Full Circle Associates

A while ago Beth Kanter put out to her network a request to know about useful nonprofit wiki practices. I meant to reply, but, as usual, got distracted. Today I received an email update about a local coalition here in Washington State (USA) that reminded me about their great wiki work. Check out the Communities Connect Network Wiki . Early on, I had the pleasure of working with Peg Giffels who was their main wiki gardener (among many other roles.) Peg “got” that there was both an information architecture and a set of social processes associated with their use of a wiki as both a project communication tool and as a knowledge sharing tool.

Intially the blog was going to be a general place for coalition members to share stuff. But we all know how general stuff goes — slowly if at all. Then Peg hit on using the wiki to be the central point for the coalitions training programs. Now, at the completion of this last round, Peg has a site that is rich in materials (print, audio, video), has an integrated wiki orientation and training component, reflects specific member areas and contributions (for example here and here) and is well organized and “gardened.” The left navigation links to major areas of the wiki.

One of the things that came out of the early “Wiki Wednesday” hour long telephone based orientations was that people came to get trained, but left with new connections to other coalition members. When asked what was best about the calls — it was always the people they connected with. Peg lives that in the way she works with the coalition. While she stewarded the technology and the content, her attention to the people came across to me, as I observed the wiki development over the months and now years.

Like most wikis, there is a relatively small proportion of editors to page views. For example, in April, there was a rough average of 220 unique visitors per day, 2-3 editors and intermittent spikes of editing across the month. This makes sense given the ‘wind down’ phase as well. There was a huge jump in traffic between February and March. I should ask Peg what was going on!

Interestingly, while this wiki is very focused on Washington state, there are viewers from around the world. I really wish I knew what they thought, in what ways, if any, they benefited from visiting the wiki. I appreciate that the Communities Connect project worked with such openness. They have made a contribution that is bigger than their own project work. I like that about public wikis.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this cool wiki with you. Do you have any great wikis you’d like to share with the rest of us?

P.S. Beth, when I went to find the link on your blog, I noticed two things. Your search box is now waaaay down on the left nav bar of your blog - I almost gave up looking for it. And it is a Technorati search, so I have to go to Technorati and THEN link back to your blog. Maybe consider putting in a Google or other direct search option? I want to find your great stuff FAST! And yes, I’m finally becoming a searcher!

photo credit: rgordon

A while back my friend and colleague Shawn Callahan asked me to pitch in with him and fellow Anecdote-ite Mark Schenk to write a paper on collaboration. It is out today on the Anecdote site –> Anecdote - Whitepapers - Building a collaborative workplace. From the introduction:

Today we all need to be collaboration superstars. The trouble is, collaboration is a skill and set of practices we are rarely taught. It’s something we learn on the job in a hit-or-miss fashion. Some people are naturals at it, but most of us are clueless.

Our challenge doesn’t stop there. An organisation’s ability to support collaboration is highly dependent on its own organisational culture. Some cultures foster collaboration while others stop it dead in its tracks.

To make matters worse, technology providers have convinced many organisations that they only need to purchase collaboration software to foster collaboration. There are many large organisations that have bought enterprise licences for products like IBM’s Collaboration Suite or Microsoft’s Solutions for Collaboration who are not getting good value for money, simply because people don’t know how to collaborate effectively or because their culture works against collaboration.

Of course technology plays an important role in effective collaboration. We are not anti-technology. Rather we want to help redress the balance and shift the emphasis from merely thinking about collaboration technology to thinking about collaboration skills, practices, technology and supporting culture. Technology makes things possible; people collaborating makes it happen.

This paper has three parts. We start by briefly exploring what we mean by collaboration and why organisations and individuals should build their collaboration capability. Then, based on that understanding, we lay out a series of steps for developing a collaboration capability. We finish the paper with a simple test of your current collaboration capability.

I think the issue is beyond building a collaborative workplace. It applies to our communities and networks. But heck, starting with organizations is always worth a try, eh?

While we were co-writing (using a Google doc) I started reading more about the differences between collaboration and cooperation - which we don’t address in the paper, but which are important. So I’ve noted that for future writing. If you are interested in Cooperation, don’t miss Howard Rheingold’s work on this.

One of my favorite communities, Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev as we call it), will have it’s annual F2F in Almada, Portugal, just across the Tagus river from Lisbon. Yes, I lobbied for Portugal because some of my dear friends are there, giving me multiple reasons to hop on a plane. The gathering in June will be in Open Space, so anyone can bring their knowledge to share, questions to pose and you can be sure, there WILL be partying. I have to start getting in Party-Shape to keep up with these friends and colleagues!

Who can come? Anyone who decides to join the community via our site or DGroups email list and shares a passion for the application of knowledge and learning in international development. So that might be YOU!

It looks like I may be in Lisbon the few days earlier to give a talk at an Elearning Conf. More on that later!

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

I am intrigued by this bit of advice from Michael Idinopulos writing about Creating a Participatory Knowledgebase: 3 Best Practices

Lead with what you want, not what you have. Many groups, especially research groups, tend to use the wiki as a dumping ground for research they’ve already done. This research typically takes the form of reports which were written for a specific audience to answer a specific question at a specific moment in time. So the value of the reports themselves isn’t so great. What is valuable, however, is the insights embedded in those reports. That’s what contributors should be encouraged to post to the wiki. Put differently, a page called “Trends in Retail Channel Marketing” is a better wiki page than “2006 Analysis of our Company’s Channel Marketing Spend”. (Of course, the report might be useful as backup–so include it as a link from the main page on trends).

Since I’ve recently been up to my eyeballs with a wiki on knowledge sharing, this caught my eye. How do we use language to engage others? What makes something “yet another info dump” and another thing an attractor towards ongoing knowledge sharing?

The KS wiki is mostly about sharing information about knowledge sharing tools and methods. This information is available all over the web, but scattered. What it also lacks is insights of what to use when and a place for stories of use. Right now, we are really working hard to try and find ways to express the invitation for sharing use stories, but I had totally forgotten about ways to ask for what you want? Now I’m thinking maybe a page that is a springboard to expressing need.

photo credit: NataPics
What do you think? How would you phrase the invitation? How would you make any of the existing pages on the wiki more of an invitation to what we want, vs. what we have?

I often use a variety of paper networking mapping exercises in my face to face workshops. These have been valuable because the maps help people visualize their work networks in new ways, and the conversation around the maps — especially getting others’ perspectives — helps us see our own maps in new ways and then be more strategic in the use of our networks.

In an upcoming online workshop on knowledge sharing for the CGIAR, we want to do this exercise online — and we want to keep technology low key as this is at the start of the workshop and some participants are not as techy as some of us! So I’m trying to figure out how to do it. I really like the Net-Map process, but it is more in depth than we want to go for this introductory activity.

Would you help me and try it out? I’ve altered the instructions here so we can do it right in the blog, but it will actually be done inside a Moodle installation.

Activity: Map Your Network

Brief Description:

This activity offers and introduction to social network mapping. Using paper, pens and post-it notes, you can create an informal map for your network and then discuss it with others in and outside of your network. Discussing with your network partners offers their perspective of how they fit into your network, which you may not always easily see. Discussing with workshop participants gives you a chance to see the diagram from another’s point of view. Together, these help inform your strategy for working with and sharing knowledge with those in your network.

Purpose:

• Understand a simple application of social network mapping
• Consider how best to utilize your network for your project
• Use the multiple perspectives of others to improve your understanding of your network

Materials:

• 2-3 pieces of flip chart paper
• Small Post-It notes (or pieces of paper and tape)
• Pencil
• Marker pens (2-3 colors)
• Digital camera

Steps:

1. Think of a project that you are working on that requires knowledge sharing. Ideally, this is a real project and one you will be working on throughout the workshop. (For our test, pick one of your networks!)

2. List all the people and organizations involved with your project, putting each one on a small Post-It note. We’ll call these “notes” from now on.

