YMCAs worldwide do cover a wide range of programmes, all of which certainly worth our full attention. Now why should we get engaged with Rio+20? There are hundreds of NGOs which are far more into the matter, why can’t we just leave it to them? Essentially Rio+20 will shape again the future of the young generation which we represent as YMCA. And again, leaders who grew up in the time of the cold war will take decisions that meet a world rapidly changing. As I stated in a former post, youth always have been experts for change, so they have to be at the table. During the conference there was an increasing acknowledgement that more youth participation was needed. Yet did any roundtable participant stand up and left his chair to a youth representative? Maybe I ask too much, but it seems that most elder leaders really enjoy and support youth action, but refrain when it comes to offer real participation on eyelevel. There are youth NGOs and NGOs with youth chapters specialized on sustainability topics getting ready for Rio+20, yet I think only if the large youth organisations such as YMCA and the Scout movement join in, our voices will be loud enough to be heard. The Rio+twenties have set up a great communication platform for coordinating our efforts. I also learned today that as the conference as such will last only 3 days, much of the decisions will in fact be fixed before in a process starting during the next months. So time to act is now.
The World Scout Bureau offered a workshop on “Volunteer Relations Management” today. As the YMCA and the Scouts have quite a lot in common, starting with our focus on young people, I expected to learn a lot. Well, I did. We talked - again - about giving real responsibility to young people so they can grow individually. We had the question, how one could identify the volunteers to be supported by trainings etc. and came up with the answer that Scouts and YMCA both aim to give every member the mentorship they need. However one important difference we discovered was that between what we called a bit clumsily “lifestyle-NGOs” which tend to immerse their members into a community that covers large parts of their lives and topic-focused NGOs. Volunteers are often active in more than just one initiative, but especially “lifestyle-NGOs” tend to absorb their volunteers entirely. This has negative consequences first for smaller NGOs, as volunteers are forced to decide. And the longterm consequences for NGOs such as the YMCA can be that people get worn out and fed up in the long run, resulting in a loss of an engaged volunteer not only for the YMCA, but for the whole NGO community. I think it is vital that we teach our future youth leaders that we should value volunteering in general, not only within the YMCA. If we are willing to “share” our volunteers, we will most likely be rewarded with great input of knowledge and ideas which will enrich our own work in manifold ways.
This morning’s youth breakfast session had some good input on the role of NGOs in relation to consumers, governments and private companies. Unfortunately I forgot the name of the presenter, it was this blond guy from sweden, maybe you can help me out in the comments ;-). The point he made was that while choices of consumers have the highest impact on sustainability (the goods we demand and consume), choices of companies come second (how these goods are produced) and governments come third. Yet looking at their degree of organization, the picture is upside down: Governments are highly organized, private companies less and consumers, well, often not at all. You can of course argue differently, but that was not the point here. The question was, if NGOs are there to fill in this blank spot and network consumers, how does this change the consumers’ relation with the government and private companies?
Now the following are more my own thoughts than a summary of the discussion, yet they are strongly inspired by the vivid session. NGOs and states share some important characteristics. We lend souvereignity to the state, getting in return a (hopefully) working community. When we lend our voice to an NGO, we do something very similar. We accept certain regimes in order to be part of a better community. Now the restrictions we accept in an NGO do not have the character of an enforceable law (admittedly sometimes they have - look at sport courts and exclusions from membership), yet still they add to the rules by which we live our live. Our geographical community, in the sense of national states, is only a part of what makes up our very individual mashup that form the community each one of us is living in. From now on let us consider NGOs as community layers. In each community layer, rules are set according the lowest common denominator neccessary to gain support by the majority of people organized in this particular layer, provided that the layer is organized according to democratic principles or at least that people are free to leave in case of dissent.
Now if we look at the problem of pro-sustainability regulation with this model in mind, it becomes kind of obvious that there are certain regimes that are next to impossible to be imposed upon a geographically constructed layer covering a highly disperse society, but could be more easily introduced on an ideologically structured layer such as an NGO. It strikes me that NGOs have grown in importance during the last decades in a way that actually puts them in a position enabling them to enforce themselves some of the transnational regulation they are asking for. I am not sure to which extend this would work, but I think we should concentrate on convincing people, not countries.
I must admit that I am not the kind of guy who is attracted by long panel sessions. In some respects, the organisation of the conference falls behind what is considered standard in large networking events today - be it open space methodology or intense and intelligent use of social media. Neverthelessthe conference also today offered many moments of inspiration.
