The number one issue I encounter when dealing with racism on an organizational/institutional level is the lack of ability to put the organization's resources toward ending racism and the lack of diversity in the institution.
Many US Organizations state they value "diversity." What does that mean?
Diversity, inclusion and equity aren't seen as an issue of sustainability for our organizations and institutions. These issues are looked at like pinstriping on a sports car. It seems they are not as important to our organizations as the engine, or even the tires of the car...
Our nation will not survive if we do not deal with the issues of race that exist in our culture.
Unconscious bias is built into most education, entertainment and other forms of information.
We need teams of analysts to investigate these biases, analyze them, describe them for laypeople, and prescribe fixes for them. We need these teams within our organizations and in general society.
In the organization, these teams need autonomy in order to properly do the job of analyzing as objectively as possible. They also need power in order to properly execute the changes they find are needed within an organization.
Organizations need to create such teams and give them the full support of the instead of just giving this subject lip service and keeping actions at the "cultural petting zoo" level.
Educating a diverse workforce and attaining the mission of almost any organization will entail that the organization work to meet the needs of a diverse membership and makeup.
Is it about money, or is it about fixing a broken system?
Indeed, if diversity, equity and inclusion were desirable goals for institutions from the US government down to our local community colleges and school districts, then these organizations would allocate and use their resources at the same level as other "crucial" goals and 'outcomes' of these institutions.
The thing is--these organizations almost NEVER allocate proper resources, nor processes to achieve these goals.
These resources range in type from the will to create change (and deal with the consequences of those who are upset by said change), to spending money to train, and educate the members of the organization.
In the US our culture shows that it values something by how much money, or how much 'integrity' an issue, or thing has to us.
People are willing to stand up for their guns, but when it comes to POC--they don't seem to care.
This integrity, in the sense I am speaking about, is the will to deal with those of the dominant culture who might become upset by the appointment, or the recruitment of ethnic minority faculty, staff and membership.
I see people stand up firmly for their gun rights, for the right to fly their confederate flags, for the right to shoot someone if they feel their lives are in danger--yet when it comes to standing up for the lives of their fellow countrymen--all of the sudden--they are worried about offending people.
Denial is the current mental health state in the US.
"Why should I suffer! I never discriminated against anyone, I never owned slaves!"
"Some people might get mad if we were to appoint POC faculty, or staff members!"
I hear again and again.
However, they don't understand that POC are already upset. That we deal with microaggressions on a daily basis, that we deal with fear and the knowledge that discrimination exists in our culture.
"Will it be us this time? "
"Was that discrimination?"
"Did they really just say that?"
"Maybe they didn't mean it."
The hell POC live when it comes to race in this culture. The hell of sending your child out to school and not knowing if they will be judged according to what they do and who they are instead of the color of their skin, or by their accent is never acknowledged, nor is it even a reality to those with privilege.
Those in power don't care about the hell POC exist within when it comes to race and employment in the US.
They are more concerned with upsetting someone from the dominant culture.
They don't care one iota if we are upset...
That should send us ALL a really clear and strong message when it comes to rectifying the racial situation in the US today.
meth·od
ˈmeTHəd/
noun
plural noun: methods
a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.
We need new methods and we need not be afraid of approaching our organizations with this knowledge in mind.
We need to stress that our organizations put their resources, both financial and spiritual toward ending racism in our organizations, toward achieving those lofty mission outcomes and toward achieving equity.
Our organizations and institutions will benefit from this and we will achieve a return on investment that will be staggering--if only we have the courage to make our organizations put their money where their mouths are.
We must create some change with direct action and stop repeating the same things we have been doing for the past 30 years.
I know and understand that diversity is more than race, but I submit that within race exists a rich diversity. That is to say, if one recruits a rich and large pool of faculty of color, then one will have a richly diverse pool in more than just race, but also of class, gender, abilities, and other measures of diversity that organizations use. We need to work on race at the moment.
Right now you're probably thinking, "Oh, no, not ANOTHER Twitter® tutorial!" Well, yes, this IS a Twitter® tutorial, but we're going to dig a little deeper. We'll cover the basics, then move on to organizational uses and searching. I'm hoping to impart some ideas and enthusiasm to friends in the library community as well as anyone else who might benefit. This tutorial takes for granted that the reader is already familiar with Twitter® and has a user account. For those who are not, and don't, a cheat sheet follows. The site address is http://Twitter.com/. Sign up for an account.
