For this week we have been furthering our research and branching to looking at technical stewardship and how technology and social network trends could aid the Tiny House Community. We also collected together our NGO’s community activities and representing this information through a spider graph.
So in our spider graph we have 8 points, each one represents an activity which we use in our work. Our scale works from 1 to 6, with 1 being the least important to 6 being the most.
Open ended conversation gives us information about what our NGO wants from us, and gives us advices on our future move, also such conversations can help us with making a right decision on our way to a successful project, that’s why we rated it 3 out of 6.
Group meetings as well as projects are the key and most productive points of our activities, because they help the team to reach a common decision, we discuss and brainstorm on different topics. We rated group meetings 5 out of 6 and projects 6 out of 6.
Social platform is one of the most important activities, because it is the cheapest and fastest way to gather loads of information and present to the majority of network users. It gives us a great opportunity to compare our NGO to others that are similar and is also a great source of ideas! We rated social platform 5 out of 6.
Relationship is a factor which helps team members to understand each other better, it is important to understand the dynamics of a relationship in order to strengthen your bond with one another, but it isn’t the most important factor that may affect the project, and that is why we rated it 2 out of 6.
Context is everything. Without context you can’t communicate effectively. When your message is delivered in one context, but received in another, it is likely leads to miscommunication. We rated it 2 out of 6.
Clients give us a lot of information about the NGO needs and what their ideas are to reach a better result, however in our opinion the most useful source of information is still the internet, that’s why we rated client information 4 out of 6.
Expertise gives us a deeper look on what we have done and what we need to get done, it actually doesn’t improve teamwork at all but is a really helpful activity if we want to have a better result which will suit our NGO`s needs.
Of course there are a lot of other important activities, but we have chosen the ones that we use most of all and that we believe are the most important, and with this our strategy of work will probably and hopefully lead to productive results!!
From this we concluded that the Tiny House Community should initially start by creating a website. We were told last week by our point of contact that they do not yet have a website. We believe that this is the first way to begin being present on the internet and becoming known by others through a virtual presence. In addition to this, a website would create a page where the public could access the community on another platform.
Furthermore, we believe that any solutions created for assuring the community is financially sustainable would benefit massively from a website. In regards to tourism whether it be property rental, a ‘campsite’ or a workshop, a website would be almost a necessity with the ever increasing use of the internet. Additionally, our social entrepreneurship (we’ll explain what this is later on) idea of using renewable energy would also benefit from a website creating a page to express what the community is about and what it has done (if it goes down the renewable energy path.
Further down the line after we have the website up and running we would then advise the tiny house community to expand further on to Facebook, Instagram, potentially Twitter and to create a blog page. We would primarily focus on Facebook due to it being the widest used social media platform. Using these different networks would enable updates on what the community is doing, using pictures, text and videos which would help to get the community known by others and collectively aid in becoming financially sustainable.
After presenting this information to Shorty we gained some extremely useful feedback. Even though she agreed with our ideas about social network trends and a website, she informed us that the community was not yet ready for an expansion over social platform due to not yet being able to properly manage it. Along with having a website would be better considered when they have a market and have a better understanding of what the community is going to do. After discussing this with Shorty we have decided to change our focus on to how to help the community with finding sponsorship and investors.
Finally, we mentioned earlier about social entrepreneurship and how it related to a few of the solutions we had created as the idea of social entrepreneurship is clearly relevant to us as this kind of system would fit our NGO´s needs.
“Social entrepreneur: /noun/- A person who establishes an enterprise with the aim of solving social problems or effecting social change” [1]
Social enterprise is a relatively new term in the field of entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is not only practiced by nonprofit companies but also by entrepreneurs who want to take social responsibility. The success of a social enterprise is not valued by the profit it generates, but by the social effect it provokes. [2]
We have gained a lot new information this week and had a few set backs with our ideas and thoughts. However, now we are aware what we need to elaborate on and will show you this over the coming weeks! Keep updated and check our comments below as we’ll be adding bits of information every now and then when we come across it!!
Tiny Innovators
[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com
[2] wirtschaftslexikon.gabler.de
Tiny Innovators 
Love the creative spidergram. Even more, I love that you are using Shorty’s feedback to refine your thinking and next steps. This is an example of useful client interactions. Clients need solutions that reflect their realities. Cheers to that. So IF you continue thinking about social media next steps, consider what they DO have time and capacity to do. One thing I’m noticing is that busy people may be able to do a little social media on their phones, so choosing strategies that work on a mobile may be one thing to consider IF IF IF they want it/are interested.
Second, I appreciate the care you took to annotate your resources. That is another way to acknowledge who and where we learn from. It fits well with the values underneath social entrepreneurship as well.
Where are you going to look to learn more about the network of social entrepreneurs themselves? (vs descriptions of what it is… look for the stories of people DOING it!) Check out SOCAP!
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One of the ideas I found interesting to get more sustainability for our NGO was to create a program for the newlyweds. The prototype of the program includes: renting the tiny house (with the furniture and all the utilities), getting to know the community, participate at workshops, entertainment activities. The price the newlyweds should give for the program should cover all the costs for one week of a honeymoon.
The only problem that we found about this idea is that somebody should manage the whole process, but we need volunteers (groups of volunteer that would help us working for a long-term period), because we can’t afford to pay managers in order to get finance sustainability.
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