ChiliPLoP, Day 2

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Today, my workshop began in earnest. My goal for today was to collectively
develop a working definition of collaboration, and I’m happy to say
that we achieved that (see Collab:Collaboration). Tomorrow, we’ll
start exploring patterns in earnest.    (1BW)

I have a great group of participants:    (1BX)

We began the day by introducing ourselves to each other. I asked each
person to relate their best collaborative experience. Most people
found it a difficult question, which jives with my overall
experience. Nevertheless, we managed to get enough out of the stories
for a barebones definition to emerge.    (1C2)

I then sent the participants off to read Chapter 4 of Michael Schrage’s
No More Teams! while I refactored my Dialog Map, captured using
Compendium.
(I’ll post the final map at the end of the conference.)    (1C3)

After lunch, I showed the participants my Dialog Map for the first
time. From that point forward, the map became part of the
conversation (Shared Display). We walked through several scenarios —
some of which had emerged from the earlier discussion — deciding
whether or not they constituted collaboration and why.    (1C4)

Afterwards, I refactored the map again, and we started refining the
definition. The end result is at Collab:Collaboration. I’ll post
more commentary on the patterns mailing list.    (1C5)

Throughout the day, all of us recorded possible patterns on index
cards. We’ll use those as a starting point for our discussion
tomorrow.    (1C6)

Side Notes    (1C7)

I had made my expectations very clear at the beginning of the day: My
goal for the day was to have a working definition of collaboration.
(A pattern Ofra calls Set The Pegs.) So, having accomplished that at
the end of the day, we all were satisfied.    (1C8)

On the way to dinner, I ran into another workshop participant who
asked me how my workshop went. I said, “Great. We defined
collaboration.” He thought I was joking. We had spent the entire day
defining one term, and I was actually happy about that.    (1C9)

This was very much by design, and to be perfectly frank, I was glad
that we managed to come up with something workable by the end of the
day. I am a strong believer in Shared Understanding as a prerequisite
for effective collaboration. I’ve also been influenced by the
MGTaylor process, which suggests that spending about two-thirds of the
allotted time on Shared Understanding and Shared Language and the rest
on the concrete objective is actually more effective than attempting
to spend all of the time on the concrete objective. The reason is
that you are not capable of effectively attacking the concrete
objective without first developing Shared Understanding. The end
result is that you end up trying to solve both problems simultaneously
(and often unconsciously) and up doing both poorly. Additionally,
because you were not realistic with your expectations up-front,
everyone walks away disappointed.    (1CA)

The proof, of course, is in the pudding. It’ll be interesting to see
how my participants feel about our overall productivity by the end of
the day tomorrow.    (1CB)

Earlier that day, I described Blue Oxen Associates to another attendee,
who wondered, how will we make money if we give our pattern language
away? He was actually trying to tactfully ask how we make money,
period. I don’t think he realistically thought that we could make
money selling a “proprietary” pattern language.    (1CC)

My response: The real value is in the experience, not in the text
itself, which without context is simply more information in the
infoglut. If you can gain value from merely reading our material,
outstanding. We give it away to heighten the potential impact.
However, to truly appreciate the research, you need to experience it
firsthand. I see Blue Oxen Associates as a new type of learning
organization, where members learn by experiencing and participating in
what we study and what we learn. The value is in the experience and
in being part of our community, and that’s what we expect people to
pay for.    (1CD)

Finally, in the evening, Jerry Michalski demonstrated The Brain, a
Personal Knowledge Management tool. Sadly, it was late in the evening,
and only a few people saw the demo; tomorrow, I’m going to suggest
that he do it again. I had seen The Brain before, but Jerry’s demo is
particularly compelling because he’s been adding data to it since
1997.    (1CE)

One thing that really comes through with The Brain is how little
semantic richness you need for a tool to be useful. The Brain supports
typed links, but Jerry doesn’t use them. Instead, he uses topical
nodes to relate other nodes. In essence, it’s a barebones graph model
with a great UI, but its utility is tremendous. We don’t have enough
tools like it.    (1CF)

ChiliPLoP Day 1

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Yesterday afternoon, I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona for Chili PLoP
2004. I hitched a ride with Ralph Johnson and Joe Yoder to Carefree,
Arizona, and soon found myself at the Lutheran Retreat Center, where the
conference is being held.    (1BJ)

The post-dinner agenda was to discuss the structure of the
conference. Other than the meal schedule (which is strictly
enforced), there is no structure. This is what differentiates
Chili PLoP from Hillside Group‘s other PLoP conferences. The setting is
more relaxed, and the agenda is entirely flexible.    (1BK)

Once we got business out of way, the fun began. There were a lot of
great conversations, and a few of us stayed up late into the night
chatting about everything from Pattern Languages to politics.    (1BL)

Tom Munnecke got the discussion started by asking about the
generativity of Pattern Languages. This is an ongoing beef that Tom
has with Pattern Languages, a misunderstanding that’s important to
clarify.    (1BM)

Tom’s thesis is that society is too problem-centric. For example, our
approach to healthcare is to cure sickness rather than to promote
healthy living. Tom’s GivingSpace project — and the reason he’s here
— is to identify and propagate patterns of uplift. This is a
wonderful effort. It’s related to our work on patterns of
collaboration, and it’s an effort I fully support.    (1BN)

Patterns are often defined as solutions to problems in a context.
Tom’s complaint is about the term “problem”; he think it prevents
patterns from being generative. “Problem” in this context, however,
means, “Something that needs a solution,” not, “Something that is
wrong.” In other words, describing things in terms of problems and
solutions does not necessarily prevent the solution from being
generative.    (1BO)

In fact, Christopher Alexander stresses the importance of identifying
generative patterns. Linda Rising cited an example first described by
Don Olson (and is also discussed in Linda’s book, The Patterns
Handbook). Beginning skiiers often have a tendency to lean back,
something that will cause them to lose their balance. You could say
that one pattern is, “Don’t Lean Back.” This is not very useful
advice. Leaning back is an instinctive, not conscious action.    (1BP)

Don’s suggested pattern is “Hands In View.” This is a conscious action
you can perform, and the end result is that you lean forward. This is
a great example of a generative pattern.    (1BQ)

Ralph cited a similar example in software development:
qmail. The motivation for qmail was to
build a secure mail server. The approach, however, was not to
identify and fix every security problem. The approach was to design
small, modular programs that were easy to verify as secure. In other
words, security was an emergent property of the software’s design.    (1BR)

Other topics of note:    (1BS)

  • Ralph offered the following advice on naming patterns: Use noun phrases, not verbs.    (1BT)
  • Some patterns are not easily cross-cultural. For example, we talked about The Mexican Wave as a pattern of uplift. (I didn’t know that it was “the Mexican wave”; I thought it was just “the wave.”) Ofra Homsky suggested that Israelis would never do the wave. Joe Yoder said the same about Chicago Bears’ fans. The reasoning was that these fans are culturally noncomformist, and that they would never reach the necessary critical mass of fans in order to get the wave going. Similarly, Ofra explained that in America, when people want to increase their applause, they applaud faster. In Europe, people start applauding in rhythm.    (1BU)
  • Jerry Michalski related a story from Dave Grossman’s book, On Killing. Prior to World War I I, the U.S. military did a study that showed that in previous wars, only 10 percent of American soldiers were shooting to kill. This is because most humans naturally do not want to kill other people. The military reacted by changing its training methods, and by the Vietnam War, that number had increased to 90 percent. The point was that we are capable of changing people’s behaviors through training. The result, however, was not only increased killing efficiency but also the emergence of post-traumatic stress syndrome, which only started appearing after the Korean War, and an increase in the suicide rate among soldiers in wartime. The military had managed to change soldier’s behaviors, but at a terrible psychological cost.    (1BV)

December GivingSpace Workshop

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

There were several interesting presentations at Tom Munnecke‘s December 11 GivingSpace workshop, as well as some worthwhile discussion. Some quick thoughts and tidbits:    (NA)

