Communities

communities of interest and practice

Blogging rhythms

by

I’ve been helping out with OLDaily for the past several weeks, but Stephen is now back as editor-in-chief. The pressure of getting out a daily newsletter was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I found that I was scouring my feeds and looking for appropraite posts quite often each day, and then trying to give some kind of fresh perspective. Luckily, Gary Woodill and Barry Dahl were doing the same and I only had to do 2-3 posts per day. Gary also handled the daily publishing of the newsletter. Thanks guys :-)

I started the OLDaily project all full of energy, but was quickly called to task by a reader for repeating a post that Stephen had already covered. I learned to check the archives before posting, realizing that Stephen’s audience is quite large and someone will notice any slip-up. This was of course once I figured out how to track comments.

This co-editor stint has given me a new pespective on blogging. As of last week I was finding the grind a bit much and had stopped posts on this blog. I found that once I’d filtered, examined, pondered and then written for OLDaily that I didn’t have any interest to write one of my own posts. My own pace is much slower and I need to have three or four posts in the mill and let them stew a bit before I decide to post any of them. Many potential posts get chucked or wind up as a quick link on Delicious.

Each blogger writes for different reasons and I mostly do it to make sense of what I’m observing, reading or pondering. There is no pressure to create a daily post and I now know that I couldn’t handle that kind of pressure to deliver for very long. I have more respect for journalists and their deadlines. I also have an even greater respect for Stephen and the enormous cumulative value of OLDaily for our field. Adding a post numbered 45,167 showed just how small my contribution had been.

And now back to our regular programming …

I am a Canadian

by

John Diefenbaker, Prime Minister of Canada, in 1960, while referring to the Canadian Bill of Rights:

“I am Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”

I was only one year old at the time. Of course, each generation has to keep fighting for its rights and freedoms and ensure the rights of those who cannot.

It’s a great country — Happy Canada Day!

Moncton’s open source community is growing

by

This week I attended the Social Media Meetup in Moncton and had the opportunity to spend some time with guest speaker Jevon Macdonald and several other folks, hosted by Steve in his new business digs. I met Steve Mallett over five years ago when I gave a presentation on open source at the local Cybersocial. Steve has been running the Open Source Directory for many years and at that time I’m sure he was trying to figure out who this local guy was talking about OS. Our meeting was my first glimpse that there may be people “below the radar” who work globally on open source projects but don’t advertise their local presence.

On my flight back from Ottawa on Friday evening I was lucky to meet another open source evangelist. Deb Richardson, the intrepid girl reporter, was on her way back from Silicon Valley after this week’s successful mega launch of Firefox 3.0. Her post on the Field Guide to Firefox 3 is worth a read for those +14 million who have downloaded it so far:

We’re done. Firefox 3 is going to be launched very soon. In anticipation of this long-awaited event, the folks in the Mozilla community have been writing extensively about the new and improved features you’ll see in the browser. The new features cover the full range from huge and game-changing to ones so subtle you may not notice them until you realize that using Firefox is just somehow easier and better. The range of improved features is similar — whole back-end systems have been rebuilt from scratch, while other features have been tweaked slightly or redesigned in small ways. Overall the result is the fastest, safest, slimmest, and easiest to use version of Firefox yet. We hope you like it.

Firefox 3 Deb Richardson

BTW, Deb, since you like the Peterson Field Guides so much, you’ll have to try your eyes on all the species in Sackville, or at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute [I work there from time to time].

Canadians demand fair dealing

by

In 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that:

Excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole, or create practical obstacles to proper utilization.

On June 12, 2008, the government introduced Bill C-61, which strengthens the rights of media conglomerates and makes many everyday practices, by average citizens, criminal acts. Teachers, students, writers, musicians, business operators and especially start-up businesses stand to lose their rights with this bill.

More images from Gaetan.

It’s time to learn about Copyright Law in Canada.

Read the issues at Fair Copyright or from Michael Geist.

