a-social networking

I was continuing my quest for webhosts and site-building and spent some hours of interesting surfing. At first webpublishing was only for developers, now it’s for each blogger. Surely, in the same way, community platforms will become simpler to put together? So I looked for services where you can build a community portal in a modular, simple way. I am thinking of a kind of pimped Yahoo group, only with many more possibilities.

I found commercial platform builders that do not let you manage the assembling. I also found many social networking things, but what I want is something you set up as an established group, to network internally in your group. In some of the social networking tools you can have a separate group or network. For example, the portuguese branch of BNI, a business network, kind of merged with the Portuguese group in E-cademy. So BNI members now use E-cademy software for their own network, while other E-cademy members cannot come in. So this gives some of the exclusivity I want. But still, that is not offering the ease of use (should be so easy to set up that your would do it even for a temporary thing, like a family wedding) and flexibility I am looking for.

I also found Goingon.com. From their site:

Organizations of all size can use GoingOn to build interactive communities around their most important initiatives and benefit from the open and compatible "network of networks" environment.

GoingOn Networks allows companies to:

• Set-up your own brand network within minutes and build an interactive community around your initiatives and ideas
• Easy-to-use weblog publishing system that incorporates the latest blogging, search, tagging, and feeds.
• Powerful community management system with full-access controls
• Real-time access to full range of network traffic, member, and content data & analytics
• Fully hosted, scalable and secure platform

This is one of their networks http://opensourceforum.goingon.com/

It looks promising, although there are many questions. Is this what I have been looking for?

update: just now discovering a wealth of hosted services too, of which Bryght and aroundme seem most interesting

How to build a website2.0

I want to make a website for my consultancy business. My wish list:

• full control not only over text but also over architecture of the site, but in a very simple way as I do not know code
• a basic site now, but with the possibility to expand in future, even host clients projects and link wikis etc
• I am willing to dive into some system and invest time to learn it, but if I do it should be good enough for full size community work.
• my proper domain name
• ease of maintenance
• open source software
• low cost

There´s different steps:

1. making the site and maintaining it
2. registering a domain
3. uploading & hosting of the site

For each of these traditionally you would pay. Bloggers’ services have turned this around: I have made some sites on wordpress, which is quite easy to master for non-techies like me, you borrow their domain for free (but you have to accept the “wordpress.com” to your sites address), the uploading is instantly and hosting is free. You do your own updating and maintenance. So WordPress could probably do the job, but if I want my proper domain, I am directed from wordpress.com to wordpress.org and it looks much more complicated. I have to download programs, and hosting is separate in that case. Bluehost seems to host for 7 U$/month, includig a free domain. (but what will the domain address look like?)

I found squarespace, which I instantly fell in love with for its intuitive assembling, very clear and easy, and their beautiful styles. I had my site built even before noticing that it is not a free service: hosting is paid. They very generously let you tinker with all they have on offer for a month, but afterwards you pay. And if you do not want their name in your address you cannot go for the 7 U$ package, but go to the 12U$/month. You need to come up with your own registered domain, and there is no email with the same domain. There is no nice “export” function to make your site in Squarespace and then host it elsewhere, you can only get a rough xml backup. So in about three weeks the site I built will drop of unless I do something.

I wondered about joomla, drupal or moodle, but my spirits drop when I see the opening portals. I can see it will take lots of time to master these…

I think these are my two best options now:

1. making and maintenance: WordPress
2. registering a domain AND 3. uploading & hosting of the site: a host, e.g. Bluehost for minimum of 7 US/month

Questions: Is the domain I might get free with the host a registered domain, meaning can I use it also if I move? Would a local portuguese webhost also do; do they work with WordPress?

1. making and maintenance AND 3. upload and hosting: Squarespace for minimum of 12 U$/month
2. registering a domain

This is what others said about it.

