Perspectance

Tomorrow, I am delighted to be playing host in a CPsquare Research and Dissertation Fest community conference call to Alice MacGillivray, a Canadian knowledge management researcher.

Alice published a chapter in the Handbook of Research on Knowledge-Intensive Organizations entitled, Knowledge Intensive Work in a Network of Counter-Terrorism Communities. There are three things intriguing me in her work:

1. Alice applied a model that considers community of practice design that she learned in 2004 from (then Army Major) Pete Kilner, practitioner designer who created CompanyCommand, a community of practice that has been transforming Army officers.
2. In addition to applying a practitioner’s model, Alice also used a phenomenographic methodology in her research design. Her study approach appears to be replicable.
3. By applying Pete’s model, and publishing a replicable study in an academic work, a practice approach heretofore known mainly to the practical domain in which it originated has the chance of being tried and disseminated through the academic domain.

Alice is bridging a scholar-practitioner divide that exists and many of us experience but is often times difficult to discuss. This may come up in the call tomorrow along with discussion of the applicability of the C4P model.

Pete’s C4P model is an interesting tool that I will immediately apply to my support of curriculum and faculty development communities. You really should read the well-written short paper, but this definition section might tease you:

The C4P framework defines each of these terms in a specific way. Content refers to explicit, static knowledge objects such as documents or video clips, whereas conversation refers to face-to-face or online discussions. The key distinction between content and conversation is that content involves a one-way communication of information (monologue), whereas conversation necessarily includes at least a two-way exchange of information (dialogue) [25]. Connections, as used in C4P, refer to interpersonal contacts between community members that involve some level of relationship. When one member sends an email to another member, a connection has occurred. Information context is the who, what, where, when, why, and how that enables community members to assess whether and how information is relevant to them. This context provides the richness of detail that makes information meaningful and memorable. Finally, purpose is the reason for which the members come together in the community.

Alice’s chapter is available through the publications section of her artful blog (third item down). The CPsquare call tomorrow from 1-2 PST is free and open to invitees. If you are interested, contact either Alice or myself for the bridge number. Skype is good ? : suewolff or amacgillivray.

I’m in the middle of moving a client’s Joomla website to a new host. The project reminds me of Gary Stager’s learning adventure assignments in my masters program. Professor Stager would assign one new application project each week or so, like “create a composition using Notepad Finale and share it with your learning circle.” If you didn’t know the first thing about music theory or notation, well, that just added a layer of complexity to learning a new technical application. It was hard to fail when the goal was to construct learning. As a result, I grew in my confidence to tackle new technologies using the abundant resources available among others who know a little more. Partly as a result, I work in the technical arena if the client can spare the extra time it will take me to figure out how to get the job done. Read on only if you are interested in the chronicle of moving a Joomla site to a new server. (more…)

As if I needed one more thing to distract me…I am going to investigate the leading theories that attempt to explain why Twitter has problems keeping up with demand. Maybe it doesn’t even have trouble. Maybe it’s a coincidence that lots of the 30 or so folks I follow seem to complain that Twitter is down and I usually have a “Twitter experiencing problems” message on my Twitterific ap when using my Mac.

Mostly though, Twitter does all I want it to, which is allow me to blurt out 140 characters worth of whatever I am doing and “listen” to same most of the time for the folks I follow. It keeps records, so that if I wonder what others have been up to while I was away, I can visit their logs. And I can track anyone on the whole network who uses a word like emergence or complexity for instance. Pretty amazing that such a large network does work – it all seems like magic most of the time anyway.

But I am curious if Twitter actually has a scaling problem and where exactly to pin the trouble. Help me out here with your comments if you have researched the problem. Look for my report soon.

That one last check of email before getting back on task was (as so often is), the derailment event. I’m deciding to at least blog the sequence for the sake of checking off one to do (blog something by the end of the day). It started with this:

Email: Stewart Mader sent a message to the members of the “Using Wiki in Education” Facebook group.
Subject: Message from Stewart (group founder): new Wikipatterns book, and a chance to win an iPhone!

I didn’t care about the Iphone, but people talk to me every day about wikis, so had to check this out:

Wiley Publishing is releasing Wikipatterns, a how-to guide for growing wiki use in organizations.

Stewart says the book is…

A how-to guide for growing wiki use in organizations with practical advice from a wiki expert.

Inspired by the vibrant community on Wikipatterns.com.

Loaded with case studies from organizations big and small including Sun Microsystems, Johns Hopkins University, LeapFrog, Red Ant, and National Constitution Day.

