVE the idea of using these areas as a way of creating your Social by Social Score Card. With a 1-10 scale for each one, you could imagine after scoring your current situation/use/status on all 45, you could easily calculate the overall score. And, as you say, be able to quickly identify areas where you aren’t scoring as highly which could help start conversations at the organization about why that is, where the barriers lie, and how to work on them.

    45 is a lot; it can certainly be overwhelming. But, we tried to make this small and direct so that each one is a nugget on it’s own and make sense, etc. I do the same thing, though, and put on the hat of one of the organizations I have worked for or with and then start checking them off (or not!) in my head.

    If you can, would you share which ones are the most difficult or controversial for organizations you have worked with before or that you imagine being the most difficult?

    Thanks for contributing to this!

  4. Kristiana- Thanks for weighing in! It definitely feels like we need a couch and a therapists for us when we dive into social media and I think many nonprofit staff tasked with the responsibility of bringing the organization online turn to networks like NTEN and NetSquared to find some of those couches. I’m glad this list can offer another option for organizations looking for a little confirmation, support, and clarity.

    #19 is one of my favorite ones and something I think is really important for nonprofits to remember – there’s so much free stuff out there, don’t waste money when you don’t have to build something yourself!

    Are there other propositions you have found especially true or difficult at your organization? Any examples you want to share?

    Thanks for adding to the conversation!

  5. nice list but 45 in a list seems like a lot – Maybe break it down into categories – 9 by 5, 5 by 9?? could be based on where they fit/don’t fit in the lifecycle?? – could be themed around the party idea??

  6. Rob – that’s a great idea! It is something we struggled with as well – gosh, 45 is a lot! But we didn’t want to take any out 🙂

    I think that your idea of splitting them into groups for what process they relate to, or category they fit into is very logical and would probably help organizations digest them easier by taking them a chunk at a time. Additionally, by breaking them into groups we would automatically provide context to the application of the proposition.

    Great suggestion, thanks!

    Are there any propositions you think are especially useful or difficult for nonprofit groups just diving in to social media use?

    Thanks for adding to this conversation!

  7. Yep, we had them in sections originally but I compiled them into a list so they would be more ‘Cluetrain’. The Cluetrain manifesto reads more like a sequence of points that build on each other though, so perhaps these are too disparate to read as a coherant whole, hence they’re a bit overwhelming. Anyone want to take a crack at reworking them and reblogging the results?

  8. Andy – Might need to be a wiki project, so we can move them around and collaborate on finding the 5×9 or however it works out. Thanks for encouraging the crowdsourcing!

  9. Hi all – delighted our Social by Social propositions are resonating with others. Thanks for comments … and I love Rob’s visualisation. As Andy says, we did have them in sections relating to a chapter I was mainly working on … a sort of development routemap. We tried coming up with one-liners that summarised the main points from the chapter … here’s an early draft below.
    I think Andy’s final version added the sparkle. Amy was able to add so much substance from her own and the Netsquared community. I would be great if we could take another step in reworking.

    Early draft of propositions

    So, what do you want to do

    * The Internet has created another world – but it is still people who make it work.
    * People who want social change can have more influence, and a greater ability to create their own services.
    * In a networked world organisations can no long control what their customers know or say about their products and services.
    * In planning what to do, who and why comes before what and how.
    * Where and when makes a lot of difference to what is possible.
    * The technology may look as if it offers solutions – but it is the last thing to decide on.

    Research: what worked, what hasn’t – and whether you are ready
    * Context influences (almost) everything – so understand your own situation and the new context – the Internet.
    * The people who will know best about your products or services are the users – make them part of the project.
    * If you want to know what works, look at what didn’t.
    * If you want to research and understand social technology, start using it

    Getting started
    * Developing a social technology project is first social, second technical.
    * Social technologies give you a voice – if you listen first you’ll develop one people will listen to.
    * Markets are transactions, conversations and relationships – of which relationships are the most important
    * Social attitude beats technical ability.
    * You can’t learn to fly by watching the pilot.
    * Innovation is not possible within an organisation unless mindsets are ready for change.
    * Start at the top. Get the boss blogging.
    * Making it fun as well as worthwhile gets most commitment

    Structuring the project
    * To achieve social progress and improved services, open up, embrace diversity, and collaborate.
    * Don’t build it and hope they will come. Invite the users to help create the plans
    * Enthusiasts are as important as experts – attitude beats ability when tools are cheap and easy.
    * Make empowerment unconditional. If you want innovation, give permission.
    * Normal business is not suspended. You have to get the roles, responsibilities and protocols right too.
    * There are no free lunches, even online. Someone has to pay.
    * The Internet is the platform for your online services, not just your site. Go where people are.

