When browsing for it, I accidentally discovered another “change” website. This one is change.org, calling itself a “social action network”.

The great thing about these two sites, beyond the excellent causes and issues they discuss, is the fact that the information flow is most definitely two-way. These sites are excellent examples of using web 2 tools for social change.

And not only are conversations and debates taking place among the site hosts and their visitors but in fact the sites themselves are also examples of what I would call “web theatre”.

By web theatre, I mean the following. It’s a well researched fact that the majority of visitors to web 2 – type sites (social networks, social tagging, microblogging and so on) tend to lurk rather than participate. That the participation by the “masses” is actually participation by “the few, watched by the masses”.

Clever site hosts can make the most of this level of participation to further communicate their messages to the masses, and this is what is being done in an excellent way by these two sites, especially change.gov.

Instead of pushing their messages blindly without allowing for open debate to take place on their turf (hence driving it to blogs etc where they have less influence) or when it does, simply ignoring it, the Obama team are sharing their ideas and plans and openly encouraging feedback, whether positive or not.

And responding to it. That’s the key to the “theatre” bit – performing with the few participants for the mass of lurkers.

On top of discussions and digg-like voting, they are also sharing information about the meetings they are having with outside groups. Even to the point of sharing agendas, presentations and so on. (Have a look at the “Your seat at the Table” section of the site).

If a new government can do this, imagine the opportunities available to other organisations. Greater collaboration with staff, customers, their community of visitors, greater participation in driving their agendas, greater transparency…. imagine.

And imagine how worried the boards of various multinationals must be.

Back then, I think the media coverage was measured by how quickly organisations could update their web pages, capture and show film footage and photos, and locate people to interview. Blogs and YouTube weren’t yet mainstream, sure there were some newsgroups and forums but I suppose most people turned to the tv and other traditional media for their information.

Imagine if a similarly significant event happened today – using web 2.0 tools people could post updates on presence awareness tools such as twitter, send photos and videos from their mobile phones to flickr, youtube and so on, and share their feelings in social networking groups and blogs. And get newsfeeds on their mobiles.

News coverage would truly be by the masses. Our record of history would definitely be different – no longer just the “official” (read govt-endorsed, corporate funded) version of events but made up of real stories covered by real people who were in various ways a real part of the event. A social version.

A pretty big difference in a short amount of time.

Imagine back to other significant events, earlier in our world history – the end of world war 2, say.

And imagine how different the coverage and information sharing about future major events will be. Once mobile connectivity is more reliable.

Great for democracy, and more power to the people.

And it dawned on me that, unless I’ve missed something, the writers of Groundswell have made a bit of an assumption around customers and their use of web 2 tools.

Their book suggests that if you figure out who your target customers or users are, decide why you want to communicate with them (e.g. to get ideas from them for new products, to promote new services to them, etc), and then understand how these users make use of web 2.0 tools (ie. their “social technographic profiles”) – well then all you need to do is use these tools and magically customers will communicate with you.

Except that they probably won’t.

The piece that seems to be missing is what Clay Shirky talks about in Here Comes Everybody. Its something he calls “Promise”. Another way of thinking of it is the “what’s in it for me” factor.

For example, just because an organisation has identified its target users as being “critics” (in Groundswell’s  social techno profile) – due to the fact that they tend to rate products and comment on blogs – doesn’t mean they will do this on matters of interest to the organisation.

Forrester charges for access to its detailed information on social technographic profiles but I wonder whether the info considers this dimension – not so much exactly which groups use what web 2.0 tools but also what they talk about when using them. WHY they choose to use them. The “what’s in it for me” element.

Maybe I’ll find out by the end of the book.

What do I define as a “web 2.0 friendly” organisation ?

Well, for starters it’s a place that values empowering staff to make their own decisions around how to do their jobs above enforcing tight controls, rules and security over what they can do. Naturally you need to consider these things – pity help the organisation who doesn’t have strong firewalls these days.

But it’s a place that tries to get the balance right to encourage staff loyalty and stimulate innovation while also managing business risks. A place that actively shows their staff that they both trust and value them whilst also having some safety nets in place if / when things go wrong.

A place that has a very flat structure and comprises self-organising ad hoc groups (rather than organisational divisions / depts) that form the way they think best around business opportunities and then disband when done.

Examples:

- a place that has blogs and wikis for knowledge sharing but minimal guidelines about usage beyond those needed to protect the organisation’s reputation and exposure to risk

- a place that lets employees make their own decisions about the tools they need in order to best do their jobs

- a place that is process-light and provides an environment to encourage doing over talking

- a place that lets employees create their own knowledge sharing structures, groups and systems, e.g. adopting folksonomies and social networking tools for business use

- a place that provides employees with access to a range of data sources and lets them make decisions on what to “mash”.

Wikis, blogs, communities of practice, instant messaging, flat structures, light processes, self-organising teams, hands-on approaches to getting things done, working when you need to  and where). All good stuff, conducive to getting the best out of people.

That’s my type of organisation.

This led me to discover KML (a file format and schema based on XML) – though initially developed for use with Google Earth, it is now able to be used with google maps.

And by recreating my maps using KML and various tools (see below) I now have this instead of this.

Previously, I needed to struggle with javascript and the Google Maps API to feed data from XML files.

Now it’s as simple as this:

1 – create your KML file in the format, and using the elements, described by Google

2 – upload your KML file to some server space

3 – if you use your own icons, upload them (as 32 x 32 size thumbnails) too

4 – go to Map Channels and create a free account

5 – generate your map by creating a map channel and inserting the url to your KML file

6 – Map Channels will then give you some code to paste into your web page in order to embed into it a google map based on the data in your KML file

Very easy!

And here are some tools to improve the quality of your maps:

* KML Tool: a tool for finding the KML Point co-ordinates and KML polyline co-ordinates of any given location

* Feed Validator: for validating your publicly hosted KML code

* KML Colour Converter: A downloadable tool for converting a html colour code (in format “#9E7658″) into a KML colour code (in format “7d58769e”)

Google does it again – nice and simple.