Managing virtual teams

(cartoon via Marketing and strategy innovation blog)

Together with Sibrenne Wagenaar I wrote a Dutch article of 15,000 characters on virtual teamwork. 15,000 is really short for all there is to say!

During the literature review one of the best articles we found is the article called Managing Virtual teams by Lisa Kimball. It is actually the text of a speech in 1997. As Lisa Kimball says:

"although the technology that supports these new teams gets most of the attention when we talk about virtual teams, it's really the change in the nature of the teams -not their use of technology- that creates new challenges for team managers and members. "

I think this an important observation, virtual teams require us to rethink the group dynamics of teams as we know them. This is the exciting part because why not try and create powerful virtual teams, leveraging a variety of tools to become more creative and productive than some of the 'normal' teams? However optimistic that may sound, I believe that with more tools and ways of communication, we should be able to do a better job than with only one tool and modality (face-to-face interaction). So that in the end 'normal teams' can learn from virtual teams how to use a variety of online tools to communicate and collaborate smarter. I can see the pitfall of increased miscommunication in virtual teams too, so we all need to become increasingly skilled in choosing the right tools for teamwork, and the right medium also depends not only on the work requirements but also on the preferences and experiences of you teammembers. This requires understanding of group dynamics PLUS how these dynamics work in a virtual team.

Lisa Kimball points out that there is a need for a new managers mind set- I agree and think this is true for the whole team that needs to shift mind sets. One of the needed shifts I believe is from "face-to-face is the best environment for interaction and anything else is less" to "different kinds of online interactions can be played with to draw out the best of all team members".

If you believe this, you can try and get an optimal mix of communications. As Lisa also observes, virtual teams may need more check-ins and short process checks. In a virtual team, you need regular feedback about the use of tools.

Our article purposely draws on the so-called web2.0 tools, in complement to the software packages offered by organisations. With web2.0 tools, a flexible toolset is within reach of the virtual team, and that may enhance the virtual teamwork. Rather than forcing a software package upon a virtual team, the team can then depart from individual online experiences and preferences and build upon those. Adjusting the toolset to the teammembers rather than adjusting the teammembers to the tools.

10 common objections to social media

I found the excellent post by Marshall Kirkpatrick with the most common objections to social media and ideas how to respond. He got them by asking 1300 twitter connections. You can find the full blogpost here. It is very recognisable and I'm going to make a list for the Dutch situation on my Dutch weblog.

Here are the common objections:

1. I suffer from information overload already.
2. So much of what's discussed online is meaningless. These forms of communication are shallow and make us dumber. We have real work to do!
3. I don't have the time to contribute and moderate, it looks like it takes a lot of time and energy.
4. Our customers don't use this stuff, the learning curve limits its usefulness to geeks.
5. Communicators [bloggers, tweeters] are so fickle, better to stay unengaged than risk random brand damage. We don't want hostile comments left about us on any forum we've legitimized.
6. Traditional media and audiences are still bigger, we'll do new stuff when they do.
7. Upper management won't support it/dedicate resources for it.
8. These startups can't offer meaningful security, they may not even be around in a year - I'll wait until Google or our enterprise software vendor starts offering this kind of functionality.
9. There are so many tools that are similar, I can't tell where to invest my time so I don't use any of it at all.
10. That stuff's fine for sexy brands, but we sell [insert boring B2B brand] and are known for stability more than chasing the flavor-of-the-month. We're doing just fine with the tools we've got, thanks.

I recognise mainly number 1,2 and 9. I notice some are objections by marketeers, others by 'normal' users. The list might be stronger if that would be separated. Marshall provides possible answers too. I think it is important not to overestimate the power of social media and 'push' it onto people. Some objections are real. For instance, the time it takes, I've invested little time in Facebook, but feel like most of that time is wasted. So the advice to step in hand-in-hand with a more experienced social media users makes a lot of sense. A person guiding you will help you direct your energy into social media that make sense for your particular goals.

Pro-ana as a community of practice

In the Dutch news there was an item about the so-called 'pro-ana sites'. Websites that connect girls with anorexia. The pro-ana movement believes their behaviour is not disease but a lifestyle. 25% of the anorexia girls/women under medical treatment visit the pro-ana sites, often weblogs. The three girls who were interviewed in the news explained that they were really attracted by the sites and the tips they can get on the sites eg. about 'how to avoid eating', 'how to cheat your parents'. One of them did not identify with the site during her first visit because the girls were too skinny. But later she was attracted to come back. Another girl could spend 3 hours per day on the websites. They feel the sites are dangerous because of the enormous appeal to the anorexia girls and the way the girls on the websites stimulate eachother with tips to give in to their obsession to avoid food, on a downward journey. You can still watch the interview with 3 girls in Dutch here.

