Towards a participatory

community mapping method:

the Tilburg urban farming

community case

Aldo de Moor CommunitySense

WWW.COMMUNITYSENSE.NL

Communities & Technologies Conference,

27-30 June 2015, Limerick, Ireland

Urban farming • “urban farmers have a need for being involved in and

empowered by engaging, informal practices that lead to the

creation of viable tools and processes underpinning community

practice (CITIES Foundation 2012)”

2

Community sensemaking

• Communities can be seen as sets of relationships where people

interact socially for mutual benefit (Smith 2002)

• Sensemaking is an ongoing retrospective development of

constructing plausible images from a social context (Weick et al.

2005)

• Formalization of sensemaking efforts helps to reduce ambiguity

and to create common foundations for collaborative action

(Vlaar et al. 2006)

3

Participatory community mapping

• A core communal sensemaking activity

is community mapping (e.g.

geographical, knowledge mapping,

social network analysis)

• Our challenge: how to weave the

community mapping method (language,

tools, and process) through an iterative

process of community-building? – How to make sense of the current state of

the community?

– How to use the maps to inform active

community building efforts?

The community mapping language

• Elements (based on collaboration patterns, De Moor, 2013)

– Participants (Persons, Organizations,

Communities/Networks, Roles)

– Activities

– Results

– Tools (Online Tools, Physical Meetings)

• Connections: increasing degree of involvement (based

on Conceptual Model of Community, Carroll and Rosson in (Carroll, 2012))

– Informedness

– Membership

– Involvement

– Producing

The community mapping tool

• Kumu http://kumu.io (web-based tool to track,

visualize, and leverage relationships)

• Key participatory community mapping features: – Storytelling, shareable/embeddable

– Perspectives: decorations, foci, filters

Community map

Community perspective: decorations

Community perspective: focus

Community perspective: filter

Map as community catalyst

Retweeted by

The community process:

some lessons learnt

• Capturing the data – Dedicated map maker role, master/domain map makers

– Balance completeness and feasibility

• Make choices frequency & granularity

• E.g. quarterly official updates, only organizational

participants

– Motivating community members: friendly peer pressure

emerges

• But: avoid gaming the system

• Interpreting/using the maps – Community members: participant/activity perspectives

– Community managers: management & accountability

Future research

• Language – Expand conceptual model of community (Carroll et al.), in

particular Belonging-construct

– Draw from community /social networking theory, e.g. community

bridges, community clusters

• Tool – More advanced SNA, e.g. NodeXL

– Integrating in social media ecosystem for community activation

• Process – Develop operational/governance roles, e.g. Reader-to-Leader

(Preece and Shneiderman, 2009)

– Draw cues from proven participatory design methods, e.g.

geographical community mapping, Knowledge Art, Socio-

Technical Walkthrough (Herrmann et al., 2009)