I started off with the Youth Breakfast Sessions, which are pleasantly informal, with a lot of opportunities to talk and discover surprising connections. I enjoyed talking about the playful concepts of political education the German Model UN offers. Ah yes, free coffee and sandwiches came in as a nice extra. In the morning round table session the idea of a bottom-up economical revolution by transforming communities into Fair Trade Towns sounded promising. After all it is quite odd to tell policitians what to tell us to do so that we finally do it. If you know what I mean ;-).
What made me think a lot was the appeal to elderly people to be aware of their function as role model to the young generation by someone from the audience. Just in the very recent centuries the idea that the young always learn from the old has changed profoundly. Very few parents taught their children how to watch TV. Less even how to use the internet. The same might apply to sustainable living. The young are catching up faster to a rapidly changing world, so the elderly have to learn from the young. Elderly decision makers’ experience might be rendered obsolete, because it was gained in a totally different world. So the general openness for change among the young generation is indeed an asset, while historically this was seen as something dangerous and often supressed by the elder generation.
So what we basically need is a re-definition of the collaboration between generations. That’s where the inspiring talk by Nejeed Kassam comes into play. He argued for giving young volunteers real responsibility, emphasizing the role of menthorship. For YMCA people this may not be real news, as youth empowerment and leadership are in the prime focus of our work. Yet sometimes I think we should make young people aware of the responsibility they are given. I mean this in a very positive way, like “look what a huge responsibility you are already able to carry”. This is because in the light of all those shining international volunteer activities, I sometimes observe people feeling small in conversations when they say that they “only” work on community level. We should avoid in any case creating an implicit hierarchy of engagement. Nejeed as well wrote a book portraying 17 young leaders. Maybe this could be a source of inspiration for our leadership training as well.
In the light of all this, it appears odd that no young people were present in the round table sessions. They may not be experts in economics, politics or sciences yet, but they do have this longing for change deep inside of them.
Now that was a challenging day. Challenging because I kept constantly looking for that one answer we overlooked so far when trying to solve this puzzle of a sustainable future. The whole YMCA delegation - Betty, Katja, Eva, Jason and me - shares the feeling that we are talking the same things all over again for years. The goals appear clearly set, yet obviously so difficult to follow from the side of the governments. But probably there is nothing to be discovered. It just takes a lot more time to reach goals than to formulate them. That said, there’s a lot left to discuss.
Achim Steiner from UNEP made some noteworthy statements in his keynote during the opening ceremony. He argued for a technology-driven green economy, with the implicit promise that if technology changes, we do not have to change that much. He did not say so, but I conclude this from the example he gave: The lighting of the conference hall nowadays consumes only 10% of the energy it would have 10 years ago. As well he asked NGOs to become literate in economics, to argue their causes in a language understood in economy and politics.
Marian Markin, member of the European Parliament, argued to overcome the GDP as sole indicator for the well-being of a country. Among other things she suggested to make volunteerism measurable. I am not so sure about that. While I would always emphasize the enormous socio-economic impact of volunteer work, also a “holistic” economical approach bears certain risks. What is more valuable - a volunteer hour spent assisting a blind person or an hour helping 10 children with their homework? Not making an economic judgement but acting out of an inner motivation is typical for volunteer work. You do not calculate where your work would be most efficient, you go and act where you personally think it is needed the most. Thus talking economics cannot be the sole solution, we also need to teach the economy another, measurement-less perspective on society.
The other extreme I experienced in a workshop called “Designing the Transition to Sustainable Societies”. It was a highly interesting workshop with some insights on sustainability education work in connection with the ecovillage movement. Ecovillages however make a strong statement that you yourself have to change fundamentally (as opposed to the technology-driven approach to sustainability). It is a way of life which by and large does not appeal to the mainstream - which consequently was the dominant theme of the workshop discussion. I’d really love to have a session with both Achim Steiner and Martina Grosse Burlage from the Global Ecovillage Network. They share a common goal, but have chosen very different approaches. Maybe the way into the mainstream lies in a synthesis of both, maybe there cannot be any synthesis at all.
I arrived in Bonn late and took the subway to the Maritim Hotel, where I’ll join the 64th UN DPI NGO Conference tomorrow, together with a bunch of very nice YMCA people. Too many acronyms, I’ll try to translate: The United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) holds an annual conference, inviting all NGOs that are associated with the UN DPI. It is a kind of huge networking session, where UN people and NGOs will discuss on the grand theme of “Sustainable Societies - Responsive Citizens” in a lot of workshops. The outcome of the workshops will be compiled in a conference declaration, but I personally see these declarations more as a by-product. In fact, you can already read through a first version of it. The real impact will lie in all those contacts we make and those great ideas that we will catch up in the course of the conference.