    Engagement and adoption
    * People are the secret business ingredient
    * Build it and they may well not come. Build relationships and they probably will.
    * Online is a noisy place – so getting people attention requires something both simple and special.
    * Be realistic about who will create content online … it’s about the same as hands up at question time.
    * Respect people’s individual preferences in the use of communication tools. Some will write, others take pictures or make movies.
    * If possible, keep sites open. Passwording will severely reduce usage and innovation

    Choosing tools
    * Think strategically, but be prepared to develop tactically, evolving as you go.
    * Use as little technology as possible. When people say they want more, you’ll know you are on the right track.
    * Design to support conversations, relationships, transaction – not organise documents.
    * Experiment with free or low cost tools.
    * Use social media techniques to solve social media problems
    * Avoid creating any new tools or systems until you are sure you can’t do the same thing by using or combining existing ones.
    * Don’t specify tools you haven’t used.

    Business models
    * If you need a new web site, you may also need a new businss model
    * Although many online tools are free, everything has costs of time if not money
    * Budget several times more for people than hardware and software

  10. David – Thanks SO much for sharing one of the previous drafts! I think it’s great to be open with our process and hope this helps get even more feedback about what we can do with the set of Principles.

  11. Amy- At my particular organization, I spent so much time trying to pitch the value of social networking, but no one got it – it was exhausting and frustrating because I knew that we could reap huge benefits with just a little more effort. One day, I just DID IT! I started out Twitter account, and you know what happened? A local news anchor was following us, and in response to one of our tweets, she called to coordinate an interview – this was within 24 hours of launching the Twitter account!

    I would add two things for those who may be on the fence about incorporating social media into their organization’s development and/or marketing plan:

    1) sometimes you have to leap before you look
    2) you’re not going to be able to control the conversation – and that’s a good thing

    This is a fantastic conversation and a very important one. Thanks for facilitating it.

  12. I had fun just now looking for categories each item might fall into, and came up with Control, Communication, Content, Design, and Strategy. Maybe it would be useful to see whether within each category the items build on each other (tackle an easier one first, do this before you do that)? I’m not sure it would be, because the power-beauty of this list is its mosaic or pointillist quality, but then again we humans do seem to appreciate knowing where to start when we’re diving into something new 🙂

    CONTROL
    1. Expect the unexpected. Be prepared to develop tactically, evolving as you go, and learn to maximise possibilities.
    2. Your users own the platform. If they feel own it, they will trust it, help sustain it, and find ways to use and improve the tools; if they aren’t interested, no amount of pushing will help.
    3. People want control. If you give them tools for taking more control of their lives, they will pay you back in attention, support and even hard cash.
    4. Give up on the illusion of control. In a networked world, organisations can no longer control what people think or say about their products and services. If you’re worried, get involved.
    5. Empowerment is unconditional. Telling people what they can and can’t do with your platform is like an electricity company restricting what its power can be used for.
    6. Keep it messy. Design to support conversations, relationships, stories – not to organise documents. If everything’s neat and tidy, it’s because no-one’s there.
    7. Let people solve their own problems. As the amount of work grows, so does the number of workers.
    COMMUNICATION
    8. Eat your own dogfood. If you aren’t using your own services, why would anyone else? And you can’t influence the community if you aren’t in it.
    9. Go where people are. Experienced users have plenty of existing places already, and newcomers are difficult to recruit. Go to see them and say hello.
    10. Learn to listen before you start talking. Good conversations require good listeners more than good talkers. Learn how to say things that people want to hear.
    11. Don’t forget the tables and chairs. If you want people to communicate or collaborate online, bring them together face-to-face too.
    12. Be consistent. Whatever you say in public, remember you are talking to everyone, all the time, so stay true to your principles.
    13. Respect how people choose to communicate. Some will write, others take pictures or make movies. Most people will just listen and view, and maybe comment.
    14. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The more you open things up, the less risk there is of damage to your reputation. And restricting access can severely reduce usage and innovation.
    15. Say thank you in public. People don’t need to have something hand-written on headed paper to feel recognized. Use your tools to acknowledge the people who helped make them in a visible way.
    16. Start at the top. Get the boss blogging or talking on YouTube.
    17. Never assume, always ask. You can’t know what your community wants from you without asking and they are waiting for you to ask. Be specific, define the issue, problem or idea, and let the answers pour in. but be transparent about your next moves and highlight the answers that informed your next steps.
    18. Throw a good party. Make it fun and sociable as well as worthwhile to get more commitment.