ThMe future of custom-built small websites
How To Build a Website with Office 2.0

Notes on prato narrative and how communities can memorize

I read the conference paper ‘prato narrative‘ by Beverly Trayner, John D. Smith and Patricia Arnold. As I haven’t  read any of the books and do not even know the authors they are reviewing I feel like a rookie and an ignorant. So normally, I would not be inclined to react. Yet on the other hand there is something to their text which is exciting and unsettling at the same time. They are mixing styles (scientific & narrative), media (article & wiki), point of perspective (first tense, third tense), roles (as character and researcher) …. what not?

The reader is forced to switch roles as well, from being drawn into the intimate description of part of the lives of the three, to a student of the literature. Ultimately, the reader could contribute to the wiki and become co-creator. It makes reading an experience, which is a welcome change from traditional research aricles.

Like Mathemagenic, I always start reading a PhD dissertation by the acknowledgements. Knowing (something of) the person who is writing makes reading much more interesting. It provides context, colour, feel…Here the authors help you, by describing their settings and their work process.

I love it…. It is what I like about reading blogs, too. 

And, though not familiar before with “autoethnography”, I instantly acknowledge the usefulness of ‘personalized accounts’ to extend understanding or to put into perspective any subjectivities.

But still. It is unsettling because I feel a bit guilty: Surely the details of their work processes is not what I am studying the article for? I love to know some context, but it sometimes feels too close, almost inappropriate to just read this as normally ´context´ is gradually discovered, through other ways than the actual article. Getting it presented like this feels like intruding, cheating. Would I have finished reading the article without the narrative patches? Isn’t it also about making an article less dense, more accessible, less difficult? Isn’t this a concession to the zap-generation who otherwise will not be able to stay focused long enough?

It is a very interesting effort to take academic writing a step further, from the era of print and linear, static writing, into the era of hypermedia with “multi- layered, multi-tagged web or references.” By reading the article, looking at the wiki, trying to grasp the content, the initial questions the authors set out with start to become more clear: how to have a common understanding of issues in a (research) community? How to jointly practice meaning making? How to remember, and what to remember? How can successive ‘generations’ of community members be mutually learning, with help of what kind of technologies?

It’s this last question which gave me an idea. I am new to CP square, which is the community the authors are all part of. I will try and ‘test’ CP square for its ability for introducing and teaching newcomers.

CoPs for multistakeholder problems?

During the project in the CP2 course we focused on inter-organizational CoPs. After we discovered that an inter organizational CoP is not all that different from other CoPs, I felt unsatisfied as the questions I started out with, about forming and sustaining CoPs, had not been asnwered. I came to discover that it was more general, CoPs in difficult conditions, where no embrionic CoP existed, I was interested in. I had (wrongly) attributed the difficulties of these CoPs to the fact they were (to be) inter-organizational. A better question would have been: How to form and sustain CoPs in complex, challenging multistakeholder issues, where no communities existed before. We used again the metaphor of gardening: how to cultivate plants in a place that does not even have weeds, in barren soils?

Etienne Wenger responded:

There seems to be a number of situations that you could be referring to with your barren soil analogy, but all would have in common that you see the potential and need for a community, and prospective members do not. It is a problem.
They may have a common practice already but they do not see a need to connect. In this case, they need to experience how learning together can enhance their own practice. Being brought together for a task can do this without committing to the full community idea up front.
They may be involved in different practices and do not see each other as potential learning partners at all. In this case they need to experience a challenge that transcends their different perspectives and can only be addressed by connecting across boundaries.
They are in such competitive relationships that sharing is out of the question. In this case, they need to find some common ground that is at a level that does not involve direct competition or that involves competition with some other group.
These situations are always difficult for community building and the mortality rate is fairly high. But it is not impossible.

While another co-learner commented:

• My sense is it starts with the burning, ‘need to know’ question – usually by one person – that is quickly found to be in common with others. 

• there is a natural gestation or nurturing period where the idea of exploring knowledge together coincides with an evident and emerging leadership that is recognized for its legitimacy and is trusted. In our own case, the idea of municipal cultural planning had been around for some time, but the leadership wasn’t there.  The person who was most passionate about the topic couldn’t get it off the ground until our organization (CCI) saw the potential that this co-learning would provide its own members.  Once we stepped forward and provided administrative support and leadership, it enabled the person whose passion it was to study and share knowledge about cultural planning, to flourish. 

