Making community mapping

work: the Tilburg urban

farming community case

Aldo de Moor CommunitySense

WWW.COMMUNITYSENSE.NL

Berkeley meetup, March 22, 2016

Urban farming – sprouting seeds

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Urban farming – growing the movement • “urban farmers have a need for being involved in and

empowered by engaging, informal practices that lead to the

creation of viable tools and processes underpinning community

practice (CITIES Foundation 2012)”

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Community sensemaking

• Communities can be seen as sets of relationships where people

interact socially for mutual benefit (Andrews, 2002)

• Sensemaking is the process by which people

give meaning to experience

• Complex properties (Weick, 1995) – Identity and identification

– Retrospection

– Enacting in dialogues and narratives

– Social

– Ongoing

– Extract cues

– Plausibility over accuracy

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Community mapping

• A core communal sensemaking activity

is community mapping (e.g.

geographical, knowledge mapping,

social network analysis)

Community mapping - geographical • Mapping for Rights http://www.mappingforrights.org/participatory_mapping

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Community mapping – content • It Takes a Village http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-

l0lwFwPQO98/Tz0oOIs6bTI/AAAAAAAADEk/TLx1uuaMHH4/s1600/villagecmap_large.jpg

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Community mapping – dialogue • Dialogue mapping http://pictureitsolved.com/resources/practices/dialogue-mapping/

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Community mapping – social networks • NodeXL community detection

http://nodexlgraphgallery.org/Images/Image.ashx?graphID=55296&type=f

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Participatory community mapping

• A core communal sensemaking activity

is community mapping (e.g.

geographical, knowledge mapping,

social network analysis)

• Participatory community mapping – How to make sense of the current state of

the community?

– How to use the maps to inform active

community building efforts?

• Our challenge: how to weave the

community mapping method (language,

tools, and process) through an iterative

process of community-building?

The community mapping language

• Elements (based on collaboration patterns, De Moor, 2013)

– Participants (Persons, Organizations,

Communities/Networks, Roles)

– Activities

– Results

– Tools (Online Tools, Physical Meetings)

• Connections: increasing degree of involvement (based

on Conceptual Model of Community, Carroll and Rosson in (Carroll, 2012))

– Informedness

– Membership

– Involvement

– Producing

The community mapping tool

• Kumu http://kumu.io (web-based tool to track,

visualize, and leverage relationships)

• Key participatory community mapping features: – Storytelling, shareable/embeddable

– Perspectives: decorations, foci, filters

Community map

Community perspective: decorations

Community perspective: focus

Community perspective: filter

Making common sense @ lunch

“Friendly competition”

Map as community catalyst

Retweeted by

Different communities, different maps

Maps starting to bridge communities

The community process:

some lessons learnt

• Capturing the data – Dedicated map maker role, master/domain map makers

– Balance completeness and feasibility

• Make choices frequency & granularity

• E.g. quarterly official updates, only organizational

participants

– Motivating community members: friendly peer pressure

emerges

• But: avoid gaming the system

• Interpreting/using the maps – Community members: participant/activity perspectives

– Community managers: management & accountability

Key open questions

• What types of nodes and edges work best?

• How to link empirical and “aspirational

(goals/best practices) maps”?

• How to make the maps fully owned by the

community?

• How to link maps (and their communities) to

scale for collective impact?