During the last week’s research I learned a lot about online communities and networks. And whether it is crowdsourcing or crowdfunding, to find the right community and the right networks to spread or promote your idea of a product is very important.

Communicating with clients and partners online was new for me and in the beginning I had to get used to it, but now I can see the advantages this online communication brings. We are able to talk to many different people over the world, we are able to get an insight in their work and thoughts and we can ask questions!

Going through the design principles I discovered one fact that caught my attention: design is honest. A product does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept. Our movie for the Gogorobi Foundation will provide several ideas of crowdfunding and network expansion and we tried to make them as realistic as possible. They should work and be realizable in the next years.
All the Design principles connect together and regarding our final video/report/website I would say having a clear structured video will help us to deliver our suggestions understandable. Keep a clear storyline with pictures that attract attention but are not confusing. We decided to use a Prezi presentation which will help us to come back to the main page again and again to keep a structure. Furthermore we will add a spoken text in order to make the video authentic.

I would advise next year’s class to take the “get-to-know-your-group” part serious. In my group it took us a while to discover everybody’s strengths and now knowing them it saves us so much time and work! Personally for me it was very helpful to create a book where I note down all the ideas and topics we discussed during the weekly meetings. We worked on many online platforms and it sometimes was a bit confusing for me to keep an overview. Structure and setting yourself deadlines helped me (as with everything…yes, maybe that’s typically German :)).

The course improved my knowledge about crowdsourcing and funding and especially helpful for my path through the program was to create something for a real client. And I have to say, that I started caring about the foundation during the weeks I learned more about them and their purpose. I hope our ideas and plans will help the foundation to reach their goals.

The foundation my group is working with concentrates on preserving the storytelling tradition in Curacao. Their main unmet need for the NGO was fundraising so we tried to concentrate on expanding their networks and use crowdfunding to find as many sponsors as possible.
During the last weeks we learned a lot about crowdsourcing, Technology Stewardship, Marketing and working in teams. I think all these topics were very important for me in order to be able to think of a complete working solution-suggestion for the NGO. Of cause the final solution plan for the NGO includes all of these aspects and as I said every lesson was helpful to achieve the solution plan we have figured out now.

But crowdfunding was definitely the most important part of it. To use crowdfunding means raising capital from many individuals who belief in your idea, each making small donations that adds up to a lot. Before this course I had heard about crowdfunding but I was not aware of the actual way a foundation could use it and I didn’t know how close it is connected to crowdsourcing.
But why is crowdfunding so important to the NGO?
crowdfunding will help the NGO not only to raise money but also to expand their network, which is the second unmet need of the Gogorobi Foundation.
Crowdfunding is a big part of our final suggestion-plan for Gogorobi and since crowdfunding is closely related to crowdsourcing we were able to cover both their unmet needs with our strategy! I would like to give an example showing the connection between Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding. We advice the NGO to join the website Globalgiving.org. It is a website to raise money especially for Nongovernmental organizations. But in order to become a long term member and to make a profit from the popularity of the website the NGO has to pass an open challenge. They have to find sponsors and show that they are able to use online networks to expand and reach new communities. The suggestions (e.g. website improvements, using new online networks) will help the Gogogrobi foundation to pass this challenge.
The end goal should be to reach as many new communities as possible to gain more popularity and as a result to find more donators. A key role to success will be the foundation itself. They have to build up and maintain the communities we want to reach with our suggestion-plan. If they start to use online networks they have to put in a lot of effort and time in it, so that it will be as effective as possible.

We as a group can only provide as many information and strategies as possible that we think could work to achieve the end goal. The final video will include many details and exact steps the foundation should follow. I think it would also be very helpful to talk to our contact person Sheila Payne from the foundation after sending her the video to answer questions or to explain some things in more detail. The suggestions we come up with will be a start for the NGO to rethink their current online network status and also to start new projects by using crowdfunding and more online networks to expand their communities.

Let’s go back to 1858. 

