I was excited to learn that The Nature Conservancy won a Webby for their web site, nature.org. They beat out the competition (which included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation!) in the category of Charitable Organizations Nonprofit.

I worked on nature.org from 2003-2005 as a Web Producer. I think it’s a great site though, of course, I’m hopelessly biased

Nature.org was recently redesigned but it follows a core set of design principles that I think helped it win the Webby. If you look at past screenshots of the site, these principles have been pretty consistent over the years. They include:

• Excellent use of white space. Text on the home page is given room to breathe, making it easier for people to scan down the page and absorb what’s on it.
• Strong photography. What sells nature? Great photos of nature. The photos selected for the site are more than just pretty pictures, they tell a story.
• A consistent color palette. Using the same set of well-matched colors across the site provides a consistent experience, one that underscores that this is a professional, well-designed site.
• Third-party validation. The home page features endorsements from the Better Business Bureau and Charity Navigator.
• Concise copywriting. Many nonprofit web site are either hopelessly wordy or incredibly vague. In a limited amount of space, nature.org manages to communicate what the organization is about and how you can get involved.

Note how simple this is. Readers aren’t overwhelmed by flash animations or crowded blocks of content. This simplicity is a design choice that has paid dividends for The Nature Conservancy.

I’ve been reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. It’s a brilliant book on the information revolution that we’re going through. He believes that this revolution is as momentous as the development of the printing press, which triggered the Reformation and religious wars. The rise of amateurs and the expansion of consumer choice has meant the end of seemingly unassailable institutions like newspapers.

Seeing how the world is rushing to adapt to the web, I had a practical question. Why doesn’t the government use the web to more efficiently accomplish its work? For example:

1. Why is there no actual Facebook for feds? Govloop (a social network for government employees) is a brilliant idea, a way for federal employees, contractors and other interested parties to communicate and collaborate. Why didn’t the federal government provide this tool (just a Ning social network) to its employees years ago? Think what a tremendous aid this would be to organizing and working together.

Why isn’t there, at the very least, a government-wide directory showing photos, titles and contact information?

Some have argued that there are legitimate privacy reasons for not providing this information to the public though it is the public that pays the salary of these civil servants. There’s a great call for transparency in government. Yet, like with taxes, it’s always transparency for someone else’s program – not yours!

2. Why isn’t there an online project management tool? So much of government work is managing projects – people, inputs, resources, deadlines, deliverables and so on. I’ve seen people use spreadsheets, Word docs, MS Project, Sharepoint, wikis and even crossed-out to do lists. Why doesn’t government adopt a tool like Basecamp (my fav), a web-based project management tool?

The objection to this is that big government likes to put things behind firewalls. A service, like Basecamp, that exists outside of the secure government environment is almost impossible to get approved.

3. Why is so much of government work done on paper? Reimbursements, training requests and purchases so often require the walking around of paper forms and the collection of signatures. Think how much more efficient government would be if these forms were made electronic.

The argument against this is that government regulations require the keeping of records on paper. These rules need to be updated; we’re no longer using typewriters.

4. Why doesn’t government publish all of its photos on Flickr? Shirky lists Flickr as a great example of crowd-sourcing, where amateurs post and tag exponentially more photos than a newspaper or magazine would publish. What if you could visit a National Park Service page and see countless NPS and amateur photos of Yellowstone, all carefully geotagged?

This is an area where the federal government is experimenting. EPA has an Earth Day photo contest in Flickr and the Library of Congress has its own Flickr photostream.

5. Why can’t I just click once to apply for a government job, like I can do on Monster? USAJOBS, with its complicated password requirements, lengthy disclaimers, pages of explanations to wade through, laborious KSAs to complete and endless duplication, is a usability nightmare. And this is how potential employees are introduced to government.

It’s not just the technology. The job descriptions are the very antithesis of the plain language that government aims to promote. Here’s the first line from a recent job announcement for a Program Analyst: 

At the full performance GS-13 level, establishes and administers assigned administrative programs in accordance with Department requirements and other related directives.

Umm, this is a little vague.

For the most part, the ideas I listed above are not revolutionary. This is not Web 2.0. Online directories, web-based forms, improved usability, one-click applications – this is Web 1.0, from the 1990s. Investing in these common-sense processes would make government more efficient, effective and creative.

Here are some more notes from SXSW Interactive.

I attended a session called, “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.”  Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson of Adaptive Path interviewed stage managers and conductors on how you keep a group creative and productive.  I think both roles are very similar to what web producers and site managers do.  We often have to work with prickly creative types, with specialized skills, who we need to be inspired and working in the same direction.  Web sites, like orchestras or stage plays, are, by their very nature, collaborative environments.

Several web people I know actually work in the theater or film (like me) or music, as if they’re drawn to creative group activities even when they’re outside of the office.  There’s a psychological lesson in there somewhere…

At the SXSW Interactive session, Bryan and Sarah (a former musician) introduced us to ten techniques used by creative management professionals to get great work from a wide range of employees.

1. Cross-train entire team – teaches empathy, possibility.  In the avante-garde theater they studied, everyone got to write and act.
2. Rotate creative leadership – provides ownership.
3. Actively turn the corner – there will come a time when you must put the bad ideas away and start on production.  The theater did this by taking a smoke break between the brainstormin session and the actual planning of the play.
4. Know your roles – stay in your lane.
5. Practice as a group.  This is why it’s vital that orchestras practice together.
6. Make your mission explicit to the whole team.
7. Kill your darlings (the ideas that are good but don’t fit).  Avenue Q, the Broadway musical, had lots of songs that didn’t serve the story.  They were ditched.
8. Leadership is service.
9. Do projects around group’s ideas.
10. Remember your audience.  Avenue Q was written in coffee shops, around the type of people who would be the audience for the musical.

Bonus Tip 11. Celebrate failure… with an afterparty!

A new study by Intuit predicts that the past will become the future. We’re heading into the Age of the Artisan. The press release has a great lede:

Artisans, historically defined as skilled craftsmen who fashioned goods by hand, will re-emerge as an influential force in the coming decade.

Now, we’re not talking about people making crafts by hand in some log cabin. The New Artisan is likely to be a web developer, writer, photographer, designer, marketing consultant or other independent professional. Powered by social networking tools and an always-on net, they’ll be able to work anywhere, for anyone.

The tools are getting easier and easier for new artisans, lowering the barriers to their work and eliminating many of the gatekeepers that once kept them from the market. In addition to the machine of democratization that is the internet, today’s artisan has a wealth of tools available to them:

• Writers can easily self-publish their books on Lulu and sell them worldwide.
• Photographers can use Flickr to market themselves and sell the stock photography through istock.
• Designers can market their creations on CafePress, without having to keep any merchandise on hand.
• Marketing professionals can find clients on LinkedIn
• And teams of people can collaborate using Backpack and Google Docs.

While there’s a certain amount of hyperbole in this study, particularly in its prediction of the end of the Industrial Revolution, this is an idea that largely rings true. There’s no reason for large groups of people to travel by carbon-spewing vehicles to sprawling office parks where they’ll occupy beige cubes for giant corporations as they put in eight hours a day.

That’s the Cubicle Economy, where you’re judged not necessarily by the quality of your work but, often, by less concrete measures, like whether you’re a “team player” or your facility at office politics. Or, sometimes, by a very concrete measure – the “face time” you put in the office.

I’ve worked for large organizations most of my career. In all cases, creative people (like myself) have challenges in adapting to to the Cubicle Economy. If you’re creative, you want to create, whether it’s a brochure, a web site or a party. You want a tangible product. Yet, so much effort in the Cubicle Economy is spent around process – meetings, timesheets, required briefings, politics, showing up on time. Is it any wonder that creative people have problems in the Cubicle Economy?

At the beginning of my career, as I transitioned from school to the Cubicle Economy, I felt hopelessly restless and bored. Was the problem with me? Maybe I had ADD.

Working on web sites saved me from being driven crazy by the Cubicle Economy. Having a concrete thing to work on, to update, a creation that was constantly changing but was reaching real people – that was something I could point at, a creation that made the rigors of the Cubicle Economy worthwhile.

The Artisan Economy would not only be a more efficient way to run a business, it would be friendlier to human needs and more conducive to creative work. I, and millions of other members of the Cubicle Economy, would welcome it.