Category: online facilitation

Online Communities Mini-Conferences

Passing this along from Leigh Blackall…This is a terrific set of “mini-events” around a variety of online community and collaboration topics. NOT TO BE MISSED!

Participants in the Facilitating Online Communties course have come together to coordinate an online mini conference. Below are the range of events scheduled so far. Keep an eye on the conference wiki for up to the minute details. See you there!

A mini conference for Facilitating Online

From Facilitating online communities
Date: 2 – 9 November 2008
All times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) unless stated otherwise. Use this time convertor to work out your times.

2-9Nov Community Leadership Development

Title: Community Leadership Development – review and feedback

Date: online discussion

Duration: throughout the conference period

Facilitators: Valerie Taylor with guests and friends

Venue: blog posts, discussion page threads

Description: Community Leadership Development – online, open education and skills development for individuals and groups working with community-based organizations to provide leadership training, needs assessment and planning, coordination and management of projects to benefit the community.

As Community Leadership Development is a new course modeled on FOC08 and CCK08, participants in the FOC08 Mini Conferences are uniquely qualified to provide input, feedback and suggestions.

Throughout the Mini Conference, questions about the content and the process for the course will be posted for review and comment. Summaries and links to contributions will be posted each day.

Questions, offers of collaboration welcome.

2-9Nov Managing Multimembership in Social Networks

Title: SCoPE seminar discussion: Managing Multimembership in Social Networks: Oct 27-Nov 9, 2008

Facilitators: Bronwyn Stuckey, Jeffrey Keefer, Sue Wolff, Sylvia Currie

Description: How do you track and keep up with blog conversations? How do you manage your time as you engage in social networks? What are our limits as we integrate social learning into our work environments? When you do find yourself becoming disconnected from your networks and organized activities, how do you return to the fray? As facilitators how do you manage multimembership for your participants?

Many of us confess to fumbling along and we engage in multiple networks. Yet, many networks are essential for the projects, sectors and people that we work with, and for staying abreast of hot issues. Multi-membership and multi-platform overload is becoming a BIG challenge!

During this 2-week discussion we invite you to share tips for managing participation in social networks. This seminar is organized as part of the Facilitating Online Communities course mini-conference. There are many ways to participate! Take our survey, leave a Voice Thread, and join the asynchronous discussion.

Venue: SCoPE is an open, online community supported by BCcampus and hosted by Simon Fraser University. Membership is free and open to the public and our discussions are facilitated by volunteers. Access the seminar discussion directly.

Planning for the event: A record of our planning steps is on a subsequent wiki page: /multimembership

5Nov-7pm The Role of an Online Facilitator

Date: 7pm on Wednesday 5th November UTC (8am on Thursday 6th NovemberNZ DST) Check the time in your zone.

Duration: approximately 1 hour

Facilitator: Vida Thompson

Venue: Skype (contact skype user: vidathompson in advance to join this session)

Description I recorded an interview with a Community Facilitator here in Alexandra, Central Otago, New Zealand. For the mini conference I would like participants to listen to the inteview and then discuss their perception of the role of an online facilitator and how that compares to the role of a face to-face community facilitator. This discussion will be held on skype on Wednesday 5th November at 7pm UTC. (Contact skype user: vidathompson in advance to join this session).

All interested people are welcome to attend. It would be good if participants could listen to the interview before the event. Note: The interview does take a while to start as I edited the beginning out.

Please contact Vida Thompson in skype prior to the event so you can be included in the event when it starts (contact skype user: vidathompson or by e-mail address:vidat@tekotago.ac.nz) There is a limit of 9 participants who can talk but no limit to the chat contributions.

5Nov 9pm Interview About Second Life in Second Life

Title: About Second Life

Date: Wednesday 05 Nov UTC at 9.00pm (Thursday 06 Nov 10.00 am New Zealand Time)

Duration: 30 Minutes

Facilitator: Grant Comber (aka Avatar: Clinty Inglewood)

Venue: Explorer Island in Second Life

How to get there? Click on this SLurl Link and then click on the Teleport Now button to zoom to Explorer Island. The Second Life Grid coordinates for the Venue are 195,208,22 (PG) Your Host Clinty Inglewood will meet you.

