Communities

communities of interest and practice

Sustainable Local Economies

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I believe in local economic sustainability even in a flattened world where your competition may be in Asia. I think that you can have both – locally sustainable economies that are also connected to global networks of partners and customers. That’s why I’m involved with the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, which is developing a regional wildlife emergency response network to ensure good science-based common standards and practices. I’m also a member and supporter of our local Green energy investment cooperative, Renew Co-op.

At the same time, my clients are all across Canada and my long-term strategy is to grow my network outside the country. Most of my work is via the Internet so that my travel/energy footprint is relatively small. All of my revenue comes from outside of the region, so I would say that I add to the local economy, where I purchase most of my goods.

From the Dominion, I just found out that we have a local flour mill in western New Brunswick, one more piece of the economic sustainability puzzle:

The organic grains and cereals produced by Speerville Flour Mill in Speerville New Brunswick are not available outside the Maritimes. Although having more people in British Columbia or Ontario eating food produced in Atlantic Canada might increase Speerville’s profit margin, Grant does not see it a choice the Mill can justify.

The average meal travels 1500 miles from field to table. Almost one third of transport trucks on Canada’s highways are carrying food. Less than one per cent of the Atlantic region’s available cereals and flour are actually produced in the region.

Having a diverse local economy to meet our basic needs, while exporting value-added goods and services seems to be a rational, long-term economic strategy. Any economists have anything to add?

Writely now in Google Camp

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I’m sure that almost everyone has heard that Writely has been purchased by Google. I’ve been using this wiki-like program for a while and have found it very practical for collaborative word processing. It sure beats sending huge files around by e-mail and trying to figure out five colours of track-changes plus a bunch of comments in Word or even in OpenOffice.org. Writely is basically a wiki (multi-editor web page), but has a simple word processor interface and imports/exports from popular file types like .doc and .pdf.

So far I’ve had little luck in convincing many others that Writely is a better tool than “Word + e-mail”. People are stuck in their old habits and with the first sign of difficulty they revert to their comfort zone. Now that Writely has some street cred from Google I’m hoping that it will be easier to convince others to try it. The interface has been steadily improving and I’m sure that Google cash will help it even more. New users may have to wait, as Writely seems to have temporarily closed the door on new accounts. Existing users can add only four new collaborators. I’m sure this will change shortly.

Personally, I see the move of word processing to the Web as a real productivity advance for what used to be known as CSCW (computer-supported collaborative work).

Personal Knowledge Management 2

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Note: If you are looking for the summary page on personal knowledge management/mastery (PKM) it is now here: jarche.com/pkm/

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Jay has recently posted on Learning Circuits that blogs can be used as knowledge management (KM) tools. Using these tools brings some new challenges, as Lilia has noted “In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.” I won’t deny the cultural change issues in using blogs for knowledge management but I will show how I, as an independent worker outside an organisational hierarchy, use blogs and other tools for personal knowledge management. [This is an update & re-write of a previous post from last year.]

I write on my blog for several reasons. First of all, it’s the platform by which I try to make implicit knowledge (e.g. not codified or structured) more explicit, through the process of writing out my thoughts and observations of what I have come across in my life. By forcing myself to write a summary or an observation, I have to reflect on my own learning. Also, by making my thoughts public I know that they will be scrutinized – now and in the future. There’s nothing like public visibility to make you check your logic. I also view my blog as my main communication medium, letting me converse with potential clients or provide them with a venue to get to know me without any feelings of obligation. Basically, it’s all out there for the world to see.

But how do I get from “Gee isn’t that interesting?” to a written blog post?

Many of my observations come from the blogs that I visit regularly. These feeds are aggregated in my Bloglines account which is made up of +/- 100 feeds. This feed aggregator is sorted into various folders and feeds are routinely added and deleted depending on my preferences and information needs. If I’m working on a project in a specific field I may add some feeds for the duration of the work. The feeds I select are a reflection of the work that I’m doing. I also keep a couple of feeds that have little relation to my work for any serendipitous learning. The ability to scan, preview, read and save posts makes this a simple and easy process – better than visiting each site.

There are also some web pages, posts or sites that I find interesting but I feel are not worth the effort of writing a blog post. For these sites I use Furl, a social bookmarking service. Furl not only saves the page but allows me to tag the item by category. My Furl archive is public so that I can share these pages.

Items and thoughts that are not ignored or stored in Furl usually get saved into a temporary bookmark folder in my browser. Over time I review these and may find a few others that relate to each other. When I have the time and inclination, usually after exercise, I’ll draft a post, review it and post it.

But what use is my blog?

Because my website is searchable, I’m able to retrieve two years of thoughts and comments and easily review these. This is quite practical for presentations, papers, proposals and responding to questions. If I didn’t write a blog, I would have a lot more bookmarks, without annotations of my reasoning and reflection at the time. After two years, my blog is becoming a valuable productivity tool, and the comments and links from others only add more value.

