Blogging in a Fishbowl?
September 25, 2008A Personal Reflection on my Blog Network
I plan to divert a little from the assigned topic on blog networks for Week 7 of FOC08. This post will be a little longer than usual too. Please indulge me.
I’ve been blogging on an off since April, 2005. When contemplating this task, I began to reflect on my own experiences over the last three and a half years, and wonder whether my own blog is insular or part of some wider network.
In one sense, I feel that it’s quite insular – a lone voice in the ether where I add tid-bits of information and collect random thoughts. I wouldn’t be the first blogger to wonder: if a blog falls in the forest …
I’ve received only just more than a handful comments over this time. My blog doesn’t receive a lot of traffic – somewhere in the vicinity of 350 page views per month. And from what I can tell, there are just a few repeat visitors – mostly from some of my ‘real life’ friends like Nick and Marty. I guess this is in itself a small network or blogging community. It allows me to keep tabs on Nick as he is bobbing across the Atlantic and still feel someway connected to him. It also let’s me discover what delicious vegetarian recipes Marty has concocted and how his running is going.
On the other hand, I keenly feel how connected my blog has allowed me to be in a much wider network and community. As a direct result of blogging I have formed a number of significant relationships and joined a number of new networks.
Before I started blogging, I was following another of my ‘real-life’ friends Tony. He is friends with Johnnie and Hugh. From there, I started following other blogs and following threads that interested me. A lot of these are listed in my blogroll.
As a consequence of following, reading, absorbing, learning – I began to reorient my career towards the things I was becoming more interested in – the intersection of technology and the human side of business.
From Johnnie’s blog, I discovered Anecdote and
after reading and responding to a post on their blog, I ended up working with them. Perhaps I’m biased, but I think the Anecdote blog is one of the best examples of a niche business blog on the web. I witnessed first hand the power of building a community around that blog and the brand. I have learnt a great deal from reading it and from Shawn and Mark who write it.
My work with Anecdote extended my network and connections with other bloggers – like Nancy White, Patrick Lambe, James Robertson and Matt Moore whose work (and blogs) I admire a lot.
I was fortunate to be able catch up with Johnnie in person when he visited Melbourne on holidays recently. With Tony, we enjoyed a casual lunch by the river and chatted for a long while.
That meeting felt like a fateful event – like I’d come full circle and connected some loose ends.
Johnnie commented (I’m para-phrasing here and hopefully not talking out of step) that he also sensed a ‘community’ of like-minded people that share similar values about their work that have managed to make connections across the blogosphere. Relationships and connections which are complex, multi-dimensional, intertwined and have manifested in many different ways.
What we have by definition is the same social network: a social structure made of nodes that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, friendship etc.
I also find Downes’ argument compelling, and a useful way of describing the phenomenon that I’m trying to explain:
The community is the network. There is no centralized place that constitutes community, there are only people, and resources, that are distributed, that are all acting on their own behalf and in their own interests … where the network consists of a set of self-selected relations using a variety of contextual information … to establish meaning, and where this meaning not only defines the community but emerges from the community.
I also belong to the Melbourne blogging community. I use the term quite loosely here, but by following other local bloggers such as Cameron, Michael and others, I’ve ended up at a number of face-to-face meetings organised by other Melbourne bloggers and digital media folks and have met a lot of great people. Regular ‘community’ events take place, and I maintain contact with a number of people I’ve met through this network.
Of course, I also belong to a very big network or community of people who choose to blog – the
blogosphere. Getting philosophical: can we not agree as people, to be part of the whole? Quantumly aren’t we all related?
Blogging has also lead to my interest in using other tools and social media, del.icio.us, flickr, podcasts, facebook, twitter – each of which has increased the number of loose connections or weak ties that I have in my network. In turn, there have been many instances where these links have lead to participation in social events, conferences and work collaborations. Most importantly it has created interesting conversations.
When I pause to think about this, I find it quite amazing.
Buddha said: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”
Through blogging, I guess I have made my own world. It has lead me to make fundamental changes to the work I do and the approach I take to it. It has also extended my personal and social network beyond the boundaries of where I was once comfortable. I am grateful for the opportunities it has afforded me and for the meaning it has created.
My Photo on Schmap
September 24, 2008Another one of my photos has been included in the newly released fifth edition of the Schmap Hobart Guide. It’s a picture of Eaglehawk Neck taken from the nearby lookout on our trip to Tasmania in Nov-2006. The original photo is on my flickr page. The other photo included is Adventure Bay.
I really get a kick out of seeing my photos included in stuff like this and the feeling that I’m contributing ‘value’ by being a producer rather than just a ‘consumer’ online.
My photos are released under a Creative Commons license, so people are free to use them with attribution.
Facilitating, moderating, or teaching?
September 3, 2008The foc08 task for this week is to try to determine the role and behavior of these three roles:
- Facilitator
- Moderator
- Teacher
And to attempt to describe these roles.