    CONTENT
    19. Content is king. Providing great content, whether it’s resources, information, connections or conversations, means new users will find you and others will stick with you. Give people the means to share this content too, freely and openly.
    20. Be realistic about who will create content. It’s about the same proportion as put their hands up at question time.
    21. You can’t force people to volunteer. Contributing content and spreading the word are voluntary activities, so learn how to create good invitations and actionable opportunities.
    22. The world is a noisy place. Getting people’s attention means offering them something valuable.
    DESIGN
    23. People make technology work. Think about mindset, language and skills before you think about tools, features and screen designs.
    24. Start small. It’s always better to build too little than too much. Beware of specifying costly systems until you are absolutely familiar with the tools and know how people would use them.
    25. Design for real people. Tailor your offering to the real skills and characteristics of your users, not how you’d like them to be.
    26. Don’t centralise, aggregate. Do you really need data centralisation? Well do you? Use lots of different, disconnected tools and then pull the content together into a central location.
    27. Be a pirate. Don’t make things yourself; make use of what others have already shared.
    28. In user-centred design, everyone is right. Evolve any tools and systems with the people who will use them, and respect their complaints. Bring them in and let them help you.
    29. Empty rooms are easier to redecorate. Be fast and loose with evolving your platform in the early stages, but be cautious of changing things once people start using them.
    STRATEGY
    30. Know your limits. Technology can solve information problems, organise communities and publish behaviours, but they can’t deliver food or care for the sick.
    31. You can’t learn to fly by watching the pilot. If you want to understand new technologies, start using them. Dive in.
    32. Don’t jump for the tool. Be clear on who your target audience are and what you will do for them. Choosing technology is the last thing you should do.
    33. Planning ahead is hard. Find cheap, easy ways to try your ideas out with real people in real situations before committing lots of resources.
    34. Keep it simple. Every time you add a feature to your toolset, you make the existing features harder to use.
    35. Build it and they may well not come. Build relationships and they probably will.
    36. Be a good host. Make people comfortable and then get out of the way.
    37. Enthusiasts are more important than experts. Attitude beats ability when tools are cheap and easy.
    38. Put your energy where their energy is. Support the early adopters rather than chasing the sceptics, and they will become your evangelists.
    39. All energy is good energy. If people are taking the time to criticise you, they are engaged. Don’t waste that.
    40. Keep your powder dry. Set aside as much money for design, copy and user testing, and for marketing and community engagement, as you do for software and hardware.
    41. A marathon, not a sprint. Launching the service is just the beginning; the hard work starts once you have something for people to engage with.
    42. Someone has to pay. Although many online tools are free, everything has costs of time if not money. If possible, make sure the money comes from the core purpose of the project.
    43. Don’t confuse money with value. Look at the other assets you have in your community, like skills, volunteers and goodwill, and put them to use in sustaining it.
    44. No-one knows anything. The only thing worth watching is what your users are actually doing.
    45. Failure is useful. If you want to know what works, look at what didn’t. Fail often, fail usefully.

  13. Christine –

    I LOVE the categories! Control, Communication, Content, Design and Strategy. This is excellent!

    How did you come up with these 5? Do you think there should also be an ordering or rating scale of the Propositions within each category for easiest to hardest, or simplest to complex?

    Thanks again for diving into this!

  14. Hi Amy,

    Thanks for the love 🙂 Not sure I have an answer to your “how” question. My brain just came up with those categories when I asked it, “So what is it we’re really talking about here?” for each item.

    I don’t think it would be helpful to order or rate these items as you’ve suggested, but I *would* encourage you and the others working on the book to provide some guidelines on how the reader might go about doing that themselves: a URL they can go to where they can
    1) access the list in an easily-manipulatible(?) format
    2) find or create their own categories for making it more manageable
    3) decide for themselves which are easiest (or already being done) and which are more difficult
    4) click through to some guidance on how to shift from “not doing/following this” to “doing/following this.”

    The first three items there are just a matter of technology (UI). The fourth one is where you’d get into the work that’s often left out of resources like this one: HOW do you change your habits/practices/organizational-culture/assumptions? How do you relax your need for control in new ways? How do you become a good listener? etc.

    With publication a month away, if guidelines-for-adopting-these-guidelines aren’t already included in the book they’ll most likely need to wait for the sequel 😉 But maybe a list of suggested websites and other resources for group exercises, thought experiments, journaling, etc. could be provided?

  15. Thanks SO SO much, Christine!

    Your feedback is terrific! Let me share a bit about the book and the process: The plan is to publish the entire thing online, so that every page of the book is similar to a blog entry, with a unique URL. This will let people who read it as a hard copy or online continue the conversations about Propositions, case studies, and how-tos in the online version without losing each other. We are quite excited to see how the conversation continues and grows online.

    I agree that a next step could be to open up the Propositions in a way that invites reworking, reordering, and especially the ability for people to “attach” their examples to specific Propositions. We are brainstorming how to do this on and offline and I’ll keep you posted!

