Blue Oxen Collab Collaboratory Summary -- 2003-03-31
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In which a summary of recent activity on the yak@collab and
tools-yak@collab lists and CollabWiki is provided. (02)
Please respond with corrections, comments, questions, and suggestions. (03)
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This summary will cover two weeks of activity: I was sick last
week and Eugene was busy. Next week's summary will be skipped in
favor of a two week summary the following week: I will be in
California next week for the Blue Oxen launch party and other
related activities. I hope to meet many of you. (05)
I'm going to use a somewhat different format this week. Please
let me know if this style is better or worse (and in what way)
than previous styles. I feel like some of the narrative benefits
of the summary are lost when presented with a bunch of intermixed
URLs. Rather than providing an outline of the conversation I'm
trying to provide an entrance. To get full context it will
probably be necessary to move both forward and backward in time
from the referenced postings. (06)
Because of the sheer volume of stuff involved this time around, I
may miss something important. If you feel I've left out something
that should be included, please append it to this message. (07)
The previous summary may be found here: (08)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-03/msg00052.html (09)
The previous Dangling Thread message may be found here: (010)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00051.html (011)
All the summaries may be found from here: (012)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MailingListSummaries (013)
Mailing Lists =================================================== (014)
Many postings across a large number of threads. The main themes
center around a continuation of earlier discussions of what are
collaboration, collective IQ and coevolution; the interaction of
tools, process, people and language; and miscellaneous resources
and ideas. (015)
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Tom Munneke was inspired to make a sizable number of postings
that all, in some way, tied back to efforts to identify that
which is not yet known but will reveal more by its
identification. The canonical example is the concept of zero and
how it is required to reach higher than simple math into algebra
[1]. Tom feels we need new terms to identify the tools and
patterns used in collaboration to begin creating a language for
uplift (and other forms of collaboration). He has gathered ideas
and terms related to this topic [2] at nooron [3]. (016)
Another thrust from Tom was to make a distinction between
situations where something is being built and something is being
grown. A space shuttle is built to specification but many
situations, such as improving collaboration, are not so reducible
and thus must be grown (for example, see [4]). He advocates a
higher level approach where technologies are not hard coded into
process [5]. (017)
There was a lot of discussion, in various threads that juxtaposed
formality with conversation, specification with emergence,
sense-making with sense-creation and all of these concepts with
the concepts of collaboration and groups. This balancing is
emerging as a centerpiece of our combined thinking: it is a
process that has been earlier identified as creative chaos
followed by the trimming and focusing of refactoring. (018)
Al pointed out that while IBIS can seem overly constraining to
some folk it is an effective scaffolding mechanism that helps
people when it is used appropriately [6]. (019)
Gary pointed out a term used for highly motivated groups:
covenanting group [7]. These groups are associated around a
shared mission. Our efforts to seek out a shared mission for the
group can be facilitated by harnessing the forces that create
covenanting groups [8]. This can be done by asking "Who are you,
what are your interests, and why are you here?" (020)
We can do more talking related to these questions. There are a
large number of participants that post only rarely or have never
posted. Your voices are important. (021)
[1] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00067.html#nid01
[2] http://www.nooron.org/know/uplift_linguistic_shell
[3] http://www.nooron.org/
[4] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00121.html#nid01
[5] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-03/msg00069.html#nid08
[6] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00082.html#nid08
[7] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00085.html#nid07
[8] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00085.html#nid020 (022)
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Jack Park announced the latest development version of NexistWiki
[1] and invited people to experiment with it. Earlier Eric
Armstrong asked for a show of hands of people willing to
participate in an evaluation of NexistWiki [2]. What is the
status of this experiment? (023)
[1] http://www.nexist.org/dev/TopicMap
[2] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-03/msg00055.html#nid02 (024)
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Eric Armstrong and Gary Johnson continued their discussion of a
starting point for a collaboration tool. At issue is whether
categorization of "data objects" is necessary or just nice [1].