Written to answer questions such as:
* How an organization’s wiki differs from Wikipedia
* The best ways to get started
* How wikis streamline and simplify day-to-day activity
* How to encourage participation and make the wiki “stick”

It’s available on Amazon.com: http://snurl.com/1wdti
For more information: http://www.ikiw.org/wikipatterns

So I click over to the Amazon site. Cute cover. Subtitle reminds me I don’t have time for this right now, but can’t resist the Search inside the book! feature- and I pick the table of contents. Hmm, nothing in the first 25 pgs I need to read. Wait…. pgs 28-29 The All Virtual Community vs. Wiki that Mirrors Physical Community, and Why Mischief Doesn’t Happen, gotta see what they say there…but first…the rest of the TOC….

Pgs 57-59 looks like they’ll compare wikis to Intranet-powered CMS and shared drives (wonder if they include pen drives?). I was just looking into that yesterday! Hmm Atlassian, never heard of that one…should check it out – and the email had said that Atlassian is having a t-shirt design contest, so is the book a pitch for that company’s wiki? Interesting, like a fat white paper maybe. I really need to stop this and get back to work, but what about these links?

They keep listing questions that refer to wikipatterns.com. I pop that into the browser and ahhh…I like the pattern language concept lots, and scrolling down see plentiful promises to coalesce my experience in this area. Rich stuff. Got to share, I tag it on del.icio.us and think, now back to work…but first, back to the Amazon site. I pop it onto my wish list and notice Managing Virtual Teams. Rationalizing that this one is even more relevant to recent inquiries, I repeat this whole process. Checking out their companion site, I think, interesting concept for left links, but I don’t tag it. I add the book to my wish list though, X out of all my open browser tabs, and finally, except for writing this…get back to work, except…there’s a new email now…

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Did you ever have a teacher who had you write down every word you didn’t know in a new book and then go look up definitions and then use the word in a new sentence? That was one of my favorite school activities from the earliest age. When I was done, I felt so much smarter. Most of the time now, I can make sense of content in context with enough surrounding words, but once in awhile I stumble into a delectable berry patch where too many of the surrounding words are also new – but tasty.  

Such is the case with much of my reading on the Ning Developer’s Network.:

Some of the most common questions from developers new to the Ning environment have to do with the Ning Store (XNS from now on). These questions fall roughly in one of two categories:

• Mapping of relational (or more generally, traditional) database concepts to the XNS. This included questions regarding locking, concurrency, referential integrity, etc.
• Usage details. What are types? How are fields defined? And so on.

I’m not really a developer, but I am happy to be splashing around in there. I joined it and said in my profile I’m a NooB. (I should look that up.)  I’m a wannabe lots of things, one being a community developer; and because the people I know (and want to know) and work with are geographically dispersed, online is a good place to try and develop community.

Somehow, my want of bringing about community has combined with my Ms. Breakit, Makeit, Fixit approach to the world and landed me in the weeds of one after another computer science estuaries. 
Fortunately, I love estuaries- all kinds of them- every sense of them, metaphorical and tangible. As a child, I crabbed, fished, and swam in one. I’m a native of the briny edges (hmm, good blog title), which is perhaps why I’m at home adapting to new environments on my way out to sea.

I stopped reading to come write here because I noticed in the Ning Developer’s Network familiar characteristics of nurturing growth/learning environments.  

1. First, there’s Diego, believing and presenting the need for at least a little relational database theory before explaining how to do something.
2. Then, there is readable structure in the form of a Table of Contents, Intro, sections, and from a cursory look, liberal illustrations. These are great signposts that encourage me to swim out just so far, dart back, then swim out further.
3. He talks about models the reader can compare and contrast with this unfamiliar one. I particularly warmed up reading that my new learning can hook in somehow with a Network model – which I understand better.
4. Finally, there is the company of others to feed and swarm with, afforded by the discussion section immediately below the article.
   

I’m excited about Ning Networks! I’m excited about the level of help available among people who’ve started social networks and landed there with their questions and answers, and that I have learned the power of social learning. I’m excited that Ning makes it easy to pull a site and group together with little or no technical expertise, then turn over keys to the back door, basement, closets, and attic with the click of a button. There is so much I want to explore and do with our new site, and I just expect to be able to do it with a few searches of the Ning resources. 

Why was I writing this again? Oh yes, because the Ning page provoked it! So there’s this Primer….written by developer Diego, and I can see that if I read all the way through it, maybe a few times, I will LEARN all kinds of stuff about not only Ning, but the principles of database theory in general. This excites me so much I had to stop reading and capture what is happening here.