Telling the Workforce Story:  New Tools for High Impact Engagement

Workforce Innovations * New Orleans, LA * 2008

A New Age of Communication and Engagement

What is important about stories and what do we mean by it?

• Leveraging resources: We have big complex problems and a nickel.  This will not help us achieve our goals. What do we do with a nickel?  We use it to leverage 95 cents from our partners.  We need to make the case.  Prove the needs.  How destitute and desperate we are so that we leverage the 95 cents with the 5 cents.  But is this motivating?  Data is not motivating.  We need to convince people we actually care.  We do this by telling a story.  Storytelling is powerful to use a nickel to get something different done with 95 cents.
• Starfish and spider:  spider is a network. When you are trying to be leader, you want to extend, and invest.  You are at the center trying to convince people of what is important.  Alternate model is the starfish.  You make the other leaders, using your resources.  Incent, make them curious, make them interested.  In spider, if center goes away, initiative goes away.  With the starfish, if one leg goes away, the others still perfor, and another leg could grow.  You engage people as partners to find their own solutions.  Story telling is powerful here.  You are not just telling one story, but giving them tools to tell their stories, creating a movement.

Graduate Philadelphia:  Want to get people who have touched college in someway to go back to school.  A massive effort to get people back into school.  Director said, "We won't be successful when we see more people coming into school, but when neighbors help neighbors to come back to school without our help."

Data is necessary but not sufficient.  Graphs, charts, text, are valuable but not sufficient.  We know a lot.  Story is about giving context and meaning to the data.  We have it in our heads, but don't seem to use it.  We are all dressed up with our data, but nothing to do with it.  Need to get better at compelling communication.  We need to touch hearts, but we don't communicate it.

Chaos: when you tell stories, you need to be able to accept chaos.  You engage people, but you cannot control them.  It's ok to disagree, to have a bad response on a blog.  It's about fun.  If you are communicating and not having fun, your audience will not either.

Handouts

• Why storytelling is important
• Story telling in organizations (John Sealy Brown)

Tools for engagement and storytelling

Blogs

Bath Kanter blogs about how nonprofits use social media (beth.typepad.com).  You can use any idea from her site (creative licensing).  She uses "snippets" to use material from other sites.  You can use a widget--or snippet--to help people donate to charities or embed other tools in your site.  She uses a "tag cloud." It shows the topics, and the biggest words are the ones that people use most.  What happens with firewalls and who can use what?  Organizational versus personal lilfe on the blog.  There is a lot of fear to use social media in the office.  Rules seem to make people feel better.  But the policy is vague.  It goes on, but says "Use common sense and don't do stupid stuff."

Slideshare--beth has taken the html snippet from her blog and posted the slides from slideshare there. 

Flikr requires a "Yahoo" account.  You can borrow people's pictures in your presentation.  Use photoshare sites so that, as you get started in blogging or elsehwere, a lot of text is still a lot of text.  Upload the picture, you get the HTML snippet, cut and paste it into your blog, and there you go.   

Don't be afraid to start a blog.  You can't mess anything up, and if you do, you can delete it.

Video for the web

YouTube does not require you to create video to get involved.  You can view and comment.  Visit other people who are in workforce world or economic video.  Let people know that you appreciate what they are doing, and may be they will visit you.

For documentation in Mid MI WIRED (Gen 1), we were embedded.  We interviewed partners, people on the street.  We pay $25k and get a professional video we use at a dinner.  If you do this, make sure you get rights to the video (make sure who you hire gets this to you).  You can then use this to create your YouTube video.  Build a library.  Then you can weave stories together for multiple pictures.

The Flip costs $100 and takes one hour of video.  You can upload directly to the web and even edit on a slide.  If you want a conference style video, don't want a flip.  But if you want to spruce up a newsletter, blog, or company website and just want to show a human face.  It's cheap and easy.  It's the future.  Invest. 

Wikis

See the video.  E-mail is not good at coordinating and organizing video.  Wikis let everyone edit, save, link and share.

www.pbwiki.com

www.paintshare.com

www.wikispaces.com

Wayne X has a great blog on Web 2.0.

We use wikis to brainstorm together and share ideas.

We stick ideas up on the office wiki if we are not on site.

We can make them private for our office.

Or we can make them public

Open Source Code & Asset Map Meets Web 2.0

CSW used Drupal, and open source code, to create a unique web-based tool more cheaply and effectively. You can use existing tools or, if needed, create unique tools in ways you might

What people want to know 

 How do I get people to know about my wiki if I don't already know them?

   Wiki's are for communities that exist already.  You can use YouTube and MySpace and LinkedIn to "fish" for people who are online? 

How do I find people who are not online? 

   Probably not with online tools.  Use reallife networks, print materials, and word of mouth to spread the word.  Press release.

Good to Great for the Social Sector (Jim Collins).  Sharing, authenticy--not about marketing and copy.   

Which state has the best policies?  Some offices (Deleware) can't use MySpace but can use FaceBook.  Some of this is arbitrary, but we can work around some things.  Can use wikis.

What's the difference between Facebook and MySpace.

Facebook has to have an actual person who has created it.  You cannot find people unless you know their name.  And the look is all the same.  Far more controlled.

MySpace allows total creativity. Anyone can see your page unless you mark it private.  Look is custom and can leave unique comments.

What is Drupal? 

OpenSource content management system that is put together using modules.  Often, custom work is proprietary, but in Drupal, everyone owns it and it's all free.  You pay for the expertise. 

Blogs

Check assignments, course calendar, and teacher office hours here.

Outside Resources

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Slideshare

Photobucket

YouTube  Type in "CO4SkilledWork" to see video documentaries on an array of transformation stories. 

Flip Video (a handheld video camera that allows you to edit footage on the device itself)

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