Though I originally did not think of patient communities as communities of practice because they do not have a professional practice, I currently think you might think of them as one. Look at the way of living of the pro-ana members and they way they behave: a very strong practice. You can see that the websites give enormous power to the pro-ana communities. At the same time, it is an enormous reminder that communities of practice are not something good and to be promoted everywhere. It depends on the practices, the innovation etc. whether a communities can be labelled as good and should be encouraged or discouraged. The pro-ana community seems to do well in helping new entrants to get up to the task. However, the practice is horrible (no photos to match this blogpost...!)

Interview with facebook user

Here's a video from Beth Kanter interviewing a facebook user. Everytime I see a video of Beth I'm inspired to do another one myself. Probably next week might be a good opportunity with the ecollaboration meeting in Amsterdam. In this video she interviews a facebook user, using it more than email, to stay in touch with friends. He doesn't know what a blog or twitter is. I think the interesting point is that at times I assume that the younger generation is fluent with all online tools. It may be so that they will learn new tools faster. But they may have their own preferences which are hard to change too. (good news: there may be a need for people who know about a wide range of tools and can help teams and networks make appropriate choices).

Lizard2.0

This beautiful picture is taken by Pandiyan. In Intermediair, a Dutch magazine, I read about the research of the University of Ohio with 18 different types of lizards. Lizards can hunt using one of the following ways:
(1) they wait quietly till a pray walks by and jump
(2) they walk around to search pray and creep over
The researchers found out that all lizards can run, but only the types of lizards that walk around to search pray can actually walk. The 'waiting' types simply lost their ability to walk in a few generations.

This made me seriously wonder what the human2.0 will loose in a couple of generations, or already during the next generation. Suppose we would all become web2.0 adepts, what are the capabilities and competences that will disappear? Will we completely loose the need for intimacy to discuss personal matters? Will we loose the embarrassment emotion? Loose our sense of hierarchy? We will definitely adjust our eyes to 'computer screen mode' and develop keyboard fingers!

Obsolete (learning) practices

Following on my last blogpost on Is Yours a Learning Organisation, I started thinking about change processes. Becoming (even) more of a learning organisation is basically guiding a change process and improving practices.

Yesterday I noticed that my arms are getting sun-tanned but that on the place of my watch there is an extremely white piece of my wrist. That's because I've taken on the habit of having my watch on all the time. Before I had children, I was quite reticent against watches. If I had one (and I regularly lost them) I kept it in my pocket. This all changed when I started breastfeeding. I was living so much by the clock that I kept my watch on day and night (yes, poor mothers even have to breastfeed in the middle of the night). Now my daughters are 6 and 8 years, so no need for breastfeeding - though I heard a story in Ethiopia that a man of 24 in Harar was still breastfeeding but that's another story altogether- and no need for a watch on my wrist day and night.

What does this have to do with changing practices? I'm really intrigued by practices and habits and entry points for changing them. I never liked the phrase 'resistant to change' because I think it lack understanding and respect for the person. Everyone wants to change, as long as you know what for, why and how, and you can see the point. So when you are talking about a learning organisation 'culture' try to find those obsolete practices and try to find out the history. If you can point out why they are obsolete, you have done half of the work. - time to get back to losing my watches!

Is Yours a Learning Organization?

Via Jay Cross I found this learning organisation scan under the title Is Yours a Learning Organisation? on the Harvard Business Review site, developed by David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino. There is a short online survey with 12 questions, and a longer one, with more depth, can be found here. I'd recommend the longer one, with lots of relevant questions, most of them related to the culture in the organisation with regards to experimenting, networking, etc. A good tool to start talking about what a learning organisation is. To read the full article, you have to pay for it.

I think the term 'learning organisation' knows many different interpretations. A lot of development NGOs have used the Bruce Britton scan, as outlined in his paper the Learning NGO. You can find more information in the km4dev wiki here. Maarten Boers from ICCO started an interested discussion on the the email group of km4dev about the fact that ratings may go down when people become more aware of the complexity of a learning organisation. When discussions about being a learning organisation have just started, people may rate their organisation relatively high, because they are not so critical yet about their practices. Johannes Schunter linked this to a high relevant framework of the conscious competence learning framework. Hereby people move from the unconscious incompetence stage, through the conscious incompetence stage to the compentence stages. It is during the conscious competence stage that people become more critical about the practices in the organisation.

Personally, I shocked a manager once, by stating that his professionals were learning rapidly, but that his organisation wasn't. When the professionals left, the organisation was left at a loss. He was of the opinion that his professionals were not rapid learners. I made him look more carefully at the processes in the organization to leverage individual learning, to become organisational learning. For me, the crux of organisation learning is in making sure there are the processes that transform individual learning into innovation in the organisations practices are functioning. Secondly, it is important to see that the sources of learning, the feedback loops are the right ones. I have been in another organisation, where colleagues thought the organisation was learning, because it was changing all the time. However, the organisation was changing to the latest management whims rather than in response to feedback from its clients.

