Category: engagement

Reconceptualizing facilitation and participation in a networked (MOOC) context

Well, since Stephen quotes me, and I’ve fully dived into Lisa Lane’s critique  (the real juice is in the comments) of the Curtis Bonk/Blackboard/Coursesite’s MOOC  “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success , I guess I had better blog my thoughts here on my own space. 🙂 Please forgive the stream of conciousness, because if I take too much time to craft this, it won’t happen. Life and work is happening like a thundering curtain of water coming off of Victoria Falls. (Yes, my trip to Zambia is still strong in my memory!)

This is a particularly fruitful time for  reflection because I’m working on three projects with aspirations to build capacity for facilitation of (mostly) online learning in some quite diverse contexts. Most of them have larger ambitious of scaling and becoming as much “network like” as much as smaller, bounded “community-like.”

Add to that the fact that there is such a streak of conversation, creative tension and interest as #Bonkopen (as us Twitterphiles know it) launches into its first full week, you know there is learning happening. For some, it is the eye-opening possibilities of scale, even if not fully realized (BonkOpen will see participation rates declined. I’m pretty sure of it.)  There is and will be gobs more of learning, even  if it is not the INTENDED learning.  More about that later! First, the quote from Stephen’s OLDaily. (Emphasis  mine.)

Intro video for Curt Bonk’s ‘Blackboard MOOC’ (I wonder how much Blackboard itself is putting into this project). The level of support from his home institution makes me envious: “IU has been highly supportive. Last week, there is a university press release as well as an article in the student newspaper. And my instructional systems technology (IST) department had a short online news story as well.” Not everybody is enthused, though. A comment to the Inside Higher Ed article points to “a long list of serious problems with Blackboard Course Sites that render it unusable for a MOOC” – there’s no blog subscription options, no profile pages for participants, and no blog comment notifications. As Nancy White says, “the design issue here is designing for a networked experience, not a group experience (which is foundational in a lot of Dr. Bonk’s work with a focus on community, etc.) Bb is not network centric.” See also Sail’s Pedagogy, “blogging within an LMS is just wrong.” And Lisa Lane writes, in “Leaving an open online class,” that “it’s the same old Blackboard, with more white space, nicer fonts and some cool icons.”

Let’s pick apart some layers here. We certainly have a technological aspect which I’m going to studiously ignore because not only is it ginormous, but I want to focus on the process of design and facilitation in this post. So we’ll leave the tech elephant in the room for a later post. I’m sure I can take a technology stewardship lens to it! 😉

Curt Bonk has been an amazing practitioner and scholar of facilitating learning, particularly online learning. He has been a source of inspiration to me and many others. What I really REALLY want to learn from his MOOC is how to apply his ideas and theories to a networked learning experience vs a group learning experience. I want to learn and practice these skills not just because MOOCs are all the rage. (Don’t know what a MOOC is? A massively open online course — see more here.) My motivation is because much of the work I’m doing with distributed teams, communities of practices and networks find their ability to AMPLIFY what they learn and produce requires access to, and from,the  larger networks that contain their groups.

The sort-of-obnoxious part of me wants to poke at this particular MOOC which is about using tools for online learning success, branding itself as a MOOC, trying to use this network-intentioned form to learn about practices that have essentially built on the bounded small group form learning  — the thing we often call “courses.”  Does anyone else see the irony?

Laura Gibbs, who I thankfully “met” in the introduction threads of BonkOpen (by posting with a provocative subject line instead of a traditional “intro” one – which would be pretty obnoxious in the old model, and effective in a networked context) wrote in the comments of Lisa’s blog:

If Blackboard can make this massive class and call it a MOOC, very M and very C, while not having much O or O (is Blackboard really open? no; is Blackboard really online if it is so disconnected from the Internet itself?), then maybe even the term MOOC is in trouble.

The less obnoxious part of me holds a great deal of compassion for the team, because this is really a huge, transformational leap and many of us are trying to make it. And personally, I’ve stumbled. A lot! The term MOOC IS challenging. The concept asks us to design and facilitate in ways that are different for most of us. When you are really good at doing it one way, going another is a huge shift. Not seeing that this is a new way, or worse, pretending that it is but acting on old models, is problematic.

MOOCs have really forced me to stretch my mind and conceptions about what learning with and from each other  can and does mean. Even the word “course” is not big enough to hold these possibilities. While most of my practices is outside of academia, there is perhaps more alignment on the design and practice challenges with non-academic learning than ever before. Because life outside of academia is rarely about the course. It is about the learning we want and need. This resonates with the concept of MOOCs.