Why use Twitter® at all?
Twitter® creates a constant stream of updates from important sources. Twitter® is like RSS on steroids, or like having multiple (both local and international) television news reports open all at once, or like having your best friend’s opinions in combination with world famous experts' opinions—all available for questions and answers. It can also be likened to having the phone numbers of your favorite authors and artists at your fingertips. If you are an advocate, PR person, outreach librarian or technology person, Twitter® can be of great use to you and your community. This is a tool that can spread your message—whether it be an event, announcement, policy, informational resource, or just a friendly message to the community.
Organizational communication is fast changing due to social media. In many cases, these tools can be used to communicate internally and externally; they have exponential potential for market saturation. Twitter® recently emerged as a top communication tool and the uses are being investigated and exploited. As of this writing, new applications are being created based on Twitter®. Twitter® is a tool to consider utilizing when pondering news/communication tools, both personally and individually. For this article we will focus on organizational uses of Twitter®; individual usage will be covered in a later post.
Twitter® Cheat Sheet
Twitter® is what is known as a microblogging service. That is, a service that allows one to blog 140 characters at a time to a network built by the user--the "tweeter". Following are some terms of usage which you will find helpful.
Tweet: a 140-character or less post to a user account. "I am tweeting" means I am posting a 140-character post to my account, which can then be seen by my network (those who "follow" me). "I am reading tweets" means I am reading posts from others in my network.
To follow: a user follows others, which means that they see the tweets (status updates) of those individuals whom they have added to their Twitter® stream. When someone follows you, the user, this means that they have added you to their Twitter® stream and can read your tweets.
Reply: to respond to a user's tweet. When you respond, you must begin your post with this symbol: @, followed with the user's id of whom you are responding. For instance, if I were responding to my own account, I would type: "@maxmacias--you are always right, Max!" When you respond using "@reply", please know that these replies are public and may be seen by your entire network.
A mention: when someone replies to or forwards ("retweets") your tweet. Twitter® keeps track of your mentions; you can easily view them by clicking on the "mentions" link in your account.
RT (Retweet): to forward a message from your Twitter® stream to your network. This allows your network to see the tweet and to also pass it on to their respective networks. The retweet also sends the @id of the person originally posting the tweet and establishes a sort of provenance--an excellent way to broaden your network.
DM (Direct Message): a direct message you send to a user. This message is private and only goes to the specified user.
Hashtag: An informational keyword tag indicated by the # symbol which precedes it, i.e., #Iranelection. Hashtags are postings which can be searched for and easily found.
Search: Twitter® can be searched for keywords and hashtags via the search option on the right sidebar and @id names. Searches may be saved.
Twitpic: allows one to upload and share photos on Twitter®.
Outreach/PR
For most organizations including libraries, Twitter® can be a great outreach tool. Twitter® allows you to send out a constant stream of valuable (value-added) information about the library, historical events, lectures, concerts, new items available, links to library videos, interviews, podcasts and more. Twitter® is also an effective public relations tool, announcing press releases, organizational communications, general information and also targeting populations directly.
Fun!
Twitter® is fun. It's all about networking, sharing information and answering questions. The content—and the stimulation—is as rich as your network.
Phones and other devices
Twitter® and many Twitter® applications may be accessed on phones and other devices. This allows a wider access to information and a larger audience than the usual web content. The digital divide is interestingly being conquered by wireless carriers; at the very least, the carriers have had a huge impact in lessening the chasm.
FREE
Twitter® is free; it only takes an investment in people.
Ease of use
Twitter® is easy to use; with a bit of participation and networking, you will soon develop your own help network as well as helping others along the way.
Photos can be shared by sending a link to your photos, or by posting to Twitpic®. This service tweets a link to your photos when you post them to the site (a handy tool to use with your phone camera). Photos are powerful; symbolic, they can carry strong messages to your network.
Some Considerations on Following Individuals and Organizations
Does the account you are considering provide information that is valuable to your organization?
Can you collaborate with this organization offline?
