I’m looking at ways to build a community of the IT practitioners here in my home town. George at elearnspace blog has unearthed a fabulous piece on social software and added his own relevant comments. Both are going to be very useful as I work forward.
The reason we initially get involved in communities is often not the reason that keeps us motivated to stay on — we grow as people… and communities grow and evolve. For example, when I’m learning a new subject (or exploring a new field of interest), my reasons for joining a community are to learn. After a period of time, once I’ve acquired the language and have an understanding of main concepts of the field, my involvement moves to participation. If I’m truly passionate about the field, I may begin to try and impact directions (i.e. contribute at a ‘meta-level’). George Siemens
A great picture of the landscape many of us are involved in each day. Of particular interest to me was the explantion of how to better run a conference call by using phones, wikis and chat sessions. So often we restrict ourselves to one channel. This changes a little the Communication Decision Tree logic which is quite linear in its options.