People Time

Adina Levin quotes Peter Kaminski:    (21Y)

“Time together in person is too important to spend working.”    (21Z)

Reminds me of something Paul Visscher and Jason Cook told me when I had dinner with them a few weeks ago. I was asking about the hacker community in Dayton and whether folks ever got together to do code sprints. Paul responded, “When I get the chance to see these people in person, I’d rather just hang out with them.” Jason told a story of how he went to one local hacker gathering, where everyone was in a circle, staring at their laptops, something he found rather unappealing.    (220)

To some degree, it shows how spoiled techies are in the Silicon Valley. There are so many of us here, doing code sprints doesn’t necessarily interfere with socializing. When Seb Paquet met up with me in December, he had just come from Marc Canter‘s party and was in awe of how easy it was to run into cool and interesting folks — not just techies — around here. (Hey Marc, where was my invitation?!)    (221)

Wikis And Face-To-Face Events

Face-to-face gatherings are very good at generating a large amount of enthusiasm and momentum. Unfortunately, that energy usually dissipates soon afterwards.    (204)

Here’s what generally happens: Folks leave the event exhilirated, but exhausted, and return only to discover a daunting pile of work. By the time they’ve made their pile manageable, the only artifact of their gathering is a lingering feeling of, “Oh yeah, that was fun.” The work that was done and the work that was to be done is mostly forgotten.    (205)

For the past two years, I’ve been designing a set of processes that use online tools to maintain and even increase that energy after an event. I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with bits and pieces of the methodology at the past two Planetwork conferences and the recent AdvocacyDev convergence to varying degrees of success. At the MGTaylor 7-Domains Workshop last month, I finally had a chance to test the methodology in its purest form, and I was extremely pleased with the results.    (206)

The Process    (207)

The process is based on two principles:    (208)

  • The event itself must result in a living Group Memory, not just an event memory.    (209)
  • Participants must be literate in the tools used to collaborate afterwards. Otherwise, the tools become an impediment.    (20A)

The process addresses both of these principles simultaneously by using the online tools for developing that Group Memory during the event itself. This gives people — especially non-techies — the opportunity to orient themselves around the tool in a comfortable environment. The better integrated the tool is into the event process, the more accelerated the learning.    (20B)

What makes a Group Memory alive?    (20C)

  • Group ownership. The problem with after-the-fact proceedings or journals is that participants aren’t necessarily invested in the results. Hence, they’re likely to ignore them. How many participants read event proceedings after the fact? One corrollary to this is that Group Memory does not have to be polished. A rough diagram developed by the group as it worked is more valuable than an edited summary of the event written by a third-party observer and published several days afterwards.    (20D)
  • Dynamic. You have to be able to add to a repository and refactor existing content.    (20E)

Tools    (20F)

Wikis are an outstanding tool for Group Memory. However, simply making the tool available during an event will not automatically result in Group Memory. The end product of Wikis at most conferences is not usually representative of the attendees at large. The main reason for this is that the percentage of participants who use them is usually fairly low.    (20G)

Wikis also tend to be underutilized because they are advertised as conference space and not community space. Organizers don’t expect them to be living spaces for continuous discussion and collaboration, and hence, they aren’t.    (20H)

(A quick aside on Mailing Lists and Group Memory. Contrary to what one might think, Mailing Lists can be very effective as a Group Memory. It’s possible to refactor existing discussions by posting summaries, a common practice in many effective online communities. However, Mailing Lists alone tend to be much more useful for participants as a Knowledge Repository than for outsiders. I think Mailing Lists are far more powerful as a complement to other tools, such as Wikis.)    (20I)

7-Domains Workshop    (20J)

I always felt that the best people with which to do this experiment were the good folks at MGTaylor, because their events:    (20K)

  • Are action-oriented and highly interactive.    (20L)
  • Consist of large, eclectic crowds, often technological newbies.    (20M)
  • Emphasize face-to-face, multimodal interaction. This presents interesting design challenges, because they usually discourage laptops at their events.    (20N)
  • Place great importance in documentation and assembling knowledge.    (20O)

How did this differ from some of the previous events Blue Oxen Associates has worked?    (20P)

