Category: Digital Habitats

Community Technology Spidergram Evolves Again

gabrielesspidergramIt is so lovely having a fabulous network – including people I just barely know, but who then hook in with a moment of insight, a remix or ready to augment a forming idea or practice. Gabriele Sani from World Vision in Italy has recently done this with the Community Orientations Spidergram from our Digital Habitats book.  He saw a post I put on KM4Dev and immediately took it further!  He has taken the spidergram and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. You simply put in the values in the table on tab 1 on the spreadsheet,  and voila, a lovely spidergram image is produced (see tab 2 of the spreadsheet).

Here is the tool: CoP-Orientation-Spidergram-Tool

This is a great tool to help people visualize the diagram at a distance – when you don’t have the comfy proximity of a white board and a bunch of post it notes. I also love the visual background Gabriele put in – lovely.

Others have been sharing their spidergrams. I’ve been tagging them on Delicious. You can find my spidergram tags here: http://delicious.com/choconancy/spidergram. Here is one from Sylvia Currie that she did with Gliffy – another way to  do the activity:

So why are seeing and sharing these practices useful? Gabriele’s spreadsheet  is useful not just because he created the it, but because he tried the work within his organization, saw the need for a “tweak,” the need to “tinker” and improve — and DID IT! Then he shared it back. Sylvia’s gave us another way to “crack the nut.” This is the value of working in the open, of iterating both internally and externally.

THANK YOU, Gabriele and Sylvia. And to the rest of you, do you have a Spidergram story to share?

I CAN pronouce Mooloolaba

From theother66 on Flickr, creative commonsThe last leg of my Australian adventure took me north to the Queensland beach town of Mooloolaba. I had been practicing my pronounciation so I would not mess up. Again. Last year I presented via video to the Learning Technologies 2008 conference. This year (Learning Technologies 2009 or Twitter tag #lt2009) I got to be there in the flesh and I wanted to get it right. MOO – LOO – LA – BAH with equal emphasis on all the syllables!

On Wednesday I ran a half day workshop on Technology Stewardship. (As promised, the slides are here.) It was a pleasure to hang out with Anne Bartlett-Bragg, Claire Bray, Paul Doherty, Jay Mair, BronwynDavies, Billy Ramadas, Gillian Smith, Alison Bickford, Colin Warren , and Mary McVay. We explored their own technology stewardship in their communities with the Spidergram exercise, some playing around with the Social Media game cards and conversations about our work. The afternoon flew by.

Digital Habitats Nov09 Frameworks

View more presentations from Nancy White.

Then we retired to the Mooloolaba Surf Club for the official opening cocktail party. Surf Clubs are an important part of Australian coast culture and it was fun to get a peek inside of the place where all the volunteer lifeguards hang out, as well as a critical community center.

The conference proper was Thursday and Friday. I helped kick off Thursday with the keynote, “Me, We and the Network,” where I continued on my theme about the importance of having a line of sight to the full range of learning contexts – individual learning, group or community (bounded), and the wider, free-ranging network environment. In the middle of the talk, I tapped the group in the room to help me sing happy birthday to Larry, since I would miss his birthday on the 21st. They did a brilliant job!

Me Weand Everyone Nov09 Learning Technologies conference

View more presentations from Nancy White.

Tweetclace While in Mooloolaba and surrounding area, I did a little shopping, including a Tweetclace! Bronwyn Stuckey (@Bronst), Joyce Seitzinger (@catspyjamasnz) and I went to the Eumondi markets and I, um, supported the local economy!

Gippsland, KMLF and the Warm Melbourne Mob

Gipps CollageIf this is Sunday, I must have been in Victoria state, landing in Melbourne, then being taken kindly out to the beautiful Gippsland by old online friend Brad Beach. Out to the rolling hills, the hospitality of he an Bron (who made an Australian Chocolate Ripple cake for me!!) and the thrill of hanging out with their beautiful baby boy. Brad took up the challenge of trying to help me see a roo in the wild, but I think all the marsupials in Australia are laughing their butts off at the American who never sees them.

