Prototyping an online chat for #SocialLabs, and failing fast
Back in January, I was delighted to join the Social Labs team to help get the word out about their work, and find out if people were keen to morph from a network of people interested in the concept of social labs, into a thriving community of practitioners, funders and supporters.
One of the first things I did was bring in more ways for people to have their say about what they thought we should be doing — I’ve always found it’s a great way to empower people and tune into what they see the greatest possibility is for this group. I was delighted to get some enthusiastic responses, and to hear a really strong call to connect the dots — to allow people from all over the world to meet, learn from one another, and discuss their burning questions.
Codesigning Solutions
It’s very easy for me to jump to a solution as I’ve been working in the communications and community building space for 10 years or so now, but my recent work with Lifehack taught me the value of including the diversity of voices and perspectives early on in the process. That said, I started leaning toward a twitter chat to begin with before I reined myself in.
So I set about doing some calls to interview a few different people, and sought some input from a variety of people who didn’t have a huge amount of time for a call. I heard really strongly that people wanted to connect on a human level — that instead of a light touch connection like a Twitter chat, people preferred to spend an hour or so with a smaller group of people to connect more deeply. They all suggested a video call.
The crowd had spoken. I changed my plans, and set about facilitating a call.
Holding Space
I decided that I’d set a time, name a platform, create a document so everyone was on the same page, and create a landing page to allow people to sign up. I think it only took me 2 hours in total to make all of that happen.
A small amount of promotion through the newsletter, a blog post and social channels, and we filled the 8 spaces (limited by the video call platform) overnight.
Failing Cheaply
If I’ve learnt anything in the social entrepreneurship space, it’s to create cheap and quick first prototypes, because they’ll probably fail when you come into first contact with people you’re building them for.
“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
This was no different.
Sure enough, as the call came around — I was set up and excited to greet people into the little group of people I’d managed to assemble — then only one person turned up.
Hmm.
Thankfully I’ve had the good luck of speaking occasionally with Hamish (my only other Social Labs buddy on the call) for the best part of a year. I suggested we chatted any way and just see where the call went.
Hamish was game, so we had an hour of digging into his burning questions, musings and thoughts about Labs. Instead of a facilitator, I could just be a peer, someone who was also on a similar journey of trying to understand more about Social Labs myself. It was a really energising talk!
Unexpected Insights
Sometimes when you’re prototyping something new, you don’t find quite what you’re expecting to find. That’s why it’s a prototype.
When you’re prototyping, you need to stay alive to the unexpected. Keep listening for the cognitive dissonance.
Hamish and I covered some really great ground, and we both really enjoyed that time. I even got the chance to get back to some sketchnoting:
It sounded like Hamish was pretty happy too, so there was still value in spending the time and energy on the prototype:
Retrospective Needed
Vital to any prototyping exercise, is to do a retrospective on what worked, what didn’t, and what we might do better or differently — or how we can take the learnings and apply them to something else.
My retrospective gave me a couple of pointers:
Better logistics and communication is essential.
I think the main failing here was actually the event platform I used, and the inability to help people see the event on their own time zone. I resolve to better next time!
A peer call was surprisingly great.
There was some huge value for both of us in having the time and space to talk about our current learnings and challenges. This could be a great format for Social Labs to facilitate going forward, but you’d need some form of existing relationship and shared understanding to make it most useful.
Try a twitter chat to see if we can herd cats.
Notably when you’re working with a diverse network of busy people spread across the world, coordinating them is a little difficult. We’re still committed to doing this, because connecting the dots in the Social Labs space is what we’re here to do. Alternatively maybe we just need to focus on a region to begin with — say Canada & North America, or Western Europe.
Creative Catharsis
Somehow writing these kinds of posts are a bit of catharsis for me — they make me realise that doing all the work to make something like this happen, and then ending up on a call with one other person isn’t actually a waste at all.
I’m really looking forward to the coming months with Social Labs, and connecting with an amazing bunch of people around the world.
Want to join the party? Head to Social-Labs.com and sign up for the newsletter, follow us on social, or just drop us a line!
Want to know what Social Labs are? Here’s a short video.
Links to things I talked about:
