MyFootballClub’s new board – 3rd time lucky?

In August, 20 candidates campaigned for seats on the MyFootballClub Society Board and the “lucky” 7 will direct the strategy over the next year, a critical role as the Society is the main financial support for Ebbsfleet United.

Despite being elected to represent the members of the Society, some of the previous Board members sermonised about their view of responsible ownership, actively opposing the open, community decision-making way of thinking that MyFootballClub was based on.  In particular, this was seen in some of the more contentious issues during the year, such as the Club budget, membership fees and player sales.

The forum discussions about these decisions went on and on for dozens of pages, with very few new facts or analysis produced along the way.  The more vocal contributors quickly dug in their heels and the casual members had no way of tracking the debate or main points.  We still need something more than the forums in this regard, at the very least to get the main points summarised regularly.

I think one of the biggest factors in the state of anomie that sometimes seems to pervade the MyFC community is the lack of faith from the Board in the ability of the membership to make the right choices.  Alice Casey describes this perfectly:

…decision makers don’t give enough credit to public wisdom and intelligence, the press consistently portray the public as being respondent, passive and powerless rather than active and influential, and people themselves do not feel able to influence decisions in their communities. These three have worked together to ensure that many citizens remain as passive consumers.

Of course for many members, MyFC is a luxury item, so the constant peril at Ebbsfleet is that if members are not engaged with the Club or if the cost is too high (bascially value for money), they can walk away.  I don’t use the term  “peril” lightly: as widely predicted, 20,000 members did not renew in February 2008.  In the run up to that deadline the Board spent far too much time wringing their hands over this, rather than deal with the issues that were causing.

My view remains that the two most important roles for the Board are to build the community within the Society itself, and to implement mechanisms to inform and involve members in the activity of the Club.

Building a succesful internet community
I’m thinking along the lines of Slice the Pie or Zopa.  I refer to these two specifically as they were also featured in Ivo Gormley’s film, “Us, Now” alongside MyFootballClub.  Like MyFC, these organisations are set up in response to the failure of “real” institutions (like record companies and banks) for certain segments of those market.

They have a product which is easy for individual members to join, participate in, and contribute towards the development of the community.  Because of this openness, they are sustainable and successful.  It’s not the ownership that is the attractive thing about MyFC, it’s the participation.

Enabling members to collectively contribute
This means more than “give us your money, now f**k off”, which is sometimes how it can feel as MyFootballClub member.  It means being open about the decisions that are being made, and that requires a philosophical change of attitude from the Club as well as the Board.

But the most urgent task for the new Board must be to sort out the communication between the Club and the Members, and maximise members involvement with decisions.

The election result:

The above was draft before the election but I didn’t post due to work things & holiday.

I’m a little bit disappointed that a couple of candidates with more technical and financial nous narrowly missed out, but the bad eggs either stood down or didn’t make it through nomination.  They’re a reasonable crew, don’t agree with all of them all of the time, but that’s democracy for you.

In general they are starting well, and the new Chairman is also keen to improve communications.   There have been a few big issues that have cropped up over the last couple of months that have served to rally people to the cause and bring cohesion to the organisation.  But I’ll talk about them later.

Crowdsourcing at Ebbsfleet United: building the Republic of Football

One of the exciting principles of MyFC was that it would allow ordinary fans to get involved in the decision-making at a football club, in a way that had never been achieved before, the theory being that the crowd could make a better decision than experts.

In recent weeks, for example, we’ve been voting on:

• Season Ticket and Matchday ticket pricing
• Home and Away kits for 09/10 season
• 09/10 Season kit supplier

as well as some of the internal Society governance and club management issues.

Firefighting leads to disengagement

The voting process is far from smooth: there’s a constant balancing act between transparency and privacy, between “authority figures” recommending an option or a free vote.

There are also situations where the members approval is sought in order to authorise a Club officer to undertake an activity,  usually a forgone conclusion because we don’t have much choice in the short term but to accept the recommendation.  These kinds of votes cause the most division and the Board of MyFC really should have learned long ago that long term planning was needed as well as the short-term fire fighting.

MyFootballClub's Working Groups process

Groups, working

This is where the Working Groups come in, allowing a group of ordinary members to tackle an issue, break it down into to manageable tasks, and make well reasoned recommendations to the members, with open-ended votes.  They’re still in early stages, but already we’ve seen progress from the active groups.

For example, the Financials Working Group came back with a procedure for arranging and publishing the Society and Club accounts, something that had previously been bogged down by lack of ownership and inertia.  This will add clarity to discussion and allow decisions to be made with full awareness of the implications for the Society and Club.

These are the groups that are currently in progress or being considered,  all initiated and given the go-ahead by ordinary members of the Society, and approved by the Society Board.  Links require MyFC login.

