Category: collaboration

Playing With Sharing Evernote Notes

(Note: this post was scheduled month ago and got hung up. Just found it today!)
Since I got my iPad, one of the apps I’ve been playing with a lot is Evernote. I can prepare and/or take notes, incorporate images, etc from a meeting then send the notes via email to participants, or even make a note public. Here is my preparation note for the Graphic facilitation workshop I led at the Rome Based ShareFair last September, along with one photo from the workshop. Graphic facilitation workshop

Here is a note snippet from Etienne Wenger’s keynote at the ShareFair. Here are very brief notes from the community case clinics Etienne and I did at the Fair.

I have used this feature mostly for sending private notes to meeting participants as what I do on the iPad is usually pretty rough. I’ve found it pretty speedy and efficient. I can always fix the spelling when I get back to my desktop, as I still make a lot of typos on the iPad’s keyboard.  I like the low profile of the iPad vs the wall that even a small netbook creates on a lap or table.

More generally, I need to think about how to best organize my Evernote notes. I’m using it to read articles I’ve saved using Instapaper and ReadLater which make it easy to collect online content to read on the pad when I’m offline. But I tend to collect more than I read. So there are some workflow issues to sort out.  I still havent’ figured out my workflow relationship between readitlater and tagging on services like delicious. So many conundrums as I evolve my technology configuration.

What new tool(s) are you playing with?

Digital Habitats Editable version of Chapter 10 – Action Notebook

John Smith likes to work on his vacation, it seems. 😉 Thanks to him, we now have an editable version of Chapter 10 of Digital Habitats… which in essence is a collection of all the worksheets from the book. I’ll let him explain! This is from the book blog.

We wrote Chapter 10 of Digital Habitats as a combination summary of the whole book and as a workbook that organizes the content in a roughly chronological / process order (instead of the logical, expository order we use in the book itself).  We imagined that people would copy pages of the book and write their responses on paper.  And we published a PDF version that you could print out and write on as well.  But we’ve found that it’s useful when people complete it together, discuss it, and share it at several different stages of “completeness.”

Anybody can vew the Google Doc version of Chapter 10

Step 1: View the Google Doc version using this URL: http://bit.ly/DH-chapter10

Recently a group of students in the Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop completed a Word-Doc version of Chapter 10.  It turned out that the process of responding to the questions was very useful to them and the results were very interesting to compare, even thought the communities represented seemed quite different one from another.

Being able to write in the Word Doc was more useful than the PDF version because the boxes could expand according to how much there was to say about a particular topic for a particular community.  (And in one community that was at a very early stage of development, it was useful to complete just the front end and skip the rest of it.)

Here’s how to make a copy so you can work through the questions that are relevant to your community using Google Docs:

  1. Step 2: Save your own copy of the document

    Point your browser to the original:http://bit.ly/DH-chapter10 .  You can’t edit the original version, but anybody can view it.  Log in to Google Docs. (See Step 1.)

  2. Save your own copy of the document by selecting “Make a copy” on the drop-down menu under “file”.  (See Step 2.)

  3. Find your new copy in your list of Google Docs and begin the hard / fun part: thinking through all the issues discussed in Chapter 10!  (See Step 3.)

Step 3: Edit your copy, discuss, and share.

We are considering having some systematic group discussions in CPsquare, comparing completed responses for many different communities.  I anticipate that the issues raised in Chapter 10 will be challenging and difficult for some communities, obvious for others, and irrelevant for some.  Understanding more about those differences should be very useful to all of us.

If you have a completed workbook that you would like to present, please let me know.  Either way, stay in touch!

via Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities » Editable version of Chapter 10 – Action Notebook.

Thanks, John!

fOSSa2011, Coders and Sketchnotes

I’m home from another adventure! I’m back from Maastricht, Bonn and Lyon where I’ve been working and playing on various thingamabobbers. In Lyon, I really stepped into a new domain for me, Open Source Software (OSS) development. I was invited by the energetic and creative Stephane Ribas to present at fOSSa2011, a 2.5 day gathering of mostly French and Italian OSS developers and academics, along with a few philosophers and inventors thrown in to spice up the mix.

Conceptually, the discourse on Open Source makes a lot of sense to me. I did get lost when they started talking code. So I decided to sketch the sessions where I could understand “enough” to do a little reflection and sense making. It turns out people seemed to really appreciate the notes based on the feedback on Twitter and from people directly. After the organizers scanned the paper images, we gave each of them their own picture. I sense that this is a unique way to know you have been “heard.” It also helped me get to know people a bit easier.

