Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roxanne Persaud on May 15, 2010 at 11:36

Thanks, Paul, for starting this conversation. The subject of etiquette and netiquette came up at the London RSAde meeting and it's one I am very keen to address in practical ways. I think it's very important for building confidence for Fellows to get stuck in online,. So far in the LinkedIn discussion there are fairly unsurprising views about good manners and standards of etiquette. I think the hard part will be about agreeing what sanctions (if any) can be applied if Fellows misbehave online.

It does strike me that RSA events are a great opportunity to join up the virtual and 'real-life' aspects of Fellowship. The existing good practice promoting event hashtags, live streaming and digital archives provides a sound base for amplifying and extending the reach of RSA events. It's also a great way for Fellows to get more involved in the events programme, expand interest in Fellowship and extend our own networks. It's certainly worked for me through twitter. Interested participants have appreciated 'meeting' Fellows in real time while they're commenting on events.

So in the spirit of active participation I'm drafting a Fellows guide to tweeting events which I hope the events team will want to adopt and adapt. I'm meeting Kirsti next week to explore how we might make it happen. The focus will be on practicalities rather than policy, though of course mindfulness of appropriate behaviour will be included. I'll post up a draft afterwards on this thread. Hopefully it can act as a companion 'how-to' behave as a Fellow online which gives examples of how we adhere to any set of principles. It's a small experiment for improving RSAde and may even support the 'how-to' guide anticipated for the new Charter.

In terms of the 'how' and 'why' of the RSA sanctioning any specific group/platform or technology as a means for Fellows to engage, I think guidelines and high-profile champions/adherents are probably the best approach to twitter - I'm really not sure that there are any other ways of 'controlling' that channel (let alone the various others such as LinkedIn and Facebook - where there are at least 3 groups! )

Permalink Reply by Tessy Britton on May 15, 2010 at 14:03

Thanks for posting on this Paul. Quite a complex subject - some of which relates to one's view of 'networking'.... and most importantly creating the online and offline environment that we all want to spend time in. So your question of 'selling' is an important one. What constitutes selling? It is important that we know what everyone does, and have a link to websites - what behaviours would you think overstep?

The description of networking that I like the most in recent years is from Russell Davies. He describes blogging as ‘networking for shy people’, but ‘not in the horrible commercial sense of networking – serial small talk in the hope of opportunity – but the sort of networking that a village has, or a workplace, or a hobbyist club; like-minded people who help each other out, point each other at new like-minded people and generally see that what’s good for the network is probably good for them.”

Very much in line with this view has been Andy Gibson's facilitation of a recent London Network's event when people attending were asked 'what help they needed' and everyone was invited to offer assistance where they could. It seems this sort of approach is helping to create a culture of generosity rather than 'selling' and much more in line with the type of networking that Russell describes above?

Permalink Reply by Andy Gibson on May 15, 2010 at 14:17

Indeed! I always hated networking, it seemed positively immoral, until I actually got interested in my work and started meeting genuinely interesting people. These days I do loads of 'networking', but all I really do is swap ideas, explain my thoughts, get feedback, help people do interesting things, and find people with common interests and values. Perhaps that's why I'm so scattergun in my approach: I have no idea where the commercial value comes from, and I don't care, I just like meeting amazing people and seeing what comes out of it.

Oh, and on Paul's point about flagrantly promoting products or companies, that's fine by me - as long as they aren't boring!

Permalink Reply by Roxanne Persaud on May 15, 2010 at 15:29

Appropriate 'promotion' of self or company is in the eye of the beholder and will be different on the different online spaces used by RSA (nings, LinkedIn, Facebook etc). When signing up to the various groups I did note that no 'community rules' are set up... quite unusual these days, and refreshing. It's good when they form organically (and are applied humanely)... seems like the time is nigh. And as David Wilcox has said elsewhere, we need to consider how the role of 'community manager' is taken up and supported.

Permalink Reply by Jemima Gibbons on May 20, 2010 at 15:31

@Roxanne - that's brilliant you're putting together a "How to" guide re tweeting events - really look forward to reading it!

With regard to netiquette, I agree that we can't start setting hard and fast "rules", but I think if we could publish some friendly "guidelines" somewhere, that might be useful.