3. Create a note that represents you or your immediate working group or organization.

4. Starting with your note, arrange the notes on the flip chart paper. Place the other notes in relationship to you and your organization. In other words, people or organizations you most frequently do things with should be closer to your note than ones you only interact with infrequently. If your work is all internal, consider other departments, etc.

5. If people or organizations on the notes have relationships or interactions with each other, try and place those notes closer to each other. Move the notes around until you have a general sense of how each person/organization relates to you and to the other notes.

6. Now with a pencil, draw an arrow from you to any of the other people/organizations to whom you regularly share knowledge. The direction of the arrow should be from your note to their note. Then draw lines from other people/organizations who regularly give you information or share knowledge (or you WISH they would!). This time the direction of the arrows should be from them to you. Finally, repeat this process for where other people/organizations share knowledge with any of the other people/organizations. You should now have a set of penciled, directional lines.

7. Now, look at the network again. After thinking about the knowledge flows, do you want to reorganize the notes in any new arrangement? Is there a clumping of some people/organizations? Are some with few or no pencil lines and should be moved further away from your note? Go ahead and move them.

8. With your rearranged notes, draw in the knowledge sharing flow lines in pen. Put the flow from you to others in one color, and from others to you in a second color. Add a third, dotted line between any post its where there are the strongest connections. These identify primary connections in the network.

9. Take a moment to step back and look at your map. What do you notice?

a. With whom do you have the strongest knowledge sharing connections (two way arrows and dotted lines)?
b. With whom do you THINK you should have the strongest connections? If they are not the same as (a) what might you do to strengthen them?
c. Who is an important knowledge intermediary or connector in your network? These would be people/organizations who have lots of connections with other nodes. Which have very few connections and what are the implications for your work?
d. What might you do to strengthen weak connections? To manage where you have too many connections? If you are the only current ‘connector’ who else might help play that role?

10. If you have time, show your map to someone in your network and see what they see when they look at it. Make a note of their observations and any changes they might suggest.

11. Take a digital picture of your network image. Post it on Flickr or some other website and post a link in a comment to this blog post. Share anything you learned in your observations from steps #9 and #10.

12. Look at the maps of others, their observations and give your perspective on at least one other person’s map. A workshop facilitator will also offer their observations, so everyone will get some feedback.

13. After you have received feedback, post a short reflection in your Learning Log on the Moodle site about any insights you had about your network and how you can best use it for your work. (FEEL FREE TO DO THAT HERE IN ANOTHER COMMENT).

DEEP appreciation and thanks in advance for playing along.

Edited later: I have made a few tweaks, fixed some typos, all with the help of my friends. Photos of Twitter friends’ feedback via Flickr here. See also some early thoughts here.

Edited even later: Here is a Short Podcast with Patti Anklam on “Why Map our Networks?”

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)

You may have noticed that yet again I failed to post my Monday Funnies Video. Hey, sometimes you just have to wait until inspiration hits. My sister passed along the link to this amazing performance by Anita Renfroe. There are many versions on YouTube, but I picked this one because in the information box there are the lyrics. Take a listen: YouTube - The Mom Song Sung to William Tell Overture with Lyrics

Of course I enjoyed this both as a mom and as a daughter.
Anita nails it. What an act of knowledge sharing!

But the video inspired more.

I have been thinking about how to evoke the history online community as a thread of our current and future practices. My emerging idea is to look at the intertwining between personal stories about online community along with the technology development that has enabled this new form. I’m not so much interested in the precise history, but the intertwining between our desires to connect, our practices and how the technology community has responded to those pushes and pulls. From the early internet connections through BBS and email, to today’s microblogging and social networks. How might this more evocative retelling inspire our next practices and developments? I had initially thought about this in terms of a set of visuals. But after hearing Anita’s paean to a mother’s advice, I’m expanding my possibilities. Yes, I’m probably about to get in even deeper over my head and may capabilities. That’s why I need you.

Stories + Advice + evocative visuals + some sort of performance art. Can I pack that usefully into a 45 minute presentation at Community 2.0? Will it be USEFUL? I figure I’ll start by exploring each of these, then keep what rises to the surface.