  • There were many non-techies at Planetwork, and the Inter Active sessions took center stage. However, despite Jim Fournier and Elizabeth Thompson‘s best efforts, Planetwork was still a talking-heads conference (and a good one at that). Planetwork gets a special mention, though, because that’s where I first met and worked with Gail Taylor.    (20Q)
  • AdvocacyDev was highly interactive, it was fairly large (40 people), and the Wiki played a central role in the design. However, the group was already very familiar with Wikis, and those who weren’t were technical enough and motivated enough to figure them out quickly.    (20R)

The 7-Domains Workshop is a semiregular gathering of the folks in the MGTaylor network, practitioners of the process. There were about 60 participants representing a number of organizations, including Vanderbilt Center For Better Health (our host), Cap Gemini, and the VA. The purpose of the gathering was self-evaluation and collaboration on improving both individually and collectively.    (20S)

My primary role was to help integrate the Wiki into the design of the event and to support Wiki usage during the event. I also assisted in other Krew duties. In addition to being a somewhat ideal audience for my experiment, I had a few other advantages:    (20T)

  • By nature, the participants were interested in collaboration, experimentation, and learning.    (20U)
  • Most of the participants owned and brought (at the urging of the organizers) laptops. The center had wireless ethernet, ethernet jacks, and several kiosks for those who did not have computers.    (20V)
  • We had outstanding facilitators and a great Krew. These folks quickly oriented themselves to Wikis before the workshop and naturally assumed the roles of Wiki gardeners during.    (20W)

Workshop Design    (20X)

I played a very small role in the design of the event itself. Of the four facilitators — Matt Taylor, Gail Taylor, Rob Evans, and Bryan Coffman — Matt and Gail understood Wikis quite well. In fact, their conceptual understanding of Wikis was much more advanced than their proficiency with the tool, which I think is quite unusual and impressive. They had insights into the tool’s potential that many people who are quite skillful with the tool never see. Gail had also worked with me at both Planetwork conferences, so she had some experience with what did and did not work.    (20Y)

On Gail’s suggestion, the primary group exercise at the event was to write a book. The exact topic and format was not specified — that would evolve as the workshop unfolded. The only thing that was understood was that everybody would participate — participants, facilitators, and Krew.    (20Z)

The book exercise solved many problems. Like most MGTaylor events, it built knowledge assembly into the workshop process. More importantly, it made the participants responsible for that assembly, which kept them invested in the content. Traditionally, the Krew is responsible for documenting the event and assembling that knowledge afterwards into a journal. At this event, the participants documented the workshop themselves using the Wiki. This not only sliced two days off of the Krew‘s normal responsibilities, it also freed them up to take more of an assembler role, and it allowed both Krew and facilitators to contribute to the discussion in ways not previously possible.    (210)

There was no training. On the second day of the five day workshop, I spent about forty-five minutes talking to the entire group about the philosophical underpinnings of Wikis and about ten minutes demonstrating the Wiki itself. With other groups, I would have skipped the philosophical discussion entirely. Beyond that and a one-page Wiki formatting cheat-sheet, there was no training. I was on-hand to help, as were the Krew and facilitators, and participants were encouraged to help each other.    (211)

As an initial exercise, we precreated pages for every participant. We then asked people to add some information about themselves, then to go through the Wiki and comment on another page that interested them. Having people write in their own pages allowed us to avoid a massive edit conflict problem. It also gave people a fallback if they were unsure of where to add content, and it populated the Wiki with a lot of useful and interesting information. People are social animals. We like to read about other people.    (212)

The Results    (213)

As expected, a bunch of people were skeptical about the Wiki at first. By the end of the week, the Wiki had over 400 pages of rich and interesting content, and a month later, people are still using it. Several people gushed about the tool — Holly Meyers, one of the Krew, loved it so much, she wrote a manifesto entitled, “Wonderful Wiki.” Many asked me afterwards about setting up Wikis in their own organizations.    (214)

The “book” synthesized a lot of group knowledge, which not surprisingly centered mostly around the MGTaylor facilitation process. There were also several interesting thoughts and stories about collaboration in general. One group of participants chose to tell their story in murder mystery form, a surprisingly effective medium that ended up captivating quite a few people.    (215)