What organizations or individuals from outside the library field will benefit your organization?
What other fields would provide ideas and models that might be adapted to your organization?
How can you help others in their missions and goals?
Stay away from direct marketers, pornographic profiles, bots, and accounts that do not relate to your mission. Check profiles before following. Some profiles are bots or direct marketing types. A quick look at the profile and recent posts will tell you if you really want to follow that particular user.
Search: you can search from Twitter® looking for mentions of your id, your organization's id, or someone else’s id. You can also search for hashtags mentioned in the cheat sheet. Try searching for #iranelection. Look at the return and how it refreshes. When there is an event going on and people are tweeting and including the hashtag, all of the tweets will show up in your search. This can be a highly effective way to get a message out; marketers, artists and others come up with clever ways to get their hashtag trending (becoming a popular tag on Twitter®).
Every Friday people tweet their favorite people to follow. This is a great way to network. After a certain amount of time your social capital (SC) is built up and you can endorse other users with authority. As you build your SC, you build trust with your followers. This is likened to a trusted news source whose sources and veracity of information check out when investigated. Participate in Follow Friday and you will build your SC much quicker.
Hashtags for FollowFriday/Vivaviernes:
#FF # followfriday #vivaviernes, etc…
Hashtags are trended at various sites on the web. One can gauge the popularity of a conversation by analyzing how many times the tag appears in conversations. The tag can “trend” which means that it ranks in popularity.
Here are three sites that show twitter trending topics:
An organization can create a campaign by urging your network and communities to use a specific tag. This tag will trend and will show how popular your campaign gets.
Ability to Pump Out Tweets to Various Platforms
Your Twitter® feed can be pumped out to your blog, website, or other social networking sites with a Twitter® badge or widget.
Organizational Considerations
Internal Tweets
An organization can use #hashtags to post non-confidential internal tweets to employees.
Look at profiles
Make sure they are not bot, spammers, or direct marketers. Also be sure they are related to your organizational goals/mission.
Twitter Applications:
As you build your network it may seem overwhelming; you might want to use a Twitter® application (an outside vendor) to make your life easier.
Ability to store tweets for later answering/retweeting. Tracks links followers follow.
Better interfaces than Twitter®
Easy to reply, retweet, dm, etc…
Easy to follow, unfollow, etc…
Archiving of tweets
Allow you to tweet from multiple accounts and to tweet to your Facebook® status
The ability to group your followers into groups, i.e., news group, tech group, library group, etc.
Searching
An organization can perform a search utilizing several different search utilities for Twitter® or by asking their network or posting a direct question to people. There are a broad range of topics, anything from politics to web design. The access to specialized information is incredible!
Responsible and Privileged
Make sure the individuals who have been assigned to tweet for the organization are responsible.
Use multiple people to keep the posts interesting and diverse. This can be effective as Twitter® requires continuous interesting posting to build SC.
Policy
The organization should have a clear policy that addresses:
Appropriate language
Appropriateness of links provided
Non-political links and tweets
Tweet with the organizational mission in mind at all times
Individual vs. organizational Twitter® usage The tweeters should understand they are representing the organization and that their personal viewpoints should never override information provided and should never dictate information shared or re-tweeted.
Assessment: How will the ROI be assessed? What will be considered successful? What are your benchmarks and how will you reach them?
Building community
Tweet organizational related material. Retweet information you know your network will appreciate. Do not argue, flame or use derogatory language when tweeting. Stay positive and friendly. Share, share, share. Be yourself and be genuine, but always remember you are a representative of the organization. Again, look for those who your organization can collaborate with and build off one another’s work. Cross—promotional opportunities abound in the world of Twitter® .
Contacting luminaries, artists, politicians, etc.
Accessing leaders in most fields is easy if they are using Twitter®. If one is interesting, and thoughtful, as well as being in possession of SC, then one can reach many important authorities in various fields to ask questions, or just to give thanks for their work. I myself have had the opportunity to thank some of my favorite authors and musicians via Twitter®. You never know where you will find the next valuable supporter.
Become a resource for those in your network
Provide information, respond to questions about best practices, calls for help, trending certain topics; be friendly and approachable.
