Category: facilitation

Travel Budget Slashes, Meeting Crunch and Going Virtual

Flickr Photo by http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/517610028_956361eb2c.jpg?v=0Throughout the year  I’m involved in quite a few conferences and meetings. This year, the ground is shifting. Travel budgets are being slashed (faster here than in Europe as far as I can tell) and people are starting to think more seriously about the non financial costs such as carbon emissions of the travel and the plain old wear and tear on our bodies traveling across time zones and geography.

Financially, meeting organizers have serious concerns. One US based conference coming up this Fall is seeing a 30% reduction in registrations and they feel LUCKY! One of my core communities of practice, KM4Dev, just had a call to discuss how we could meet, and scuttle our more ambitious S. Africa plan and do something more focused and less expensive because we could not get funding. Ed-Media, a conference I’ve been invited to speak at (in Hawaii – and yes, I feel both thrilled and carbon-guilty, even with offsets), sent email today announcing opening of virtual presentation submissions and participation. I say “good on ya!” Here are a few snippets from their note:

>>  Virtual Presentations included in Final Call  <<
http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/VP/
 > Please forward to a colleague <
http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/call.htm
_______________________________________________________________
ED-MEDIA 2009

World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications
June 22-26, 2009  *  Honolulu, Hawaii

INVITATION:
ED-MEDIA 2009 serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia and telecommunications/distance education.

ED-MEDIA, the premiere international conference in the field, spans all disciplines and levels of education and attracts more than 1,500 attendees from over 60 countries. We invite you to attend ED-MEDIA and submit proposals for presentations.

All presentation proposals are peer-reviewed and selected by three reviewers on the respected Program Committee for inclusion in the conference program, Proceedings (book and CD-ROM formats) and EdITLib (Education and Information Technology Digital Library),   http://www.EdITLib.org

VIRTUAL PRESENTATIONS:
————————————-

In consideration of presenters who may be unable to attend ED-MEDIA in person due to funding or time constraints, Virtual Presentations have been added to the program with the same validity (publication, certification, etc.) as the face-to-face (F2F) conference and with the capability to interact with session participants.

A limited number of presentations in these categories will be accepted:
– Virtual Brief Papers
– Virtual Posters
– Virtual Corporate Showcases

Why a Virtual Presentation?
————————————
* Saves money.  No travel, accommodation, and restaurant costs
* Saves time. No travel or away time required.
* Allows you to participate when you schedule your time to do so.
* Same validity as the face-to-face (F2F) conference (publication, certification, etc.).
* Paper published in CD, book, and Digital Library ( http://www.editlib.org) proceedings.
* Publish and share all supporting media (PPT, video, etc.) in the proceedings.
* Capability to interact with your session

I love meeting face to face. But the reality is those of us who can are priveledged and soon, the ability to travel and gather may be even more restricted. We have to get better at “being together” using technology. That means better tools AND practices. That probably leads me to griping about the web meeting tools I have been using because they are what my clients use.

After criticizing SharePoint last week for it’s silo-creating, I have to ding Microsoft Live Meeting for it’s top down control model. There is no group chat (participants can only chat with the moderator or one other person at a time, thus no horizontal communication nor any easy ability to collectively take notes), there is no visible participant list (thus defeating any community building part of one’s agenda), and there can only be one moderator at a time, reducing the ability to agily collaborate. This is “I deliver content to you” style technology. Yes, it may integrate nicely with Office and Outlook, but what if you are not using or don’t focus on these integration issues?

Not far behind in its clunkiness is WebEx, which makes passing the control baton something of a high wire act. I have enjoyed using Elluninate more. I’ve had the best luck with their integrated VoIP and their breakout rooms, while still a bit tricky, are much easier for me than WebEx.

On the free and lower cost side, Vyew is getting higher marks from me, but I’ve not tested it with a larger group and have not taken a run at the latest version of Dim Dim. Both currently offer 20 person rooms for free!

Skype – audio and chat – is still at the core of my small group meetings, often augmented by a quality phone/Skype bridge when I have larger groups (which costs me $40/month).

However, without clear purpose and useful practices, these tools are useless. We need to make gathering time serve our purposes and to be useful, functional and ENJOYABLE. Not a torture test. Friends and colleagues in my circle have all acknowledged we need to start thinking, working and practicing together to both better understand and manipulate the tools and improve the meeting processes themselves. Clearly, I need to make time for this.

Photo credit (and yes, I’ve used this one twice!) by stephentrepreneur

CoP Series #9: Community Heartbeats

This is the nineth in a series of blog posts I wrote for Darren Sidnick late last year in the context of communities of practice as part of online learning initiatives. I am finally getting the rest of the series up.  Part 1, part 2, part 3,, part 4, part 5, part 6,  part 7 ,  part 8 , part 9 and  part 1o here!

Community Heartbeats – when synchronous interactions matter 

Online community learning is great in that it provides us the opportunity to learn anytime,and  anywhere we have connectivity. However, that is a pretty rosy view when we consider the competition a course or workshop has against everything else going on in our lives. Often the thought of “oh, I can do this anytime so I’ll do it later” leaves a course to be done in the wee hours of the night or on weekends when we really might like or need to be doing something else. A learner who stays away too long may begin to feel they have fallen too far behind, or isolated from their community. That’s where synchronous events can help. They can keep the heartbeat of a learning community going strong. For some, they create a sense of community, relationship and “realness” — voices and not just words on a screen.