A group of scholars created the first oxford English dictionary. It was a huge project and they needed help. So they asked for lots of volunteers to write about different topics according to their expertise and then they put it all together. The point is: relying on the crowd isn’t really a new-fangled idea. But it wasn’t until we all got connected that crowdsourcing came about because of the internet you can reach lots of people very quickly and you can direct and organize their work. It’s a way of solving problems and producing things by connecting online with people from all over the world.

Anyone can use crowdsourcing: Companies, governments, groups and individuals. They can use it to grow their organizations or support their causes.
There are 4 different ways crowdsourcing works: the first enables you to access a large online labor force and identify and select workers. Or you can post your work and let the workers find you. Crowdsourcing provides a platform for designers who wouldn’t otherwise be given a chance to showcase their talents. Another chance of using crowdsourcing in the process of developing ideas, where the Audience can engage in the production process and this can bring a lot of attention.

For the first time in the history of McDonald’s, in 2011 the fans in Germany were able to invent their own burgers and to promote them online via facebook and other social media. The best five burgers were sold in the restaurants throughout Germany. You could say it was a crowdsouced Burger. McDonald’s itself says it was the most successful campaign in Germany ever. They reached every forth German online user and decided to repeat the campaign in 2012.

The crowd creativity can be used to develop original art, media or content and companies can reach diverse and creative people for idea generation and problem solving.

But you have to keep in mind that many designers will participate in the competition and some people regret the loss of quality of the design on websites like 99designs.com or freelancer.com. I would propose to use crowdsourcing in design not for radical innovations because the designers that take part in the online competition do not know what exactly the soul of the company is and how can they create something extraordinary for something they do not exactly know?
But crowdsourcing can definitely be a chance to help connect designers to funders and investors. Connecting with large groups of people via internet to attach expertise, time, knowledge, and resources can help every designer to develop ideas and expand communities. Especially crowdfunding where you can raise capital from many individuals who belief in your idea, each making small donations that adds up to a lot can be seen as a great opportunity to help individuals develop their ideas. But I think you have to be very specific about the project that should be funded, otherwise it will lose attention and drown in the crowd.

The second way of crowdsourcing allows you to ask the crowd and find a solution to a problem. It can support communication and collaboration among distributed groups of people.
A third is when knowledge exists but you need help finding and organizing it and a fourth is when you need ideas from the crowd, opinion and feedback.
As you can see there are different ways you can use crowdsourcing and there are different things you can do with crowdsourcing. Using crowdsourcing in design is cheap, saves time and offers diversity but the quality of design suffers and companies miss out the dialogue with the designers who can’t truly provide for their needs. However, if you want a logo for a simple catalog for your company I think crowdsourcing’s benefits of usefulness and low costs outweigh the quality concerns. It is a good opportunity for small businesses with small resources and can be used as a kickstart.

This week’s Project Community class was all about teamwork. And yesterday’s reflection on our group work helped us a lot to define our next steps as a group.
I structured my text in different parts and added some visuals to make the reflection more understandable.

What is going well in our group?

To be able to start with creating a plan for our foundation, we started to gather information about what the foundation does and how we can help them. And I have to say our team is really good at gathering information! We all agreed on using Google Drive and we created a facebook group to keep up with dates and news. This communication process works well.

What is challenging for our group?

A big challenge for our group was structure. We had lots of information but there was no clear division who works on what. Therefore not everybody was involved in the working process and the motivation decreased.
Furthermore it happened very often that one or two members were not attending the meetings, so the group (depending on everybody’s research) was not able to continue the work.

Team work can be challenging, especially when the team exists of seven people with seven different cultural backgrounds. Everybody has his/her own values and objectives and most of us didn’t work in a group like this before. I think it is a normal process our group goes through and I think by talking about problems and challenges we will be able to organize our work and our group.

Personally for me it was challenging to get everybody involved and motivated. We didn’t define clear roles and since last week we couldn’t really improve our groupwork in terms of results and solutions. So we had to ask us these questions:

How can everyone contribute efficiently? How can we involve and motivate everybody in our group?