My talk was a mish-mosh of ideas that relate to supporting communities of developers and related roles in the OSS space. I talked general, not OSS, but with the intent that the ideas were applicable. Slides are also below. I went out on a limb and had them start with the face co-drawing exercise from Johnnie Moore. I sense it pushed some out of their comfort zones, while others seemed to enjoy it. My goal was both to show another “face” of co-creation and collaboration, AND to break out of the traditional academic presentation mode.

As I reflected on the 2.5 days, there were a ton of amazing ideas, but it was challenging to be sitting and listening in schoolroom set up all day. Just imagine these same people using OpenSpace and what additional space for conversation would be available! Next year the fOSSa theme is “archeology” looking back at the open source software movement. I suggested they do a large graphically captured history wall. YES! I hope I can help contribute to that next year, on site or remotely. In the meantime, I’ve been given a lot to reflect on regarding the politics of OSS, the wonderful side conversations with the wonderful Miguel Cornejo, who I finally got to me F2F, and finally, the enticing possibilities of RepRap machines from Adrian Bowyer! Holiday project?

My thanks to all the organizers, hosts, speakers and presenters. I had a wonderful time, including the great wine tasting meal on Thursday. Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/sets/72157628002081730/

via fOSSa2011 sketchnotes.

fOSSa2011 sketchnotes

And the slides…which make little sense without the talk. Sorry.

fOSSa2011: Five Things About Online Community and Networks

View more presentations from Nancy White
View more presentations from Nancy White

Noodling on my fOSSa presentation

October is a month on the road… and one stop is Lyon, France, where I’ll be presenting at the third edition of the fOSSa Conference taking place from October 26 to 28, 2011.

What is fOSSa? From the organizers:

The aim of the fOSSa (Free Open Source Academia Conference) is to reaffirm the underlying values of Open Source software: innovation & research in software development.

While the first edition aimed at providing valuable information on the Open Source model at large, the second edition focused specific key-aspects of FOSS such as development, innovation & research, community management & promotion, public sector, and education. The third edition will address in an open-minded style about
– what tech people are actually doing and innovating?
– which are the upcoming issues & challenges in the open development context?
– how open activities, collaboration and knowledge sharing is beneficial to academia, education & industry?

fOSSa 2011 program includes talks about Education, Online Community Management, New Innovating Development & Contribution Paradigm, Openness and OSS trends.

fOSSa days are open to everyone and registration is free !
more information @ http://fossa.inria.fr

So what am I going to offer? Here is my first draft: Twittering: Frittering or Connecting?  The role of transversal connections in online communities and networks.

As humans, we have a long history of working in groups: families, local geographic communities, work teams. Today online technologies allow us to connect broadly using networks of all kinds. We might think of these as deep (groups) and broad (networks). The question is, how do we keep these two forms usefully knitted together? How do the emerging technologies work together as a useful habitat, and when do they actually make things harder? What are the online and offline implications? Lets explore the place of the “transversal!”

I picked up the word “transversal” from Etienne Wenger’s talk a few weeks ago at the Rome Share Fair. It resonated with my observations about the disconnect we seem to experience between high level conversations in a domain and practice, between the breadth of networks and the intimacy of smaller groups. So I grabbed the word and I’m running with it, along with his term “social artist!” Yum. Plus I’ll weave in technology stewardship. So maybe this is about roles, eh?

This week I also have a fabulous case to illustrate many of the ideas I’m thinking of sharing, the #Canlis4Free treasure hunt in Seattle. I took a ton of screen shots and uploaded them today.  But does one dare talk about one of the more exclusive Seattle restaurants when in the home of some of France’s finest cooking? Mmmm….

Dave, Rachel and a Great Online Meeting Idea

Browsing Rachel Smith’s blog today I came across this terrific idea. She was building on an idea of Dave Gray (of Brainstorming fame) to help people share their current state. Sort of a project emotional barometer. I love things that help us visualize and make discussable this often “internal weather.”

Project Map | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

I can imagine putting the image up on a webmeeting white board.

John Smith introduced me to a barometer for the ongoing health of a community of practice which I really liked. What this one does is taking it a step beyond simple data collection and add the emotive element.