I don’t think I’m the only one struggling to recoceptualize teaching, learning and facilitating in more open networked contexts. But we all sense something important here. Thus the huge interest.

Bonnie Stewart wrote about this recently, when she noted the recent EdX announcement from MIT and Harvard universities in the US. Can “massive and open” acheive the scale and the flipping of the teaching and learning paradigm AND disperse the control that our traditional teaching institutions (and platform builders, etc. etc) have exerted on the process?

The problem with EdX is that, scale and cost aside, it IS essentially a traditional learning model revamped for a new business era. It puts decision-making power, agency, and the right to determine what counts as knowledge pretty much straight back into the hands of gatekeeping institutions.

MOOCs are about finding that cliff between structure and the unknown forward trajectory of each of us as learners. It is about sufficient constraints that create conditions not for necessarily uniform learning destinations for every learner, but for a learner to learn into his or her own learning possibilities around the subject at hand. This includes who they learn with and from, the range of supporting tools they choose to adopt (tech, content) , and the density of engagement with the material and other learners.

If my hunch is right, this then asks us to seriously reconceptualize our facilitation and teaching frameworks. For me, as a facilitator, this has meant letting go of my deeply held belief that things START with socialization and relationship building. A simple example is “introduction threads” and “icebreakers” which we have used very successfully for building strong learning cohorts online — I’ve been doing it since 1997. These approaches are predicated on individual–>group–> wider network trajectories.

Steve Covello points out our past successful online learning experiences start with a profoundly human socialization and orientation which he is missing in BonkOpen (Again, from Lisa’s blog).

…this environment is unintuitive to fundamental human experience. It is mediated through an interface. The interface offers **nothing analogous** to the social environment which it symbolizes. I cannot be more emphatic about how important a framework of social orientation is to online learners. It is as if the greater importance in the development of an LMS is the *information*, not the human.

Yes, and…. MOOCs start at the network. Human intersections happen, but differently, mostly over dialog in synchronous and asynchronous contexts (chat room during a presentation, blog comments), facilitated by daily newsletters that scrape for a tag. Introductions in a cohort of 3000 is — well, ridiculous and we are crazy to ignore the fact. Creating subgroups is a strategy, but one that repeats the small group classroom model and that is what MOOCs are NOT. (At least this is my belief.)

Relationships happen when we encounter another and try and understand their point of view, share ours, swap content, even crack a side joke and develop an affinity. Then, amongst all the waves of people and content, we start surfing the same breaks. We run into other sets of surfers that have emerged, and plenty of soloistas. Relationships then create nodes and bridges across the network. And that glue of bits of information with the shared tag facilitates.

It is much less often that the “teacher” facilitates. And that, my friends, is a pretty dramatic reconceptualization.

Again, Lisa Lane, from the comments of her post wrote (emphasis mine):

The force of networked individualism is coming up against the bounded group(s) dictated (is that too strong a word?) by the Bb forums. One of the questions is what size group works? We have a small one here for an intense discussion, so we could argue “class sized” groups are better for focus. But networking is better for exploring. I just can’t figure out where Bb threaded discussions could fit into any of this? They worked in only a limited way in Moodle for the big MOOCs, and even there it was because the whole group didn’t participate. So is this an issue of size, or of a technology that simply cannot support a networked experience?

This tension between the concepts of individual and group, of individual, group and collective (public) goods through learning is also tremendously juicy and challenging. Mama mia! This is not “peaches and sunshine” as it introduces potentially competing goals — certainly for institutions vis a vis their people formerly-known-as-students. Maybe we throw out the concept of group as we know it. And if you know me, this is a very radical thing for me to say. I hold small groups and communities as something sacred. AND, I am not suggesting they aren’t. But a MOOC perspective suggests we start at the individual and network intersection rather than small group. In my experience, we arrive back at the small groups, but in a way that is more firmly knitted back to the network — and that IS the value proposition. Hm, I buried that down here, didn’t I? So much for writing at 6am.

So if we believe this is the direction that MOOCs are exploring, of networked learning, we also have to throw out a good bit of our past and previously very functional wisdom and practices. We have to reconceptualize the affordances — and this points strongly to the technology. Blackboard, for example, is not a networked affordance. Introduction threads are not networked affordances. Connections, text mining, and perhaps hardest to pin down, but for me at the deepest core, is reimagining what it means to build relationships and trust without our previously comfortable walls. Now we, as learners, both tear down and build up the walls.