Working in virtual teams

I've been busy writing a Dutch article for Leren in Organisaties, with less time to write for my blog(s). So I suddenly thought I could share a small part of the article, hitting two birds with one stone (or two flies in one hit as we say in the Netherlands). The article is about the use of web2.0 tools to support the work of international virtual teams for a thematic issue about globalization. Since there is not much room (15.000 characters) we have a relative narrow focus on small teams dealing with a clear, time-delinated project. Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and Nancy White have written a white paper in English with the title: Building a collaborative workplace. It was good timing for us, and we enjoyed reading it. They write about teams, networks and communities and hence have taken a much wider focus. It helped us to choose a focus.

Towards the end of our article, we try to illustrate the possible advantages of the ways of working of virtual teams (only in the best teams that is!) and suggest that 'normal' teams could learn from it too. The advantages are:

1. Access to a broader mix of expertise.


2. Stimulation of creative thinking.


3. Equality in communication and collaboration.


4. Collaboration outside the beaten tracks.


5. Easy 'harvesting' of knowledge products.


6. Working efficiently.

We do explain it further in the article. Did we overlook an important advantage? The paper is not as superoptimistic as this list might suggest- we do talk about problemteams too. By the way, we know that virtual teams are real teams. Virtual team is a funny name, as it sounds like a science fiction team. It seems to make sense to adopt this name for teams that are not co-located as it is a widely known term.

New media, new conversations (with the same old people)

Let me crossblog this story from my Dutch blog, because I enjoy blogging about my daughters (apologies if it becomes boring..). My youngest (6 years) insisted on have a gmail account like her bigger sister, so we finally gave in. As soon as she had it, unlike her sister, she became an enormously active mailer, collecting mail addresses and checking replies. She asked her teachers for their email addresses and then sent them a mail talking about the noise in class and how it disturbs her. The teacher replied empathically, and asked whether she had any solutions. So she mailed grandma to ask about the situation in class in the part.

The story is illustrative on where I see the power of new media. I don't see everyone blogging (maybe they will, but I don't think they have to), but new media can make people enthusiastic by giving them new means of communicating. And it leads to a different kind of conversation. Ofcourse if all children start mailing the teacher, she may become crazy, but at least my daughter is using it creatively, and feels happy to discover new means of communication. My mother has learned to use email too. Even though I was the one trying to stop her (!) I can see she is happy. Her friends are sending around all the emotional and religious powerpoint presentation stuff ("you know a real friend by..." etc). Though it seems nonsense to me, it makes them -apparently- happy.

To be fair I should also mention all the conversations I did NOT have with my children because I was busy blogging...

7 Introductory resources into web2.0 tools

Wikis, weblogs, mashups, photosharing, mapping, social bookmarking. People who start to learn about web2.0 tools, ask me where they can get a good and short overview of the various web2.0 tools. Honestly, I don't have one great resource to recommend to them. It's quickly overwhelming for people new to the field. Seven pointers:

1. Euforic is developing a web2share wiki, which is good basic resource.

2. The commoncraft show with its series of videos on tools like blogging, wikis, social bookmarking, twitter. It explains the advantage of the tools in very clear easy to understand language.

3. Tim Davies has developed some one page guides like this on social bookmarking. You can access the whole series here.

One level up in terms of overwhelminess:

4. The top 100 social media blogged by Steve Dale

If I really want to browse for tools (level 5 in overwhelminess) I go to:

5. Go2web20 website or

6. The organizer's toolkrib (less elaborate) and

7. The Seomoz web2 awards website

Enough about bloggers, how about the blog readers?

Via a message by Stephanie to the online facilitation yahoo group I read an article on sciencedaily.com called Simple tools would enhance bloggers, blog readers experience. "UC Irvine researchers have provided new insight into blog readers' online habits and experiences, as well as how they perceive their roles in blog-based communities. ...The UCI study examined in-depth the blog-reading habits of 15 participants of various ages to determine how they consume content and interact with blogs and blog writers.". Two results that resonated with me:

1. Readers include non-technical elements in their definition of blogs. Social aspects, including the presence of conversation or personal content is important to them.

2. Regular blog reading often becomes more habitual and less content oriented. Similar to e-mail checking, blog reading can become ingrained into users' online routine.

I can imagine there are huge differences in blog readers. You may read one blogpost, or you may follow a blog systematically. I try to follow less than 50 blogs systematically, but I'm now at 70. There is a difference in commitment I have to the blogs. For some I really try to read the blogposts, even if there is a backlog to read. For others, I simply skim through and pick out any interesting topics. I recall that in the beginning I didn't dare to read some of the blogs because the content seemed so personal and not meant for my eyes, and when I started blogging my experience changed in that regard. At times, people ask me whether they can read my blog. Though I'm now surprised by that question, because I blog in public, so anyone can read it; I can recall the way I felt about reading blogs in the beginning and recognize the idea behind it. By blogging you get beyond a certain level of embarrasment.

