Strategic Planning for Networks.. (what can we learn from the planning behind wikipedia's 100,000 volunteer editors)

I'm interested in how we can leverage huge numbers of people from around the world towards a collective pro-social aim. The best example of this (and yet to be replicated) is wikipedia.

Below are some slides from their planning explaining how they moved from a mission of "all information for everyone" to 100,000 volunteer editors around the world, maintaining the 4th most read website on earth. This is a bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model. Diverse volunteers can create fast, fluid and innovative projects that outperform the largest and best financed enterprises..

Lets be completely honest. Our current method of: context, gap analysis and strategic planning WILL NOT GET US HERE. This isn't about a communication strategy, or dissemination or viral applications. Its about how we sell a massive challenge and manage millions of separate contributions into a whole. And we cannot do that by using the same strategy tools.As the slides say: "the plan is not the point, the point is activation".

So how do we make it happen? Here's their 5 steps:

1. focus on asking Qs
2. make a space for it to happen
3. focus on people
4. model transparency
5. fail fast

Strategic Planning for Networks from Eugene Kim