Alice's response to ED

Have you thought about doing a small 'collaborative' project as the basis of your thesis research...

This would be fab - I really would like to work on a real project - lets explore this idea further. Would the web - resource itself be this kind of project? I gather we are trying to construct a platform for collaboration - maximising the benefit, and useability of the platform will require working with users, tailoring it to their needs (this links to the language angle below).

So what type / area of collaboration do you guys share an interest in?

I think we need to go deeper with this question. We're meeting soon, so we have an opportunity to explore this together. I'm personally very interested in your suggestions around culture and language, in particular your comment that:

It's interesting that still on the web there's precious little truely inter-cultural collaboration... Wikipedia a bit, but they are separate languages, Linux has contributers from several countries (code languages are international, like music notation and pictures), but very little on more 'social' projects... yet that is what is needed for addressing global social/environmental challenges.

I had a brainwave of a real-time translation tool, for collaborative websites, so that you always see the page and posts in the language of your choice. The user would help with the continued development of the dictionaries... Maybe this thing allready exists...? (More to explore).

With FAR's Thesis in mind, we need to explore the application of such a tool for business towards facilitating 'truly inter-cultural collaboration'.

Alice :)

In response to Ed....

So thank you to Ed for sharing those thoughts- I couldn't agree more about the importance of exploring what collaboration truly is and bringing that into this project.  And I couldn't resist responding....

Our class really spent the first half of the program discovering the power and challenges of collaboration; which is what led me personally to this topic.  Our program has people from all different walks of life, from all over the globe, and all of our academic work is done collaboratively- with the thesis as the capstone of that work.  I came to Sweden to learn more about leadership and how to tackle our shared sustainability challenge, but the true Aha! moment came when I realized I was here to learn how to really collaborate- and the necessity of this to address the sustainability challenge.  I realized that in my past I'd done lots of group work, but very little meaningful collaboration where different minds come together and are empowered to create something greater than each individual involved.  I know one of the greatest experiences for me was working with three other individuals all from different continents, different ages and different levels of experience to develop a learning experience for our peers about Theory U.

I'm sure Alice and Fei can speak of similarly eye opening collaborations- and the three of us are really excited to put all our learning to practice on this project.  I'm excited about Brave New Collaboration because I think the web has the opportunity to change the way we share, learn and organize ourselves to allow collaboration that transcends barriers- but only if its developed intentionally to overcome those barriers.  As a group from all over the world, I think we have a better chance of really addressing those- but that's also why I think it will be so valuable to bring in Beyond Zero's experience in Africa and some of the unique barriers to that region.

One obvious barrier to the web's usefulness is the danger of information overload, particularly e-mail overload.  In our program it's clear that because we e-mail in english,  it is more time consuming for non-native english speakers to process e-mails; posing an unequal barrier to participation.  And then there are those of us who constantly fear the work e-mails coming in at all hours of the day, always staring at us when we sign in.....

At the same time, we don't want to lose those random thoughts and insights that are relevant to building shared knowledge, passion and understanding just because we're afraid of sending yet another e-mail, especially considering we are collaborating at a distance.  One strategy we're toying with is saving e-mail communication for logistical necessities- timely things needing response- and then post all other thoughts, commentary, insights to this blog people can check at their own convenience during set times.  We haven't used it much yet so no way to know if it will work.  Maybe over the next few weeks while we're waiting for our site to go up, all the 'facilitators' of this project (FAR, Menka, Ed and anyone else who is keen to take such a role) could share thoughts here- because I'm sure we'll all have many.  And then if we find it necessary to have a private means of communicating for the project facilitators, we could keep this on an unlinked part of our site.

Ok- more than enough from me.  I'm sorry brevity is not my strength- I promise I'll work on it...