Full Circle Associates

photo credit: Carnavas
As part of the online Knowledge Sharing (KS) in International Agriculture Development workshop, we are exploring KS tools and methods and then sharing our learning via the KS Toolkit Wiki. One tool that came up for review was Trailfire. I had not heard about it, so I put a query out on my Twitter network and in moments, Scott Leslie, a Northern Voice colleague, came to my rescue. Here is a 15 minute podcast with Scott about Trailfire and related tools used to share and comment on our journeys across the web.

Podcast: Scott Leslie on Trailfire

This tool is a Firefox plug-in, so if you want a defined group or community to use it, they all have to be FF users and agree to use the plug in. It would be interesting to test this in the international agriculture research community. (Or any other community.) There is also the wonderful bit about serendipity - finding trails left by others - their annotations and opinions — on sites that you are looking at.

Scott also shared his pre-call prep notes — which I find interesting. (Thanks, Scott!) I’ve put them below.

If you are interested in more blog posts like this, please let me know — and what tools or methods that might interest you.

Trailfire notes

Firefox plugin that works in conjunction with a main site

allows users to create “trails” which are made up of sequenced web sites

a trail mark also allows users to add an annotation to the page, so that when you are looking at that page
with the plugin enabled, you see a small mark, mousing over it shows you the full comment and
provides a link to the full trail

the website allows you to share your trails with others

you can also have the plugin show ALL trailmarks that have been made for a specific page, not just yours, which opens up
all sorts of possibilities for finding other users and finding other trails, other contexts in which a page can be seen

you can also add comments to other people’s trailmarks, meaning that conversations can actually break out “on” the web pages where the
marks were left without the need for any additional server software

cross between a social bookmarking and annotation tool

Educational and Other uses
obvious one is for instructors to create a trail through a series of web pages with some educational objective in mind

but as students/learners can also create their own trails and marks, it also becomes a way to connect with other informal
learners

it empowers users to connect and share with each other without requiring the individual sites to provide any facility or
containing mechanism to do so

simple way to add help commentary to websites - add a mark that leads off to further help documents and tutorials from whatever site
you are trying to use, or use the note to add help, like Greader shortkeys mark

a way to non-invasively annotate the web

a way to leave commentary for Others on websites

a virtual layer that overlays the web; this same technique is now being exploited by browser plugins like PMOG,
passively multiplayer online game, a game played ON TOP of the regular web through a browser plugin

cf. also medium (http://me.dium.com/ )

URLs mentioned in this podcast:

• Scott Leslie’s EdTech Post blog
• Trailfire
• PMOG
• Me.dium
• Knowledge Sharing Toolkit

Bill Anderson adds to the repetoire of conference capture techniques with Haiku Notes from SXSW

PRAXIS101: SXSW 2008 Reflection: Free association as a note-taking practice.

Your social footprint.
Or your ghost on the network.
You have to choose one.

Of course, to complement the text, I’ll grab one of Bill’s colleague’s visual efforts, an image from Honoria Starbuck!

This is the second in my latest series of online facilitation method tips and mini-podcasts. John Smith asked me to write up the practice some of us have been nurturing on the KM4DevWiki to encourage summarizing and harvesting of learnings from key community conversations in our email list on to a wiki. The podcast can be found here.

There are often amazing threads on email lists and web based discussions. Often they get lost due to the tyranny of recency over relevancy. We remember what we last read. How many times have you heard people say “hey, we discussed that before… where IS that conversation?” Some tools make it easy to search within message, but then you have to reconstruct a thread. There may have had subject line changes, interruptions, etc. It is hard work. That’s why it is useful think about practices to pull out useful stuff so it can provide wider and easier benefit.

One practice of harvesting learnings from text based discussions (in email or web forums) started as a small FAQ (frequently asked questions) project a small group of use did a couple of years ago as part of the KM4Dev community. KM4Dev is a global community of practice interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing in international development.