Reminder: Min computer specs – RAM: 500mb (preferably 1 Gig) Chip speed: 800 MHz Pentium III or better, Screen 1024×768 pixels Internet Connection: Cable/DSL Microphone/headset needed for Chatting

Description:An interview between newbie Grant Comber (Clinty Inglewood) and seasoned Second Life user Harold Atkinson (Hat Carter). General questions on the use of Second Life and sharing of unique experiences. Opportunity for all avatars in FOC to gain some insight into using Second Life especially those who are newbies like Grant!

So if you want to philosophize, go didactic on us or just talk some technical turkey issues please pop in for this casual interview.

My thanks to our guest Harold Atkinson who is a fellow teaching colleague of mine with much Second Life experience. See you there! Signing Off: Clinty Inglewood

6Nov-8am Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work

Facilitated by: Daryl Cook with guest Dr. Mark Elliott.

Mark completed a PhD in 2007 that developed theoretical frameworks for collective activity and mass collaboration in conjunction with a number of real-world projects and now runs a consultancy that provides services surrounding online collaboration and social media / web2.0. In our meeting, Mark will assist us to explore:

  • Stigmergic collaboration as a means of explaining how co-ordination is achieved in ad hoc, massively scaled collaborative contexts (i.e. Wikis)
  • How we can, as facilitators, use Wikis to collaborate, share and learn
  • His experiences from the Future Melbourne project — the world’s first, wiki-based, collaborative city plan.

The one hour session, will include a very brief presentation, but will mostly be informal and conversational. Definitely no Powerpoint.

Please join us!

DATE: Thursday 6th November 2008 at 7PM EST or check the time in your time zone.

VENUE: Join this online event at the Elluminate Meeting Room

Beforehand, please ensure that you computer is ready to use the web conferencing software (Elluminate).

RSVP: daryl.cook@gmail.com

ENQUIRIES: For any enquiries and/or for any assistance with Elluminate, do not hesitate to contact me.

6 Nov-10pm International Online Collaboration Group meets FOC08

Title International Online Collaboration Group

  • Date and Duration – UTC Thursday 6 November 10pm-11pm UTC (Friday 7 November 9am – 10am East Australia time)
  • Facilitators: Kerry Trabinger (CIT Australia) and Leigh
  • Description

This is a FANTASTIC opportunity for the group to meet with teachers who are currently completing a subject called Facilitating Learning Online in Australia. Come and discuss your experiences. Topics will include: – Introductions (where are you from and what area are you teaching in) – Virtual Classrooms – Do you like this platform? Will you use it with your students? Why or Why not? Any tips on using these platforms. – Time Management – How does your Institute allocate time for online delivery? Is it the same as for face to face? – Marketing – how can you get students or participants to join in an online dicussion or virtual classroom session? PLUS you have a chance to try a different virtual classroom platform.

  • Venue – VET VIRTUAL (a virtual classroom used in Australia VET Sector – www.vetvirtual.com)

6Nov-1030pm TLC (Think, Learn & Create) Using Mind Maps

Title: TLC Using Mind Maps (TLC – Think, Learn & Create) – Online Discussion, followed by Presentation, – Friday 7 Nov 2008 11.30 am – 12noon NZ DST (10.30 pm – 11 pm Thursday 6 Nov UTC)

Facilitators: Kay Lewis and Elaine Dittert

Description:

  • Have you had difficulty keeping up with the ‘overload of information’ during this course?
  • Got confused or lost by trying to view all the discussion threads?
  • Have you jotted down some thoughts and ideas you’ve read and heard but by the time you’re ready to go over your notes they make no sense?

