Year: 2009

Interested in Informal Learning? Join us at LearnTec 2009

Tomorrow I’ll be the guest of Heike Philip (in Germany) along with Jay Cross and Ken Thompson for an online roundtable on virtual learning, informal learning and virtual teams. We’ll mix it up, I’m sure. It is part of a larger day of activities that are F2F and online in GERMAN in the morning, German time, and in English in the afternoon, German time (early morning for us on the US West coast). Join us!

 

DateFebruary 4, 2009
Time1:30pm – 6pm Middle European Time
Duration4,5 h
BusyPeople
World Timewww_timeanddate_com
PlaceElluminate
TagsLearnTec 2009 , Simulcast, European Telecoaches Institute
Max. no of participantsNo limit live online, entrance fee at the LearnTec conference 49 €
ProgramProgram in pdf-format in ENGLISH, GERMAN, SPANISH
Registrationhttp://www.lancelotschool.com/index.php/services/events/registration
RecordingThis event will be recorded

Meeting Point @ LearnTec 2009
4:30pm  Virtual Collaboration Moderation Heike Philp
Introduction with Lutz Berger, free journalist 2.0, Science&Faction
Virtual Round Table – Panel Discussion

4:30pm  (GMT +!)   Virtual Collaboration Moderation Heike Philp
Introduction with Lutz Berger, free journalist 2.0, Science&Faction
Virtual Round Table – Panel Discussion
Jay Cross, author of the book ‘Informal Learning’, Nancy White, consultant for communities of practise and Ken Thompson, virtual team expert and author of the ‘Bioteaming Manifesto’, meet live online to discuss strengths and opportunities as well as weaknesses and threats for virtual teams.
This is an unusual and an explosive mixture of experts and trendsetters who have been doing the ground work of connecting people. We are looking forward to hearing their views on the ‘next 5000 days’ of the Internet, an Internet that appa rently took 5000 days to reach the same amount of connections than our brain has todate. Heike Philp will be moderating the discussion and invites all present, namely all ‘virtual’ and all ‘local’ participants to testdrive virtual collaboration and to freely share ideas.

How are we building our “community soil?

Via Hyperlocavore, I watched this video on preparing an urban, raised-bed garden. It focuses on the building of raised beds, using rotating small animal waste, and hoop houses to get an early start on the gardening season. If you are interested in gardening, take a look at the video. If not, skip the video and hop below for the online community connection.

Last week, I pondered the agricultural metaphor for knowledge sharing. The idea of “gardener” as a community role is not new, nor is the ecosystem metaphor.

So what are the practices for communities that are akin to the late winter preparation for Spring gardening?

In the video, Gardening Girl talks about:

  • start with clean, well drained soil
  • use a modular design so you can easily take care of your garden
  • use all the creatures available – chickens and rabbit hutches rotated over dormant beds to do off season soil building (in other words, good s$%#)
  • take advantage of free stuff to build soil – leaves and grass clippings
  • cover unused beds
  • build  simple hoop houses to get an early start on the season (she even shows us how – it’s easy!)
  • raised beds take the back breaking work out of gardening, bringing the garden to you
  • intensive gardening saves water and increases yield

From an online community building perspective, this might translate to:

  • Clean soil – simple environment. Make sure the technology you use is aligned to the core needs of the community – what tasks do they need to do together. Other stuff can be added later, but if you start with a mess, you’ll end with a mess.
  • Modular – can tools, processes and content for or developed by the community be used easily in different ways? Can you repurpose something for another use if needs change or you need to expand or contract? Can you easily add and subtract activities and tools?
  • All the Creatures – who is already doing something similar? Are there early joiners who have something to add to the initial start up building and process? Use what is available! Be creative. Don’t let things go to waste!
  • Use the Free Stuff – Look around and see what free things can support (build the soil) your community.  Can you put up with some ads and use a free tool? Can you recycle existing resources (and save the earth a bit along the way). If you have a budget, where is it best spent? On tools, or the rare chance for a face to face? On technology, or chocolate? (well, I may be getting carried away.) Make recycled chic and focus your resources where they count – on people.
  • Cover Unused Beds – empty spaces create empty feelings. Is some part of the community technology configuration unused? Are there dead forums? Pull out the good content and recycle it elsewhere, and either archive of button up the empty spaces. But be careful about what you delete. See these threads on the ComPrac list about the dangers of assumptions about archives.
  • Hoop Houses for Early Starts – sometimes online communities need a smaller, protected space to germinate, build trust and get strong to withstand some of the buffets of the open world. This may mean finding an existing set of core members and gradually growing, or creating a little hot house to get things going.
  • Raise the Beds – like higher planting boxes that reduce stooping, bringing community as close to where people are now rather than making them go further out of their way to participate. Can you piggy back on their community rather than starting a new one? Are there some simple overlaps or complementarities that suggest some sort of cross community collaboration?
  • Intensive Gardening – good soil retains water and has greater yields. Good nurturing, leadership, stewardship and followership makes it easier for communities to focus on why they came together in the first place. This is not about control, but creating space and conditions for success. So a little extra work up front can go a long way. But like anything, don’t get carried away. Like a garden, a community has its seasons and it changes over time. Be as intensive as is right for the moment!