How can nonprofits succeed in the online attention economy?

I like the approach of Netsquared to ask a group of bloggers to write about the same question. Though I struggle with some of the topics because I don't feel I have enough expertise, I want to try to participate this month with the question: How can nonprofits succeed in the online attention economy?

Britt Bravo explains what is meant by Online Attention Economy in this blogpost. As more nonprofits, businesses and individuals create blogs, podcasts, rss news feeds, wikis, social networks, YouTube accounts, Twitter feeds, fundraising widgets, mashups, etc. what do you think nonprofits need to do to attract and maintain people's attention online?

Richard MacManus writes:
"A key point is that The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice - they get to choose where their attention is 'spent'. Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell."

One impression I have is that currently nonprofits can reap the benefits from 'being the first' and can currently have a comparative advantage in attracting online attention by virtue of using the 'cool' new media like videos, weblogs, podcasts, etc. Once the 'hype' around these tools is over and everyone is using these tools, you don't have people read your blog because it's one of the few blogs on international development for instance. (by the way, I'm looking forward to this!). I think we'll an interesting situation at that point because then quality of the nonprofit's work and engagement with constituency (is this a good word?) will matter more.

At that point we'll be back to having nonprofits be assessed for their merits and quality. What will be different from the situation before social media were used is that organizations will have a double strategy to connect with their constituency: online and offline will be seamlessly blended. For constituents the work done by the nonprofit will be more transparent and they can make more informed choices. They will not just connect with nonprofits rather because a marketeer in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam convinced you to become a donor or a large advertising campaign. This will make nonprofits more accountable to their constituents. And last but not least there are more ways for small initiatives to connect, using network sites like helpalot or change.org.

So my answer to the question: how can nonprofits succeed in the online attention economy? is: by being very transparent and accountable about your actions, and by becoming good in blending on- and offline strategies to engage people for your course. (so the next round of netsquared questions is likely to become: how does a well blended on- and offline engagement strategy look like? :)

Is everything miscellaneous?

When I made a picture of my professional books for my Dutch website I realized that all the social media expertise I gained was through experiencing it (online hours) and reading online resources, but not books. I thought it would be good to start reading some books too, as they give a more thorough understanding of a certain topic. I started with the famous book by Weinberger, Everything is miscellaneous. The book has its own website and blog (books are lucky nowadays). I blogged a video with Weinberger before, but I'm happy I read the book.


The miscellaneous in the title is an analogy to the disorder in one drawer of your cupboard. Everyone has a drawer where all things end up that don't have their proper place in your house, that's the miscellaneous drawer. Weinberger argues that online everything is now miscellaneous. His virtue is the thorough explanation of the 3 orders in organizing information.


First order: books on the shelf, one book can only be on one shelf

Second order: meta data about books on cards, allowing you categorize a book in several categories

Third order: Digital data and meta data, endless number of data possible and mixing of data and meta data


The first and second order give some level of control and power to the person or organization doing the organizing. One person or institute decides on which shelf the book will go. The strong example given of the Dewey library system is very illustrative of the cultural biases that are imposed or transferred to others by that process. They Dewey library system developed by a American (Melvil Dewey) has provided Judaism with its own number, but Islam has to share its number with Babism and Baha'i. And Buddhism doesn't have its own number but falls under the category of 'religions of Indic Origin'.


The third order or the miscellaneous (for an example, think of del.icio.us for social bookmarking online) hence endangers some of the well-established institutions who gain their authority on their grip on the knowledge. That in itself explains some of the resistance to web2.0 developments like wikipedia and weblogs. It's a new way of working and organizing information and there are people who lose authority. But there are others that gain! Weinberger has made me more attentive to the people and institutions who may loose in the development of information as the miscellaneous.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Weinberger doesn't explain in detail what the consequences are for working life, and knowledge management (though maybe that's too much to ask for). He does touch the upon the semantic web and explains that having all information miscellaneous on the internet may lead to fragmentation and to the effect that groups become more and more polarized in their views. I'm thinking there are problably new groups in control of determining the agenda (the social media converts??) and I'm left wondering how this works out. What does the miscellaneous offer in terms of reversal of power for marginal groups? Can we truely accomodate all views into solutions? It is evident that the English wikipedia is larger and more consulted all over the world than the Swahili wikipedia, but will the miscellaneous help to surface different views? Will people be more open to explore it? Personally, these are some of the questions I have after finishing 'Everything is miscellaneous'. Its explanation of the deep shift and giving examples of who may be effected is very useful. I'm thinking with these questions I may reread the last chapters to see whether there are no more answers!

