Led by Ron Rowland (SIL) [RRo], John Gilbert (FMBSBC) [JGi], and Bill Stevenson (Harvest Datalink) [BSt].
RRo: This will be an informal session. "Success" and "Failure" are terms hard to define in relation to this type of discussion.
JGi: I work at the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board. In April we presented a report to the Board of Trustees on the status of World Evangelization. The acknowledgements show the dependence on many different organizations. Networking and strategic alliances essential to the task. We have a new day of co-operation.
BSt: Some questions I see need to be addressed:
The issue of competition: Is it healthy or inappropriate in the
Christian community? Building consensus is good but it takes time
and the new technologies may therefore pass us by, which means you
may lose what you have put in.
God wants His goals achieved more than He does your organization structure to survive.
The key: Focus on what God is doing and join in with it (Blackaby). Focus on building relationships, and build on this network of relationships as God works through you to accomplish His plan.
Sometimes introducing a new idea so it gets into action is better than waiting for consensus. Building consensus may help you better understand who you are serving.
Initiating may get those who need your product the product sooner and they can decide whether the product has value to them. Initiating puts an initial stake in the ground that is concrete and allows others to look at it, shoot at it, position alternative solutions vs. discussing a white paper with no concrete deliverables to look at.
How do you balance signing up a large number of users if the long term solution isn’t right OR do you sign them up today, giving them the benefits of your service today?
There is a need to evaluate the cost of change within your organization.
Don’t get obsessed with the tool and lose sight of the result you are trying to achieve.
If you spend too long trying to provide the perfect solution and build consensus for it, the next better mouse-trap will come along, and you will have to deliberate all over again, and the user receives no benefit.
Organizations watch and see the experiences of those involved in the discussions and make their own decisions and sign up for what best serves them.
Question: Will an organization choose what is best for them or
what is best for the overall Christian community when they evaluate
your product? What are the costs involved?
Segment your customers
Focus and prioritize
Position your product for a particular segment in your market.
You don’t have to meet the needs of everyone at once.
Partnering.
Consider your strengths. Example: If a Christian
radio station goes onto the Internet and therefore goes
worldwide would there be ways to follow-up the contacts made?
Will what we are accomplishing be seen as valuable by the constituency with which we work?
Sometimes our talk is big when we meet, but our actions are small when we are gone.
Be open to ideas from new sources.
It is important to look at your strengths and build on them, and consider outsourcing/partnering the rest.
Why do something that someone else is already doing and possibly doing it better at a lower cost?
Watch to see where God is working and join Him in it.
RRo: Involved in networking from a number of different ways. Coordinates the Peoples Information Network. At first we distinguished between information providers and information seekers. But we dropped that because we found at different stages people were in different roles. Lurking and active participation will be part of everyone's participation. One doesn't always have to be an active participant.
The people who make a network *work* are those really willing to participate. It is people committed and doing things that make things happen between committee meetings.
Must have a product. Unless people are getting some return for the time they invest in your network they are not going to return. The "dual citizenship" (part of own organization and part of larger network) issue must be taken into conscious account. The SIL/GMI language mapping task is networking but is not formally organized.
Networks can be formed or dissolved whether the task it was setup for was a success or not.
Q: Please give us a brief definition of "Share" and "PIN".
RRo: SHARE was to facilitate the communication within the
Christian community. SHARE no longer exists. Global Mapping is
doing now some of what SHARE was created to do. It met a need
for the 5 or 6 years of its existence. The "products" included
the "Information Sharing Handbook." The code of conduct we
developed is now being used in a number of Christian
organizations. (honoring others, respecting copyright, etc.)
BSt: The code of conduct is going up online so others can see what has been done along that line. The handbook covered many issues like how to communicate across different e-mail systems. SHARE's mission mandate has gone away because organizations began to develop the networking links pioneered by SHARE.
Q: Four levels of confidentiality: How categorized and
determined?
RRo: It's a continuum but we put lines of division in.
PIN = "Peoples Information Network" = Sharing information about peoples. Loosely organized. Started within SIL, now administratively outside SIL.
Principle: If too many structures and procedures are placed on a network it becomes an organization not a network. Keep it loose.
JGi: There is a chart showing the relationship between various databases, e.g., ROPAL, Ethnologue, etc. [available on handout table]
A personal trust relationship is key and is the foundation of effective networking.
RRo: The issue is not knowing the network but knowing the people with whom you can network.
An example of good networking is the development of the levels of evangelisation map done by GMI with input from various other organizations.
JGi: The Southern Baptists will freely share data with other organizations (except what we consider confidential). One reason for such sharing is that you may spot errors we have missed and can tell us leading to a revision of the data.
We use an Annual Interactive Field Verification and Update. We send what we have to the field and get the feedback on verifications, corrections, and updates.
Q: Where do you see the future in the next few years. Will
things stay basically the same?
RRo: It will continue to change. We are working on an ethno-
cultural classification system rather than an ethno-linguistic
system. Then how does the geo-political issue enter into
mapping? Now we need to look at Habitat Mapping showing where
people actually live. We try to encompass more and more of the
reality out there. Reality resists being systematized. Next year
we may have to do things differently than we do today. Systems
people find this difficult. Systems people like to stay with an
established system.
Q: There is a wide disparity between what one group says about
people groups and what another group says. How can we present a
number with some confidence?
RRo: The Joshua Project list was developed with groups more than
10,000, less than 2% evangelical, less than 5% "Christian". So
about 2,000 are listed. Ethnologue and ROPAL present groups by
languages. At dialect level that gives some 10,000 or so. Social
indicators may be part of strategy when working among people
(e.g., Taxi drivers in Bangkok) but are not manageable for
producing lists.
And example of a good study: The Anthropological Survey of India has done a great job of defining and listing peoples in India by communities and sub-communities.
We have to separate apples and oranges (as some groups may use dialect plus language or culture names plus language names.