Let me say up-front that I totally agree with a comment on Leigh’s blog that suggests the word ‘facilitator’ is being used loosely by many people and institutions. This makes it difficult to have this sort of conversation without getting into semantics. The meanings will be different depending upon the context and also from different people’s own experiences.
Rather than try and come up with a definitive answer, what I’ve done is captured some words and thoughts about each role that sprung to mind when I reflected on them. The following is my summary:
Facilitator–guide; interested in process not content; independent/neutral; creates space for conversations.
Moderator–to me, this implies the role of referee, adjudicator or arbiter; someone who has control of the conversation; directing flow of conversation.
Teacher–this is a generalisation, and I recongnise that there is a shift away from this (I’ll address this later on), but my perception of the teacher role is based on the traditional ’schooled’ model: authority; structure; prescribed content; transmission-based; didactic; formal; and based upon expertise.
I want to pick up on the traditional notion of teacher as the expert imparting wisdom and knowledge. This is informed, and perhaps tainted by my own experiences - particularly in the Knowledge Management domain.
Because of the sheer volume of information and exponential growth of knowledge in the twentieth century–if you’re skeptical, I recommend you check out the Did You Know?/Shift Happens presentation–it is almost impossible to master a specific domain. In other words it is increasingly difficult to be an ‘expert’.
Further specialisation and reductionism is one response to this. However, I believe that this will ultimately lead to–and require–new ways of learning, and a change in the traditional teaching role towards a more facilitative style of learning. We need to “move from ‘Sage on the Stage’ to ‘Guide on the Side’”(Kempe 2001: cited in Australian Flexible Learning Framework guide).
If I understand correctly, this is what social constructivists argue.
So what does a facilitated learning environment look like? Here’s some quick thoughts (repeating the process I used above): networked; informal; self-directed and motivated; social; meaning-making; peer-learning; experiential.
I know I haven’t answered the questions directly, but I’ve enjoyed pondering and reflecting on the different roles and empathize with Leigh’s dilemma.
Informal Learning
August 25, 2008Jay Cross writes:
Corporations need to replace traditional training, knowledge management, and in-house communications with something more informal, interactive, collaborative, self-service, impromptu, and flexible. Instead of pushing content, they need to be facilitating conversation.
What is an online community? – Wrap up and summary
August 19, 2008Prompted by this morning’s foc08 conference call discussion, I feel that it would be helpful to try and summarise my thoughts on the topic ‘What is an online community?’, so I can put it to bed and move on to the next intellectual challenge.
So here goes–a wrap up and summary of my take on the meaning of community:
Not long after my first post, where I was trying to grapple with semantics and definitions, Bron told a story of a personal experience of community, reminding me of the futility of my own approach. Having spent the best part of the last 12 months working with narrative approaches, I should have known better!
I really liked Bee’s play on Wenger’s model of three interrelated components; domain, community and practice.
… to define all other types of community, just change the 3rd component.
a) domain + community + interest = community of interest
b) domain + community + learning = community of learning
c) domain + community + practice = community of practice
In this model community is not a function of the content (domain) or the outcome (practice, interest, learning), which also implicitly means that community is the personal; the interaction; the binding element.
It was Greg’s illuminating post that hit the nail on the head for me:
“while all communities are networks, groups and teams, not all networks, groups and teams are communities. In the same manner that while all teams are groups and networks, not all networks and groups are teams. And while all groups are networks, not all networks are groups.”
No offence intended, but this paragraph reminds me of the poetry of Donald Rumfeld: see ‘The Unknown‘. It’s difficult to grasp, but what he says makes perfect sense to me. Thankfully, he’s also included a diagram.
This morning, I had some further thoughts and a bit of an ‘Aha!’ moment, which has helped cement my thinking on this topic. This thought was related to the traditional distinction made between the activities necessary for groups to effectively operate – group tasks — what the group was set up to do — and maintenance — keeping the group going in order to do it.
I have not been able to trace the origins of this work around task–maintenance, but the following samples are adapted from “Resource Manual for a Living Revolution”, New Society Publishers, 1985.
Task Activities: those activities that assist to achieve it purpose and goals.
- providing direction towards goals
- initiating ideas and tasks
- information collecting and sharing
- consultation
- clarifying and summarising
- co-ordinating
- time management
- practical issues and logistics
Maintenance functions: those activities and behaviours which are needed to build a group and keep it going:
- creating and maintaining an atmosphere of safety
- encourage participation
- equalising participation
- listening
- relieving tension
- social interaction
- creating group ownership
- valuing and highlighting diversity
It occurred to me that the extent to which maintenance functions are performed (and are performed well) are directly related to the sense of community or cohesiveness of the group.
Often there is a tendency to concentrate on the formal task activities and ignore the maintenance activities. Community builders should pay more attention to the less tangible maintenance functions and behaviours.
Phew, that’s out of the way. I feel like this now provides me with a really good sedge way into looking at the differences between teaching, moderating and facilitating. Looking forward to that–and to the weeks ahead.