    Thanks again!

  16. Hi Amy,
    I come a little bit late into the conversation and have the feeling all the “intelligent” contributions have already been made here.

    This is a very useful tool and getting it into the hands of those especially at the top echelons of organizations will be a good idea, because if they use and apply these guidelines, then they set a good example for the base to follow.

    I will make reference to the following point:

    23.Go where people are. Experienced users have plenty of existing places already, and newcomers are difficult to recruit. Go to see them and say hello.

    True..but the issue here is the experienced users (especially in a 3rd world country where I come from) are youths who can do little or nothing to influence the status quo on one hand and the newcomers are mostly the elitist few who hold the reins of decision making but are difficult to access and be informed. Going to say hello to them is even more difficult than getting a “flying horse” for oneself.
    Are there other techniques you know of that can enable the experienced ones bridge that divide with the newcomers?

    keep up the great work

  17. This is a very vibrant approach. Stimulated by Rob Allen’s wonderful graphic, I wonder if something like a “periodic table” might work which could introduce colour and sequencing into the presentation?

    See the original periodic table at:
    http://www.chemicool.com/

  18. Tambe-

    Thank you so much for your contribution. You are very wrong in saying that all the intelligent contributions have already been made – the conversation, I hope, will continue and great ideas like yours keep it moving!

    You raise a terrific point here. There are certainly situations where those that really need to be influenced or touched are not online or even part of the conversation. This is a chance for using technology to collect and harness the power of all those concerned about the issue or subject you work on, and empowering their voices to carry beyond the website or application so that those in power really hear it. For example, maybe you have a petition that you encourage supporters to sign and comment on. The political figure who it targets maybe not be online or have even heard of your website. But when you get enough supporters to sign the petition, and you move it from the internet and onto his desk or email inbox – the statement is much more powerful.

    The greatest power of social media is the ability to organize and collaborate, outside of traditional barriers like geography, age or race. Using technology to organizer and mobilize people who support your work is the best thing you can do – and target those organizing and mobilizing goals towards moving the message from the supporters to those “in charge.”

    Thanks again for adding to the conversation here. As we continue to develop resources for these Propositions and the book, I will keep you posted here on the blog and will look forward to more great feedback!

  19. Thanks, Clive – A periodic table of social media elements. I like that!

    So long as we don’t have to pair propositions with elements and try to agree which one is Oxygen 🙂

  20. I was thinking that some of the 45 are found universally, while others are more rare. But not expecting to map them directly (though could be done humorously!).

  21. Like i said on Andy’s blog (http://sociability.org.uk/2009/04/06/45-propositions/#comment-66), long lists of social media tips aren’t tapping the deeper potential for impact.

    The interesting question is what do all these observations point to? What is the new worldview or ethic that social media is surfacing? Sussing that wouldn’t just bring coherence to the lists but would unlock the social implications at level beyond ways-to-do-socialmedia.

    The periodic table is a great example; although for years it was simply a useful way of ordering of properties, it’s real impact was it’s part in the (re)emergence of the atomic model.

    yours atomically
    dan

  22. Dan’s point about underlying worldview reminds me David Gurteen did a Worldview 1.0 – 2.0 comparison a while back – see http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/2008/03/not-getting-it.html for that and other links

    Words that featured in 2.0: sharing, social learning, transparency, freedom, freely, uncontrolled, own voice, open, complex

    compared with 1.0: imposed, closed, controlled, stripped, professional voice, authority. cause and effect

  23. Thanks – Dan! As always, great feedback and pushes to keep moving.

    I look at the Propositions as the ingredients in the spice cabinet that as a whole create the kitchen, but alone are pretty random and often unuseful (how often do you have a recipe that ONLY calls for fenugreek?). Yet, just listing the ingredients off, doesn’t “make” the kitchen, either. As you say, we need to capture the new worldview created when all of these Propositions are in place, when we have a kitchen that is drawing on all the possible tastes. Maybe it’s a bad metaphor…

    One next step that we are working on for repurposing the content we developed for the handbook is to create a space either on or offline or both where people can contribute their own lessons learned and case studies that use the 45 Propositions, and we hope that this process will really start creating that higher level picture of the new ethic that social media has surfaced and enabled.

    Of course, I’ll keep you posted – and will look for more challenges and questions to keep it moving forward!

  24. David – thanks for throwing in those words! I think that tags, since that’s really what those lists of words are, create a simple and often times more compelling way to conceptualize a topic. In this case, comparing the 1.0 and 2.0 words makes much of what is discussed in the Propositions obvious: openness, flexibility, and the moving of control to the community.

    Thanks for sharing those!

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