As if Jim Julius was reading my mind, he also posted in the comments on Lisa’s blog:

So I wonder … has someone created a taxonomy of learning tools identifying their affordances and how well suited they are for networked learning designs vs. group-based learning? That would be interesting to consider …

I’m interested, Jim!

All in all, this  is pretty darned radical. And sometimes stressful. It turns  my hard earned practices and knowledge on their head VERY often. In fact, my gut instinct is we need to remove the word “course” from all of this. Find something to help us escape our past experiences and assumptions.

Finally, as I work to curb my own snarkiness, I’m reminded of the importance of  cultivating sensitivity and compassion to productively learn from these opportunities. Again, from Steve in Lisa’s blog”

My oversensitivity here, I hope, will serve as the moral equivalent of what Temple Grandin provides for the livestock industry. Her research into the sensitivities of animals in captive environments has lead to improvements in stress reduction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin

And yes, these experiments and conversations are heady and exciting with potential. And I’M ALL IN!

Drift Deck – another facilitation card deck

Just a quick addition to my two posts on facilitation card decks (here and here). This one is for a geocentric exploration of a place. COOL!

The Drift Deck (Analog Edition) is an algorithmic puzzle game used to navigate city streets. A deck of cards is used as instructions that guide you as you drift about the city

via Drift Deck | Near Future Laboratory.

Here is a peek at the cards…

Near Future Laboratory Drift Deck 2008

View more documents from bleeckerj

Relating Community Activities to Technologies

[Edit Feb 23: The notes and recording link of this event can be found here: http://faciliteeronline.nl/2012/02/the-spidergram-for-getting-started-with-and-evaluating-communities/comment-page-1/#comment-7704]

Next week I have the great pleasure of facilitating a webinar for some Dutch colleagues of mine. In preparation, they asked me to put together a bit of background to prepare folks for our conversation. I decided to share it on my blog as well, in case any of you, dear readers, had additional insights to add. In other words, walking the “network talk!” [Edit Feb 20 – see the great pre-event comment stream here: http://faciliteeronline.nl/2012/02/digital-habitats-technologies-for-communities-webinar-with-nancy-white/]

The group I’ll be conversing with is a group of 12 people who are involved in learning and change processes in their organizations or with their clients. (This reminds me of Beth Kanter’s Peeragogy.) They are on an 8 month learning journey and have been exploring things like social media  (which reminded me of this post on how I use social media – albeit a bit dated), communities of practice, online communities and the like. Now is the time to start weaving across those technological and process areas. So a perfect time for community technology stewardship!

As we prepared for the webinar, some of the random potential bits for discussion included the practice of tech stewardship, the pros and cons of  “hopping across technologies,” the tension between thinking about the platform AS the community instead of the people — especially distributed communities, what it means to ‘be together” as a distributed group, more on online facilitation, and how to identify community activities and tools useful in supporting those activities. The webinar will focus mostly on the latter and we’ll use the Activities Spidergram from “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities,” as a learning tool. But to set the stage, I wanted to write a bit about the other topics. Sort of a  lead in to the activities conversation. At the bottom of this post, I’ll link to all the artifacts we’ll use next week. And if someone prompts me, I’ll return after the webinar to post an update in the comments! (That means — show me you are interested/care!)

What it means to be together using technology

Groups, communities, pairs, networks are all about people connecting, being together in some way. In the “olden days” this meant being together face to face augmented by these artifacts which carried documentation of our being together called books, and letters that we slowly exchanged with each other via land based transport. Today we spend time with each other online — not just face to face. That may look like reading, replying to or retweeting messages via Twitter, interactions on Facebook, email, blogs, Skype, YouTube, Pinterest or any of hundreds of web based platforms. These platforms convey and hold the artifacts of our interactions. They are the digital traces of being together. But the EXPERIENCE of being together is something we create in our own minds as we navigate these artifacts. Without conversation with others, we may find our individual experiences of “being together” are, in fact, not at all similar. So the first key here is that being together, even technologically mediated,  implies that we have to reflect – at least a little bit – about shared or different experiences. Otherwise we may not be “being together.”  Sense-making is critical. So if I’m designing or facilitating a social strategy using online tools, I had better darn well design in process to facilitate reflection, sense-making and other similar types of conversations. Yes, conversations, which implies active listening — something you can’t always see or have in pure social media actions.

