Full Circle Associates

Jim McGee exemplifies how sharing experience and trying to understand those experiences makes us collectively smarter when we try and talk about tools and how we use them. Look at the role of self reflection and awareness as you read this bit from Jim:

I'm one of those, for example, who finds web-based discussion less satisfying than blogging. Denham, on the other hand, appears to prefer web-based discussion. But he has made the effort to try the alternatives and can ground his preferences in that experience. You need to "go native" long enough to grasp what makes each of these new experiences worthwhile in their own right. You can't stop at the metaphorical level. And you can't stay detached.

There are two reasons I prefer blogging over web-based discussion. First, it allows me to get my own thoughts in order at my own pace. I lose the thread in threaded discussions. Second, blogs make it easier for me to find and link to others' thinking. The conversation moves at a slower pace and in chunks I find more satisfying.

All of these tools ought to be in the repetoire of any knowledge worker. But that requires a commitment to experimenting and working with the tools long enough to discover their signature rhythms and styles. That runs counter to software marketing practices that emphasize "out of the box experince" over time enough to learn how to use the tools and fit them to your needs. Those of us who are scouts in these new territories need to think about how to ease the transition for the settlers who will follow.

What I learned reading this echoes something Lilia mentioned last month at a gathering in the Netherlands -- this need to organize one thoughts and resources. It struck me that my entry into the online interaction world was to see others' thoughts and then to discuss them. I never had that "organizing" thing in mind.

Jenny Ambrozek asked me in email a while back about how the way I went online has influenced my development and thinking. I've been chewing on that. The event that triggered my deep dive was participation in Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds - right from the get go. It was the contact with people I did not have in my F2F life, and the conversations this contact enabled, that changed me. So I was clearly "conversation" centric from the start, not information or idea sharing out. My attention over the years has been around this and the social structures that support connection and conversation.

But dang, when someone points another perspective out to me, even better, with examples, I get it. I get it even better when they help me understand not just the functions of a tool, but their experience of those functions. Then I can expand my repetoire of how I use tools. Now THAT is social, friends. It ain't the software, it's the people. I'll keep repeating this, so fair warning, dear reader. Fair warning!

FYI, this references both a post here and on Many2Many