If this sounds like you, this 30 minute session may be just what you need. It is designed to give you some pointers to help you gather and organise large amounts of data and provide a clear overview, analyse your thoughts, identify problem solving ideas and generate more ideas with clarity, efficiency and accuracy.

We plan to have one special guest speaker:

  • Jennifer Goddard, BBus (Admin), Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Master Trainer in Buzan Advanced Learning Techniques, inspirational Director of the Buzan Centre in Australia and New Zealand and co-founder of Mindwerx International. OR
  • Jennie Vickers, Buzan Licensed Instructor (senior advanced coach), Masters of Management, Diploma in Business Administration (University of Auckland), BA Law (Honours). Jennie is also an Alumni of the Leadership NZ Programme.

Venue: From your feedback in the discussion here [1], we will use 24/7 Meeting Room (Elluminate) or Skype to host the presentation.

7Nov-4PM EST Storytelling

Title: Storytelling

Date: November 7, 2008 at 4PM EST or check the time in your time zone.

Duration: 60 minutes ?

Facilitators:

Venue:

Description:

  • Do you think of stories when you look at a photo, a video, or listen to music? Does the topic interest you as a tool for instruction and learning or are you just curious? In any case, for whatever reason you may have, you are invited to join this storytelling mini conference.
  • We will have a live storytelling event on WiZiQ or Elluminate. Please refer to the main page of Connecting Online for further discussions on the topic.

Further Information

8Nov-Midnight Heart2Heart Online

Title: Heart2Heart Online

Date: Tentatively Saturday, November 8, 2008 00:00 UTC Time

Duration: 90 minutes

Venue: TBA (Skype, Elluminate Meeting Room or WiZiQ)

Group Size: Maximum of 8 people

Facilitator: Greg Barcelon assisted by partner Ivy (guest)
A place where we can simply be ourselves… sharing ourselves at a deeper level without the fear of condemnation, unsolicited advice, interruption or being judged.

Traditionally we got this deep level of connectedness with our true selves, and assist others in doing the same, from our families. But, with many people experiencing difficulties in their family life today, we need communities that can become “Schola Amoris,” a School of Love, in which all learn to first of all accept themselves as they are, and then in a greater way accept others unconditionally – the greatest yearning we collectively have.
More about it here.

TBA Connecting Online in Developing Countries

Connecting Online in Developing Countries

Title: Connecting Online in Developing Countries

Date: Saturday November 8, 2008 at: See your time zone, please.

Duration: 60 min?

Faciliatator: Joy Zhao & guest speakers

Venue: WiZi or 24/7 Meeting Room

Description: to be updated…

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Posted By Leigh Blackall to Facilitating Online Communities at 11/05/2008 10:08:00 AM

Onramps to online engagement

Rambly post alert –  this one hops all over the place with little regard to coherence.


DEANZ 2008 - Workshop Discussions

My friend Mark Hammersley reminded me a few months ago of a tool to help surface intercultural issues and build trust in distributed teams. One was Thiagi’s Multicultural Email Game. (Mark notes it is also included in the “Building Trust in Teams” toolkit, PDF for free or you can buy the book, published by Oxfam www.oxfam.org.uk) I have not used this game and would like to try it – and not just at a F2F meeting, but try it online. It could be tricky because it actually asks participants to trust the process of the game right from the start. But the idea of a game appeals to me, not only for trust building, but as an on-ramp to engagement. Michele Martin shares some of her favorite ice breakers (mostly F2F) which are another way of initiating engagement. Check the comments on the post for more ideas.

So why am I focusing on onramps to engagement today? Two reasons. The first is I’m a guest in a South African workshop on elearning for educators in higher education and almost ALL of their questions have to do with engagement.  Most often, “how do I get people to post on discussion boards.”  They are also dealing with huge cohorts that blow my mind. How does engagement scale? Wow. I’ll have to save that for another post.

The second reason engagement is top of mind is because  I was Skyping with a colleague who is facing challenges getting some organizational partners to participate in a discussion forum. In our conversation we talked about three big barriers. Maybe they will stimulate you to contribute some more issues and ideas.