I’ve asked you for your stories. (More still appreciated). Now I’d like you to give me any and all of your advice about designing, building, being in online communities. The shorter and pithier the better. I’ll try and do a version of Anita’s song. Can you help me? Post them in the comments or on your blog and put a link back to this post and I’ll find them. I’ll be, as always, in your debt.

Just as inspiration, here are Anita’s lyrics

“The Mom Song”

Get up now
Get up now
Get up out of bed
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Comb your sleepyhead
Here’s your clothes and your shoes
Hear the words I said
Get up now! Get up and make your bed
Are you hot? Are you cold?
Are you wearing that?
Where’s your books and your lunch and your homework at?
Grab your coat and gloves and your scarf and hat
Don’t forget! You gotta feed the cat
Eat your breakfast, the experts tell us it’s the most important meal of all
Take your vitamins so you will grow up one day to be big and tall
Please remember the orthodontist will be seeing you at 3 today
Don’t forget your piano lesson is this afternoon so you must play
Don’t shovel
Chew slowly
But hurry
The bus is here
Be careful
Come back here
Did you wash behind your ears?
Play outside, don’t play rough, will you just play fair?
Be polite, make a friend, don’t forget to share
Work it out, wait your turn, never take a dare
Get along! Don’t make me come down there
Clean your room, fold your clothes, put your stuff away
Make your bed, do it now, do we have all day?
Were you born in a barn? Would you like some hay?
Can you even hear a word I say?
Answer the phone! Get off the phone!
Don’t sit so close, turn it down, no texting at the table
No more computer time tonight!
Your iPod’s my iPod if you don’t listen up
Where are you going and with whom and what time do you think you’re coming home?
Saying thank you, please, excuse me makes you welcome everywhere you roam
You’ll appreciate my wisdom someday when you’re older and you’re grown
Can’t wait till you have a couple little children of your own
You’ll thank me for the counsel I gave you so willingly
But right now I thank you not to roll your eyes at me
Close your mouth when you chew, would appreciate
Take a bite maybe two of the stuff you hate
Use your fork, do not burp or I’ll set you straight
Eat the food I put upon your plate
Get an A, get the door, don’t get smart with me
Get a grip, get in here, I’ll count to three
Get a job, get a life, get a PHD
Get a dose of,
“I don’t care who started it!
You’re grounded until you’re 36″
Get your story straight and tell the truth for once, for heaven’s sake
And if all your friends jumped off a cliff would you jump, too?
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said at least a thousand times before
That you’re too old to act this way
It must be your father’s DNA
Look at me when I am talking
Stand up straighter when you walk
A place for everything and everything must be in place
Stop crying or I’ll give you something real to cry about
Oh!
Brush your teeth, wash your face, put your PJs on
Get in bed, get a hug, say a prayer with mom
Don’t forget, I love you
And tomorrow we will do this all again because a mom’s work never ends
You don’t need the reason why
Because, because, because, because
I said so, I said so, I said so, I said so
I’m the mom, the mom, the mom, the mom, the mom!!
Ta da!!! (less)

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.

Are you interested in knowledge sharing tools and methods? Particularly if you work in non profits, NGOs or in international development? If so, I’d appreciate it if you took a look at a project some of us are putting together, The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit. From the draft “about” information:

This toolkit is a living knowledge repository about knowledge sharing. We created it to be a resource both for KS workshops and as an ongoing place to learn about, improve upon and generally share our knowledge sharing practices. There are other KS toolkits out in the world - many of them listed in our acknowledgments. Most of them, however, are static - not updated. We wanted to provide a place where we can share our practices in an on-going manner. So we invite you to improve upon any of the entries, leave your name and contact information if you can be a resource on a tool or method, and share stories (both success and “uh-oh - failure” types) of these methods and tools in use. Let’s help each other.

Edit in the wiki, comment in the wiki discussion tabs or leave your comments here. Thanks in advance!

photo credit: Choconancy1