silbatron

Hamburg models Christmas off a children's fairy tale, but IRL (last wk)

Sri Lanka photos. Mostly elephants.

I was expecting something like South India -- a place I've never visited but imagine to be hot, crowded, and poor from all that I've heard and seen. 

Sri Lanka was nothing like that. Instead it was green and lush, rapidly developing (no obvious signs of extreme poverty), and full of friendly people working to rebuild a country stunted by and still recovering from 26 years of civil war that only just ended in 2009. 

I was lucky enough to visit the island in September at the invitation of the US State Department / US Embassy in Colombo to help lead a digital activism training for students across South Asia (see WICPER Training for Trusteeship). My colleague Susannah Vila posted some of her thoughts on the experience here on HuffPo. 

We didn't have time to see much while there, but we did cover many hours of rough roads from rainforest-like mountain regions (Kandy, Kigale) to capitol city (Colombo) to -- briefly en route to airport -- tropical beach. I have many more miles of Sri Lankan beach to explore in my career. The elephant photos below are from the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, which was more like a park/refuge but seems to have started as an orphanage.

By the way, the US Embassy in Sri Lanka has an impressively active social media presence; here they are on twitter and facebook.

They literally made my breakfast today (thx folks; grt work)

A new warrior up close: my visit to the Rainbow Warrior III [pics]

I'm here in Amsterdam for a whole mess of meetings with folks across the global organization at Greenpeace and the timing happens to coincide with the launch of GP's latest, um, campaign tool -- the Rainbow Warrior III. 

Here are some quick pics I took from the tour that Martin Prieto (GP Argentina) and I took with one of the new deckhands, Pablo. He was good enough to show us his quarters, not to mention the helipad (!), radio room (awesome gadgets), campaign room, engine room, and much more

It's bigger than I expected -- barely fits under the veranzano bridge apparently. But it also seems sturdy. Which is good because previous GP ships have had to withstand everything from bombings to pirate attacks. Hopefully this crew faces none of that.

For some great behind the scenes (reality tv?) stories of the new hands on deck and this maiden voyage, check out the videos my colleague Brian Fitzgerald has been producing by following the RWIII's twitter, or here is the full series and background, pretty cool:

https://www.facebook.com/newhandsondeck?sk=app_162569423837389

The visit:

Just another Amsterdam sunrise

Time capsule thoughts on rapidly changing role of NGOs in change-making; on successful "engagement" [vid]

What am I most inspired by these days? That's the question the staff of Hollyhock threw my way while we enjoyed their edenic retreat center on Cortes Island -- once again the setting for our annual Web of Change conference in September.

Here's my answer, which feels particularly bound to this moment in time, immediately on the heels of the Arab Spring and on the cusp of the Occupy movement going to scale. 

And Jason Mogus (Communicopia), our founder, had some really smart things to say about opportunities for new thinking and radical digital approaches in the face of major recent setbacks:

Finally, the real prize. Charles Tsai wisely asked several participants and colleagues to give us a sense of what successful supporter engagement meant to them, and he captures some great quotes and thoughts from some brilliant minds in this video for the Knight Foundation:

Cliche but perfect fall weekend

Larriland Farms, Maryland

Why do bad things happen to good digital people?

It's hard to believe now, but when I first tumbled into consulting in 2004, most of the conversations we had with ED's and CEOs started with the reasons WHY they should consider the power and potential of the internet in/on their work.

Today digital is a given for nearly every organization -- from new upstarts to 40-year old institutions like the one I now work with. Instead of asking why digital, we're now talking about WHERE the digital function should sit wtihin an organization. Comms? Fundraising? Operations? Campaigns? Somewhere else? It's a tough question -- because digital ends up touching almost every aspect of an organization's work and identity and the idea of restrcuturing one's organization is almost as appealing as a root canal. 

In my last few years of advising organizations, I often felt as if we were doing more management consulting than digital campaign consutling. It may be a dull topic for those who prefer tools and tactics to organizational politics and beurocracy, but the internal dynamics and structure are what enable or disable digital staff from functioning and succeeding. And these internal structures sure as hell matter to any staffers banging their heads against the wall watching colleagues at competing orgs speed ahead with innovative supporter engagment work or online campaigns. 

So after working with dozens of amazing clients over the years at EchoDitto, the digital consultancy I co-founded, I compared notes with my colleagues Jason Mogus and Christopher Roy at Communicopia. 

We summarize in this pair of articles for Stanford Social Innovation Review the ways in which we're seeing digital teams / the digital role running into trouble within orgs and, more importantly, some models for overcoming those challenges:

Part I: The Five Dysfunctions of a Digital Team

Part II: Four Models for Managing Digital at Your Organization

Hope you find something useful in here and that it starts a productive conversation wherever you work. Let us know if that's the case or if you have other models to add here. 

Just our prez and me, hangin out reppin our country in rural Kandy, Sri Lanka