They appear to agree that it is not necessary for discussions but
shows greater value in a general knowledge management tool [2]
agreeing that this may be an ideal application for topic maps. (025)
Gary provided some recommendations for short term tool
developments that may provide good bootstraps [3]. I hope to
pursue some of these in Blue Oxen's infrastructure over the next
few months, many pieces of the foundation are already laid [4]. (026)
[1] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00054.html#nid09
[2] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00075.html#nid01
[3] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00094.html#nid06
[4] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00099.html#nid03 (027)
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Eugene attempted to energize a thread born out of the previous
summary's session. In that discussion people declared that
people, not tools were central to the "problem" of collaboration. (028)
Eugene asked "what are the first people steps we can take to
improve this community?" [1] He gave as examples these weekly
summaries and the human process of making links back to the email
archive (this is a people process facilitated by a very simple
tool, a method I think is _quite_ fertile). (029)
John Sechrest responded that the steps depend on the people,
therefore we need to understand the people involved with more
accuracy [2]. Once that is done additional steps are: (030)
- Being explicit about what types of discussions are happening
and should happen.
- Keeping a map that provides a global view of the process of
interaction
- Look at tools that support task oriented efforts
- Maintain an inventory of tools
- Identify features of tools that need to be understood and keep
records of what tools do what (031)
John also provides some astute statements on the state of our
education, pointing out that we are very much in a vocabulary
building stage [3]. His list of references is worth reviewing
[4]. (032)
Unfortunately this thread died after John's message. I feel this
may indicate a fundamental gap in our shared understanding of
what we are trying to do or a mismanagement of our expectations
on what we can do. There are indeed people steps that we would
like to take, some of them we can take. To take them, however, we
need to know where we are going. Where would you like to go
today? (033)
[1] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00059.html#nid01
[2] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00062.html#nid05
[3] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00062.html#nid030
[4] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00062.html#nid036 (034)
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In a similar vein, Eugene's "Collective IQ redux" message
initiated more discussion in search of a definition of and
metrics for "collective iq" [1]. (035)
John again responded, this time pointing out several thought
experiments which show that collective iq has many dimensions. He
wonders which is the part we want to care about [2]. (036)
Gary provided an aspect of a possible definition [3] based on his
own definition of individual intelligence [4] wherein the ability
to make detailed distinctions and comparisons between
superficially similar or different things is important. (037)
Henry reported from a conversation with Doug that Doug indeed did
have measurements in mind when he came up with collective IQ [5]. (038)
[1] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00061.html#nid018
[2] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00066.html#nid024
[3] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00084.html#nid08
[4] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00084.html#nid03
[5] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00110.html#nid03 (039)
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John and I got into a conversation about our habits as
collaborators: techniques we use to manage information and
dialog. We both have techniques to make sure we had seen relevant
information before making an inappropriate posting [1] but
differing attitudes to managing web content. (040)
The conversations evolved into a discussion of collaborative
styles and what it is to be a "collaborator" [2]. We did not
reach agreement. (041)
This thread kept open the questions that have been open for some
time: (042)
- What is collaboration in general? What is the collaboration
that this collaboratory is trying to pursue?
- Who is a collaborator? How do they do their work? What are the
tools they use to be more effective? (043)
There's no clear sign of consensus (yet) but it may be that we
are (I am?) pressing on the issue too hard, looking for a concrete answer
where simply identifying the unknown might suffice. (044)
Gary questions for forming covenanting groups (mentioned above)
may provide a good starting point for further discussion. (045)
[1] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00086.html#nid03
[2] http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00090.html#nid016 (046)
Wiki ============================================================ (047)
Additions to the wikis were related to participants in the group.
Shawn Murphy added a ShawnMurphy page, and an unidentified
someone added a WhyAmIHere (I think it might be Dorai): (048)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ShawnMurphy
http://collab.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WhyAmIHere (049)
Both types of pages are very helpful to members of the
collaboratory and visitors. They describe and shape what we are
trying to do. If you haven't made a page for yourself on the wiki
you should consider it. (050)
Resources ======================================================= (051)
Tom and Jack directed us to the Plexus Institute as a source of
ideas and info related to the science of complexity. (052)
http://www.plexusinstitute.com/ (053)
Eugene recommended the Planetwork Conference in earl June. (054)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-03/msg00097.html#nid01 (055)
Shawn provided a description of the Nooron garment approach: (056)
http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/tools-yak/2003-03/msg00070.html#nid02 (057)
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