No, not to Blockbuster, as The Sweet were banging on about (although give me a John Otway live version any day), but to documenting the emerging thoughts of a (possibly) fragmented group of people from early conceptual ideas, to a shimmering half-vision, to fleshing it out, to evolving changes over time.
It is, perhaps, easy to fall into the traditional, rather formal process of having a few meetings and workshops, followed by someone putting a draft document together, sending it round a load of people for their comments, receiving a load of comments, maybe a few more meetings, updating the document, sending it round for further comment, receiving a load more comments and so on.
Such a structured approach can clearly be attractive – it is a familiar, comfortable process that gets people involved, gives the author a great degree of control and provides a clear audit trail. But I am keen to explore how social network / online collaboration technologies can improve the process – yes, in terms of saving time and effort, but also in terms of getting people more involved (starting at team level, but with a view to broadening to the organisational level and beyond)
Dave recently wrote about some good work using wikis to help collaboration, and this is something I really want to learn more about – the idea of someone starting with quite a sketchy outline of an idea, and people coming together to contribute, challenge, discuss and evolve it over time.
I guess this is an appeal for any examples, good practice or other general advice about how to make the most of what is ‘out there’, and how to get around possible barriers such as access, cost, security, data back-up etc (recognising, of course, that this is not just about the technology)
All comments gratefully received.
08 July, 2008
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3 comments:
I've been chewing over using a blog as a tool for early formulation of ideas, a bit of led, deliberative discussion, place to post outputs (video, audio, images) from real world events, use tools to draw in discussions from across the web etc. A bit like our governance of Britain website (http://governance.justice.gov.uk) but on a micro scale. Key is the skillset (technical, facilitative, moderation etc) rather than than the tools themselves
We're working on a wiki that is a bit more indepth collaboration but I have some useful links in the process section
http://www.wearemedia.org/
Hey Chris, thanks for the link!
Recently I worked on a project where people were all in different locations. This meant we didn't have the option to meet up.
We used various ways to communicate, share, discuss and create what was needed for this project.
Firstly, I created a Facebook group. Here we shared useful links which related to the topic, and we posted questions and suggestions on the wall/discussion boad. Obviously we set the group to private.
Secondly, we shared all the work we had done ourselves (word documents and spreadsheets) via Google Docs. Sometimes more people needed to work on one document, so rather have to sent all changes back and forth we made the updates in real time. This way there was never a delay and everybody was aware of any changes made.
These are relatively easy tools to get started with. If you need any more advice/suggestions just give me a shout.
Oh, btw the post you linked to has been moved as I've decided to put all my blogging efforts on my new blog, www.daanjansonius.com - if you want to change the link, you can find it here: http://www.daanjansonius.com/marketing/its-not-about-the-technology-its-about-the-community/
Cheers!
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