What are synchronous events?
Synchronous online events are when some or all of the learners are online at the same time and interacting using tools such as Voice over IP (VoIP), telephone bridge lines, chat rooms, web meetings and instant messenger tools – even Twitter!. They can be discussion based, or can be a presentation by a guest or tutor combined with time for questions and answers. They can be large group or small group breakouts from the larger community. Some examples include:

  • Weekly online tutor “office hours.” Learners can log on and ask questions, get support and just check in. These could be mandatory or voluntary. I find that if you do one first that is “all hands” people can get a sense of the value of the office hours, then are more likely to participate in the future.
  • Presentations and guest speakers & lecturers. First of all, if you aren’t planning any interaction with the learners around lectures or presentations, don’t make them synchronous. Save the synchronous time for INTERACTION. Content can be provided on the web to be viewed at anyone’s convenience.  But if you can bring in a special guest, this is worth a fixed meeting time and it makes it — well – SPECIAL.  Keep in mind, this is not about pushing powerpoints. A good online presentation will mix presentation with interative activities – a good mix is 7 minutes of content, 7-10 of interaction. An hour is good, and 90 minutes should be the maximum. Include audio, text and visual elements. Some of us are not so good at just listening!
  • Small group meetings. Is there small group work? Encourage learners to set a time to meet each week. This builds full participation and helps reduce procrastination. They can meet in a web meeting room or even just on an instant messenger or Skype. Even a shared Twitter hashtag can create little moments of shared learning and support.

What frequency of online events is useful?
For new learners, it is helpful to have regular synchronous events until they have figured out their learning and participation rhythms. Virtual team expert Martha Maznevski likens it to the heartbeat of a runner. New runners’ hearts are still weak so they beat fast early on in their runs. But trained runners hearts beat slower. So experienced learning communities may not need to meet as often, unless meetings are their preferred mode of interaction.

How do we bridge between the synchronous and the asynchronous?
Synchronous meetings don’t work for everyone due to schedules, internet access and personal learning preferences. So we need to have strategies that bridge between the synchronous and asynchronous.

  • Post recordings, notes and artifacts of synchronous meetings. Make sure your learners know where they are and how to access them.
  • Follow up on synchronous action items in the asynchronous interaction spaces. Notes taken “live” in a web meeting can be shared right afterwards, with action items highlighted. If additional conversation is needed, continue in a discussion thread, blog or wiki area.
  • Prepare for upcoming synchronous meetings by involving the group in planning, again using the asynchronous tools you have at hand. You can even use scheduling tools like http://www.doodle.ch to pick a meeting time!

Finally, check in with the group as to how the “heartbeat” is going. Ask for feedback and use that to improve the meetings and the timing of the meetings. Each group is different and we can use iterative planning to make the most of that diversity, rather than stifle it with set plans.

Resources:

Monday Video: The circle of trust

Via Liz Lawley I found Ponzi Pirillo’s video of a little trust exercise done at the Microsoft Social Computing gathering last fall.

Trust has come up in conversation a lot lately. Clay Shirky has been oft quoted saying “in collaboration we trust.” This idea that we build trust through what we do with each other resonates in my work. It is not something we, as facilitators, “create.” We can’t build a culture of trust, we can build our culture through working together and building trust as we go.  I often go back to the 1999 work of Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa and Dorothy E. Leidner and their fabulous paper on Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams. The idea of “swift trust” given through small, interdependent interactions in teams now takes on new meaning to me through small, information exchanging acts we do with people in our networks whom we do not know personally or even at all. 

This little video is a nice visualization of Shirky’s idea.

YouTube – The circle of trust at MSR’s Social Computing Symposium

What are you doing WITH people to build trust with them? For what purpose?

BIG CHANGE Webinar Series Starts Today

For the last two years I have been part of Nexus for Change. This year we decided to take a break from the work of putting on a F2F gathering and a subgroup has been preparing for some online work, this time in the form of the BIG CHANGE Webinar Series. The series focuses on concrete approaches for “thriving in tough times – the key is to create inspired organizations and communities through meaningful collaboration.”

Today is the kick-off for this free webinar series sponsored by The NEXUS for Change and Bowling Green State University. If you read this soon enough, you can register for today’s session. Go to www.nexusforchange.org and click on Big Change to register.

WEBINAR Session #1 – 90 Minutes
Feb 17th – 2:30pm EST
The Change Handbook: Uncovering the principles for whole system transformation withPeggy Holman &  Tom Devane
>a live fishbowl with executive graduate students using mind mapping and affinity diagramming to make sense of the methods for large-scale transformation.  There are more than 60 methods to consider and even more emerging every year…Learn more and register

Future sessions include:

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There: Leading Meetings that Matter
with Sandra Janoff & Marv Weisbord
90 Minutes
Mar 5th – 2:00pm EST
Cost: Free
For leaders and consultants who run task-focused meetings. Find out about the ten principles derived from 20 years of leading meetings in many of the world’s cultures…

Terms of Engagement: Designing RoadMaps for Positive Transformation
with Dick & Emily Axelrod
90 Minutes
Mar 18 – 2:00pm EST
Cost: Free
This session brings together the practical view of the realist and the people-oriented view of the humanist into one role: the “Pragmatic Involver.” Explore the six major questions addressing how success can be attained in a project on any scale…

The Philosophic Consultant: Revolutionizing Organizations with Ideas
with Peter Koestenbaum& Dick Axelrod
90 Minutes
Apr 2nd – 2:00pm EST
Cost: Free

Large-Scale Change On-Line: Living & Learning Together
with Denise Easton, Jake Jacobs, Jon Kennedy, Gabriel Shirley, Nancy White, & Christine Whitney-Sanchez
90 Minutes
Apr 29th – 2:00pm EST
Cost: Free

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?