Month: April 2010

Digital Habitats on April 5 Yi-Tan Tech Call

Host with the most, Jerry Michalski, convenes a weekly 45 minute telecon that delves into interesting subjects and discussed with fascinating people. This coming week Etienne, John and I are the guests. Here is the information – please JOIN US!

Digital Habitats
Yi-Tan Weekly Tech Call #274
Monday, April 5, 2010

Do you need a technology steward? Are you one already?

Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D Smith are black belts in social learning and online community formation (as well as longtime friends of ours). Their new book, Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities, focuses on how communities and technology intersect, with practical advice for the stewards — the people with enough experience in the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with technology to take leadership in addressing those needs.

If you are a member of a community (who isn’t?) and you’ve made use of a mailing list, wiki, web conferencing system, Skype call or other collaboration tool, you’re probably curious already.

With Etienne, Nancy and John, let’s discuss:

  • How has technology changed what it means for communities to “be together”?
  • What is the role of a technology steward? the key skills? the new terms of art?
  • Where can we see these stewards in action? How can we learn these skills?

There’s also a site for their new book, here.

As always, an IRC Chat will be available during the call, here.

We tweet as @yitan. Please follow us, and let’s also continue using #yitan. This page is on a wiki, here.

Date:    Monday, April 5, 2010

Time:    10:30 PDT, 1:30 EDT

Dial-in Number: 1-270-400-1500
Participant Access Code: 778778

See all the calls in the call archive or listen to the edited podcasts on this blog. You can also listen to the shorter call summaries.
Please feel free to forward this note to people you think would be interested in these calls. (To unsubscribe, please just reply to me and I’ll be happy to do so.)

Talk to you on the call!

Bestest,

Jerry

Suggested Readings in Complexity and Systems Thinking?

A couple of weeks ago I shared the link to Donella Meadow’s seminal essay, Places to Intervene in a System. This was in the context of moving our perspective of some work from a linear progression to something complex.

She found the essay useful and asked “what basic readings would you suggest to follow up  learning about complexity.”

Well, I know enough to be dangerous in this area, rather than useful. So I turned to my network and asked for recommendations for suggested readings in complexity and systems thinking. I created a simple Google form that feeds into a Google spreadsheet. Then I tweeted out the request. Today there are over 25 entries, books both familiar and new to me. And from people who care about this topic.

First, I want to thank all the people who have and who continue to add to this resource:

If you want to see or add to the resource, Suggested Readings in Complexity and Systems Thinking takes you to the spreadsheet to view. Below is the form to fill in if you have a suggestion. (Edit – just a screen shot. I forgot WP does not allow iframe! To fill out the form please go  here.) If you leave me a comment, I can also add you to edit the spreadsheet directly if you would like.

Now my next step is to create a reading path through these, to build, and expand versus overwhelm us, the readers! Ideas? How would you navigate and why?

Later PS: Just saw this Tweet from Alice and it is sooo relevant: