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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 11/11/2006 5:02 PM |
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Hey everyone,
I've been thinking a fair deal lately about how we could facilitate this process as much as possible. As I understand it, this project is currently in a "beta-testing" state that will soon change substantially with the official launch and invitation to contributors. Considering that we have already past the 1000th member, and the potential for this community to explode into massive numbers is definately a possibility.
In software, I have come to understand the substantial differences that exist when a system scales from 200 users to 2000. It stands to reason that any holes in our methodology will only be amplified as the community grows.
One of the issues that I see us grappling with right now is the relatively low rate of contribution that we see from the members. Out of 1000 people, I see a lot of networking going on (introductions of whos who), but in my opinion, the wiki is advancing at a slower rate that I would imagine is necessary for reaching our publish date.
I think this is due to the lack of direction that the chapters are incorporating. I understand and support a free-form contribution model, but one thing is just launching the project onto the community and seeing what results and the other thing is to help that community down the path.
Facilitated workshops is one idea that comes to mind. The goal is not to "tell" the members what they should write, but to help "trigger" the ideas that they already are thinking about and help them reframe those ideas in the context of the project.
In this vain, I propose the use of a theme section within each of the chapter wikis. I have taken the liberty to create an example of this in Chapter 10 (Research). The goal of the themes is to help identify exactly what the chapter will address. It does not provide any answers, to the contrary, it is meant to provide the relative questions. I find the value of a well placed open ended question can be instrumental in the creative process.
One added benefit is that through the exploration of the key themes, we will be able to sketch out (as a community) the potential structures of the chapter and the sequencing of the argument. This will provide a much higher degree of clarity for new members and provide them with a more focused jumping off point for collaboration.
In one of Isaac's posts he comments that "you don't need to write a whole chapter, a paragraph is just a important, so get in there and let us know what you think". (paraphrasing)
This is the right sentiment, but quite difficult to acheive. The book desires to cover a very complete range of topics, and the sheer mammoth size of the undertaking is quite daunting. I suggest that this is intimidating a great deal of our users. By breaking the problem down into much more specific directions for exploration, we make the material more accesible for receiving input from others.
So, that's what I think, take a look at Chapter 10, and get back to me with what you think. If we all choose that it's a valid idea, I would like help to implement it in all chapters.
cheers,
joe |
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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 11/11/2006 8:33 PM |
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| sorry guys, the example is in Chapter 2: We can Research It |
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barry
Posts:72
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| 11/13/2006 5:30 AM |
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thanks for your insightful comments and excellent contributions. Let me speak with the co-founders and isaac, our community manager, today, and we will get back to you about how we can work with you to implement your recommendations throughout the wiki to drive participation.
regards,
Barry |
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hjbarraza
Posts:11
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| 11/13/2006 11:33 AM |
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I've been re-reading CODE for the weekend, Collaborative Ownership and Digital Economies, It has a total of 17 contributors and 1 editor. The guys at MIT surelly already know which one I'm talking about. What i noticed after reading Joe's recommendation is that Rishab Aiyer Gosh, provides an descriptive introduction to each chapter. this lets the reader grasp an general idea of contents of the chapter.
I might think that we could leverage this issue with on of two options:
a) As Rashib Aiyer did, provide an full description of the chapters content.
b) Establish organised questions that contributors might answer (and add more questions).
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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 11/14/2006 12:10 PM |
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In his topic "Tagging needed", Dave Truss makes some good points with regards to how we could use themes for opening up the interaction with the book.
I'm going to continue the discussion here, but if you would like to see Dave's original posts, please go to:
http://www.wearesmarter.org/communitytools/discussthebook/tabid/80/forumid/6/postid/248/view/topic/Default.aspx
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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 11/14/2006 12:40 PM |
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Dave wrote:
[quote] "I think that there should be a series of themes rather than chapters- for now. Choose a theme that you are interested in and make a contribution to that theme (a post in a blog or wiki). Tag it and put it online for all to see. Everyone else can vote and/or comment, but not edit the contribution."[/quote]
There have now been a number of posts which have talked about the structure of the book wiki in its current state. My original idea had been to incorporate the themes directly into the chapters and from there be able to expand upon them, but after spending a few days writing themes, it became aparent a few things:
1) There is a huge amount of overlap between the chapters. For instance, in talking about "virtual economies", there is information that could be valuable to "We can sell it", "we can market", etc. By moving towards a set of themes, we could be sure of focusing on the ideas and not worrying so much if it makes sense in the context of a particular chapter.