Financial WG
Aim: Strengthen the flow of financial information and prepare forecasts and draft budgets for the Club and Society (full aims)
Status: In progress, Private, Open Forum
Leader: rugbyswift
Last weekly review: 15/4/09

Marketing & Advertising WG
Aim: Focus marketing and advertising campaigns for Club and MyFC Society (full aims)
Status: In progress, Group Area, Original thread
Leader: roca
First weekly review: due 27th April

Communications WG
Aims: Make recommendations to improve communications between members, Board, Club and general public (full aims)
Status: Awaiting Greenlight Vote, Forum Discussion

Surveys WG
Aims: Facilitiate surveys to members on behalf of Society and WGs
Status: Forum Discussion

Live Streaming WG
Aims: Investigate options for providing cost-effective live streaming of TV footage to overseas members
Status: Forum Discussion

Calendar & Planning WG
Aims: Establish timelines for activity leading up to important deadlines and improve Calendar functionality
Status: Forum Discussion

Get stuck in!

Weekly reports allow the wider membership to keep a casual eye on the situation, meaning they can get on with working on areas that interest them.  Other members may stick to discussions or just engaging in casual chat.  Nothing wrong with this, as it still contributes to the fabric of the Society.  Governance and communication are likely to be ongoing issues: the need to keep all types of member involved and informed.

This framework can take MyFootballClub from an unfocused mob to a more constructive, forward looking organisation.  Providing the Society’s Board, the Website Operator and the Club management cooperate with the recommendations of the members, finally MyFootballClub can get to grips with the fundamental problems and start owning Ebbsfleet United.

Post-Apocalyptic vision

February 20th 2009 and MyFootballClub is left with just under 10,000 live members, with 22,000 having decided the venture wasn’t worth staying involved with for whatever reason.  Communications are still a problem, both in terms of the infrastructure we use to disseminate information, but also there’s great confusion about who does what.

We are currently holding another Board election, this time an interim election to fill the 5 missing board members.  That’s right, of the 7 members we elected last year to drive and monitor the strategy of the Society, only 1 remains, with 1 more having being coopted a couple of months back to fulfill legal requirements.  Bizarrely, one of the candidates is someone who resigned in December.

There are still a lot of passive members, but on the positive side, there seems to be a lot more willingness to challenge each other on issues we disagree with.  This almost always descended into personal argument, but perhaps we’re recognising the challenge we face to turn the organisation round and keep the club going.

The biggest plus point was the implementation of a Working Group structure, which I steered through, mindful of the need for a clear process and understanding of Roles and Division of labour that I picked up from Activity Theory.  This framework should allow us break down the many problems that the Society needs to deal with into manageable chunks, and give a mandate for small teams of members to go off and do the work, presenting their final findings to the wider membership for a decision.  David Pollard’s post on the appropriate use of Crowds and Experts in the decision-making process was a good reference point in this.

So yes, there are still problems, but it was too interesting not to stay involved.

MyFC’s broken windows – repairing broken functionality on a social networking site

The key to the success of MyFootballClub was always going to be control and direction of information, and I have constantly tried to promote this idea on the MyFC website and on this blog.

Many of the problems of engagement and retention that are causing panic for the Operator, Board and Club (not to mention the remaining members who really want this venture to work) come back to this issue – that our activities and information flow are not coordinated by the website.

Coming back to a previous post, All of this, for me, relates to Activity Theory, the idea that we can look at what is happening across our organisation in terms of:

• Participants – members, board, web team, club management
• The community, which all these are part of (and sub-communities)
• The rules that describe how these people take part in the community
• The divisions of labour – who does what
• The tools we use to achieve our goal

Groups – bad implementation

The MyFC Operator implemented the Group functionality in July 2008, partly as an attempt to get away from repetitive or cliquey threads in the main forums.  Unfortunately, like other aspects of the website, it wasn’t put in place with proper consideration of how it would benefit the Society, how they relate to the Soapbox and Society forums, Proposals, Votes etc.

Coming back to Activity Theory, there was no clear link between the Groups (a “tool”) and Subjects, Community and Divisions of Labour. There were no clear rules about how they should be used to achieve the Objects of the Society.

It’s no wonder then that the same debates that we’ve been having over the last year continue as ever on the forums with no resolution (and not just the controversial Pick The Team issue).  It’s no wonder that conversations persist concurrently in one or more Groups, Society and Soapbox, as well as having been assigned to Board members for action.

Getting Groups working

Here’s some suggestions for getting groups working. These could be written down as explicit guidelines but we can always just start working this way. Other elements need minor changes to the site by the Operator’s Web Team, who are paid by the Society to maintain and develop the website.

1) Cull Duplicate groups.
E.g. There are 5 groups with PTT in the title, one called “Pick the team f’christsakes” and one called “Selector Solutions”

• Solution: We make a rule that someone who creates a duplicate group is pointed in the direction of the existing group. If there is an argument for a similar group to be set up, e.g. “Pro PTT / Anti PTT”, then this shall be made when creating a group, for the Forum Team to approve.

2)Encourage more ownership and participation in the groups
Some of these have very few members, and only on has seen any activity in the last month. Despite this, there are similar threads on the Society, Football and Soapbox forums.

