Oct 19, 2007

Participant Relationship Management (PRM)

This post started out as a post on using JIRA as a communication tool, getting into 37signals take on the CRM, and eventually meandering off towards the term Participant Relationship Management, a term I coined to explain my vision of a high-tech tool for participatory culture and events. That thought led this text. I’ll post more of the thoughts on the way once I’ve edited them.

Participant Relationship Management System (PRM)

Over the last few years I have been working at The Story Lab, adding a technical and information architecture perspective to their storytelling mantra. We were granted money from Vinnova to investigate and plan a larger project about a year ago. I was lead for the project - at least nominally.

The title of the project was “Participant Relationship Management System: Technical Tools for Participatory Culture”. The “investigation” went well, in spite of a rather sketchy process where the team members spent countless hours trying to understand each other by talking about abstract concepts and making PowerPoint presentations.

We were granted money for the “Big project” a few months ago. A press release was carefully crafted and sent to me for final review, and was to be released immediately on the web site (which I had made).

Curiously this was the first time I had seen the document. My name and thoughts were strangely missing, replaced by people who had not been a part of the project and strange words I had never seen. I did a late night quick edit of the press release, added a few words of my own, and pressed publish.

Then came summer and I started thinking. I decided that I was very happy that the project was going to happen, but that I did not want to be a part of it. I couldn’t bear spend another hour in one of those cool conference rooms, equipped with high-tech ‘idea tools’. Whiteboards, LEGO®s, projectors, Post-it®s.

I also wanted to concentrate on Unikum. To try my best to actually make something, instead of just talking about it.

But then I realised that I have been doing stuff - I haven’t been just talking. The problem is that I haven’t written down what I’ve been doing - just talking about it.

During the course of our investigation I have built the following sites:

(while mostly doing this:)

I have created an ARG to teach a group of municipal education managers about gender issues. Eva 2057 (start reading from the bottom of the page - the posts are in blog-order).

And no, I didn’t do this alone. Thanks to all involved.

I have created accounts, and actually used, the following services:

So, in spite of (or because of) wasting a lot of time talking in high-tech conference rooms I have learned a lot. I have seen a lot of my ideas hijacked and misunderstood, but in the end this is a bunch of bright and very creative (if rather confused) people. Talking to them is always a pleasure. Good luck, and call me if you want a chat.

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This is some sort of blog where I post stuff that catches my interest. Sometimes, in a burst of creativity, I post some stuff I've made myself, but lately I've been mostly putting pretty things here. Subscribe via RSS.