The great misconception: Value

Photo by Mark Strozier on Flickr.

A persistent misconception is tormenting the cultural sector and it’s a misconception about value. I’ve heard people say the craziest things about value, including from experts put on stage to educate us. One of them, just to pick an example: Social media allows us to have a large impact with a low investment. Bollocks!

Another one: The cultural sector has significant social and cultural value, but not necessarily economic value.

Talking about economical value and social value and their relationship makes the value discussion way too complex, especially since “The Economy” has been branded as something difficult (read Tim Harford to understand it’s not) and value is understood as profit and loss (read Seth Godin to understand it’s not).

To make everything easier, here’re the two things you need to understand about value:

1. Value and money are two completely different things. Value more closely resembles karma. It’s a universal currency and the banking of it is outsourced to everybody.
2. In a way, value is a constant. Over the long run, the value you receive will always equal the value you have created for others. However, this relationship can be diffuse.

If you understand this, you’ll understand there’s no such thing as a big impact for a low investment, in social media or elsewhere. Everybody who tells you so AD 2011 is a fraudster. A tweet that receives hundreds of retweets might be free to send, but to build the engaged following that will retweet it takes at least 6 to 12 months of professional high-quality tweeting. That’s a huge investment for, at best, a large impact. It’s why corporates pay for their videos to go viral. Read the rest of this entry »

Next year: The strategy start-up

Photo by Sofia Torrão on Flickr.

This post will answer the number one question I’ve been asked after it became known the Museum of National History would cease to exist in January: What will I do next year? And to take away some worries immediately, I won’t be gone from the cultural sector. At least not entirely, as I will explain shortly.

Starting right after New Year I will be working on what we call a “strategy start-up”. Together with the talented digital producer, music enthusiast and my good friend Erwin Elling, I will start a company that will help others to use the opportunities of the 21st century strategically and sustainably, and create campaigns and strategies that add value to brands.

We call it a strategy start-up because on the one hand we will use the no-nonsense mindset of start-ups in approaching challenges, while at the same time we will look beyond the short-term objectives that often dominate (digital) projects.

Ever more organisations have taken successful first steps in the digital domain, and can pride themselves in an established traditional presence. Today, however, they’re faced with the question “what’s next?” How to turn Facebook fans into visitors? How to connect with completely new target groups? How to build a meaningful relationship with our audience that spans the physical and digital domain? How to make some money doing so?

That’s where we come in. Together with our future clients we will give workshops, training, co-create successful campaigns and strategy, develop a vision for the coming years and help you make sense of the immense possibilities of the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »

30 do’s for designing successful participatory and crowdsourcing projects

Photo by Chris Blakely on Flickr.

This week at the Dish conference in Rotterdam I gave a presentation about all the do’s and don’ts, tips and tricks, lessons and hands-on advice about crowdsourcing from my experience at the Museum of National History. Well… that’s quite a lot to talk about. All in all I came up with some 25-30 little notes, which the audience of my presentation – in a little participatory trick – had to label as do’s or don’ts.

Here’s the full list, now all as do’s, with some additional ideas that didn’t fit in the presentation. Use it to your benefit and please add your thoughts when you feel I’ve missed some.

1. Ask your potential participants a clear question or a clear task. A clear question is never ambiguous, unless you’re looking for (and only looking for) different ways to look at its ambiguity.
2. Run a couple of real-life test sessions with your question. Even if it’s an online project, ask people in the street your question and see how they respond. Change the question all the time. Once people only respond with the answers you’re looking for, you’ve found your question.
3. Ask a question that is meaningful to people. Questions that might be labelled emotional or highly personal are good. Not everybody will answer them, but the answers you’ll get will be so much more valuable.
4. Pinpoint very specific groups of people you’d like to reach with your project. Design to meet their demands and answer to their needs. Preferably, involve this target group in the design of your project.
5. That said: don’t exclude anyone from participating if they really want to.
6. Be extremely clear about your limits to what people can contribute, and keep these as limited as possible. Racism, hate, advertising and unlawful things are usually enough to exclude.
7. Accept all other contributions, regardless of they way in which you perceive their quality. Every time a person took the trouble to contribute to your project, this contribution is valuable (you can use peer reviewing to maintain overall high quality). Read the rest of this entry »