Why are we talking about discussion forums?

Engagement is an issue with all tools. Tools are the medium to achieve our purpose.  It just so happens today people were talking about discussion forums. It is still critical to ask the question “why are we using discussion forums.” Again, I won’t go into that today. So let’s take it as a given just for fun, ok?

Barrier 1: No Shared Context for Learning Together

One of the possible barriers we identified was the different cultural contexts for sharing work in progress as a way of learning. I have found that people often think what they observe and experience won’t have value to others. That their stuff, their “work in progress”  is not ‘good enough.’ So one suggestion is to create an example or trial run, and wrap it in an invitation that has relevance and value to the participants. To role model the value of thinking together while working, not just when we are done. This begins to help us see where we have shared and different contexts and how these can add to, not subtract, from our learning.

For example, recruit 2 people from the group – one who is willing to share her workplan (this is what is under discussion) and another to interview the first person with you, the facilitator. Prior to posting, spend some time with person one to see if they need any help preparing the document and give them some feedback about the value of the work. There is always value, trust me. But sometimes we are blind to our own learning and strengths. Then spend some time with the interviewer brainstorming questions. DON’T practice the interview. I find that often saps the life out of things. But prep the initial questions and give tips on how to interview and dig down for the gems rather than just coasting on the surface.

Then create an invitation to the rest of the group to a time delimited interaction. In this example, it is on a discussion forum due to bandwidth limitations.  In the invitation, use language that is relevant to the participants interests and needs, such as “come participate in a peer interview with Person 1 and Person 2 where we’ll mine for the gems in a work plan. Get ideas and different perspectives on the work plan process.”

After this interview, do a quick debrief. What did people learn? What did they like about the process? Not like or make them feel uncomfortable. This can surface both focus, technological and cultural issues. Adjust and then encourage others to take a turn their your plans and getting valuable peer feedback.

The debrief, as was cited in the Email Game link above, is the critical part. Without this you have no feedback to adjust and improve. Without the reflection on the process, many of the participants may speed past their own learning and the possibilities of the conversations and learning with others. The “I don’t have time to post on discussion boards.”

Barrier 2: Technology

Wait, I said we were taking forums as a given for this post? Well… maybe not, eh? I work a lot in international contexts where there is little bandwidth equality. Or even electricity parity. Some members are lucky to get online on a patchy dial-up once a week, while others are always on with broadband. A portal or forum tool may just not cut it when it takes 20 minutes to download a page – and worse when that page has no value.  Organizations sometimes deny this, but it is real and the sooner we adjust our strategies, the better. So one of the suggestions we talked about on our Skype chat today was the bridging of technologies, specifically text on mobile phones to alert or focus on key web based interactions. It is probably not yet realistic to replace all web interactions – not everyone has web enabled mobiles, but this linkage with the commonly shared tool of mobile phones recognizes the realities of those with less web access and includes them more fully. It is easier to say yes to a text than that 20-minute loading page.  So the message to organizations who insist that everything happens on their portal should look again. Rethink the centralized strategy because it is not inclusive in many cases.

Barrier #3: Organizational Foo

Finally, we come to the fun stuff. The elephants in the room. Our own organizational blinders and shortcomings. For example, funders have power over their grantees, so grantees do what they need to to “tick the box” but do they feel ownership of their learning in an experience with a funder, or beholden to the learning agenda of the funder? What real and meaningful roles are available to people? What ownership? Like the tool choices above, the power of the convenor can stifle the engagement of everyone else, especially if their power is disproportionate.

To address these issues, we have to look inward to our organizations and ask the hard questions about our values, how we lead and follow, how we prioritize our time and what we ask of others. If we are asking our colleagues to participate in a web based interaction, we should not dare to refuse to participate ourselves. If we choose technologies that are for our convenience, we should also struggle to master those that are convenient for others. It is a two way street.

