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May 19, 05:35 pm: Cloud Campaigning from internet.artizans

In a terrific post called Cloud Computing, Dan McQuillan writes:

Of course, cloud campaigning is an experimental art, and for most organisations it’ll reinforce rather than replace the well-established principals of traditional ecampaigning . But the final message I wanted to get across in Prague was “Don’t think like an NGO”. I honestly believe that approaching the social web through the lens of the NGO limits the potential for social innovation. So the image of the cloud is also a statement about the cause; whether it’s human rights or youth enterprise, the cause isn’t owned by any one organization but is present across the universe of particular and individual passions that are now becoming visible across the social web.

I think that this is right on and I also think that it is incredibly hard for organizations to do. the hard part isn’t just about getting the “why“s of doing it or even the art of connecting to the “cloud.” I think that it requires that NGOs re-imagine themselves in terms of their mission instead of their organization. How do you think of yourself, for example, as a collection of projects that are more or less loosely tied together with the aim of achieving your mission and engaging with the others — individual and organizational others — who can help.
I’m still trying to figure out what I mean here. But take Yahoo! pipes as an example. Once you’ve created a pipe, you have a variety of ways to share it — including other companies like Google or WordPress who are, more or less, competitors with Yahoo!. I think the salient point is that you have to recognize that your constituents are going to assemble tools in ways that are meaningful to them. Social benefit groups need to think about who they can make themselves ripe for assembly. And that’s not just about having a fundraising widget that will allow people to put your ask onto various sites and services.
It’s about thinking of the projects that you are doing to achieve your mission and the ways that you can make those available to co-conspirators.
I’m not sure where this headed. But I’m placing my money on a change of branding from the organizational to the small projects that move through our attention stream and, if they are elegant, catching us exactly when we can help and act.