You are the ambassador of your organization to the greater world when you tweet. Be a diplomat and train your tweeters to be diplomats and collaborators. Miscalculations like this:
Tweeting without thinking about ramifications can lead to things like this: Arnold and knife. Needless to say you don’t want negative PR issues to deal with. It is better to be disciplined in your tweets and to have well-trained tweeters for your organization.
Look for local Tweetups (an offline gathering of localized, or special interest tweeters), Social Media clubs and groups. Depending on your field there may already be specialized groups, or perhaps you can start one in your area. There is strength in numbers and you can bounce ideas off one another, perhaps compare best practices and have presentations that are edifying to members.
Twitter cause banners/ribbons:
You can add a ribbon to your profile photo via services like this to show your support for a cause, organizations or person, etc…
Here is one site that can help you:
http://twibbon.com/
Links for Further investigation
Here are some links where you can learn more about using social media to enhance your organizational goals and mission.
twittercompendium The Twitter Compendium is designed to link you to news and information about Twitter, a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or on the web
Organizational Communication Infrastructure for Innovation and Progress
by Max Macias
11/08
At large organizations, Web 2.0 is being used in internal blogs or social networks. These perform the very useful functions of keeping far-flung employees, teams, and divisions in touch, sharing best practices and other useful information, and serving as a way to train. Organizations are beginning to see the value of these arrangements for more formalized training, as well as informal companywide communications (HR Focus, 2007).
One of the requirements for an efficient (profitable?) organization is effective communication.With the influx of information today, new forms of communication are required for organizations. Most contemporary associations I have encountered have late 20th century forms of communication based on an hierarchical system (I will be kind) from the 19th century.Today one communicates in a variety of ways based on new tools for communication that aggregate, relay, analyze and contribute to learning and understanding new information.
Efficient communication requires an infrastructure.Using new tools to facilitate a new direction in organizational communication infrastructures, organizations can increase their progress toward meeting their missions. Many of these new tools require a new manner of thinking; vision and leadership are essential in leading the organization through this evolution of communication.Some of these new tools are available to be used internally, while others exist on public or semi-public networks.
This post seeks to identify and show how some of these new tools can be incorporated into organizations in order to facilitate greater communication and efficiency at meeting the organizational mission.Most importantly, the creation of a new infrastructure requires support of the administration.Gaining the support of the management is the ‘Holy Grail’ of instituting change and requires exceptional leadership.This leadership will incorporate solutions to problems stated and build on the historical organizational structure.I seek to convince administrative readers (and others of course), that by building new efficient infrastructures for communication within the organizational structure, the organization will carry out the mission of the business more efficiently, creatively, and collaboratively.At the same time, building morale and creating a stronger, healthier organization.
In present day, we are literally flooded with information; instituting these kinds of communication enhancements will help filter and refine information in the organization, thereby taking it one step closer to knowledge.The ability to make information available via a message board, blog, or other form of interactive communication will facilitate commentary by people including experts in any given field who may never have contributed to the organization before.There are some that are shy; other individuals like to express themselves via writing, while others, perhaps socially inept, have much to contribute.Accessing, documenting, and instituting the information from these people can provide a rich resource of new and gainful knowledge valuable to the organization.
I am using the word efficient here to signify communication that can take advantage of all the members of an organization in a manner which enhances and facilitates the organizational mission.In the 21st century, it has already been shown that when communication channels are opened to members of an organization under the correct conditions, these formerly non-participating members can contribute by thinking and offering solutions and improvements to organizational processes.
By infrastructure, I mean creating the conditions for a free flow of communication.The existent channels of communication and the rates and directions of communication are what I am describing.Does the communication only flow from top down, or does it also run in the opposite direction?One of my axioms is that information must flow both ways in order for maximum organizational efficiency.In some senses this may seem threatening to some administrative readers.Admittedly, it is relinquishing a certain amount of control.However, the benefits of creating this infrastructure in the organization will outweigh this loss of control, and will free up time for other projects.
A strong example one can ponder is the analogy of old so-called Web 1.0 websites and the new 2.0 social sites.The 1.0 sites relied strictly on the website producer to generate content for the site.The new social aspect of sites allows interaction and contributions by all users, freeing the producer to pursue other creative avenues.This is an example of the kind of efficiency that can happen when social technology is executed correctly in an organization.Incidentally, the content is ALWAYS much richer and interesting when others are contributing.