Broader issues: Training, Performance Support and Learning

So now, this spreads out to something I’ve been following others on – how we think about learning in the workplace. Is it training? Is it performance support? Is it formal or informal learning? Or better, what should we be pulling out of the bag when? This actually links back to the question, why are we seeking engagement?Yes, for learning, but for what? Why? For whom? Are we being strategic? Are we deluding ourselves that people have time for these distributed, online learning conversations in the first place? Purpose is always first and foremost, but we still slide by it with vague answers. Or we forge ahead with training, performance support or communities of learning and practice without asking about purpose.

If our purpose is clear, then what is the relationship and strategy around training, PS and learning? Too many questions and it is time to go make dinner. How was that for an easy out? 😉

Other people blogging/thinking out loud about this:

Edited to correct some bad spelling boo boos

The World Cafe Community – Virtual Cafes?

There is a very interesting conversation buzzing around in various locations online about how to do World Cafes online. I am feeling tortured, because I’d like to be fully participating, but due to the “to do list” I’m watching from the side. I think there is much more here than looking at how to do World Cafe gatherings online, but in a larger sense, how do we best utilize convening methods from our F2F practices in a distributed environment – and all the juicy questions that go along with it. For me, some of the key questions include:

  • What methods can “translate” into an online space – why or why not? What do we even mean by “translate?”
  • Are we being strategic and clear about what method to use when – online or off. In other words, lets not do the “move our dysfunctional offline meetings into the online space.” The bottom line is creating interactions that matter – online or off.
  • What are the social implications?
  • What are the technical implications? Existing and potential tools (especially free or low cost tools)?

The main thread about virtual World Cafe’s is on the World Cafe’s community space here –> The World Cafe Community – Virtual Cafes?. Some other side shoots and resources:

Truly, I’d love a month to research this sort of thing and things like useful patterns and practices in online events… and so many other things. Maybe in December…. 🙂

More on community management (part 3 or “what’s in a name”)

Otto's ear
Creative Commons License photo credit: os♥to
I hate titling these blog posts with the words “community management.” After writing post 1 and post 2 on this topic (triggered by Chris Brogan), the words just feel wrong. But because this is the label that has been floating across our blog conversations, I’m keeping it in as “connective tissue.” I was actually thinking about “The Giant Ear!”

So why am I writing a third post in three days on community management? (Instead of going for a walk this morning. Uh oh.) It is “in the air.” For those who have had a baby, it’s like once you get pregnant, all of a sudden you notice all the other pregnant women walking around town! Once you start putting blogging your ideas on something, you notice others who have thought/said/tickled around the same thing. The waves of blogging conversations about community management seem to be washing on the shore closer together these days.

While catching up on some feeds, I saw Matt Moore’s bit on
chief conversation officer.

Organisations need Social Media Relations people. And because of the participatory nature of the social media, these people will have to blog. And comment on other blogs. And Twitter. And all that other stuff. They will encourage, advise and look out for bloggers and social media headz in their own organisations. And they will have to believe in what their organisations do (be it curing cancer or causing it) or else they will get found out.

Everyone wants to be Chief Talking Officer. Who wants to be Chief Conversation Officer?

Hm. Matt is talking about something different than this animal we’ve been calling community manager, but some of the functions he lists hearken back to Chris’s list. But do you feel the dissonance that I do? Just the title “officer” shows us the polarities that we activate when trying to reconcile a network activity with a corporate structure.

Control <–> Emergence
Talking <–> Listening
Planned <–> Evolving
Being in charge <–> Being able to be an effective network actor

We are recognizing these polarities or tensions. (YAY!) They are showing up in thousands of blog posts and creeping into books. They emerge from deep roots and cannot be ignored or wished away. Yet it seems to be hard to talk about them within organizations and even the “job descriptions” we see more of every day. (Check the listing of online community manager blogs on Forum One’s site or on Jake McKee’s.)