While reflecting on our group work, Fernanda created a list of topics we were working on and topics we still have to work on. We divided not also our group, but also the project into smaller, more manageable tasks. Individual members of the group are now assigned to primary areas of responsibility and that will increase the motivation. It seems like a great plan to take a bearing on and I’m sure it will work out well, especially because now the assignment seems tightly structured.

Team meetings are one of the most important parts of our work to share information and to get new input from others. So we created an agreement:

- Everybody has to attend every meeting, on Monday and on Friday. If a person is missing two times without an excuse the group will first talk to the person and then to the teacher.

We used the STARR model to reflect on our team work in terms of information & ideas Gathering and Team organization. It was very useful to see what worked out very well and how we have managed so far.

Furthermore we established a common goal (content of the final presentation) and determined what each individual would like to get out of it. I am sure that creating a shared objective will help us to start working efficiently as a group.

Technology changed what it means to be together.
This week I was introduced to crowdsourcing and online social structures and I found it very interesting as it made me think about my own network. Being able to use online spaces gives us the opportunity to interact with people from all over the world and it affects the way we use the internet. But what is my network? What does it mean? Who is part of this network?

When I think about my personal network I can’t think of any online space I use only as an individual. In my opinion online spaces are made to interact and communicate with other people. As a result the online spaces where I’m most active in are facebook and Whatsapp. At the first place I thought I only use facebook to write to friends but when I think of it in more detail and be honest to myself it’s not about writing messages. It’s about follow others life. Seeing my friend’s pictures and reading their posts gives me the feeling of being a part of their life, although I know it’s a weird kind of “contact” to follow their facebook pages.
Furthermore I personally find inspiration and access to ideas by looking at other pages on facebook, Tumblr and Instagram. Isn’t it interesting that the initial idea of facebook was to be a platform for people to be able to stay in contact with friends?! But now Facebook is a network-world, where you can find information about almost everything: there are pages about companies, where you can even link the website to a page, there are pages about how to be creative, and there are pages about events, invitations, games and much more. On the whole you can say that it replaces other online spaces or you could say it includes most of them. For instance, it is no longer necessary to google a website, the only thing you have to do is to type it in facebook and you will find what you are looking for.
To apply this knowledge to the foundation we are working with, I am convinced that an updated and attractive facebook page will bring them more attention and publicity.

Coming back to my network I would like to add that I also use other online spaces to learn more about topics I’m interested in. For example, if I have a question about baking (because I’m really not good at that ;)) I just post my question on one of the numerous forums (e.g. http://www.bhg.com/advice/food/baking/) and I can be sure someone is answering within the next hour. And the good thing about it is, that not only one person is going to answer, but many. Furthermore in some online forums there is a possibility to vote for the best answer. In my opinion that is the intellectual power of a large group or, to say it with different words: croudsourcing.

I hold facebook and whatsapp in high regard to keep in contact with my friends. I use Youtube as an entertaining website and instagram to learn more about pictures and other creative people. My Tumblr page is a valuable space for me as I put in a lot of effort, ideas and thoughts. But the most valuable website to me is Wikipedia. It is not only valuable to me but also to other people and that’s what makes it special. I think the collective intelligence is one of the best ways of education. I personally find it very useful to look things up in the Internet to get an overview of opinions and knowledge.

On facebook I am a member of defined groups. Some of them are with my friends, some are with people I work with to share ideas or information about our work (e.g. our projectcommunity page). But I also joint networks without knowing all the people in this group just because we share a common interest, for example the “For sale in Den Haag” group on facebook. And this is an interesting point I found out about me, because I always thought that I would not interact on online spaces with people I don’t know outside the virtual world. But obviously I do! And I also interact in a wider network by using Youtube or Wikipedia.

Besides all these networks I am using, there is of cause my email account. To be honest, it is the most relaxing online space I’m using and I feel very comfortable with the way it works. Because the only reason I log in is to see whether I received an email or not. There are just two possibilities.
But when I log in my facebook account, there are messages, new pictures, news, events etc. It sometimes even feels like a duty to be online and always available. I myself sometimes like to switch of my phone and be aware of not being available. But today’s world depends on technology and online social structures. Using online spaces is the easiest, fastest and most common way to gather information.
One of the good things about being a digital native is, that most of the people in my generation learn very fast how new networks work and they feel comfortable with most of them. Well, these networks are designed to work easily and most of them work very similar.