The conference area of the hotel seems like a high-security area. Fences block sight on the building from the outside and there are sniffer dogs. We have to register for a “Conference Ground Pass” tomorrow - actually we had to give our eye colour, size and weight when we applied to the conference. Wonder how they’ll check the weight tomorrow …
I finished the day with a really nice chat with Jason from YMCA England on the hotel terrace. He is the only non-german member in our delegation and we already had a vivid discussion in comparative YMCA administration structure sciences. There’s already so much to learn, I hope we’ll still find time to talk with the other conference participants ;-)
For now, it’s way past midnight and I have to quit now, else I might fall asleep during Ban Ki-Moon’s video address tomorrow.
My head is humming with all those new concepts for marketing of journalistic content. Time to sort my thoughts a bit. When I considered the concept of flattr.com I realized that pressing the flattr-button conveys two messages.
- “I appreciate the work you have done and do gladly pay for it”
- “I see your potential and I want invest so that I can read more of your fine stuff”
If it’s just one of those messages or both depends on each user’s mindset. You can re-interprete any regular media consumption from a production-consumption cycle into a investment-production cycle. If you subscribe to a newspaper, you do so because you know the potential of the staff and the kind of content you can expect. You’re not buying content, but rather a content promise. This new perspective on journalism is the foundation of startups such as empha.sis and spot.us. What strikes me about this idea is that the idea of investing in potential instead of buying content seems to fit the vast imbalance between first-copy-costs and distribution costs in the digital age. Traditional media production is kind of a bet. You invest the first-copy-costs and then try to sell enough to make a good margin. The blockbuster movie business has taken this to extremes. Yet the higher the stakes, the less of a risk the investor will be ready to take, leading to endless sequels and literacy best-seller adoptions with built-in audiences.
Regarding journalism the investment-production cycle eliminates the risk of not covering your production costs and once for all the problem of illegal copies, as in strict application of the concept, copy and distribution costs are zero for the producer, so on an ideal market the price should approach zero (refer to Yoshai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks for more elaborate thoughts on that). At the same time, the chances to make a fortune with a best-selling book would be diminished, as I suppose investors will expect their investment to be used for content production and not to create a huge extra margin for the producer. This would favour small companies and independent authors who are not able to compensate losses as well as large media enterprises.
There are downsides to the concept too, which are partly related to thinking in terms of pre-digital media economy and some are related to the way markets work in general. First what about freeriders? If you can get any content for free, why should exactly you be the one who invests instead on relying on other people to pay? I think the challenge here is to create a more direct feedback about a user’s acticities on the market. This intention resembles the anti-piracy-spots on DVDs and in Cinemas, yet investing in people has more potential to create social responsibility than buying products from big media companies. And we’ll probably have to accept that there always will be a certain percentage of freeriders, yet even they would play a positive role on the market: By sharing content they help to find the maximum audience for every content, enhancing the numbers of future investors. Another concern might be that only popular content proposals attract investors. In a long tail economy such as the internet I do not see this as a problem. Highly specific or innovative content will find its initial investors, who might be even willing to put in a disproportionate higher amount of money. Gradually each topic will grow to the size of its maximum audience. Finally, there is a downside that you cannot be a journalist (or creative producer of any kind) without being an entrepreneur, performing a good portion of self-marketing. It could be that this special mixture of skills has a negative impact on the publicistic quality. As well it can be doubted that a majority of users has an interest (and the time) to permanently act as a content investor. This might foster the rise of new kinds of intermediaries, which are suited to the new rules of the content market.
What is so exciting about this is the shift from a transaction of immaterial goods towards human relationships, putting people in the focus, not the product. So when I push the flattr-button I do invest into the future of content and I hope from now on you do, too.
The importance of the attention economy for media markets cannot be denied, whether you follow Goldhaber, Franck or the more down-to-earth Beck & Davenport. While it can be debated whether attention could actually be regarded as a currency, a media business without a good attention strategy is bound to fail. Now what I keep missing in business modeling is a decent method to analyse and describe the attention model of a media product or service. What I want is to …
- describe the different qualities of attention that matter to the services
- depict the aggregation of attention
- analyse the transformation of attention qualities
- visualize all that on the time axis and across different media channels
- be able to judge whether the chosen attention model covers all qualities of attention applicable to the service
I started off with taking Beck & Davenports attention quality pairs and found a visualization that can be used to either compare the attention development over time or across channels. Two simple examples illustrate the application of what I will call attention fields for the time being. The first example shows an attention development over time for the American Idol show (or Deutschland sucht den Superstar, as it is called here).
