Herding cats with social media
Herding Cats with Social Media
Bracket’s session at Media Camp London 4 during Social Media Week generated lots of discussion about the best methods and tools for helping groups of creatives to get things done. It looked at how social media could be used to support collaborative working between artists and designers etc that are used to working independently, usually have autonomy over their work, are characteristically busy, and highly skilled in generating ideas. The aim of the session was to develop solutions for how to channel that creativity into tangible outcomes and how social media can be used to support the process along the way.
The word ‘collaboration’ is often used freely without consideration for how complex it can actually be. Not only does it require a set of skills to do it effectively, but also a different mindset and culture to adapt to a new way of working. An ‘online project hub’ can be used to provide a central point to bring everyone together, but technology should actually come last after two other factors – people and process.
People
The set of skills and awareness that is needed by the individual before starting the project. Effective collaboration requires tolerance of other working styles, a willingness to share and a commitment to open and frequent communication with other team members.
Process
The part that should happen with the team in place, to plan how the collaborative project might work. Individuals need to identify what they are bringing and hope to get out, the team needs to look at the overall aims of the project and roles should be allocated according to key skills and personalities to ensure a good spread of what the project requires (Belbin is a good tool for profiling this). Time must also be allocated to planning, scheduling and organisation, which many online tools can help with.
Technology
Time or cost spent developing an online tool doesn’t guarantee that people will use it. It is often difficult to get people away from using e-mail to communicate in projects, because on a basic level, it works! But social media can add much value by keeping ideas in one place (particularly when team members tend to go off in different creative directions), making this easily searchable, providing a record of what has already been discussed/agreed and therefore reducing duplication of work and effort.
So the perfect online tool, for groups of creatives short on time is something that requires little or no training, is intuitive and is flexible to the initial needs of the type of project and as it develops. And a big challenge throughout the project is maintaining focus without killing creativity.
February 06 2010 05:54 pm | Creativity and Online tools and Project management and Teams and Thoughts