My personal preferences are online networks that give information. Whether it’s about friends, news and general knowledge about baking…and of cause the online groups I am a part of are related to my interests. In my case these are groups about movies or photography, design and architecture. Most of my personal network consists of people I also know outside the virtual world, but when it comes to general questions and knowledge or short contacts, my network expands to a worldwide network.

Kick Start Phase

• Projects - Projects are already an important aspect of the Gogorobí Foundation. To get an idea of how it is like working to reach defined goals, a team needs to focus on the outcomes or products they expect to have. This practice consists of structuring and running projects. If the organization needs to conserve and spread their traditions of storytelling, having a time delimited for a group of tasks related to this subject is the best opportunity to learn. It is clear that for Gogorobí the first projects need to enclose communication and advertising in order to refine those practices. Working out their own projects, with a personal and effective approach, may bring audience and recognition for Gogorobí. It is also important to realize, as a start, how the management of the projects can work.

• Meetings - Working individually can bring good results and insights but especially in the start it’s necessary to share ideas and gather group conclusions. Gogorobí could try to work with both synchronous or asynchronous meetings, as long as it clarifies the team purposes and needs to everyone: how to work, what to do, who is good at what. For the synchronous meetings it is better to meet offline, face to face and without any time pressure. The result will be a better  working team. As for the asynchronous meetings, the team needs to experiment with a variety of tools and find out what works best for them.

• Access to expertise - As a start, the organization already has a defined purpose and knows their environment, traditions and other important aspects. It is the moment to work with outside ideas and trying to find a solution, but not acquire expertise on these things yet.

• Relationships - Relationships are fundamental for the first part. To create a good working team its participants should be able to know each other’s strength and weaknesses. Group forming meetings or activities together can be helpful for that.

• Context - In the first phase it’s important to create a structure within the foundation. Later in the implementation phase the community can be included.

• Content - The content is something Gogorobí should really work on. Their stories and traditions are interesting and they do have great content to present, but as a start coming up with new solutions for presenting it is important. Then after deciding how to present it, it is important to decide which content is relevant for each platform.

• Individual Participation - As we already pointed out, firstly it is important that the NGO works well as a group. To receive the best possible outcome it is important that every individual gives their best, but first the leaders/leading team has to focus on what they want to achieve in the next time.

• Open-ended conversations - Conversations and discussions are important to develop, progress and even visualize your thoughts. Nevertheless, in the Kick-start phase we think the team goals for conversations and meetings have to be fixed and clear. But, if necessary, they can also use the meetings to set subjects (not goals) for this kind of conversations and try to get together in a relaxed environment to let their ideas flow.

• Cultivation - As a practice that brings and trains brains to work based in the team’s goals, cultivation is important to the kick start phase. The founders of an organization need to have more people supporting and enjoying to work with their ideas. However, its relevance is going to increase only in the Feedback phase. In the first part, sometimes having a lot of people could help, but since it is only the beginning and some things may not be that clear, trying to stick to founders and close collaborators can make the managing simpler and objective.

Implementation Phase

• Projects - In this phase, the projects that were structured and developed during the Kick-start phase should be revised. After having a look to its planning and results the team can continue to work on them. But now with more knowledge about what the priorities of their projects are and what the weaknesses and strengths may be. At this moment it is also possible to add new projects. The increasing amount of experiences enables the team to continue with their organization work. Furthermore it helps them to not only have audience and recognition for their ideas but also to be recognized as a good working group.

• Meetings - It is advisable to continue with regular meetings, but as the main goals are clear to everyone in the team and as tasks are divided the necessity of meetings decreases. Maybe now it will be more interesting if synchronous meetings take place online. The team should stick to the tools they have already realized and that are appropriated for the asynchronous meetings.