My blog is also a great way to meet people interested in similar subjects, and has helped to create an evolving community of practice. As I’ve mentioned before, this blog is like a very detailed business card, and those who disagree with my points of view may decide not to engage my professional services. This would be a good thing; from both perspectives.

As an independent consultant, a blog is probably the simplest, cheapest and most effective knowledge management tool there is today. Some other benefits are listed here.

Bloggers’ Rules

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I’m currently in Jay Cross’s Informl Unworkshop and we are discussing some guidelines for bloggers. From Dave Pollard’s front page is this great advice:

Blog readers want to see more:

  1. original research, surveys etc.
  2. original, well-crafted fiction
  3. great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
  4. news not found anywhere else
  5. category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
  6. clever, concise political opinion (most readers prefer these consistent with their own views)
  7. benchmarks, quantitative analysis
  8. personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
  9. first-hand accounts
  10. live reports from events
  11. insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
  12. short educational pieces
  13. relevant “aha” graphics
  14. great photos
  15. useful tools and checklists
  16. précis, summaries, reviews and other time-savers
  17. fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive content

Blog writers want to see more:

  1. constructive criticism, reaction, feedback
  2. ‘thank you’ comments, and why readers liked their post
  3. requests for future posts on specific subjects
  4. foundation articles: posts that writers can build on, on their own blogs
  5. reading lists/aggregations of material on specific, leading-edge subjects that writers can use as resource material
  6. wonderful examples of writing of a particular genre, that they can learn from
  7. comments that engender lively discussion
  8. guidance on how to write in the strange world of weblogs

Update: This was quickly posted while listening to the unworkshop, so perhaps I should add some commentary, especially since Stephen has picked it up. I would think that one blogger could not address ALL of the readers’ wants nor could every reader give writers everything that they want. I think that the “reader wants” show how varied are the demands of this worldwide audience, and why sites like BoingBoing are so popular. This site will never be in the top 10,000 blogs of the world, but there are some points about reader wants that make sense for my particular situation, such as — original research; personal stories; relevant graphics; first-hand accounts. Anyway, I think that Dave has made a thought-provoking list.

Dave’s Social Media Project

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Dave Cormier has started a wiki with the provisional title; The Best Damn New Media Curriculum Evah! Plan. The idea is to get a number of thinkers and workers together to build something (a course?) that will support and encourage learning activities on the Web. I’ve volunteered to get involved and we’ll see where this all goes.

I like the idea of a collaborative curriculum, but I have some concerns about the restrictive aspects of curriculum, as has been brilliantly described by Brian Alger. My own focus will be to try to develop some artifacts that could be used by others to support learning in an inter-networked world. Nothing ventured, nothing gained; so it’s time to stick out our necks and create something new. Check it out and join us.

2nd Anniversary

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Many bloggers reflected on what they had learned on the arrival of the new year. I’m doing it now because 1) I have some time as I sit in a Montreal hotel hoping that the freezing rain won’t cancel my flight home and 2) the second anniversary of this blog is on Sunday, the 19th, but I’d rather not turn on my computer this weekend, after two weeks away from home.

On reflection, I can confirm how powerful informal learning is becoming, in a ubiquitously connected & pervasively proximate, world. Many people are using their expanded networks to learn and collaborate. On the other side, there is still a large segment of the population trapped in hierarchial organisations where information, knowledge and decisions trickle through layers of filtration. I’ve also realised that the digital divide, or digital immigrants vs digital natives, is not generational, it is attitudinal. As a baby boomer, I thought that my generation was way behind younger generations. However, I have met many university-educated people, 20 years younger than me who don’t have a clue about the basic operations of computers and the Internet. Even school-age children don’t have basic information search capabilities, and many do not understand how to evaluate a source of information. We have a long way to go in becoming a society of autonomous knowledge workers.

On a positive note, I’m excited about being part of Education Bridges and I’ve seen some real progress in extending our research and education network at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, where I volunteer as the Director of Education. These grassroots projects are stimulating, even though they don’t pay the bills.

I’m also finding that this year I have not had to go out and market my services. All of my projects to date have been referrals and I believe that this is partly due to my blog. I continue to promote blogging for free-agents, and those considering going out on their own, as the most effective marketing tool there is.

So I guess it’s one more year of interesting conversations for me …

A Weblog on the 21st Century

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Nine Shift is a great blog, based on the book of the same name. It’s one of my essential reads in my feedreader, so here are some of the sample posts:
This article on Jeremy:

Jeremy can’t focus. He’s a guy. We can focus on basketballs, footballs, deer, enemies, breasts, money, new ideas, etc. But not on tedious domestic tasks like checking out a movie without some daydreaming, dallying and who-knows-what-other intermediary thoughts that might eventually some day produce a great invention for humankind.

On the death of cursive writing:

Which led me to daydream that since chopping wood (a favorite pastime) enhances eye-hand coordination, maybe they should teach that in schools. And while they are at it, it is absolutely positively true that people who can their own vegetables and jam have an enhanced work ethic, so they ought to teach that in school as well. I’m sure shoeing horses enhances something….

