Year: 2009

Book News!

On other fronts, our book is at the printer. YES OUR BOOK IS AT THE PRINTER! Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities is DONE!!

The manuscript is at our printer, Lightingsource. The cover is done. The index is done. We await the proofs, knowing full well there will be errors and typos, despite the best effort of us and our friends who have been helping out. But Digital Habitats is about to emerge. The tentative date is August 15, 2009.technologyforcommunities.com, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities, Aug 2009

You should read the whole article.

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Online Community Building Strategy Advice

We are having record breaking heat here in Seattle and I just don’t have the energy to jump into my stack of half drafted blog posts. So I’ll take advantage of Robin Good’s interview with me in Rome earlier this month! Thanks, Robin!

Online Community Building Strategy: Good Advice From Nancy White

(Gee, I do talk fast)

Edit: It appears that Robin has some other videos from that day on YouTube here, here and here.

Monday Video: Digital Skills + Community = Digital Literacies

Following my recent rants on skills ((Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), comes this pertinent video of Howard Rheingold at Reboot Britain. (Hat tip Will Richardson http://twitter.com/willrich45)  Howard asks us to go beyond skills – which are embedded in the individual – to literacies which are embedded in communities and networks, particularly digital literacies tied to social media. The five he talks about in this video include:

  1. Attention
  2. Participation
  3. Cooperation
  4. Critical Consumption (Crap Detection)
  5. Network Awareness

“The fluency is not the particular literacy, but being able to put these literacies together.” Howard Rheingold.

Take a watch.

Deeper Skills for Learning Professionals…Part 4

It is fascinating to see what strikes a cord. This series on Skills for Learning Professionals and Knowledge Workers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) have spiked the old hit-meeter and shown up on Tweets all week. There have been many thoughtful and insightful comments and the other blog posts responding to Tony K’s Big Question have been fabulous. (I keep adding the links at the bottom of Part 1).

Michele MartinToday Michele Martin posted an important amplification to  the “Four Meta Skills” from Part 1. Michele offered the caution around online  homophily. She said I didn’t go far enough with the four and she is very right. She deepened them.

Michele, your observations are so good, I’m pulling in a rather lengthy quote, but I urge everyone to go read Michele’s full post, especially the science references at the start. (Emphasis mine.)

In it she says that scanning, filtering, connecting and sense-making are critical skills.  I agree with this, but think that maybe Nancy didn’t go far enough in thinking about how we develop these skills. She offered a series of excellent questions to ask ourselves in terms of our ability to do things like scan and filter, but they don’t take into account the habits of mind and psychological behaviors we bring to the table in developing these skills.  In light of our tendencies toward homophily and pre-conceived ideas, it would seem there are deeper issues at work that we need to consider:

  • When we are scanning, how do we combat our natural tendency to only “see” information that fits with our preconceived notions of the world? The skill of scanning isn’t just about how well we are able to manage a stream of information. It’s also about our ability to actually SEE information in its raw form.
  • In developing our filtering skills, how do we ensure that we are not filtering out information that doesn’t fit wth our existing concepts and frames? I suspect that many, if not most of us, are likely to apply our filters in a way that shields us from data we may not want to consider. But this is not effective filtering behavior, particularly if we end up filtering out key data that would change our decisions or ideas about how things work.
  • Creating a knowledge network is important, but if we are creatures of homophily, seeking out like-minded connections, then are we really using this skill to its full advantage? How do we make our networks diverse? As I’ve pointed out before, social technology tends to collude in this process of connecting us to like-minded people, for example suggesting friends who share our interests. But how do I ensure that I’m connecting to people who think differently than I do?
  • How do we become capable of objective sense-making based on the actual data that is coming into us, rather than our IDEAS of what the data means? I think that the tendency to interpret information as its coming into our brains is so ingrained we don’t even realize it’s happening. That’s why “beginner’s mind” is an aspiration, rather than something most of us are able to do on a regular basis.

Again, these are not just skills for learning professionals or knowledge workers. They are literacies that most of us need in the “modern” world. Online and offline.

Thanks, Michele! Your other post, Are Knowledge Workers the New Blue Collar Workers, was also terrific. I deeply appreciated that you asked why these skills aren’t getting traction and if some of them will be subsumed by computers.

Next ICT-KM Social Media for Development Workshop

It seems like we just finished the last one, but here it comes again… the next Social Media for International Development Sector Workshop from the ICT-KM Program of the CGIAR. I’m really looking forward to facilitating it with Simone and Pete!

