fOSSa2011, Coders and Sketchnotes

I’m home from another adventure! I’m back from Maastricht, Bonn and Lyon where I’ve been working and playing on various thingamabobbers. In Lyon, I really stepped into a new domain for me, Open Source Software (OSS) development. I was invited by the energetic and creative Stephane Ribas to present at fOSSa2011, a 2.5 day gathering of mostly French and Italian OSS developers and academics, along with a few philosophers and inventors thrown in to spice up the mix.

Conceptually, the discourse on Open Source makes a lot of sense to me. I did get lost when they started talking code. So I decided to sketch the sessions where I could understand “enough” to do a little reflection and sense making. It turns out people seemed to really appreciate the notes based on the feedback on Twitter and from people directly. After the organizers scanned the paper images, we gave each of them their own picture. I sense that this is a unique way to know you have been “heard.” It also helped me get to know people a bit easier.

My talk was a mish-mosh of ideas that relate to supporting communities of developers and related roles in the OSS space. I talked general, not OSS, but with the intent that the ideas were applicable. Slides are also below. I went out on a limb and had them start with the face co-drawing exercise from Johnnie Moore. I sense it pushed some out of their comfort zones, while others seemed to enjoy it. My goal was both to show another “face” of co-creation and collaboration, AND to break out of the traditional academic presentation mode.

As I reflected on the 2.5 days, there were a ton of amazing ideas, but it was challenging to be sitting and listening in schoolroom set up all day. Just imagine these same people using OpenSpace and what additional space for conversation would be available! Next year the fOSSa theme is “archeology” looking back at the open source software movement. I suggested they do a large graphically captured history wall. YES! I hope I can help contribute to that next year, on site or remotely. In the meantime, I’ve been given a lot to reflect on regarding the politics of OSS, the wonderful side conversations with the wonderful Miguel Cornejo, who I finally got to me F2F, and finally, the enticing possibilities of RepRap machines from Adrian Bowyer! Holiday project?

My thanks to all the organizers, hosts, speakers and presenters. I had a wonderful time, including the great wine tasting meal on Thursday. Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/sets/72157628002081730/

via fOSSa2011 sketchnotes.

fOSSa2011 sketchnotes

And the slides…which make little sense without the talk. Sorry.

View more presentations from Nancy White

Noodling on my fOSSa presentation

October is a month on the road… and one stop is Lyon, France, where I’ll be presenting at the third edition of the fOSSa Conference taking place from October 26 to 28, 2011.

What is fOSSa? From the organizers:

The aim of the fOSSa (Free Open Source Academia Conference) is to reaffirm the underlying values of Open Source software: innovation & research in software development.

While the first edition aimed at providing valuable information on the Open Source model at large, the second edition focused specific key-aspects of FOSS such as development, innovation & research, community management & promotion, public sector, and education. The third edition will address in an open-minded style about
– what tech people are actually doing and innovating?
– which are the upcoming issues & challenges in the open development context?
– how open activities, collaboration and knowledge sharing is beneficial to academia, education & industry?

fOSSa 2011 program includes talks about Education, Online Community Management, New Innovating Development & Contribution Paradigm, Openness and OSS trends.

fOSSa days are open to everyone and registration is free !
more information @ http://fossa.inria.fr

So what am I going to offer? Here is my first draft: Twittering: Frittering or Connecting?  The role of transversal connections in online communities and networks.

As humans, we have a long history of working in groups: families, local geographic communities, work teams. Today online technologies allow us to connect broadly using networks of all kinds. We might think of these as deep (groups) and broad (networks). The question is, how do we keep these two forms usefully knitted together? How do the emerging technologies work together as a useful habitat, and when do they actually make things harder? What are the online and offline implications? Lets explore the place of the “transversal!”

I picked up the word “transversal” from Etienne Wenger’s talk a few weeks ago at the Rome Share Fair. It resonated with my observations about the disconnect we seem to experience between high level conversations in a domain and practice, between the breadth of networks and the intimacy of smaller groups. So I grabbed the word and I’m running with it, along with his term “social artist!” Yum. Plus I’ll weave in technology stewardship. So maybe this is about roles, eh?

This week I also have a fabulous case to illustrate many of the ideas I’m thinking of sharing, the #Canlis4Free treasure hunt in Seattle. I took a ton of screen shots and uploaded them today.  But does one dare talk about one of the more exclusive Seattle restaurants when in the home of some of France’s finest cooking? Mmmm….

Dave, Rachel and a Great Online Meeting Idea

Browsing Rachel Smith’s blog today I came across this terrific idea. She was building on an idea of Dave Gray (of Brainstorming fame) to help people share their current state. Sort of a project emotional barometer. I love things that help us visualize and make discussable this often “internal weather.”

Project Map | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

I can imagine putting the image up on a webmeeting white board.

John Smith introduced me to a barometer for the ongoing health of a community of practice which I really liked. What this one does is taking it a step beyond simple data collection and add the emotive element.

Small Group Creation Ideas

I believe in treating adults as adults. That doesn’t mean I, as a facilitator, cannot be inspired by techniques teachers use with children in their classrooms, right?

Here are a few inspirations from Karen Moler of FlamingoFabulous in 2nd Grade. Facilitators, be inspired! And see if any of Karen’s challenges show up for you working with adults!

Here is a tool I use in my classroom to “randomly” partner my students up for activities. I love giving students the opportunity to choose their own partners but there are always a few who just can’t work together well but insist on doing it anyway. I also pass out cards and find the match to find their partner from time to time. But sometimes you need a quick way to ensure that your students are paired up academically or according to behavior. Soooo…. I created the partner wheel.

via Flamingo Fabulous in Second Grade: More Behavior Management and Freebie!.

And more http://flamingofabulous.blogspot.com/search/label/Behavior

Usually, I have the “turn to your elbow buddy” or use the partner wheel approach to finding thinking partners, but I wanted another mode for finding good thinking partners so I made this variation of  Paula Rutherford’s Feathered Friends or Clock Buddies. Students will take their paper around the classroom and ask classmate’s to be their thinking partners for specific days. So if Johnny wanted to be partners with Sally, and they both had their Monday box available, Johnny would write Sally’s name on his paper and Sally would write Johnny’s name on her paper. It would go like this until everyone has every box filled. If it is done right, there should be no overlaps or duplicates. From then on, all I have to do is say, “Today children, I’d like you to sit with your Friday thinking partner on the carpet.”

Finding Process Ideas From Our Networks

This linked set of tweets tells the story about why we don’t have to k now all the different processes we can use in groups, in our work. (This is also a nice Twitter Story which I can point to when we are talking aboutNetworks at CSIR in Pretoria next week!)

We need to focus not on encyclopedic knowledge, but to know

1) how to learn and practice new processes,

2) how to ask the right questions to select processes (alone and with others) and,

3) to tap the wider knowledge of our networks to identify our options.

via Students self-organize their own curriculum – storify.com.