There is nothing wrong with maintaining ListServs, but there is something wrong with maintaining them as your only official avenue of organizational communication.Lists are generally NOT interactive (enough); information gets buried in the mass of responses, and are easy to forget.It is really difficult to carry on a good discussion of an issue via email—for a variety of issues, including lack of etiquette and time, filtration, emails get buried—it does not take place in real time, etc...
These new avenues of communication—knowledge networks, if you will--can enhance knowledge management.This is a knowledge management issue/concept.In knowledge management, one goal is to understand who knows what and how to help them use this knowledge in accomplishing organizational missions.These new social tools may build upon and expand traditional KM methods beyond our wildest dreams.Again, this requires skill in administration—the skills of networking, making connections (between people, ideas, and concepts).
Some new tools follow:
Podcasting
Organizations can maintain audio archive of presentations, trainings, etc…these can then be made available to Staff for DL so they can listen while working or commuting.This kind of media archiving can serve as documentation as well as archives of the organization’s progress and work.It can then be accessed by supporters, or potential supporters of an organization, increasing the effectiveness of organizational networking within and without the organization.
Universities such as Berkeley, Oxford, and MIT are making lectures, notes, and documents available to the general public to facilitate the expansion of information channels and knowledge creation.The ability to make available information immediately accessible is incredible.I heard of these free pod casts via Twitter, RSS, and email.Again, they are creating new information networks, increasing dissemination and also diffusion of information which facilitates the establishment of new knowledge.
Message Boards, Chatting and Wikis
When I say infrastructure I am talking about using older methods such as email, lists, etc.--and newer models like dynamic message boards, chat, Wikis--using content management systems so users could begin to tell the story of the organization through their own experiences.This empowers staff and gives them a voice.This voice can comment and instruct management and others via these new methods of communication and interaction.
These tools also make the organization more transparent as employees have greater access to the knowledge base of the organization.This increased transparency will allow stronger procedures, reasoned decisions, and a living knowledge base that increases sometimes daily.Keeping things out in the open and making information about projects, advances, and organizational news will help prevent workflow redundancy and will promote networking between individuals with the same areas of interest.
Social Sensemaking
In their article, People Sensemaking with Social Networking Sites, Joan Morris DiMicco andDavid R. Millen show how an employee can glean information from IBM’s social networking site, Beehive.This site incorporates profiles of users.Another user can scan these profiles looking for people with similar interests who may want to collaborate, or just to enhance the knowledge management database of the user.
[The] premise of this workshop position paper is that social networking websites are used today for people sensemaking, both as the information source and as the tool for interpreting and synthesizing information on individuals.People sensemaking, the process a person goes through to gain a general understanding, or gist, of who someone is. For example, by understanding what someone’s role is within an organization, what they are working on, how approachable they are, and how knowledgeable they are on different topics, you can create a mental model of this person that informs how or when you will communicate or interact with that person (DiMicco, Millen, 2008).
Social Networking sites
As noted by Terrence K. Huwe in his article in Computers in Libraries UC,
Berkeley’s bspace is highly effective and used by faculty and students.When asked how much email they receive via bSpace, 40% of respondents said that every time they made a post, they received mail in response. When asked how often they used bSpace to prepare
for finals, 34% replied, "a few times a week"--even more impressive, 24% said several times per day--and that was in bSpace's first year of service (Huwe, 2008).
Facebook:This tool is being used by many organizations, including the Obama2008 campaign as a way to let people, both within and without their organization, know what is going on.Serena Software Inc. is an organization that uses Facebook as their primary social networking tool.
So as not to appear to be Big Brother, Serena does not track individual use of Facebook. But Waldo [the HR person] gets a tally of total usage, and she calculates that employees use the site for an average of less than 10 minutes per week--not exactly a time drain (Roberts, 2008).
