A CV Masterclass

Yesterday was the annual Staffordshire University CV competition. This was my third year as a judge, and for the first year, my favourite entry won. A beautifully crafted, superbly written and cleverly executed entry by graphic designer Mike Emerson was the well deserved winner. Other entries of note can be seen in the photo below. It's a tough climate out there, so graduates need to work hard to stand out from the crowd. This lot will certainly be able to do just that!

Why do people create online communities?

There are many reasons and here are just a few;

• 
  Anonymity - not always a given but in many cases online communities offer their members opportunity to have a profile that they create themselves with no validation - hence the opportunity to create fictitious - and therefore anonymous - identities. So why is this important? - It helps people to express themselves in ways and on topics that otherwise they may feel uncomfortable with due to social 'normalisation'. (A bit more on this topic sometime later perhaps!)
• 
  Passion - at the heart of a community is a topic - a topic of interest to all the members - and given that for many online communities members give their personal time it's crucial to allow them to be passionate through forums, discussions, polling opinions etc
• 
  Reach - linked with passion is reach - for many topics there may not be huge numbers of fans on the same bus, train, road you live on etc - the physical boundaries just don't work for all communities and the web, extranet or intranet open them up
• 
  Sharing - members like to talk - to each other - they share knowledge, skills, understanding at a rate we can't imagine - more people knew about Michael Jackson's death through Twitter (a social network of 'short message' people!) than the BBC could reach - in fact the BBC were over an hour later than the response of Twitter people - BBC is old news ! - that's not good news for the Beeb
• 
  Yearning - an interesting phrase - and one possibly covered above in passion and sharing - but just to be clear - members of an online community like not only to contribute - they like to know that they are being heard - and perhaps even more importantly - being responded to! Large companies have cottoned on to this so Giant.Co.com have started establishing 'communities - of suppliers, buyers, stakeholders etc in order to influence development, innovation and communication - and no doubt a few other things this brief blog may have passed over.

This is definitely not a comprehensive list - just a few pointers to think about if and when 'your' group start to consider an online prescence and to think about the nature of members being 'online' rather than - just down the road!



So .. the big question is what does all this mean for me?, you? and for all of us engaging in Community Development - answers on a postcard to d2 or Yes at graham.mallinson@d2digital.co.uk or amanda.mcdonald@yesagency.co.uk

Graham Mallinson September 2009

Will the relationship between education and employment ever work?

I recently attended an employer engagement session on the subject of work-related learning. The group was made up of a selection of interested parties from apprenticeship scheme managers through to education liaison officers. The aim of the session was to encourage employers to contribute to the planning and delivery of activities and learning programmes for young people in schools and colleges; intervention which has proven to be valuable in motivating young people and preparing them for the opportunities and challenges of adult life.

What struck me about the attendees was that they were all passionate advocates for greater integration between businesses and education. Many of them in fact, were involved in mentoring, governing or committee roles in their personal lives. Whilst this display of commitment was impressive, it only served to highlight the lack of involvement from employers without a personal passion for the topic. Many businesses are quite rightly focused on the business of, quite simply, running their business, and interventions from education can appear at best time-consuming and at worst tiresome.

It occurred to me that representatives in education need to be smarter in their approaches to business. Rather than asking businesses for work experience for their students, perhaps they could do some research in advance and match the skill-set of a particular young person to the needs of the business e.g. “We have a really talented young person on the Mac, she has a real creative flair and may well be useful to you in the advertising work you do for our local FE College, she’s available for work experience in June if you’re interested?” Alternatively, schools could position themselves as a lean, keen resource to input into new briefs – and education representatives can proactively promote their classes based on projects that they have read about in the business press or online. This changes the focus completely. Education can bring talented new blood and fresh ideas to employers, and employers can bring work-related experience and advice to young people. It’s a win-win situation that could make collaboration more appealling to both parties.

Gangs of Great Britain

The news seems to be more full than ever before about gang culture, with more and more tragic news of young people being killed or seriously injured by gang members.

Here, I believe, is evidence of the impact of a ‘community’ on behaviour. Gangs create a community for young people whose own communities may not offer them the security of membership they need. Within a gang, all the principles of a community are in place – membership, shared values, shared goals, cohesion and a leadership hierarchy.

With this pull, can we really tackle gangs using enforcement alone? Whilst there is no simple answer, there must be some merit in trying to ‘dismember’ this kind of community, and in doing so, offer its members the opportunity to gain the same sense of value elsewhere.

What do you think? Have you tried any strategies that have started to have an effect in your community?

Amanda McDonald

Is community marketing just another name for social marketing?

At the heart of community marketing is understanding. What makes the community tick. What its core purpose is. What binds it together. How the community sees itself. What change it does or doesn’t want. Who or what influences it, and so on.

In the past communities have grown around a natural or man-made feature such as a river crossing, an estuary or road junction. The need to survive and prosper bound them together and communication was by word of mouth.

Such geographical boundaries continued to provide one definition of a community – even as townships grew and fractured into smaller ‘communities’.

Faith, work, race, nationality or ethnicity have also provided labels to identify a group that have been viewed in some way as a community. For example during a recent meeting the term ‘the Polish community’ was used to describe a group that the speaker felt had specific needs in terms of both access to support – and communication issues. It is worth noting that the labels may not always be helpful and the group perceived as community may not share that view. That is – they may not see themselves as a community even if a third party does.

Having started with seeking some clarity about a particular community, how we reach and engage that group becomes the explicit purpose of community marketing. Word of mouth, newsletters, an array of traditional marketing tools and techniques have been used in the past. Today’s communication channels have broadened along with changes in technology and have opened up new possibilities for supporting groups that at one time might not even have been considered a ‘community’. For example, drug users may find themselves talking to each other about the issues they face in accessing appropriate support services within a particular geographic area. They may do this through an online forum. They may or may not see themselves as a community as such but they have started to organize themselves and communicate between themselves very much as an established community would do.

The diverse groups that can be termed communities have a different type of requirement in terms of ‘marketing’. Social marketing has become something of a buzzword in an attempt to formulate a process for changing behaviours targeted at specific groups. Psychologists have proffered differing thoughts about tackling behaviour over the years and social marketing has grown up around some of the advocated theories. Some organisations have been practicing what has since become termed ‘social marketing’ for many years.

The question I pose myself and others is this. “Is social marketing a singular solution for reaching, engaging and driving behavioural change amongst any perceived community group”? 

Graham Mallinson

Consulting people on issues that affect them

I read in Inside Housing recently that councils will be getting even more funding to consult with their communities. The government is keen to see under-represented groups (particularly those within social housing) have a say in what happens in their communities.

The £5 million ‘planning empowerment’ fund will ensure that decision making becomes more consultative throughout. We strongly believe that this is the right approach to take. We know from our own experience, that if you consult people on issues that affect them, they are more likely to offer their support in the long-term.

Amanda McDonald

Whatever happened to Coronation Street?

We recently undertook some research into how ‘so called’ deprived communities operate. We were keen to understand what had happened to the communities of the 1950’s where people left their doors open and children played safely in the streets.

Communities where people invited their neighbours to watch television in their homes if they didn’t own their own TV set and the bulk of the weekly shop took place at the corner shop.

Nowadays, we barely know our neighbours, lock our doors and have our children barely out of our sight. Our shopping is undertaken in vast, faceless supermarkets and we would be hard pushed to recognise the cashier. So where is our community?

The answer, according to our research, is in Britain’s council estates. Only here is community live and well.

Amanda McDonald