The workshop began with one of Paul Andrews‘s Improbable Pairs videos. This one told the story of Yitzhak Frankenthal, an Israeli whose son was killed by Palestinians, and Jawad Tibi, a Palestinian whose brothers were killed by the Israeli military. Their tales are gutwrenching, but rather than respond with hatred, the two formed a group called the Parents Bereavement Forum, a support group for both Israeli and Palestinian families personally affected by the violence. Paul filmed and edited their stories masterfully. The video was only about ten minutes, but there was not a dry eye in the audience.    (NB)

Heather Wood-Ion gave a marvelous talk on transformation. An analogy she made that stood out for me was that the mythology in nonprofits centers around martyrdom. Words like “sacrifice” and “suffering” are bandied about. The mythology in forprofits centers around heroes. There, people talk about building legacies. These attitudes explain why nonprofits are so poor at collaborating with each other. There is a sense that martyrdom and collaboration are mutually exclusive. People want to share their stories of suffering, not of what went right and why. (There was some followup discussion about this at the Blue Oxen Collaboration Collaboratory.)    (NC)

Megan Smith, one of the founders of Planet Out and currently a Reuters Digital Visions Fellow at Stanford and an employee at Google, explained the 2/3 rule: Two-thirds of every successful community on the Internet consists of conversations. Successful sites, she said, are good at gardening those conversations. Megan also described a giant LCD map of the world at the Google offices. When someone in the world queries Google, a light blinks at that location on the map. What strikes Megan is that there are entire regions of the world that are always dark, a vivid visual reminder of the digital divide. In addition to being a clear thinker and a dynamic storyteller, Megan also demonstrated a diplomat’s touch, when she very skillfully and transparently defused an exchange between participants that had gotten very heated.    (ND)

Jerry Michalski explained his acronym du jour: MADA (Memory, Analysis, Discourse, Action). MADA struck me as an excellent (better?) synthesis for what Doug Engelbart calls CoDIAK (Collective Development, Integration, and Application of Knowledge). Jerry had the line of the workshop, when he pointed to the conversation map that Megan had drawn on the white board, and said, “All that discussion without memory and analysis is like going around in a giant circle jerk.” Jerry also suggested that business are partially to blame for why we don’t have better tools for group memory. Business of culture, he observed, don’t want us to have a memory. They want us to buy what they’re currently telling us we need. (See also my previous notes on group memory.)    (NE)

Richard Gabriel talked about the Hillside Group and Pattern Languages. He said that the Hillside Group “practices an aggressive disregard for novelty.” Jerry, incidentally, called Pattern Languages “deglazed wisdom.” Jerry was on fire that day.    (NF)

We participated in a Conversation Cafe for the latter part of the workshop. The topic was, “What can we do to create self-organizing systems that discover and replicate positive, scalable, small things?” We broke into several small groups, sat at different tables in the “cafe,” and drew on butcher paper as we talked. Here’s an excerpt from a previous blog entry about one of those conversations:    (NG)

Another great example of the challenges of SharedLanguage cropped up at the GivingSpace workshop in SanFrancisco last Thursday. Six of us were discussing small, concrete steps that lead to transformation, and HeatherNewbold described how MattGonzalez? for Mayor campaign buttons had galvanized the progressive community in SanFrancisco. Four of us knew exactly what Heather was describing, because we lived in the Bay Area and followed local politics. All she had to do was mention the buttons, and we understood what she meant. The other two people at our table, however, had no idea what we were talking about. One was from SanDiego, and the other simply didn’t follow politics.  T    (NH)

Here are the two products of the conversations at our table, courtesy of Fen Labalme.    (NI)

Every time I participate in one of these workshops, I find myself paying close attention to the facilitation itself, inevitably comparing it to other experiences. Shelley Hamilton’s technique shared some similarities with the MGTaylor process, and at one point, she cited Stuart Kaufman’s work, which also inspired Matt Taylor and Gail Taylor. Overall, Shelley did a good job. I especially liked the Conversation Cafe. The one thing I didn’t like was that there was no Report Out session following the cafe. It would have been nice to have had a group session where we summarized our conversations and sought connections between those summaries.    (NJ)