Full Circle Associates

OK, time to capture my random thoughts on the CPSquare F2F gathering at the Tree House in Amsterdam on June 13th. Fifteen bright, interesting souls spent Sunday talking about a wide range of issues loosely bound around the topic of Communities or Practice. We had some long-time CPSquare members plus some great new friends from the blogging world. As always, it is fascinating to get a peek at how we each experience these gatherings and the ongoing sense of always feeling like we are the outsiders. Are there really any insiders?

Others have blogged about the structure of the day, so I thought I'd write a bit about the things that have persisted, buzzing around in my head.

Designed for a Group, Experienced as an Individual
In our lovely morning breakout group Mary Ann started us out with a story about a research project she did with a partner at the University of Waikaito (check spelling) in New Zealand. They had a lot of material to gather and organize so they wanted a web space. One partner wanted to use a blog, the other a more traditional web based discussion space. Each of them preferred the space they had organized and it was a challenge for them to work in the others' space. Fundamentally, both were intended as containers for sharing content, yet each user experienced them in different enough ways to create a divided experience.

Why? Is it habituation on the platforms we first experience? Learning style? (I trotted out my long held observation that global thinkers adopt to a wider variety of online tools and experiences faster than sequential thinkers and that blogs are very suited to global thinkers. See Lilia's cloud theory. Whatever the cause, there is a very real experience gap so when we are thinking about online interaction tools in a group or team setting, we have some serious challenges. Just because it works for one or some does not mean it will work for the group. We need to figure this out better and think about solutions that bridge individual experiences into a more shared experience WHEN THIS is critical to the purpose at hand. (It isn't always -- important caveat!) So I'll keep harping on this designed for a group/experienced by an individual thing.

This segues into the question about why there are some very strong feeling camps and distance between camps in the blogger/discussion board/wiki arena and how can we move past advocacy for one over another and instead look for bridges?

The Group That Eats Together Communicates Better?
Finally, the two highlights of Sunday revolve around meals. Our lunch was a collaborative pot luck including some great red wine from the Basque region of Spain, fresh danish from Denmark, Dutch cheeses and meats, US chocolates and lovely fresh fruit and bread. Many hands cleared the decks for lunch, we had a laughter and conversation filled 90 minutes and then poof, all hands cleared things away so we could continue our conversations. It was seamless and it felt efortless to me. Was it the wine? The company? The companionable act of sharing food?


Later that evening we had to get to Den Hague where many of use were participating in the Infonortics Virtual Communities conference. It was getting late, we had to prepare for the next day and there were no restaurants nearby. So we walked across the street to the Shell station, bought and heated up Indonesian foon in the microwave and had another amazing dinner eating food from a gas station sitting in the parking lot of a fancy-pants hotel. I still smile when I remember it!


Summing up? It is great to be in a community of practice on communities of practice. And it is great to punctuate our ongoing online interaction with F2F meetings with fresh ideas, old and new friends, wicked complicated problems and always, the communal meal.