• The other learning I gained from our project case study is that a CoP needs time to germinate.  So, framing your question in gardening or agricultural terms is really very appropriate:  How can we better cultivate a quest to learn among those who share a common interest in learning together?

• Our comparative case study did point out come characteristics of CoPs that were not apparent to me earlier - that there are issues of rivalry that exist within organizations and between organizations that form barriers to co-learning. Therefore, one of our questions, has to be how do we overcome rivalry and demonstrate that there is shared benefit?

With their help, I am also discovering what CoPs are NOT. I am intrigued by those groups that do not share a practice, but do have reciprocal sharing of rights and responsibilities for the mutual benefit of the participants. Networks that give rise to collective action in complex issues. In short, development. I am not yet sure what CoP think can contribute.

The dream I am working on: a networking organization which fosters innovation and learning for rural areas. Especially the linkages between producers, small and large, and market, customers, R&D, and other business sectors will be promoted. Governmental and academical participation will be sought after if deemed opportune.
The mission will be something like: joint learning for a healthy rural area. Farmers and other investors in the rural area, together with others who live there, will be in the "driver’s seat". It is not a consultancy or training company, not a farmers association, not a ngo, but it has elements of each of these. Not the private benefit of any particular business or group is central, but the advancement of the rural area.

The role of the organization would be to gather a group of people around a certain theme, and to not only facilitate but also actively encourage them to interact as much as possible with each other, about this theme. This is done by providing multiple means and opportunities to meet (smartly blending face-to-face and online), prompting them, moderate their meetings and discussions. The following methodologies could make part: moderated lunches/drinks, excursions, presentations by members, internet social networking, Open space discussions, World Café, speed dating, interviews and presentations in blogs.

It would be a hub for inter-organizational communities of practice.

Target groups or themes could be: bio-energy (biogas, solar, wind, biodiesel), agri-food chain (different sectors, like dairy, horticulture etc), water, tourism. 

After a while, the members will have to take an active role, and should articulate their evolving needs. This could be a market study, courses/training, finding new contributors to the group, finding possibilities to start a pilot, apply for subsidies…. or other.

The objective is that they jointly exchange and generate knowledge, and come to co-operate on projects which each of them individually would not have succeeded. Participating to the organization will add value to their own practices, and to the knowledge organization, so it can continue with other groups, other themes.
Fixed costs of the organization should as much as possible be paid for by the group (partly subscription, partly per-transaction, maybe sponsors). However, development, start up and marketing costs… ???

Learning at many levels

How to keep a learning log if your learning pace is higher than your processing pace? I did an assignment for a business association with 260 companies as members. Traditionally their objective was to strengthen business ties between the Netherlands and Portugal, but since structural funding by the Embassy stopped, they are basically free to do anything they like. Which puts them in a terrible fix: part of the staff wants to follow market opportunities and act like a consultancy company, while another part wants to tend to the members´ needs. Members do not form a closely-knit community, hence their needs are not articulated. The services to them are merely social events, like a golf tournament and a festive anniversary dinner.

The consultancy services are lucrative, the social events are not. Traditionally the two re-enforced each other, today, increasingly, the clients are not members, and do not want to become members. How to turn around the divergence between "clients" and "members"? I did a quick scan and discovered:

• It is valuable to people if you just write down what you see and what they tell you. They seem all surprised and happy with the result, which is basically just a summing-up of what they gave you. Looking from a distance and the relative quiet I have in my daily life, are a contrast to the daily lives they are in, and this helps me to structure my observations.
• The digital divide is everywhere. I assumed people my age who are university level office workers with Internet connections at work and at home would know what a blog is. Wrong.
• How to create value from a network? The term "network" is also used for a network company, e.g. a telecom company. A lot can be learned for organizational networks from the comparison. Networks create value by mediating exchanges between their members: more members, intensified networking among members.
• On a self employed consultant level I am still a beginner… How to negotiate? It is disturbing the rest of the conversation. I am now invited to prepare a proposal for follow-up… which is good, but which will cost time…