Contact your Member of Parliament, before it is too late. If this law passes, our children will become criminals. Is this what we want?

Who’s your city, Canada?

by

In Who’s Your City, Richard Florida focused on the US. Now we Canadians have an opportunity to tell our story. From The Creative Class Exchange:

Now, I’d like to ask for your stories about Canadian cities Tell me about the place you live. Why did you pick your city or region? How did you go about picking it – what was your strategy? What other kinds of places did you look at? How has that choice affected the rest of your life? Your job or career? Friends, family, or romantic interests? Fulfillment and fun? Real estate jackpots or money pits? Would you do it differently next time? What cities and regions are on your radar for the future and why? That’s it. 100 or 200 words, on any or all of those subjects. 300-500 words could be even better.

Ten years ago we chose Sackville, NB (pop. 5,000) as our home. I was taking early retirement from the military and I had the choice of moving anywhere in the country. I wanted to work in the field of educational technology and a position was available at Mount Allison University, so I started at the Centre for Learning Technologies. The job went away several years ago but we have stayed here.

The university, a hospital, proximity to an airport; coupled with small town living and reasonable real estate prices attracted us here. We have stayed because of the lifestyle, friends and the now the ability to work at a distance because of the Internet. Without the Net, we would not have stayed, as there are not a lot of good work opportunities in the area.

Photo of Sackville’s “famous” Mel’s Tearoom by Chris Campbell

It’s obvious that the Internet is an integral part of my work, so how has living far from any major urban centre affected my life? First of all, I have been involved in many aspects of our small town and could volunteer myself to death if I wanted to. I’ve had opportunities to be on a hospital board, work with a wildlife institute, get a renewable energy investment co-op started and lately help launch a community supported agriculture initiative. It’s the advantage of being in a small pond.

I also have been pushed to look far beyond our local area for work and professional development. Had I lived in a large metropolitan region I might have been able to find enough work locally and just been satisfied with that. Living out here in Atlantic Canada I’ve had to look far and wide for opportunities, hence my blog and my involvement with international groups and issues.

I would like to stay here, as it’s been a wonderful town to raise our two boys. Once they decide to leave home we may move but I don’t foresee a move to a mega-city. We live on a major rail line and even if gas prices go through the roof, rail travel to Montreal or Halifax would still be a good option. If we ever got our Commons going (maybe, who knows) then it would be one more reason to stay.

Open Source Social Networking Platform

by

It seems that some folks have seen a business opportunity in developing an open source social network platform. From Insoshi’s website:

Insoshi is a product and a project. The product aims to be the best open-source social networking platform. The project is to make the product!

I posted my perspective on such an endeavour about six months ago on OS Social Networking Application. I thought for a while that Elgg had the makings of such a platform but it never really took off, except in a the educational field. We’ll see how Insoshi does and it’s good to have several OS options. I know that it will be a platform that I will look at for my clients.

I found out about Insoshi via Dan Martell on Twitter, so I’m sure the team at Spheric Technologies will be playing with it soon.

Karyn asks, How did you get started in social media?

by

This is in partial answer to Karyn’s question. My first foray into using the Web for more than just gathering information was in asking questions to those who were publishing. Kieren Egan, author of The Educated Mind, posted e-mail comments on his web site, and my post from 1997 is the earliest I can find online. For the next several years, I read a lot online and made some comments. Jay Cross‘ earlier websites were a common spot for me to make comments. During this time, I used online discussion boards and many closed platforms, but not much on the open Web, as there weren’t many options.

My first step toward almost blogging was with QuickTopic in 2003, discussing topics like elearning R&D and Open Source for learning. I still find QT an excellent discussion board. I later moved to Blogger, which I found to be a more flexible platform for the expression of my opinions, such as this from October 2003:

I believe the next great business model for an elearning entrepreneur is to provide high quality installation and support services for a select group of open source learning systems. Your customers will soon realize that you are not trying to sell them the next upgrade to get more cash, because the software is free. You will be selling your knowledge, experience, and customer service. Many IT departments would be more apt to use open source if they knew that it was strongly supported. Also, there is a lot less conflict of interest when you remove the vendor from the ongoing support.