American Idol
The American Idol attention field visualizes the development of attention quality over time, describing the three phases of the show, first round, recall and finals. I address the first season here, as a growing fan base will have an effect on attention quality beyond the scope of a single season.
The first round is all about catching attention of the widest audience possible. It uses both attractive and aversive attention, so you can attract people interested in seeing talented singers as well as those who would rather laugh at fools. Attention is voluntary (e.g. out of curiosity) and front-of-mind, but not internalized as a steady back-of-mind topic. Captive attention might play a minor role as well, given that large ad campaigns suggest the show was something people would be talking about. This could urge people to watch the show in an act of social compliance.
The recall increases the overall musical quality (I personally question the musical quality of the show at all, but this is not about me), offering less candidates to make fun of and more for identification. So this phase is about turning aversive into attractive attention. Picking and supporting a favourite strengthens back-of-mind attention, leading to people watching the show regularly and talking about it to friends. The latter also increases captive attention, as other people notice they need to catch up to be able to follow the watercooler conversations.
The finals are about turning captive attention into voluntary attention, i.e. having more people identify with their favourite and the now (hopefully) high musical quality of the show. Curiously enough, attractive attention for favourites is strengthened by aversive attention driven by certain jury members. Back-of-mind attention increases further until we see a nice mushroom shape in the attention field. For now it appears to me as if the mushroom is the ideal shape as the result of any attention transformation process.
ZDF Log In
Log In is a talk show with a strong transmedial concept. Between the airing times of the show new themes and opinions are collected on the web. There is a continuous discourse going on, web and TV working complementary to keep it alive.
There are actually at least three parts to consider in a complete analysis: The asynchronous web communication, the TV show and the synchronous web communication during the TV show. For the sake of simplicity I just split the analysis in two parts, web and TV. Attention fields can help to analyse cross medial services and products regarding the distribution and transformation of attention quality between channels. As a working thesis I assume that optimizing your attention model means covering the whole attention field with a combination of multiple media channels.
For the web part I see the task to keep alive back-of-mind attention, having people checking habitually if some interesting topic popped up or if anyone replied to a topic they have raised. I put an emphasis on aversive attention, not because I expect particularly disgusting discussions, but I argue that the urge to participate in a discussion is triggered mostly by disagreement. Further, in the case of Log In I see a voluntary, intrinsic motivation to participate.
The TV show offers attractive attention by interesting guests, well-produced content and the overall dramaturgy of a show as such. It demands front-of-mind attention to follow the on air discussion. And ideally it will profit from captive attention from the web contributors. They will want to see what happened to their online input and how the discussion will turn out, whether their viewpoint is reflected. So we have a transformation from voluntary attention on the net to captive attention on TV.
Further development of the attention field method
I feel that attention fields can bring us a long way towards business modeling in an attention economy. Already in the simple form suggested here I see a huge potential for analysing and improving cross media attention models. Yet certain points should be improved:
- Introduce measurable quantities for the six qualities of attention
- Visualize the dynamics of attention transformation
- Verify the applicability of Beck & Davenport’s attention qualities
Meanwhile, why don’t you try it yourself and tell me what you think? Just download the template and start analysing.
People start complaining about Twitter hiding all data interfaces behind OAuth authentication, abandoning open standards such as RSS. They are right. This probably has to be seen as a strategic move towards their new business model, which is selling “garden hose” and “fire hose” access for data mining their tweet archive. While I can see a need for some kind of protection against everybody sucking the live out of twitter’s servers doing extensive data mining, I guess they are really going over the top here. Twitter argues that rss is not a feature for the average user and is thus skipped for simplicity’s sake. That’s right, RSS is geeky, as is subscribing to RSS feeds. But those geeky RSS subscribers are the same people that established this incredible Twitter ecosystem, without which Twitter would probably already be buried next to Jaiku on the cementary of internet buzz. RSS appeals to developers because of its incredible versatility in syndication and mashup. Maybe Twitter has grown up and does not need us geeky nannies anymore. But already now Twitter is keeps innovations in its ecosystem on a daily basis. I can name quite a few ideas my students came up with and could not realize due to Twitter’s heavy restrictions on accessing archived tweets.
Now, Twitter, whether you want to shut out the geeks in favour of the Nielsen’s of the world is up to you. Just try to remember who is writing those tweets that feed you.
