The WELL: inkwell.vue.328: Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

#69: Gail Williams (gail) Mon 16 Jun 08 13:38

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:38:00 PDT

In regard to #67, I kind of like the "multimodal" approach you mention, though at times it is just too easy to miss something. I think a group still needs an information wrangler or energy center person(s) to make a multimodal collage work smoothly.

That person doesn't need systems powers, just insight into the value of summarizing and feeding back, and a sense of permission to behave that way.

Honoring, promoting and assisting people who can do centering and recapping is an undervalued communications strategy, seems to me. Most likely I undervalue those who are champions at that myself. [Read entire topic]

#68: Vassi (vassilio) Sat 14 Jun 08 11:29

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:29:00 PDT

<scribbled by vassilio> [Read entire topic]

#67: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Sat 14 Jun 08 09:15

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:15:00 PDT

As part of our consulting methodology, my partner and I are working on something similar to the "decision tree," focused on best strategic uses of specific social technologies. But it wouldn't work to put that in front of someone and expect them to understand it. It's more of a guideline.

Of course, you shouldn't consider the tools in isolation. As Nancy White and I discussed long ago, it's more powerful to take a "multimodal" approach. An example that I used to reference in my talks was the "happening" format (Ross Mayfield's term) that Joi Ito et al used to create the "Emergent Democracy" paper in (I think) 2003. We combined conference call with chat room and wiki. There were two levels of converation - the conference call, which was relatively restricted bandwidth (one person talking at a time), and the chat, which was many people having multiple conversations at once, as a backchannel for the call. Some were capturing notes in the wiki, then Joi wrote the summary paper as a Word document that he uploaded to Quicktopic for sharing (similar functionality to Google docs). A later iteration was wikified on Joi's wiki, and there were several changes and comments there. I took that version and edited it for the version that appeared in the book _Extreme Democracy_. The paper itself is just one manifestation of a knowledge process. I think this process would fall into the category of "capturing the sense of the group," and I think we were closer to the real process of producing knowledge, and though Joi was listed as author of the paper, there was more transparency into the group process behind the author (which is usually there, but seldom visible).

Clay talks about using social tools to converge on a decision, and I think it's interesting to observe where tools fail. For instance I've used Timebridge to schedule meetings - it's a tool that allows you to offer several meeting times and see which works best for all participants, as each identifies good and best times from among those offered. I've seen groups that absolutely could not converge on a workable time for everyone, so we had to abandon the tool and mandatge a meeting time. [Read entire topic]

#66: Gail Williams (gail) Fri 13 Jun 08 12:23

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:23:00 PDT

Clay, your previous point is very useful. We see people at The WELL using forum software for a lot of things it was never intended to facilitate. Social roles, with nicknames such as "energy center" have been used to describe behaviors that compensate for the non-wikiesque nature of a simple flowing conversation. Somebody steps in and summarizes, reads back, cultivates the goal. (Typically this is a practice used for something like arranging an event, as i mentioned.)

I think that the open mic conversation format does lead to a scattering and drifting of ideas, unless all or most participants are very clear on just what they want to use the tools to do.

I'm struck by your statement that: > What *hasn't* been done yet is a real decision tree for these kinds of > choices. I have a feeling that it hasn't happened b/c its impossible, > in that social complexity swamps simple binary forking, so we're left > with intuitions about what will and won't work.

So of course I want to know if you know of faux decision trees or half-assed attempts at this stuff that take it any further than the list vs wiki split. [Read entire topic]

#65: Gail Williams (gail) Fri 13 Jun 08 12:08

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:08:00 PDT

There are several components that make IM feel different than email. One is a temporal distinction, again. Rapid response changes the flow.

I think another reason people prefer one or the other has to do with the volume of mail one gets. Even if there's little spam per se, the mix of correspondants in a typical mailbox are likely to be less intimate than the list of instant message buddies. Email evolving first and being more exploited for commerce is part of the context for these kinds of preferences. So that makes it partly cultural, even absent other considerations like twitter integration, degree of adoption of a short punchy message writing style, etc. [Read entire topic]

#64: uber-muso hipster hyperbole (pjm) Fri 13 Jun 08 10:27

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:27:00 PDT

I love IM. Email is for an exchange of info. IM is a conversation. There are things that I can write that are hard to express in a normal converasation. I think IM can often be deeper than a regular conversation. [Read entire topic]

#63: Jef Poskanzer (jef) Fri 13 Jun 08 08:38

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:38:00 PDT

I've never gotten why some people prefer IM over email; perhaps IM is better for some goal that I never care about and don't see. [Read entire topic]

#62: Clay Shirky (clayshirky) Fri 13 Jun 08 06:47

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:47:00 PDT

There are lots of intersections between tool and goal -- for instance, synchrony, participation, and scale form a "Pick 2" dilemma.

If you want everyone to have a shared sense arising from interaction, you can do it with synchronous form like a chat room, but only with a small group, or with a synchronous and large group, but only if most people are in listen-only mode, or with a large group of participants, but only asynchronously.

What *hasn't* been done yet is a real decision tree for these kinds of choices. I have a feeling that it hasn't happened b/c its impossible, in that social complexity swamps simple binary forking, so we're left with intuitions abut what will and won't work. A few observations are simple and general (as with the one here) but most are complex and context-dependant. [Read entire topic]

#61: Jef Poskanzer (jef) Thu 12 Jun 08 07:55

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:55:00 PDT

That is very interesting.

Is there just this one dimension of desired outcome, or are there other types of goal and corresponding optimal tools? [Read entire topic]

#60: Clay Shirky (clayshirky) Thu 12 Jun 08 07:11

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:11:00 PDT

(Sorry for being away so long -- serial family colds plus bad travel...)

Gail, I think the other characteristic in your observation, besides duration, is focus of outcome. Sometimes you want to have divergent work, starting with a few ideas and ending with lots of them, or starting with a few vague intuitions and ending up with serious ans sharp alternatives. Tools like Caucus and mailing lists are great for that sort of divergence, as they always allow for the introduction of new ideas, and because disagreement propels conversation better than agreement.

Sometimes you cant convergence -- for people to agree on something, and then do something about it. Tools to arrange face-to-face meetings, and systems that capture a sense of the group, whether in loose ways like Wikipedia, or tight ways, like a source code repository in an Open Source project, can produce that outcome.

The critical mistake, in my view, is deploying convergent tools for divergent problems and v-v. If you want to have an open-ended discussion, using a wiki will tend to leave the conversation inert, while if you want to get people to do something, a mailing list will tend to dissipate the "do" energy in the usual back-and-forth of conversation. [Read entire topic]