One of the tough things about all this is how to understand what is working. Is there really connection? We tend to compartmentalize the tech into things like page views. But does that tell us about our quality of being together? Of learning? Of getting things done? Not really. So in thinking about being together in this age, we need new frameworks for assessment. A nice intro to thinking about communities and how to evaluate them comes from a short video from the USAID KM Impact Challenge

Hopping across technologies

If you accept my first proposition that being together requires some sort of sense-making/reflective aspect, lets add on a layer of complication: hopping across different tools and technologies. So not only are we not face to face, but we don’t necessarily interact as a full group, nor on a single communications tool and this may (and usually does) vary over time.  Community’s technological configurations change over time. Let’s pick this apart a bit.

1. There is rarely just one tool. From Digital Habitats we framed the idea of configuration this way: “By configuration we mean the overall set of technologies that serve as a substrate for acommunity’s habitat at a given point in time—whether tools belong to a single platform,to multiple platforms, or are free-standing.”  For example, we may have a NING site, but we talk to each other on the telephone and no one every identified the telephone as an official community tool. 😉 Look around. Our configurations are rarely as simple as they look. Observe and notice what people are using. Explore if there is a shift from the official platform to others and use that usefully, rather than as a distraction.

2. Togetherness does not imply only full group interactions. Side conversations and “back channel” are an intrinsic and important part of a community’s communication ecosystem.  We talk about “capturing” knowledge and having everything in one place, but the reality is that communities have all types of conversations and interactions. Some should stay small and private. Some should be captured and shared. And some will just happen. The key is that people are connected enough so that they DO happen. The interaction has primacy over the container or the captured artifacts … even if this seems counter-intuitive at times.

3. People start where they are technologically comfortable, and move to what serves them over time. Now this may seem like a repetition of #1, but what I’m getting at here is change in technologies is actually part of the life-cycle of many communities rather than an aberration or fatal disruption. (Though, yeah, it can be fatal, but less often than we might expect!) The key lesson here is start where people are “now” and let the needs of the community, its appetite (or not) for experimentation and change drive the platform evolution.

4. A change in technology may intrinsically change the interaction.  In our research for “Digital Habitats” we noticed that not only did technology change communities, but communities changed technologies. When members wanted or needed something, they invented new ways of using tools or scrounged for new ones.  When the motivation to do something together becomes more urgent and compelling than the platform, it’s affordances or constraints, you know something good is going on. So attention to the community’s domain, community and practice (see that video above!) should be front and center. Technology supports.

 Technology stewardship

So if technology changes what it means to be together, if technology choices change over time, it is logical that stewarding that technology becomes part of the life of the community and there is an association between the people who do this and a role — a role we call technology steward. Technology stewards are people who know enough about technology to help scan for, select and implement tools and enough about their community to know what they need and what they want/can tolerate. This is not the traditional IT person or pure geek, but someone who straddles these two domains of knowledge and practice. They are bridgers. (You might enjoy this 6 minute audio from Etienne Wenger, John Smith and I on tech stewardship. ) For example, consider the person who can observe how others use a tool (even if it is different than how they themselves do), notice how it can be valuable to the community and share that practice with others. (An ethnographer!) You have to know the tool, but to observe and understand the practice — that is the magical sweet spot. (For an example, see John Smith’s post on Skype.)  Most of us who find ourselves in this role are in it accidentally. I think that is significant!

Community activities and their technological support

So this leads me to the bridge to our webinar next week. Flowing directly out of this idea of technology stewardship is the need for ways to identify important community activities as a precursor to selecting and deploying tools. In the work writing Digital Habitats we identified 9 community orientations which comprise sets of activities that we found happening pretty commonly across different kinds of communities. This slide deck gives a brief overview.

Digital Habitats Activity Orientation Spidergram Activity Cg

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A couple of key things the spidergram exercise has taught me are: 1) observe your community with an open mind rather than through your own preferences. I, for example, love asynchronous conversations, yet in many of my communities, they would not thrive without telephone calls. 2) You can’t prioritize all 9 orientations all at once, but they may shift over time. This impacts community leadership, facilitation, and technology. So as always, this is not primarily about the tech, but about the community. That seems like a “no brainer” yet time and time again we fall into the technology seduction trap! That leads us to community facilitation, but we’ll have to save that for another day!

 

I’ll be asking the group to read Chapter 6 of Digital Habitats and then begin to fill out a spidergram for a group or community they belong to or work with. I’m also inviting them to post questions here or over at their group blog. But for the rest of you, what sort of advice would you offer for those trying to steward technology for their community? Post in the comments, please!