Let’s make them discussable, and we can discover the way forward. Let’s discuss them — with every boss and leader who will listen. Let’s encourage the network around organizations to tell them how they feel about being managed – or listened to. Let’s find a way to use the power of the network for our organizations, and with it, the multiplied, nested power of the communities that live in and spring from the network. (Oh heck, I’m getting all riled up and haven’t even had a cup of tea this morning!)

To circle back to this idea of “community manager,” and what it is becoming in a network age, the first thing is to be brave enough discuss the idea that it may be “management” in the frame of business structures and some “older ways” of doing things, but in terms of the action in the network, it is not management as we know it. It is is about being connective tissue between an organization and the world/network it lives within. It is about activation, listening, pattern seeking and then bringing that back into the current context of the organization – at whatever stage that organization is in becoming a network organization. It is about reconciling that businesses, in their interaction with the world (customer, vendors, regulators) have opened the door to a new way of being in the system that requires more than management. More than measurable data. More than targets and goals. It requires intuition, intellect and heart.

Heart? Community Managers and HEART she says? INTUITION???

Yes. Heart and intuition, but not in the absence of intellect. Because systems include that beautiful, irrational, impulsive part of human life – emotion. “Community” and “network” both imply human beings. The person you entrust to guide and represent and help your organization learn – this person we have been calling the “community manager” – is your person who stewards your connection to both hearts and minds. Who listens with every available channel, including intuition. How do you measure your ROI on intuition? On heart? I’d ask, what are you losing every day by ignoring them.

So what would you call that role? Magician? The Giant Ear? Elder? I’m currently stumped.

(edited later for a silly typo)

Musings on “community management” Part 2

Words from Community SessionMy last post was on the ground, in-the-flow practical stuff of online community management in response to Chris Brogan’s great post, On Managing A Community . This one climbs up to meta-ville a bit and asks a couple of questions.

Are we talking about communities, or are we embarking on the era of network facilitation?
If you read between the lines and through the comments on Chris’s blog I think he has begun to tease out some of the differences between community and network management! (I’ll come back to that word “management.”) Read through his goals which I think are different than what we have come to expect for what I’ll call “traditional online community management.” In the past this has been about the inward set of processes around hosting, moderation and facilitation of web based discussion communities – large or small. He speaks of outreach, of reputation of an organization in the world, and of mechanisms of learn from and with groups of people and even the wider world. It is an outward looking role, not inward. It is about spawning connections, not keeping existing connections organized.

This is not your mother’s discussion board, sweetheart!

When we move to the network, a couple of things happen. The notion of managing becomes even more of an illusion than managing that herd of cats called “community.” (By community, I mean a bounded set of individuals who care about something and who know they are members and interact with each other over time.)

Instead we are talking about scanning for things important for our organizations – conversations about us, niches or needs we can fill, feedback and suggestions for improving what we do. It is filtering and redirecting those messages to where they can do good. It is a little bit like listening to the universe.

Instead of managing conflict or spammers in a walled community, we are seeking to make connections between people that advance our organization’s learning and goals. That includes between disgruntled people and the people who might address that problem, between ideas, links and content to people who might use them, and between communities that exist within the humus of the network garden.

Instead of spawning or archiving threads, we are tagging and remixing. Instead of inviting in or kicking out members, we are mapping the network of relationships, looking for where to respond, and where to catalyze action.

These are not the list of community management skills we have come to know since the first big upswing in online communities in the mid 1990’s. We have moved to from community to network…. what is the word?

If we are talking about communities, are we really talking about managers?
I don’t think it is management in the traditional sense, in the sense of control and mold (or even “facilipulate” – manipulate+facilitate!). It is about sensing, scanning, filtering and connecting. And, it is about learning. Facilitating learning. Living the learning and creating the next iteration of that learning. It is about stewarding technology as wave upon wave of new tools crashes upon our organizations.

It is about weaving between the community and the network.

What the heck would this job be called? Which organizations have the foresight to invest in it — and realize that those who help them weave their organizations in and out of the networks will benefit most from those networks? If we were looking for this person, what skills would they show up with? What would their traces across the internet look like?