So is Spring approaching in your community? What are you doing to prepare?

How Could I have missed the annual Soup Swap?

Nerd's Eye Soup Swap Picture on FlickrI live in a place that is cold, dark and wet in the winter, something that can only be assuaged by good friends, more chocolate and soup. I am thinking about making split pea soup this very minute but instead, I was doing some blog reading catch up on Nerd’s Eye View – a Seattle blogger – and saw her post on a Seattle Soup Swap.

Waaah. I missed it. No matter that day I had just returned from 20 hours of international travel and was asleep by the time they started, but just the idea is delicious. It is such a community indicator. When people ask about the most important part of facilitating a F2F event, i say “the communal meals.” Even better if they are home made, pot luck, or if in a restaurant, family style. Where the sound level is quiet enough to hear each other converse, but not so quite you feel embarassed to guffaw out loud. Or worse, laugh with your mouth full of food.

While there is SO much we can do together online, I have yet to find the thing that creates the experience of a shared meal. I have been in online chats where each of us, at our distributed location, eats and writes about what we are eating. But it is a different experience. The hosting act of providing a tenderly cooked meal, or even sharing your store bought cookie, is a uniquely human, embodied experience. It ain’t the same online.

There is one ritual of the soup swaps that I find entrancing. Knox Gardner writes about it from the recent Seattle Swap:

It takes quite a while for the “Telling of the Soup” to get around the room when there are twenty-two soups, but it’s worth it. Without the Telling, it’s an empty power grab. With the telling, the humaneness of sharing food together shines right through. It’s essential.

Here is another soup swap post worth reading.

Want to set up your own Soup Swap? You can find all the how-to’s at Soup Swap

Photo from Nerds Eye View on Flickr

Brandy Agerbeck’s Obama Speach Visual Capture

For those of you interested in visual thinking and graphic recording, take a look at this! Brandy was inspired to do a visual capture of Obama’s inaguration speech – something quite different than she normally does. 

Brandy Agerbecks Graphic Facilitation Work

I was really interested to read about her process…

… I ended up scribbling down the main points I heard in pencil on a notebook. Not a real-time drawing. And as I scribbled notes, I realized that it was critical to quote Obamas words. One of my skills is to distill points into shorter, clearer phrases. Because this content was recorded and would be quoted, it was good to keep it in Obamas voice, even if it took my shape, my synthesis.

After I scribbled the notes, I downloaded a transcript. I highlighted the phrases that resonated with me when I listened live. Next, I needed to figure out how to wrap these points around the Obama banner I had drawn as a centerpiece. I started knowing that the O would be a face saying a major point. I chose to make that “Greatness is never a given. It is earned.” I built the main point around the banner, though not strictly in linear order.

I was very curious what pieces of the speech would be made into soundbites. As I prepped this image, I listened to NPR and I was glad to hear a lot of the pieces of the drawing being repeating on air.

Her reflection about capturing Obama’s exact words brought to mind one of the challenges/questions I face when doing either text or visual summaries of group conversations. How important is individual recognition and ownership of the words? When are quotes essential and when does distillation add more. Clearly in this case there was a sole focus on Obama. But Brandy’s articulation of the point gave me food for thought.

What do you do when you summarize online or F2F group interactions? What is your harvesting practice?