RSA and Social Media
I’ve had the pleasure this evening (on behalf of NMK) of hosting a meeting of interested parties about the potential for the RSA’s adoption of social media. The meeting was prompted by a blog post from David Wilcox that was imported to Facebook, and led to some discussion and my offer to take that discussion face-to-face (Facebook users can see this here).
The RSA is the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. Established 250 years ago, it currently has about 26,500 Fellows. They can attend a very full and well-attended events schedule;they get the letters FRSA after their name; there’s no shortage of applications for its paid membership. Business is booming. And yet there’s a little bit of a problem.
The Society’s problem is that times have changed. Fellows are apparently expressing some degree of disgruntlement that they don’t feel involved with the programme or the Society. While in the past, a programme of well-planned lectures from eminent persons, nice premises on the Strand and a learned journal several times a year seemed satisfactory, that’s no longer enough. Today’s younger members want projects they can join, causes they can work with and more of a say, arguably, in what’s happening at the Society. There’s a feeling of empty hands that want to be filled.
How can the RSA make Fellows feel more involved, develop and encourage projects that engage members at the grass roots level, rather than merely being part of the audience listening to someone from the stage in the Grand Hall of its London HQ?
The problem has many layers. What is the RSA’s great value to people and how can it continue to provide that while also opening up and devolving authority?
One of its key assets, it seems, is the premises. It’s free office space in central London for members. It’s a place where you can meet all kinds of interesting people. It’s a place where you can host all sorts of interesting events of your own.
And that makes it an incubator of sorts. By meeting fellow Fellows, you’re more likely to come up with great ideas. Quite possibly, through other Fellows, you can make them happen.
One of the initial and simplest ideas for social media involvement for the RSA was a Facebook group. I don’t really think that Facebook groups have a lot of mileage beyond those that are only for a very close group of friends and colleagues. It can create a mailing list for you of interested parties, but beyond that, there’s no real incentive to revisit a group you’ve joined. Nonetheless, I feel that a Facebook group for Fellows is certainly a start; there’s no real downside if it fails and it could well provide some great pointers for what the membership wants and for the next stage of the Society’s social media policy. However, a Facebook network, whereby Fellows can add the Society as an additional badge and means of connection appeared to me to have considerable value. The network status communicates your membership to everyone you connect with and could act as a badge of trust, expertise and commonality. Creating a network, though, requires a little money, as I understand.
There were at least two more canny ideas.
The first was some sort of RSA version of Yahoo Answers. The RSA can put you in touch with very clever people in lots of fields, was the sentiment. They can probably provide advice and answers on a multitude of topics.
The second, which may well be a variation of the first, was some sort of member directory. This would give Fellows access to the location and specialisation of other Fellows and allow them to ‘hook up’ in a Facebook-esque manner. I’m drawn to the way ecademy gets members to describe themselves in 50 words (tags to the Web 2.0 world) and allows other members to search for fellow members on those tags. A network in which all members had the added trust value of being Fellows could certainly work, I think. The Society already has a lot of the necessary data from Fellows’ sign-up forms and more could be added voluntarily.
Further discussion picked up around what the RSA’s brand values might be. One example of that was as an ‘excellent convener’. That it draws very brilliant and interesting people together. However, the RSA is keen that the Society was not just viewed a place or a publication, but also as an actor. That it allows for the creation of brilliant ideas and then also acts upon them. How to decide among those ideas for the ones to publically support is one problem (maybe the case for a prediction market). Another is the extent to which the Society might rightly claim some sort of part-ownership for creating that chemistry - not in a commercial sense, but in a branding sense.
In my own opinion, social media policy from the RSA can’t work on the basis of containing discussion within a particular forum or blog or social network. Nor can it claim ownership of ideas created through its auspices. Those discussions and ideas, as with any brand or grouping, cannot be contained or owned. They are going to happen and will continue to happen anyway. What the Society might work to is the idea that having your ideas and business connected to it in some way earns kudos. Yeah, we came up with it/ met them at the RSA network/bar/forum mentioned a few times in business interviews and conversations as a point of pride, the same way certain members’ clubs and restaurants are spoken about, would do a great deal for the current and future value of membership. Like MySpace members adopting brands as friends, new and existing companies that friend the RSA in some way in the social media space may well be a way forward.
So - to sum things up with a superficial buzzword - I think it needs a widget. And it needs a way to get people to adopt that widget. That’s the tricky bit, I expect.