• Access to expertise - The importance of expertises increases with the implementation of strategies. Now that the team knows how to support projects and have good relationships, they need to focus on what is important so that they learn and develop ability. Then choosing the right people and sources to help them with acquiring some expertise in new and helpful practices. This is essential to make an effective work when implementing strategies, since a team not always have all the knowledge it takes to reach their goals.

• Relationships - Relationships still are fundamental for the work in the team. As everybody got to know each other better, the strength of the group increases. And this strength is useful to cope with upcoming projects, new events and people. If now more people are joining or getting in touch with the team it is helpful to have a good and strong inner relationships. It will help others to understand how the organisation works and what the best way is to work with them.

• Context - It is time that the communities are included in processes as a part of the projects, however, the context of the organization remains the same. The structure within the foundation should have been created by now and the team knows who they are working with/for. Getting in the implementation phase doesn’t increase the context relevance. They just need to make it clear for the communities to be included.

• Content - The relevance and quality of content should still be great. Now that it is going to be presented to the communities, the team needs to learn more about new contents/tools and has to make use of different online platforms. It is the most effective way to ensure that people all over the world will be able to learn what the foundation wants to achieve and by knowing more about it they will be able to interact. A new website with an easy possibility to donate money will help the foundation to receive donations. A contextualized and always updated Facebook page is necessary to get more audience. And there are even more possibilities to make great content available, such as blogs or microblogs like Twitter.

• Individual Participation - The management team is able to work smoothly. This will guarantee that there are people to help others getting motivated. The implementation work requires some quality individual participation but still, it is important that everyone can work well as a team. More than new individuals, new communities are interesting because they can give new input that helps the NGO.

• Open-ended conversations - With the start of the projects there will be a need to discuss whether things are working out fine and whether not and how to improve them. Now, as strategies are being tested/implemented, it becomes more important to develop and visualize personal and group thoughts.

• Cultivation - The cultivation relevance still does not increase because the team is now only working to put into action what they think is right. Instead of bringing more “workpower”, having too many people working could become stressful and tiring. Also it is absolutely normal and healthy for the team that some things go wrong before the actual feedback phase.

Feedback Phase

• Projects - Projects that were developed during the first and second phase should be checked if they are successful in three ways:
  1. successful in spreading the idea of the foundation (popularity)
  2. the management and implementation of the projects works well
  3. the projects received good donation (financial part)
  If yes, then it is advisable to develop new inner and external projects.

• Meetings - As it is feedback time, meetings are now essential to share what happened during the last months. Now the team needs to meet up as much as they can: offline, online, synchronous and asynchronous meetings are welcome. They need to gather as much information as they can about how the world sees them. We think meetings are the best way to talk about the projects, the management and the financial aspects.

• Access to expertise -There should be a leader/team that is able to change feedback into useful improving methods because it is time to learn how all the work is seen and accepted. But definitely not the moment to try and learn new things. To work with upcoming feedback it is necessary to have skills in communication, which should have been already developed so far.

• Relationships - During the feedback phase it is not only important to know what the team within the foundation has to say, but also what suggestions the people in the communities have. One possibility is to create a feedback letter that will be handed to participants after the theaters/workshops/projects. Another possibility is to install an online feedback page on the website. The team needs to be open to people’s opinions and know where to get genuine feedback. The online activity is really helpful here especially on sites like Facebook.

• Context - Now that the team is gathering information on the results of its work, it is really important to set a context. If the work doesn’t have a proper context, the organization may receive feedback from a group that it’s not their target. Analysing what kind of people have been interacting with the organization and trying to prioritize what they can offer and how is a good idea.

• Content - The content now plays an important role for the context. If the content is not good, the organization’s seek for feedback is not well contextualized. This can place Gogorobí in a irrelevant environment for them. As the feedback is received it also becomes easier to shape and present the content in a right way.

• Individual Participation - The feedback phase is based on the individual experiences of every participant. Their suggestions should be a big part of the feedback process. This aspect is is weighted very high during the feedback phase because an individual view of the other’s interaction can bring relevant and important ideas. People are often more able to see things clearly and in details when they work individually than when they are with others trying to stick to a certain kind of attitude.