Maybe I should have invested in Blackboard stock instead ;-)

For me, social media have been closely linked with my becoming a free-agent (June 2003). Blogs were becoming easier to use, and by early 2004 I had this one up and running on Drupal. Since then, it has been a fast trip testing out so many different platforms and applications that I cannot remember them any more. Thankfully my blog has become a knowledge-base so that I can find out what I was doing and writing about four years ago.

Social media – first blogs, then wikis, bookmarks, SNS, micro-blogging, etc – have provided a richer way to engage people whom I would not have met other than online. It has allowed me to engage many communities, such as edubloggers and open source advocates. To say that social media have made a difference to my professional practice would be an understatement. Much of my current practice has become focused around social media. Five years ago I would have said that I was a training and performance improvement consultant. Today, I would say that I specialize in social media for learning and working.

Queen Street Studios

by

A theme on this blog is that of a Commons, or third-space that connects people in their work and living. The Queen Street Commons on PEI was one of the first in Atlantic Canada and a slightly different model is offered by Queen Street Studios in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia:

Fondly known as QSS, its genesis emerged from the personal and professional background of its creative director Julia Rivard. Her vision was to create a place for creatives to meet, work and share ideas. Together with her husband Trevor, Julia purchased the historic Union Protection Company property, built in1895 at 50 Queen Street in Dartmouth. In the summer of 2006, the interior of the building was transformed into a unique space and Julia’s dream became a reality. Today it is a vibrant space nurturing the creative energies of its members, and reaching out to the HRM community and beyond, to further the growth of the profession.

QSS offers various levels of membership services, ranging from $150 to $675 per year. It also houses the for-profit QSS company, which provides the nucleus of the business energy that seems to result in many opportunities for its members. Students are welcome and QSS will be offering an incubation program soon.

This looks like a focused and pragmatic business model that is growing a local ecosystem of independent companies. It is the kind of business development that our governments should be supporting, instead of creating jobs (a.k.a. indentured servitude) by luring multinational corporations to set up temporary shop in the Deep East.

Bridging with Conversations

by

I’m currently working with several communities of practice and helping to find appropriate web tools and techniques to foster their goals. I was going over some previous documents that I’d developed and found a diagram that may be helpful. It shows how you need to move into a space of shared conversations before you can work on sustaining a community of practice (CoP).

Many organisations are cut off from their clients/customers and the Internal staff are often focused on the inside of the company when they should know much more about the customers they serve [no customers, no job]. Shared conversations start the process of creating shared knowledge, but first a level of trust must be developed. This happens over time, and is supported by the creation of tools to support the work. Over time, these conversations are supported with the right tools and this can create an environment for a performing business network. It takes time and commitment, not just words, but in the end there is a dynamic and resilient network of trust, based on work that is meaningful to each individual.

Retail Sales Community

by

There are a lot of retail stores in this country and most are so small that they don’t have dedicated HR, training or development staff. Professional development is not often part of the life of a retail sales clerk in a small or even medium-sized business.

Enter 3point5.com, with a community that links retail sales professionals with manufacturers of the products that they will be selling. There are specific modules on brand-name products as well as general information on broader activities, such as watersports for outdoor equipment outlets.

Sara at Wanderlust Outfitters here in Sackville tells me that all of her staff use the online campus and there are even prizes and deals to be had for members.

The business model for 3point5 seems simple enough – aggregate a community that cannot afford custom training or job performance support, link this community to those who would benefit from a more informed retail sector (wholesalers & manufacturers) and then make it very easy for these communities to connect. The same model applies to many other markets and I’m working on a couple at this time.

Community is king, IMHO.