We initially intended to create FAQ’s out of key discussions to answer what we thought were some of the “big questions” that often came up in the community. You can read about the project at the following links.

• FAQIntro - about the FAQ project
• Community Knowledge - what the FAQ project turned in to.
• FAQ Template - the template use - which is now simpler than our earlier versions.
• FAQ Team Meeting Notes - our FAQ team telephone meeting notes
• FAQtory Process Observations - our observations and reflections on doing this project
• FAQ Project After Action Review
• Community Questions and Comments - community feedback.

What we discovered was that often something wasn’t simply a response to a question, so the FAQ format started to limit us. We moved into harvesting what we called “Community Knowledge.” This is the basis of the technique I know use regularly.

Now, on the the technique. (Did I say these were going to be short? I guess I goofed on that!)

1. Role model the harvesting behavior. Our initial FAQs gave people the chance to experience discussion summaries. But the next step was to role model it around current discussions. At first we would notice a “hot thread,” summarize it then post the wiki url back to the email list.
   • Templates can make it easier/more comfortable for people new to summarization and/or wikis.
   • Cross promote the wiki on the list to keep it in the community “line of sight.”
2. Ask others to try the behavior. Next we started asking people to create and post their own summaries of discussion threads that they started.
   • asking in a private email is friendlier, but sometimes the public request can add some useful “pressure.”
3. Time the request well. Usually we made the request for summarization after we saw a thread really get going — and hopefully near the end of the thread.
   • I have made the mistake of suggesting that the thread be summarized too soon and people took that as a “stop talking” signal.
4. Expect resistance. (And I’m tempted to say “resistance is futile, but that’s not really true!) Initially people did not summarize. So I would set up a wiki page for them, send them the url and another small request. (I think I started signing my emails from “wikipest.”) Some people would then summarize and post to the wiki, and some would send me the summary to post. That was fine.
   • Reminders are often useful. I do wonder if I annoyed some times…
5. Encourage those who adopt the practice. After about a year, others started recommending a summaries to starters of hot threads. So the initial part of the practice was being picked up by others. More people were creating pages, but it was still a very limited group.
   • Don’t expect miracles
   • Do thank those wonderful souls who will do this important community work.
6. Make the value visible. Last year we had the need to review our technical platforms and lo and behold, the wiki was getting more page views that the community’s older, established content management based site. This validated that people were finding and in some way, interested in what we had harvested. I believe this external validation helped motivate and maintain the practice.
   • Share stories of use
   • Make pageview data available
   • If the wiki has been useful beyond the community, get the other users to send a thank you as well.
7. Reduce barriers and support from the side. Some of us still have to go in and link pages to the index page.
   • We have had to require registration for the wiki due to wiki-spam, which creates some friction and overhead - it is not as easy as I wish it were.
   • The wiki still needs a lot of overall attention to make things easier to find. (That is on my to do list - and has been for a long time. )

All in all, the practice is valued. We are making our knowledge visible and available to the wider world and inviting them to help improve it. There are 76 entries. The entries on knowledge sharing tools and methods have been spread and reused by members’ parent organizations. Value has been amplified. I think it was worth it!

For more on harvesting:

• The Art of Hosting (paper .dco)

I’m not in Austin for the perennial geek culture fest that is SXSW. But via Twitter and blogs, I’m getting some vibes all the way up here in the northland.

My friend and artist Honaria Starbuck is doing some on the spot paintings of the panels she is attending. She is also including some short poetry. It is an evocative way to share what is going on, very personally filtered through Honaria. Here is an example from Andy Beal’s panel (her picture to the right). You can see all of her painting posts here.

This is yet another example of visual conference capture. Low tech, unlike the work of David Sibbet at TED I blogged about earlier this week. When we think about “harvesting” and “sharing” what is going on at a F2F event, the options are widening. No longer are we limited to text live-blogging, or photo streams. These artistic endeavors capture a “sense” and, for me, enhance the more literal text and audio captures.