Resources

 

It Is Here! Group Pattern Language Deck

I’m thrilled to learn that the Group Pattern Language Project has released the Group Pattern Language deck  ….and happy to add the deck as an an update to this post from 2010: Facilitation Card Decks.

I was part of the initial team, but honestly, I struggled with the discipline of writing patterns. My brain kept on spotting exceptions so I fell off the wagon after the first meeting. But I kept supporting from the side because I sensed this team really got something I simply could not grasp. Now their hard work has borne fruit. Here are a few snippets from the web page.

Welcome to groupworksdeck.org, the website about the Group Pattern Language Project’s exciting new deck of 91 full-colour cards to help facilitators and participants make their group process work more effective. The deck is accompanied by a 5-panel explanatory legend card and a booklet describing the purpose of the deck, how it evolved, and some ideas for games and other activities using the deck.

The cards, besides being quite lovely to look at, are a great way to stimulate our thinking about how we interact with others, how we design gatherings and how we work together. Look at a few of their suggestions on the about page.

Suggested Uses:

1.  For group learning or teaching of facilitation skills
Deal out the cards randomly, so that each person is holding a portion of the deck.  Have someone read, tell, or invent a story about an event:
(a) that was well-facilitated,
(b) that was poorly facilitated, or
(c) that they will be facilitating in the near future.
Have participants call out when the cards in their hands correspond to patterns that:
(a) were used in the well-facilitated event,
(b) could have been used to improve the poorly-facilitated event, or
(c) might be used in the upcoming event.

2.  For post-event reflection and debriefing
Lay out all the cards so everyone can see them.
Tell the story of the recent event.  As you do, identify which patterns were invoked and which might have been more effectively invoked.

3.  For a team preparing for a facilitated event
Place a large display board at the front of the room.  In the rows, list the nine categories; in the columns, list time stages:  “pre-event planning,” “beginning of the event,” “middle of the event,” “ending of the event,” “follow-up.”
Sort the cards by category.  Hand out the category stacks to individuals or groups on the team.
Have someone describe the upcoming event:  the objective, background, possible obstacles to success, etc.
Invite team members to select patterns in their category that could be used at each stage, and post the corresponding card in the appropriate row or column of the board (using a non-permanent adhesive).
Once complete, review the full arrangement on the board and discuss as a group whether it presents an appropriate strategy for the upcoming event.

4.  For intuitive guidance—using the cards as an oracle or fortune-teller
Can be done as part of preparing for an event or a during a break.
Focus on the situation you are seeking guidance for, turning it over in your mind.  Draw one card to give you inspiration for how to proceed.  Or choose a tableau to apply.  For example, five cards might represent, in sequence:  (a) the context/past situation, (b) current influences, (c) the current challenge you face, (d) unexpected future influences, and (e) outcome/resolution.
Use the cards personally or as a group to divine your current situation, future fortune, or what to do next.  Let your minds and imaginations and the group conversation guide you to what it all means, and have fun with it!

5.  For creating a case study to present in a class or workshop
On a board or flipchart, create a blank Storyboard with dates and/or times shown across the top.
In time sequence, tell the story of what happened, writing key events and facts on the Storyboard.  As you do, post the card for the pattern that was used at that key point onto the Storyboard (using a non-permanent adhesive).

6.  Assignments during a group session
As people walk in the door, or once everyone has assembled, give each person one random card and ask them to take responsibility for bringing that pattern into the group session as needed.

7.  For self-assessment and self-directed learning
Lay out all the cards.  Identify which patterns you feel most competent using, and which you would like to become better at.
A.  Personal Development Activity
Each week, select one pattern from the second list, and think about how you have used it in the past, could have used it, and might use it in future.  Keep it in a place where it’s visible and refer back to it at various points during the week.  Research situations where it has been used in an exemplary way.  Make a point of observing when it gets used in an event or activity you participate in, and how the facilitator effectively invoked it (or not).  (NB: If you are a facilitation teacher, you might similarly assign certain patterns to your students to study and research.)
B.  Group Development Activity
Sit in a circle around the cards laid out.  Give each person one or two sets of tokens (coins, paperclips, etc.).  Invite each person to lay tokens on: (a) the patterns they feel strong in already, and (b) the patterns they would like to get better at.  Take turns sharing about why you chose the patterns you did.  Teach each other by having the more competent group members tell stories and suggest approaches and exercises, and go to this website for further resources.