As a professional I think the miscellaneous information has some opportunities to expand your professional learning process and widen your horizon. An example of this is the use of the word web2.0 versus social media. I noticed many people tag resources with social media rather than web2.0 which made me to explore the different notions between the two. As a teacher, I noticed that when I explain the 'current reality tree' student are capable of finding all kind of additional information, so the role of the teacher as source of information changes. That may be another example of how the development of the miscellaneous information on the web may be threatening to a group of professionals that used to derive their authority from being the source of information.

How to make short videos with your mobile phone

Blogging questions and answers...I received a question some time ago about: Do you know of teaching materials about making short videos with your mobile phone?

The best resource I know of in terms of teaching material is Beth Kanter's wiki:
Video Blogging wiki

There is an instruction for a session of video blogging by Michael Szpakowski:
Video blogging for artists

Jennifer Proctor has developed teaching resources for university level:
Teaching resources for instructors

My own blogpost is specifically focusing on helping starters in video blogging to vlog a meeting or presentation:
How to vlog a meeting or presentation

And there is the yahoo group on video blogging led by Jay Dedman (I gave up on it because it has something like 50 messages per day!):
Videoblogging yahoo group . The group has a very good wiki on videoblogging

'Can you repeat yourself?'

I love working in intercultural settings. So I'm very happy that I find myself in this situation again working in the Netherlands teaching an international class of students. All of us have English as a second or third language. Yesterday I swapped stories with colleagues. I shared that there are times when you simply don't understand what a student is saying. Depending on the situation, you decide whether you ask him/her to repeat it. At times, you think it's best to nod in agreement and really hope that it wasn't a question! Others shared how it works for them to fill in the empty spaces in what you hear with some empathy. And try to summary and check whether your understanding is right.

A pitfall in these situations is that you may confuse intellectual/analytical skills with skills to express oneself. Being aware of this pitfall hopefully helps. As a teacher, I try to work with as many signals about the students performance as possible (it's an experiential course without test exam). Therefore I attended some team meetings too. That really gave a different view as compared to the class situation. Furthermore, I stimulate students to communicate online by using e-mail or our google group. The google group has helped in two or three confusing situations to clarify the situation. In that way, the multiple channels seem to contribute to improve 'regular' communication in class and clarity about the work.

The Italian man who went to Malta

Via Guido Sohne I discovered this video with the Italian man who went to Malta. It's a funny example of miscommunication. At the risk of causing another layer of intercultural miscommunication about Italians ...

Interview with Clay Shirky

By coincidence I read the name Clay Shirky in David Weinberger's book (Everything is miscellaneous) that I'm currently reading, as well as on several internet sites. So I got interested and started reading this online interview with him, conducted by Jon Lebkowsky. It's very interesting, so please go ahead and read the full text at the World Changing site. Anyhow here's the juicy part for me. Lebkowsky and Shirky talk about the intuition people have for the use of various media, when to call by phone or when to meet face-to-face use email. With all kind of new media added to the repertoire available to people, we might get confused. They hope that it's more intuitive for young people. I can imagine that even it's intuitive for youngster in their friends interactions, it might not be intuitive for them in the workplace either. So we have people with different media uses and preferences, and we lack the intuition to know which one is the best, setting us up for confusion/miscommunication. Here's part of their conversation:

"Jon Lebkowsky: We have everybody online now publishing with the same forms of media, everybody's got access to everything, and you've got mass communication on one end of the spectrum, and on the other end you have very intimate but still public conversations, which is kind of interestingly weird. Is that a gradual continuum? How much are people really confused about the kinds of conversations they're having?

Clay Shirky: This is an experiment I want to see run, but I think this is a very interesting question. Here is my hypothesis: that one of the things that people create some kind of really deep mental model for is modes of communication. People my age and older have a very good sense of when to call someone on the phone, and when to send them a personal letter, and when to go see them. But we don't have such a good sense of when to email them, or IM them, or Twitter or what have you, because all of that stuff was invented after we had already solidified our sense of the media landscape. All of those things are still new.

One way to test this would be to see whether fifteen year olds today have a literally more intuitive sense of when to call, when to SMS, when to email, and when to IM. And I think they do. I think that the confusion around media is largely with people who have grown up in the environment we grew up in, where television is one thing, whereas the phone is another thing. The medium that reaches groups isn't a communications medium. The medium that is a communications medium doesn't reach groups. When all that has gotten overturned, it looks strange to us that people having group communications in a public medium – you know, these half a dozen friends, are all Live Journaling one another about their trip to the mall, or the party last Friday. But to those kids I don't think it seems weird at all. And if that's true, then that's the kind of generation gap that came up around the use of the telephone or the use of the telegram, and I think it's something society will have to weather for thirty years. If I'm wrong about that, which is to say, if increased numbers and kinds of media actually lead to increased social confusion, then I think that society is going to have to develop some formal methods of etiquette in order to figure out how to manage all of this proliferation of new communications options we've gotten."

Blogging from hospital

No, not me fortunately!

I have a friend whose two-years old son was admitted to hospital with a rare auto-immune disease. He needed a lot of blood transfusions. The friend asked me to open a blog for his son so that he could share all information with everyone interested. Which is what I did. I added an email subscription feature, because most readers would not be familiar with RSS readers. They did not want comments online. They posted daily, or even twice daily, and included videos too. It made it a lot easier to pick up conversations on the phone, because you already had an idea whether there had been good or bad news lately. I felt better prepared to phone while knowing the latest news. The boy is back home now and doing fine. Now and then there is still a blogpost with some news.

The blog made communication with a wider group much easier for the parents than emails, because it is not a push, but a pull medium. They would not have sent daily mails to a wide group. With the blog, even not-so-close-friends would send each other the URL, so that they could read and follow the ups and downs and decide how often to read. It was also good, to have an online space where all information could be found, and you could scroll down to compare the writings with earlier accounts.

The interesting thing about this story for me is that he knew enough about weblogs to be able to use the tool (amongst others by reading my blog I guess). Yet, he never had the urge to start his own blog. I'm the last person who thinks that everyone should blog by the way. But when a situation occurred where a blog could be useful he was able to see its application. Had he not known enough about weblogs, he would probably not have been able to see this as clearly as he did. So that's what technology introduction is about for me: making sure people know enough about the available tools so that they can design their own application for the tool when the situation calls for it.

My first self-made widget

I'm proudly presenting my first self-made widget! I have built it with Sproutbuilder, which I got to know through Beth Kanter.




I have used the example of a conference about communities of practice in the Netherlands, that we'll be organizing on June 2. I particularly liked the countdown feature. You can do much more like adding audio or video to your widget (though it already seems heavy for non-broadband internet users). If you want to know more about widgets, you can read one of my earlier blogposts.

The difference between communities of practice and action learning

Tomorrow I'm going to present the difference between the theories of communities of practice and action learning (and between the communities themselves and action-reflection groups). I haven't found any materials comparing the two, so I had to do some brainwork for myself. This table summarizes what I intend to present. (CoP = community of practice, AL = Action Learning). Any input welcome!

Characteristic	CoP	AL
Is	A theory, little information on methods	A methodology, less detailed theory
Goal	Stewarding a knowledge domain	Problem solving
Participation	Varying levels of voluntary participation	Fixed group over period of time
Activities	Mix of learning activities	Focus on reflection and questions
Expertise	Distributed Expertise Leadership	Peer-to-Peer
Period	CoP life stages	Determined period of time

How can blogs support communities of practice?

(Cartoon via tangwailing blog)

I observed that Stan Garfield blogs about questions he receives or overhears about knowledge management. That made me think that I could blog some of the questions I get (+ the answers). One of them was: how can blogs support communities of practice?

1. A community of practice can have a public teamblog. An example of a teamblog is the ecollaboration weblog . It works for the community to document face-to-face meetings, and makes it publicly known. In a discussion about the future of the community, it came up as an object of identification with the community. It is not easy to keep it going. For instance, it would be great if members would post more blogs sharing their experiences with ecollaboration and reflections, but it's not priority for people.

2. A weblog with summaries of discussions can be a repository for the community. An example is the weblog Everything you always wanted to know about capacity development . It is a weblog from ICCO capacity building advisor. The discuss cases in a password-protected environment. The cases are summarized in a depersonalized matter. Besides a repository, it is also a boundary crossing tool, as it is publicly available. In this case, the first posts were done by me as a facilitator, since this was a new way of working for the group and hard to explain. When they saw it, they were enthusiastic and were inspired enough to continue. It feels like a 'product' of discussions which may seem intangible.

3. Individual member weblogs can stimulate individual practice reflections, but can also act as means to open up practices to others. CPsquare offers an RSS feed that aggregates all blogposts by its members. This can be a way of making the weblogs more visible.

4. Blogging communities have blogs as their main means of communication. Nancy White has written an article about blogging communities called: Launching a new paradigm for online community. She distinguishes 3 types of blogging communities:
1. The single blog/blogger centric community with the power vested in the central blogger.
2. The Central connecting topic community which is a community that arises between blogs linked by a common passion or topic.
3. The boundaried communities like myspaces or multiply where members register and join and are are offered the chance to create a blog.

For more about blogging communities you can watch Nancy White presenting on this topic (she is talking through webcam!) in this video

Second life secondary experiences

I've never spent time to understand or experiment with Second Life. Somehow it seems more part of gaming than general online interaction and that seems like a whole different specialization. When I was checking feebs (Dutch site with videos for quote "ICT-ers and professionals" - so ICT-ers are NOT professionals :) I found this tutorial for Second Life by Thorley Linden. Besides using it as tutorial you can use it to get some feel of how it is to walk in second life with an avatar. It feels a little like walking in a fairytale.



