FluWiki

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FluWiki is a site that endeavours to create a sharing community to prepare for the next flu pandemic.

No one, in any health department or government agency, knows all the things needed to cope with an influenza pandemic. But it is likely someone knows something about some aspect of each of them and if we can pool and share our knowledge we can advance preparation for and the ability to cope with events. This is not meant to be a substitute for planning, preparation and implementation by civil authorities, but a parallel effort that complements, supports and extends those efforts.

This site interests me because we used wikis with internal communities of practice, and the ability to co-edit pages was greatly appreciated by the social workers who developed an online knowledge base. The community seems to be just gearing-up but there is a lot of information already available, including a basic primer on influenza.
Via Denham Grey

Development Gateway

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The Development Gateway is a comprehensive, non-profit resource on issues related to economic and social development with a particular focus on information and communication technologies. It includes 28 online communities, such as ICT for Development. I came across this site because I was looking for specific information on ICT’s and Indigenous communities and Development Gateway listed 61 articles on the subject. This is a very easy to use and substantial web resource.

Technologies of Cooperation

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I’ve already referred this excellent document to two of my colleagues, so I guess that I’d better blog about it. Entitled Technologies of Cooperation, this paper from the Institute for the Future is available on Howard Reingold’s site as a PDF. A small or a large map is also available. The large map is great to read on your computer but a pain to print.
Technologies for Cooperation is a follow-up and a synthesis of a paper that I talked about last year, called Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business. The recent document is worth a read for those immersed in Web 2.0 as well as anyone trying to get a handle on the two-way web and online communities.
What triggered me to read this report was the recent CCL e-learning workshop. I was reading the Executive Summary just as we were discussing how the CCL could facilitate the creation of communities. The strategic guidelines for the use of these coooperative technologies are covered in detail in the document:

  • Shift focus from designing systems to providing platforms
  • Engage the community in designing rules to match their culture, objectives, and tools; encourage peer contracts in place of coercive sanctions by distant authority when possible
  • Learn how to recognize untapped or invisible resources
  • Identify key thresholds for achieving “phase shifts” in behavior or performance
  • Track and foster diverse and emergent feedback loops
  • Look for ways to convert present knowledge into deep memory
  • Support participatory identity

The information in this report is useful to anyone starting or trying to maintain some type of online community. It also shows that top-down approaches and constrained spaces with explicit rules will not foster cooperation. Cooperation is becoming important for all organisations, as the authors conclude, "competition and cooperation will likely become a pair of evolutionary strategies for organizations".

Canada Day 2005

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Dominion Day is now called Canada Day – July 1st, the 138th anniversary of Confederation. I still prefer the old appellation, but life goes on.
Forty years ago we also got a new flag, the Maple Leaf, which replaced the red ensign (also the flag for the Canadian Army).
The flag debate in the Commons was rather heated and consensus seemed to be impossible. Many people were upset when the new maple leaf flag was adopted (similar to our recent same-sex marriage debate).
Today, there are few people who would deny the distinct nature of our flag. I wore it proudly as a soldier. Travellers sew them on their backbacks and it is recognised throughout the world.
Sometimes you have to do what is right. This is what Prime Minister Pearson and 162 other Members of Parliament did after forcing closure on the issue. The tyranny of the majority can prevent us from doing what is right. Luckily we have some visionaries from time to time who bring us the likes of universal health care and a distinct flag.
I’m proud to be Canadian, and I like our distinct Maple Leaf. Vive le Canada.
Now it’s time to start our vacation :-)

Ministers of Education Not Happy with Copyright Law

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The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) has issued a press release stating their concern with the new copyright law, recently passed. Jamie Muir, Minister of Education for Nova Scotia stated:

“While other countries have copyright laws that support education by protecting student and teacher access to learning resources, Canada has a law that makes routine classroom activities illegal.”

It makes you wonder what is more important, the education of Canadians or profits for a select group of copyright holders. One point about the CMEC’s position that concerns me a bit is the use of the word "classroom" as the only venue where learning happens. Education is not confined to the classroom, but it may be confined by the classroom. Time to drop the classroom metaphor.

Canadian Council on Learning

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The CCL had its first elearning workshop today, and I attended from the NRC-IIT video conference facility. The major problem was the technology – we couldn’t get a real conversation going as about 20% of the time we were fighting with the technology. I’m told that the main issue was that users did not know how to use the technology (an open source system, run mostly over the mega-bandwidth CA*Net).
I’m still formulating my thoughts on CCL. Here is what I know so far.
It has received $85M to establish five knowledge centres:

  • Adult Learning in Atlantic Canada
  • Early Childhood Learning in Quebec
  • Work and Learning in Ontario
  • Aboriginal Learning in the Prairies, Northwest Territories and Nunavut
  • Health and Learning in British Columbia and Yukon

I don’t want to appear too cynical but my first impressions were – It’s a new organisation with a new pot of money, but the same players from other initiatives that have gone by the wayside, with the same issues and agendas as well as the same barriers. That being said, upon further discussion it became evident that CCL could play a pivotal role for learning. That role would be  as an objective advocate (since the CCL is not a government agency) to advance good learning practices. Already, the CCL is advocating open source technologies and methodologies within the elearning sphere. This is a good thing, and will enable us to help developing countries and vice-versa.
On the other hand, I don’t see a sustainable business model with CCL. What will happen when the money runs out? I used to work for the Centre for Learning Technologies. We were 85% self-sufficient but it wasn’t enough for the university, so the CLT was closed after five years. How will the CCL continue when the $85M runs out? My experience with not-for-profits is that you have to work on the business model just as hard as you do with any other private sector start-up. I don’t see how the CCL will generate revenue after the initial funding is over. So my basic question is  – Is this another flash in the pan?
Any comments here are greatly appreciated, since the CCL does not have a blog/wiki or other collaborative medium (yet).

The Individual is the Organisation

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Yesterday, at the QSC opening, I was able to have a much too short discussion with Robert Paterson about organisational change. The gist of our conversation was that since all change happens with the individual, why focus on the organisation for any cultural/organisational change? This has me thinking about my own business, which I have summed up by stating that my consultancy focuses on "Improving organisational performance at the intersection of learning, work and technology". Perhaps a better, and more pragmatic, focus would be on "Improving individual performance …". The lesson being that you should focus your energies on what you can change, and that would be by helping people, one person at a time. It’s pretty well what I am doing, I just haven’t stated it that way.
I think that a focus on individuals could also reduce some of the inherent frustration of consulting. Even if the organisation has not implemented the change, or just parked the report on a shelf, you can walk away from a project knowing that you have helped someone. It’s a parallel activity within a project but could be the most rewarding.

Queen Street Commons

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The Queen Street Commons had its official opening in Charlottetown today and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of enthusiastic people. Robert, Cynthia and Dan were charming and excellent hosts. It’s really a simple idea – make some workspace available in the downtown area for a reasonable price. Then set some basic rules and let the members grow a common space to work, learn and share. So, for $35/month you can have some cool urban office space as well as a lounge, conference room and a kitchen to hang out in.  On top of that, you get to talk to some interesting people whom you may not have otherwise met.
I look forward to the day that the next Work Commons is created – maybe in Sackville(?).

Communities and Chaos

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Peter Bond has a good article (with explanatory diagrams) that looks at communities of practice (CoP) from a biological perspective. He sees these communities as balancing between chaos and structure. The more chaotic, the more energy and innovation is evident. In chaos little gets done but as structure is added over the life of the community it loses its energy.

This suggests that the process of CoP development be approached as if they were transitory organisational phenomena that may act, but only for a finite period, as the source of the motivation for change and as the vehicles for change.

One inference I can make from Bond’s article is that loosely joined technologes would be more appropriate for CoP’s than single structures, like a CMS or web portal. If the nature of a CoP is temporary then it would be best to have individually-controlled pieces that can form and re-form over time. This ability is currently available from a combination of blogs, RSS, tags and feedreaders.
In my experience working with single structure CoP’s (password controlled access to a single site) I still find the much more open blogosphere is a better (more flexible) environment for community building because the tools are in the hands of the individual. This flexibility, and the absence of a controlling hand, help to maintain the balance between chaos and structure.

Fewer Left Brain Careers

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Following up on my post on Productivity, I noted that Dan Pink has referred to this AP article about the decline in demand for traditional technology jobs:

"In this country, we need to train our engineers to be at the leading edge," Gray [executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers] said. "That’s the only place there’s still going to be engineering work here."
At Stanford, career experts are urging engineering and science majors to get internships and jobs outside of their comfort zones — in marketing, finance, sales and even consulting. They suggest students develop foreign language skills to land jobs as cross-cultural project managers — the person who coordinates software development between work teams in Silicon Valley and the emerging tech hub of Bangalore, India, for example.

The writing is on the wall. If your work can be automated or outsourced to a cheaper labour market then you had better be looking for a new career.