So, based off this post on Tom Schade’s site that’s a reprint of something Gini posted to some UUMA email list or chat or something, the 100k is in part to better come up with a strategic plan. From that post,
“The Board responded by authorizing the use of $100,000 from reserves for a management consultant to support the Administration in creating a strategic plan, aligning programmatic efforts to the plan, evaluating the outcomes of those programs, and reporting, and to work with the Board to assure accountability going forward.”
And this makes sense to me, because I read that Strategic Vision that was in the Board Packet (and yes, I read the Board Packet, but that’s because now that I’m the Appointments Committee I feel pretty obligated to keep up with that stuff.) And I just didn’t like it that much. And here’s why.
I highly recommend you pause reading this and go read it. It’s at http://www.uua.org/documents/moralespeter/2013_strategic_vision.pdf and only seven pages long, the first of which is just the title page.
The biggest, massive alarm bell that rang for me when I first read it was this line, on page 4 under overarching strategies.
“We are in the process of shifting from content creation to “curation.” Curation refers to the role of vetting and sharing resources as opposed to creating them.”
No No NO!!! As something of a UU Social Media Expert, which is really weird to say but I suppose justified now that I also get paid to do it and have also entered the world of UU Social Media Consulting, the UUA *should* be behind content curation. Random individuals should not be relied on to define what Unitarian Universalism is and produce content that reflects their own personal definitions. That’s what’s happening right now – for example, last year when I put out the “Love Without Exceptions” graphics, that’s just what I think Unitarian Universalism is/should be. But what authority do I have to define that? I didn’t have that authority for my congregation, much less the entire denomination.
The UUA should be the creators of content for individuals and congregations to curate and send out to the world, not the other way around. And I really can’t stress that enough. And I say this as someone who is a co-founder of the UU Media Collaborative that is a UU content creator – the reason we had to step up is because of the total lack of anything coming out of the UUA on the social media graphics front. And that’s a problem.
Next in the vision there’s a lot of talk about Congregations and Beyond, which once again, is great and all but so far meaningless to me. I think it holds great promise, but as far as I can see, nothing’s actually been done. Maybe there have been changes on the staff level, but as a somewhat well connected UU, I honestly can’t see how there’s been any sort of meaningful programming around Congregations and Beyond, beyond well, an unmoderated facebook group and conversations. Conversations aren’t enough.
Now, with the five-year tactics section, the first is about communication. I whole-heartedly agree about how important in this day and age a good communication strategy is. But President Morales said that the staffing decisions recently made were made with this strategic vision in mind and more than one of the positions let go involved communication. Now, I don’t know the details of what those positions did beyond the title, but eliminating communication positions when you say communication is the first strategic tactic to use over the next five years just doesn’t make sense to me.
Then content curation is back as a tactic that I think made a couple more hairs go gray. NO. I really can’t stress enough that the role of the UUA should be creation, not setting back and letting others define Unitarian Universalism and it’s mission/vision/message. If you move into curation that’s what you’re doing – letting others define the message. There’s no accountability with the Denomination only focusing on curation – I can make an image that goes viral that says Unitarian Universalism is all about pretty pictures of kittens, but that’s just not what UUism is about.
Ok, so I know a lot of my beef is with the curation vs. creation side, and I admit that’s probably a minor point to a lot of people. But I also know quite a bit about content curation vs. creation and I think the vision is totally wrong in that area. Most of the areas I don’t know much about, but if I find one part highly, highly alarming then it stands to reason there are other areas in there that are equally problematic to others who have expertise in those fields.
The vision, after re reading it, doesn’t leave me just feeling uninspired, I leave feeling like I’ve got no clue what it actually means in the real world. It’s written in that non-offensive UU corporate speak that we all know oh so well. There’s very little actionable things in that vision, and I can totally understand the Board’s frustration there.
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Oh, and as a final point, look at those tactics:
Communicate a new vision for Unitarian Universalism
Nurture new forms of congregational organization
Implementation of Ministry strategic review recommendations
Diversity in ministry
Regionalization
From content creation to curation
Public Witness and Social Justice
Stewardship
Notice things that are lacking? I do. Things like spiritual depth, faith development, religious education, you know, like, religious things.
So enough with the platitudes and the buzzwords of “Content Curation” and “Congregations and Beyond.” Let’s get to work on something concrete and let’s actually see and measure how that work is going. I for one applaud the board in making sure this happens and hope they continue pushing the administration for more concrete accountability. Not everything can be paired down to an excel spreadsheet to be analyzed, but more can that what was presented in this vision.
Thank you for sharing this, Tim. As an aspiring librarian, supporting curation over creation alarms me, too. I cannot curate something that barely exists.
I think we first spoke about this while I was livetweeting the Faith Formation 2020 training at the UUA. You’re spot on. The UUA should and must be about creation and co-creation, and not just reposting/pinning/retweeting/curating content.