I also read a book by the writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer about his experiences in Second Life. He wondered around for half a year. He has chosen to be a woman in Second Life as a kind of sociological or antropological experiment. He/she earns some money with Pole Dancing (?) = paaldansen. One of the big attractions for him is the fact that you can fly and don't need a house in Second Life. However, most of the avatars in Second Life do build a house and some even sit on their couches in Second Life. Since there is no crime (you can't bleed, and your property can be taken- in the code of property the owner is written) he (or she rather) had to get used to the absence of danger. After a while, he was seeing the normal world through Second Life eyes, being amazed about the details and searching for the minimap where you can spot other avatars.

I think this could be a way of using Second Life in the context of learning- to have people experience a different culture and see how it makes them creative and look at their real life with other eyes.

Video to explain Twitter

There's a new short video by CommonCraft, this time explaining Twitter. Since we organized a twitter experiment I've continued twittering. I'm not doing it fulltime though and may forget about it for even a few days. But sometimes I think it's fun to see what people are doing, and sometimes I find interesting new meeting rooms like Seats2meet or new wiks that are of interest to me like the etoolkit wiki. It's an amazingly new type of communication that reminds me of overhearing short conversations in the train (something I like too). It also ressembles the short conversations with friends and family in which you pick up an idea for a movie to see or a book to read. But this time you can broaden it to a larger group. I notice that the kind of activities I report are influenced by what I read from others, but that's very diverse from people reporting every step to people reporting their mood, or only their blogposts/what they read online (almost like a surflog). I've never liked the name microblogging, because it is so radically different from blogging, it has nothing to do with writing short blogposts!

I met Elmine Wijnia yesterday for the first time and she said she preferred Jaiku. Later I thought it is hard to change from twitter to Jaiku because it's dependent on where the people you are following are. It's as if everyone is going to the same pub and you are going to another. But it might be nice to try with a new group.

Jay Cross about informal learning

I just finished reading informal learning, the book by Jay Cross

If you want to see two more videos where Jay Cross continues his explanation, you can go to his blog. In youtube the second video has half the amount of viewers as the first one, which can be an indication that it wasn't interesting enough for half of the people, or it can be explained by the fact that people like to watch a video for 3-4 minutes, but not longer. Personally I dislike watching long videos, it takes up too long, then I'd rather have the text to scan through.

In the video and his book, he explains that 80% of learning budgets in companies are spend on training, whereas most of the learning (also 80%) takes place outside training rooms. He sees human conversations as the mail technology for learning and estimates that training will become obsolete. Though later he adds that formal training can be good for novices, comparing it to driving on a buss, where you the buss driver is determining the direction for you. Informal learning, though, works better for experienced workers. This is compared to biclyces, riding a bike you can decide where to go. It makes me curious why he hasn't chosen a car, which goes as fast as a buss at least... A bicycles is much slower than a buss.

To be honest, the book did not give me a lot of new insights, but maybe my expectations were too high. I had hoped to find more detail about levels of learning. I'm a little frustrated that we use the word learning for someone who asks for whether you want coffee with milk and learns that you like milk in your coffee. But we also use it for the results of deep personal reflections that make you decide that you want a major shift in your life. You learn what to do with your life.
It's a different level of impact.

The positive side is that the book explains informal learning in very simple, convincing ways, and gives lots of examples methods to stimulate informal learning like World Cafe, Bar camps, etc. I've come to realize informal learning may be a good term in itself. And he has very good account of the developments in the field of elearning since he was one of the first people coining the term.

I feel that Jay is using a definition of training in a somehow sterotype way. The way I know training is much more participatory and experience-based and may therefore not be diametrically opposed to informal learning. For instance, a training may even use a World Cafe method, a method that Jay labels as perfect for informal learning. Therefore it seems too black and white to me to talk about formal and informal learning and labelling training as formal learning. I will try to capture my ideas about informal/formal in a diagram in a next post. (I'm just realizing that this is the second blogpost with a cliffhanger, maybe the example of Jay about a waiter who only remembers something while unfinished and forgets everything when it's finished has influenced me after all :).

Dilbert discusses web2.0 or web1.0

Via Miles to go a cartoon from Dilbert (it was actually placed in the Intermediair magazine in Dutch). It's actually more about diverting attention in organizations.. It reminds me of two things: experts in eg. Netsquared talk about 'social media' rather than web2.0 (to avoid the dichotomy between web1.0 and web2.0?). And the eternal discussion about: is this a community of practice or not (or a learning community).

I've been asked to explain the difference between action learning and communities of practice, so as soon as I have a draft, I will put it up here.