IBM is ahead of the game with their incorporation of Beehive into their organizational communication infrastructure.Their groundbreaking Center for Social Software puts them on the cutting edge of organizational communication.Their social visualization project, Many Eyes facilitates interaction, brainstorming, critical thinking and organizational communication.This is a quote from the Many Eyes website:“Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis.”IBM’s Visual Communication Lab puts it this way: “Visualization is traditionally viewed as an efficient way of transferring a large amount of information from a database into an individual's head. We believe that visualizations become even more powerful when multiple people access them for collaborative sensemaking.”
The Social Accessibility Project is a(n) (IBM) utility that enables volunteers to make Web pages accessible to the visually impaired. Using an innovative new system, it gathers information about accessibility problems directly from visually impaired users. To address these problems, The Social Accessibility Project provides a tool to members of the open community that allows them to externally modify Web pages, successfully making the pages accessible while leaving all original content untouched.Projects such as these seek to leverage collaborative processes to increase the speed of progress.This is exactly what all organizations seek to accomplish.
Many Eyes has incorporated message boards into their system that allow one to create visualizations of different subjects. This allows the creation of new information networks that didn’t exist before.Look at this visualization of a lesson plan by a member. Here the lesson plan has been changed into a sort of tag cloud of lesson plan words.This allows a visual learner to take advantage of this knowledge in a new, socially repackaged learning object.The other network that did not exist before was that of the Many Eyes project’s message board social visualization tool.
It is imperative that organizations incorporate, or facilitate the use of non-organizational social networks in their organization.Members will not wait for the organization to catch up—they will seek their own solutions via Facebook or other social platforms.
In our benchmark, we found that about 18 percent of enterprises were using blogs …and 23 percent had begun to deploy RSS as a way of managing information flows throughout the organization.These numbers are impressive for new technology, but they don't tell the whole story. When we dug deeper, we found adoption wasn't widespread throughout the organization; rather, in most cases individual workgroups were using these tools for both internal and external collaboration.In some cases, IT had little knowledge or control. Business units were taking it upon themselves to obtain the tools they needed to solve their communications and collaboration challenges, without waiting for IT to create a strategy (Lazar, 2007).
Irwin Lazar postulates some common obstacles to instituting Enterprise 2.0 in organizations (Lazar, 2007).
Fear
This can be fear of loss of control, fear of losing information to competitors, or fear of the new.Managers may be resistant to change, but also may be aware of workers’ resistance to change within their own departments. Tell people about the differences between the old 1.0 web concepts versus the 2.0 aspects which free up time for other investigations and pursuits.
Confusion
Just what is Web 2.0, social media, etc...?While some tools may be a good choice for some, others may not be.There is no cookie cutter approach to this and it takes talent, vision, communication, and leadership to be successful.The ability to see and relate one aspect to another in an organization will be an increasingly valuable skill.Hold a brownbag lunch, present at inservices, share your knowledge with the organization to educate.
Organizational Obstacles
The main organizational obstacle is resistance to change because of reliance on the old tried and true methods.These methods were sufficient in the days gone by, but today they just do not suffice.The amount of information today is staggering and organizations need tools to filter and make sense of this information.These tools can be presented as enhancements and many of them are fun to use and learn.Create a spirit of fun and learning in your organization.
Reliance on longtime vendors
In many cases IT departments are happy to maintain institutional communication networks just as they are.This requires little work, and can lead to reliance on longtime vendors.Again, this may have been adequate in the past, but today people need new tools that are not being offered by these same vendors. Educate people via videos on YouTube, and other forms of media.Show people the effective tools that are available at little or no cost, except labor.
The surge of information and the speed of change require organizations to develop new forms of communication infrastructures which allow collaboration, information relay, and criticisms.These infrastructures can be created using both internal and external tools to the organization.Again, there is no cookie cutter solution, but creating a team of technologically skilled people who are familiar with the organization can facilitate the implementation of social technologies to your organization.By introducing these technologies piecemeal, and in ways that make them fun, management and administration can go a long way toward implementing effective use of these new tools.Today we can leverage information via efficient communication in ways we never imagined.Please take a moment to consider how you might incorporate social technologies in your organization to accomplish your organizational mission.
References
(2008, April). What You Should Know About Using Web 2.0. HR Focus, 85 (4), 10-11.
DiMicco, J, & Millen, D (2008). People Sensemaking with Social Networking Sites. Position paper presented at the Sensemaking Workshop.