Frankly, I don’t see how curation meets the primary purpose of the UUA as stated in the bylaws: “The primary purpose of the Association is to serve the needs of its member congregations, organize new congregations, extend and strengthen Unitarian Universalist institutions and implement its principles.”
Sure, curation can help, but it doesn’t deepen my spirituality, or develop my faith.
So maybe I came across a little strong…
I still want a bit of content creation happening at the denomination level, it’s where the money is-sorta. As curation was mentioned at Faith Formation 2020 (FF2020) training at the UUA, the Stewardship and Development folks also then wondered, how do you fund curation, or how/how do you help fund the actual content creators.
And I think curation is also needed, it would only strengthen our polity.
If I remember the FF2020 discussions correctly, it’s what John Roberto has discussed or noticed in local congregations, and his recommendations for how to help folks develop faith who don’t come into our congregations on Sunday morning as well.
I’ll be interested to see how other denominations embrace it.
I think Curation is the role of the Congregation for the most part. Yes, some creation, but leaving content creation up to our congregations works under the assumption that a) congregations have someone in that congregation with the technical skills to do so (and looking around at congregational websites, I doubt that) and b) that any one single congregation can define the greater message for all of Unitarian Universalism.
I wonder if the UUA feels like it can curate because they have a core of dedicated leaders who will provide programmatic content and resources.
I was a Youth Chaplain trainer for many years, and adapted a lot of the Chaplain training manual. I created a lot of content and gave it away because I felt the work was important. Part of me wishes I was compensated and part of me knows the work I did and do is valuable.
Sidenote: You won’t see Religious Education as a topic because I still haven’t been reached out to in a meaningful fashion from either LREDA (after registering as a new DRE) or the Southwest District. My argument is that’s the work that the UUA needs to be focused on but can’t because of UUMA and LREDA are separate entities.
Yeah, I have to disagree with you on this one. The intentional progression towards curation away from an attempt to see in every gap an opportunity to fill it themselves is an example of their maturing understanding of their role (from my perspective). There is an abundance of skilled and creative people producing great resources across the whole denomination in every role, but knowing about it and accessing it remains the biggest barrier. I think there needs to be more consideration of how they’re encouraging and facilitating and enabling that work (including financially), but I don’t think they need to be producing it themselves. This is especially true in worship, RE, music, programming, where regions, districts, and congregations have produced some of our best resources in recent years. I would like to see the UUA specifically looking at how their model can shift to platform provision rather than content.
I also disagree with the suggestion that it’s problematic that the media collaborative (a bunch of volunteers!) is articulating a vision of what UUism is. I think your concern is that you want the UUA to be promoting a clear, cohesive narrative otherwise any old person can post stuff and say “this is what UUism is.” There are people doing that already, and they will continue to do that, and well they should because it sometimes is very revealing about unconsidered viewpoints, and the notion of singular brand voice has effectively been revealed in recent years as impossible to maintain. So many of our branding exercises produce messages about who we think we ought to be, while the messages you’ve been creating (and it seems the UU Media Collaborative accepts submissions from most anyone if they have a good idea) tell us who we actually are.
The value we get out of the media collaborative’s messages is actually legitimate data about the phrases, ideas, sources and articulations that are resonating with people, that they’re sharing, that are effectively then their theologies. The messages that don’t resonate, that don’t reveal some truth, that don’t speak to them, don’t get shared. It’s the most democratic expression of our values I’ve ever seen manifested. We are in effect discovering who we are and what we believe via these messages rather than through some structured imagining of who we think we want to be (or what we think other people might want us to be that might make them come through the door maybe).
Like you, I would love to build a beautiful program and package and platform that the congregations can all sign on to that would follow best practices and help everyone do outreach, marketing and messaging well, but I think that doing that well doesn’t depend on its being done by the UUA, but instead by passionate people such as yourself, Peter, Rachel and others. What we need is a better way of bringing more people into that mix, enabling more vision sharers and making the whole thing sustainable.
Some of the congregations up here are looking at synchronizing themselves on a thematic calendar and I’m going to produce some web, audio, video and print assets that can be shared between them in whatever way they want to use them. Like many others, I want to give them away to other congregations and regions that might want to use them, but the mechanisms for doing that now suck. The UUA can fix that problem (or maybe that promised crowdfunding platform could).
I guess really I’m just saying, the work you’re doing now is the kind of work we need and you’re doing it in the right way. We just need more of it, from more people, in more places. Our shared theology is emerging through the metrics and I think it’s becoming clearer every day.
*Speaking of which, can we get another one of those metrics stories. Loved the last one.
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Amen, Christopher. UUA is an association of congregations, not the Vatican or even the Methodists. We are congregational, and we, not UUA Board or staff, define what UUism is. The Association’s role is to help us coordinate and share, not to hand down definitions or even provide services.