And another post on boys and education

1. Limbic system shuts down.   When boys are under stress, the limbic system "shuts down" and  another part of the brain devoted to self-preservation and fight aggression kicks in.  The limbic system is where emotional stability is, where that affective comfort level resides.  Boys need that emotional comfort level to be able to learn.
2. Safe environment.  Schools have to create a safe environment in order for students to learn. When students feel as though they will be criticized, chastised, accused, and so on  when they walk into the school, that safe environment dissipates.

I noticed that there aren’t many Bloglines subscribers to Nine Shift, so I thought I’d pass the word :-)

Failure of Online Communities

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Jay Cross is at ASTD TechKnowledge 2006 in Denver and provides this observation on communities of practice:

Next up was Bill Bruck of Q2 Learning on Creating and Sustaining Online Communities of Practice. After the session, several people told me they really appreciated Bill telling it like it is. Early on, he said that while he thought he was pretty good at fostering online communities, 90% of the communities he sets up fail.

I have had similar experiences, with the failure of the R&D for elearning community in New Brunswick as well as our local Sackville SOHO Society, which has died a natural death. I believe that it’s natural for online communities of practice to fail and that we may be putting too much emphasis on their longevity. If they serve a temporary purpose then I would say that they are successful, even if they don’t last.

Blogs seem to work this way. First you start reading other blogs, then you may aggregate them in a feedreader and then you may start to make comments. Later you may create your own blog and continue the conversations of others by linking to their posts.

However, your focus and links will change over time, as will the flow of the conversation. The ‘communities’ in which you are actively engaged will change and some conversations will stop entirely. This is similar to the failure of an online community.

We don’t view a discontinued blog conversation as a failure, but an unused community of practice is seen as a failure. I believe this is because we create most communities within an enclosed web space to which the members must go. On the other hand, most blogs are built around the individual and the community is dynamic (it flows).

Centering on the individual, who then decides on which people to connect to, is more natural than creating a box to which you must subscribe to be a member. With Elgg Learning Landscape, communities have the same properties as people and individuals link to a community as they would link to a friend. It is not necessary to go ‘inside’ a community space. This seems to be more natural. If more communities are built around the way that people naturally work and socialize then that 90% failure rate might drop.

Edublogs.org Needs Support

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James Farmer has been offering one of the few educational blogging services that is free, non-commercial and just about perfect for those looking for an alternative to Blogger.

edublogs.org is a non-profit adventure into providing free blogs and hosting for teachers, students, researchers, librarians, writers and other education professionals.

I know that there is a demand for this service because many people pass through here while searching for "free educational blogs" or similar search terms. What James needs to keep edublogs going is some financial support.

But I’m fundamentally against putting any advertising on blogs. Down the line I’d like to leave that option up to you (i.e. advertise if you want to & for yourself) but I certainly don’t want to slap ads on any edublogs.

So, it’s going to have to be sponsorship & partnership. Here’s the deal…

  • Plain old simple advertising as a ’supporter’ on edublogs.org
  • Inclusion (and write up) in the edublogs.org newsletter
  • Inclusion in the ‘backend’ of each blog (this can be done in a number of ways)
  • Partnership in offering edublogs.org users tools and services

The issue is copyright reform

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This blog is not about politics so I didn’t discuss the past election, other than a post last week about the role of the Internet. I did follow Michael Geist and CopyrightWatch on the Toronto riding where copyright became an election issue, especially the question on the Liberal incumbant receiving monetary support from the media industry. For me, copyright is a critical issue in the economic and cultural development of our country, and it seems that more Canadians agree.
From Michael Geist:

But they are not the most important part of the story.  More important than the story about blogs, is the substantive lessons to be learned from the past three weeks.  Building on a copyrightwatch post that mines the same theme, I offer three:

First, the recent events send a clear message that Canadians want copyright policy (and indeed all policy making) to be both fair and to be seen to be fair.  That means accounting for all stakeholders and removing the lobbyist influence from the equation.  My article on the role of the lobby groups in the copyright process attracted considerable interest as many people expressed surprise at just how badly the system is broken.  It was this message that resonated with many people in the riding who may know little about copyright policy, but can identify a perceived conflict of interest when they see one.  Going forward, all parties must work to clean up copyright.

Second, among the most important voices in the debate came from artists such as Matthew Good, Steven Page, and Neil Leyton.  As groups such as CRIA were rightly identified as lobbyists who represent predominantly foreign interests, Canadian artists and Canadian interests began to speak up.  If (or more likely when) a new copyright bill comes to committee, it will be incumbent on Canada’s politicians to hear not only from the lobby groups, but also from the creators and users, many of whom are singing a much different tune from the lobbyists.

Third, this could have been about any issue, but it wasn’t.  It was about copyright.  Copyright is often described as a fringe issue, yet to millions of Canadians it has an enormous impact on their daily lives, affecting education, culture, creativity, the use of personal property, privacy, and security.  Labeling those concerned with these issues as pro-user zealots or claiming that this is merely about music downloading is to miss a much bigger story and to fail to connect with a segment of the population.