I know, four months with nary a post and this is just a quick visit. If you are a champion for visual practices, Liberating Structures and collective sense making, take a peek at Barry Overeem’s wonderful post about the Liberating Structure, Drawing Together. I particularly appreciate his emphasis on the TOGETHER bit, because this LS can often be relegated to an individual activity.
Earlier this month on the KM4Dev email list, one of my colleagues pointed to a study comparing F2F and online idea generation in the journal Nature and concluding F2F produced better results.
Virtual communications curbs creative idea generation, by Melanie S. Brucks and Jonathan Levav was a fascinating read. The authors did more to test their hypothesis compared to other studies I’ve read which claim one environment or other is better for some function. I take them with the proverbial grain of salt. This one got me thinking more deeply. Here is a bit from their summary:
Departing from previous theories that focus on how oral and written technologies limit the synchronicity and extent of information exchanged4,5,6, we find that our effects are driven by differences in the physical nature of videoconferencing and in-person interactions. Specifically, using eye-gaze and recall measures, as well as latent semantic analysis, we demonstrate that videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus. Our results suggest that virtual interaction comes with a cognitive cost for creative idea generation.
Brooks and Levav
Narrower cognitive focus! In the example studies, they talked about the power of objects around is in a physical room to help us get creative. We limit those options when we diligently focus on the screen online. Wait, we focus on the screen because that is what we have habituated as proper virtual behavior. “Focus on the screen! Avoid distractions! And then we lose a bit of ourselves. Have you ever had that experience at the end of a Zoom where you have to reground yourself in your physical space?
Broader cognitive focus! Our habits impact our participation and our results. What if it is our lack of imagination and attention to what full presence and participation means that hampers us? What if we invited ourselves to use our F2F external environment WHILE attending to the screen? What if stepping away from the screen was part of the idea generation practice which not only widened our visual cognitive focus, but reawakened our kinesthetic selves?
It is convenient to assume that environment trumps all. And thus we begin to bias our thinking about the issue of F2F vs online options and choices that are so top-of-mind these days.
Maybe we are asking the wrong questions. What if the question was “what kinds of focus most contribute to idea generation?” And THEN ask how that focus can play out across different environments. This might be a great area for experimentation!
Alan Levine noted that he is just past his blogaversary and linked to a post of his from 2006 that I just love. It is a story of how he created an artifact from a presentation I gave at NorthernVoice (a BLOGGING conference, can you IMAGINE that?? We were crazy kids back in the day!). What was magical about this story is how Alan’s recording of my talk rippled across our respective networks and how people added to it and amplified it. (Bev, I loved your notes. Still do! Nick, all these years you mashed it up and now retirement is on the horizon! Who would have guessed!) I think this is when I really became a fan of CogDog, aka, Alan.
Alan’s post also has me looking back at years and years of Flickr event albums. Mama mia, there are stories. I often think I have few stories to tell. My problem is simply that I just don’t practice telling them! A little nostalgia… And boy, I was a lot younger back then! And with a lot longer hair. Still sharing the same Dove Dark chocolates though!
Edit a few minutes later: I’m listening to the audio. Still relevant.
Here comes a wander. Be warned.
There are some bulbs along our driveway that were here when we bought our house in 1984. In the Spring, they put up a bunch of large green, strappy leaves which dry and fade away as the Summer heat comes on. Then, come Autumn, large pink crocus-like flowers emerge. The surprise was delightful the first time and still is, 30-some years later. (Turns out they are probably Giant Colchicum – Autumn Crocus).
So blogging… I’m not sure if it is because I’m paying attention differently, or if there is something emerging around personal blogging like the crocus. It is alive all year long. It sends up shoots in the Spring then disappears again, and then it flowers. Is a new cycle starting? People whose blogs I used to read consistently but who have faded out over the years are blogging again. There is crosslinking around the topic at hand. Look who is blogging again!! I’m so delighted. (AND: I need a better feedreader, email subscriptions are not as useful, help!)
Blogging is different than participating in social media for me. But it takes more time and attention. It is quieter for the most part. Sometimes solitary. Sometimes it connects. Sometimes it needs the permanency of a url so it can sit, and later, even much later, the flowers can emerge. It is NOT feed of the moment for me.
I wrote yesterday about my Blogiversary. One of the observations was the power of thinking out loud in a blog post and the tantalizing possibility that others may chime in, counter, improve or simply show they were “there” in a comment. As Chris Corrigan noted, the satisfaction is NOT like the (addictive, distracting, destructive) “likes” or “retweets” of FB, Instagram and Twitter. I feel something visceral in this. Cellular versus a visual stimulation that comes and goes in an instant.
Dave Pollard wonders out loud about the role of relationship in our blogging. About how relationships do or do not inform our sense of identity. Euan Semple riffs on the relationship and self knowing. ( I find Euan’s post today on non-identifying usefully troublesome and need to think about what is surfacing for me, about the down side of non-identifying when one is from a dominant culture, race, gender etc. Claiming non-identification can also be an abdication of the negative impact of privilege but that is another topic for pondering.)
What we all have in common is that we wonder out loud in our blogs.
P.S. If you don’t blog, and are INTERESTED, check out these suggestions from Chris.
Today I had a TON of fun with Beehive Productions “Origin Stories” series where they brought in the two founders of Liberating Structures, Keith McCandless and Henri Lipanowicz. Beehiver Amy Lenzo called to ask if I would do a graphic recording of the two hour Zoom session.
So today I got out my paper and pens with glee. I was all set to draw when my eye caught a piece of interesting paper in the mess that is my desk. Just a few days ago Keith had shared some of the collage work he is doing and I thought, hey, I’ll collage! So without permission I went to work. I pulled and piled scraps in front of my computer, grabbed blue glitter glue and a tray of acrylic paints and went crazy.
Is it useful? Who knows, but it was SURE fun to do. It was total improvisation on my part. Here is the final piece.