• Open-ended conversations - We hope that in the feedback time the team has a lot of opinions to discuss about. What kind of people are interacting with the organization? how is the quality of these interactions? Conversations can show which things are working out fine and which not. The foundation should spend time with open-ended conversations.

• Cultivation - Now it is the time when cultivation matters the most. It is time to bring everyone of the organization together to join the conversation. Both online and offline cultivation are important so that a variety of experiences and opinions are analysed.

We are currently living in a time where the importance of digital media, technology and digital presence increases rapidly. Communities rely on technology more and more. And as the importance of technology increases, the importance of technology stewards increase as well. By developing our technology knowledge we will be able to find the best supporting technology for our NGO and we will be able create our digital identity.

Technological knowledge is necessary to be able to keep up with upcoming new ideas. But as the amount of technology in the communication process increases we also have to be careful what we, as digital identities are putting out there.

A digital identity is the presentation of the actual real life person in the Internet. It starts by using cell phones or having a ID card with an RFID chip. It is your digital footprint left by the interaction in a digital environment. But what do we want to put out there? People write about us and very often we can’t control what they post or tweet. And all this affects our digital identity.
You should ask yourself if you want to be a part of that digital world or better, ask yourself how you cannot be part of it. Isn’t it almost suspicious not to be a part of the digital world?

In the third week of the project community class we started by using a spidergram to find out which types of activities will be required for our NGO and how important they are going to be. But creating one spidergram seemed not clear or suitable enough for our NGO. So we came up with the idea to create three spidergrams. There is one spidergram for the first Kick-Off Phase, one for the Implementation phase and another for a feedback phase. Depending on how productive each phase is going to be, it would be useful to give feedback in between the other phases, to increase the amount of constructive work.

Creating a spidergram is a great possibility to take an overview about all the questions that come up while creating the best way how the NGO can work. Consequently we started to discuss the importance of different topics, such as meetings. How important are meetings? What is the difference between an actual meeting and digital communication (e.g. Google Hangout)? How does it affect the way a group is working?

The discussion gave me the opportunity to get to know the opinions of my group members and I think we are starting to find our roles in the group. As a result our work on monday was well-organized and efficient.
By using Google Hangout a second time we learned that efficient work needs practice. And it takes time. You need time to set up rules such as who is going to talk when? It is interesting to see how social dynamics develop. I see the class as a chance to practice my personal online tools.
Some people in my group already have experience in using online tools and it was very helpful for me that they explained everything. One tool which i feel confident with is Excel. It helped us creating the spidergram. And I would say I am good at filming and have some skills with movie editing, which is going to help us in a later phase of the project. Of cause I would love to learn more about it and hopefully I can help others to develop their skills as well.

All in all i can say that the confusiasm turns into pure enthusiasm! :)

Could that be a possibility for our NGO?

http://www.globalgiving.org/

Welcome to Holland!

And welcome to my new Tumblr account “le trait de genie de lucie”. I am Lucie and I am studying Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University.  

In the course Project Communities we were asked to reflect on the first week of the course. First of all I would like to say, that I think the amount of experience we can achieve in this course really depends on our own participation. We are going to learn how online communities and networks can support innovative design.
We have to understand how networks work, how we can create an online community and how we as innovative designers can have influence on how the structure and the dynamics of network is controllable. When we are able to find a way to organize all of these different aspects we can use it, to for example increase and improve an organizations network to raise funds. Furthermore we have to continue to research what kind of fund would fit the best? What are some of the best ways to expand networking links in different communities?

There are many things I still have to learn. Starting with a simple thing like creating a Tumblr account and continuing to challenge my personal development by learning how to work productively in a group and asking questions which will help me to understand topics in detail.

I guess working in a team is always a challenge but the way we could collect all different ideas shows that we are able to create a realistic and useful strategy for our NGO (Non-governmental-organization). However as far as I have experienced our group-work up to now, it would be definitly useful to create a detailed time planning management so that we can use all of our different talents for the best outcome. I hope I can motivate the group with all my enthusiasm and with “le trait de genie de lucie” ;)

Let’s turn words into images!