8.  Methodology Mapping
If you are an experienced practitioner of a particular process method (e.g.  Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, etc.), you can use the cards to map that method.  Choose 5-12 cards that you think are most important or that tell the story of how that method works.  Then from that set, choose 1-3 cards to put at the very centre, the patterns that express the vital core of that method.  Use this to explain the method to others, from among your colleagues or on our website.

9.  In the middle of an event when the group is stuck
The deck can be used for “getting unstuck” in a variety of ways—by having the group reflect and talk about patterns that might be invoked (perhaps handing out the cards and/or displaying the full list of patterns), by guerrilla facilitation of someone in the group describing an “escape pattern” and then leading the group to invoke it, or by drawing an “oracle” card as in use (4) above.

I immediately wanted to start trying some of these ideas and will use the deck in some upcoming work.

Because I love the people who made these cards, I went out and bought 10 sets … some to use, some to give to clients and some to set free. I want to give four sets away to readers of this blog who help get the word out about the deck.

If you would like a set, please post a blog post about the deck and how you might use it, then leave a link in the comments. Make sure you include a valid email address when you submit your comment (only I will see it) as I’ll use that to contact you to get your address/mail you the deck. First four, folks! Starting NOW!

 Edit: January 12th. The Decks have arrived (THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL) so I’m going to put a deadline of noon PST, January 18th on my offer so I can then send the decks along!)

Social Artists, Connecting the Dots and Steve

Last week while I was on the road, in response to the Tweets and two online events for #change11, I received a wonderful email from one of my online friends, Steve Crandall (aka “imaginary friends” which means we have not yet met F2F) which warmed the cockles of my heart…some real life stories about “social artists” which was. One of the core ideas I hoped to chew on this week with the good folks of #change11. (If you are lost about the meaning of #change 11, look here and here.) Steve wrote:

Hi Nancy

I was looking at your video conference on social artistry. The role of the listener/synthesizer is very important. We had one in an inventor’s circle at Bell Labs – of the four of us was one person who rarely offered the new core ideas, but rather would listen to the three of us hash things out for an hour quietly and then say ‘let me see if I understand this”   he was enormously broad and connections none of us had imagined would surface giving new directions. He also had rich connections to other people where he served in a similar role. He was far and away the most important guy in our group. I should note that he was older and his background was *extremely* diverse.

It reminded me of an old notion that Bonnie Nardi and I had on the “library gene” — the folks who navigate content for the rest of us. We measured it for music and found they were about as common as numbers people talk about for literature. There was speculation that perhaps this type of person exists to curate social graphs as well as technical graphs — I’m certain they exist. I know one at Pixar who is spectacular. In theory a group leader should have some of these skills – in practice I think they are rare (at least natively perhaps people can learn)

best

Steve

I immediately wrote him back before I headed, yet again, to the airport and asked if I could share his email alnd if he might join us for our second session on friday at 9am PDT. Here’s what he wrote:

Feel free to post Nancy

I don’t know my schedule on Friday – I may be traveling – but I can offer more detail if you like. I’m very interested in this class of person.

Early on in my Bell Labs career I spent some time working with the silicon production people at the Western Electric Allentown PA Works. A dingy place that was built in WWII, but was the leading edge of AT&T’s electronic production at the time. The silicon process was had a lot of black magic and art in it. People roughy understood it, but there was a considerable amount of tuning and local knowledge – small changes often led to expensive disasters. There was a guy who was technically a process manager, but his unconventional habit of walking around and asking everyone deep questions was allowed as he had the respect of people. He would bring together very disparate people (that’s how I got involved – I was giving a talk at Murray HIll in NJ that he visited and he thought I needed to look at something in Allentown – it wasn’t a problem for them, but he wanted to plant seeds and involve people who might be useful in the future. Unofficially he was known as “the major of Allentown”. He successfully tied about 25 groups of technologists together. I’m still astounded at his curiosity and connections.

The phrase “connect the dots” means a lot to me. We generally think of it in idea space, but it is clearly present in other areas I think SSTEM only education is a mistake as it focuses too much, bu that is a different subject. I don’t know if you saw it, but here is a general post on this type of person (although it doesn’t get into the social graph navigators and librarian gene people)

http://tingilinde.typepad.com/omenti/2011/08/polymaths-connect-the-dots.html

You know, Steve is a “connect the dots” sorta guy. Yes, a social artist! More on social artists in the next few days as I continue to synthesize what I learned last week from the MOOC Change11.

P.S. Edit on Tuesday — you might enjoy Steve’s second and very thoughtful blog, Omenti.