Community Engagement; Maintaining Involvement and Group Cohesion

Tools of the TradeSummer, 2009

Tools of the Trade – Community Engagement 1

You’ve identified a key set of partners to form the group to help with decision making and policy setting in the coming months. The group has members from different parts of the County, from multiple disciplines, vocations, and organizational cultures. All seem eager to be part of the group, and to appreciate the seriousness of the H1N1 challenge.

But you realize how difficult it can be to engage and maintain the involvement of the members of such a disparate group, and to foster a sense of group cohesion over many weeks and months—and it just won’t be feasible to have regular face-to-face meetings with the whole group.

Tools of the Trade – Community Engagement 2

You decide to meet with your immediate staff—including some of your more “tech-savvy” colleagues—to discuss what tools and technologies might help promote member involvement and foster group cohesion among the newly-formed H1N1 communities leaders group.

What kind of group is this?

• Advisory Committee?

• Commission?

• Consortium/Alliance?

• Network?

• Task Force?

By what means might you currently manage/interact with

such a big, diverse group?

Common means

• Good, old fashioned in-person meetings• Conference calls• E-mail• Listserves• Project web site• Newer tools (e.g., Web conferencing /

virtual meetings; Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et al.)

When should you use which means?

Reason(s) for Group Engagement

• To keep the group briefed• To get input from group members• To maintain group cohesion, especially with a

large and/or disparate group• To maintain involvement through a project

lifecycle• To facilitate interaction among persons with

different points of view• To motivate and foster interest among a group of

people who can help further your mission• To foster ‘buy-in’ of the final product

Consider using info technology tools…

1. When the group is too large or too dispersed geographically for regular in-person meetings

2. When information distribution is the primary goal

3. When interaction can or must be done asynchronously (b/o scheduling, time zones)

4. When frequent “small bites” of information/interaction are necessary

5. When feedback requires careful thought rather than immediate discussion (e.g., doc review)

Consider using info technology tools…

1. When the group is too large or too dispersed geographically for regular in-person meetings• Teleconferencing – universal, easy, cheap, but

challenging to keep group members’ attention• Web conferencing / virtual meetings – becoming

more common, great for remote presentations• E-mail, Listserves – universal, easy, but not

great for fostering group cohesion• Web site: allows persistent project collections• Blogs, Facebook/MySpace, Twitter, et al. –

great new tools for fostering on-line “communities”

Consider using info technology tools…

2. When information distribution is the primary goal• E-mail, Listserves

• Teleconference

• Web conferencing / virtual meetings

• Blogs, Twitter

• Facebook, MySpace

Consider using info technology tools…

3. When interaction can or must be done asynchronously (b/o scheduling, time zones)• E-mail, Listserves

• Web site

• Blogs, Facebook/MySpace, Twitter, et al.

Consider using info technology tools…

4. When frequent “small bites” of information/interaction are necessary• E-mail, Listserves

• Blogs, Twitter

• Facebook, MySpace

Consider using info technology tools…

5. When feedback requires careful thought rather than immediate discussion (e.g., doc review)• E-mail, Listserves

• Web site

Use When:E-mail,

ListservesTeleconference, Web Conference

Web Site

Blogs, Twitter

Facebook, MySpace

Group is large or dispersed

Info distribution is the primary need

Asynchronous interaction required

“Small bites” of info, interaction

Feedback requires careful thought

Newer tools for group engagement

• Social media tools

• Virtual Meeting exercise

New York Times August 10, 2009

New Tools for Group Engagement

• Blogs, Twitter (Thursday)

• Facebook, MySpace

• Social bookmarking, et al.

Blogs (“web logs”)

• Blogs are websites with regular updates and typically combine text, images (graphics or video), and links to other web pages.

• Blogs are usually informal—taking on the tone of a diary or journal entry.

• Most blogs encourage dialogue by allowing their readers to leave comments...

(from blog.aids.gov)

Example blog: blog.aids.gov

Facebook

• The goal here is just to give you a sense of two typical uses of FaceBook• Personal

• “Corporate”

• Not enough time to teach how to use Facebook; it is both easy to use but also remarkably rich

• Let’s play: http:/www.facebook.com

More about these “Social Media” tools

• http://Mashable.com

• http://blog.aids.gov/new-media-toolkit.html

• http://www.newmedia.hhs.gov/socialmedia101.html

Social Bookmarking

• Store, organize, search, manage bookmarks• Save links to web pages• Organize bookmarks with “tags”

• http://sharethis.com/

• Links to social bookmarking sites• http://www.diigo.com/

• http://delicious.com/

http://www.diigo.com

Web conferencing / Virtual meeting software

(iLinc demo)

Bottom line

• Many information and communication technology tools to help manage and foster collaboration among a large group of people.

• For any given group, the tool you select should be determined by the nature of the group, and the primary purposes of your engaging with it

• Web conferencing can be a powerful tool for fostering group cohesion – more engaging than a teleconference, more convenient (and often more practical) than in-person meetings.

Case Study (cont’d) – How to Run a Meeting

Now that you feel that you have a pretty good handle on who the key stakeholders are, where they are coming from, and how to mobilize support for this assignment, you realize that you will immediately have to put this analysis to the test.

Your next step will be to call a meeting of your key staff in the health department to go over the assignment from the board.  You are thinking that it sure would be helpful if there were some basic tools about how to run an effective meeting.

Community Engagement; Maintaining Involvement and Group Cohesion

Tools of the TradeSummer, 2009