Power Point 20th Anniversary Cinderella

This presentation is too good not to reblog! Via a blogpost on Northern Voices by miss604

A powerpoint presentation about Cinderella. Explains directly the difference between a story and a powerpoint bullet presentation... Now that I have a look at it again, I do like the graph with displaying Cinderella's beauty and happiness over time.

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Can web2.0 improve decision-making processes?

This is my first cross-post from my Dutch blog. Deciding whether a topic should go to my Dutch blog or this one has been quite smooth. Generally speaking, it's been easy to start the Dutch blog, building on the experience with this blog. I'm not insecure about topics, and confident that the audience will grow.

The Dutch blogpost 'Can I blog a visum?' might be interest to a wider audience I believe. In short: I invited an Ethiopian friend to come and visit me in the Netherlands. For the second time, her visa request has been declined by the Dutch embassy in Addis Abeba. The reason is that she has no property and no fixed job, (and no children) and therefore they think it is not proven that she will return to Ethiopia after the holidays. The risk is too high. I understand the Dutch embassy, but think they are flawed in their decision-making process. I think property, job papers etc can not reduce the risk of that Ethiopians with a tourist visa stay in the Netherlands. (might be the contrary??) I think it has much more to do with the context of the visa request and the invitation.

So I started wondering whether in this flawed decision-making process, web2.0 tools could be of help to improve decision-making. After all, it would be better if Ethiopians with the right intentions would be allowed to make a trip to our country -another friend who worked for Ethiopian Airlines and had a free ticket had the same problem-.

I see a lot of potential in blogging. For instance if Addisalem had blogged the two year process, with high hopes and huge disappointments, it would be a great testimonial of how a person with good intentions would suffer from the Dutch policy. And blogs are prone to be authentic stories, it is hard to fake two years. But how to get the right audience? Therefore it might be necessary to have a central space where people with similar problems blog. This could give a lot more insights to the decision-makers involved. But are those decision-makers ready to read? This is not obvious, and therefore a change process may be needed to raise the awareness of the decision-makers and raise their appetite to read. Would this be very different from listening to the stories or formal evaluations? I think blogging has the potential to be different because of the low threshold of putting this information out there on the internet. So blogs make a huge, previously hidden world more accessible. But the change has to go hand in hand with an attitude of learning by reading and searching for pertinent information. RSS feeds and tags will be important to that purpose.

The organization is there to stay, but the manager is not

In an earlier blogpost I proposed to experiment with a blog debate and Josien and Andy were into to trying this. Josien kicked off a debate about The end of the organization? Based on an essay by Michael Gilbert.

A quote:

Is this the end of the organization? Probably not by name and certainly not in the broadest sense of the term. But the traditional, tightly controlled, top down, branded organization is finding itself having to adapt and change. The
organizations of the future will not look like the organizations of today. Whether the organization as we know it survives or not, it is by studying the changing patterns of communication that we will discover the new
shape of civil society. Our methods of analysis - and possibly our methods of regulation, funding, and participation - will shift from those that reflect managerial thinking to those that reflect ecosystem thinking.

Josien responded by agreeing that organizations are shaped by communication patterns, communication patterns are changing, therefore organizations are changing. Communication channels have determined organigrams. The social web is a revolution which has really changed the principles of communication. Secondly, she argues that it is already happening, the future is now. For instance in the music, travel industries etc. New business models emerge. Best is the read the full post.

So I will argue that the organization is here to stay. I think both are putting too much emphasis on communication. The basis of organizations is their mission, aim, goal, whatever you name it. In the commercial sector it is about products and services, in the government is it about legislation, in the nonprofit sector is it about a societal goal.. The function of an organization is to deliver that product or to achieve that mission by integrating the work of its employees. So the organization is there to stay, because its basis it collaborating to produce a product or service of value for society. Communication is a means to an end.

But I do think there are changes underway, since more and more organizations thrive on knowledge workers, professionals. I would like to point to Stephen Collin's presentation Power to the People. Stephen points to the fact that knowledge workers (people working primarily with information and developing and using knowledge) are often demotivated and restrictred by their organizations. The manager's wish to control the outputs of the organizations leads to overly controlling behaviour towards knowledge workers who feel withheld in their practice by the managers. This is a core conflict between managers and knowledge workers who don't want to be managed. So the organizations of the future will have found ways of dealing with this conflict and are smart in leveraging the power of the knowledge workers. Possible contributions to dealing with this conflict may be found in the following 3 areas:

1. Communities of practice - whereby value created is measured and effectiveness closely monitored- this needs much more attention.
2. Online communication and collaboration tools- which make help reducing the tension between managers and knowledge workers because it makes the work of knowledge workers more accessible and transparent. (after all, online communication leaves visible traces, face-to-face communication doesn't)
3. Disappearance of the division between knowledge worker and managers, managers will increasingly be knowledge workers and be parttime managers - hence the disappearance of the full-time manager.