“Social media is using the Internet to collaborate, share information, and have a conversation about ideas, and causes we care about, powered by web based tools.” – [We Are Media]

Background
From the learnings from the successful pilot (See blog posts about the event), and second  Social Media Online Workshop, the CGIAR through its ICT-KM Program, is pleased to offer a new online opportunity for social media explorations, this time with the specific objective to embed social media in participants’ contexts of international development work. This fully online workshop will run from September 7 to 25, 2009.

Social media offers international development practitioners and organizations a move from “push” communications towards a place where we can interact with our constituents, listen and engage with them in ways we never could before. It enables us to network with colleagues and some stakeholders. If facilitates collaboration in the lab and in the field.

Social media also offers so many options that it can be overwhelming. This workshop focuses on exploration of social media from some specific international development contexts. So instead of saying “there is a tool, how can we use it,” this workshop seeks to answer “we need to do this activity, how can social media support it and under what circumstances.”

If you ask yourself questions like these, you might consider joining the workshop:

  • How can I support collaboration in wide-spread teams?
  • How can I provide opportunities for open dialogue with my stakeholders?
  • How do we support communities of practice and thematic networks, online and offline?
  • How do we share our content and knowledge effectively online?
  • How can we make use of social media under low-bandwidth constraints?

This online workshop is designed for researchers, research and development communications professionals and knowledge sharing practitioners.

Objectives of the workshop
This three week online workshop will provide a collaborative, peer based learning opportunity for you, as development practitioners, to address if and how social media can help address your needs, opportunities or challenges related to collaboration, participation, or communication. By the end of the workshop you should be able to understand and analyze the opportunities that social media can offer in the view of your specific research and development context, identify some potential tools and create a plan of action.

During this workshop you will:

  • Identify possibles usages of social media through small group synchronous and full group asynchronous conversation, exploring opportunities and constraints related to your work.
  • Obtain an understanding and appreciation of the role and value of social media.
  • Explore 2-3 different social media tools which may be appropriate for your context.
  • Start to plan the implementation of one or more social media tools that fit our work environment.
  • Learn from participants of mixed professional and organizational backgrounds.

Outline of the 3-week event

  • Week 1 to 2 – Context and Application of Social Media: Introductions, and telephone conversations in small groups to assess your research for/and development context and identify opportunities for social media practices.
  • Week 2 to 3 – Testing Social Media Tools. Explore select social media tools in small groups.
  • Finalizing week 3 – Reflection for Action. Reflect on individual and group learning of the past two weeks and  create an initial plan for social media implementation.

Maximum Number of participants: 18

Language: English

Participant Requirement/Dedicated time: This workshop offers an in-depth exploration of social media tools adapted to your specific context with personalized support and work in small groups. To do this, we ask the following of each participant:

  • Organize your agenda to dedicate up to 1-1/2 hours per day during the three weeks. If you will be on travel and won’t have time in a particular week, save some time for “catch up.” If you will not be able to participate in more than one week, please consider taking a future workshop. It will become hard to catch up after missing significant time.
  • Participate in weekly telecons of  60-90 minutes. These are scheduled for the afternoons for those in Europe and Africa, mornings for North and South American, and evenings for Asia. We will try to accomodate all time zones as best we can.
  • Read and respond to blog posts
  • Explore at least 2 tools
  • Reflect and share your learnings on the workshop blog and wiki
  • Complete a pre- and post-workshop survey.

Open to: CGIAR staff, not for profit partners, agricultural and development organizations. Individuals, consultants and members of for profit organizations may join on a space available basis as the unsubsidized rate. (See costs below)

Platform: Blog, Skype and/or telephone, email and wiki. Our teleconference platform allows you to call for free using Skype. If you choose to use a landline for the conference calls, you will be responsible for long-distance costs. You should have regular access to the Internet. Some tools may not be accessible for those with low bandwidths. You may need to check with your IT department, as some web-based services you wish to explore may be currently blocked in your organization and you may need to seek support to access them.

Facilitators: Nancy White (Full Circle Associates), Simone Staiger-Rivas (CGIAR-CIAT), Pete Shelton (IFPRI)

Cost: USD$ 850 for people who work in international development/NGO organizations, USD$ 1050 for those who work for for-profits or are consultants.

Contact: Please write to Simone Staiger-Rivas (s.staiger[at]cgiar.org) for questions and subscription