Wednesday, May 2, 2007

End of Day 1 on the Blog

I think we have gotten off to a good start. I will be sending all of you an invitation to contribute to the blog. I granting each team member author privileges so that you can contribute postings, or comments...your choice as to which is best. If there are settings that I should establish as owner of this blog, please let me know...I'm new to this and just learning so all suggestions and help are welcome.

As we move forward to Day 2, I'd like to focus on the end result we want to achieve at the end of this exercise. Our goal is to have, by Wednesday, a demonstration of the potential power of collaborative technology. We recognize we can only touch the tip of the iceberg, but we want to demonstrate how quickly we were able to get this up and running, and achieve a deliverable in a relatively short time. Therefore, we need to make some decisions on our presentation.

First off, should the presentation itself be on the wiki or on the blog? Based on Chris's response, the wiki may be the place to craft the story of collaborative tools. I'd like to decide this by Thursday so that we can start crafting the story (together).

What other tools should we showcase to demonstrate the power of collaborative technology? Remember we only have 15 minutes or so and until next Wednesday morning to prepare.

What information can we share about existing use of collaborative tools in use in the department today?

Can we give a live demonstration of remote access...ie have some of us in various rooms connected, participating and contributing?

I'm sure there is alot more we can think about but this is enough for today. Please feel free to add to this list of questions. Consider this a team meeting....the floor is now open for comments, answers and suggestions! I'll check in again on Day 2.




5 comments:

Fram Engineer said...

Part 1
To answer the question directly - wiki - it has more structure, versions are kept.

Part II - making sure I understand the objective

Now, just to reframe the objective: ie a demonstration of the potential power of collaborative technology .

To me this is an experiment; The experiment is, using various collaborative tools, we will craft a story as if we were brainstorming in a meeting, using the a sub-set of c-tools to get our thoughts 'on paper' (so to speak).

An experiment proves/provides insights/disproves predictions and often leads to unexpected results(aka lessons learned).

The end result is a story to present early next week without meeting again.

In other words we are saying the 'proof is in the pudding'. Benefits would be time saving etc.

part III - first power demonstration using IM (instant messaging)

Using IM show the power of a live on-line available community of,say, Microsoft expertise or 'techies' in the dept. Ask questions from the audience, such as "is the department going Vista?" - 'why does my internet access slow down at lunch?' get instant answers. Now we can say to the audience, "what if we had HR staff on line as a community to answer HR questions? what if we had procurement staff on line to answer procurment questions?" Power/opportunity of the IM tool demonstrated in the first 3-5 min (in my opinion that is)and we move on to the next c-tool.

How's that for a start.
Ps - forgive any spelling errors.

amydawnrose said...

a collaborative tool that some of the library reference staff have recently started using is del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) a social bookmarking website. users create an account, and then bookmark their favourite websites, favourites which can be shared with other del.icio.us users (you can also choose to hide sites if you wish). because it is internet based, you can access your favourites from any computer, and the reference staff from any of the library locations in canada can access the same bookmarks. tags can be assigned to the bookmarks, which i think makes it much easier to find a relevant website than trying to rifle through the favourites folder of a browser. you can create networks of other users and easily suggest bookmarks to be added to their accounts. my two cents.

Peter Cowan said...

Both should be used (see http://imtransformation.blogspot.com/2007/04/blogs-vs-wikis.html). Blog should be the leadoff to show the collaborative discussion, evolution in thought and decisions arrived at. The last blog entry should crystalize our decisions and from there we link to a WIKI to demonstrate the collaborative document capabilities. Some options for what we demo here could be:

1) WIKI 101 with a section on collaborative tools (easiest)

2) The beginnings of a position paper or even a business case TOC that would outline types of collab technologies and issues (authenticity etc) still easy

3) a first cut at a combined diagnostique structure using the DGPC materials(not so easy but do-able)

Chris Taylor said...

I like Peter's idea of using both the blog and the wiki, for the reasons he stated. If we start ont he wiki too soon, you end up with people either taking the approach in wildly different directions, basically restructuring everything, or afraid to touch it because it is so far from their vision.

I would be a little careful in regards to "framiam"'s comments about the proof being in the pudding. Just because we might find this experiment successful does not necessarily translate into it being good overall. And if we find it to be a dismal failure, that does not necessarily translate into the tools being useless. Also, the use of new tools can often be impediments as we learn to use them. The question "blog or wiki" is a good example. We might waste a lot of time and effort working in the wrong tool at the wrong time. I don't think we should read too much into either success or failure.

Anna said...

I also agree that both should be used. I would like to continue using the blog to demonstrate our process and perhaps link to the wiki to profile the the end result of that process - the mapping piece that Paul referred to and a synopsis of Amy's del.icio.us library experience.