On Monday, Brad gave me the chance to hang out with his amazing cohort of online facilitators from Gippstafe – people who totally get what it means to connect with and teach with others online. Gipps has been a center for online facilitator capacity development in Oz. We talked about our practices, what we have learned and what we aspire to learn. Plus had some great homemade cake. Do you notice a pattern here?

melbourne collageThen back in the car and into town to spend the afternoon with the Knowledge Management Rountable to talk about Digital Habitats and Technology Stewardship. (I will get the slides up on Slideshare eventually…can’t hog all the wifi where I am at the moment!) A special shout out to Michele Lambert, my host, who not only warmly welcomed me, but was a fantastic engaging partner in the afternoon. Oh, and we had scones. 😉

The evening brought me to the KMLF gathering where we played with the idea of individual/group/network in more playful ways. I have to say, the Melbourne KM community (or is it a network?) is intelligent, friendly, and really crazy. Afterward we went for an (over)abundant Chinese meal at Post-Mao.

After the hospitality from Keith De La Rue for my co-conspirator, Matt Moore and I, it was off on Tuesday to run two half day workshops on online community. Again, a vibrant, intelligent and engaged group in both the morning and afternoon as we explored the nuts and bolts of our online community and network practices. We gathered in an amazing place – and darn it, I can’t remember the name. So again, I’ll have to come back to that.

Then we zoomed off to the airport and I headed for the semi-tropical shores of Mooloolaba, an hour north of Brisbane, my last stop in Oz.

I want to give out link love to all these great people, but if I did that, I’d NEVER post this, so maybe I can circle back and do this later. (Hahahaha). I love ya’ll and you know who you are.

Some posts and related digital bits from the days…

Canberra Countryside and Communities

hanging with Leigh and Sunshine

Wednesday I hopped on a plane to Canberra to spend some time with the creative and energetic Leigh Blackall and Sunshine Connelley, their two magnificent pooches, Lego and Mina, and spend an afternoon with some communities of practices folks in national government here in the capitol city. After I arrived, Leigh and Sunshine took me out to the beautiful Murrumbaidgee River, about 30 minutes outside of town. We swam in the river and had a nice BBQ dinner in the warm afternoon sun. The water was just cool enough and the current not too strong to allow us to wallow in the shallows. It was a perfect antidote to being in planes and conference rooms, well peppered with conversation.

Thursday, we headed again out of town to Braidwood. Man, I could fall in love with this town. Between the Bread Dojo bread (Matt, you are an amazing baker), the beautiful setting and community spirit, one could be tempted to bid on the old hotel and pub up for auction. heh! Then we high tailed it back to town, allowing me to walk into my appointment just on time and have a great afternoon talking about the ideas surfaced in Digital Habitats and wrestling with the challenges of working in a government organization.

Then it was off to the airport and on my way to sunny and unseasonably warm Adelaide! Mike Coglan met me and we then went out to dinner with the energetic Brad Beach and John (whose last name I did not quite get. Mike as has a great shot of Brad here. You can see John here.)

Digital Habitats now in print!

On our FLNW tour I shared the proof with my traveling companions. Sylvia took this picture! I’m excited that Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities” is now PUBLISHED! You can find the early ordering details on the book’s blog site. It will be a while until it shows up on Amazon.

In case you are a new reader (and have not read my obsessions about the book over the years), here is the book info:

Technology has changed what it means for communities to “be together.” Digital tools are now part of most communities’ habitats. This book develops a new literacy and language to describe the practice of stewarding technology for communities. Whether you want to ground your technology stewardship in theory and deepen your practice, whether you are a community leader or sponsor who wants to understand how communities and technology intersect, or whether you just want practical advice, this is the book for you.

Written by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith, the book brings together conceptual thinking, case studies and offers a guide for understanding how technology can help a community do what it wants to do. It gives a glimpse into the future as community and technology continue to affect and influence each other.