• Solution: Allow group moderators to send “Newsletters” to their membership, with obvious guidelines so that spamming is discouraged.
• Solution: Allow more than one forum moderator so that the group can remain active
• Solution: Allow moderators to create quick polls

3)Move emphasis from the Forums to the Groups.
There are many repetitive threads on the forums that never really resolve any of the issues they are supposed to.

• Solution: Forum Team to direct Forum threads (where appropriate) to a relevant group. e.g.
• Solution: Encourage Groups to summarise a debate or proposal from their group in the Society / Soapbox forum. Or just what they’ve been talking about recently.

4) Cull inactive groups
There are dozens of groups that have few members in, and no activity.

• Solution: Archive groups with less than 8 members
• Solution: Archive groups with no activity for 6 weeks

5) Make special website sections for Society wide interests

There are some groups that should would better serve the Society by being part of a well formed section on the site, rather than being buried within a group thread.  There are two main areas that come to mind:

Upcoming matches:
Make this a distinct section which shows the recent and upcoming games, latest updates to each match etc.

Each upcoming match has it’s own page, with match previews, Jaiku rota, Questions for Liam, fitness, away travel information, who’s attending, match representatives and a place for banter.

Previous matches show previews, photos, Liam’s feedback etc. Each of these elements are available in various unlinked places throughout the site, whereas to have them in one location would tidy things up and put them all in context.

Society:
Make this a distinct page, more like a group blog than the same, dull article system.  Use it to show recent board articles, meeting agendas and minutes, proposals, but also calls for action from the members, whether it be physical help like handing out leaflets, or expert advice from qualified members.

And of course use tags and categories to link common threads together.

6) Broken Windows
There is far too much name-calling, inappropriate or irrelevant comments that slow down the flow of a conversation and make considered debate impossible.  For too long we as a Society have not discouraged it, and the Forum Team have allowed this to continue unabated.  In fact the Operator’s Web Team themselves have been guilty on occasion, which hasn’t helped matters.

This is Broken Windows – in social behaviour this is the idea that a single broken window left unrepaired will lead to further vandalism. On a website site it’s the idea that you would write things on a forum post that you would not say to that person in a pub.  We call it “trolling” and there are various ways to deal with it.

At the least, before you hit return, read out what you’ve just typed aloud to the person next to you. If they punch you in the face then perhaps you should consider rewriting it.

A solution for web forums - thanks to Randall Munroe of xkcd.com

After all, we all have the same goal, don’t we?

The continued success of the MyFootball Club Society and Ebbsfleet United.

Goodwill Hunting

When MyFC started recruiting members before taking over Ebbsfleet United, one of the rules was that the first year of membership would commence when the club was formally taken over. Which means that on February 19th 2009, over 20,000 memberships will expire. Some have renewed their subscriptions already, but there is great uncertainty as to how many will actually commit on or before the deadline. This is a problem because the clubs budget depends on the funds that these renewals will bring in – the CEO hinted as much on a recent BBC TV Inside Out report.

So whilst there are various issues that the Society is dealing with (not least how to deal with dissenting views, and others that I’ve commented on previously) the Operator has a new campaign to get people to commit. They have asked all members to signal their renewal intentions, and whether they will be purchasing gift memberships for christmas, perhaps donating a little more to the club kind sir?

I’m not sure at how this information can be considered representative, as it doesn’t seem to take into account the thousands who really don’t care any more. I said on the forums after the first couple of days: “by the end of next week the figures you have will be pretty much all your going to get”, and sure enough, for the last few days, there has been little increase in the number of respondents, which is now at about the same level as recent Society vote turnouts. I.e. everyone who was ever going to respond has done so, so their response should in no way be extrapolated to the rest of the 28,000 people who haven’t replied.

New Research

This report from Forrester Research could be far more useful, not just at estimating likely renewals but as a guide to work out how better to engage the different “kinds” of community participants.

It suggests that users of social websites like MyFC can be categorised by the extent to which they participate online and can be described by the following activity profiles:

• Creators – write articles, create social content, upload images etc
• Critics – respond to articles and forum posts, add to Wikis etc
• Collectors – organise content for themselves and others
• Joiners – join social networks and maintain their online identity / profile
• Spectators – read articles, watch videos etc but otherwise do not contribute.
• Inactives – neither create nor consume social content.

Clearly these categories are not all discrete as some participants may be both creators and critics, for example.

They also report significant differences in patterns of activity between different age groups, gender groups and nationalities. This is demonstrated with the profiling tool.

Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

A quick glance to me suggests that things may not be as bad as some of the more skeptical members make out, and reinforces my belief that the “Target” survey does not truly reflect likely member participation. This data seems to suggest that a website where 40-65% of the membership are either inactive or only spectators is not unusual.

My hope is that the Society Board and the Operator will at least consider this research along with their own demographic data, and use it to make better estimates about the renewals strategy and website development.