Throughout the week, Alicia Bramlett, another Krew member, evolved the Wiki site design, highlighting content we felt was important. (She also put together a very cool movie of the event, which we showed to the participants on the last day, and which appropriately received a standing ovation.) The other Krew members and the facilitators were actively engaged in contributing to and gardening the Wiki throughout the week. (It should be pretty obvious at this point what I thought about these folks — they were awesome.)    (216)

Watching people use the Wiki was a special treat for me. I learned tons about the tool’s usability, stuff I’ll report on eventually. Most people learned the tool quickly and easily. I had more trouble getting people connected to the wireless than getting people using the Wiki.    (217)

I ended up adding a new feature to PurpleWiki — visited pages — during the event. I realized that several people were having problems navigating the site after editing the pages, and I knew that having a list of recently visited pages would help resolve that. It was already on our list of things to do, and it was an easy feature to add, so I did it.    (218)

Shortly after the event, I was delighted to see a new function evolve from the Wiki. Because people were from all over the globe, one of the participants suggested that people post useful travel information on the Wiki, which several people did.    (219)

I’ll have more to say on all of this at some point, including a more formal report of the results.    (21A)

Goodbye, St. Louis

Did the Anheuser Busch tour this morning, then went to the Soulard district for exploration and lunch. Spent most of the afternoon visiting the antique shops on Cherokee Street, following some spicy Cajun food at the Hard Shell Cafe.    (1YY)

If there’s been a theme to this trip, it’s been the reawakening of my sense of touch. The design of last week’s workshop emphasized kinesthetic learning. The night before the workshop, I was helping Holly Meyers cut out signs that we were posting throughout the room. The scissors felt completely foreign in my hands. It was as if I had almost totally forgotten how to cut anything more complicated than a straight line.    (1YZ)

When I visited Abraham Lincoln‘s birthplace a few days earlier, I saw the Lincoln family Bible. I spent what seemed like forever staring at it, thinking about how Honest Abe himself used to flip through that very Bible when he was a kid living in a tiny Kentucky log cabin.    (1Z0)

Walking in and out of shops on Cherokee Street was like another trip on the time machine. I held kitschy tchotchkes, ran my hands over century-old furniture, and thought about where they had been before, who their owners were, what these items meant to them. On occasion, I chatted with store owners, marveling at their passion for old things.    (1Z1)

Ended the day at Busch Stadium watching the Cardinals play the Giants. The evening was dry, warm, and breezy, thanks to the rain the night before. From our seats along the right field line, we could see the Arch outside the stadium. Towards the end of the game, we watched the riverfront fireworks (along with the fireworks inside the stadium provided by Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols).    (1Z2)

After the game, Scott Foehner, his friend Eric, and I had beers at Dressel’s in the Central Western End. Had a few Boulevard’s, which is a Kansas City brew. Perfect way to end my Midwest adventures — gorgeous weather, a night at the ballpark, good company.    (1Z3)

Yogi, Lewis and Clark

Had to put out a few fires this morning. Thank goodness for high-speed wireless and my trusty new iBook. As a sidenote, Apple Works is an absolute travesty. It is twelve steps backwards in the evolution of office applications. Can’t wait for OpenOffice to run natively on Panther.    (1YT)

Afterwards, I drove to The Hill for lunch at Amighetti’s, then walked down Elizabeth Street to see the stretch of road where Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up. I love The Hill. Red brick houses line the streets, and there’s an Italian restaurant and bakery on every block. I could spend weeks here, just wandering the streets and eating.    (1YU)

My next stop was the Arch. Took the crazy tram to the top. Remember the egg from Mork and Mindy? The tram consists of eight of those, with five people crammed in each of them. There’s a tram on each side of the Arch, and they meet at the center. Takes about five minutes to the top.    (1YV)

The highlight of the Arch was the IMAX movie and exhibits on Lewis & Clark. I had to add a book on the two explorers to my always growing reading list.    (1YW)

Scott Foehner and I had dinner at Blueberry Hill, which Scott claims is the most well known restaurant in town. Near Washington University, it sports plenty of seating, good burgers, a wide beer selection, live music, kitschy trinkets, and the occasional St. Louis celebrity. Its longtime owner, Joe Edwards, has invested a lot in the area recently. Afterwards, we had a few beers and played some darts and pool at the Black Derby, an excellent little dive with good music in the south side of St. Louis.    (1YX)