2) As I have said before, I agree with the idea of starting off with chapters, just to give us a start. But right now, I'm seeing the chapters as an unnecessary restriction. Try to think of this in the shoes of a newbie entering the site for the first time. Someone new, will look at the 1043(and counting) members and say, "Wow, that's quite a bit of people". She will then go into the book wiki and see a specific structure (ie the chapters. Since she's new to the group, she may assume that this is the structure that the community wants to be using, and so will not question it. At that point, she either starts to work with the structure or chooses not to participate at all. I guess the point is that right now we have a structure that does not open itself up to playing with, instead it boxes a lot of ideas in, and makes it difficult to fully explore.
3) WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING! In the good sense. One of the great things about this project is that we are all exploring ideas that do not have a lot of materials already existing. This field is relatively new,so there is a huge amount of potential for uncovering some real gems that will make this book a really fascinating artifact. But we shouldn't forget that many people simply don't know where to begin. We need to think about clarity.
4) Related to point #3, I don't think anyone really knows what this book will be shaped like. In looking at what's been written, you get the feeling that we are trying to jump straight into the end text. It would actually save a lot of time if we stepped back a few steps and focused back in on the IDEAS/THEMES. From there we could allow the chapters themselves to emerge.
Dave, Isaac, Lilly, Barry, Jon, and everyone else in the community, WE NEED TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE. I've been visiting this site daily, and trying to participate in as much as possible, and what I've seen is that the member count is rising, but most of these new members are not contributing. This could be for a number of reasons, but in my experience, these are people who are signing-up to see what's going on, then they are not being motivated enough to contribute and so the site drops in their priorities. I've seen this happen in countless community sites, and don't want it to happen with this one.
Please help out, getting the discussion roling on all of these problems. None of them are insurmountable, we just have to think. We just have to be smarter about it ;)
cheers,
joe
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iphazard
Posts:87
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| 11/15/2006 4:35 PM |
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I am in the process of revamping the Main page of the wiki to redefine the chapters as "Challenges". I think this will feel less monolithic than the current table of contents.
Joe, your reworking of the chapter text is fantastic and if you can help implement it in other chapters it would be much appreciated. Take a quick look at the navigation I put together around your Chapter 1 work to facilitate moving through the article. |
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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 11/15/2006 4:48 PM |
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Isaac,
Good work on the challenges idea. It's starting to take form. I would use the small paragraph with each challenge as a description of the overall objective of the "Chapter". If we think of them from the perspective of business challenges it may help with the clarity. For instance, what business challenge are we looking at in Chapter 2 with regards to "research"?
I suggest that we remove the words "Chapter" for the moment from each of the challenges. The term is very weighted right now and I think it would open things up to more participation if we focus on the challenges and themes right now. As they each challenge is fleshed out and developed, we can begin to see the logic grouping of the themes into "chapters". Right now though, I don't think the term helps us out any.
I will definately be completing the work on themes that I began last weekend. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait till this weekend to complete the rest of the chapters. It took me two complete days to figure out the first half of themes. But don't worry, I will continue to develop the ideas as much as I can.
I think the navigation is good and definately helpful. It give a quick rundown of the entire wiki page which will definately be necessary once the chapters begin bulking out more with content. I would go ahead and implement it in the other sections as well. The "top" links are also very useful to make the reading/writing process more fluid.
great work...let's keep the momentum going.
cheers,
joe |
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iphazard
Posts:87
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| 11/15/2006 5:42 PM |
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Joe,
For now I'm going to leave the "Chapter" term in only because I don't have a way to rename the wiki articles without losing the history. We may get this feature in the near future and if so, I can make the change then. I will add a quick discaliamer that the "Chapter" headr does not imply anything finished and the titles and order are subject to change.
Great news that you will continue your work. I think it's extremely helpful.
Brace yourself. We're expecting a flood of people tomorrow.
Isaac |
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1ofus
Posts:103
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| 11/24/2006 6:49 PM |
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OK, a bit of progress report on the priorities for changes in Chapters, Themes and Challenges would be helpful.
For instance, there seems to be some support for reordering Chapters - is that possible and is it planned? If so, when?
I would like to see some visual material here. A picture paints a thousand words - and a mind map would be great here! Any chance of having that kind of facility here?
Joe, your idea of facilitated online or web conferences is a good one. It would be interesting to see how many people turn up on an invited session re specific challenge. BTW, do we have access to technology to do so? And, would the input be directly accessible here or transferable into the book itself? |
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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 11/25/2006 1:43 PM |
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For the last four years I've been working on a social software framework for the rapid development of exactly these sorts of applications. I'm using it right now to put prototype much of what you are describing. The knowledge base tool that I am proposing with the supplemental site, will be a little more open to playing around. Users will be able to generate new sections and sub sections. Post images and downloads with their pages and tag everything.
By opening up these "testbed" apps, we can really dive into the caos without affecting the overall progress of the book-wiki. I can develop web services to facilitate the transference of this test content into the official wiki in order to really capitalize on the contributions. |
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